Comment Re:1st A... (Score 1) 338
Being a homeless, jobless bum is alright if you have the cash, or a neat gun.
Comment Re:1st A... (Score 1) 338
If it is like what the parent says, and if the employer is not very important, say a start up company, it would be fine to let this go.
However, as many would like to point out, this is a city job, a public service job.
That in itself changes the whole game.
As public servants, in theory, they are there to help the public by doing their jobs, whether it be janitorial or clerical.
If this is allowed to happen, it might at the very least devolve into what is currently happening in police jobs.
There if one wants to succeed and keep their job, keeping their supervisors happy and not saying anything bad about them is a must.
Positive criticism cannot be attained and the organization loses a check, another regulating power to help keep it nice and efficient.
Yet, who in their right mind, as a bureaucrat, would let go the chance to control their employees more?
However, as many would like to point out, this is a city job, a public service job.
That in itself changes the whole game.
As public servants, in theory, they are there to help the public by doing their jobs, whether it be janitorial or clerical.
If this is allowed to happen, it might at the very least devolve into what is currently happening in police jobs.
There if one wants to succeed and keep their job, keeping their supervisors happy and not saying anything bad about them is a must.
Positive criticism cannot be attained and the organization loses a check, another regulating power to help keep it nice and efficient.
Yet, who in their right mind, as a bureaucrat, would let go the chance to control their employees more?
Comment Long article is long (Score 2, Insightful) 111
The article itself is a very good read eh. (Which is probably why there are not that many comments here yet (RTA FTW).
It focuses mostly on the war/espionage aspects and has very few mentions of privacy and such, downplaying it rather well.
The interesting thing I learnt is that the NSA is pretty messed, [the article saying they] want security but they would rather know everything about everyone.
In all, it's probably all hype eh. Sure there are implications of damage war can be brought, but as the article sometimes pointed out, it's hard to distinguish from economic spying and military espionage.
In any case, the best thing that can happen (for me) is if America does decide to go ahead and give the NSA even more power they seek. When everyone is under the eye of bigbrother, there should be war. Which is fun eh.
If there is no war, America would be a sucky place to live in. Canada would probably be bullied into doing the same thing, so my place would be messed too.
Heh... but in all this, I find that I am really anxious for that to happen. I really want to forget everything, take out a few guns, and go out guns ablazing. Like that dude in V for Vendetta. Yarr.
Submission + - Duke Nukem Forever Demo at PAX - slated for 2011 (gametrailers.com)
divinewind writes: The developers at Gearbox have taken over the Duke Nukem franchise slated for 2011. They have also had a running version of the game at PAX, and you may become a tester if apply here, provided you can get yourself to Plano, TX, USA.
"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum."
"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum."
Submission + - Duke Nukem Forever To Launch On Nov 19th For &poun (itproportal.com)
siliconbits writes: It's been one of the longest vapourware products in the history of technology but now Take Two's Duke Nukem Forever has been given a release date and a price tag if online gaming retailer, Shopto, is to be believed. Oh and it will cost £25 including delivery and you'll be paid £3 if they do not deliver the goods
Submission + - GameStop Pulls Medal of Honor from Military Bases
donniebaseball23 writes: EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on U.S. Military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision "out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform."
Submission + - Open Source PS3 Jailbreak Released (ps3news.com)
tlhIngan writes: "Despite all the lawsuits and injunctions by Sony to keep the PS3 Jailbreak out of modder's hands, it appears that a third party has made a clone. The best part is, it only requires a cheap (approximately $40) development board by Atmel, and the requisite software is open-source. Get the Atmel code from GitHub and apply a small patch which will enable backup play (the code by itself only lets you run unsigned code, the patch allows for BD backups). The code is GPLv3. It would be highly ironic if someone ported this to Linux USB Gadgets, then you could use a Linux device to jailbreak your PS3, to which Sony removed Linux functionality. An Android phone would be suitable."
Comment Re:WTF? (Score 1) 42
In all, if the quality of video games start to suck, I still have my tennis racket to hit other people with just in case the apocalypse comes
Submission + - Space Exploration Strategy
postagoras writes: NASA and 13 space agencies from around the world are releasing the latest product of their Global Exploration Strategy discussions. The document, "The Global Exploration Strategy: The Framework for Coordination," reflects a shared vision of space exploration focused on solar system destinations where humans may someday live and work.
Submission + - GNU coughs up Emacs 22 after six year wait
lisah writes: "After keeping users waiting for nearly six years, Emacs 22 has been released and includes a bunch of updates and some new modes as well. In addition to support for GTK+ and a graphical interface to the GNU Debugger, 'this release includes build support for Linux on AMD64, S/390, and Tensilica Xtensa machines, FreeBSD/Alpha, Cygwin, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9 with Carbon support. The Leim package is now part of GNU Emacs, so users will be able to get input support for Chinese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and other languages without downloading a separate package. New translations of the Emacs tutorial are also available in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Italian, French, and Russian.'"
Submission + - MIT Faculty Accused of Racism
epistemiclife writes: CNN reports that a professor at MIT
has resigned in protest, because a colleague was denied tenure. He charges that it was because he is
black. DiverseEducation.com expounds
upon this, by referencing similar issues with MIT in the past, as well as
with other institutions which focus on science and engineering.
Submission + - Word 2007 unacceptable for science journals
G.Bognar writes: Both Nature and Science Magazine have announced that they will not accept submissions with Word 2007. Apparently, Word 2007 introduced incompatibilities which make it unusable for these journals. One could detect bafflement and a bit of anger on the Instructions for authors pages of Science Magazine and Nature.
Submission + - Cancer docs gets death threat over drug approval (psa-rising.com)
nbauman writes: "Two oncologists got death threats from angry prostate cancer patients because they voted, as members of the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval panel, to delay approval of a new cancer drug. http://psa-rising.com/blog/index.php/2007/06/03/pr ostate-cancer-doctor-receives-death-threat-over-pr ovenge#more-325 The issue is rigorous science vs. immediate access. Howard I. Scher and Maha Hussain said that the studies of Provenge, a prostate cancer vaccine, done by manufacturer, Dendreon Corp., didn't show improved survival. After the FDA studies were done, supporters of the drug went back and found ways of interpreting the data that did show an advantage, which sometimes came out to 4 1/2 months longer survival depending on how you look at it. Critics say they're data-dredging evidence selectively to make the drug look good. http://psa-rising.com/blog/index.php/2007/04/17/sc her-to-fda-about-provenge-hearing An ongoing 500-patient study will give the answer — in 2 years. Prostate cancer patients say they'll be dead by then, they have nothing to lose, and they have a right to use a new drug now. "We want Provenge to work; that's our raison d'etre," Scher said, but in order to know whether it works, they need to complete the study. Paul Goldberg, editor of The Cancer Letter, said that basing decisions on reliable evidence is also "patient advocacy. This is just another form of it through science." http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/05/10/cancer-vacc ine-activists-unhappy-but-unbowed/ Usually unmentioned is the question of who should pay for the treatment. The FDA would let Dendreon give the vaccine to cancer patients now as "compassionate use," but Dendreon says it would be too expensive. Cancer patients want it to be approved so Dendreon can sell it normally and insurance companies (and Medicare) will pay for it."
Submission + - Rubik's cube solved in just 26 moves
thefickler writes: Researchers from Northeastern University in the US have managed to prove that the Rubik's cube can be solved in just 26 moves.
Computer science professor Gene Cooperman and graduate student Dan Kunkle were able to accomplish this new record through two primary techniques.They used 7 terabytes of distributed disk as an extension to RAM, in order to hold some large tables and developed a new, "faster faster" way of computing moves, and even whole groups of moves, by using mathematical group theory.
Computer science professor Gene Cooperman and graduate student Dan Kunkle were able to accomplish this new record through two primary techniques.They used 7 terabytes of distributed disk as an extension to RAM, in order to hold some large tables and developed a new, "faster faster" way of computing moves, and even whole groups of moves, by using mathematical group theory.
Submission + - Hard data on Vista usage: not so much (marketwatch.com)
quixote9 writes: "We've heard conflicting estimates of how widely adopted Vista has been. Now comes some hard data. DRAM makers ramped up to meet the huge expected demand for more memory needed by Vista. Except the demand hasn't materialized. Now they're suffering. Alternatively, maybe everyone's cleverly hacked their Ultimate Aero Glass Vista to fit on their old PCs. You think?"
