Second is preventing crime. The theory is if you take a mentally unstable person and bathe him in child porn, virtual or not, he's more likely to actually commit a crime acting out what he's been exposed to. So, by removing the stimulus, you prevent the crime.
I strongly disagree with this kind of preventative measure: the same could be said of violent videogames, rap music, etc. Why should the rest of the population have to cater to a small mentally unstable minority because of the possibility that they may commit crimes? This is, IMO, just further hysteria over the pedophilia issue, and punishing people for completely victimless actions.
The idea behind IDM is not that it is somehow more intelligent than other forms of music, but more that it is music designed to make the intellect dance (i.e. it messes with your head because of its atypical use of sounds, instruments, shifting time signatures, etc). I personally used to love the stuff before I burnt out on it. Very interesting, very bizarre, and almost physically impossible to dance to. Going to IDM shows was quite the experience, because it essentially consisted of a room of 300+ people just standing and listening - and some of the more adventurous possibly swaying slightly - to the undanceability of the music. It seems to appeal, too, to a good amount of the geek / nerd scene; at least that was my impression by the people I saw and met at the shows, and it was a big plus for me.
While there are studies that demonstrate that MSG is safe, there are also studies that demonstrate that in certain susceptible individuals, it can be harmful; in fact, there is scientific evidence that this is linked to a vitamin B6 deficiency. As the metabolic pathway for MSG involves B6, this is not surprising.
I found I had similar symptoms to the OP several years back and traced the causes to MSG. I felt absolutely horrible for about six months: like I was constantly suffering from a low grade fever and on the verge of illness, although I had no fever and nothing indicated that I was sick. I was having regular panic attacks after meals and couldn't figure out why. My mother suggested that I should try eliminating MSG. I began to improve within three days. While you may suggest that that's psychosomatic, I have struggled with being overweight my whole life, and without doing a lick of exercise more than I had been and without significant other dietary changes, I shed 50 lbs in two months and then 25 lbs in the following six months, which I've kept off for over six years now without any effort while being able to enjoy a fairly extravagant high-carb high-fat diet.
I did discover that I had a B6 deficiency, which has been corrected, and now I will occasionally treat myself to something with small quantities of MSG and be fine. I am convinced, however, that my weight loss was from excessive MSG consumption. Other people have reported similar results.
Your body also produces a wide variety of compounds that if administered in doses hundreds or thousands of times the naturally occurring ones would not only make you be ill but likely be fatal.
Monosodium glutamate, and the disodium monophosphates, are actually harmless and naturally occurring in many foods; you have a whole tastebud group for that flavour (it's the "savoury" taste, umami).
Yes, they are naturally occurring, but to propose that they're harmless in the current doses being used in most foods that contain them (thousands of times as they naturally occur, and in a modified form) is absurd.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest MSG is harmless, and there is plenty to suggest that it is harmful, especially in certain susceptible individuals. There is no consensus either way and thus this individual's claims should not be outright dismissed.
I can't believe that they omitted Emmy Noether, one of my role models and possibly, IMO, the greatest geek girl of all time.
Despite the incredible sexism and rise of the nazi rule that she faced during her day, she was brilliantly accomplished, contributing huge amounts to the fields of commutative algebra and theoretical physics.
A friend of mine recently bought me a CD - something I haven't bought for myself in years - and after I ripped it, I had no idea what to do with it. My entire music collection is stored on my hard drive and set up so I can access it on any computer in the house through the network. If I'm not listening to music locally, I have my iPod.
I ended up just putting it in a box in the closet. At this point, for me personally, any CD that I acquire is going to do nothing short of take up space that could be better used for other things.
At the same time, I appreciate that people like immersion and realism, but I'm amazed at the amount of money they're willing to pay for it. Then again, I found it was easy for me to get completely immersed in the old games like Ultima IV, Bard's Tale, etc. because the storylines were rich and the gameplay fun, so maybe I'm easily pleased compared to most.
When I want high definition beauty, here's my solution: I step away from my 27" old school TV (which suits me just fine for all my needs) and go outside. It's a hell of a lot cheaper, the resolution is great, and it often has a pretty good storyline, too.
To a degree, but GMail did come with some innovations that changed web-based e-mail: large storage space, labeling instead of sorting into folders, relevant ad-delivered content, etc.
It may not seem like much, but you have to admit that the large storage space forced other competitors to offer similar, which was very nice after suffering through the 2MB Hotmail restriction for years.
Microsoft rarely - if ever - brings even that much novelty to the table with their offerings, although, in their defense, there were a few small technologies being offered with Vista (e.g. using USB keydrives as additional RAM) that made me think, "Hey! That's pretty cool!"
What the heck is wrong with your city that you don't feel safe unless security cameras are on you? I live in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, and I walk on dark streets alone late at night without feeling like my existence is being threatened.
I have no idea how many countless hours I spent playing this game. I still keep a C64 emulator around to waste more time than I want to admit on it when I'm bored / looking for reasons to procrastinate. This is an example of brilliant gameplay: the graphics are appallingly bad, but one is still drawn to the game because of the challenge and the fun of it all. My mother used to criticize me for playing it when I was a kid, and now she still can't believe that I play it all these years later.
2. Ultima VII: The Black Gate
This was, IMO, quite possibly the best RPG of all time. The world was so incredibly detailed and addressed problems that were relevant to today, including pollution, overpopulation, cult-like philosophical movements, racism, etc. The plot was open ended enough to encourage exploration and detailed enough to take a huge amount of time to solve the main quest. It drew one in with its elements of mystery through the gruesome murders, thefts, etc. that were transpiring in Brittania.
3. Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
I laughed my ass off, and the game was *damn* fun. The music was so catchy I still find myself humming it years and years later. How I miss puzzle games.
4. Super Mario World
My favourite of the series. Lots of improvements - particularly in graphics and gameplay - over SMB3, and enough secrets in the game to make one replay some of the worlds over and over again.
5. Heroes of Might and Magic III
This was definitely the pinnacle of the HOMM games, and between the expansion packs and user-created levels, one of the most addictive games I've ever played.
You only have two choices in this debate...to pay and use, or to keep your money and not use.
I disagree. I think that there's an entirely reasonable third choice: (1) to pay and use when the price is reasonable and the company behind the product respects us, and (2) to protest through whatever means we feel are appropriate when the price to end users is completely absurd or the company treats us like garbage.
I'm not claiming that I necessarily disagree with what he's saying if the intent is widespread Linux adoption, but I'm very curious about something.
I've googled and Wikipedia-ed and tried very hard to determine what significant contributions ESR has made to the open source software movement to deserve the respect and broadcasting of his opinions that he seems to get, and I can't for the life of me figure it out.
From what I can tell, he wrote fetchmail, dinked around a bit with emacs, and maintains an online hacker dictionary. Surely we have slashdot members who have provided us with far more important accomplishments - both philosophically and programatically - than ESR. So why does he receive the airtime that he does? Someone want to enlighten me?
There are significant differences between diabetes and depression, and I think your analogy is flawed. Diabetes is an autoimmune dysfunction that attacks and kills the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Once these cells are destroyed and enough time has passed, it is believed that you will be forever incapable of developing new ones and hence, producing insulin*.
While depression and anxiety might be a mismanagement of neurotransmitters by the brain and medication does help many, both are quite responsive for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for many people. I, for example, have tried several antidepressants (various SSRIs, venlafaxine) for both chronic mid-grade depression and severe, chronic Generalized Anxiety Disorder, both of which run prominently in my mother's family along with mild obsessive compulsive disorder. I found that the medications themselves, due to side effects, caused more undesirable symptoms than the original ailments that they were prescribed to treat. In the end, the thought of taking these daily drugs for who knows how long was incredibly unappealing, so I decided to deal with my emotional hardship day by day and pursue a rigorous program of CBT while doing so. The CBT was a good amount of work and while I noticed a difference fairly quickly (think about four weeks), it took months before I can say that I felt largely cured. And while I may still be genetically more prone to anxiety and depression than most people and find certain situations trigger my "start getting depressed / anxious" mentality (which used to be virtually nonstop), because I have been mentally trained to do so, I can recognize the triggers and respond to them appropriately to prevent the process from continuing to the point where I probably don't feel significantly more anxiety and depression than your average Joe.
I won't deny that these issues are likely due to a deficiency of serotonin, but I'd also like to propose that, psychologically, one can affect the level of neurotransmitters in one's brain. I am a strong believer that in the case of emotional illnesses as above, lower serotonin increases one's proclivity to anxiety, depression, and obsessive tendencies, but allowing the thoughts that come with these states to continue in turn decreases serotonin and causes a vicious cycle.
* Interestingly, however, some research seems promising in the realm of correcting autoimmune dysfunction through the use of hypnotherapy, especially with regards to things like environmental allergies, Crohn's Disease, etc. So there might well be a psychological component here, although in diabetes, by the time the problem becomes fully evident and such a treatment (in conjunction with insulin, obviously) is considered, it is likely to be too late.
I don't recall having said that they shouldn't be allowed to list whatever prices that they want. Taking this into account in the feedback system, as I mentioned, will not only allow buyers to avoid (say, during search by specifying certain criteria) those obnoxious sellers who flood eBay with hundreds of "FREE XBOX AND IPOD!!!" ads that make it difficult to actually find XBoxes and iPods on eBay, but will as well help identify poor sellers, i.e. sellers who do not seem to know how to successfully price their items to sell. Not selling what you have listed is an indication of failure: if you are a seller, your intent should be to sell. As the rating system is supposed to provide a measure of quality of the seller, I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider this factor.
As many have pointed out, the current feedback system is loaded with shortcomings; I was simply proposing one factor that might be worth considering in a reimplementation. *shrugs* You're free to disagree if you like.
I'd like to propose, too, that eBay take the ratio of sales completed to sales listed into consideration for feedback scores for sellers. This would definitely quickly identify sellers who list items at overinflated prices that do not sell, and those who list "BUY INFO TO GET FREE XBOX360 AND POWERBOOK" auctions, which rarely sell as well.
I'd much rather do my business with someone who's listed auctions in which most of the items have sold.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, on that, but you could just have a picture.
True enough, and I'll definitely settle for pictures of the venomous snakes. There's something to be said, though, for watching a snake move around and play inside their enclosures.
Facinating? They slither around, eat, and shed. Wow.
How is that particularly different from cats and dogs? Snakes can actually be quite surprisingly interactive, although, of course, not so much as cats and dogs, admittedly. They do grow attached to your scent, even if they don't necessarily recognize you as a living thing. And watching a snake eat is a lot cooler than watching any other animal eat, to be sure. So is watching a snake shed. It's very elegant.
Require little care or expense? So you can get snake food easily?
Most pet shops have frozen mice and rats for decent prices, or you can order bulk for very cheap. It cost me about a buck a week to feed each snake (they really should only be fed once a week or so).
So when then do something wrong, e.g. get out of your home, people won't be scared and will just act like it's a dog? What about when they bite someone? They can't be impossible. They must scare guests.
*grins*... Well, I do admit these are possible problems. If you take precautions, your snakes usually won't escape, but I think almost every snake owner has a horror story when they look over and see that Monty's escaped from his tank. At least in the case of constricting snakes, snake bites are virtually nothing. Their teeth often are only about a millimetre long: a cat scratch is far more painful than a snake bite. I've been bitten three times and two of them, I didn't even know I had been bitten until I saw a couple droplets of blood.
They do scare some guests, but many people, upon meeting them, convince themselves that they want to hold them and it helps them overcome their fear.
Fish meet all of those categories as much or more so than a snake
To some degree, yes, although you can't very well pick up a fish and interact with it. Fish are also lovely and fascinating in their own right, although I think they typically require more care, too (daily feedings, water control, etc).
I disagree. I had up until recently six pet constricting non-venomous snakes, ranging in size from three feet to about seven. Several children have seen my snakes and were not startled by them or upset by them at all, nor were the rest of my pets (two cats and a dog).
I suspect that this is because many snakes move quite slowly if they're not immediately attacking, so they're not viewed as a danger. They're also beautiful to behold in their patterning and colours. Furthermore, I suspect my pets weren't scared of them because snakes don't have a really strong scent unless they're musking or sitting around in their own filth, so animals who base their interpretation of the world largely in scent don't necessarily perceive snakes to be alive or interesting.
Anyways, snakes do make wonderful pets, if you're inclined towards them. They're gorgeous, fascinating, and require little care or expense.
Why not some more obvious and simple snake defense mechanism (like, immunity from snake poison?)
The majority of snakes that feasibly can eat humans (think anacondas, burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, and perhaps scrub pythons) are not venomous but constrictors. While venomous snakes will attack us out of defense if threatened, to my knowledge, none of them are large enough to eat us, and thus it is unlikely that they would seek us out with the intention of killing us, unlike the aforementioned species.
You claim: Because I always wanted to be the guy who got paid piddling amounts of money to do a lousy job of teaching students, all of whom clearly understand that I'm doing a lousy job.
This is beyond stupid. I get paid $32 / hour for my TA responsibilities at the grad level. How is that at all piddling? And for your information, I teach my students quite well, and find TAing to be a significant training excerise towards one day teaching my own students.
All I can say is that a Master's degree has promised me the megabucks. Hell, my thesis was focused in combinatorics, which, while fascinating to me, seems virtually inapplicable to the majority of industry these days, but I got calls back left and right when I applied for positions and they didn't seem remotely put off by my technological shortcomings. Distributing 20 applications in a week yielded me five interviews, which I strongly believe is far higher than the standard. I accepted a position back home in Canada (I was living in the US, and had tons of interest), finally, and was hired as a "Senior Software Engineer", superior to other members of my programming team who had been there for 5+ years and were given positions as junior / intermediate software engineers. In the end, I decided to go back to do my PhD, but I can definitely say that I feel I had a strong advantage in IT.
Slashdot Mirror
Second is preventing crime. The theory is if you take a mentally unstable person and bathe him in child porn, virtual or not, he's more likely to actually commit a crime acting out what he's been exposed to. So, by removing the stimulus, you prevent the crime.
I strongly disagree with this kind of preventative measure: the same could be said of violent videogames, rap music, etc. Why should the rest of the population have to cater to a small mentally unstable minority because of the possibility that they may commit crimes? This is, IMO, just further hysteria over the pedophilia issue, and punishing people for completely victimless actions.
The idea behind IDM is not that it is somehow more intelligent than other forms of music, but more that it is music designed to make the intellect dance (i.e. it messes with your head because of its atypical use of sounds, instruments, shifting time signatures, etc). I personally used to love the stuff before I burnt out on it. Very interesting, very bizarre, and almost physically impossible to dance to. Going to IDM shows was quite the experience, because it essentially consisted of a room of 300+ people just standing and listening - and some of the more adventurous possibly swaying slightly - to the undanceability of the music. It seems to appeal, too, to a good amount of the geek / nerd scene; at least that was my impression by the people I saw and met at the shows, and it was a big plus for me.
How many times do you test before calling it truth
I don't know about truth, but according to my gut, it's definitely truthiness.
0^(-1) = 1/0
0^2 = 0 * 0
Where exactly is the problem?
While there are studies that demonstrate that MSG is safe, there are also studies that demonstrate that in certain susceptible individuals, it can be harmful; in fact, there is scientific evidence that this is linked to a vitamin B6 deficiency. As the metabolic pathway for MSG involves B6, this is not surprising.
I found I had similar symptoms to the OP several years back and traced the causes to MSG. I felt absolutely horrible for about six months: like I was constantly suffering from a low grade fever and on the verge of illness, although I had no fever and nothing indicated that I was sick. I was having regular panic attacks after meals and couldn't figure out why. My mother suggested that I should try eliminating MSG. I began to improve within three days. While you may suggest that that's psychosomatic, I have struggled with being overweight my whole life, and without doing a lick of exercise more than I had been and without significant other dietary changes, I shed 50 lbs in two months and then 25 lbs in the following six months, which I've kept off for over six years now without any effort while being able to enjoy a fairly extravagant high-carb high-fat diet.
I did discover that I had a B6 deficiency, which has been corrected, and now I will occasionally treat myself to something with small quantities of MSG and be fine. I am convinced, however, that my weight loss was from excessive MSG consumption. Other people have reported similar results.
Your body also produces a wide variety of compounds that if administered in doses hundreds or thousands of times the naturally occurring ones would not only make you be ill but likely be fatal.
Monosodium glutamate, and the disodium monophosphates, are actually harmless and naturally occurring in many foods; you have a whole tastebud group for that flavour (it's the "savoury" taste, umami).
Yes, they are naturally occurring, but to propose that they're harmless in the current doses being used in most foods that contain them (thousands of times as they naturally occur, and in a modified form) is absurd.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest MSG is harmless, and there is plenty to suggest that it is harmful, especially in certain susceptible individuals. There is no consensus either way and thus this individual's claims should not be outright dismissed.
I can't believe that they omitted Emmy Noether, one of my role models and possibly, IMO, the greatest geek girl of all time.
Despite the incredible sexism and rise of the nazi rule that she faced during her day, she was brilliantly accomplished, contributing huge amounts to the fields of commutative algebra and theoretical physics.
A friend of mine recently bought me a CD - something I haven't bought for myself in years - and after I ripped it, I had no idea what to do with it. My entire music collection is stored on my hard drive and set up so I can access it on any computer in the house through the network. If I'm not listening to music locally, I have my iPod.
I ended up just putting it in a box in the closet. At this point, for me personally, any CD that I acquire is going to do nothing short of take up space that could be better used for other things.
*grins*... Yes, I did intend it to be silly.
At the same time, I appreciate that people like immersion and realism, but I'm amazed at the amount of money they're willing to pay for it. Then again, I found it was easy for me to get completely immersed in the old games like Ultima IV, Bard's Tale, etc. because the storylines were rich and the gameplay fun, so maybe I'm easily pleased compared to most.
When I want high definition beauty, here's my solution: I step away from my 27" old school TV (which suits me just fine for all my needs) and go outside. It's a hell of a lot cheaper, the resolution is great, and it often has a pretty good storyline, too.
To a degree, but GMail did come with some innovations that changed web-based e-mail: large storage space, labeling instead of sorting into folders, relevant ad-delivered content, etc.
It may not seem like much, but you have to admit that the large storage space forced other competitors to offer similar, which was very nice after suffering through the 2MB Hotmail restriction for years.
Microsoft rarely - if ever - brings even that much novelty to the table with their offerings, although, in their defense, there were a few small technologies being offered with Vista (e.g. using USB keydrives as additional RAM) that made me think, "Hey! That's pretty cool!"
What the heck is wrong with your city that you don't feel safe unless security cameras are on you? I live in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, and I walk on dark streets alone late at night without feeling like my existence is being threatened.
1. M.U.L.E.
I have no idea how many countless hours I spent playing this game. I still keep a C64 emulator around to waste more time than I want to admit on it when I'm bored / looking for reasons to procrastinate. This is an example of brilliant gameplay: the graphics are appallingly bad, but one is still drawn to the game because of the challenge and the fun of it all. My mother used to criticize me for playing it when I was a kid, and now she still can't believe that I play it all these years later.
2. Ultima VII: The Black Gate
This was, IMO, quite possibly the best RPG of all time. The world was so incredibly detailed and addressed problems that were relevant to today, including pollution, overpopulation, cult-like philosophical movements, racism, etc. The plot was open ended enough to encourage exploration and detailed enough to take a huge amount of time to solve the main quest. It drew one in with its elements of mystery through the gruesome murders, thefts, etc. that were transpiring in Brittania.
3. Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
I laughed my ass off, and the game was *damn* fun. The music was so catchy I still find myself humming it years and years later. How I miss puzzle games.
4. Super Mario World
My favourite of the series. Lots of improvements - particularly in graphics and gameplay - over SMB3, and enough secrets in the game to make one replay some of the worlds over and over again.
5. Heroes of Might and Magic III
This was definitely the pinnacle of the HOMM games, and between the expansion packs and user-created levels, one of the most addictive games I've ever played.
You only have two choices in this debate...to pay and use, or to keep your money and not use.
I disagree. I think that there's an entirely reasonable third choice: (1) to pay and use when the price is reasonable and the company behind the product respects us, and (2) to protest through whatever means we feel are appropriate when the price to end users is completely absurd or the company treats us like garbage.
I'm not claiming that I necessarily disagree with what he's saying if the intent is widespread Linux adoption, but I'm very curious about something.
I've googled and Wikipedia-ed and tried very hard to determine what significant contributions ESR has made to the open source software movement to deserve the respect and broadcasting of his opinions that he seems to get, and I can't for the life of me figure it out.
From what I can tell, he wrote fetchmail, dinked around a bit with emacs, and maintains an online hacker dictionary. Surely we have slashdot members who have provided us with far more important accomplishments - both philosophically and programatically - than ESR. So why does he receive the airtime that he does? Someone want to enlighten me?
There are significant differences between diabetes and depression, and I think your analogy is flawed. Diabetes is an autoimmune dysfunction that attacks and kills the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Once these cells are destroyed and enough time has passed, it is believed that you will be forever incapable of developing new ones and hence, producing insulin*.
While depression and anxiety might be a mismanagement of neurotransmitters by the brain and medication does help many, both are quite responsive for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for many people. I, for example, have tried several antidepressants (various SSRIs, venlafaxine) for both chronic mid-grade depression and severe, chronic Generalized Anxiety Disorder, both of which run prominently in my mother's family along with mild obsessive compulsive disorder. I found that the medications themselves, due to side effects, caused more undesirable symptoms than the original ailments that they were prescribed to treat. In the end, the thought of taking these daily drugs for who knows how long was incredibly unappealing, so I decided to deal with my emotional hardship day by day and pursue a rigorous program of CBT while doing so. The CBT was a good amount of work and while I noticed a difference fairly quickly (think about four weeks), it took months before I can say that I felt largely cured. And while I may still be genetically more prone to anxiety and depression than most people and find certain situations trigger my "start getting depressed / anxious" mentality (which used to be virtually nonstop), because I have been mentally trained to do so, I can recognize the triggers and respond to them appropriately to prevent the process from continuing to the point where I probably don't feel significantly more anxiety and depression than your average Joe.
I won't deny that these issues are likely due to a deficiency of serotonin, but I'd also like to propose that, psychologically, one can affect the level of neurotransmitters in one's brain. I am a strong believer that in the case of emotional illnesses as above, lower serotonin increases one's proclivity to anxiety, depression, and obsessive tendencies, but allowing the thoughts that come with these states to continue in turn decreases serotonin and causes a vicious cycle.
* Interestingly, however, some research seems promising in the realm of correcting autoimmune dysfunction through the use of hypnotherapy, especially with regards to things like environmental allergies, Crohn's Disease, etc. So there might well be a psychological component here, although in diabetes, by the time the problem becomes fully evident and such a treatment (in conjunction with insulin, obviously) is considered, it is likely to be too late.
I don't recall having said that they shouldn't be allowed to list whatever prices that they want. Taking this into account in the feedback system, as I mentioned, will not only allow buyers to avoid (say, during search by specifying certain criteria) those obnoxious sellers who flood eBay with hundreds of "FREE XBOX AND IPOD!!!" ads that make it difficult to actually find XBoxes and iPods on eBay, but will as well help identify poor sellers, i.e. sellers who do not seem to know how to successfully price their items to sell. Not selling what you have listed is an indication of failure: if you are a seller, your intent should be to sell. As the rating system is supposed to provide a measure of quality of the seller, I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider this factor.
As many have pointed out, the current feedback system is loaded with shortcomings; I was simply proposing one factor that might be worth considering in a reimplementation. *shrugs* You're free to disagree if you like.
I'd like to propose, too, that eBay take the ratio of sales completed to sales listed into consideration for feedback scores for sellers. This would definitely quickly identify sellers who list items at overinflated prices that do not sell, and those who list "BUY INFO TO GET FREE XBOX360 AND POWERBOOK" auctions, which rarely sell as well.
I'd much rather do my business with someone who's listed auctions in which most of the items have sold.
The comment was a joke referring to the following, I assume:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail94.html
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, on that, but you could just have a picture.
True enough, and I'll definitely settle for pictures of the venomous snakes. There's something to be said, though, for watching a snake move around and play inside their enclosures.
Facinating? They slither around, eat, and shed. Wow.
How is that particularly different from cats and dogs? Snakes can actually be quite surprisingly interactive, although, of course, not so much as cats and dogs, admittedly. They do grow attached to your scent, even if they don't necessarily recognize you as a living thing. And watching a snake eat is a lot cooler than watching any other animal eat, to be sure. So is watching a snake shed. It's very elegant.
Require little care or expense? So you can get snake food easily?
Most pet shops have frozen mice and rats for decent prices, or you can order bulk for very cheap. It cost me about a buck a week to feed each snake (they really should only be fed once a week or so).
So when then do something wrong, e.g. get out of your home, people won't be scared and will just act like it's a dog? What about when they bite someone? They can't be impossible. They must scare guests.
*grins*... Well, I do admit these are possible problems. If you take precautions, your snakes usually won't escape, but I think almost every snake owner has a horror story when they look over and see that Monty's escaped from his tank. At least in the case of constricting snakes, snake bites are virtually nothing. Their teeth often are only about a millimetre long: a cat scratch is far more painful than a snake bite. I've been bitten three times and two of them, I didn't even know I had been bitten until I saw a couple droplets of blood.
They do scare some guests, but many people, upon meeting them, convince themselves that they want to hold them and it helps them overcome their fear.
Fish meet all of those categories as much or more so than a snake
To some degree, yes, although you can't very well pick up a fish and interact with it. Fish are also lovely and fascinating in their own right, although I think they typically require more care, too (daily feedings, water control, etc).
I disagree. I had up until recently six pet constricting non-venomous snakes, ranging in size from three feet to about seven. Several children have seen my snakes and were not startled by them or upset by them at all, nor were the rest of my pets (two cats and a dog).
I suspect that this is because many snakes move quite slowly if they're not immediately attacking, so they're not viewed as a danger. They're also beautiful to behold in their patterning and colours. Furthermore, I suspect my pets weren't scared of them because snakes don't have a really strong scent unless they're musking or sitting around in their own filth, so animals who base their interpretation of the world largely in scent don't necessarily perceive snakes to be alive or interesting.
Anyways, snakes do make wonderful pets, if you're inclined towards them. They're gorgeous, fascinating, and require little care or expense.
Why not some more obvious and simple snake defense mechanism (like, immunity from snake poison?)
The majority of snakes that feasibly can eat humans (think anacondas, burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, and perhaps scrub pythons) are not venomous but constrictors. While venomous snakes will attack us out of defense if threatened, to my knowledge, none of them are large enough to eat us, and thus it is unlikely that they would seek us out with the intention of killing us, unlike the aforementioned species.
You are so ingorant and speculative.
You claim:
Because I always wanted to be the guy who got paid piddling amounts of money to do a lousy job of teaching students, all of whom clearly understand that I'm doing a lousy job.
This is beyond stupid. I get paid $32 / hour for my TA responsibilities at the grad level. How is that at all piddling? And for your information, I teach my students quite well, and find TAing to be a significant training excerise towards one day teaching my own students.
All I can say is that a Master's degree has promised me the megabucks. Hell, my thesis was focused in combinatorics, which, while fascinating to me, seems virtually inapplicable to the majority of industry these days, but I got calls back left and right when I applied for positions and they didn't seem remotely put off by my technological shortcomings. Distributing 20 applications in a week yielded me five interviews, which I strongly believe is far higher than the standard. I accepted a position back home in Canada (I was living in the US, and had tons of interest), finally, and was hired as a "Senior Software Engineer", superior to other members of my programming team who had been there for 5+ years and were given positions as junior / intermediate software engineers. In the end, I decided to go back to do my PhD, but I can definitely say that I feel I had a strong advantage in IT.