I may be missing something here, but last time I checked, if you download the offline installer, it doesn't bundle, or even offer, the Ask.com tool-bar (certainly not if you are installing it silently). Furthermore, you can disable automatic updates via command-line switch / post-install registry change so that it doesn't automatically prompt you to download the next update as a web-based installer and run the risk of forgetting to un-tick the Ask.com tool-bar option
Surely those of us in business / enterprise environments are using this and are capable of keeping up-to-date with new releases without trusting your update mechanism to a third party? And that's not to mention preventing calls because end-users can't install an update that has automatically downloaded itself and prompted them to run it due to not having admin rights (you are locking your users down, aren't you?!?). Add to this, manually deploying updates rather than leaving yourself in the hands of Oracle means you can test first to make sure the new release doesn't break anything (you are doing this too, right?).
About the only people this would affect are home users who, at the end of the day, will just accept whatever is shovelled at them and may un-install the tool-bar later if it bothers them that much. Consequently, the damage to good-will exists only in the heads of those like us who actually know what goes on under the hood and give a damn about it. Personally, I know what's going on, but as I can avoid it with trivial amounts of effort, I don't really care. Yes, as a business practice, I find it somewhat distasteful, but at least they give you the option to say no. I, for one, am not about to lose any sleep over it! I can understand why they do it. It'll either be a contractual obligation that they inherited when they acquired JAVA via SUN, or it could be a way of getting (I won't sully the word earning) a few extra pennies wherever they can. The end result is an easily-avoidable minor annoyance, so in real terms it's of far less concern to me than a lot of other things that are going on in the industry.
The problem is that no-one wants a phone interface on their desktop. If they want a phone interface they'll buy a phone, and that phone is unlikely to be using windows.
That's not the only problem...
Unless I've missed something pretty damn fundamental, Apps developed for Metro on the Desktop won't be finding their way onto Tablets or Phones without having to be recompiled. Last time I checked, the x86 presence in the Phone/Tablet world was pathetically low.
I may, however, have completely misunderstood something here... It is worth noting that I'm not a programmer, so I'm not really clear on how much extra effort is involved in getting a coded for x86 app working on ARM-based devices.
I may be wrong, but I think the parent poster meant that after 22 hours the battery had only DIScharged by 5%, not that it had taken 22 hours to charge up to 95%... or were you just being facetious?
...Plus, if your charger is throwing a full 120V out the device end, I'd be more than a little concerned!
I'm sorry but a medical professional should flat out know better.
And a lot of them (probably most of them) do.
Couple of things to bear in mind:
1) Patients can be quite insistent and some doctors simply aren't equipped to deal with the psychological angle of a patient questioning their abilities, so simply prescribe what the patient asks for to shut them up and get rid of them so they can get on with dealing with more serious problems
2) Most doctors, unless their heads are stuck deeply in the sand (or somewhere else... feel free to use your imagination) are well aware that if they don't prescribe what the patient asks for or something sufficiently similar, they will simply pop online and order something from an unscrupulous web pharmacy (of which there are plenty, and, being online, the government is effectively powerless to stop them) that could be significantly worse. To keep the patient from seriously endangering their health, they might prescribe something mild (amoxycillin or something of that ilk) so that the patient is less tempted to browse the web pharmacy and get something far more dangerous.
Disclosure
I have seen something similar happen myself. A while ago, my wife became heavily addicted to Zopiclone (Zimovane / Imovane) sleeping tablets that she was being prescribed. By heavily addicted, I mean upwards of a dozen pills spread throughout the day every day, when the warning labels state half or one per night half an hour before bed. This was going on for years (because a doc was simply giving her what she asked for!) but as the doc would only prescribe enough for a standard course (28 per four-week cycle) she was purchasing more online (because the prescription was running out after 2-3 days!). As time went on, my wife was ordering more and more online, getting depressed because it's leaving her with very little money each week, coupled with the side effects of continuous overdosing on a medication that even the manufacturers state shouldn't be taken for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Finally she begs the doc to prescribe her some more, explaining that she's been getting them online to supplement the prescription. It's a different doc to the one she usually sees (the usual one retired). Doc prescribes her Promethazine Hydrochloride based antihistamine (but tells her its a more effective sleeping pill).
I can see exactly why the doc did this, to stop her from taking the Zopiclone. Unfortunately, my wife is a little more savvy and looked the name up as soon as she got the pills home. As soon as she saw "antihistamine" instead of "sleeping pill" on the web, they went straight in the bin and a new order was placed with her online pharmacy of the moment. This even survived the pharmacy's website being shut down and moved three times in two years.
In hindsight, perhaps the doc should have looked into some form of supported reduction in intake, possibly supported with Diazepam or equivalent, maybe even in some form of a rehab program. To do that, however, would have highlighted years of prescribing daily doses of a medication that even the manufacturer states should be for occasional use and never in courses exceeding one month. Couple that with the fact that she had previously been on an excessive cocktail of anti-depressants for several years prescribed by another partner at the same surgery and you'll start to see why this may have prompted some difficult questions for the docs to answer.
Good news, however, is I've managed to wean her off them. It took a long time (and a hell of a lot of arguing!), but she's almost back to her old self (no thanks to the local surgery, who refused to help me to detox her, as she would have to ask for the help herself, and there's no way someone who is that much of an addict is going to do that!). Also got no help from the authorities when I reported that the website in question was supplying POM-rated meds to customers in the UK without a license to do
What's "Islamic" about the name? If you said "Arabic", now that would be something else...
You are right, technically speaking, but since 95% of Arabs do in fact practice or consider themselves part of the Islamic faith, I would say that your comment is bordering on pedantic.
Where do you get that statistic? I know that the media portrays it as practically everyone with an arabic name or heritage is automatically a member of the Islamic faith, but the statistics do not bear this out. Yes they are the majority, but once you factor in the Christians, Druze and other assorted communities who are generally ignored by the mainstream media you start to see that the figure is almost definately somewhere sub-90-percent.
There are places in the world where Islam co-exists with other religions quite happily, even places where it has done so for centuries.
As an atheist with a few Wiccan friends, could you direct me to the Islamic country that would welcome us with open arms?
I have added emphasis to show you where you are going wrong here. As soon as religion and politics intermingle at state/country level, this is when things start to go horribly wrong. A country should be ruled based on general principles of morality. As soon as you start to introduce a religious element to a country's legal framework, you are setting yourself up for a fall whatever religion it may be.
A sociopath is someone with extreme anti-social behavior and a lack of conscience.
Arresting your child for something that *could* have had bad consequences but *actually* didn't is sociopathic in our society.
By your own definition, it takes more than just deviating from societal norms to be a sociopath. Deviating from "Historically... very reluctant" and "For many people..." does not, in my book, a sociopath make.
Whilst I would agree that the parents' actions could be seen as extreme, they are not what I would consider to be anti-social.
Let's flip things on their heads a moment. Using your own examples, are you saying that if the parents were abusing the daughter and she went to the authorities, that would make her a sociopath?
There is a reason that "For many people, "family problems" are nobody else's business and it would be far more damaging to bring in the law than to cover it up and deal with it privately -- especially when it comes to their children." It's called embarrassment. The damage they're worried about is to the parents' reputation, which is oftentimes far more carefully guarded than their childrens' wellbeing. Your use of the term "cover it up" is evidence of this.
Returning to your last paragraph, are you suggesting that if the consequences HAD been bad, then arrest would have been justified? If that is so, all you are reinforcing in the kids with this attitude is that punishment comes from being unlucky, not from doing the wrong thing. Parents should be reinforcing in their kids that irresponsible behaviour results in serious consequences, and, IMHO, the best way to reinforce this is to base the lessons learned on the potential for harm that could result from the actions the kids have taken, not on the actual outcome. Otherwise the message is "You got away with it this time, you probably will again".
Granted, the GP has somewhat overstated his case (IMHO), but I would agree that books can be superior. That being said, eschewing all technology and abandoning the 21'st century is, in my book, hardly the answer either. I would suggest a standpoint in the middleground, and I am more than happy to discuss my reasons for this.
1) Books, far and away, require more imagination than video games. The excercise of ones imagination whilst reading has long been considered to be good for the cognitive health. Certainly it seems, as well, to keep the brain far more functional for far longer. This can be seen at any care- or retirement-home. Compare the levels of response you get from lifetime readers to those who haven't been as avid readers, and you'll often find the readers still happily reading and capable of (albeit reluctantly, in many cases) tearing themselves away from their books to engage in conversation, whilst the ones who haven't been keen on reading throughout their lives will often just vegetate in front of the television and will often be difficult to engage in conversation. Obviously there are exceptions to this pattern, but it certainly appears to be the norm.
2) Video games are far more interactive than books. You read a book 10 times, you have almost exactly the same experience 10 times. You play a video game 10 times, you can often (depending on the quality of the game) have 10 wildly different experiences.
3) Whilst you don't have to use your imagination as much in video games, you do need to use other cognitive functions. It takes more than just imagination to formulate strategies, learn from outcomes, solve puzzles and whatever other facors are incorporated in the game you happen to be playing. This additional thinking is done for you in books (except the old adventure books where you make choices and turn to specific paragraphs depending on your choices, but I always saw them as more of an alternative form of game, than as a form of literature.).
4) How many books can you read as a team, and get additional benefits through reading them together? Many modern games seem to be focussed not on single-player offline play, but on co-operative or competitive play online. This excercises social skills of teamwork and leadership in ways that reading a book can't hope to replicate.
5) Books can be taken pretty-much anywhere and read without any need for anything more than a light-source to see by. Video games, however, often need a power-source and / or network signal to play.
As a result, I would argue that there is a place for both. Personally, I am more of a reader than a gamer. I do, however, play a variety of games both on- and offline on a variety of platforms. Maybe the best route forward would be a return to the older text-based games of the past - all the benefits of video games, but with the added use of imagination required when your situation is shown to you as four or five lines of text instead of a rendered 3D display in full colour complete with sound...?
Now on the subject of letters vs video-chat, how are you going to see the girl you're interacting with strip by letter? I jest, of course, but again there is a place for both. Handwriting is a lost skill. My stepdaughters cannot write a legible handwritten note to save their lives, and their written correspondence, even their resumes, are replete with text-speak and spelling/grammar mistakes. Now before I get pounced on by the local cohort of the grammar-SS, I wholeheartedly accept that I make mistakes of both spelling and grammar from time-to-time, but I try to keep these to a minimum... I get the impression that the younger generation just doesn't care to expend any effort to even attempt to minimise such mistakes, much less eliminate them.
Communication has become too easy for many to take any care when using it. As a result, I would be keen to see an increase in letter-writing, primarily as it may encourage the care and attention-to-detail which is lacking these days. That being said, I would not propose doing away with video chat. There are often times when communication needs to be right-the-heck-now, and a letter just won't do (especially with the time it takes post to get around my neighbourhood recently, much less worldwide!).
Sure, for many it is the case that video games are far more immersive than a book (especially, in my experience, todays younger generation).
It is fair to say, however, that this does not apply to all. Case in point... me! Don't get me wrong, I can definately get immersed in a game and lose track of the passage of time, but I find that this is far more common for me when reading than when gaming, regardless of whether the book is based in fact or fiction.
Looking at it from a different angle (and I should state clearly up-front here that IANAL) the OP appears to be saying that this person is misrepresenting the content of the sites as being by her, not about her.
Under such circumstances, libel and slander are clearly irrelevant, but how about fraud?
Obviously this is an assumption, based on my reading of the OP. Without a link, I can't tell if the ex is defaming, or impersonating the submitters fiancee.
Am I the only one who thinks the thought process involved here may be to make it more difficult for those like Gary McKinnon to use Aspergers as a means to avoid extradition to the US?
What concerned me was the title's implication that the study used as a benchmark the necessary video quality to enjoy snuff clips. I thought these were illegal in most jurisdictions, so getting the data for the report must have been some feat!
We should never punish anyone, because we're not really sure that we're killing Bpunishing who's guilty.
FTFY.
Your logic fails, doesn't it?
Because when you send someone to prison, you can never give that person back the time they spent there.
To follow your logic, that means no one could ever be punished for any crime - because there's always the possibility of a mistake.
Except, as has been pointed out several times already, you can compensate a released inmate who has been exonerated. How, exactly, do you propose to compensate a corpse (and the family doesn't count!)?
With that said, rarely are cases that clear and to the point and there DOES exist some wiggle room that is exploited by the lawyers and the guilty parties which I think could be tightened up.
(Emphasis mine)
So you're saying that defendants, regardless of actual guilt, should not be allowed to present a full and robust defence? If that is the case, what's the point of a
having any justice system, just dole out summary executions at point of arrest?
I imagine you'd be somewhat surprised at how many people are glad we don't live in your world?!?
I think the crux of the comments so far haven't been suggesting that long term support will be terminated early, but more that this move gives the public the impression that such support is soon to end.
Most users don't care for the reality of the situation. I guess the suggestion is that if it appears that Microsoft os withdrawing support for Win 7, end users are more likely to be reluctant to stay on it and will instead move to Win 8.
I tend to be of the opinion that most end-users (especially in the home environment) won't give a damn either way and would stick with Win 7 (or whatever other OS they happen to be running), supported or (by appearances) not. They will get a new OS only when they get a new machine, will gripe about it being different, but will resign themselves to having to get used to it in the name of "progress".
Obviously this is somewhat less the case in a business/corporate environment.
Here, the size of the business comes into play. For smaller companies without any form of formalised IT provision, you will likely see the home environment more-or-less mirrored. For larger environments, you will probably see this further divided depending on size and style of the IT support. In-house IT teams will generally be clued-up enough to know Win 7 is still supported, but the key issue is whether they can convince the higher-ups of this (office politics at its finest). Outsourced will be split according to whether the provider's charging model is built around higher costs for skills to support new technologies, or higher costs for supporting what are perceived to be out-of-date technologies. Depending on your provider the model may differ, with the result that your corporate budget for outsourcing may influence upgrade decisions.
Personally, I think that if you are carrying out ANY install of Win7 from a CD, you are to be congratulated. I have yet to see a Win7 image that is small enough to fit on a CD. Don't get me wrong, a patched image is definately the way to go, but to fit the Win7 installation image, patched or otherwise, on anything smaller than a DVD is an achievement worthy of credit.
The shower limit is our over-harvesting of our natural resources, as well as the soda tax, because apparently caramel and whatever else is in soda is too expensive to produces/grow/mine/etc.
Personally, I thought the drinking water being cheaper than soda was a reference to the current trend to try to encourage social change by imposing taxes on less-healthy options.
Slashdot Mirror
The interesting data here is he is consuming 30,000 more than the average user. which would mean the average user uses between 2-3 gigabytes of data.
Out by an order of magnitude. TFS says 30000 percent, not 30,000 times. Works out at about 26 and a half GiB. (or maybe I need more caffeine?!?)
I may be missing something here, but last time I checked, if you download the offline installer, it doesn't bundle, or even offer, the Ask.com tool-bar (certainly not if you are installing it silently). Furthermore, you can disable automatic updates via command-line switch / post-install registry change so that it doesn't automatically prompt you to download the next update as a web-based installer and run the risk of forgetting to un-tick the Ask.com tool-bar option
Surely those of us in business / enterprise environments are using this and are capable of keeping up-to-date with new releases without trusting your update mechanism to a third party? And that's not to mention preventing calls because end-users can't install an update that has automatically downloaded itself and prompted them to run it due to not having admin rights (you are locking your users down, aren't you?!?). Add to this, manually deploying updates rather than leaving yourself in the hands of Oracle means you can test first to make sure the new release doesn't break anything (you are doing this too, right?).
About the only people this would affect are home users who, at the end of the day, will just accept whatever is shovelled at them and may un-install the tool-bar later if it bothers them that much. Consequently, the damage to good-will exists only in the heads of those like us who actually know what goes on under the hood and give a damn about it. Personally, I know what's going on, but as I can avoid it with trivial amounts of effort, I don't really care. Yes, as a business practice, I find it somewhat distasteful, but at least they give you the option to say no. I, for one, am not about to lose any sleep over it! I can understand why they do it. It'll either be a contractual obligation that they inherited when they acquired JAVA via SUN, or it could be a way of getting (I won't sully the word earning) a few extra pennies wherever they can. The end result is an easily-avoidable minor annoyance, so in real terms it's of far less concern to me than a lot of other things that are going on in the industry.
The problem is that no-one wants a phone interface on their desktop. If they want a phone interface they'll buy a phone, and that phone is unlikely to be using windows.
That's not the only problem...
Unless I've missed something pretty damn fundamental, Apps developed for Metro on the Desktop won't be finding their way onto Tablets or Phones without having to be recompiled. Last time I checked, the x86 presence in the Phone/Tablet world was pathetically low.
I may, however, have completely misunderstood something here... It is worth noting that I'm not a programmer, so I'm not really clear on how much extra effort is involved in getting a coded for x86 app working on ARM-based devices.
I may be wrong, but I think the parent poster meant that after 22 hours the battery had only DIScharged by 5%, not that it had taken 22 hours to charge up to 95%... or were you just being facetious?
...Plus, if your charger is throwing a full 120V out the device end, I'd be more than a little concerned!
I'm sorry but a medical professional should flat out know better.
And a lot of them (probably most of them) do.
Couple of things to bear in mind:
1) Patients can be quite insistent and some doctors simply aren't equipped to deal with the psychological angle of a patient questioning their abilities, so simply prescribe what the patient asks for to shut them up and get rid of them so they can get on with dealing with more serious problems
2) Most doctors, unless their heads are stuck deeply in the sand (or somewhere else... feel free to use your imagination) are well aware that if they don't prescribe what the patient asks for or something sufficiently similar, they will simply pop online and order something from an unscrupulous web pharmacy (of which there are plenty, and, being online, the government is effectively powerless to stop them) that could be significantly worse. To keep the patient from seriously endangering their health, they might prescribe something mild (amoxycillin or something of that ilk) so that the patient is less tempted to browse the web pharmacy and get something far more dangerous.
Disclosure
I have seen something similar happen myself. A while ago, my wife became heavily addicted to Zopiclone (Zimovane / Imovane) sleeping tablets that she was being prescribed. By heavily addicted, I mean upwards of a dozen pills spread throughout the day every day, when the warning labels state half or one per night half an hour before bed. This was going on for years (because a doc was simply giving her what she asked for!) but as the doc would only prescribe enough for a standard course (28 per four-week cycle) she was purchasing more online (because the prescription was running out after 2-3 days!). As time went on, my wife was ordering more and more online, getting depressed because it's leaving her with very little money each week, coupled with the side effects of continuous overdosing on a medication that even the manufacturers state shouldn't be taken for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Finally she begs the doc to prescribe her some more, explaining that she's been getting them online to supplement the prescription. It's a different doc to the one she usually sees (the usual one retired). Doc prescribes her Promethazine Hydrochloride based antihistamine (but tells her its a more effective sleeping pill).
I can see exactly why the doc did this, to stop her from taking the Zopiclone. Unfortunately, my wife is a little more savvy and looked the name up as soon as she got the pills home. As soon as she saw "antihistamine" instead of "sleeping pill" on the web, they went straight in the bin and a new order was placed with her online pharmacy of the moment. This even survived the pharmacy's website being shut down and moved three times in two years.
In hindsight, perhaps the doc should have looked into some form of supported reduction in intake, possibly supported with Diazepam or equivalent, maybe even in some form of a rehab program. To do that, however, would have highlighted years of prescribing daily doses of a medication that even the manufacturer states should be for occasional use and never in courses exceeding one month. Couple that with the fact that she had previously been on an excessive cocktail of anti-depressants for several years prescribed by another partner at the same surgery and you'll start to see why this may have prompted some difficult questions for the docs to answer.
Good news, however, is I've managed to wean her off them. It took a long time (and a hell of a lot of arguing!), but she's almost back to her old self (no thanks to the local surgery, who refused to help me to detox her, as she would have to ask for the help herself, and there's no way someone who is that much of an addict is going to do that!). Also got no help from the authorities when I reported that the website in question was supplying POM-rated meds to customers in the UK without a license to do
Except that, with the accuracy of Apple Maps, you ask them to black out Texas, and it'll be New Jersey that disappears off the maps!
'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet.
Brought to you by the mindless tautology department of mindless tautology.
What's "Islamic" about the name? If you said "Arabic", now that would be something else...
You are right, technically speaking, but since 95% of Arabs do in fact practice or consider themselves part of the Islamic faith, I would say that your comment is bordering on pedantic.
Where do you get that statistic? I know that the media portrays it as practically everyone with an arabic name or heritage is automatically a member of the Islamic faith, but the statistics do not bear this out. Yes they are the majority, but once you factor in the Christians, Druze and other assorted communities who are generally ignored by the mainstream media you start to see that the figure is almost definately somewhere sub-90-percent.
There are places in the world where Islam co-exists with other religions quite happily, even places where it has done so for centuries.
As an atheist with a few Wiccan friends, could you direct me to the Islamic country that would welcome us with open arms?
I have added emphasis to show you where you are going wrong here. As soon as religion and politics intermingle at state/country level, this is when things start to go horribly wrong. A country should be ruled based on general principles of morality. As soon as you start to introduce a religious element to a country's legal framework, you are setting yourself up for a fall whatever religion it may be.
A sociopath is someone with extreme anti-social behavior and a lack of conscience.
Arresting your child for something that *could* have had bad consequences but *actually* didn't is sociopathic in our society.
By your own definition, it takes more than just deviating from societal norms to be a sociopath. Deviating from "Historically... very reluctant" and "For many people..." does not, in my book, a sociopath make.
Whilst I would agree that the parents' actions could be seen as extreme, they are not what I would consider to be anti-social.
Let's flip things on their heads a moment. Using your own examples, are you saying that if the parents were abusing the daughter and she went to the authorities, that would make her a sociopath?
There is a reason that "For many people, "family problems" are nobody else's business and it would be far more damaging to bring in the law than to cover it up and deal with it privately -- especially when it comes to their children." It's called embarrassment. The damage they're worried about is to the parents' reputation, which is oftentimes far more carefully guarded than their childrens' wellbeing. Your use of the term "cover it up" is evidence of this.
Returning to your last paragraph, are you suggesting that if the consequences HAD been bad, then arrest would have been justified? If that is so, all you are reinforcing in the kids with this attitude is that punishment comes from being unlucky, not from doing the wrong thing. Parents should be reinforcing in their kids that irresponsible behaviour results in serious consequences, and, IMHO, the best way to reinforce this is to base the lessons learned on the potential for harm that could result from the actions the kids have taken, not on the actual outcome. Otherwise the message is "You got away with it this time, you probably will again".
Granted, the GP has somewhat overstated his case (IMHO), but I would agree that books can be superior. That being said, eschewing all technology and abandoning the 21'st century is, in my book, hardly the answer either. I would suggest a standpoint in the middleground, and I am more than happy to discuss my reasons for this.
1) Books, far and away, require more imagination than video games. The excercise of ones imagination whilst reading has long been considered to be good for the cognitive health. Certainly it seems, as well, to keep the brain far more functional for far longer. This can be seen at any care- or retirement-home. Compare the levels of response you get from lifetime readers to those who haven't been as avid readers, and you'll often find the readers still happily reading and capable of (albeit reluctantly, in many cases) tearing themselves away from their books to engage in conversation, whilst the ones who haven't been keen on reading throughout their lives will often just vegetate in front of the television and will often be difficult to engage in conversation. Obviously there are exceptions to this pattern, but it certainly appears to be the norm.
2) Video games are far more interactive than books. You read a book 10 times, you have almost exactly the same experience 10 times. You play a video game 10 times, you can often (depending on the quality of the game) have 10 wildly different experiences.
3) Whilst you don't have to use your imagination as much in video games, you do need to use other cognitive functions. It takes more than just imagination to formulate strategies, learn from outcomes, solve puzzles and whatever other facors are incorporated in the game you happen to be playing. This additional thinking is done for you in books (except the old adventure books where you make choices and turn to specific paragraphs depending on your choices, but I always saw them as more of an alternative form of game, than as a form of literature.).
4) How many books can you read as a team, and get additional benefits through reading them together? Many modern games seem to be focussed not on single-player offline play, but on co-operative or competitive play online. This excercises social skills of teamwork and leadership in ways that reading a book can't hope to replicate.
5) Books can be taken pretty-much anywhere and read without any need for anything more than a light-source to see by. Video games, however, often need a power-source and / or network signal to play.
As a result, I would argue that there is a place for both. Personally, I am more of a reader than a gamer. I do, however, play a variety of games both on- and offline on a variety of platforms. Maybe the best route forward would be a return to the older text-based games of the past - all the benefits of video games, but with the added use of imagination required when your situation is shown to you as four or five lines of text instead of a rendered 3D display in full colour complete with sound...?
Now on the subject of letters vs video-chat, how are you going to see the girl you're interacting with strip by letter? I jest, of course, but again there is a place for both. Handwriting is a lost skill. My stepdaughters cannot write a legible handwritten note to save their lives, and their written correspondence, even their resumes, are replete with text-speak and spelling/grammar mistakes. Now before I get pounced on by the local cohort of the grammar-SS, I wholeheartedly accept that I make mistakes of both spelling and grammar from time-to-time, but I try to keep these to a minimum... I get the impression that the younger generation just doesn't care to expend any effort to even attempt to minimise such mistakes, much less eliminate them.
Communication has become too easy for many to take any care when using it. As a result, I would be keen to see an increase in letter-writing, primarily as it may encourage the care and attention-to-detail which is lacking these days. That being said, I would not propose doing away with video chat. There are often times when communication needs to be right-the-heck-now, and a letter just won't do (especially with the time it takes post to get around my neighbourhood recently, much less worldwide!).
Gotta say that depends on the person.
Sure, for many it is the case that video games are far more immersive than a book (especially, in my experience, todays younger generation).
It is fair to say, however, that this does not apply to all. Case in point... me! Don't get me wrong, I can definately get immersed in a game and lose track of the passage of time, but I find that this is far more common for me when reading than when gaming, regardless of whether the book is based in fact or fiction.
Looking at it from a different angle (and I should state clearly up-front here that IANAL) the OP appears to be saying that this person is misrepresenting the content of the sites as being by her, not about her.
Under such circumstances, libel and slander are clearly irrelevant, but how about fraud?
Obviously this is an assumption, based on my reading of the OP. Without a link, I can't tell if the ex is defaming, or impersonating the submitters fiancee.
There can be a world of difference between "fine to drive" and "legal to drive".
...unless you mean having sex with machines or something....
In which case, the suggestion of modelling robots on toddlers is even more discomforting!
Am I the only one who thinks the thought process involved here may be to make it more difficult for those like Gary McKinnon to use Aspergers as a means to avoid extradition to the US?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon
Or am I just a little too cynical?!?
What concerned me was the title's implication that the study used as a benchmark the necessary video quality to enjoy snuff clips. I thought these were illegal in most jurisdictions, so getting the data for the report must have been some feat!
We should never punish anyone, because we're not really sure that we're killing Bpunishing who's guilty.
FTFY.
Your logic fails, doesn't it?
Because when you send someone to prison, you can never give that person back the time they spent there.
To follow your logic, that means no one could ever be punished for any crime - because there's always the possibility of a mistake.
Except, as has been pointed out several times already, you can compensate a released inmate who has been exonerated. How, exactly, do you propose to compensate a corpse (and the family doesn't count!)?
With that said, rarely are cases that clear and to the point and there DOES exist some wiggle room that is exploited by the lawyers and the guilty parties which I think could be tightened up.
(Emphasis mine)
So you're saying that defendants, regardless of actual guilt, should not be allowed to present a full and robust defence? If that is the case, what's the point of a having any justice system, just dole out summary executions at point of arrest?
I imagine you'd be somewhat surprised at how many people are glad we don't live in your world?!?
Is that all we aspire to be now here at /.? Just a news aggregator? Oh, how we have fallen!
I won't surprise you then... As far as I know, slashcomma doesn't even exist, much less sit in the top 15!
I think the crux of the comments so far haven't been suggesting that long term support will be terminated early, but more that this move gives the public the impression that such support is soon to end.
Most users don't care for the reality of the situation. I guess the suggestion is that if it appears that Microsoft os withdrawing support for Win 7, end users are more likely to be reluctant to stay on it and will instead move to Win 8.
I tend to be of the opinion that most end-users (especially in the home environment) won't give a damn either way and would stick with Win 7 (or whatever other OS they happen to be running), supported or (by appearances) not. They will get a new OS only when they get a new machine, will gripe about it being different, but will resign themselves to having to get used to it in the name of "progress".
Obviously this is somewhat less the case in a business/corporate environment.
Here, the size of the business comes into play. For smaller companies without any form of formalised IT provision, you will likely see the home environment more-or-less mirrored. For larger environments, you will probably see this further divided depending on size and style of the IT support. In-house IT teams will generally be clued-up enough to know Win 7 is still supported, but the key issue is whether they can convince the higher-ups of this (office politics at its finest). Outsourced will be split according to whether the provider's charging model is built around higher costs for skills to support new technologies, or higher costs for supporting what are perceived to be out-of-date technologies. Depending on your provider the model may differ, with the result that your corporate budget for outsourcing may influence upgrade decisions.
Personally, I think that if you are carrying out ANY install of Win7 from a CD, you are to be congratulated. I have yet to see a Win7 image that is small enough to fit on a CD. Don't get me wrong, a patched image is definately the way to go, but to fit the Win7 installation image, patched or otherwise, on anything smaller than a DVD is an achievement worthy of credit.
The shower limit is our over-harvesting of our natural resources, as well as the soda tax, because apparently caramel and whatever else is in soda is too expensive to produces/grow/mine/etc.
Personally, I thought the drinking water being cheaper than soda was a reference to the current trend to try to encourage social change by imposing taxes on less-healthy options.
Hmmm... I wonder... SPAM, or an example of plagiarism for comedy value? If the latter, kudos for getting it in under the radar!