Some girls don't like games but here are some to try that the female population seems to be more receptive to in my experience:
Party Games: Guitar Hero, Mario Party, Wii Party, Scene It, Monopoly Streets
Multiplayer Platformers: Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country, Little Big Planet
Puzzle Games: Bejeweled, Peggle, Hidden Object Games like Mystery Case Files
Adventure Games: Back to the Future (big hit with my fiancee, we played through the whole thing)
For the more girly girls, you might need to go with something with the "cute" factor. Little Big Planet is especially good at this one. You can put stickers on stuff and dress your sack boy/girl. It's also multiplayer. Co-op is usually a plus.
Assembly is the only way to go when it comes to database oriented web apps.
This is what I find funny about C++ zealots who hate.NET and java. Interestingly enough, Microsoft had an incubating effort to build a "framework" called Casablanca that would give C++ developers an easy way to host a web server or a RESTful web service. Part of the C++11 standard is incorporating features in languages like C# and java. It's interesting to watch the pendulum shift back and forth and the philosophical arguments being argued from ivory towers.
Lets have a look back in time at the history of Microsoft. Windows XP was the first stable version of Windows that was targeted at a typical end-user. Yes, yes, there was Win 2K Professional but it was targeted at business. Windows XP was a very attractive choice for those migrating from Windows 98/ME that were notorious for crashing at least once daily. And that was the incentive to upgrade. The operating system didn't crash repeatedly.
Once XP was released, Microsoft really dropped the ball on providing incentives to keep upgrading at a premium price. If anything Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 are like Plus Packs. They are just adding (mostly useless) new features that no one needs. They created an artificial restriction that in order to play games on the latest Direct X you had to be running the latest version of Windows. This was quite a departure from the older Direct X versions.
Microsoft would be better off selling the Operating System separate and letting people purchase the features they want a la carte. That pretty much would eliminate all of this nonsense. If the features really are worth paying for (which most of them aren't) then they would be able to support the feature on multiple versions of the operating system. Novel concept! Why does there need to be a monolithic operating system will all the bundled crap on it?
Basic laws of reality? Isn't science about increasing our understanding of reality? Many theories and ideas have come and gone and been replaced by more refined ones. We would be extremely naive to think our current understanding is even remotely close to all there is to know and completely correct. There is much to learn my friend.
Should developers be responsible for installing the software they develop into production environments?
Absolutely not. This is horrible security practice and will not fly even an inch in many industry standard audits. I can give countless examples. A developer sneaks a change into the software to funnel personal information and credit card numbers off to a private database and then sells it on the black market.
The whole point behind the division of labor is a set of checks and balances and reduction in conflict of interest. Quality Assurance analysts validate the code does what it is supposed to. The developer doesn't do this. Developers typically don't care much about that level of quality of their code. They have a different set of objectives. They must complete objectives, they have deadlines. The customer performs user acceptance testing not the QA analysts for obvious reasons. Even the brightest of user proxies cannot replace the customer's direct feedback. The deployment specialists, IT or Operations specialists deploy the software. They are responsible for the production server infrastructure and the environment not the developers. They must exercise great care in what they install, whether its the company's own product, Microsoft updates, drivers or anything else. It's all the same.
I'm shocked this question even gets asked. There is no free lunch!
Or you could stop eating beef and dairy products or buy from suppliers that use the genetically engineered low-fart cows. Or you could plant some trees or put renewable energy devices on your house or get a shorter commute or replace flying with telecommuting or make your next car electric or see if there's an option to buy renewable power in your area or phase in lower-power devices in your home or maintain/reuse things instead of replacing them...but yeah it's hopeless and there's nothing an individual could do.
I don't disagree that these things aren't without merit but you know what no one likes to think about in the midst of all this debate? The main problem is the rate at which our populate is increasing. All of our technological advancement which has been driven by our primitive instinct to survive and multiply has made us consume the resources on the planet much more effectively. No matter what you do to make it more efficient, it will just cause us to feel like we can increase our population more to consume more resources, making all those efforts in vain. You really just can't win. Wake me up when someone really wants to get serious about functioning better together as a civilization to grow in a responsible way.
Linux will be ready for the desktop in 5 years time.
Heard that one before. And in other news, unseasonably chilly temperatures suddenly sweep through hell, a deluge of eyewitness reports of monkeys spontaneously flying out of people's rear orifices around the world.
I'm fine with Microsoft's new logo. It certainly looks much better than any of their previous logos. However, their new flat gray color scheme with 80's era upper case menu items is crap. It is painful to look at. I've been thinking a lot about why Microsoft moved to such crap color scheme and the only thing I can come up with is they are trying to distinguish themselves from Apple and maybe Google. Apple has a similar color scheme but the difference is they make tasteful use of shiny buttons, bevels and drop shadow. It seems like Microsoft didn't want to copy them so they decided to go with the exact opposite. Now, I'm definitely not an Apple fan boy but seriously, Apple's site looks 100x better than Microsoft's. In fact, I think Microsoft's new color scheme and branding strategy widened the gap. If I didn't know better, I'd say a decree came down from the top that the next branding/marketing strategy had to differentiate Microsoft from their competition. Microsoft definitely accomplished that... in the worst way possible.
AT&T's share price has greatly improved over the past year and is almost back to where it was 5 years ago. I can only assume this means a great increase in revenue. Why can't they afford to increase infrastructure to provide better service? Where is all the money going?
No company in their right mind is going to adopt Windows 8 for their business workstations if Microsoft forces the Metro interface on everyone. It simply is not productive. Visual Studio Touch Edition? Microsoft Word and Excel from a tablet? Right. I have no idea what they are thinking. It seems like in their effort to pursue the tablet market they are alienating other significant revenue streams. I'm not following the marketing strategy.
Business isn't around to "hire", as every right winger I've ever met is so quick to point out, yet every time I hear one spouting tax cuts for business (so they'll hire) and less regulation (so they'll hire). It seems to me you right wing freaks should take your own advice. Business is there to make money.
You see, this is where we America in particular got lost. We lost sight of the fact that we are a society and that Capitalism was originally intended as a better system for encouraging everyone to collaborate for the common good of all citizens. Those that offer jobs and those that fulfill the needs of the jobs are in a symbiotic relationship. The executive boards of the corporations are small in numbers, not able to do the actual amount of work their companies need to bring in the revenue and everyone needs a job to feed and clothe their families and things they need to be able to go to work. The idea is that there is a supposed to be a balance between these two parties that produces the ideal amount of economic output, making the lives of everyone in the country as good as possible. To not acknowledge this and not try to do your best to facilitate this or even worse trying to circumvent or abuse it for your own gain is being a bad citizen. What good are corporations that take so much money out of the system that there is no money left for everyone else? They wouldn't survive very long because eventually they wouldn't have any employees and that would result in a total economic collapse.
This reminds me of the song by Alice Cooper, "Lost in America"
"I can't get a girl
cuz I ain't got a car
I can't get a car
cuz I ain't got a job
I can't get a job
cuz I ain't got a car
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car
Don't you know where you are
Oh boy I'm rusty at this but I'll give it a go. The fond memories I have of writing stuff for the C64. I remember writing an application as a kid called Organizer where you could create user-defined lists of stuff and save it to disk. I found out much later that I had created a primitive database. Fun times!
18 FOR I = 1 TO 1000: POKE 55295 + I, INT(RND(0) * 16): NEXT I
That description is really messed up. Ocarina of Time is the first Zelda game to feature horseback riding. Twilight Princess is the first game to feature horseback combat.
That's the beautiful thing about capitalism and the free market.
The peasantry is in control rather than a few Robber Barons.
With all due respect, you are just flat wrong. Laissez-faire Capitalism puts control primarily in the hands of the people who have the wealth (AKA "capital"). I assume you are referring to the United States. In this country the "peasantry" doesn't have much of a voice because we do not have a real democracy. Some may say we have a Republic but I think it's closer to an Oligarchy at this point. Here the most wealthy 1% control 35.6% of the wealth while the top 10% control 75% of it. The Forbes Top 400 has a combined wealth of $1.37 trillion dollars. That's who is primarily in control not the "peasantry".
Typically Sql developpers tend to throw everything into the data base, then create marvelously large queries, and finally pout when you complain about performance, that "if they had had the time they would have some stored procedures, and the server is too slow anyway...."
This should be marked as flamebait. This is only true of some developers i.e. those who are ignorant about RDBMS. They should make it their business to understand RDBMS especially in large scale applications where performance is critical. This particular aspect alone forces any developer or DBA to have think "hard" about the structure of their data such as transactional vs. analytical needs. If used appropriately, an RDBMS can be quite intuitive and performance/space efficient. It all comes down to understanding the tool you're using. If you don't know how to use a screw driver or a hammer, you probably shouldn't be using it!
He was just being funny about "week." However, you are correct there is indeed a logical problem with imposing more "secure" password policies on users that are simply not feasible for humans to be able to remember the passwords. These policies force users to have to store the passwords somewhere in plain text in order to remember them. Surprise! We just defeated the whole goal of not having passwords stored in plain text except in our heads because it's now on a sticky note under your keyboard or wherever.
The types of policies that are contributing to this are, among others, 1) Requiring frequent changes of passwords, 2) Requiring passwords to be strong in character selection rules, must contain numbers, letters and symbols, cannot be any consecutive letters or numbers, etc. This makes the passwords incredibly difficult to remember as a mnemonic device and 3) Password lengths. We are being required to have longer passwords. Steve Gibson has a very interesting tool called Haystack demonstrating that 8 character passwords are insufficient and trivial to crack with today's computing power.
What is the solution? Heck if I know, but it probably isn't passwords. As computing power increases, the length and complexity of the passwords will also have to increase in order to defeat or greatly discourage brute force attacks. But they will also render passwords useless because no on can remember them.
That's the trouble with capitalism. Any philosophy which promotes the principle of selfishness
Capitalism doesn't promote the principle of selfishness, it just recognized self-interest as the primary driving force. Like Churchill said about Democracy, it sucks, until you compare it to all the other systems.
Self-interest and selfishness are degrees of the same scale. Where is the line? And if we enforce that line to equalize everyone at what point does that become Socialism?
How about we ban other dangerous activities while driving like:
- Changing radio stations
- Putting on makeup
- Reading books or newspapers
- Scolding children in the back seat
- Thumbing through CD wallets looking for CD's
- Eating
Seriously, people have been doing things in their cars that can and have caused accidents, some of them even more utterly ridiculous than using cell phones or texting. Why is this getting so much attention?
Just because they are using a sneaky way to get around a law or regulation doesn't mean that you can't hire an attorney to file a petition to bring it to a court's attention. A judge may decide that what they are doing is logically equivalent to disobeying the law and render a judgment against them anyway. It comes down to having the money for the legal representation.
You may be able to get an attorney to take your case with a low retainer if they feel strongly that you would win the case and be awarded substantial legal expenses and/or damages. It just depends. DISCLAIMER: IANAL
Many people make assumptions about whether they have the ability to fight something that is wrong without ever making it their business to find out. They just assume they are doomed without even trying. You are guaranteed to be a victim and complain incessantly for the rest of your life unless you take responsibility for standing up for yourself.
One time I went to mail some documentation for a legal matter I was involved in where I needed receipt confirmation and had never done that before. First, I went to the post office but the workers there were rude and the lines were so long that I eventually just went to a Fedex Kinko's. While it cost a bit more, the employees at Fedex Kinko's were very friendly and I was in and out of there in less than 10 minutes.
I really don't understand this. Prior to the internet, snail mail was the primary means of communicating in written form across long distance. Now that the internet is nearly ubiquitous in many countries around the globe, there is a natural shift from snail mail to email. Email is technologically superior. Why should USPS expect that taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for services that have become obsolete. It is only natural that USPS should decrease in size now that its technology is used far less because a more superior technology has replaced it. For now, at least until we have some matter disassembler/transmission/re-assembler technology, there will always be a need to send packaged goods. Certified mail is certainly still useful. But obviously, the USPS services are not as relevant in today's world as they were say 20 years ago.
In order for the USPS to stay viable at the size it currently is, it will need to find a way to re-invent itself to make itself more relevant in the so-called digital age. That is the name of the game in business. If you want to stay relevant, you have to adapt. Survival of the fittest.
While I agree that software piracy is probably morally wrong. I don't think it can be classified as stealing. Stealing would be like I break into my neighbor's house and steal his/her property. Notice I said "property". I am transferring his/her physical property into my possession. When you pirate a game, there is no transfer of property. In software piracy, you are making a copy. Now would you say that if I looked in my neighbor's window and saw a piece of artwork he/she made, liked it and created a copy of it and enjoy it in my residence. Is that morally incorrect? Is that a crime? Did I steal something?
Let's see... I can pay $17.98 to get 1 Blu-ray title at a time and unlimited streaming with Netflix or I can pay $7.99 for unlimited streaming with Netflix and use Redbox to rent 6 Blu-ray titles a month or 10 DVD titles a month in addition to my Netflix streaming. How is this a good business plan for Netflix to be competitive?
As an avid computer FPS gamer, I can tell that using a higher end mouse definitely makes a difference. I've used quite a few in my days, mostly Logitech. I currently use an MX518. However, let's say for the sake of argument that the sensors are not of higher quality and don't offer any higher DPI or sensitivity than their mainstream office counterparts. There are other aspects to gaming mice that are quite important. The ergonomic shape of the mouse. The placement of the buttons. The software that allows you to configure the sensitivity very specifically to your preferences. In some mice, you have the ability to add or remove optional weights to suit your specific style. All of these contribute to being able to fine tune your mouse to give you the optimal control that allows you aim more accurately and quickly than a typical mouse that does not have these features.
Slashdot Mirror
Some girls don't like games but here are some to try that the female population seems to be more receptive to in my experience:
Party Games: Guitar Hero, Mario Party, Wii Party, Scene It, Monopoly Streets
Multiplayer Platformers: Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country, Little Big Planet
Puzzle Games: Bejeweled, Peggle, Hidden Object Games like Mystery Case Files
Adventure Games: Back to the Future (big hit with my fiancee, we played through the whole thing)
For the more girly girls, you might need to go with something with the "cute" factor. Little Big Planet is especially good at this one. You can put stickers on stuff and dress your sack boy/girl. It's also multiplayer. Co-op is usually a plus.
Assembly is the only way to go when it comes to database oriented web apps.
This is what I find funny about C++ zealots who hate .NET and java. Interestingly enough, Microsoft had an incubating effort to build a "framework" called Casablanca that would give C++ developers an easy way to host a web server or a RESTful web service. Part of the C++11 standard is incorporating features in languages like C# and java. It's interesting to watch the pendulum shift back and forth and the philosophical arguments being argued from ivory towers.
Lets have a look back in time at the history of Microsoft. Windows XP was the first stable version of Windows that was targeted at a typical end-user. Yes, yes, there was Win 2K Professional but it was targeted at business. Windows XP was a very attractive choice for those migrating from Windows 98/ME that were notorious for crashing at least once daily. And that was the incentive to upgrade. The operating system didn't crash repeatedly.
Once XP was released, Microsoft really dropped the ball on providing incentives to keep upgrading at a premium price. If anything Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 are like Plus Packs. They are just adding (mostly useless) new features that no one needs. They created an artificial restriction that in order to play games on the latest Direct X you had to be running the latest version of Windows. This was quite a departure from the older Direct X versions.
Microsoft would be better off selling the Operating System separate and letting people purchase the features they want a la carte. That pretty much would eliminate all of this nonsense. If the features really are worth paying for (which most of them aren't) then they would be able to support the feature on multiple versions of the operating system. Novel concept! Why does there need to be a monolithic operating system will all the bundled crap on it?
Basic laws of reality? Isn't science about increasing our understanding of reality? Many theories and ideas have come and gone and been replaced by more refined ones. We would be extremely naive to think our current understanding is even remotely close to all there is to know and completely correct. There is much to learn my friend.
Should developers be responsible for installing the software they develop into production environments?
Absolutely not. This is horrible security practice and will not fly even an inch in many industry standard audits. I can give countless examples. A developer sneaks a change into the software to funnel personal information and credit card numbers off to a private database and then sells it on the black market.
The whole point behind the division of labor is a set of checks and balances and reduction in conflict of interest. Quality Assurance analysts validate the code does what it is supposed to. The developer doesn't do this. Developers typically don't care much about that level of quality of their code. They have a different set of objectives. They must complete objectives, they have deadlines. The customer performs user acceptance testing not the QA analysts for obvious reasons. Even the brightest of user proxies cannot replace the customer's direct feedback. The deployment specialists, IT or Operations specialists deploy the software. They are responsible for the production server infrastructure and the environment not the developers. They must exercise great care in what they install, whether its the company's own product, Microsoft updates, drivers or anything else. It's all the same.
I'm shocked this question even gets asked. There is no free lunch!
genetically engineered low-fart cows.
The next coming fad. Low-fart diets!
Beano to the rescue! We can save the world!
Or you could stop eating beef and dairy products or buy from suppliers that use the genetically engineered low-fart cows. Or you could plant some trees or put renewable energy devices on your house or get a shorter commute or replace flying with telecommuting or make your next car electric or see if there's an option to buy renewable power in your area or phase in lower-power devices in your home or maintain/reuse things instead of replacing them...but yeah it's hopeless and there's nothing an individual could do.
I don't disagree that these things aren't without merit but you know what no one likes to think about in the midst of all this debate? The main problem is the rate at which our populate is increasing. All of our technological advancement which has been driven by our primitive instinct to survive and multiply has made us consume the resources on the planet much more effectively. No matter what you do to make it more efficient, it will just cause us to feel like we can increase our population more to consume more resources, making all those efforts in vain. You really just can't win. Wake me up when someone really wants to get serious about functioning better together as a civilization to grow in a responsible way.
Linux will be ready for the desktop in 5 years time.
Heard that one before. And in other news, unseasonably chilly temperatures suddenly sweep through hell, a deluge of eyewitness reports of monkeys spontaneously flying out of people's rear orifices around the world.
I'm fine with Microsoft's new logo. It certainly looks much better than any of their previous logos. However, their new flat gray color scheme with 80's era upper case menu items is crap. It is painful to look at. I've been thinking a lot about why Microsoft moved to such crap color scheme and the only thing I can come up with is they are trying to distinguish themselves from Apple and maybe Google. Apple has a similar color scheme but the difference is they make tasteful use of shiny buttons, bevels and drop shadow. It seems like Microsoft didn't want to copy them so they decided to go with the exact opposite. Now, I'm definitely not an Apple fan boy but seriously, Apple's site looks 100x better than Microsoft's. In fact, I think Microsoft's new color scheme and branding strategy widened the gap. If I didn't know better, I'd say a decree came down from the top that the next branding/marketing strategy had to differentiate Microsoft from their competition. Microsoft definitely accomplished that... in the worst way possible.
AT&T's share price has greatly improved over the past year and is almost back to where it was 5 years ago. I can only assume this means a great increase in revenue. Why can't they afford to increase infrastructure to provide better service? Where is all the money going?
No company in their right mind is going to adopt Windows 8 for their business workstations if Microsoft forces the Metro interface on everyone. It simply is not productive. Visual Studio Touch Edition? Microsoft Word and Excel from a tablet? Right. I have no idea what they are thinking. It seems like in their effort to pursue the tablet market they are alienating other significant revenue streams. I'm not following the marketing strategy.
Business isn't around to "hire", as every right winger I've ever met is so quick to point out, yet every time I hear one spouting tax cuts for business (so they'll hire) and less regulation (so they'll hire). It seems to me you right wing freaks should take your own advice. Business is there to make money.
You see, this is where we America in particular got lost. We lost sight of the fact that we are a society and that Capitalism was originally intended as a better system for encouraging everyone to collaborate for the common good of all citizens. Those that offer jobs and those that fulfill the needs of the jobs are in a symbiotic relationship. The executive boards of the corporations are small in numbers, not able to do the actual amount of work their companies need to bring in the revenue and everyone needs a job to feed and clothe their families and things they need to be able to go to work. The idea is that there is a supposed to be a balance between these two parties that produces the ideal amount of economic output, making the lives of everyone in the country as good as possible. To not acknowledge this and not try to do your best to facilitate this or even worse trying to circumvent or abuse it for your own gain is being a bad citizen. What good are corporations that take so much money out of the system that there is no money left for everyone else? They wouldn't survive very long because eventually they wouldn't have any employees and that would result in a total economic collapse.
This reminds me of the song by Alice Cooper, "Lost in America"
"I can't get a girl
cuz I ain't got a car
I can't get a car
cuz I ain't got a job
I can't get a job
cuz I ain't got a car
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car
Don't you know where you are
Lost in America"
Oh boy I'm rusty at this but I'll give it a go. The fond memories I have of writing stuff for the C64. I remember writing an application as a kid called Organizer where you could create user-defined lists of stuff and save it to disk. I found out much later that I had created a primitive database. Fun times!
18 FOR I = 1 TO 1000: POKE 55295 + I, INT(RND(0) * 16): NEXT I
That'll make things realllllly colorful ;)
Don't forget sound, turn the SID chip up! 19 POKE 54296, 15
That description is really messed up. Ocarina of Time is the first Zelda game to feature horseback riding. Twilight Princess is the first game to feature horseback combat.
That's the beautiful thing about capitalism and the free market.
The peasantry is in control rather than a few Robber Barons.
With all due respect, you are just flat wrong. Laissez-faire Capitalism puts control primarily in the hands of the people who have the wealth (AKA "capital"). I assume you are referring to the United States. In this country the "peasantry" doesn't have much of a voice because we do not have a real democracy. Some may say we have a Republic but I think it's closer to an Oligarchy at this point. Here the most wealthy 1% control 35.6% of the wealth while the top 10% control 75% of it. The Forbes Top 400 has a combined wealth of $1.37 trillion dollars. That's who is primarily in control not the "peasantry".
Typically Sql developpers tend to throw everything into the data base, then create marvelously large queries, and finally pout when you complain about performance, that "if they had had the time they would have some stored procedures, and the server is too slow anyway...."
This should be marked as flamebait. This is only true of some developers i.e. those who are ignorant about RDBMS. They should make it their business to understand RDBMS especially in large scale applications where performance is critical. This particular aspect alone forces any developer or DBA to have think "hard" about the structure of their data such as transactional vs. analytical needs. If used appropriately, an RDBMS can be quite intuitive and performance/space efficient. It all comes down to understanding the tool you're using. If you don't know how to use a screw driver or a hammer, you probably shouldn't be using it!
He was just being funny about "week." However, you are correct there is indeed a logical problem with imposing more "secure" password policies on users that are simply not feasible for humans to be able to remember the passwords. These policies force users to have to store the passwords somewhere in plain text in order to remember them. Surprise! We just defeated the whole goal of not having passwords stored in plain text except in our heads because it's now on a sticky note under your keyboard or wherever.
The types of policies that are contributing to this are, among others, 1) Requiring frequent changes of passwords, 2) Requiring passwords to be strong in character selection rules, must contain numbers, letters and symbols, cannot be any consecutive letters or numbers, etc. This makes the passwords incredibly difficult to remember as a mnemonic device and 3) Password lengths. We are being required to have longer passwords. Steve Gibson has a very interesting tool called Haystack demonstrating that 8 character passwords are insufficient and trivial to crack with today's computing power.
What is the solution? Heck if I know, but it probably isn't passwords. As computing power increases, the length and complexity of the passwords will also have to increase in order to defeat or greatly discourage brute force attacks. But they will also render passwords useless because no on can remember them.
Capitalism doesn't promote the principle of selfishness, it just recognized self-interest as the primary driving force. Like Churchill said about Democracy, it sucks, until you compare it to all the other systems.
Self-interest and selfishness are degrees of the same scale. Where is the line? And if we enforce that line to equalize everyone at what point does that become Socialism?
How about we ban other dangerous activities while driving like:
- Changing radio stations
- Putting on makeup
- Reading books or newspapers
- Scolding children in the back seat
- Thumbing through CD wallets looking for CD's
- Eating
Seriously, people have been doing things in their cars that can and have caused accidents, some of them even more utterly ridiculous than using cell phones or texting. Why is this getting so much attention?
Just because they are using a sneaky way to get around a law or regulation doesn't mean that you can't hire an attorney to file a petition to bring it to a court's attention. A judge may decide that what they are doing is logically equivalent to disobeying the law and render a judgment against them anyway. It comes down to having the money for the legal representation.
You may be able to get an attorney to take your case with a low retainer if they feel strongly that you would win the case and be awarded substantial legal expenses and/or damages. It just depends. DISCLAIMER: IANAL
Many people make assumptions about whether they have the ability to fight something that is wrong without ever making it their business to find out. They just assume they are doomed without even trying. You are guaranteed to be a victim and complain incessantly for the rest of your life unless you take responsibility for standing up for yourself.
One time I went to mail some documentation for a legal matter I was involved in where I needed receipt confirmation and had never done that before. First, I went to the post office but the workers there were rude and the lines were so long that I eventually just went to a Fedex Kinko's. While it cost a bit more, the employees at Fedex Kinko's were very friendly and I was in and out of there in less than 10 minutes.
I really don't understand this. Prior to the internet, snail mail was the primary means of communicating in written form across long distance. Now that the internet is nearly ubiquitous in many countries around the globe, there is a natural shift from snail mail to email. Email is technologically superior. Why should USPS expect that taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for services that have become obsolete. It is only natural that USPS should decrease in size now that its technology is used far less because a more superior technology has replaced it. For now, at least until we have some matter disassembler/transmission/re-assembler technology, there will always be a need to send packaged goods. Certified mail is certainly still useful. But obviously, the USPS services are not as relevant in today's world as they were say 20 years ago.
In order for the USPS to stay viable at the size it currently is, it will need to find a way to re-invent itself to make itself more relevant in the so-called digital age. That is the name of the game in business. If you want to stay relevant, you have to adapt. Survival of the fittest.
While I agree that software piracy is probably morally wrong. I don't think it can be classified as stealing. Stealing would be like I break into my neighbor's house and steal his/her property. Notice I said "property". I am transferring his/her physical property into my possession. When you pirate a game, there is no transfer of property. In software piracy, you are making a copy. Now would you say that if I looked in my neighbor's window and saw a piece of artwork he/she made, liked it and created a copy of it and enjoy it in my residence. Is that morally incorrect? Is that a crime? Did I steal something?
Let's see... I can pay $17.98 to get 1 Blu-ray title at a time and unlimited streaming with Netflix or I can pay $7.99 for unlimited streaming with Netflix and use Redbox to rent 6 Blu-ray titles a month or 10 DVD titles a month in addition to my Netflix streaming. How is this a good business plan for Netflix to be competitive?
As an avid computer FPS gamer, I can tell that using a higher end mouse definitely makes a difference. I've used quite a few in my days, mostly Logitech. I currently use an MX518. However, let's say for the sake of argument that the sensors are not of higher quality and don't offer any higher DPI or sensitivity than their mainstream office counterparts. There are other aspects to gaming mice that are quite important. The ergonomic shape of the mouse. The placement of the buttons. The software that allows you to configure the sensitivity very specifically to your preferences. In some mice, you have the ability to add or remove optional weights to suit your specific style. All of these contribute to being able to fine tune your mouse to give you the optimal control that allows you aim more accurately and quickly than a typical mouse that does not have these features.