.... which congressmen have the inside track to invest in an escrow service to act as a go-between for US gamblers and the companies they love to give their money to?
Ever wonder what the electricity bill must be like for most of those big silicon valley companies? Perhaps the oil companies should strike back by claiming that there needs to be an energy consumption tax penalty paid entirely by the companies doing the consuming.
The tech companies would STFU in a split second. They aren't conserving a damned thing and aren't interested in anything other than protecting their own interests, same as any other corporation.
Loading software on someone else's computer without their knowledge is at the very least unethical if not downright illegal in some instances. People who purchase software must agree to the EULA, and people who download software agree to the license via usage.
If I ever found software on my machine that a tech loaded without my knowledge, not only would I never use his services again, but I would consider legal action against him. I have no problem whatsoever in a tech counseling someone on preventative action against future problems and then installing software if the owner agrees, but I have a huge problem with a tech deciding that his activism should take precedent over my right to enter into a license agreement with vendors or developers of my own will.
... but when choosing between a high end PC or a next-gen console, I chose the console. My current PC with its creaky old GeForce 5700 is powerful enough to run almost any game that is currently being emulated by MAME and the other popular console/arcade emulators. I have no interest whatsoever in playing any of the MMORPGs out nowadays... my time to play video games is generally limited to a few nights a week and a few hours on a weekend.
I'm fully confident that in 3-4 years, video cards may be packaged with physics chips and other AI goodness, and when that happens, perhaps PCs will finally be able to do things that the next-gen consoles can't. But right now, with wireless controllers, headsets, and hard drives, there's virtually nothing that a PC can do in a game that a console can't do just as well.
Er... except freeware addons, macros, and some games manufacturers' refusal to give a player complete access to customizing his controls. Ya know, if ya like that sorta thing.
Seriously, though, I'm happy with my purchase, I tend to buy virtually brand new used games when my local store has buy 2 get 1 free sales on used games, and I can't see spending 2-3 grand on a top end gaming rig ever again. I bought a 360, extra controller, 1 year sub to xbox live gold, 6 games, and a widescreen LCD TV to play it on for less than 2 grand. For my money (and mine alone), it was the best purchase I could have made. The only negative about the entire purchase is that the early 360 lineup seems to be filled with way too many FPSes, with a noticable lack of games in the platform or arcade genres.
He loved the way the Duke always came out on top. Loved the way Wayne's characters acted and lead and showed men how to be men.
And all that stuff.
And while I've never watched a John Wayne movie, I tip my hat to them despite how cheesy they may have been, because I loved and respected my grandfather and those movies were the ones we bought for him when he was suffering from cancer at the end of his days. He was in obvious pain, but he enjoyed them nonetheless.
Optimus Prime is the John Wayne of the generation who grew up in the 80s. Sure, there was Duke from GI Joe, but he was usurped in midstream by a general. There was Lion-o, but the Thundercats were too wierd for most kids to take seriously. There was He-Man, but he was never anything more than a bad Superman re-interpretation.
But Optimus, man... Optimus was a truck and an action figure all in one. And when he spoke, he did so with conviction on the side of right and he used his leadership to defeat those who would harm others. And even when he was wrong, he eventually did the right thing. I don't own any "toys" anymore. I mean, I have recreational objects that I use to unwind with, but nothing that a kid would understand or find interesting. Except one. My 20th anniversary edition Optimus sits proudly on my desk. The original toy looked little like the cartoon character. But this one? 60 bucks and it doesn't even matter... Optimus looks like he shoulda. He's a kickass poseable paperweight.
When Optimus died in the movie, I was a kid, and I was upset. Who was this Rodimus dude, and what did he do with our hero? See, even with the neat futuristic car and the neat flaming paint job, Hot Rod and Rodimus just weren't as cool. Didn't matter that he could fight Galvatron and kick some Swoop ass... he wasn't the hero. He wasn't the legend. And when Optimus came back, he died saving the universe again. And then he came back for more.
Children today will tell their kids about the time they saw Kobe Bryant score 81. They'll swear Duane Wade was the best ever. But they never saw Jordan play. They never watched Magic pass. But I never got to see Wilt in his heyday, or see Oscar Robertson average a triple double. They'll claim that LaDainian Tomlinson is the best RB to ever lace them up because of his fancy moves, but they never got a chance to watch Barry spin the way I never got a chance to see Jim Brown knock people over.
Everyone grows up and has their own legends to tell tales about. For the 80s bunch, Optimus Prime saved the day after school, and that's why so many love and respect the character to this day. And you can't have Optimus Prime without the deep, John Waynesy voice of Peter Cullen. Just wouldn't be right.
Learn math, specifically, learn the language of math. Then purchase a few books on algorithms and computational theory and data structures and read them. Complete the exercises. Test yourself.
Then, learn how to plan to code while you actually learn to code. For every developer who has the genius to simply sit down and write fully functional, self documenting code I can show you 50 who would be absolutely lost without properly planning what they're doing and how they're going to get there (and 60% of that bunch will still be lost even afterward). Learn about design patterns and object orientation. Familiarize yourself with these concepts and the concepts they refer to. Then when you've got that down, learn about database design and familiarize yourself with at least SQL, because even the smallest programs nowadays tend to use some sort of database connectivity. When you begin to think in terms of how to solve a problem instead of thinking about the syntax you're going to use to solve it, then you're getting there, and it separates the 5 year burnout from the career developer.
Quick example: you're a PHP programmer, and your boss wants you to develop a login system for the company website. What information do you need to have?
Well, is there any existing and perhaps unused functionality in the website architecture that you can use? If not, where's the login info to be stored? How is it to be stored? What database connections do you need? How many people are going to be hitting your site? Do you want to use cookies or sessions or both? Do you want the user to be able to save his password? How do you prevent people who have logged out from viewing content? What if they forget their username? What if they forget their password? Do you want to have multiple levels of administrative access on the website? Do you want to be able to ban ips? If so, do you want to handle it in your code, or do you want to handle it with your OS's firewall? Are you using cookies or sessions or both? Are there best practices you should follow?
And so on and so forth. Some of them are basic, and some require a bit of thought. Even though I can get that done in my sleep, I will still always document what it is I'm going to do and then give it to my client beforehand for him to review so that we're both on the same page and I can justify my time if needed. I also keep an evergrowing book of documentation with me that contains the issues that I ran across on past projects. If I've encountered it in the past (especially if I'm tackling the same type of project as before), the info is in there. It helps me to ask the right questions to clients and to avoid earlier mistakes.
When you develop software professionally, you aren't just writing it for yourself. You're writing it to do what your boss or client want it to do, and so that you and your fellow programmers can understand what your intent was with each part you developed, and so that the people who come after you and have to maintain what you wrote can understand it as well.
Look, you're going to be the instructor, so what you say goes. My advice would be to use an IDE like Eclipse, to take advantage of the benefits the interface has like checking to make sure they have the correct number of parentheses and/or braces and... um... stuff like being able to create, open, and save files in an environment in which they are familiar with.
Here's the thing... if you don't show them how to compile their programs with the IDE... they'll probably never figure it out. Let them use the editor for the programming and the command line for the compiling. That way, you get the best of both worlds, and avoid the headaches that will most assuredly come with trying to stay steadfastly with either one.
Besides, it's not like you're going to be teaching them to design swing interfaces... because if you are, you have no business teaching that class. They should learn to program first, and there's a whole lot of ground regarding design and data structures to cover before UIs should ever be mentioned.
Or I could sit them in front of the PCs currently coming out of manufacturer's factories, and they won't make any more noise than any G5 box or iMac I've ever seen. Just because you like to believe in myths doesn't make them true.
I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the populace would either disagree with the assertion that Apple provides the best hardware or not have a clue either way.
The vast majority of people are going to look at the prices, see that Windows is what they're familiar with, and go with it. Switching from Windows to Apple is downright freaking annoying with all the differences in the UI, and that's going to trump whatever minor improvements in hardware that Apple has made, especially when you factor cost.
You're right. Apple IS a hardware company. But their hardware comes at a premium and their OS is incompatible with most of the software available on the internet or in stores. By the time you get through purchasing a Mac comparable to the big vendors' offerings and purchasing Windows, you've spent the money that could have bought some very nice peripherals instead.
So, if that's the case, then why are there so many camera phones out there?
You also miss an obvious point: camera phones can't take pictures as well as stand alone cameras can. iPods are nothing more than digital media storage devices with an interesting interface and an earphone plug.
iPods are winning the war right now because they're a neat fad item with a decent interface and they hold a ton more data than most cell phones. But what happens when affordable flash media starts holding 10-20 gigs? Still want to bet on the iPod's supremacy when Joe Sixpack will be able to walk by a Cingular kisok and pick up a phone that has that kind of storage, no DRM lock-in, and a service plan that makes it cost about a hundred bucks?
When the great Cola plague of 2012 arrives after a bottling plant leak in Atlanta, Georgia, we will all be consumed by gallons and gallons of Coca cola. If it can eat a steak in 4 days, imagine how much YOU it can eat! The ones who survive will be lucky and/or have figured out stairs or stilts. They will live off of elephants, tree nuts, fruit, and giraffe will become a main course. The bones in our coffins will be disintegrated, and there shall be nothing left!
Of course, geeks have nothing to worry about anyway, seeing as how being a missing link means that you were actually a link to something. Too bad socks and pr0n are killing you guys off in record numbers!
Most Hollywood movies suck because they're driven by marketing and the hype of former success instead of creativity, and the ones that don't suck are tailor made to win Oscars and are overly preachy crap.
It's like wanting to eat beef, but the only two choices are a Big Mac or a filet where the chef sits next to you and criticizes your indelicate palate the entire time you eat it. Why not just stay home and wait until it only costs a few bucks for your entire family to watch the movie? After all, if you don't like it, you haven't wasted 10 bucks, and the entertainment industry is the group that's been at the forefront of pushing all this HD crap down our throats anyway.
If you have an aggressive streak, the ability to lie with a straight face, can communicate effectively, and the ability to remember a few facts and figures, you too can be a top salesman. No education beyond high school necessary.
The qualifications necessary for a sales position and CEO aren't even close to being the same, and they should have checked his qualifications again before ever giving him the top spot. If you're a salesperson and you screw up big time, they can fire you and give your accounts to someone else, but even then you're not likely to hurt the company a great deal. If you're a CEO and you screw up, everyone in the company, and especially the shareholders, feel it.
You contradicted exactly not a fucking thing I said.
The consequences of smoking and drinking aren't that hard to grasp either, yet children tend to flock to both when given a chance. Hell, there are even ad campaigns, warnings on the side of boxes and bottles, and yearly in school education campaigns. It doesn't matter, because for a teenager, there's nothing better than being thought of as an adult. Who needs consequences when you're bulletproof?
Now, here's your very short clue bus rolling into town: it isn't a pseudo-argument to say that kids fucking as early teens is a thing that isn't good for society. It's a fact. No amount of sex education changes that fact. Kids aren't given adult responsibilities because they don't handle them very well. They tend to go for the immediate gratification instead of thinking things through. Hell, most adults don't handle adult responsibility very well, and it's only through seeing enough of their peers fuck up that they actually get it. There's a huge difference between knowing a bunch of facts and learning something.
STDs? Virgins aren't exactly a major carrier. Condoms? How are they gonna get em? Birth control? Yeah, little Susie at 14 is going to go ask her mom to take her to the doctor for a birth control prescription. Fucking? Hell yeah! Fucking feels good and makes little Billy feel like a man and gives him a small amount of emotional control over little Suzie. Who needs all those facts when you can play trailer trash roulette?
Sex for pre-teens and early teens is absolutely self destructive. They don't fully appreciate the consequences of their actions, and the result many times is an early pregnancy, and with it for the girls, the stigma of being a young mother or the slut who had the abortion. And how'd you like to be a guy who takes over child support payments at 18? Even if they go to college, they'll probably have to limit their choices to local schools to stay close to their kid, and their free time will be eaten up by paying for their mistake.
... anyone who can afford a stove like this can afford a personal chef or catering service to cook all their stuff for them.
Besides, about the only complete meal you could cook in that thing is either a microwave dinner or a casserole, and there's only so much spaghetti pie and lasagna you can eat before you start strangling Italians and charging at all things red.
One of the jobs I've had in the past was as a headhunter. The agency charged a markup of between 50-120% for contract employees and 20% of the employee's first year salary for placing a full time employee. The contract markup is a bit high, but the salary markup is pretty standard throughout the industry.
Of that, I got about 12% of the markup for contract employees and about 4% of his salary for placing him.
Never pay a headhunter, and when you use them, use several. They work for the employer, not you, so use them as an extra networking tool instead of absolutely relying on them for your next position. I networked several hundred consultants in less than a year while I was working in that job. To a recruiter, no matter how special you think you are, you're nothing but another name, and you aren't irreplacable. Quit because I hated the grind.
Also, realize that most keep regular hours and aren't going to set up an interview late at night or on weekends unless the client is a really good one or unless they're desperate for the dough. You need to make time to interview, so schedule your lunch around it.
Dialup? That's newfangled shit right there. My Ti 99/4a was more secure than any computer with dialup... except when my sister recorded her Bon Jovi songs over my Adventure tape... but then, no computer is Sisterproof!
... are not so much the cutscenes in games themselves but when game manufacturers market their games by showing NOTHING BUT cutscenes on the TV ads. Check out any of the XBox 360 games' ads other than King Kong to see what I'm talking about.
Some games, like God of War, are impressively enhanced by the cutscenes and how they add to the storyline.
Try architecture. I have a buddy whose class is full of Mac geeks who swear by Apple products for everything tech, but they all have to own PCs because none of the software they need other than the Adobe products is available to them on the Mac. Apparently, they spend all their time screwing with autocad and whatever else they need on a Windows pc, and then run over to the Mac just to make sure the coloring for their project is accurate.
... but I play one occasionally in my spare time (Computer Science degree = computer tech to most people around here).
One of my neighbors ran into the dual headed buzzsaws called SpyAxe and Spywarestrike. Both of these programs are supposedly anti-spyware programs, when in reality, they're hijackers that hold your computer for ransom. Both programs place a flashing error message in your system tray warning you that your computer is infected with spyware and that you need to purchase the full version of their product to get rid of them. These messages fill up a quarter of the screen and constantly pop up. If you uninstall the software, they reinstall themselves on the next reboot. To get rid of SpyAxe, I had to run a custom program in safe mode. For SpywareStrike, I ran across a forum message on Sysinternals that said all I had to do was delete a dll file from the System32 directory.
It would have cost them less to purchase the software than it cost me to fix their machines, but I think they gained a lot of valuable insight when I explained to them what vulnerabilities their computer had and how they could avoid problems in the future. They had no firewall, were using IE, hadn't updated Windows in forever, and were running Norton with an out of date virus definition file.
Most of New Orleans has power, cable, internet, etc., and power is not the government's responsibility in the first place, it's Entergy's responsibility and they're working about as fast as can be expected given the conditions.
... but an overwhelming majority of introverts also claim to be afflicted with Asperger's, datelessness, hairy palms, and large anime figurine collections.
Slashdot Mirror
.... which congressmen have the inside track to invest in an escrow service to act as a go-between for US gamblers and the companies they love to give their money to?
Ever wonder what the electricity bill must be like for most of those big silicon valley companies? Perhaps the oil companies should strike back by claiming that there needs to be an energy consumption tax penalty paid entirely by the companies doing the consuming.
The tech companies would STFU in a split second. They aren't conserving a damned thing and aren't interested in anything other than protecting their own interests, same as any other corporation.
Loading software on someone else's computer without their knowledge is at the very least unethical if not downright illegal in some instances. People who purchase software must agree to the EULA, and people who download software agree to the license via usage.
If I ever found software on my machine that a tech loaded without my knowledge, not only would I never use his services again, but I would consider legal action against him. I have no problem whatsoever in a tech counseling someone on preventative action against future problems and then installing software if the owner agrees, but I have a huge problem with a tech deciding that his activism should take precedent over my right to enter into a license agreement with vendors or developers of my own will.
... but when choosing between a high end PC or a next-gen console, I chose the console. My current PC with its creaky old GeForce 5700 is powerful enough to run almost any game that is currently being emulated by MAME and the other popular console/arcade emulators. I have no interest whatsoever in playing any of the MMORPGs out nowadays... my time to play video games is generally limited to a few nights a week and a few hours on a weekend.
I'm fully confident that in 3-4 years, video cards may be packaged with physics chips and other AI goodness, and when that happens, perhaps PCs will finally be able to do things that the next-gen consoles can't. But right now, with wireless controllers, headsets, and hard drives, there's virtually nothing that a PC can do in a game that a console can't do just as well.
Er... except freeware addons, macros, and some games manufacturers' refusal to give a player complete access to customizing his controls. Ya know, if ya like that sorta thing.
Seriously, though, I'm happy with my purchase, I tend to buy virtually brand new used games when my local store has buy 2 get 1 free sales on used games, and I can't see spending 2-3 grand on a top end gaming rig ever again. I bought a 360, extra controller, 1 year sub to xbox live gold, 6 games, and a widescreen LCD TV to play it on for less than 2 grand. For my money (and mine alone), it was the best purchase I could have made. The only negative about the entire purchase is that the early 360 lineup seems to be filled with way too many FPSes, with a noticable lack of games in the platform or arcade genres.
He loved the way the Duke always came out on top. Loved the way Wayne's characters acted and lead and showed men how to be men.
And all that stuff.
And while I've never watched a John Wayne movie, I tip my hat to them despite how cheesy they may have been, because I loved and respected my grandfather and those movies were the ones we bought for him when he was suffering from cancer at the end of his days. He was in obvious pain, but he enjoyed them nonetheless.
Optimus Prime is the John Wayne of the generation who grew up in the 80s. Sure, there was Duke from GI Joe, but he was usurped in midstream by a general. There was Lion-o, but the Thundercats were too wierd for most kids to take seriously. There was He-Man, but he was never anything more than a bad Superman re-interpretation.
But Optimus, man... Optimus was a truck and an action figure all in one. And when he spoke, he did so with conviction on the side of right and he used his leadership to defeat those who would harm others. And even when he was wrong, he eventually did the right thing. I don't own any "toys" anymore. I mean, I have recreational objects that I use to unwind with, but nothing that a kid would understand or find interesting. Except one. My 20th anniversary edition Optimus sits proudly on my desk. The original toy looked little like the cartoon character. But this one? 60 bucks and it doesn't even matter... Optimus looks like he shoulda. He's a kickass poseable paperweight.
When Optimus died in the movie, I was a kid, and I was upset. Who was this Rodimus dude, and what did he do with our hero? See, even with the neat futuristic car and the neat flaming paint job, Hot Rod and Rodimus just weren't as cool. Didn't matter that he could fight Galvatron and kick some Swoop ass... he wasn't the hero. He wasn't the legend. And when Optimus came back, he died saving the universe again. And then he came back for more.
Children today will tell their kids about the time they saw Kobe Bryant score 81. They'll swear Duane Wade was the best ever. But they never saw Jordan play. They never watched Magic pass. But I never got to see Wilt in his heyday, or see Oscar Robertson average a triple double. They'll claim that LaDainian Tomlinson is the best RB to ever lace them up because of his fancy moves, but they never got a chance to watch Barry spin the way I never got a chance to see Jim Brown knock people over.
Everyone grows up and has their own legends to tell tales about. For the 80s bunch, Optimus Prime saved the day after school, and that's why so many love and respect the character to this day. And you can't have Optimus Prime without the deep, John Waynesy voice of Peter Cullen. Just wouldn't be right.
Learn math, specifically, learn the language of math. Then purchase a few books on algorithms and computational theory and data structures and read them. Complete the exercises. Test yourself.
Then, learn how to plan to code while you actually learn to code. For every developer who has the genius to simply sit down and write fully functional, self documenting code I can show you 50 who would be absolutely lost without properly planning what they're doing and how they're going to get there (and 60% of that bunch will still be lost even afterward). Learn about design patterns and object orientation. Familiarize yourself with these concepts and the concepts they refer to. Then when you've got that down, learn about database design and familiarize yourself with at least SQL, because even the smallest programs nowadays tend to use some sort of database connectivity. When you begin to think in terms of how to solve a problem instead of thinking about the syntax you're going to use to solve it, then you're getting there, and it separates the 5 year burnout from the career developer.
Quick example: you're a PHP programmer, and your boss wants you to develop a login system for the company website. What information do you need to have?
Well, is there any existing and perhaps unused functionality in the website architecture that you can use? If not, where's the login info to be stored? How is it to be stored? What database connections do you need? How many people are going to be hitting your site? Do you want to use cookies or sessions or both? Do you want the user to be able to save his password? How do you prevent people who have logged out from viewing content? What if they forget their username? What if they forget their password? Do you want to have multiple levels of administrative access on the website? Do you want to be able to ban ips? If so, do you want to handle it in your code, or do you want to handle it with your OS's firewall? Are you using cookies or sessions or both? Are there best practices you should follow?
And so on and so forth. Some of them are basic, and some require a bit of thought. Even though I can get that done in my sleep, I will still always document what it is I'm going to do and then give it to my client beforehand for him to review so that we're both on the same page and I can justify my time if needed. I also keep an evergrowing book of documentation with me that contains the issues that I ran across on past projects. If I've encountered it in the past (especially if I'm tackling the same type of project as before), the info is in there. It helps me to ask the right questions to clients and to avoid earlier mistakes.
When you develop software professionally, you aren't just writing it for yourself. You're writing it to do what your boss or client want it to do, and so that you and your fellow programmers can understand what your intent was with each part you developed, and so that the people who come after you and have to maintain what you wrote can understand it as well.
Look, you're going to be the instructor, so what you say goes. My advice would be to use an IDE like Eclipse, to take advantage of the benefits the interface has like checking to make sure they have the correct number of parentheses and/or braces and... um... stuff like being able to create, open, and save files in an environment in which they are familiar with.
Here's the thing... if you don't show them how to compile their programs with the IDE... they'll probably never figure it out. Let them use the editor for the programming and the command line for the compiling. That way, you get the best of both worlds, and avoid the headaches that will most assuredly come with trying to stay steadfastly with either one.
Besides, it's not like you're going to be teaching them to design swing interfaces... because if you are, you have no business teaching that class. They should learn to program first, and there's a whole lot of ground regarding design and data structures to cover before UIs should ever be mentioned.
Or I could sit them in front of the PCs currently coming out of manufacturer's factories, and they won't make any more noise than any G5 box or iMac I've ever seen. Just because you like to believe in myths doesn't make them true.
Your argument is one of the lamest ones around.
I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the populace would either disagree with the assertion that Apple provides the best hardware or not have a clue either way.
The vast majority of people are going to look at the prices, see that Windows is what they're familiar with, and go with it. Switching from Windows to Apple is downright freaking annoying with all the differences in the UI, and that's going to trump whatever minor improvements in hardware that Apple has made, especially when you factor cost.
You're right. Apple IS a hardware company. But their hardware comes at a premium and their OS is incompatible with most of the software available on the internet or in stores. By the time you get through purchasing a Mac comparable to the big vendors' offerings and purchasing Windows, you've spent the money that could have bought some very nice peripherals instead.
So, if that's the case, then why are there so many camera phones out there?
You also miss an obvious point: camera phones can't take pictures as well as stand alone cameras can. iPods are nothing more than digital media storage devices with an interesting interface and an earphone plug.
iPods are winning the war right now because they're a neat fad item with a decent interface and they hold a ton more data than most cell phones. But what happens when affordable flash media starts holding 10-20 gigs? Still want to bet on the iPod's supremacy when Joe Sixpack will be able to walk by a Cingular kisok and pick up a phone that has that kind of storage, no DRM lock-in, and a service plan that makes it cost about a hundred bucks?
When the great Cola plague of 2012 arrives after a bottling plant leak in Atlanta, Georgia, we will all be consumed by gallons and gallons of Coca cola. If it can eat a steak in 4 days, imagine how much YOU it can eat! The ones who survive will be lucky and/or have figured out stairs or stilts. They will live off of elephants, tree nuts, fruit, and giraffe will become a main course. The bones in our coffins will be disintegrated, and there shall be nothing left!
Of course, geeks have nothing to worry about anyway, seeing as how being a missing link means that you were actually a link to something. Too bad socks and pr0n are killing you guys off in record numbers!
Most Hollywood movies suck because they're driven by marketing and the hype of former success instead of creativity, and the ones that don't suck are tailor made to win Oscars and are overly preachy crap.
It's like wanting to eat beef, but the only two choices are a Big Mac or a filet where the chef sits next to you and criticizes your indelicate palate the entire time you eat it. Why not just stay home and wait until it only costs a few bucks for your entire family to watch the movie? After all, if you don't like it, you haven't wasted 10 bucks, and the entertainment industry is the group that's been at the forefront of pushing all this HD crap down our throats anyway.
But moviemaking isn't about business. It's about art!
So... what part of the art scene is Jar Jar from? Retarded anthropomorphic jamaican frog art?
If you have an aggressive streak, the ability to lie with a straight face, can communicate effectively, and the ability to remember a few facts and figures, you too can be a top salesman. No education beyond high school necessary.
The qualifications necessary for a sales position and CEO aren't even close to being the same, and they should have checked his qualifications again before ever giving him the top spot. If you're a salesperson and you screw up big time, they can fire you and give your accounts to someone else, but even then you're not likely to hurt the company a great deal. If you're a CEO and you screw up, everyone in the company, and especially the shareholders, feel it.
You contradicted exactly not a fucking thing I said.
The consequences of smoking and drinking aren't that hard to grasp either, yet children tend to flock to both when given a chance. Hell, there are even ad campaigns, warnings on the side of boxes and bottles, and yearly in school education campaigns. It doesn't matter, because for a teenager, there's nothing better than being thought of as an adult. Who needs consequences when you're bulletproof?
Now, here's your very short clue bus rolling into town: it isn't a pseudo-argument to say that kids fucking as early teens is a thing that isn't good for society. It's a fact. No amount of sex education changes that fact. Kids aren't given adult responsibilities because they don't handle them very well. They tend to go for the immediate gratification instead of thinking things through. Hell, most adults don't handle adult responsibility very well, and it's only through seeing enough of their peers fuck up that they actually get it. There's a huge difference between knowing a bunch of facts and learning something.
STDs? Virgins aren't exactly a major carrier. Condoms? How are they gonna get em? Birth control? Yeah, little Susie at 14 is going to go ask her mom to take her to the doctor for a birth control prescription. Fucking? Hell yeah! Fucking feels good and makes little Billy feel like a man and gives him a small amount of emotional control over little Suzie. Who needs all those facts when you can play trailer trash roulette?
Are you really that dense?
Sex for pre-teens and early teens is absolutely self destructive. They don't fully appreciate the consequences of their actions, and the result many times is an early pregnancy, and with it for the girls, the stigma of being a young mother or the slut who had the abortion. And how'd you like to be a guy who takes over child support payments at 18? Even if they go to college, they'll probably have to limit their choices to local schools to stay close to their kid, and their free time will be eaten up by paying for their mistake.
... anyone who can afford a stove like this can afford a personal chef or catering service to cook all their stuff for them.
Besides, about the only complete meal you could cook in that thing is either a microwave dinner or a casserole, and there's only so much spaghetti pie and lasagna you can eat before you start strangling Italians and charging at all things red.
One of the jobs I've had in the past was as a headhunter. The agency charged a markup of between 50-120% for contract employees and 20% of the employee's first year salary for placing a full time employee. The contract markup is a bit high, but the salary markup is pretty standard throughout the industry.
Of that, I got about 12% of the markup for contract employees and about 4% of his salary for placing him.
Never pay a headhunter, and when you use them, use several. They work for the employer, not you, so use them as an extra networking tool instead of absolutely relying on them for your next position. I networked several hundred consultants in less than a year while I was working in that job. To a recruiter, no matter how special you think you are, you're nothing but another name, and you aren't irreplacable. Quit because I hated the grind.
Also, realize that most keep regular hours and aren't going to set up an interview late at night or on weekends unless the client is a really good one or unless they're desperate for the dough. You need to make time to interview, so schedule your lunch around it.
Dialup? That's newfangled shit right there. My Ti 99/4a was more secure than any computer with dialup... except when my sister recorded her Bon Jovi songs over my Adventure tape... but then, no computer is Sisterproof!
... are not so much the cutscenes in games themselves but when game manufacturers market their games by showing NOTHING BUT cutscenes on the TV ads. Check out any of the XBox 360 games' ads other than King Kong to see what I'm talking about.
Some games, like God of War, are impressively enhanced by the cutscenes and how they add to the storyline.
Try architecture. I have a buddy whose class is full of Mac geeks who swear by Apple products for everything tech, but they all have to own PCs because none of the software they need other than the Adobe products is available to them on the Mac. Apparently, they spend all their time screwing with autocad and whatever else they need on a Windows pc, and then run over to the Mac just to make sure the coloring for their project is accurate.
... but I play one occasionally in my spare time (Computer Science degree = computer tech to most people around here).
One of my neighbors ran into the dual headed buzzsaws called SpyAxe and Spywarestrike. Both of these programs are supposedly anti-spyware programs, when in reality, they're hijackers that hold your computer for ransom. Both programs place a flashing error message in your system tray warning you that your computer is infected with spyware and that you need to purchase the full version of their product to get rid of them. These messages fill up a quarter of the screen and constantly pop up. If you uninstall the software, they reinstall themselves on the next reboot. To get rid of SpyAxe, I had to run a custom program in safe mode. For SpywareStrike, I ran across a forum message on Sysinternals that said all I had to do was delete a dll file from the System32 directory.
It would have cost them less to purchase the software than it cost me to fix their machines, but I think they gained a lot of valuable insight when I explained to them what vulnerabilities their computer had and how they could avoid problems in the future. They had no firewall, were using IE, hadn't updated Windows in forever, and were running Norton with an out of date virus definition file.
Luckily, they also follow directions.
We already have female centric software. It's called shareware, and it comes complete with nag screens.
Most of New Orleans has power, cable, internet, etc., and power is not the government's responsibility in the first place, it's Entergy's responsibility and they're working about as fast as can be expected given the conditions.
... but an overwhelming majority of introverts also claim to be afflicted with Asperger's, datelessness, hairy palms, and large anime figurine collections.