My girlfriend is a registered massage therapist and often fixes me. I can tell you that as a user who is mousing/typing eight hours a day, my forearms (especially the mousing right arm) are not healthy. Instead of the supple, flexible muscle that is supposed to be there, when my gf works on it it's like just under the skin there are lumps of chewing gum with crunchy pieces in them.
Thanks to her help i'm getting better, however, and can offer this advice:
- find the working position that is optimal for muscle relaxation. I have two desks put together in an "L" shape with an armless chair, so i can rest my elbows up at the level of the keyboard. What kills your muscles is having them flexed (even gently) for a long period of time.
- stretch every 30-60 minutes. I do these three forearm stretches and find them very effective:
1. Hold your arm straight out. Bend your hand forward at the wrist, pulling it with your other hand until you feel a gentle stretch. Hold it for at least 30 seconds (it takes at least this long for muscle fibers to get the hint and release.
2. do the same thing bending your hand backwards.
3. this one is more complicated but is really the money stretch: hold your arm straight out in front of you, make a fist with your hand and hold it tight. Rotate your arm to that the thumb-side of your fist is facing outward. Now grab the fist with your other hand and pull it down and outwards, simultaneously bending the wrist and rotating the arm further. If done properly you should feel a nice stretch all through your forearm. Be gentle: it's more important to hold it longer than to push it harder.
If you're a Canadian living in Ontario or BC, you can go see a Registered Massage Therapist - they do wonders, and can give you advice on stretching and posture. Also Active Release Therapy (or ART,) which is provided by certain RMT's and Chiropractors, is pure gold for more serious problems. I don't know what regulatory bodies exist in the states, but i know that in Canada's unregulated provinces (everywhere but BC and Ontario) a lot of massage workers are either foofie-lala new age aromatherapy types or borderline sex industry workers, as opposed to genuine health care providers - so be careful.
Reading this reminds me of my cognitive neuroscience/AI prof Lev Goldfarb. He began our course by telling us that very, very little has been accomplished in the fields of Cog Sci and AI, and that he is possibly the only one who has brought a real contribution to the table: a formal language ("real science") for working in this field. His "Evolving Transformation System" or ETS provides methods for measuring symbols and the differences between them, and lays the groundwork for modelling cognitive processes.
Compare this to any of the fake sciences, which can easily be itentified because they have the word "science" in them. Social Science, Cognitive Science, and so on, which talk about phenomenon but fail to create formalisms to describe them (like physics does for physical phenomena, for example.)
He's eccentric, but is he right? I don't know. You can read a summary of his work here. I never dived into this field enough to learn whether he was a revolutionary or just a big talker. I'd be interested to hear what other slashdotters have to say.
sounds like fun - attach a lightweight, solid state wireless video camera to one of these and it would be endless fun for surveillance! Perhaps with the RF unit connected to a serial port and a video output on the screen you could carry out all sorts of remote missions.
"So if you are playing a guy and hitting on women.... you are really.... hitting on...."
Does it matter if your male avatar is hitting on a female avatar controlled by a male? IMO It's all part of the fictional narrative that you and other players are creating by role-playing. You're collaborating to write a (hopefully) interesting story. I think the only reason anybody is disturbed by the prospect you describe is homophobia. That's not a dirty word or anything, it's just an unfortunate part of our culture. It's troubling for some guys to think that they might be hitting on another guy, because you've been taught since gradeschool that you don't want to be a gaylord.
Example: in my little university town all the bars and clubs were as lame-ass-lame, except a gay club that had the best music, nice people and cheap drinks. One of my buddies wouldn't set foot in that place, wouldn't dream of going there. He didn't have anything against homosexuals, but he was worried about what that might suggest about his own sexual orientation.
Nobody is bothered by the other aspects of role-play that we choose to distort our identities.
Example: "dude i met this totally hot elf warrior online but then i found out that in real life she's not six feet tall, has never swung a sword in her life, and she's a human!!"
"Most people I know spend about 3-4 hours a night watching TV... so in many cases it is just a substitution of entertainment rather than some unfortunate development in their lifestyle."
I'd say 3-4 hours of TV/Everquest a night is certainly an unfortunate development in anybody's lifestyle. My God! I would have to break up my band, dump my girlfriend, stop riding my bike and sever ties with my family to make this much time.
It's definitely an attractive idea, and the first thought that came to mind when i read it was Neo proudly saying "I know ju-jitsu." But the 16+ years i spent getting educated was much more than classrooms, obviously, and has shaped everything about who i am. Wouldn't your invention spit out drones with identical personalities?
"Controlling the Weather - Since the beginning of time, man has been fighting the forces of nature. Clothing protects us from the weather in a small way. Buildings protect us in a much larger way. But wouldn't it be nice to spot a hurricane when it first starts to develop, shoot a special wave into it, and just put it out."
Better invention: How about clothing and buildings that are strong enough to withstand any weather? Why disrupt the natural world when we can adapt to it?
"Instant Sleep - People who need to finish an important project, but are beginning to get exhausted can just walk into the instant sleep chamber. In just a few seconds they can walk back out totally rejuvenated, ready to tackle their rest of their work."
Better invention: lets come up with an economy and lifestyle where we get a nice eight-hour sleep at night. I like sleeping. No more sleep, so that my employer can enjoy my improved productivity? This is progress?
Yeah, just look at George Orwell's "Animal Farm." Nobody reads that book anymore. [/sarcasm] Why can't art reflect on real events? In my opinion a true artist doesn't give a damn about the long-term profitability of their work.
Well if you had any questions about security, posting it on slashdot is definitely the acid test. I'm sure they'll log more unauthorized access attempts in the next 24 hours than in the lifetime of the project.
I see what you're saying and i agree that a)gay is a multi-definition word, and that b)we spend too much time worrying about language and whether it will offend people.
But i know that when i went to gradeschool, calling somebody gay was a serious insult, and you were suggesting that they were a homosexual (although exactly what that meant wasn't too clear at the time.) Unfortunately for some people that word sticks in their vocabulary, and when they use it interchangably with "stupid" they are absolutely using it in the homosexual sense although they may not be thinking about it. I didn't have a problem with this either until i used the word when i was standing next to a friend of mine who happens to be gay, and realized how much i had hurt his feelings.
Try arguing that you use the word "nigger" to mean idiot (i actually know people like this) and that you just mean "idiot," with no offense to black people. You could say that "it has nothing to do with race, although it may have originated there." If I'm a black person standing next to you when you say it, will this fact make me feel better?
(yes, offtopic, but I can't let this stuff slip by.)
I hear ignorant people say this sometimes and it never fails to surprise me. In their defense they're usually acting out some gradeschool conditioning and are not truly hateful or bigotted people. But holy cow, grow up.
I wonder if some third-party developer will put out a bullshit game that includes a massive exploit? People would shell out $75.00 for "Ms. Pac-Man Redux" just because it's an easily exploitable piece of MS-certified code.
So - to clarify: Sun lays off "thousands" of employees and replaces them with migrant workers for half the price. Assume an average 80k salary.
At the minimum, you're suggesting that the CEO of sun did this to give himself an $800 Million a year raise? How do you know none of it went to R&D, or anything else for that matter?
I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 running under Mandrake 9. It took a little tweaking but now works well. It's missing many of the bells and whistles present on the Audigy, but in return you get high-quality* DA and AD converters, MIDI in/out, and SPDIF in/out. Simple, very low noise, records and plays back at 24-bit 96Khz. I use it for music production but for things like gaming you might like the EAX effects and other perks on the SB.
* - you can pay $1000 just for an AD/DA converter, so "high quality" is relative, but it definitely beats out the SB.
"Linux in the Professional Recording Studio" lead me to believe that a linux box was running as the core of a multitrack system in a music studio.
Then the article goes on to describe a radio station that needs a computer for stereo recording, Ogg-encoding, cataloging and backup with some editing. There is no professional recording studio here - no multitrack recording, professional audio hardware, MIDI, effects, mixing, or mastering. The machine they built hardly qualifies as a Digital Audio Workstation, let alone a Professional Recording Studio.
The focus of this story seems to be whether or not the third party cartridges are illegal. Perhaps under the DCMA they are, but that doesn't seem to be the issue to me.
Sure, the cartridges in question do circumvent a form of security. But is that security legal in the first place? As others have mentioned, a car manufacturer could not create a car that rejects third party components because it artificially creates a monopoly. Perhaps the question to be asked is not whether or not the third party cartridges should be allowed, but whether Lexmark's copy-protection technology should be removed from their printers once and for all.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a portable computer? Does it have wheels?
This story is OLD!!! jaguar has been dead for a long time people. the only decent title on it was Aliens vs Predator.
I don't know.. a lot of those icons look like somebody else's copyrighted images to me... (apple, corel, AMD, BeOS, Compaq, Hewlitt-Packard, etc)
http://www.reldni.com
high quality freeware games with a razor sharp wit... like Oscar Wilde meets King's Quest.
The preceding paragraph was a complete lie.
My girlfriend is a registered massage therapist and often fixes me. I can tell you that as a user who is mousing/typing eight hours a day, my forearms (especially the mousing right arm) are not healthy. Instead of the supple, flexible muscle that is supposed to be there, when my gf works on it it's like just under the skin there are lumps of chewing gum with crunchy pieces in them.
Thanks to her help i'm getting better, however, and can offer this advice:
- find the working position that is optimal for muscle relaxation. I have two desks put together in an "L" shape with an armless chair, so i can rest my elbows up at the level of the keyboard. What kills your muscles is having them flexed (even gently) for a long period of time.
- stretch every 30-60 minutes. I do these three forearm stretches and find them very effective:
1. Hold your arm straight out. Bend your hand forward at the wrist, pulling it with your other hand until you feel a gentle stretch. Hold it for at least 30 seconds (it takes at least this long for muscle fibers to get the hint and release.
2. do the same thing bending your hand backwards.
3. this one is more complicated but is really the money stretch: hold your arm straight out in front of you, make a fist with your hand and hold it tight. Rotate your arm to that the thumb-side of your fist is facing outward. Now grab the fist with your other hand and pull it down and outwards, simultaneously bending the wrist and rotating the arm further. If done properly you should feel a nice stretch all through your forearm. Be gentle: it's more important to hold it longer than to push it harder.
If you're a Canadian living in Ontario or BC, you can go see a Registered Massage Therapist - they do wonders, and can give you advice on stretching and posture. Also Active Release Therapy (or ART,) which is provided by certain RMT's and Chiropractors, is pure gold for more serious problems. I don't know what regulatory bodies exist in the states, but i know that in Canada's unregulated provinces (everywhere but BC and Ontario) a lot of massage workers are either foofie-lala new age aromatherapy types or borderline sex industry workers, as opposed to genuine health care providers - so be careful.
Thanks for that BillyGates, haven't laughed that hard in a long time.
Now please provide instructions on how to get that f*cking song out of my head.
I wonder how these changes in the political climate of software will affect Microsoft's Indian software development division?
As much as i love that quote, its authenticity is in dispute. You can read about the source here: http://irregulartimes.com/honest.html
Reading this reminds me of my cognitive neuroscience/AI prof Lev Goldfarb. He began our course by telling us that very, very little has been accomplished in the fields of Cog Sci and AI, and that he is possibly the only one who has brought a real contribution to the table: a formal language ("real science") for working in this field. His "Evolving Transformation System" or ETS provides methods for measuring symbols and the differences between them, and lays the groundwork for modelling cognitive processes.
Compare this to any of the fake sciences, which can easily be itentified because they have the word "science" in them. Social Science, Cognitive Science, and so on, which talk about phenomenon but fail to create formalisms to describe them (like physics does for physical phenomena, for example.)
He's eccentric, but is he right? I don't know. You can read a summary of his work here. I never dived into this field enough to learn whether he was a revolutionary or just a big talker. I'd be interested to hear what other slashdotters have to say.
sounds like fun - attach a lightweight, solid state wireless video camera to one of these and it would be endless fun for surveillance! Perhaps with the RF unit connected to a serial port and a video output on the screen you could carry out all sorts of remote missions.
"So if you are playing a guy and hitting on women.... you are really.... hitting on...."
Does it matter if your male avatar is hitting on a female avatar controlled by a male? IMO It's all part of the fictional narrative that you and other players are creating by role-playing. You're collaborating to write a (hopefully) interesting story. I think the only reason anybody is disturbed by the prospect you describe is homophobia. That's not a dirty word or anything, it's just an unfortunate part of our culture. It's troubling for some guys to think that they might be hitting on another guy, because you've been taught since gradeschool that you don't want to be a gaylord.
Example: in my little university town all the bars and clubs were as lame-ass-lame, except a gay club that had the best music, nice people and cheap drinks. One of my buddies wouldn't set foot in that place, wouldn't dream of going there. He didn't have anything against homosexuals, but he was worried about what that might suggest about his own sexual orientation.
Nobody is bothered by the other aspects of role-play that we choose to distort our identities.
Example: "dude i met this totally hot elf warrior online but then i found out that in real life she's not six feet tall, has never swung a sword in her life, and she's a human!!"
"Most people I know spend about 3-4 hours a night watching TV... so in many cases it is just a substitution of entertainment rather than some unfortunate development in their lifestyle."
I'd say 3-4 hours of TV/Everquest a night is certainly an unfortunate development in anybody's lifestyle. My God! I would have to break up my band, dump my girlfriend, stop riding my bike and sever ties with my family to make this much time.
It's definitely an attractive idea, and the first thought that came to mind when i read it was Neo proudly saying "I know ju-jitsu." But the 16+ years i spent getting educated was much more than classrooms, obviously, and has shaped everything about who i am. Wouldn't your invention spit out drones with identical personalities?
Also: there's some prior art on the Instant Sleep machine. The USAF has been using this technology for some time under the codename "amphetamines."
"Controlling the Weather - Since the beginning of time, man has been fighting the forces of nature. Clothing protects us from the weather in a small way. Buildings protect us in a much larger way. But wouldn't it be nice to spot a hurricane when it first starts to develop, shoot a special wave into it, and just put it out."
Better invention: How about clothing and buildings that are strong enough to withstand any weather? Why disrupt the natural world when we can adapt to it?
"Instant Sleep - People who need to finish an important project, but are beginning to get exhausted can just walk into the instant sleep chamber. In just a few seconds they can walk back out totally rejuvenated, ready to tackle their rest of their work."
Better invention: lets come up with an economy and lifestyle where we get a nice eight-hour sleep at night. I like sleeping. No more sleep, so that my employer can enjoy my improved productivity? This is progress?
Yeah, just look at George Orwell's "Animal Farm." Nobody reads that book anymore. [/sarcasm] Why can't art reflect on real events? In my opinion a true artist doesn't give a damn about the long-term profitability of their work.
Well if you had any questions about security, posting it on slashdot is definitely the acid test. I'm sure they'll log more unauthorized access attempts in the next 24 hours than in the lifetime of the project.
Havokmon,
I see what you're saying and i agree that a)gay is a multi-definition word, and that b)we spend too much time worrying about language and whether it will offend people.
But i know that when i went to gradeschool, calling somebody gay was a serious insult, and you were suggesting that they were a homosexual (although exactly what that meant wasn't too clear at the time.) Unfortunately for some people that word sticks in their vocabulary, and when they use it interchangably with "stupid" they are absolutely using it in the homosexual sense although they may not be thinking about it. I didn't have a problem with this either until i used the word when i was standing next to a friend of mine who happens to be gay, and realized how much i had hurt his feelings.
Try arguing that you use the word "nigger" to mean idiot (i actually know people like this) and that you just mean "idiot," with no offense to black people. You could say that "it has nothing to do with race, although it may have originated there." If I'm a black person standing next to you when you say it, will this fact make me feel better?
(yes, offtopic, but I can't let this stuff slip by.)
I hear ignorant people say this sometimes and it never fails to surprise me. In their defense they're usually acting out some gradeschool conditioning and are not truly hateful or bigotted people. But holy cow, grow up.
I wonder if some third-party developer will put out a bullshit game that includes a massive exploit? People would shell out $75.00 for "Ms. Pac-Man Redux" just because it's an easily exploitable piece of MS-certified code.
So - to clarify: Sun lays off "thousands" of employees and replaces them with migrant workers for half the price. Assume an average 80k salary.
At the minimum, you're suggesting that the CEO of sun did this to give himself an $800 Million a year raise? How do you know none of it went to R&D, or anything else for that matter?
I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 running under Mandrake 9. It took a little tweaking but now works well. It's missing many of the bells and whistles present on the Audigy, but in return you get high-quality* DA and AD converters, MIDI in/out, and SPDIF in/out. Simple, very low noise, records and plays back at 24-bit 96Khz. I use it for music production but for things like gaming you might like the EAX effects and other perks on the SB.
* - you can pay $1000 just for an AD/DA converter, so "high quality" is relative, but it definitely beats out the SB.
"Linux in the Professional Recording Studio" lead me to believe that a linux box was running as the core of a multitrack system in a music studio.
Then the article goes on to describe a radio station that needs a computer for stereo recording, Ogg-encoding, cataloging and backup with some editing. There is no professional recording studio here - no multitrack recording, professional audio hardware, MIDI, effects, mixing, or mastering. The machine they built hardly qualifies as a Digital Audio Workstation, let alone a Professional Recording Studio.
Nowadays anyone have an huge disk
True, if you believe all that spam in my inbox... oh wait...
The focus of this story seems to be whether or not the third party cartridges are illegal. Perhaps under the DCMA they are, but that doesn't seem to be the issue to me.
Sure, the cartridges in question do circumvent a form of security. But is that security legal in the first place? As others have mentioned, a car manufacturer could not create a car that rejects third party components because it artificially creates a monopoly. Perhaps the question to be asked is not whether or not the third party cartridges should be allowed, but whether Lexmark's copy-protection technology should be removed from their printers once and for all.