When a co-worker was layed off from our rather small company, he refused the deal, much to the consternation of the HR director. The sticking point for him was the non-compete clause. He decided it was foolish to rule out employment from a competitor for a couple weeks worth of pay. Here in my state, the employer isn't required to pay you for saved-up-vacation when you leave, nor any kind of severance, so the difference between what they have to do (pay you for the time you worked) and what they are offering could be quite substantial.
A second cow-worker told me his former boss had threatened to withold the last paycheck unless he signed the papers, which would have been illegal. So he called the guys bluff saying "Keep it, I've already signed everything I'm going to sign back when I was hired." The boss caved and handed him his money.
If you are thinking of not taking the deal, you could try editing the severance agreement yourself and deleting the objectionable parts before signing it as a counter-offer.
Idealistic. You have a valid point, but if Firefly rejects idealistic conventions, it could be said to be realistic, if only because the characters behave true to the nature of people. I guess it depends on your point of reference. Star Trek, with its multicultural cast, and prime directive, etc. was idealistic. Compared to Star Trek, Firefly is realistic. Compared to "real life", its just a TV show.
The very first thing I thought of when I read this was: Mystery Men. Since it just wouldn't do to have everyone be Spider-Man, most of the players will, at least at first, have to throw forks or swing shovels. Then I realized that if people create their own characters and make their own names, it will be more like The Tick because if people can't be Batman, then there will be a Der Fliedermouse (spelling?) I think I would choose something like The Mutterer or The Umpire if I were to play.
"Over-the-top special effects offer stunning visuals and unparalleled tactical realism"
Aren't "over-the-top" and "realism" contradictory?
When I think third-person viewed tactical, I think Metal Gear Solid. It absolutely sounds like cashing in on a good name with an almost unrelated game, but I guess it could still be a good game.
"While you are in ketosis, you do not store fat. When you have unburned fat, you remove it from your body by an ancient process known today (medically) as a bowel movement. You don't gain it as weight."
IIRC, the unburned calories that your body sluffs off during ketosis pass out in the urine, not the feces. I could be wrong though.
The part that really bothered me about the article was this: "Carefully controlled metabolic studies show that it doesn't matter where extra calories come from."
Which, as you said, is horseshit. Those carefully controlled metabolic studies DO NOT include the study of very low carb diets. They compare moderate carbs to high carbs and see no difference because ketosis isn't a factor. To take a few data points and extrapolate the extremes is not solid science.
I did Adkins for a year. I lost 30 pounds and kept it off. We went back to a "normal" diet when my son was born and I gained 10 back. I ate a lot more good vegetables on Adkins than I do off, and naturally I felt better.
I'd like to start a pool for bets on how long it will be before/. gets a subpoena in regards to these threatening statements, but I'm sure/. won't be able to tell us when it arrives. Too bad, it would be fun to watch this unfold. Good luck with "It was just a joke."
"chalking in itself isn't illegal but the usage is."
Whoah there partner, you're making a bit of a leap there. If one were using the open WAP to break into a company's interior network and/or muck around with their computers, then that would be illegal. However, it is not at all clear that a WAP open to the public, used for internet access is illegal. Many people leave them open on purpose, and secure the intranet from the WAP. It is reasonable to think that many people and companies would not be concerned about the bandwidth used by a passerby on the sidewalk waiting for the bus. "Exploiting and open WAP" sure does sound bad, but it isn't necessarily.
"That basically said that the FBI wants hackers, but their ethical screening keeps them from hiring people who think like hackers."
You completely ignored the FBI response. "Hackers" can get a job with the FBI. They have lots of contractors. But if one has done significant illegal stuff, then one can't be a Special Agent. That seems like a really good policy to me. And I think the idea that one must be a criminial to understand the criminal mind is totally bogus.
I gotta admit, hearing all the exhuberant stories of people who switched to OS X and found that computers were fun again and that everything really Just Works, really got to me. I can't remember the last time I plugged something in and it just worked. Now I want one, but I can't figure out what it could do that I can't already do with my trusty old desktop that would be worth $2k investment in hardware and software.
Isn't Arthur Dent really the only one that needs a British accent? Xaphod, Ford, Trillian, etc. aren't from the UK, so why not let them have any old accent?
The more I learn of this scheme, the more I think it is a clever way to tie into the "collector" thing that has made so much money for Nintendo and Wizards of the Coast, primarily related to Pokemon. Furthermore, if any Nintendo execs or marketing types are reading slashdot, they must be jumping up and down with joy because Mike says:"...having a little box of scancards with my GBA holder just seems cool."
Cool=pure gold, baby.
I still think its funny we are figuratively back to punch cards.
It says that the e-reader plugs in and reads an optical dot code on the trading card. I expect that means the actual game data for all the games is already in the e-reader, and the trading card just enables the right game titles. Its probably microprinting too, to defeat photocopies.
It is possible that the game data actually IS on the trading card. If that were true, I would say we have figuratively come full circle back to something very like punch cards.
from the article:"Eating that food will also improve their standing within the game."
That is the one part about this that bothers me. Gamers will have an incentive to virtually eat at McDonald's. In fact this kind of "selling out" is enough to convince me not to buy the game. When it fundamentally changes the game experience, that is too far. I'd feel the same way if racing games took money from car makers to make one car outperform others that it wouldn't normally beat. I'm buying a game, I'm not selling myself as a consumer.
I found your smokinggun link very informative. Especially the intersection between it and the above discussion of Phish. Most of the riders for the "rock stars" were amusing because of the detail of description for the catering and amenities. I was amazed by the volume of alchohol that U2 requested for each show. The Phish riders, in contrast, deal entirely with making sure the venue is safe and secure for the fans. It contains things like warning the venue that they will have people dancing in the aisles unless they have enough ushers keeping the aisles clear. I'm not a Phish fan, but I applaud their attitude.
It seems like most of the naysayers around here are only considering the US market. One of the articles pointed out that only %12 of the current world population have automobiles. That leaves a bunch of people who could use more flexible/better transportation, and many of them would also be interested in the possibility of powering their home off the vehicle. If GM could capture even 20% of 1 billion Indians that they wouldn't get with an IC car...
I think the world demands fuel cell vehicles. It doesn't matter if the US won't build it because of conspiracy or whatever, it will be built. Perhaps GM realizes this and wants to be ready so that the fuel cell revolution isn't driven by India, or China, or Brazil.
"Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)"
That simply isn't true. Electric engines have gobs of torque. Their limitation is that their power is great at low RPM's and drops off precipitously as the RPM's go up, Kinda like a diesel, only more so. Thats why Hybrid vehicles have caught on. The electric engines are very good from a dead stop, but peter out at 30 or 40 mph, and then the little gas engine can carry the load.
Fieros are still the number one platform for kit cars, since the tube frame provides all the strength. I've seen a very nice Ford GT-40 built on a Fiero. There are also at least a couple companies that make frame/suspension mods to swap the V6 (or I4) out for a V8. If GM goes forward with the AUTOnomy, you can bet there will be a revival in fibreglass. They will probably encrypt the "x-by-wire" thing to keep us from buying entire bodies from someone not approved by GM, but that won't stop people from building their own mechanicals around GM electronics. I'd like a '57 Bel Air with 2 trunks, please.
ultimately, the owners/lenders/board members get to decide whom, what, and how much of Napster gets sold, and what the price is. Its the money people that have the final say, not the CEO, unless he is a majority owner. Those people are all for recovering as much as their losses as possible, and they are not going to be too worried about sullying the image of Napster, 'cuz its dead.
A quick look at IMDB confirms that DeNiro does in fact produce movies that he doesn't act in. Of course he does act in most of the movies that he produces, but that doesn't change the fact that you are correct.
Since Kazaa is in Australia, and likely to ignore any ruling of a US court, is this the same case where the **AA is trying to make AT&T and other ISP's block access to Kazaa? Could this move for summary judgment be an attempt to get fait accompli before those ISP's get a chance to explain why they should never be responsible for content filtering?
My own perception of that is that the **AA is saying to the courts that the current rules don't stop mass copyright infringement, so the court needs to make up some new rules. "Make the ISPs do what we want." I sure hope we can rely on the court to not like being told what to do, and to not like to make up new laws.
Wow, you aren't kidding. Those are huge. There is no way those are going to stay in place while skiing or snowboarding. I guess they would be okay for the chairlift though.
I think one would be better off subbing in little ear-bud phones under your hat and/or helmet, even though the sound is not as good.
Better yet, forget the whole thing and enjoy the silence.
Slashdot Mirror
When a co-worker was layed off from our rather small company, he refused the deal, much to the consternation of the HR director. The sticking point for him was the non-compete clause. He decided it was foolish to rule out employment from a competitor for a couple weeks worth of pay. Here in my state, the employer isn't required to pay you for saved-up-vacation when you leave, nor any kind of severance, so the difference between what they have to do (pay you for the time you worked) and what they are offering could be quite substantial.
A second cow-worker told me his former boss had threatened to withold the last paycheck unless he signed the papers, which would have been illegal. So he called the guys bluff saying "Keep it, I've already signed everything I'm going to sign back when I was hired." The boss caved and handed him his money.
If you are thinking of not taking the deal, you could try editing the severance agreement yourself and deleting the objectionable parts before signing it as a counter-offer.
Idealistic. You have a valid point, but if Firefly rejects idealistic conventions, it could be said to be realistic, if only because the characters behave true to the nature of people. I guess it depends on your point of reference. Star Trek, with its multicultural cast, and prime directive, etc. was idealistic. Compared to Star Trek, Firefly is realistic. Compared to "real life", its just a TV show.
Can you fill in "John Doe" with a bogus address and get a card?
The very first thing I thought of when I read this was: Mystery Men. Since it just wouldn't do to have everyone be Spider-Man, most of the players will, at least at first, have to throw forks or swing shovels. Then I realized that if people create their own characters and make their own names, it will be more like The Tick because if people can't be Batman, then there will be a Der Fliedermouse (spelling?) I think I would choose something like The Mutterer or The Umpire if I were to play.
"Over-the-top special effects offer stunning visuals and unparalleled tactical realism"
Aren't "over-the-top" and "realism" contradictory?
When I think third-person viewed tactical, I think Metal Gear Solid. It absolutely sounds like cashing in on a good name with an almost unrelated game, but I guess it could still be a good game.
"While you are in ketosis, you do not store fat. When you have unburned fat, you remove it from your body by an ancient process known today (medically) as a bowel movement. You don't gain it as weight."
IIRC, the unburned calories that your body sluffs off during ketosis pass out in the urine, not the feces. I could be wrong though.
The part that really bothered me about the article was this: "Carefully controlled metabolic studies show that it doesn't matter where extra calories come from."
Which, as you said, is horseshit. Those carefully controlled metabolic studies DO NOT include the study of very low carb diets. They compare moderate carbs to high carbs and see no difference because ketosis isn't a factor. To take a few data points and extrapolate the extremes is not solid science.
I did Adkins for a year. I lost 30 pounds and kept it off. We went back to a "normal" diet when my son was born and I gained 10 back. I ate a lot more good vegetables on Adkins than I do off, and naturally I felt better.
I'd like to start a pool for bets on how long it will be before /. gets a subpoena in regards to these threatening statements, but I'm sure /. won't be able to tell us when it arrives. Too bad, it would be fun to watch this unfold. Good luck with "It was just a joke."
"chalking in itself isn't illegal but the usage is."
Whoah there partner, you're making a bit of a leap there. If one were using the open WAP to break into a company's interior network and/or muck around with their computers, then that would be illegal. However, it is not at all clear that a WAP open to the public, used for internet access is illegal. Many people leave them open on purpose, and secure the intranet from the WAP. It is reasonable to think that many people and companies would not be concerned about the bandwidth used by a passerby on the sidewalk waiting for the bus. "Exploiting and open WAP" sure does sound bad, but it isn't necessarily.
Finally, a good analogy. There are so many bad ones here at /.
"That basically said that the FBI wants hackers, but their ethical screening keeps them from hiring people who think like hackers."
You completely ignored the FBI response. "Hackers" can get a job with the FBI. They have lots of contractors. But if one has done significant illegal stuff, then one can't be a Special Agent. That seems like a really good policy to me. And I think the idea that one must be a criminial to understand the criminal mind is totally bogus.
I gotta admit, hearing all the exhuberant stories of people who switched to OS X and found that computers were fun again and that everything really Just Works, really got to me. I can't remember the last time I plugged something in and it just worked. Now I want one, but I can't figure out what it could do that I can't already do with my trusty old desktop that would be worth $2k investment in hardware and software.
Isn't Arthur Dent really the only one that needs a British accent? Xaphod, Ford, Trillian, etc. aren't from the UK, so why not let them have any old accent?
The more I learn of this scheme, the more I think it is a clever way to tie into the "collector" thing that has made so much money for Nintendo and Wizards of the Coast, primarily related to Pokemon. Furthermore, if any Nintendo execs or marketing types are reading slashdot, they must be jumping up and down with joy because Mike says:"...having a little box of scancards with my GBA holder just seems cool."
Cool=pure gold, baby.
I still think its funny we are figuratively back to punch cards.
so you need 5 cards to play exciteabike? That sounds cumbersome.
It says that the e-reader plugs in and reads an optical dot code on the trading card. I expect that means the actual game data for all the games is already in the e-reader, and the trading card just enables the right game titles. Its probably microprinting too, to defeat photocopies.
It is possible that the game data actually IS on the trading card. If that were true, I would say we have figuratively come full circle back to something very like punch cards.
"most north Africa residents (including *all* the Arab peoples) are Caucasian, NOT Negroid."
That is true today, but were the Egyptians 4500 years ago Caucasian or Negroid?
Frankly, I think the entire notion of race is subjective and given far too much importance, but that is another topic.
from the article:"Eating that food will also improve their standing within the game."
That is the one part about this that bothers me. Gamers will have an incentive to virtually eat at McDonald's. In fact this kind of "selling out" is enough to convince me not to buy the game. When it fundamentally changes the game experience, that is too far. I'd feel the same way if racing games took money from car makers to make one car outperform others that it wouldn't normally beat. I'm buying a game, I'm not selling myself as a consumer.
I found your smokinggun link very informative. Especially the intersection between it and the above discussion of Phish. Most of the riders for the "rock stars" were amusing because of the detail of description for the catering and amenities. I was amazed by the volume of alchohol that U2 requested for each show. The Phish riders, in contrast, deal entirely with making sure the venue is safe and secure for the fans. It contains things like warning the venue that they will have people dancing in the aisles unless they have enough ushers keeping the aisles clear. I'm not a Phish fan, but I applaud their attitude.
It seems like most of the naysayers around here are only considering the US market. One of the articles pointed out that only %12 of the current world population have automobiles. That leaves a bunch of people who could use more flexible/better transportation, and many of them would also be interested in the possibility of powering their home off the vehicle. If GM could capture even 20% of 1 billion Indians that they wouldn't get with an IC car...
I think the world demands fuel cell vehicles. It doesn't matter if the US won't build it because of conspiracy or whatever, it will be built. Perhaps GM realizes this and wants to be ready so that the fuel cell revolution isn't driven by India, or China, or Brazil.
"Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)"
That simply isn't true. Electric engines have gobs of torque. Their limitation is that their power is great at low RPM's and drops off precipitously as the RPM's go up, Kinda like a diesel, only more so. Thats why Hybrid vehicles have caught on. The electric engines are very good from a dead stop, but peter out at 30 or 40 mph, and then the little gas engine can carry the load.
Fieros are still the number one platform for kit cars, since the tube frame provides all the strength. I've seen a very nice Ford GT-40 built on a Fiero. There are also at least a couple companies that make frame/suspension mods to swap the V6 (or I4) out for a V8. If GM goes forward with the AUTOnomy, you can bet there will be a revival in fibreglass. They will probably encrypt the "x-by-wire" thing to keep us from buying entire bodies from someone not approved by GM, but that won't stop people from building their own mechanicals around GM electronics. I'd like a '57 Bel Air with 2 trunks, please.
ultimately, the owners/lenders/board members get to decide whom, what, and how much of Napster gets sold, and what the price is. Its the money people that have the final say, not the CEO, unless he is a majority owner. Those people are all for recovering as much as their losses as possible, and they are not going to be too worried about sullying the image of Napster, 'cuz its dead.
A quick look at IMDB confirms that DeNiro does in fact produce movies that he doesn't act in. Of course he does act in most of the movies that he produces, but that doesn't change the fact that you are correct.
Since Kazaa is in Australia, and likely to ignore any ruling of a US court, is this the same case where the **AA is trying to make AT&T and other ISP's block access to Kazaa? Could this move for summary judgment be an attempt to get fait accompli before those ISP's get a chance to explain why they should never be responsible for content filtering?
My own perception of that is that the **AA is saying to the courts that the current rules don't stop mass copyright infringement, so the court needs to make up some new rules. "Make the ISPs do what we want." I sure hope we can rely on the court to not like being told what to do, and to not like to make up new laws.
Wow, you aren't kidding. Those are huge. There is no way those are going to stay in place while skiing or snowboarding. I guess they would be okay for the chairlift though.
I think one would be better off subbing in little ear-bud phones under your hat and/or helmet, even though the sound is not as good.
Better yet, forget the whole thing and enjoy the silence.