AphexNexus - Slashdot User

Doctor Slams Hospital's "Please" Policy 572

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 03, 2010 @01:07AM from the paging-doctor-manners dept.

Administrators at England's Worthing Hospital are insisting that doctors say the magic word when writing orders for blood tests on weekends. If a doctor refuses to write "please" on the order, the test will be refused. From the article: "However, a doctor at the hospital said on condition of anonymity that he sees the policy as a money-saving measure that could prove dangerous for patients. 'I was shocked to come in on Sunday and find none of my bloods had been done from the night before because I'd not written "please,"' the doctor said. 'I had no results to guide treatment of patients. Myself and a senior nurse had to take the bloods ourselves, which added hours to our 12-hour shifts. This system puts patients' lives at risk. Doctors are wasting time doing the job of the technicians.'"

Man Swallows USB Flash Drive Evidence 199

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @12:37PM from the chew-it-up dept.

SlideRuleGuy writes "In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents. Records show Florin Necula ingested the Kingston flash drive shortly after his January 21 arrest outside a bank in Queens. A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage one of their drives. 'As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB.' I imagine that would be rather painful. But did he follow his mother's advice and chew thoroughly, first? Apparently not, as the drive was surgically recovered."

Blizzard Previews Revamped Battle.net 188

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday February 10, 2010 @05:40AM from the find-out-precisely-how-bad-you-are dept.

Blizzard updated the official StarCraft II site today with a preview of how the revamped Battle.net will function. They emphasize the social features, competitive matchmaking system, and the ease of sharing mods and maps. Quoting: "When the legacy Battle.net service introduced support for user-created mods such as DotA, Tower Defense, and many others, these user-created game types became immensely popular. But while Battle.net supported mods at a basic level, integration with tools and the mod community wasn't where it needed to be for a game releasing in 2010. The new Battle.net service will see some major improvements in this area. StarCraft II will include a full-featured content-creation toolkit — the same tools used by the StarCraft II design team to create the single-player campaign. To fully harness the community's mapmaking prowess, Battle.net will introduce a feature called Map Publishing. Map Publishing will let users upload their maps to the service and share them with the rest of the community immediately on the service. This also ties in with the goal of making Battle.net an always-connected experience — you can publish, browse, and download maps directly via the Battle.net client. Finding games based on specific mods will also be much easier with our all-new custom game system, placing the full breadth of the modding community's efforts at your fingertips."

Comment Re:If you're in it for the money, do something els (Score 1) 844

by AphexNexus on Tuesday January 26, 2010 @10:53AM (#30904266) Attached to: Is Programming a Lucrative Profession?

I don't think this point can be driven home enough and you sight a perfect example. As an employer I would want to hire first those who showed the desire to do the job(s) they are applying for. They are going to be far better employees to manage and work with when it comes to getting the job done. As someone who's receiving service from such a person their quality it going to tend to be better if they have a general desire to "want" to do the work they are doing. Like you said, I want the doctor who about to open me up to be a total geek about his choice of medicine. I would feel far better knowing that sitting in his bathroom are magazines about new research and techniques related to his field. If people are allowed to do what they are passionate about it's going to benefit everyone in the end, but here in the US especially it seems it's all about making the $ no matter the sacrifice.

New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances 342

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @04:36AM from the new-and-shiny dept.

ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."

Over 160 Tutorial Videos Created For Unreal Dev Kit 48

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 04, 2009 @07:14AM from the how-it's-done dept.

As a follow-up to Epic Games' release of a free version of the Unreal Engine last month, the company has now posted over 160 video tutorials which demonstrate the various uses of the Unreal Development Kit. Roughly 20 hours of footage were created by technical education company 3D Buzz, with topics ranging from user interface to game physics to cinematics.

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