Ah, but to anyone with more than two working braincells it is obvious that an increase in productivity implies an increased efficiency. By upgrading your "developer unit" with a new high-res monitor, comfy chair that isn't constantly causing the developer unit to focus on adjusting it and other minor costs you will ensure maximum efficiency which in turn means a more reliable developer unit that more consistently meets deadlines. This of course means a marked increase of profit or reduced cost of development (depending on how your company is structured to look at development financially).
Now, to a PHB this is of course just "excuses to get new toys" (of course, should the sales team request 30" monitors and faster computers well by god, they make us money, better keep them happy!).
We will NEVER travel faster than the speed of light.
That depends on your definition of "faster than the speed of light". There are some theoretical "tricks" like an Alcubierre drive that would allow us to travel "faster than light".
Of course, the Alcubierre drive has a ton of issues that would make it pretty much useless but I just don't like the naysayer attitude of those opposed to manned spaceflight ("We'll never go to Mars!", "Manned space travel isa dead end!", "We'll never leave the solar system!", "We should just stay in our gravity well because it does not make sense financially to send people to LEO or further!"...)
ST:DS9 - I liked that it had a large overarching plot
ST:TNG - It's a classic
ST:Voy - Yes, it had plenty of lame bits but at least it wasn't as shitty as Enterprise...
ST:Ent - The best description I've heard of this is "If you just make it through the first two seasons it gets better..."
ST:TOS - It may be a classic but it's still crappy by today's standards, and Spock frequently makes appeals to logic which are actually purely emotional
Stop right there. You obviously didn't read what I said. What I said was that two years is not a limited time for most people. It's an eternity. Most people have a hard time giving up something for Lent, and that's just 48 days.
I've lived on little more than pasta, vitamin-enriched orange juice and the occasional cheap beer for an entire year while in college (I was saving up money for computer parts as well as trying to have some money over for summer since the previous summer had taught me that summer jobs were practically impossible to get where I lived). An exception? sure, but there are still people who are able to do this.
Yeah. Right. Given that it costs two or three bucks per dryer load, no college student with the slightest bit of financial sense is going to let worn out clothing cost them washer/dryer loads.
Here in Sweden just about every apartment building and college dorm comes with washing machines that are free to use for all tenants.
Also, I've had most of my clothes since the 90s, and none of them have worn out other than socks plus the occasional knit shirt or light jacket. If you're wearing out a week's worth of clothing in a couple of years (remember, we're talking about college here), you should be applying that whole "save up to buy stuff" attitude towards buying better quality clothing. Buy cheap, buy twice.
How active your lifestyle is definitely factors in here. It's not that hard to wear clothes out without trying if you are physically active (outdoors, not in a gym using machines).
And with the exception of food, those are all things that you can catch up on with the first month's $80. What about the $80 every month after that?
$80 is about SEK 500, I can tell you right now that here in Sweden I have serious trouble finding a decent pair of shoes my size for that amount of money. Now, if you're also low on winter clothes, underwear, socks, t-shirts and a few other items of clothing that sure isn't just $80 worth of clothes.
Also, you need to factor in the now-increased food expenses (let's say this leaves only $50 per month, that's an amazing $7.50 extra per week for food), how reasonable is it for such a person to buy DVDs and Bluray movies?
No, I think that anyone who can afford to blow $2,000 on a TV and a computer isn't really poor, and anybody who says that this person couldn't have gotten by with a $500 used laptop and a $200 LCD TV is just using poverty as an excuse to pirate movies.
Of course they could've gotten by with less, but everyone cares a little more about something in their lives. For some it's a good pair of skis, for others it's a good computer, for others yet it's a good car. These are items we are willing to sacrifice a little extra money on, even if we have very little to begin with. For someone who is poor it can also be a way to feel "at least I'm not so poor I can't afford a good computer/car/stereo/snowboard" even if it means almost starving for several months.
It's one thing to say, "I can't afford to go to the movies, so I'll do without or rent a $1 movie from a RedBox vending machine." It's quite another to say, "I can't afford to go to the movies because I spent all my money on something else that I wanted but didn't really need, so I'm going to have someone open the back door for me so I can sneak in." And when you pirate movies, that's basically what you're doing. For that latter group, I have about as much sympathy as I do for the person claiming to not have enough money to feed his/her kids while still managing to afford a three-pack-a-day smoking habit.
Redbox vending machine? Heh, I've never lived anywhere that had anything like that, around here a somewhat recent movie release costs SEK 40 ($6) to rent for a day. Luckily these days we have Voddler for streaming movies, but there's a lot that's not in their database..
But that's not realistic. If you can stand to give up $80 a month for over two years to buy a $2400 computer and TV combination, then you can't possibly be giving up anything that is truly a basic need. I could believe it if we were talking about a couple of months or three, but not for two years.
Think of it this way. Rather than buying new shoes you end up using duct tape to extend the life of your old shoes by a few more months. Rather than buying new clothes you let your wardrobe shrink until you're doing the laundry at least once per week. Rather than eating good food you're eating store-brand macaroni with store-brand ketchup five days per week. Now, you might be willing to make these sacrifices for a limited time in order to get that big "reward" (being able to buy a computer/home entertainment system) but once that purchase is made you'll probably want to start eating healthy food, getting some more wearable clothes and replacing your shoes that now have huge holes in them, and these are all things that naturally have a higher priority than DVDs.
The fact remains that almost without exception, lack of finances is an excuse, not a justification. Lack of funds is no more justification for piracy than it is justification for spending yourself into tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt. What you call basic needs, I call a luxury. Once you are getting enough food to be healthy, have a roof over your head, and have basic utilities, everything else is optional. How you choose to spend your money beyond that is up to you. Anyone who claims that he or she doesn't have a choice is kidding him/herself.
Let me guess, you live in a 2000+ sqft house, have two cars and think any poor person who isn't living in a cardboard box isn't really poor? Because that's the attitude I'm getting from you, everyone else is spoiled and "basic needs" (for others, of course) is a single set of clothes, a roof over their heads and a bowl of disgusting soup twice daily and damnit they should be happy they've got that those useless bastards!
If a person spends $2,000 on a computer and a large TV hooked up to the TV and this person then goes on to pirate a large number of movies and TV shows (let's say 80 movies and 30 full seasons of TV shows), with an estimated retail value of $25 per movie and say $20 per season of a TV show that comes to $2,600 worth of movies and TV shows. Horrible horrible piracy, right? Except of course that it's highly likely that this person would not have spent the money on movies and TV shows anyway.
To use your comment about college students, this may not be an "affluent" college student (nice use of a weasel word there) but merely a college student who's living off student loans and barely making ends meet, someone who has barely been able to save something like $80 per month over the last two years and is now able to afford the luxury of a TV that isn't his older brother's old barely functioning 14" CRT TV. He is also able to get his own computer rather than use the school computer labs. Now, do you really think this is the kind of person who would've been paying for 2-3 DVDs or Bluray movies at $25 each every month as well as a season or two of a TV show at $20 every month (with the previous numbers it comes to $108 per month in media purchases, not really likely for someone who can barely afford to pay the bills and food)?
It's easy to be a high-ranking corporate executive with a $250k+ yearly income (with enough left over every month to buy a couple of hundred movies) and bash those who can't decide to just buy four DVDs rather than three because that means they starve. Really, there are plenty of people like that and I'm sure some troll will come swooping in now to rant about "niggers" and "white trash" on welfare with 50" TVs, that's not really an accurate view of the lifestyles of most poor people though. Sure, there are plenty of poor people who own one or two relatively expensive luxury items, but they often have to make the choice between giving up good food (not expensive dinners-good, just plain "not shitty"-good), new clothes and other fairly basic things for extended periods of time or not having that little luxury in their otherwise miserable lives (I've known a few people who basically spent their entire lives up to the age of 25 or so below the poverty line, it's not a fun lifestyle even if you do manage to scrounge up enough money to buy a decent gaming PC or a nice bicycle).
Eh, you do realize that most of these organizations aren't primarily "organizations that produce and sell drugs" but rather "organizations that deal in illegal products and services". That's what they're good at, selling and doing things that are illegal, that's what their business is tailored at.
For example, do you expect your local meth-dealing lowlifes who work for some mercenary-turned-smuggler who works for a east-bloc-intelligence-officer-turned-crimelord to be able to adapt to setting up a regular business? We're talking about people who consider threats of violence followed by actual violence to be the proper way to deal with customers who lack money. Guess what, that kind of behavior would get the police to come after them in a second.
How about competition, when the Phillip-Morris franchise weed shop gets burned down by the biker gang that runs the other store in the same area, do you think that one is going to just go unsolved?
So, to recap: Their business isn't "drugs", it's "crime". When something is no longer "crime" they are a fish out of water.
First the pro drug crowd not only wants decriminalization but they also want a very special status in which product quality and purity is not examined or a path to taxation kept in view.
Says who?
. If recreational drugs were sold at a pharmacy by prescription and had to comply with all the regulations that all other items comply to drugs would be very expensive.
Oh, now I see your little trick.
So, I assume you're in favor of only selling certified ethyl alcohol for human consumption as well? You know, where every single substance in the beverage is known in exact quantities? Bye bye vineyards and breweries, it's all industrial ethanol from now on...
The addict that can not acquire $300 a day to feed their habit and stay alive also can not earn $20. a day as a rule.
Come on, I could make $20 in no time recycling bottles and cans (around here you get the equivalent of one US dollar for turning in three 1.5 L bottles or six 0.5 L bottles). There are probably half a dozen trashcans between my apartment and the nearest grocery store where you can turn in bottles and cans. Oh, and just going to the park on a saturday or sunday morning will result in bags full of cans and bottles left behind by teenagers and college students...
You're also overlooking the fact that a lot of addicts live on welfare, their crimes are only to support the very expensive drug habits. By comparison, there are plenty of people who are capable of spending $10-12 per day on cigarettes and coffee while living on welfare. They may have to cut back on other expenses but they can (and amazingly enough most people, this includes drug addicts no matter what you may have imagined, would rather not have to rob and steal to feed their addictions).
Google succeeded because it was the best search. But Larry didn't know at the time of creating the algorithm that they had the best algorithm. They were guessing, like everyone else in the search industry (altavista, snap, ask, lycos, etc). It just so happens that their algorithm did a much better job.
Considering several other big players at the time based their algorithms solidly on "What the page claims to be about" in retrospective it's not that hard to understand why Google had the best algorithm. Hell, when I first read a description of Google's new "magic" algorithm (there were a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" about it back when Google was the new kid on the block) my initial reaction was "Huh, I thought that was how they all did it..." followed by disbelief at the idea that major search engines were basically just trusting the sites to be truthful about their content (although this did explain why so many search engines were giving incredibly bad results).
I suspect there were plenty of people not really interested in search engines at the time who just assumed the algorithms used were something along the lines of what Google used as opposed to what the others were using...
Wait, someone from Luxembourg calling someone from another European country a tax dodger? I hate to break this to you but that defies certain stereotypes the rest of us have about Luxembourgers...
Without the BitTorrent feature in the updater on you can look forward to spending many hours downloading the latest content patch (and don't even think of doing a reinstall and downloading all patches since release at once, that will take you days since the http connection to Blizzard's server will be dog-slow).
Of course, if you're on DSL or some other connection with piss-poor upstream speeds you're screwed anyway since the Blizzard updater doesn't play nice with your upstream, it just goes full out (thus killing your downstream as well).
Or rather, it makes sense that students get a chance to sort of "climb up" to the current level of abstraction. Start out with basic electronics, digital gates, registers and ALUs, machine code/asm, C, OO...
Maybe I'm biased because I sort of followed that path on my own and I'm annoyed by all the developers out there who started out with VB using Visual Studio and then went on to VB.NET or Java using Visual Studio or some other IDE. I mean, I've worked with guys who think that something is wrong if they can't write entire GUI apps just by dragging and dropping with a few clicks in dropdowns. Sure, they may have a decent grasp of the larger systemic view and the concepts used in systems science but it just seems like they keep running into problems because anything more bare-bones than "click 'add data source', click 'auto-discover', pick your database and click 'ok'" is puzzling and black magic to them.
It's the anti-Apple brigade, they come charging in every time anyone even mentions anything that might have something to do with Apple. And every time they cry about all the attention people give Apple, over and over again.
I suspect it is because they perceive Apple and their products as being "cool" and thus they try (on some level) to be "cool" by rejecting the "popular" Apple products. It's a bit like a teenager who rejects the "cool" subculture and instead joins the football team to be "alternative"...
Was beaten my MS bundling MSN/MSN Live/Whatever they call it these days Messenger with Windows.
Myspace's?
Was not the first nor did it have nearly the dominance some people who were themselves myspace users thought it had. Most people I know, who are now Facebook users, hated Myspace and did not have Myspace accounts.
Halo? TV? CDs? VCRs?
CDs and VCRs have basically been replaced by new technology supported by those who previously supported these formats.
What about every single fashion and fad in the history of mankind?
No one is saying WoW will live on forever, only that it's not realistic to assume that every new MMO that comes out is the next "WoW killer" (just like not every new smartphone is an "iPhone killer").
Actually, the current releases are already coordinated, they're just not done on the same day.
It's a bit like with TV shows, a show is aired in the US on say, march 25th. Within a few hours of airing it is available as a paid-for download as well as a torrent. Six months later the region 1 DVD of the season with that episode comes out in the US, a few months later the region 2 DVD is released (only to be followed by the Bluray release). Of course, here in Sweden the only legal way to watch the show short of waiting for the Region 1 DVD will be to wait for some Swedish TV channel to work it into their schedule which can mean anything from a delay of a month or so to over six months (in case they want a bit of a "buffer" to deal with frequent breaks in US seasons).
So why can't us europeans get things right away? The answer seems to be the same for games and TV shows, distribution deals.
No one wants to piss off the major game importers/TV networks that pay big bucks to be the exclusive first source of boxed games/TV shows. The fact that they're basically irrelevant is of course ignored...
Yet most sane people seem to hate those bland and "calming" colors intensely. Just from asking a few friends I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely not alone in almost getting feelings of nausea when I'm forced to be in hospitals or other buildings painted in those "calming" color schemes...
Although in practice I suspect it has more to do with being "non-offensive" to a the point where the non-offensiveness becomes offensive. It's not just the colors, ever look at the paintings on the walls of a hospital waiting room? or looked at what magazines they have available? Everything there is chosen to be as neutral and non-offensive as possible, which I suppose is awesome if you're extremely easily offended by just about anything, otherwise it just makes people uncomfortable.
As for spacecraft component color choices? probably not the same reason...
Or you keep "rare" data that you know is hard to get your hands on (figuratively speaking). For example, a 1080p decently high quality h.264 "rip" of a movie from the 50's or 60's that has only been released in cinemas, on VHS and on DVD (meaning whoever did the rip had access to a copy of the cinema version).
I have a whole bunch of movies that took me ages to find and/or download and which sometimes have been hard to find again, I'm not about to delete those because re-downloading or even purchasing a copy would be if not impossible then at least very cumbersome compared to just keeping the copy I already have.
I spend very little time organizing and transferring my media library.
The current array that it resides on has been pretty much untouched for close to two years, just chugging along (getting a bit cramped for space though).
Yes, you can definitely take it too far but just keeping copies of your favorite TV shows, movies and CDs in one place can also be extremely convenient. Of course, I mainly organize it into "film/movies", "film/TV", "film/documentaries", "music/singles", "music/albums" and let the applications I use deal with sorting (as long as you name stuff properly software like XBMC or Plex can figure this out for you, downloading metadata from the internet).
I see it as an issue of balance based on various factors. Either extreme (no media at all or a copy of everything you ever come across) can be inconvenient (although I'd rather go with "no media" than deal with keeping a gargantuan 15+ TB library accessible), you just need to find the right balance.
Oh, I've never owned a Macbook. My only portable machines at the moment are a Lenovo Ideapad and a Dell Precision M4440 (the Ideapad being the reliable one, the M4400 seems to enjoy having random drivers crash).
Do you want a list of Dell models that my employer has concluded have design flaws or do you just want to fling mud at Apple? (here's a hint: Every manufacturer has issues with their machines, including Apple).
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Ah, but to anyone with more than two working braincells it is obvious that an increase in productivity implies an increased efficiency. By upgrading your "developer unit" with a new high-res monitor, comfy chair that isn't constantly causing the developer unit to focus on adjusting it and other minor costs you will ensure maximum efficiency which in turn means a more reliable developer unit that more consistently meets deadlines. This of course means a marked increase of profit or reduced cost of development (depending on how your company is structured to look at development financially).
Now, to a PHB this is of course just "excuses to get new toys" (of course, should the sales team request 30" monitors and faster computers well by god, they make us money, better keep them happy!).
Yes, he jumped from a balloon at 31,200 m up, this is nowhere near the Kármán line at 100,000 m which is commonly defined as the edge of space.
We will NEVER travel faster than the speed of light.
That depends on your definition of "faster than the speed of light". There are some theoretical "tricks" like an Alcubierre drive that would allow us to travel "faster than light".
Of course, the Alcubierre drive has a ton of issues that would make it pretty much useless but I just don't like the naysayer attitude of those opposed to manned spaceflight ("We'll never go to Mars!", "Manned space travel isa dead end!", "We'll never leave the solar system!", "We should just stay in our gravity well because it does not make sense financially to send people to LEO or further!"...)
That's a highly subjective opinion.
My personal ranking is:
Stop right there. You obviously didn't read what I said. What I said was that two years is not a limited time for most people. It's an eternity. Most people have a hard time giving up something for Lent, and that's just 48 days.
I've lived on little more than pasta, vitamin-enriched orange juice and the occasional cheap beer for an entire year while in college (I was saving up money for computer parts as well as trying to have some money over for summer since the previous summer had taught me that summer jobs were practically impossible to get where I lived). An exception? sure, but there are still people who are able to do this.
Yeah. Right. Given that it costs two or three bucks per dryer load, no college student with the slightest bit of financial sense is going to let worn out clothing cost them washer/dryer loads.
Here in Sweden just about every apartment building and college dorm comes with washing machines that are free to use for all tenants.
Also, I've had most of my clothes since the 90s, and none of them have worn out other than socks plus the occasional knit shirt or light jacket. If you're wearing out a week's worth of clothing in a couple of years (remember, we're talking about college here), you should be applying that whole "save up to buy stuff" attitude towards buying better quality clothing. Buy cheap, buy twice.
How active your lifestyle is definitely factors in here. It's not that hard to wear clothes out without trying if you are physically active (outdoors, not in a gym using machines).
And with the exception of food, those are all things that you can catch up on with the first month's $80. What about the $80 every month after that?
$80 is about SEK 500, I can tell you right now that here in Sweden I have serious trouble finding a decent pair of shoes my size for that amount of money. Now, if you're also low on winter clothes, underwear, socks, t-shirts and a few other items of clothing that sure isn't just $80 worth of clothes.
Also, you need to factor in the now-increased food expenses (let's say this leaves only $50 per month, that's an amazing $7.50 extra per week for food), how reasonable is it for such a person to buy DVDs and Bluray movies?
No, I think that anyone who can afford to blow $2,000 on a TV and a computer isn't really poor, and anybody who says that this person couldn't have gotten by with a $500 used laptop and a $200 LCD TV is just using poverty as an excuse to pirate movies.
Of course they could've gotten by with less, but everyone cares a little more about something in their lives. For some it's a good pair of skis, for others it's a good computer, for others yet it's a good car. These are items we are willing to sacrifice a little extra money on, even if we have very little to begin with. For someone who is poor it can also be a way to feel "at least I'm not so poor I can't afford a good computer/car/stereo/snowboard" even if it means almost starving for several months.
It's one thing to say, "I can't afford to go to the movies, so I'll do without or rent a $1 movie from a RedBox vending machine." It's quite another to say, "I can't afford to go to the movies because I spent all my money on something else that I wanted but didn't really need, so I'm going to have someone open the back door for me so I can sneak in." And when you pirate movies, that's basically what you're doing. For that latter group, I have about as much sympathy as I do for the person claiming to not have enough money to feed his/her kids while still managing to afford a three-pack-a-day smoking habit.
Redbox vending machine? Heh, I've never lived anywhere that had anything like that, around here a somewhat recent movie release costs SEK 40 ($6) to rent for a day. Luckily these days we have Voddler for streaming movies, but there's a lot that's not in their database..
But that's not realistic. If you can stand to give up $80 a month for over two years to buy a $2400 computer and TV combination, then you can't possibly be giving up anything that is truly a basic need. I could believe it if we were talking about a couple of months or three, but not for two years.
Think of it this way. Rather than buying new shoes you end up using duct tape to extend the life of your old shoes by a few more months. Rather than buying new clothes you let your wardrobe shrink until you're doing the laundry at least once per week. Rather than eating good food you're eating store-brand macaroni with store-brand ketchup five days per week. Now, you might be willing to make these sacrifices for a limited time in order to get that big "reward" (being able to buy a computer/home entertainment system) but once that purchase is made you'll probably want to start eating healthy food, getting some more wearable clothes and replacing your shoes that now have huge holes in them, and these are all things that naturally have a higher priority than DVDs.
The fact remains that almost without exception, lack of finances is an excuse, not a justification. Lack of funds is no more justification for piracy than it is justification for spending yourself into tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt. What you call basic needs, I call a luxury. Once you are getting enough food to be healthy, have a roof over your head, and have basic utilities, everything else is optional. How you choose to spend your money beyond that is up to you. Anyone who claims that he or she doesn't have a choice is kidding him/herself.
Let me guess, you live in a 2000+ sqft house, have two cars and think any poor person who isn't living in a cardboard box isn't really poor? Because that's the attitude I'm getting from you, everyone else is spoiled and "basic needs" (for others, of course) is a single set of clothes, a roof over their heads and a bowl of disgusting soup twice daily and damnit they should be happy they've got that those useless bastards!
Well consider this:
If a person spends $2,000 on a computer and a large TV hooked up to the TV and this person then goes on to pirate a large number of movies and TV shows (let's say 80 movies and 30 full seasons of TV shows), with an estimated retail value of $25 per movie and say $20 per season of a TV show that comes to $2,600 worth of movies and TV shows. Horrible horrible piracy, right? Except of course that it's highly likely that this person would not have spent the money on movies and TV shows anyway.
To use your comment about college students, this may not be an "affluent" college student (nice use of a weasel word there) but merely a college student who's living off student loans and barely making ends meet, someone who has barely been able to save something like $80 per month over the last two years and is now able to afford the luxury of a TV that isn't his older brother's old barely functioning 14" CRT TV. He is also able to get his own computer rather than use the school computer labs. Now, do you really think this is the kind of person who would've been paying for 2-3 DVDs or Bluray movies at $25 each every month as well as a season or two of a TV show at $20 every month (with the previous numbers it comes to $108 per month in media purchases, not really likely for someone who can barely afford to pay the bills and food)?
It's easy to be a high-ranking corporate executive with a $250k+ yearly income (with enough left over every month to buy a couple of hundred movies) and bash those who can't decide to just buy four DVDs rather than three because that means they starve. Really, there are plenty of people like that and I'm sure some troll will come swooping in now to rant about "niggers" and "white trash" on welfare with 50" TVs, that's not really an accurate view of the lifestyles of most poor people though. Sure, there are plenty of poor people who own one or two relatively expensive luxury items, but they often have to make the choice between giving up good food (not expensive dinners-good, just plain "not shitty"-good), new clothes and other fairly basic things for extended periods of time or not having that little luxury in their otherwise miserable lives (I've known a few people who basically spent their entire lives up to the age of 25 or so below the poverty line, it's not a fun lifestyle even if you do manage to scrounge up enough money to buy a decent gaming PC or a nice bicycle).
Actually, "file server" is derived from "server".
Eh, you do realize that most of these organizations aren't primarily "organizations that produce and sell drugs" but rather "organizations that deal in illegal products and services". That's what they're good at, selling and doing things that are illegal, that's what their business is tailored at.
For example, do you expect your local meth-dealing lowlifes who work for some mercenary-turned-smuggler who works for a east-bloc-intelligence-officer-turned-crimelord to be able to adapt to setting up a regular business? We're talking about people who consider threats of violence followed by actual violence to be the proper way to deal with customers who lack money. Guess what, that kind of behavior would get the police to come after them in a second.
How about competition, when the Phillip-Morris franchise weed shop gets burned down by the biker gang that runs the other store in the same area, do you think that one is going to just go unsolved?
So, to recap: Their business isn't "drugs", it's "crime". When something is no longer "crime" they are a fish out of water.
First the pro drug crowd not only wants decriminalization but they also want a very special status in which product quality and purity is not examined or a path to taxation kept in view.
Says who?
. If recreational drugs were sold at a pharmacy by prescription and had to comply with all the regulations that all other items comply to drugs would be very expensive.
Oh, now I see your little trick.
So, I assume you're in favor of only selling certified ethyl alcohol for human consumption as well? You know, where every single substance in the beverage is known in exact quantities? Bye bye vineyards and breweries, it's all industrial ethanol from now on...
The addict that can not acquire $300 a day to feed their habit and stay alive also can not earn $20. a day as a rule.
Come on, I could make $20 in no time recycling bottles and cans (around here you get the equivalent of one US dollar for turning in three 1.5 L bottles or six 0.5 L bottles). There are probably half a dozen trashcans between my apartment and the nearest grocery store where you can turn in bottles and cans. Oh, and just going to the park on a saturday or sunday morning will result in bags full of cans and bottles left behind by teenagers and college students...
You're also overlooking the fact that a lot of addicts live on welfare, their crimes are only to support the very expensive drug habits. By comparison, there are plenty of people who are capable of spending $10-12 per day on cigarettes and coffee while living on welfare. They may have to cut back on other expenses but they can (and amazingly enough most people, this includes drug addicts no matter what you may have imagined, would rather not have to rob and steal to feed their addictions).
Uhm, while a modern attack sub might be able to sneak up on a carrier I doubt your chance of success would be very high with this underwater barge.
By DEA standards this thing is practically undetectable, by navy standards it's not.
Google succeeded because it was the best search. But Larry didn't know at the time of creating the algorithm that they had the best algorithm. They were guessing, like everyone else in the search industry (altavista, snap, ask, lycos, etc). It just so happens that their algorithm did a much better job.
Considering several other big players at the time based their algorithms solidly on "What the page claims to be about" in retrospective it's not that hard to understand why Google had the best algorithm. Hell, when I first read a description of Google's new "magic" algorithm (there were a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" about it back when Google was the new kid on the block) my initial reaction was "Huh, I thought that was how they all did it..." followed by disbelief at the idea that major search engines were basically just trusting the sites to be truthful about their content (although this did explain why so many search engines were giving incredibly bad results).
I suspect there were plenty of people not really interested in search engines at the time who just assumed the algorithms used were something along the lines of what Google used as opposed to what the others were using...
Wait, someone from Luxembourg calling someone from another European country a tax dodger? I hate to break this to you but that defies certain stereotypes the rest of us have about Luxembourgers...
'Cause I can't see how "unlimited download with unlimited bandwidth" is economically sustainable - not in the near future.
My ISP sure seems to be making a profit despite my unmetered 100/100 Mbps FTTH connection.
But then I'm not in the US or some other country where the ISPs have managed to fool people into thinking that this couldn't be profitable...
Without the BitTorrent feature in the updater on you can look forward to spending many hours downloading the latest content patch (and don't even think of doing a reinstall and downloading all patches since release at once, that will take you days since the http connection to Blizzard's server will be dog-slow).
Of course, if you're on DSL or some other connection with piss-poor upstream speeds you're screwed anyway since the Blizzard updater doesn't play nice with your upstream, it just goes full out (thus killing your downstream as well).
I actually agree with that.
Or rather, it makes sense that students get a chance to sort of "climb up" to the current level of abstraction. Start out with basic electronics, digital gates, registers and ALUs, machine code/asm, C, OO...
Maybe I'm biased because I sort of followed that path on my own and I'm annoyed by all the developers out there who started out with VB using Visual Studio and then went on to VB.NET or Java using Visual Studio or some other IDE. I mean, I've worked with guys who think that something is wrong if they can't write entire GUI apps just by dragging and dropping with a few clicks in dropdowns. Sure, they may have a decent grasp of the larger systemic view and the concepts used in systems science but it just seems like they keep running into problems because anything more bare-bones than "click 'add data source', click 'auto-discover', pick your database and click 'ok'" is puzzling and black magic to them.
It's the anti-Apple brigade, they come charging in every time anyone even mentions anything that might have something to do with Apple. And every time they cry about all the attention people give Apple, over and over again.
I suspect it is because they perceive Apple and their products as being "cool" and thus they try (on some level) to be "cool" by rejecting the "popular" Apple products. It's a bit like a teenager who rejects the "cool" subculture and instead joins the football team to be "alternative"...
ICQ's momentum?
Was beaten my MS bundling MSN/MSN Live/Whatever they call it these days Messenger with Windows.
Myspace's?
Was not the first nor did it have nearly the dominance some people who were themselves myspace users thought it had. Most people I know, who are now Facebook users, hated Myspace and did not have Myspace accounts.
Halo? TV? CDs? VCRs?
CDs and VCRs have basically been replaced by new technology supported by those who previously supported these formats.
What about every single fashion and fad in the history of mankind?
No one is saying WoW will live on forever, only that it's not realistic to assume that every new MMO that comes out is the next "WoW killer" (just like not every new smartphone is an "iPhone killer").
Actually, the current releases are already coordinated, they're just not done on the same day.
It's a bit like with TV shows, a show is aired in the US on say, march 25th. Within a few hours of airing it is available as a paid-for download as well as a torrent. Six months later the region 1 DVD of the season with that episode comes out in the US, a few months later the region 2 DVD is released (only to be followed by the Bluray release). Of course, here in Sweden the only legal way to watch the show short of waiting for the Region 1 DVD will be to wait for some Swedish TV channel to work it into their schedule which can mean anything from a delay of a month or so to over six months (in case they want a bit of a "buffer" to deal with frequent breaks in US seasons).
So why can't us europeans get things right away? The answer seems to be the same for games and TV shows, distribution deals.
No one wants to piss off the major game importers/TV networks that pay big bucks to be the exclusive first source of boxed games/TV shows. The fact that they're basically irrelevant is of course ignored...
Yet most sane people seem to hate those bland and "calming" colors intensely. Just from asking a few friends I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely not alone in almost getting feelings of nausea when I'm forced to be in hospitals or other buildings painted in those "calming" color schemes...
Although in practice I suspect it has more to do with being "non-offensive" to a the point where the non-offensiveness becomes offensive. It's not just the colors, ever look at the paintings on the walls of a hospital waiting room? or looked at what magazines they have available? Everything there is chosen to be as neutral and non-offensive as possible, which I suppose is awesome if you're extremely easily offended by just about anything, otherwise it just makes people uncomfortable.
As for spacecraft component color choices? probably not the same reason...
Or you keep "rare" data that you know is hard to get your hands on (figuratively speaking). For example, a 1080p decently high quality h.264 "rip" of a movie from the 50's or 60's that has only been released in cinemas, on VHS and on DVD (meaning whoever did the rip had access to a copy of the cinema version).
I have a whole bunch of movies that took me ages to find and/or download and which sometimes have been hard to find again, I'm not about to delete those because re-downloading or even purchasing a copy would be if not impossible then at least very cumbersome compared to just keeping the copy I already have.
I spend very little time organizing and transferring my media library.
The current array that it resides on has been pretty much untouched for close to two years, just chugging along (getting a bit cramped for space though).
Yes, you can definitely take it too far but just keeping copies of your favorite TV shows, movies and CDs in one place can also be extremely convenient. Of course, I mainly organize it into "film/movies", "film/TV", "film/documentaries", "music/singles", "music/albums" and let the applications I use deal with sorting (as long as you name stuff properly software like XBMC or Plex can figure this out for you, downloading metadata from the internet).
I see it as an issue of balance based on various factors. Either extreme (no media at all or a copy of everything you ever come across) can be inconvenient (although I'd rather go with "no media" than deal with keeping a gargantuan 15+ TB library accessible), you just need to find the right balance.
for us trolls uids are very useful.
Oh, I've never owned a Macbook. My only portable machines at the moment are a Lenovo Ideapad and a Dell Precision M4440 (the Ideapad being the reliable one, the M4400 seems to enjoy having random drivers crash).
Do you want a list of Dell models that my employer has concluded have design flaws or do you just want to fling mud at Apple? (here's a hint: Every manufacturer has issues with their machines, including Apple).