Whose fault is that? The Church's? You get real. Use some common sense. The Church gets blamed because of faulty parenting? Wait, isn't the general rule of thumb around Slashdot that the government or society is not responsible for the mayhem of children but rather, it falls on the shoulders of parents? But oh..I'm sorry, when it has to do with religion, all of a sudden everyone else should be blamed and not the parent? Ridiculous. If mom doesn't understand her own faith it is she who is at fault and I feel sorry for the kid. Four boys in my family, my parents are practicing Catholics and we were all given a choice. 3 of the 4 boys were confirmed, one was not until much later when he did so on his own accord after college, not at 12 when the rest of us were confirmed. This is how it should be and maybe in the US things are different, but in Canada, this is generally how the issue is perceived and the sacrament executed.
It might not be a legal requirement, but the parental, social, and school pressure to be confirmed is very great. Big bribes in the form of confirmation presents certainly don't help in having someone make an honest judgment. I completely agree. Once again, this comes down to uninformed parents/teachers/friends etc who don't really understand their faith. This is not something one should just walk blindly through and just "do" because everyone else is, or because of mom and dad, or Fr. Joe etc. The sad reality is most folks do do this blindly and now with the age decreasing to between grades 2 and 3 (merging more closely with the Eastern churches) the ability to formulate a reasonable decision is made more difficult. Still, from a legal/theological/moral stand-point, the Church itself wants people who want to be Catholics. One only has to read more than a dozen quotes from the past year wherein the Pope states he would rather have a streamlined faithful vs. an abundance of luke-warm lemmings.
How is that? Theology as a discipline has certain forms for researching. As does science. Theology is able to use what is known as the Generalized Empirical Method in order to formulize hypotheses which can be tested within the framework of the discipline. The GEM is akin to the scientific method though for fields such as philosophy and theology.
"GEM is considered critical realism. By realism, [Lonergan] affirmed that we make true judgments of fact and of value, and by critical, he based knowing and valuing in a critique of consciousness. GEM traces to their roots in consciousness the sources of all the meanings and values that make up personality, social orders, and historical developments. More information is available at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lonergan
The point is that even though you may dismiss religion and/or faith (since a staunch adherence to science as something that might expound on meaning is nothing more than a religion in and of itself) the fact remains that there is flaky theology and there is solid theology based on principles of academic research etc. The fact that theology is one of the eldest (if not the eldest) of scholarly pursuits demonstrates that you can't comment without being entirely biased. Instead, you troll because you can't come up with anything concrete to add.
All backed up with references to reports by independent firms and justice organizations which document the prevalence within the CC and those of teachers etc.
The point then stands, the comment should not have been modded insightful even if the person had mod points, funny sure, but not insightful.
Wow more ignorance from you! In fact, every Catholic before becoming a full member, has the opportunity to turn away from the faith if they so choose. This is called the sacrament of confirmation. In the Western Church, confirmation was held during the transition between grade 7 and 8 or 8 and 9, when children become adolescents and questioning all authority begins. The sanctity of life is most certainly the reason against contraception. One can theorize about conspiracy all day long, I could in fact turn the tables, debate that you are in fact a communist who wants to limit the population in order to have greater control and/or a greedy corrupt libertarian who wants nothing more to look after his own skin vs. helping his fellow man. So easy it is to throw mud when one is ignorant.
The reason it can work for Catholics is because Catholics should not be biblical literalists. Certainly, the Catholic Church does not espouse this form of belief. In fact, the Catholic Church has at its foundation three bases of belief: 1) the Bible, 2) the works/teachings of the Patristics 3) the Magisterium. For Catholics, the NT documents the fulfillment of the OT prophecies by Jesus. However, the notion of a Church existing within history requires human thought/activity. Human thought relies on rational thought. Of course, when there has been no documented evidence for something, as in science, a reigning theory will become the accepted knowledge base until something superior comes along. The Catholic Church, though flogged repeatedly for the dismissals of Galileo and Copernicus (a Catholic priest no less!)the Church is quite advanced in terms of its scientific investigations and owns/operates some of the most advanced facilities in the world (most famous is the Vatican Observatory). The grandfather of genetics was a Catholic monk, the first major proponent of the Big Bang was a Catholic priest etc. There is no cognitive dissonance when one understands the difference between dogma, doctrines, teachings and theories. Dogmas are those things held to be wholly true, akin to a mathematical law. A doctrine is something that is firmly held but can be changed. Teachings are usually more individualistic, notions that a Catholic is not bound to believe (as opposed to dogmas and doctrines) and theories are just that, theories.
Any dogma that is held, is 100% unverifiable by science. In this way, there can never be any cognitive dissonance. Doctrines can cause some problems so when science adequately proves its position (heliocentric theory, big bang, evolution etc) then the Catholic Church will adjust its doctrines and teachings. The problem is that too many Catholics are lackadaisical in their faith and further perpetuate ignorance to those who are not Catholic and so on and so on.
Because the Catholic Church was the center of thought for so many years in the Western World, it took long strides in turning those with power to new ideas that would ultimately lessen the control they had. Any control they did possess was an abuse of power, corruption and all that, and of course not ever pope, cardinal and bishop fell victim to it, but those that did really left a dark stain on the Church's reputation. However, those who make an effort to know, will come quickly to the conclusion that the Church works with the scientific community, not against it. Many of the leading universities of the world are either Catholic and/or have Catholic faculty members who are experts in their field (Jesuits for instance are often professors or science first then of theology. Jesuits are often pushed to hold multiple doctoral degrees and many are only accepted after they have a first PhD in something other than theology or philosophy. See Berkley or Georgetown for instance)
And you would have been an uninformed asshat for doing so. Do a search on the statistics of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy and compare that with rabbis and other Christian clergy, not to mention hockey coaches, teachers, parents, uncles etc. One would quickly learn that the stats on Catholic priests molesting boys is far lower than nearly all of those listed. Once again, it is the uninformed media that enjoys pushing an agenda in order to generate revenue. Presently Christianity is a wonderful target for the media and in the US, among the Christian churches, the Catholic Church is held under much contempt by their Christian brethren. Just head to the "Bible Belt" and in about 2 minutes you can make up a list of 100 uninformed completely erroneous points about the Catholic faith. All that being said, there are about 60 million Catholics in the US (mostly on the East Coast) and a good proportion are/were heavy into donations. The Catholic Church owns or owned quite a bit of property and though not rich, had a fair amount of net worth because of the real estate. Prime pickings for lawyers. I'm not downplaying the horrid victimization of those young boys and young men by those heinous seminarians/priests and the cover ups that ensued, but certainly the numbers have been dramatized and it took a neutral third party firm during the Boston trials to confirm what the Catholic Church was stating, that in deed, the numbers were much lower than being propagandized by the media and that the vast majority of crimes were committed by a handful of priests.
So insightful? No. Funny, for some I suppose. But certainly not insightful.
I had a very abusive thesis adviser (verbal harassment). Though not entirely the same as above, the fact that I technically worked as an employee in his lab (my grant and scholarships paid 100% of school fees and lab expenses, not to mention a good portion of my living expenses, but I needed a bit more cash and we had agreed early on he would pay). The university was well aware of his antics, particularly given that he had only had one successful candidate actually graduate in 10 years (most would bail). Yet, they did nothing, because he was the associate dean and was able to bring in quite a bit of money for his research. I could have kept climbing higher and higher up the chain of "boards" to complain to, but honestly, if I had to work with the guy for 3-5 years, would it be worth it? No. So I too left, and found a much better environment at a different school. It killed one year of my life, but it was worth it in the end. Some may view this as cowardly, others will agree with my move. The point is that I had no real choice. The guy was a dick, he would remain so and having a grievances filed against him by me, and him falling victim to whatever punishment handed down would have only made our working relationship that much more stressful. The university should simply suspend him for a time, and/or restrict his capacity to accept graduate students (until his anger management kicks in). His funding will be cut, it will be a hard lesson, but these "grievance boards" do little else than screw the student in the long term.
What about heat issues with the screen down? I've wondered about this for a time. I have a MacBook Pro and am buying an external monitor but thought...I may go double screen vs. just closing the lid just in case I start running the system hard and I get key imprinting or screen warping or something. Would this even happen?
The point is that the hardware enthusiast market is pretty small compared to big business and the likes of Dell. They could have, as they usually do, flip the bird to this small demographic and "forced" gamers and the like to shell out money for the new OS (or reduce them to piracy, whatever the combination). They didn't though, and in fact, they took the criticism to heart, fast and did so before the official release.
If an alcoholic who batters his wife stops drinking, apologizes for past beatings and doesn't do it again, does he not warrant some applause for his efforts? Of course he does. Positive reenforcement often leads to more postive works. With the news that MS is considering working with Novell...maybe we could see MS Office for Linux! I'm not so blind to think MS doesn't have selfish ends to motivate their means, but so long as there is some benefit to us, without addition restrictions, I'm all for it. So today, the gamers and hardware enthusiasts have been recognized, maybe the *nix folks will be in the future, and Office will run on Suse and later ported to other distros. Or maybe not, and this is a one off. Still, for those gamers, this is a good thing.
this is a good thing no two ways about it. Sure, they shouldn't have limited the OS in the first place, but the fact they are so quickly changing this is a step in the right direction. Given what I have just read about the EULA, I won't be touching Vista, but for those that seriosly need their game fix and DirectX v10 is where it is at for them, at least they can buy that new 6 gajillion dollar gfx card (or 4 of them) and go nuts without worrying their Windows install is going to puke on them. I'm no MS fan and even less of a Windows fan, but when something is done right, it is best to applaude the move. So, I applaude you MS for doing the right thing, and before Vista is officially released!
This is called price fixing and this is illegal in the US and most places in the Western World. Apple can enforce the MSRP in adprint only but they can't enforce a policy of no discounts and this is easily witnessed by smaller retailers in Canada at least that sell for a few dollars less than the Apple Stores or Best Buys. Others of course seller higher, but the end result is, they can't cut anyone off for selling below MSRP provided the prices aren't advertised. Otherwise, they enjoy the pangs of lawyers feeding on their fat 10B bank account balance.
Where do you live that Rogers is offering 1 MB for $35? I use Rogers and they max out at 6Mb for 54.95 (less for packages) for residential and even I as a beta tester max out at 8 Mb which = about 1 MB for 54.95.
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by product tying. In this case, Apple offers a technical solution not simply SW, nor simply HW. They offer a product that is all in one. They are locking in to the hardware because it is part of their business model. If you don't want to run Mac OS, you don't have to, you can run *nix, Windows etc. If you want a Mac, you buy a Mac and you have the luxury (if one determines this is so) of using their OS on their HW. If Windows came out with HW, they too could do this without it being a monopoly. Of course, the reason MS is ever termed a monopoly is precisely BECAUSE they permitted their OS to easily run on nearly any IBM clone out there. This was to their advantage. Yet, if everyone used open doc formats, it would not matter at all what HW/SW combination one used, instead it would be left up to the user to determine what experience they want. Now Apply has decided to use "PC" hardware instead of Motorola chips, they run Intels, equating them to just another "PC" in the box, but that is not so. They have tight restrictions on the HW in their boxes and they write drivers for that HW only. They sell the system all in one and that is that.
What may occur is a separate box consisting of the GFX card, Physics Card, AI card, PSU for the above along with supporting memory modules just to power existing games. Mulitple cards consisting of mulitple chips with multiple cores will likely overpower the common case. Thus for the hardcore games, a separate box wired to the main rig could be the norm. Thus, for the average home user, we will get smaller and smaller (Mac mini et. al) but for the gamer we'll see module system, with multiple boxes and multiple PSU's to help with cooling and overall performance goodness.
McFarlane is reknowned for pushing the limits of art in all he does. When he first hit the comic scene on a grand scale doing Amazing Spiderman, he quite literally redefined the artist's role. Before him, only Art Adams had pushed the limits so much in the late 80's. Once McFarlane got too big for his britches, he left to do his own Spiderman series and finally off to Image to do Spawn. Once at Image, he did draw and write Spawn for a time until he became more interested in the business side of things, working towards a toy company (the premier action figure company in my opinion) with toys that were incredibly detailed on a level nearly unsurpassed. They are now the standard other figures are judged by today. He then moved into the realm of animation, with his hit Spawn cartoon and even doing some videos for the likes of Pearl Jam. His talent and business selse could really push the boundaries of in game art. However, as much as he would like to be, he is not the greatest write, but enter RA Salvatore and we have a very well respected Fantasy writer. The two merging their right brain talents really offers this start up most companies lacked. Artistic direction. The key will be in whom they hire and the types of games they are interested in developing.
I don't know much about the baseball legend, but having his name and money behind the project can't be a bad thing. Let's hope that this is not vaporware in the making, but that they do come out with at least one really hot and solid game, soon!
This could be very very bad. If this method of delivery becomes the norm, perhaps diminishing hard copy mediums to the niche market, movie studios might play "Never Ending Editor" and continue to edit the films as they see fit to the detriment of us, the fans. If Lucas has his way, Greedo would shoot first, not simulataneously and certainly not getting burned without a hint of one off. No, Han would shoot second, and not be considered a murdering space pirate. But I like my space priates to be a murdering lot! So do many others.
What happens when everything is streamed? We the customers lose any control. At least once we own a hard copy of a film, we have it for life. This is one of the reasons vinyl is still very successful (outselling both SACD and DVD-A combined for the last 5 years). Right now, downloads are rippable to CD's or DVD's. If they catch on to a great extent, DRM will be included that will prohibit this and only the geek will find the work arounds. Yet, if the music and movie industry were to offer a flat rate for total access to their catalogue, most would not go through the hassle of ripping. Imagine $50/month for all music and movies streamed when you want wherever you are! The deal? Streaming only. Today Han shoots first, tomorrow he shoots second, the next week he shoots simultaneously until Han is no longer even in the scene. An extremem perspective maybe but not something I would put past either of the cartels.
If you are a back-up nut then back-up your own DVD's! This is fair use in Canada and perhaps?? in the US. You would likely be able to get better quality too by using a lower compression or none at all. Buying from Amazon or iTunes won't do much if your HD craps out. So what will you do? Back them up to DVD's? Gets rather pointless. It woudl be far better to spend the same amount or a bit more on a rather uncompressed (though still compressed) version of the movie, hard copy, case, extras, and then do the back up yourself.
A typical movie, if compressed by half, will fit on a standard 4.5 GB DVD (unit cost $.10 without case). Immediately we see that the cost is greater than purchasing the real thing and the quality is much less, not only in terms of picture quality, but also in terms of packaging etc.
So far, this is not much different from music right? True. However! Many ISP's cap the downloads to 100 GB's/month if not less. Few spots in the US and Canada don't have capped downloads, where the iTunes store will first be releasing the movies. This means, that for those that want to buy a good amount DVD's they will have to pay a premium once they surpass their download limit. My ISP charges $1/GB over my 100 GB limit..or I can opt to get throttled down to dial-up speeds. Convenient...
Regardless, the cost of entry is simply not on par with downloading music wherein one does not have to wait hours for the download (usually) one has near immediate gratification. As well, with the plethora of DAP products, folks don't necessarily require (or rather desire) the jewel case, cover art, liner notes etc. Yet, with DVD's the vast majority WILL be ripping to a DVD and playing in their home unit watching on their TV, not on some tiny screen on a DAP.
With prices in the $10-20 range, only the diehards will go for this, or those with massive uncapped pipes (like sysadmins at a corp or university). Drop the cost to $5 and people will be far more eager to wait for the downloads, take their chances with their ISP quirks because $5 for the new Pirate of the Carribean movie is going to be far cheaper than the 15-20 they'll pay at Best Buy for the first month of its release.
Those buying PS3's are not going to be playing BRD's on them at least not in the numbers you are indicating. In fact, many times, when folks have very HD TV's, the tv is in a family room separate from the gaming tv. When parents are able to drop 700 on a console, more often than not, the kids have their own setup and the parents have their own. Sure, 6 million or whatever will be out there, but they won't be there for movies, they'll be there for games. HD DVD has a better chance of surviving when all new DVD players are HD DVD and they are 100% backward compatible with all old DVD's. So when ma and pa Jones go to their local Walmart to replace their $50 DVD player, they will be sold an HD DVD player. It still says DVD but it is "improved!" They won't know the difference but they will own an HD DVD player and sooner than later, all new releases will be HD DVD...and again they won't know the difference. They do however understand the Blue Ray =! DVD and the name alone will kill it off from widespread acceptance. The war is far from won, but HD DVD has a far better chance worldwide of succeeding, that is, if either format has a chance at all.
This is how it worked for me for law school. For certain courses, we were locked into various codes that cost $$$$ but for the most part, students would receive 2-300 pages of "notes" from the professor at the beginning of the year. These notes were exclusively what we needed for the course save for said codes and additional commentaries. The bonus was that the codes and commentaries were useful over the 3 years and for many many courses, not to mention the bar as as reference sources for the future. Yet, in terms of getting that A, one really just needed to master the course notes that were in essence a well layed out text book in most cases. Thankfully these too became wonderful resources. Each student would then be given a bill at the end of the semester letting them know what their cost was. The cost was simply the photocopying cost/printing costs. Though the notes were often available in the library, no student would bother to take them out and go to Mailboxes or something similar because we were getting charged less than going there. Overall it was a very very good way of getting what we needed without screwing us all. When I did genetics and biochemical eng, it was the whole 100+/book, 5-8/semester 3x a year. No thanks. Outrageous with little resale. Bleh. Evil.
What are the advantages to this? I just purchased the macbook pro 2.16 in late June. Should I consider selling and buying a new Macbook Pro? Should I see a major performance hike? I run an AMD X2 for the desktop system and I do run Ubuntu DD 64 bit, but it is often quite a pain driver-wise with little speed improvements over 32 bit. Vista Beta 64 bit is abysmal, will 64 bit Leopard really take full advantage? I'm I going to be stuck with driver problems or software hiccups?
Natant speed and VM corruption for starters. I had used Parallels for near a month until my VM file got corrupted and I had to reinstall XP. It was not to my liking. Not saying this is typical, or that using boot camp can't produce similar corruptions, but thus far, bootcamp is working better for me.
Speed: No way Parallels can come close to natant use of the hardware like XP with bootcamp. In fact, with only 1 GB of ram in the most recent MacBook Pro, and XP far outperforms OS X (yes I know..I need dual simms, my next one is on the way).
GPU: XP with bootcamp can fully use the ATI card but under Parallels, at least for the moment, their driver locks one into a castrated version of what XP on a Mac is capable of.
Parallels however is awesome for that "gotta have it" app but one doesn't need to be in Windows and/or need the extra performance boosts from running truly natant. I hate being in Windows, but when I'm doing serious work, which requires stability, bootcamp is what works best for me.
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Whose fault is that? The Church's? You get real. Use some common sense. The Church gets blamed because of faulty parenting? Wait, isn't the general rule of thumb around Slashdot that the government or society is not responsible for the mayhem of children but rather, it falls on the shoulders of parents? But oh..I'm sorry, when it has to do with religion, all of a sudden everyone else should be blamed and not the parent? Ridiculous. If mom doesn't understand her own faith it is she who is at fault and I feel sorry for the kid. Four boys in my family, my parents are practicing Catholics and we were all given a choice. 3 of the 4 boys were confirmed, one was not until much later when he did so on his own accord after college, not at 12 when the rest of us were confirmed. This is how it should be and maybe in the US things are different, but in Canada, this is generally how the issue is perceived and the sacrament executed.
How is that? Theology as a discipline has certain forms for researching. As does science. Theology is able to use what is known as the Generalized Empirical Method in order to formulize hypotheses which can be tested within the framework of the discipline. The GEM is akin to the scientific method though for fields such as philosophy and theology.
"GEM is considered critical realism. By realism, [Lonergan] affirmed that we make true judgments of fact and of value, and by critical, he based knowing and valuing in a critique of consciousness. GEM traces to their roots in consciousness the sources of all the meanings and values that make up personality, social orders, and historical developments. More information is available at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lonergan
The point is that even though you may dismiss religion and/or faith (since a staunch adherence to science as something that might expound on meaning is nothing more than a religion in and of itself) the fact remains that there is flaky theology and there is solid theology based on principles of academic research etc. The fact that theology is one of the eldest (if not the eldest) of scholarly pursuits demonstrates that you can't comment without being entirely biased. Instead, you troll because you can't come up with anything concrete to add.
Sure modded flamebait for what? An alternate opinion based on fact? Hmm, does one require evidence then not to be branded? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_sex_ab use_cases
All backed up with references to reports by independent firms and justice organizations which document the prevalence within the CC and those of teachers etc.
The point then stands, the comment should not have been modded insightful even if the person had mod points, funny sure, but not insightful.
Wow more ignorance from you! In fact, every Catholic before becoming a full member, has the opportunity to turn away from the faith if they so choose. This is called the sacrament of confirmation. In the Western Church, confirmation was held during the transition between grade 7 and 8 or 8 and 9, when children become adolescents and questioning all authority begins. The sanctity of life is most certainly the reason against contraception. One can theorize about conspiracy all day long, I could in fact turn the tables, debate that you are in fact a communist who wants to limit the population in order to have greater control and/or a greedy corrupt libertarian who wants nothing more to look after his own skin vs. helping his fellow man. So easy it is to throw mud when one is ignorant.
The reason it can work for Catholics is because Catholics should not be biblical literalists. Certainly, the Catholic Church does not espouse this form of belief. In fact, the Catholic Church has at its foundation three bases of belief: 1) the Bible, 2) the works/teachings of the Patristics 3) the Magisterium. For Catholics, the NT documents the fulfillment of the OT prophecies by Jesus. However, the notion of a Church existing within history requires human thought/activity. Human thought relies on rational thought. Of course, when there has been no documented evidence for something, as in science, a reigning theory will become the accepted knowledge base until something superior comes along. The Catholic Church, though flogged repeatedly for the dismissals of Galileo and Copernicus (a Catholic priest no less!)the Church is quite advanced in terms of its scientific investigations and owns/operates some of the most advanced facilities in the world (most famous is the Vatican Observatory). The grandfather of genetics was a Catholic monk, the first major proponent of the Big Bang was a Catholic priest etc. There is no cognitive dissonance when one understands the difference between dogma, doctrines, teachings and theories. Dogmas are those things held to be wholly true, akin to a mathematical law. A doctrine is something that is firmly held but can be changed. Teachings are usually more individualistic, notions that a Catholic is not bound to believe (as opposed to dogmas and doctrines) and theories are just that, theories.
Any dogma that is held, is 100% unverifiable by science. In this way, there can never be any cognitive dissonance. Doctrines can cause some problems so when science adequately proves its position (heliocentric theory, big bang, evolution etc) then the Catholic Church will adjust its doctrines and teachings. The problem is that too many Catholics are lackadaisical in their faith and further perpetuate ignorance to those who are not Catholic and so on and so on.
Because the Catholic Church was the center of thought for so many years in the Western World, it took long strides in turning those with power to new ideas that would ultimately lessen the control they had. Any control they did possess was an abuse of power, corruption and all that, and of course not ever pope, cardinal and bishop fell victim to it, but those that did really left a dark stain on the Church's reputation. However, those who make an effort to know, will come quickly to the conclusion that the Church works with the scientific community, not against it. Many of the leading universities of the world are either Catholic and/or have Catholic faculty members who are experts in their field (Jesuits for instance are often professors or science first then of theology. Jesuits are often pushed to hold multiple doctoral degrees and many are only accepted after they have a first PhD in something other than theology or philosophy. See Berkley or Georgetown for instance)
And you would have been an uninformed asshat for doing so. Do a search on the statistics of sexual abuse among Catholic clergy and compare that with rabbis and other Christian clergy, not to mention hockey coaches, teachers, parents, uncles etc. One would quickly learn that the stats on Catholic priests molesting boys is far lower than nearly all of those listed. Once again, it is the uninformed media that enjoys pushing an agenda in order to generate revenue. Presently Christianity is a wonderful target for the media and in the US, among the Christian churches, the Catholic Church is held under much contempt by their Christian brethren. Just head to the "Bible Belt" and in about 2 minutes you can make up a list of 100 uninformed completely erroneous points about the Catholic faith. All that being said, there are about 60 million Catholics in the US (mostly on the East Coast) and a good proportion are/were heavy into donations. The Catholic Church owns or owned quite a bit of property and though not rich, had a fair amount of net worth because of the real estate. Prime pickings for lawyers. I'm not downplaying the horrid victimization of those young boys and young men by those heinous seminarians/priests and the cover ups that ensued, but certainly the numbers have been dramatized and it took a neutral third party firm during the Boston trials to confirm what the Catholic Church was stating, that in deed, the numbers were much lower than being propagandized by the media and that the vast majority of crimes were committed by a handful of priests.
So insightful? No. Funny, for some I suppose. But certainly not insightful.
I had a very abusive thesis adviser (verbal harassment). Though not entirely the same as above, the fact that I technically worked as an employee in his lab (my grant and scholarships paid 100% of school fees and lab expenses, not to mention a good portion of my living expenses, but I needed a bit more cash and we had agreed early on he would pay). The university was well aware of his antics, particularly given that he had only had one successful candidate actually graduate in 10 years (most would bail). Yet, they did nothing, because he was the associate dean and was able to bring in quite a bit of money for his research. I could have kept climbing higher and higher up the chain of "boards" to complain to, but honestly, if I had to work with the guy for 3-5 years, would it be worth it? No. So I too left, and found a much better environment at a different school. It killed one year of my life, but it was worth it in the end. Some may view this as cowardly, others will agree with my move. The point is that I had no real choice. The guy was a dick, he would remain so and having a grievances filed against him by me, and him falling victim to whatever punishment handed down would have only made our working relationship that much more stressful. The university should simply suspend him for a time, and/or restrict his capacity to accept graduate students (until his anger management kicks in). His funding will be cut, it will be a hard lesson, but these "grievance boards" do little else than screw the student in the long term.
What about heat issues with the screen down? I've wondered about this for a time. I have a MacBook Pro and am buying an external monitor but thought...I may go double screen vs. just closing the lid just in case I start running the system hard and I get key imprinting or screen warping or something. Would this even happen?
The point is that the hardware enthusiast market is pretty small compared to big business and the likes of Dell. They could have, as they usually do, flip the bird to this small demographic and "forced" gamers and the like to shell out money for the new OS (or reduce them to piracy, whatever the combination). They didn't though, and in fact, they took the criticism to heart, fast and did so before the official release.
If an alcoholic who batters his wife stops drinking, apologizes for past beatings and doesn't do it again, does he not warrant some applause for his efforts? Of course he does. Positive reenforcement often leads to more postive works. With the news that MS is considering working with Novell...maybe we could see MS Office for Linux! I'm not so blind to think MS doesn't have selfish ends to motivate their means, but so long as there is some benefit to us, without addition restrictions, I'm all for it. So today, the gamers and hardware enthusiasts have been recognized, maybe the *nix folks will be in the future, and Office will run on Suse and later ported to other distros. Or maybe not, and this is a one off. Still, for those gamers, this is a good thing.
this is a good thing no two ways about it. Sure, they shouldn't have limited the OS in the first place, but the fact they are so quickly changing this is a step in the right direction. Given what I have just read about the EULA, I won't be touching Vista, but for those that seriosly need their game fix and DirectX v10 is where it is at for them, at least they can buy that new 6 gajillion dollar gfx card (or 4 of them) and go nuts without worrying their Windows install is going to puke on them. I'm no MS fan and even less of a Windows fan, but when something is done right, it is best to applaude the move. So, I applaude you MS for doing the right thing, and before Vista is officially released!
The Tragically Hip
The Arcade Fire
The New Pornographers
Need more?
Broken Social Scene
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band
Billy Talent
Mobile
Solo Artists:
Neko Case
Hawksley Workman
Sam Roberts
This is called price fixing and this is illegal in the US and most places in the Western World. Apple can enforce the MSRP in adprint only but they can't enforce a policy of no discounts and this is easily witnessed by smaller retailers in Canada at least that sell for a few dollars less than the Apple Stores or Best Buys. Others of course seller higher, but the end result is, they can't cut anyone off for selling below MSRP provided the prices aren't advertised. Otherwise, they enjoy the pangs of lawyers feeding on their fat 10B bank account balance.
Where do you live that Rogers is offering 1 MB for $35? I use Rogers and they max out at 6Mb for 54.95 (less for packages) for residential and even I as a beta tester max out at 8 Mb which = about 1 MB for 54.95.
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by product tying. In this case, Apple offers a technical solution not simply SW, nor simply HW. They offer a product that is all in one. They are locking in to the hardware because it is part of their business model. If you don't want to run Mac OS, you don't have to, you can run *nix, Windows etc. If you want a Mac, you buy a Mac and you have the luxury (if one determines this is so) of using their OS on their HW. If Windows came out with HW, they too could do this without it being a monopoly. Of course, the reason MS is ever termed a monopoly is precisely BECAUSE they permitted their OS to easily run on nearly any IBM clone out there. This was to their advantage. Yet, if everyone used open doc formats, it would not matter at all what HW/SW combination one used, instead it would be left up to the user to determine what experience they want. Now Apply has decided to use "PC" hardware instead of Motorola chips, they run Intels, equating them to just another "PC" in the box, but that is not so. They have tight restrictions on the HW in their boxes and they write drivers for that HW only. They sell the system all in one and that is that.
What may occur is a separate box consisting of the GFX card, Physics Card, AI card, PSU for the above along with supporting memory modules just to power existing games. Mulitple cards consisting of mulitple chips with multiple cores will likely overpower the common case. Thus for the hardcore games, a separate box wired to the main rig could be the norm. Thus, for the average home user, we will get smaller and smaller (Mac mini et. al) but for the gamer we'll see module system, with multiple boxes and multiple PSU's to help with cooling and overall performance goodness.
McFarlane is reknowned for pushing the limits of art in all he does. When he first hit the comic scene on a grand scale doing Amazing Spiderman, he quite literally redefined the artist's role. Before him, only Art Adams had pushed the limits so much in the late 80's. Once McFarlane got too big for his britches, he left to do his own Spiderman series and finally off to Image to do Spawn. Once at Image, he did draw and write Spawn for a time until he became more interested in the business side of things, working towards a toy company (the premier action figure company in my opinion) with toys that were incredibly detailed on a level nearly unsurpassed. They are now the standard other figures are judged by today. He then moved into the realm of animation, with his hit Spawn cartoon and even doing some videos for the likes of Pearl Jam. His talent and business selse could really push the boundaries of in game art. However, as much as he would like to be, he is not the greatest write, but enter RA Salvatore and we have a very well respected Fantasy writer. The two merging their right brain talents really offers this start up most companies lacked. Artistic direction. The key will be in whom they hire and the types of games they are interested in developing.
I don't know much about the baseball legend, but having his name and money behind the project can't be a bad thing. Let's hope that this is not vaporware in the making, but that they do come out with at least one really hot and solid game, soon!
This could be very very bad. If this method of delivery becomes the norm, perhaps diminishing hard copy mediums to the niche market, movie studios might play "Never Ending Editor" and continue to edit the films as they see fit to the detriment of us, the fans. If Lucas has his way, Greedo would shoot first, not simulataneously and certainly not getting burned without a hint of one off. No, Han would shoot second, and not be considered a murdering space pirate. But I like my space priates to be a murdering lot! So do many others.
What happens when everything is streamed? We the customers lose any control. At least once we own a hard copy of a film, we have it for life. This is one of the reasons vinyl is still very successful (outselling both SACD and DVD-A combined for the last 5 years). Right now, downloads are rippable to CD's or DVD's. If they catch on to a great extent, DRM will be included that will prohibit this and only the geek will find the work arounds. Yet, if the music and movie industry were to offer a flat rate for total access to their catalogue, most would not go through the hassle of ripping. Imagine $50/month for all music and movies streamed when you want wherever you are! The deal? Streaming only. Today Han shoots first, tomorrow he shoots second, the next week he shoots simultaneously until Han is no longer even in the scene. An extremem perspective maybe but not something I would put past either of the cartels.
If you are a back-up nut then back-up your own DVD's! This is fair use in Canada and perhaps?? in the US.
You would likely be able to get better quality too by using a lower compression or none at all. Buying from Amazon or iTunes won't do much if your HD craps out. So what will you do? Back them up to DVD's? Gets rather pointless. It woudl be far better to spend the same amount or a bit more on a rather uncompressed (though still compressed) version of the movie, hard copy, case, extras, and then do the back up yourself.
A typical movie, if compressed by half, will fit on a standard 4.5 GB DVD (unit cost $.10 without case). Immediately we see that the cost is greater than purchasing the real thing and the quality is much less, not only in terms of picture quality, but also in terms of packaging etc.
So far, this is not much different from music right? True. However! Many ISP's cap the downloads to 100 GB's/month if not less. Few spots in the US and Canada don't have capped downloads, where the iTunes store will first be releasing the movies. This means, that for those that want to buy a good amount DVD's they will have to pay a premium once they surpass their download limit. My ISP charges $1/GB over my 100 GB limit..or I can opt to get throttled down to dial-up speeds. Convenient...
Regardless, the cost of entry is simply not on par with downloading music wherein one does not have to wait hours for the download (usually) one has near immediate gratification. As well, with the plethora of DAP products, folks don't necessarily require (or rather desire) the jewel case, cover art, liner notes etc. Yet, with DVD's the vast majority WILL be ripping to a DVD and playing in their home unit watching on their TV, not on some tiny screen on a DAP.
With prices in the $10-20 range, only the diehards will go for this, or those with massive uncapped pipes (like sysadmins at a corp or university). Drop the cost to $5 and people will be far more eager to wait for the downloads, take their chances with their ISP quirks because $5 for the new Pirate of the Carribean movie is going to be far cheaper than the 15-20 they'll pay at Best Buy for the first month of its release.
Those buying PS3's are not going to be playing BRD's on them at least not in the numbers you are indicating. In fact, many times, when folks have very HD TV's, the tv is in a family room separate from the gaming tv. When parents are able to drop 700 on a console, more often than not, the kids have their own setup and the parents have their own. Sure, 6 million or whatever will be out there, but they won't be there for movies, they'll be there for games. HD DVD has a better chance of surviving when all new DVD players are HD DVD and they are 100% backward compatible with all old DVD's. So when ma and pa Jones go to their local Walmart to replace their $50 DVD player, they will be sold an HD DVD player. It still says DVD but it is "improved!" They won't know the difference but they will own an HD DVD player and sooner than later, all new releases will be HD DVD...and again they won't know the difference. They do however understand the Blue Ray =! DVD and the name alone will kill it off from widespread acceptance. The war is far from won, but HD DVD has a far better chance worldwide of succeeding, that is, if either format has a chance at all.
This is how it worked for me for law school. For certain courses, we were locked into various codes that cost $$$$ but for the most part, students would receive 2-300 pages of "notes" from the professor at the beginning of the year. These notes were exclusively what we needed for the course save for said codes and additional commentaries. The bonus was that the codes and commentaries were useful over the 3 years and for many many courses, not to mention the bar as as reference sources for the future. Yet, in terms of getting that A, one really just needed to master the course notes that were in essence a well layed out text book in most cases. Thankfully these too became wonderful resources. Each student would then be given a bill at the end of the semester letting them know what their cost was. The cost was simply the photocopying cost/printing costs. Though the notes were often available in the library, no student would bother to take them out and go to Mailboxes or something similar because we were getting charged less than going there. Overall it was a very very good way of getting what we needed without screwing us all. When I did genetics and biochemical eng, it was the whole 100+/book, 5-8/semester 3x a year. No thanks. Outrageous with little resale. Bleh. Evil.
What are the advantages to this? I just purchased the macbook pro 2.16 in late June. Should I consider selling and buying a new Macbook Pro? Should I see
a major performance hike? I run an AMD X2 for the desktop system and I do run Ubuntu DD 64 bit, but it is often quite a pain driver-wise with little speed improvements over 32 bit. Vista Beta 64 bit is abysmal, will 64 bit Leopard really take full advantage? I'm I going to be stuck with driver problems or software hiccups?
I wish I had my mod points still. What a great comment :)
Natant speed and VM corruption for starters. I had used Parallels for near a month until my VM file got corrupted and I had to reinstall XP. It was not to my liking. Not saying this is typical, or that using boot camp can't produce similar corruptions, but thus far, bootcamp is working better for me.
Speed: No way Parallels can come close to natant use of the hardware like XP with bootcamp. In fact, with only 1 GB of ram in the most recent MacBook Pro, and XP far outperforms OS X (yes I know..I need dual simms, my next one is on the way).
GPU: XP with bootcamp can fully use the ATI card but under Parallels, at least for the moment, their driver locks one into a castrated version of what XP on a Mac is capable of.
Parallels however is awesome for that "gotta have it" app but one doesn't need to be in Windows and/or need the extra performance boosts from running truly natant. I hate being in Windows, but when I'm doing serious work, which requires stability, bootcamp is what works best for me.