Actually, if you follow the story, there is a very good reason for giving out free breast implants: When a soldier gets wounded, he quite often needs a good plastic surgeon to put him back together. In order for the surgeon to be good, he needs practice. He needs practice at hiding suture marks. He needs the experience that tells him how a particular surgical technique is going to look once the swelling goes down.
Just like a pilot needs seat time--even if the mission doesn't exactly mirror what he'll be doing in combat--the surgeons need time with the knife in hand. The military could spend hundreds of millions making surgical simulators available to all the surgeons, but for a lot less money, they can let them practice doing relatively inexpensive boob jobs, nose jobs and tummy tucks.
The military certainly wastes money on some weird things, but this isn't one of them. To my mind, this is a cheap and clever way of giving the doctors the training they need.
But seriously, how many people hate Orin Hatch at this point? he seems to sell out to about any company gives him money. i wish this guy would just go away.
Well, hopefully we can make him go away in 2006. That's when he's up for re-election. And since I happen to be one of his constituents, I've already sent him my letter (via both email and snail-mail) stating my concerns that he's not representing me very well.
Actually, not all dismissed cases can be refiled. If it is dismissed without prejudice, as this one was, they can refile the suit, and in fact the judge went so far as to say they have 30 days to do so. If he had dismissed it with prejudice, the case would be completely thrown out and could not be refiled.
There is also another opportunity which the judge hinted at in his order and which PJ at Groklaw pointed out. He said that he cannot completely throw the case out at the dismissal stage, but that Novell had made some persuasive arguments. The hint is that once SCO amends its complaint, Novell should file for a summary judgement. That will produce a ruling on the case's merits (or lack thereof).
You're right, we don't really want a dismissal. We really want a judgement, and I would expect Novell will ask for exactly that in the very near future.
CSS is an encryption system, designed to ensure that DVDs are played only in players sold in the intended market.
You might be right if not for the fact that DVD players on home computers are an intended market. DVD drives for computers are legitimate, intended devices for accessing content on DVDs.
The fact that there is no officially sanctioned software available for performing that legitimate use on Linux should not automatically render any non-sanctioned software illegitimate.
There is a reason that the courts use "community standards" as the yardstick for obscenity.
The standards of the/. community tend to be different from the community at large. As slashdotters, we are typically geeks and as such have typically been outcasts for much of our lives. It becomes an us and them kind of thing. We consider ourselves their intellectual superiors. Perhaps we even consider them to be slobbering idiots--a view not helped by the collections of tech support calls that find their way into geek legend.
The courts base their decisions on the standards of the community at large and not of the self-annointed intellectual elite. The idea is that if most of the student body were to be uncomfortable attending class because of the material being presented, there would be a problem. A teacher has a right, even a responsibility to stretch student's minds, but should strengthen not conflict with any moral principles taught at home.
Personally, I agree with the "community standards" on this one. I thought it was more artistic in the "old days" when they showed a man on his knees cowering in front of a man with a gun, who pulled the trigger and cut to black and another scene. I don't need to see the bullet enter his head in slow motion. I don't need to see his brains explode out the back and splatter across the floor.
I thought the love scene in A Knight's Tale was one of the best I've seen in a long time--it got the point across quite powerfully without wasting time to show bodies thumping that could be better spent on plot development.
Am I an uneducated fool? Have I no appreciation for art?
In elementary school, I stayed after school every Wednesday for an hour for an Art and Music enrichment class. We studied art, architecture and music from Greek Classical through Baroque over a period of three years. My mother, who agonized over whether to allow me to attend sex ed (she did finally sign the permission slip) in junior high had no qualms about my studying the medieval nudes.
I was a drama geek in high school and started college as a film major before graduating in Communications.
So many folks in Hollywood tell of an epic battle to push the envelope and explore more of their art as they fight the network censors and the MPAA ratings, but the ones that are truly exploring the art are not the ones trying to put more skin, swear words or blood on the screen. They're shows like "Ed"--a show full of quirky oddballs who somehow manage to restore your faith in humanity every week. Or a show like "The West Wing" that is so bold as to suggest that there may actually be some good, principled people working in Washington DC.
Yes, this new DVD player would be useful for schools and other places where restrictions limit what you are allowed to show, but you're forgetting how many people actually want to limit what they see--not to be ostriches with their heads in the sand, but because they know that looking at the sun hurts their eyes.
</soap box>
Call me a prude if you want, but there are a lot of good movies that I would love to watch except for the one or two scenes that I know are in there. I prefer not to watch R-rated movies. To have my DVD player automatically adjust the scenes to my preferences would be fantastic.
Re:Did just this thing for 3 years
on
Dorm Storm?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The Computer Science department at BYU where I was attending Grad School actually requires internet access of some sort for every class. Professors no longer hand out a syllabus at the start of the semester. Students are expected to read it online. All homework assignments are posted online. Every class has a newsgroup and students are held responsible for information, assignments and schedule changes posted to the class newsgroup.
In many classes, all grades are distributed only through an online system that requires a student ID and password to gain access.
Besides, the school uses broadband internet access as a lure to get people to live in the dorms. Most people here live off-campus after their freshman year, and the school is trying to get more people to come back as sophomores and longer. Broadband internet is the number one reason folks choose to stay in the dorms.
The author happens to be one of Loki's programmers, porting games to Linux. If I remember correctly, he was the lead programmer for Descent 3.
He's done several satirical pieces for Linux.com and his README for Descent 3 was quite entertaining for a technical document.
I'd say chances are slim and none (and Slim already left town) that this piece was intended to be "real" as in actually from Microsoft. On the other hand, the issues it raises are very real, and the context of a phony email from Gates makes a good stage for presenting those issues without need of industrial strength asbestos underwear.
Re:Novell is cutting workforce by 16%
on
Is Novell Doomed?
·
· Score: 1
The actual number of people let go was considerably less than a lot of the predictions. If I remember correctly, it was only 10-12%--still a lot, but not as bad as everyone expected.
Also, the optimism isn't necessarily fake. I work for a contractor that is helping them retool a portion of their website to bring it inline with their new corporate strategy. They really are making some changes.
I work with these people every day, and there is no sense of impending doom in the trenches.
Ah, but Sony built in a solution to that little issue. I never bought PlayStation or a DVD player, but now I can buy the PS2 and enjoy the few PS2 games, hundreds of old PS games, and tons of DVDs while waiting for the rest of the good games to come out.
Yes, it will be a while before the PS2 platform is real compelling, but the console is good for a lot more than that, and I can have plenty of fun with it in the meantime.
Actually, "kann" is the right verb, it's just not conjugated correctly. The correct form for use with "Sie"--the second person formal--is "koennen". The form he used is for "sie"--third person feminine.
To "kann" a language is a standard German idiom, and usually a sign that the speaker does, in fact, know a bit of German.
If he'd just gotten the verb form right, we could all be really impressed. Still though, a very worthy effort.
I may be drastically overestimating our elected leaders and our judicial system, but I would think that this is the perfect case to get UCITA thrown out/repealed/whatever.
As clueless as Congress may be, I think the politicians understand that the right to air someone else's dirty laundry is fundamental to the American system of government (as well as numerous others). That's how many of them get elected in the first place.
As flawed as our judicial system is, the courts have been quite consistent over the years about protecting the right to criticize whomever and whatever we wish. This sounds like it could easily be thrown out on First Amendment grounds.
And once we're into First Amendment territory, the media finally pay attention. There's no faster way to get journalists into a rabid frenzy than to tell them they can't air their in depth investigation of whatever they think is wrong with the world.
Hmmm. Guess it's time to fire off some polite emails to a few politicians and journalists explaining that their own livlihoods may be in jeopardy.
The above opinion is purely my own and does not necessarily the reflect the opinions of my employers, friends, family or dog.
And further, how many Dual processor/Win2k users are gonna apply for the beta? Hopefully not too many.
Well, I don't know how many will apply, but none of them will be accepted.
From the signup page:
You must be running Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5. Windows 2000 is not supported for the Diablo II Beta, but will be supported in the final product.
Actually, our licensing agreements typically work the other way around. We pay the publisher for the right to port, publish and distribute the Linux version and pay a royalty for each copy we sell.
The slowness you're seeing is Mesa reverting to software rendering because it cannot access your hardware.
The reason for this can be as simple as using a 3Dfx in a non-fullscreen mode, or it may be something more complex like a bad Mesa/GLX configuration.
You may want to check our GL drivers page for information on getting everything set up correctly.
If you're still stumped, send us an email with your system specs. While we don't technically support the demo, we do want you to have a good experience with it (how else are we going to sell anything?) and will gladly provide a few pointers to get you going.
I'm working on a MS in Computer Science at Brigham Young University--one of the most conservative schools you'll ever find. As part of the agreement to get a student account on the network, you agree not to run a server. But the reason is not to censor anyone--it's to control costs.
Before anyone starts calling me a tool of the system, let me point out that I did my undergraduate work in Communications Studies and their is no faster way to get me riled up than to get me talking about the evils of the administration's stranglehold on the student^H^H^H^H^H^Hchool newspaper
I was talking Monday with a friend who works as a network administrator for the school, and he said they just did a network analysis to see where their bandwidth was being used. It turned out that 1/12 of the bandwidth to the Internet for the _entire_ school of 28,000 students was being used by a single freshman. He was running a Napster server and got his account canned.
He didn't get canned because it was Napster or MP3s. He didn't get canned because they wanted to "censor" him. He got canned because (a) he violated the Conditions of Use in his account agreement, and (b) the school has only limited bandwidth and doesn't want to pay for any more.
Before we immediately start screaming about censorship, we need to also consider how many students may be abusing the so-called "free bandwidth" they are getting. After proper consideration, and if it's justified, then we can start civilly arguing about censorship.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this comment are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of my employers.
Imagine running off a 1000-foot cliff and diving into a lake.
Now imagine running off the cliff so fast that you miss the lake and crash horribly on the other side.
Now imagine running off the cliff so fast that by the time you drop the 1000 feet you've missed the earth entirely and due to the curvature of the earth, you're still 1000 feet in the air.
This is a low-altitude orbit. If you were going any slower, you would have eventually hit the ground (rather painfully, I might add). If you were going any faster, you would have missed the earth by more than just the initial 1000 feet, thus moving you to a higher orbit.
Your altitude and your velocity are inextricably connected until you reach escape velocity--the speed at which gravity can no longer keep you going in circles.
That was the first game I got for my TI 99/4a! I'd played the text version on a terminal while visiting Rice University and thought the updated "full-color" TI version was the coolest thing ever.
The main problem with shipping a hybrid CD with separate boxes for Linux is that if they sell out of the Linux copies, people will just buy the Windows or Mac versions instead of demanding that the store stock more Linux copies.
If Carmack wants to encourage retail stores to carry more Linux games. The best way to do that is to sell Linux versions as an entirely separate product so that all of us that want Linux versions will go rough up store managers when they don't carry or don't stock enough of the games we want.
Actually, the Communications Law class I took said that's *exactly* what it means. In fact, that's precisely how Bayer lost the trademark for aspirin. It became a household term, and the courts ruled that it is now merely aspirin and not Aspirin(tm).
The save format changed so it would be compatible with the Windows version, that way you can now download scenarios from Activision's site, trade maps with friends, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
From the caption of Fig. 3 in the article (emphasis added):
The disc diameter of 12 centimeters is equivalent to those of CD and DVD.
The key word is not "comparable" but "equivalent".
Actually, if you follow the story, there is a very good reason for giving out free breast implants: When a soldier gets wounded, he quite often needs a good plastic surgeon to put him back together. In order for the surgeon to be good, he needs practice. He needs practice at hiding suture marks. He needs the experience that tells him how a particular surgical technique is going to look once the swelling goes down.
Just like a pilot needs seat time--even if the mission doesn't exactly mirror what he'll be doing in combat--the surgeons need time with the knife in hand. The military could spend hundreds of millions making surgical simulators available to all the surgeons, but for a lot less money, they can let them practice doing relatively inexpensive boob jobs, nose jobs and tummy tucks.
The military certainly wastes money on some weird things, but this isn't one of them. To my mind, this is a cheap and clever way of giving the doctors the training they need.
But seriously, how many people hate Orin Hatch at this point? he seems to sell out to about any company gives him money. i wish this guy would just go away.
Well, hopefully we can make him go away in 2006. That's when he's up for re-election. And since I happen to be one of his constituents, I've already sent him my letter (via both email and snail-mail) stating my concerns that he's not representing me very well.
Actually, not all dismissed cases can be refiled. If it is dismissed without prejudice, as this one was, they can refile the suit, and in fact the judge went so far as to say they have 30 days to do so. If he had dismissed it with prejudice, the case would be completely thrown out and could not be refiled.
There is also another opportunity which the judge hinted at in his order and which PJ at Groklaw pointed out. He said that he cannot completely throw the case out at the dismissal stage, but that Novell had made some persuasive arguments. The hint is that once SCO amends its complaint, Novell should file for a summary judgement. That will produce a ruling on the case's merits (or lack thereof).
You're right, we don't really want a dismissal. We really want a judgement, and I would expect Novell will ask for exactly that in the very near future.
CSS is an encryption system, designed to ensure that DVDs are played only in players sold in the intended market.
You might be right if not for the fact that DVD players on home computers are an intended market. DVD drives for computers are legitimate, intended devices for accessing content on DVDs.
The fact that there is no officially sanctioned software available for performing that legitimate use on Linux should not automatically render any non-sanctioned software illegitimate.
If this is "in few words", I'd hate to see how big the "comprehensive volume" would be.
<soap box>
There is a reason that the courts use "community standards" as the yardstick for obscenity.
The standards of the /. community tend to be different from the community at large. As slashdotters, we are typically geeks and as such have typically been outcasts for much of our lives. It becomes an us and them kind of thing. We consider ourselves their intellectual superiors. Perhaps we even consider them to be slobbering idiots--a view not helped by the collections of tech support calls that find their way into geek legend.
The courts base their decisions on the standards of the community at large and not of the self-annointed intellectual elite. The idea is that if most of the student body were to be uncomfortable attending class because of the material being presented, there would be a problem. A teacher has a right, even a responsibility to stretch student's minds, but should strengthen not conflict with any moral principles taught at home.
Personally, I agree with the "community standards" on this one. I thought it was more artistic in the "old days" when they showed a man on his knees cowering in front of a man with a gun, who pulled the trigger and cut to black and another scene. I don't need to see the bullet enter his head in slow motion. I don't need to see his brains explode out the back and splatter across the floor.
I thought the love scene in A Knight's Tale was one of the best I've seen in a long time--it got the point across quite powerfully without wasting time to show bodies thumping that could be better spent on plot development.
Am I an uneducated fool? Have I no appreciation for art?
In elementary school, I stayed after school every Wednesday for an hour for an Art and Music enrichment class. We studied art, architecture and music from Greek Classical through Baroque over a period of three years. My mother, who agonized over whether to allow me to attend sex ed (she did finally sign the permission slip) in junior high had no qualms about my studying the medieval nudes.
I was a drama geek in high school and started college as a film major before graduating in Communications.
So many folks in Hollywood tell of an epic battle to push the envelope and explore more of their art as they fight the network censors and the MPAA ratings, but the ones that are truly exploring the art are not the ones trying to put more skin, swear words or blood on the screen. They're shows like "Ed"--a show full of quirky oddballs who somehow manage to restore your faith in humanity every week. Or a show like "The West Wing" that is so bold as to suggest that there may actually be some good, principled people working in Washington DC.
Yes, this new DVD player would be useful for schools and other places where restrictions limit what you are allowed to show, but you're forgetting how many people actually want to limit what they see--not to be ostriches with their heads in the sand, but because they know that looking at the sun hurts their eyes.
</soap box>
Call me a prude if you want, but there are a lot of good movies that I would love to watch except for the one or two scenes that I know are in there. I prefer not to watch R-rated movies. To have my DVD player automatically adjust the scenes to my preferences would be fantastic.
The Computer Science department at BYU where I was attending Grad School actually requires internet access of some sort for every class. Professors no longer hand out a syllabus at the start of the semester. Students are expected to read it online. All homework assignments are posted online. Every class has a newsgroup and students are held responsible for information, assignments and schedule changes posted to the class newsgroup.
In many classes, all grades are distributed only through an online system that requires a student ID and password to gain access.
Besides, the school uses broadband internet access as a lure to get people to live in the dorms. Most people here live off-campus after their freshman year, and the school is trying to get more people to come back as sophomores and longer. Broadband internet is the number one reason folks choose to stay in the dorms.
He can be reached at icculus@lokigames.com
The author happens to be one of Loki's programmers, porting games to Linux. If I remember correctly, he was the lead programmer for Descent 3.
He's done several satirical pieces for Linux.com and his README for Descent 3 was quite entertaining for a technical document.
I'd say chances are slim and none (and Slim already left town) that this piece was intended to be "real" as in actually from Microsoft. On the other hand, the issues it raises are very real, and the context of a phony email from Gates makes a good stage for presenting those issues without need of industrial strength asbestos underwear.
The actual number of people let go was considerably less than a lot of the predictions. If I remember correctly, it was only 10-12%--still a lot, but not as bad as everyone expected.
Also, the optimism isn't necessarily fake. I work for a contractor that is helping them retool a portion of their website to bring it inline with their new corporate strategy. They really are making some changes.
I work with these people every day, and there is no sense of impending doom in the trenches.
Ah, but Sony built in a solution to that little issue. I never bought PlayStation or a DVD player, but now I can buy the PS2 and enjoy the few PS2 games, hundreds of old PS games, and tons of DVDs while waiting for the rest of the good games to come out.
Yes, it will be a while before the PS2 platform is real compelling, but the console is good for a lot more than that, and I can have plenty of fun with it in the meantime.
Actually, "kann" is the right verb, it's just not conjugated correctly. The correct form for use with "Sie"--the second person formal--is "koennen". The form he used is for "sie"--third person feminine.
To "kann" a language is a standard German idiom, and usually a sign that the speaker does, in fact, know a bit of German.
If he'd just gotten the verb form right, we could all be really impressed. Still though, a very worthy effort.
I may be drastically overestimating our elected leaders and our judicial system, but I would think that this is the perfect case to get UCITA thrown out/repealed/whatever.
As clueless as Congress may be, I think the politicians understand that the right to air someone else's dirty laundry is fundamental to the American system of government (as well as numerous others). That's how many of them get elected in the first place.
As flawed as our judicial system is, the courts have been quite consistent over the years about protecting the right to criticize whomever and whatever we wish. This sounds like it could easily be thrown out on First Amendment grounds.
And once we're into First Amendment territory, the media finally pay attention. There's no faster way to get journalists into a rabid frenzy than to tell them they can't air their in depth investigation of whatever they think is wrong with the world.
Hmmm. Guess it's time to fire off some polite emails to a few politicians and journalists explaining that their own livlihoods may be in jeopardy.
The above opinion is purely my own and does not necessarily the reflect the opinions of my employers, friends, family or dog.
Well, I don't know how many will apply, but none of them will be accepted.
From the signup page:
You must be running Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5. Windows 2000 is not supported for the Diablo II Beta, but will be supported in the final product.
Actually, our licensing agreements typically work the other way around. We pay the publisher for the right to port, publish and distribute the Linux version and pay a royalty for each copy we sell.
The reason for this can be as simple as using a 3Dfx in a non-fullscreen mode, or it may be something more complex like a bad Mesa/GLX configuration.
You may want to check our GL drivers page for information on getting everything set up correctly.
If you're still stumped, send us an email with your system specs. While we don't technically support the demo, we do want you to have a good experience with it (how else are we going to sell anything?) and will gladly provide a few pointers to get you going.
Before anyone starts calling me a tool of the system, let me point out that I did my undergraduate work in Communications Studies and their is no faster way to get me riled up than to get me talking about the evils of the administration's stranglehold on the student^H^H^H^H^H^Hchool newspaper
I was talking Monday with a friend who works as a network administrator for the school, and he said they just did a network analysis to see where their bandwidth was being used. It turned out that 1/12 of the bandwidth to the Internet for the _entire_ school of 28,000 students was being used by a single freshman. He was running a Napster server and got his account canned.
He didn't get canned because it was Napster or MP3s. He didn't get canned because they wanted to "censor" him. He got canned because (a) he violated the Conditions of Use in his account agreement, and (b) the school has only limited bandwidth and doesn't want to pay for any more.
Before we immediately start screaming about censorship, we need to also consider how many students may be abusing the so-called "free bandwidth" they are getting. After proper consideration, and if it's justified, then we can start civilly arguing about censorship.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this comment are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of my employers.
Now imagine running off the cliff so fast that you miss the lake and crash horribly on the other side.
Now imagine running off the cliff so fast that by the time you drop the 1000 feet you've missed the earth entirely and due to the curvature of the earth, you're still 1000 feet in the air.
This is a low-altitude orbit. If you were going any slower, you would have eventually hit the ground (rather painfully, I might add). If you were going any faster, you would have missed the earth by more than just the initial 1000 feet, thus moving you to a higher orbit.
Your altitude and your velocity are inextricably connected until you reach escape velocity--the speed at which gravity can no longer keep you going in circles.
That was the first game I got for my TI 99/4a! I'd played the text version on a terminal while visiting Rice University and thought the updated "full-color" TI version was the coolest thing ever.
Loki has a newsgroup set up to let the community provide give input on should be ported. Check out loki.requests.
Quake III will absolutely be supported on Linux. All of us at Loki Tech Support have been dutifully playing the demo version to prepare for it. :)
The main problem with shipping a hybrid CD with separate boxes for Linux is that if they sell out of the Linux copies, people will just buy the Windows or Mac versions instead of demanding that the store stock more Linux copies.
If Carmack wants to encourage retail stores to carry more Linux games. The best way to do that is to sell Linux versions as an entirely separate product so that all of us that want Linux versions will go rough up store managers when they don't carry or don't stock enough of the games we want.
Actually, the Communications Law class I took said that's *exactly* what it means. In fact, that's precisely how Bayer lost the trademark for aspirin. It became a household term, and the courts ruled that it is now merely aspirin and not Aspirin(tm).
The save format changed so it would be compatible with the Windows version, that way you can now download scenarios from Activision's site, trade maps with friends, etc.
Half of that 400 MB is the videos. You don't have to install those. You can run them from the CD as long as your CD-ROM is mounted.