MyDoom.C's effects seem to already be felt. My girlfriend's been complaining that she can't get onto MSN all night, and sure enough messenger.msn.com is completely unresponsive, as was Hotmail a few hours ago (though, it seems to be up now). I wish I could just convince her to use Jabber.
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
Umm, and then a great fox ate this bird and, uhh, gained its firey breath or something? Yah, that'll work. Oh yeah, and Mammon's more fearful than ever.
They won't get rid of analog phone lines for a while yet. You need electricity for computers and cable modems and routers to work. Not so for most land-line phones. As last August showed us (well, those of us in the Eastern US and Ontario), land-line analog phones that work sans-electricity are VERY useful indeed.
what's the motivation to go to the pains of converting to XHTML?
Money. Or rather, saving it. XHTML+CSS designed websites are faster, and smaller (often in terms of many kilobytes). When you're dealing with a site that gets the volume of traffic that a site like this one gets (quoted at ~20 pages served per SECOND), the bandwidth savings are huge.
While we're on the topic of/. and web standards... Rob and co. really should look into updating. Check out A List Apart for a detailed analysis on how they could feasibly to go about doing this.
Can you, or anyone else, recall any type of medication that really works that wasn't protected with a patent for an ungodly length of time and being sold at an extortionist rate to the wealthy?
I apologize for responding to your intended rhetoric question, but, yes, yes I can. The drug is called Insulin, and it's used in the treatment of diabetes. Dr. Frederick Banting sold the patent on the idea to the University of Toronto for exactly $1 (Canadian funds, no less), such that it could be produced cheaply for all those with diabetes.
ADHD does indeed exist and it is indeed a debilitating condition to those whom it affects. Stimulant medication (e.g. Ritalin) is proven to be effective in almost all true cases of ADHD (note the *true*, as many have said, it is an over-diagnosed condition; the reasons for this are varied and are documented in most introductory texts in the education of children with exceptionalities).
If you're looking for behavioural techniques; token economies work well, I utilize a basic token economy in my classroom (aka "points system") and when combined with stimulant medication, I do notice a large difference with my ADHD students in terms of behaviour and time-on-task during seatwork.
As I said, a lot of these behaviour-management techniques, as well as a good background toward the etiology of the disorder, are outlined in most introductory texts dealing with the education of exceptional youth or basic educational psychology.
Yes it's karaoke, but whoever has played this games knows it's an incredibly good party game. The fact that it essentially marks your singing ability (or, in my case, lack thereof) makes it original. It's never been done on a console before, and it's executed admirably.
If you haven't heard of it, check it out at Konami's website, you'll need a PS2 and a USB mic (the one from SOCOM works admirably).
"Rather than demanding that 60 million people sharing music files turn themselves in with a so-called 'amnesty' program, the recording industry should take this opportunity to make file-sharing legal in exchange for a reasonable fee," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Stepping into the spotlight to admit your guilt is probably not a sensible course for most people sharing music files online, especially since the RIAA doesn't control many potential sources of lawsuits."
In other words, if you ADMIT GUILT, while you may be sparing yourself the wrath of the Rabidly Insane Assholes' Association, there's nothing to stop individual record companies, or individual bands (i.e. Metallica) from suing you.
If they think, "it could be my child next", it's much more likely they are going to bug their congressman about it.
Sadly, I think you give the average Joe Parent too much credit. More than likely a situation similar to the following would occur:
Dad: A kid's getting sued for downloading music? Jimmy, you better not have any emm-pee-threes on that computer or you're in trouble!
Jimmy: But....
Honestly, in my opinion, while this will definitely get people to hate the RIAA for their actions, we are so socially conditioned to fear lawyers (rightfully so), the end result will be what the RIAA wants, scaring people "straight" -- or at least what the RIAA defines as straight.
This is a civil matter, not a criminal matter; no jail time. I agree though, the copyright laws are obsolete and need not only to be changed, but reworked from the ground up (or completely scrapped).
I loved the Evil Dead "trilogy" (quoted because the first and second movies are not sequels of eachother, but more akin to a remake).
Army of Darkness rules too. With respects to the one-liners in that one, nothing beats Evil Ash saying "I'll get you and your good looks" to Good Ash (apparently, that was adlibbed by Bruce Campbell, as he played both characters).
Thanks again for reminding me of such a great movie; haven't seen it since my freshman year at college.
I really wish they would start (re)making some cool adventure games
While not a 3D remake, some people are remaking classics using the freeware Adventure Game Studio (AGS). King's Quest I and II have been redone (very well I might add) by Tierra Entertainment (and they're working on Quest for Glory II), and there's a fan-made Space Quest 7 in the works as well as a fan-made Quest for Glory 6.
Obtain glowing review of such software on Slashdot -- A GLOWING REVIEW OF A MICROSOFT PRODUCT -- and effectively confuse the hell out of the "unwashed masses"
???
Pro^H^H^H (oh wait, this is Micro$oft) Dominate World
It looks like the file format they'll be using is AAC. Maybe Apple will have a submit bug feature so we can "bug" them to use something like FLAC instead (it did work for getting tabs into Safari, after all). I'd be willing to pay $0.99 per song if it was a direct (read: lossless) audio copy.
Maybe Apple can implement a pricing model based on quality? $0.25/song for 128KBs MP3, $0.50/song for AAC file, $0.99 for a lovely FLAC.
Slap-on-the-forehead dumb
on
Baked Apple
·
· Score: 1
I was working in retail on Saturday morning and I got a call. Customer on the other end insisted that the t-shirt transfer paper (iron on stuff) we sold her earlier had broken her (inkjet) printer. I asked a few questions, and it eventually became clear that this oh-so-intelligent individual attempted to feed a t-shirt with the paper over it through the printer, assuming that that was how the transfer worked, and got stuck in the rollers. Suffice to say, she got put on hold and I had a really good laugh.
Rating the parent as flamebait is not really fair....
False memories and hypnosis are related topics, as are both rooted in social psychological research, and more specifically, in research on social influence.
First, a little background on hypnosis:
There have been two schools of thought on the matter. The first is the state theorists which views hypnotic behaviour as qualitatively different from non-hypnotic behaviour and assumes that 'real' hypnotic responses are involuntary as opposed to deliberate. The hypnotic subject is seen as passive by proponents of this school of thoght, and their responses are believed to be caused by the hypnotist's suggestions. Hypnotizability is seen as a stable trait.
The second "school" is the cognitive-social theorists. Hypnotic behaviour, by proponents of this theory, is not seen as indication of a unique, trance-like state. White (1941) probably described it best when he wrote
"Hypnotic behaviour is meaningful, goal-directed striving, its most general goal being to behave like a hypnotized person as this is continuously defined by the operator and understood by the subject."
Basically, cognitive-social theorists see hypnotic behaviour as both goal-directed and context-dependent; affected by expectancies, attitudes, and the willingness of the subject to accept the hypnotic role. Subjects seen as active participants who strive to generate hypnotic experiences. These theorists also recognize the stability of hypnotic responsiveness by the tendency of attitudes, expectancies, and interpretations of hypnotic responding to remain stable over time.
As for false memories, if you follow the state-theorists' views, then yes, the hypnotic subject, being at the relative mercy of the hypnotist, could be set to believe in events that did not occur; whereas the the cognitive-social theorists would be more likely to believe that the subject would be inclined to agree with the suggested memories while under hypnosis, but dismiss them otherwise, as expectations of the hypnotist's level control over the subject lowers.
Which view of hypnosis the reader chooses to adopt is up to him or her, however contemporary research his typically favored the second (cognitive-social) school (eg. Pekala, Kumar, & Hand, 1993; Silva & Kirsch, 1992; Spanos, Kennedy & Gwynn, 1984 [sorry, no electronic refs.]).
Most false memories are actually implanted via misinformation. One common pardigm used in the study of such effects is to show subjects a video clip of a car crash whereby a driver fails to yield at a yield sign. A question and answer session following the clip could contain questions such as "how fast was car A travelling when it ran the stop sign?" . Given this, the subject in the future is very likely to swear up and down that there was a stop sign present, when, in fact, it was a yield sign. This tactic of memory restructuring / false memory creation is often used by lawyers in cases where witnesses are unsure of the accuracy of their memories.
Something interesting for those who like the RioVolt player (or the AVC Soul) is a little-known company called iRiver, who actually designed the latter two, and only recently started to distribute their products in N.A..
Their ChromeX (iMP 150) is *identical* to the other 2 players mentioned above, and comes with that neat external lcd controller, whereas SonicBlue will ask another $20 for it. Their SlimX (iMP 350), OTOH, simply is awesome! I own one and I must say it is the best MP3/CD player I have tried (I also use the SMC-based MPio DMG when I'm at the gym though, due its smaller (2" x 2") size.
Last time I played starcraft, it was impossible to play terrans, cause if the opponent played Zerg, with the appropriate build order, he could bring in 6 zerglings into your base before you even built a barracks.
That hasn't worked since v1.08 when Blizzard raised the spawning pool (required for zerglings) cost to 200m. Try playing SC/BW again, I recently dusted off my CD, after 4 years, it still is a *great* game.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, pal. :)
MyDoom.C's effects seem to already be felt. My girlfriend's been complaining that she can't get onto MSN all night, and sure enough messenger.msn.com is completely unresponsive, as was Hotmail a few hours ago (though, it seems to be up now). I wish I could just convince her to use Jabber.
If it lowers the going insurance rates, I'm all for the idea.
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
Umm, and then a great fox ate this bird and, uhh, gained its firey breath or something? Yah, that'll work. Oh yeah, and Mammon's more fearful than ever.
Man, name changes are annoying.
They won't get rid of analog phone lines for a while yet. You need electricity for computers and cable modems and routers to work. Not so for most land-line phones. As last August showed us (well, those of us in the Eastern US and Ontario), land-line analog phones that work sans-electricity are VERY useful indeed.
Money. Or rather, saving it. XHTML+CSS designed websites are faster, and smaller (often in terms of many kilobytes). When you're dealing with a site that gets the volume of traffic that a site like this one gets (quoted at ~20 pages served per SECOND), the bandwidth savings are huge.
While we're on the topic of /. and web standards... Rob and co. really should look into updating. Check out A List Apart for a detailed analysis on how they could feasibly to go about doing this.
I apologize for responding to your intended rhetoric question, but, yes, yes I can. The drug is called Insulin, and it's used in the treatment of diabetes. Dr. Frederick Banting sold the patent on the idea to the University of Toronto for exactly $1 (Canadian funds, no less), such that it could be produced cheaply for all those with diabetes.
Source: Government of Canada Digital Collections Archive
ADHD does indeed exist and it is indeed a debilitating condition to those whom it affects. Stimulant medication (e.g. Ritalin) is proven to be effective in almost all true cases of ADHD (note the *true*, as many have said, it is an over-diagnosed condition; the reasons for this are varied and are documented in most introductory texts in the education of children with exceptionalities).
If you're looking for behavioural techniques; token economies work well, I utilize a basic token economy in my classroom (aka "points system") and when combined with stimulant medication, I do notice a large difference with my ADHD students in terms of behaviour and time-on-task during seatwork.
As I said, a lot of these behaviour-management techniques, as well as a good background toward the etiology of the disorder, are outlined in most introductory texts dealing with the education of exceptional youth or basic educational psychology.
I thought the Slashdot populace was feeling warmer and fuzzier than usual. One man's sorrow is another man's joy, indeed.
Yes it's karaoke, but whoever has played this games knows it's an incredibly good party game. The fact that it essentially marks your singing ability (or, in my case, lack thereof) makes it original. It's never been done on a console before, and it's executed admirably.
If you haven't heard of it, check it out at Konami's website, you'll need a PS2 and a USB mic (the one from SOCOM works admirably).
From the EFF Website:
In other words, if you ADMIT GUILT, while you may be sparing yourself the wrath of the Rabidly Insane Assholes' Association, there's nothing to stop individual record companies, or individual bands (i.e. Metallica) from suing you.
Sadly, I think you give the average Joe Parent too much credit. More than likely a situation similar to the following would occur:
Honestly, in my opinion, while this will definitely get people to hate the RIAA for their actions, we are so socially conditioned to fear lawyers (rightfully so), the end result will be what the RIAA wants, scaring people "straight" -- or at least what the RIAA defines as straight.
...but maybe I'm pessimistic.
This is a civil matter, not a criminal matter; no jail time. I agree though, the copyright laws are obsolete and need not only to be changed, but reworked from the ground up (or completely scrapped).
Actually, the developmental name of Mozilla's new mail client got renamed to Thunderbird, it is no longer Minotaur.
Man, all I hope is that my Level 89 Barbarian with two Schaefer's Hammers (Shael'ed) doesn't get nerfed now when they finally release 1.10
Odd, I would've thought that such a key would only be 42 lines of code.
I loved the Evil Dead "trilogy" (quoted because the first and second movies are not sequels of eachother, but more akin to a remake).
Army of Darkness rules too. With respects to the one-liners in that one, nothing beats Evil Ash saying "I'll get you and your good looks" to Good Ash (apparently, that was adlibbed by Bruce Campbell, as he played both characters).
Thanks again for reminding me of such a great movie; haven't seen it since my freshman year at college.
While not a 3D remake, some people are remaking classics using the freeware Adventure Game Studio (AGS). King's Quest I and II have been redone (very well I might add) by Tierra Entertainment (and they're working on Quest for Glory II), and there's a fan-made Space Quest 7 in the works as well as a fan-made Quest for Glory 6.
The Adventure Genre LIVES!
Damn their marketing dept...
:: Cue Bill Gates' maniacal laughter ::
It looks like the file format they'll be using is AAC. Maybe Apple will have a submit bug feature so we can "bug" them to use something like FLAC instead (it did work for getting tabs into Safari, after all). I'd be willing to pay $0.99 per song if it was a direct (read: lossless) audio copy.
Maybe Apple can implement a pricing model based on quality? $0.25/song for 128KBs MP3, $0.50/song for AAC file, $0.99 for a lovely FLAC.
I was working in retail on Saturday morning and I got a call. Customer on the other end insisted that the t-shirt transfer paper (iron on stuff) we sold her earlier had broken her (inkjet) printer. I asked a few questions, and it eventually became clear that this oh-so-intelligent individual attempted to feed a t-shirt with the paper over it through the printer, assuming that that was how the transfer worked, and got stuck in the rollers. Suffice to say, she got put on hold and I had a really good laugh.
Rating the parent as flamebait is not really fair....
False memories and hypnosis are related topics, as are both rooted in social psychological research, and more specifically, in research on social influence.
First, a little background on hypnosis:
There have been two schools of thought on the matter. The first is the state theorists which views hypnotic behaviour as qualitatively different from non-hypnotic behaviour and assumes that 'real' hypnotic responses are involuntary as opposed to deliberate. The hypnotic subject is seen as passive by proponents of this school of thoght, and their responses are believed to be caused by the hypnotist's suggestions. Hypnotizability is seen as a stable trait.
The second "school" is the cognitive-social theorists. Hypnotic behaviour, by proponents of this theory, is not seen as indication of a unique, trance-like state. White (1941) probably described it best when he wrote
Basically, cognitive-social theorists see hypnotic behaviour as both goal-directed and context-dependent; affected by expectancies, attitudes, and the willingness of the subject to accept the hypnotic role. Subjects seen as active participants who strive to generate hypnotic experiences. These theorists also recognize the stability of hypnotic responsiveness by the tendency of attitudes, expectancies, and interpretations of hypnotic responding to remain stable over time.
As for false memories, if you follow the state-theorists' views, then yes, the hypnotic subject, being at the relative mercy of the hypnotist, could be set to believe in events that did not occur; whereas the the cognitive-social theorists would be more likely to believe that the subject would be inclined to agree with the suggested memories while under hypnosis, but dismiss them otherwise, as expectations of the hypnotist's level control over the subject lowers.
Which view of hypnosis the reader chooses to adopt is up to him or her, however contemporary research his typically favored the second (cognitive-social) school (eg. Pekala, Kumar, & Hand, 1993; Silva & Kirsch, 1992; Spanos, Kennedy & Gwynn, 1984 [sorry, no electronic refs.]).
Most false memories are actually implanted via misinformation. One common pardigm used in the study of such effects is to show subjects a video clip of a car crash whereby a driver fails to yield at a yield sign. A question and answer session following the clip could contain questions such as "how fast was car A travelling when it ran the stop sign?" . Given this, the subject in the future is very likely to swear up and down that there was a stop sign present, when, in fact, it was a yield sign. This tactic of memory restructuring / false memory creation is often used by lawyers in cases where witnesses are unsure of the accuracy of their memories.
IIRC, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was done completely in Maya, and was quite successful in the box office.
Sorry in advance... another product plug :P.
Something interesting for those who like the RioVolt player (or the AVC Soul) is a little-known company called iRiver, who actually designed the latter two, and only recently started to distribute their products in N.A..
Their ChromeX (iMP 150) is *identical* to the other 2 players mentioned above, and comes with that neat external lcd controller, whereas SonicBlue will ask another $20 for it. Their SlimX (iMP 350), OTOH, simply is awesome! I own one and I must say it is the best MP3/CD player I have tried (I also use the SMC-based MPio DMG when I'm at the gym though, due its smaller (2" x 2") size.
Last time I played starcraft, it was impossible to play terrans, cause if the opponent played Zerg, with the appropriate build order, he could bring in 6 zerglings into your base before you even built a barracks.
That hasn't worked since v1.08 when Blizzard raised the spawning pool (required for zerglings) cost to 200m. Try playing SC/BW again, I recently dusted off my CD, after 4 years, it still is a *great* game.