So many people are mistaking $#*! for the word "fuck", when it really is intended to stand for "shit". Given that the latter word is generally viewed as being less offensive than the former, and the punctuation stand-in for the curse word is invoking an even "worse" word than what is intended.
Therefor, I think in order to prevent this from occurring, we should dump the $#*! and just say Shit, for the sake of the children who will think it's the wrong word.
American football fields do have end zones, while the other football does not. Does this factor into the estimation for the football field length conversion?
By ignoring the actual length provided in and just relying on trying to calculate an estimation based included in the summary, which itself was used to give a frame of reference regarding the size, you've managed to *cough* inflate the size of this airship from 235 feet (72 m) to 368 feet, or nearly 37 floors! Uh-oh, here we go again!
What I remember (growing up in the 80's) is very much in line with what was said here. Defending yourself against a bully results in getting the same punishment as a bully.
In fact, I remember getting 5 days in-school-suspension for not doing much more than getting punched by a bully. He was in my face chest bumping me trying to provoke a fight. I raised my arm as a bar between us to try to get him out of my face. There was no shove, nothing but what would be a very gentle push to try to preserve my personal space. This was construed by faculty as assaulting him first.
Most bullies are manipulators, and they know how the system works. They will attempt to provoke you in a way that can make their assault seem like they are the ones defending themselves.
When growing up (as a slightly awkward, brainy, geeky kid), I found the only way to deal with bullies at a school was never to fight them, but to never back down. Get back up in their face, show them that you aren't afraid of them and aren't afraid to fight, but that you aren't stupid enough to play their game and throw the first punch and let them work the system to get you in more hot water than themselves.
Make it sound like it's irrational for people to want to get to max level, while you overlook many of the common reasons for doing so.
1) Many games put more work and emphasis in end-game content, so players feel like that is where they need to be in order to really get what the game offers. It's where the content that lets players set themselves apart by something more than levels occurs (such as high level pvp, raiding, getting the best gear, etc).
2) The older a game gets, the player population tends to be clumped on the higher level end instead of lower levels, making it harder to find groups at lower levels.
3) Often new people join because of friends, so now the new person wants to be able to catch up with their veteran friends.
4) Many MMO's include Player vs. Player combat (even if just optional). Quite often, there is a desire to be higher level in order to have an advantage against other players.
5) Many MMO's include Player vs. Player combat (deja-vu?)... Quite often, players want to get to a higher level in order to defend themselves against higher level players preying on the weak.
6) MMO cultures tend to equate game achievements, such as level, with your skill. It's flawed, but it still exists.
The reasons may not apply to you, and you may not agree with the reasons, but there certainly are many reasons, at least a few of which are completely reasonable.
Thanks, that's exactly the message I was vaguely remembering! Indeed, how could I have forgotten Graphics Workshop? I used it almost as much as my beloved X-Tree Gold. (I still miss that program sometimes)
I remember many shareware authors writing strange things in their terms and licenses.
I recall that a common graphics viewer those cool new GIF files (among many other formats) wrote that if you continued using their software after 30 days without paying then a demon would be visited by demons who would torment you.
I was just a kid, didn't have a job, and I never paid. Demons rarely ever visited, and when they did it was just to borrow a cup of sugar or use the phone.
If it took you this long to realize that Sony can't be trusted, you haven't been paying attention. In my opinion, Sony is one of the most diabolical customer-screwing companies in existence.
I remember years ago people saying they bought a PS2 instead of an XBox because Microsoft was evil, and I thought that these people were morons who were just parroting the usual "M$ is the evil!" sentiments frequently heard on the internet.
Don't get me wrong. MIcrosoft is no angel, but they haven't done nearly as much to screw their customers over as much as Sony has. Now, if we talk about their competition, that might be a different story, but not when it comes to their customers.
When it comes to "biting the hand that feeds you", you almost have to go into the realm of politics to find individuals or organizations that can out-evil Sony.;-)
You are right that it's a great starting point, and I'd never do any kind of scholarly research relying only on Wikipedia. For some subjects, it's probably comparable in quality to an "authoritative reference", but that's by no means universal.
However, I disagree with the implied sentiment of many here that seems to be, "you can't depend on Wikipedia to be useful, accurate, and relevant, so why are these pompous editors trying to make Wikipedia more useful, accurate, and relevant!?"
The word is completely made up as a joke, that while very current, hasn't really proven itself to be noteworthy beyond a few days.
Just because the joke is related to Wikipedia doesn't make it anymore relevant to Wikipedia than other made up joke words such as "Witchalok" (from Penny-Arcade).
What does one have to do with the other? I'm critical of how that money is spent too, but the loans weren't what reduced competition. The move to broadband squeezed out most of the small players that used to be in great numbers back when dial-up was the norm.
If Net Neutrality was good for big business, as you suggest is possible, then why is big business so strongly against it? I'm baffled by how many people buy into the arguments coming from big businesses that this will help big businesses step over consumers. Since when has Big Business been a watchdog for themselves in order to protect Average Joe?
The reason it took off without government regulation enforcing net neutrality was because competition was so much greater. There were tons of small internet service providers popping up everywhere offering dial-up service at increasingly cheaper prices and with better service and features. As more and more dial-up providers were born and competed, we went from paying by the minute or e-mail to unlimited usage because of competition. It led to many providers offering other services like Usenet access, extra e-mail accounts, free homepage space, and better customer support.
With so much competition and a culture of internet freedom, nobody would even think about trying to violate net neutrality without dooming their business.
Then came the rise of broadband. As broadband became more ubiquitous, suddenly the huge number of dial-up based ISPs began to dry up and internet access became dominated by telephone companies and cable companies. These companies usually had strong footholds in their areas, and enjoyed the luxury of limited competition.
Now, we have less and less competition, and we see consumers gradually losing what we gained due to competition. Not many ISPs give free homepages anymore. More and more are cutting free Usenet. Dealing with many of these businesses has become much more bureaucratic than it used to be. They want to bring back caps and paying by the byte, and they want to have more control over how you use the internet with less responsibility to their customers.
It's also important to remember what ignoring net neutrality can mean for Comcast. It's not just about them controlling the level of bandwidth customers use, it's about them controlling who is piping all that data to you. As they try to make you sympathetic to them by invoking images of bandwidth hogs committing rampant piracy, they are setting themselves up so that they can potentially make it more costly for you to stream any video that is not from their service (or NBC) and reduce the performance of VoIP services that are from competitors. I won't even go into the other potential cans of worms that this could open up, if they are allowed to continue on this course.
I don't believe that much regulation is needed as long as market forces are working in healthy ways, but when the number of competing companies shrink while their individual power grows, then sometimes regulation is needed to keep them from abusing this position of power.
"Properly metered" is just your opinion. The industry has set itself up with a non-metered model (just like cable TV, local phone service, etc). Changing the model now would cause consumer confusion and very likely be abused by the industry to get more money from consumers.
If this were to happen, I'd expect that the lowest-usage customers will get a small savings, but I don't expect it to be a huge cut. On the other hand, I think they will try to make moderate and heavy users pay out the nose. It could have a very negative impact on digital distribution, streaming services, and many other legitimate uses of the internet that use a lot of bandwidth. It will likely kill HD streaming online as well. Also, do you expect the average user to understand how much bandwidth various sites or applications use?
Finally, Comcast will really have trouble getting sympathy from me regarding their profitability. Remember, they are the ones that just acquired majority shares in NBC.
Of course that brings up the old problem with that this can also help them give preferential treatment toward the content they want you to have. How about being metered for Hulu and Netflix, but you can have unlimited access to online shows at NBC.com?
Metering is an awful idea... Tiered pricing may be reasonable, but only if the tiers are set reasonably and take into account that the average user is using the internet for a lot more than they used to (such as watching TV online).
I bought my first LCD HDTV about 2 years ago. It was a 27" 720P, and I paid $650 it on a Black Friday Sale (it was normally $1,000). Now, in just a couple minutes, I can find several new 40" 1080p televisions for the same price I paid for my old one, or find 26" - 32" 1080p sets for significantly less than what I paid for mine.
LCDs (for the *equivalent* quality and features) *ARE* going down.
If I had to guess, your perception that they aren't going down is likely due to the fact that there are many new sets with higher specifications that keep the price point the same, but offer more features and quality.
If you compare 60hz 720p HDTVs from a few years ago with newer 1080p displaying at 120hz, then yeah, the prices don't seem to have changed much. However, if you ignore specifications in a price analysis, then computers haven't really gotten cheaper in the last 20 years either.
Sudden flashes of light that seem to zip away quickly across the sky just aren't convincing to me, when more conventional explanations (such as various atmospheric illusions) are a far more likely explanation.
Without actual physical evidence or any type of proof that it is clearly even an actual flying object, then I'm going to be inclined to believe that it's far more likely to be some sort of mirage rather than alien visitors whose existence is hidden by vast conspiracies.
By a similar token, if I were to hear of ghost ships sailing in the sky, I would tend to believe it is likely the result of a Fata Morgana rather than jumping to the conclusion some supernatural occurrence.
I'm not sure which time period you are referring to movies being $90. I don't ever recall DVDs being that high, but I do remember when VHS movies were that high (in the 80's).
However back then (and please take this as the anecdotal account that it is, and may not reflect everyone) many consumers didn't seem to be buying many films, but renting them instead. Home movie collections tended to be more based on pirated copies or recorded off of Cable movie channels (HBO, Showtime, or Skinemax).
However, I definitely agree that the price of movies have become down, and that has led to people commonly actually having legitimate video collections.
From the classified UFO documents that UFO conspiracy theorists like to use to justify their paranoia have shown once they have been declassified have been quite disappointing. What we have always ended up finding is that they weren't classified because there was some massive UFO cover-up, but rather that governments were paranoid regarding sharing how data was distributed and communication protocols. The actual data was pretty boring and has done nothing to vindicate conspiracy nuts.
When DVDs became more popular and fell in price, I found that I could get a full 2 hour movie on DVD for $20, while a 45 minute music only CD cost $17. I began to buy more movies than music, and my personal CD consumption fell. I don't know how many others out there were like me, but I doubt I'm alone. I frequently wondered how many folks like me were fueling record companies claims that CD sales slumps had to be caused by piracy.
Now, for the last several years I've been witnessing format wars between Blu-Ray and HDVD, both of which are poising to replace DVDs and convince me to buy my collection of movies a second time. Blu-Ray has "won" the format war, only to be threatened by streaming video and digital distribution. For the last several years I've been reluctant to invest in DVDs that may soon become obsolete, or to invest in new technology such as BluRay (for which I'm also not comfortable with certain consumer-unfriendly aspects). I don't like the modern DRM models either, so I find myself not buying movies anymore and instead rent and stream through services like NetFlix.
Again, I wonder how many people are like me, and how many "lost sales" that are blamed on piracy have absolutely nothing to do with piracy.
And that's even before considering inflated numbers, people who download digital copies of media they already own physical copies to, people who are only downloading because it's "free" and would not buy anyway, and fake torrents planted by copyright holders themselves to trap pirates.
That analogy is extremely flawed. Microsoft is not at fault because Corel doesn't port Wordperfect to Mac, and your office environment insists on using Wordperfect. Your office is locked into Wordperfect.
It decided the best tool for the job was Wordperfect, and Microsoft was not the company that decided whether or not Wordperfect would be supported on Mac. For many years, many artists, publishers, and graphic designers worked on Macs instead of under Windows because that's where the better tools were. Did that mean Apple locked them into the Mac platform? Of course not!
I have a lot of criticism for Microsoft, however that doesn't mean I'm going to turn a blind eye to Apple. What frightens me about Apple is the trend of less consumer control over what they can do on their own devices and developers being required to meet secret and fickle standards (sometimes which change retroactively) in order to have their work distributed in the sole distribution channel for the platform.
Slashdot Mirror
The present?
The Bible is just big boned
The submitter was quoting the TFA, not making any estimation himself. TFA gave the length in both units of feet, and units of "floors".
Of course, since you didn't read TFA, then it's easy to blame the submitter rather than the author of the article.
Instead of Privacy Machiavellis, we should have Privacy Goldilocks instead.
"This privacy options set is too big! This privacy options set is too small! This privacy options set is juuuuust right!"
So many people are mistaking $#*! for the word "fuck", when it really is intended to stand for "shit". Given that the latter word is generally viewed as being less offensive than the former, and the punctuation stand-in for the curse word is invoking an even "worse" word than what is intended.
Therefor, I think in order to prevent this from occurring, we should dump the $#*! and just say Shit, for the sake of the children who will think it's the wrong word.
That's right, "Shit" for the children!
The earth only has so much matter left!
But they didn't have lasers...
American football fields do have end zones, while the other football does not. Does this factor into the estimation for the football field length conversion?
Won't someone please think of the end zones!
TFA actually has the length.
By ignoring the actual length provided in and just relying on trying to calculate an estimation based included in the summary, which itself was used to give a frame of reference regarding the size, you've managed to *cough* inflate the size of this airship from 235 feet (72 m) to 368 feet, or nearly 37 floors! Uh-oh, here we go again!
What I remember (growing up in the 80's) is very much in line with what was said here. Defending yourself against a bully results in getting the same punishment as a bully.
In fact, I remember getting 5 days in-school-suspension for not doing much more than getting punched by a bully. He was in my face chest bumping me trying to provoke a fight. I raised my arm as a bar between us to try to get him out of my face. There was no shove, nothing but what would be a very gentle push to try to preserve my personal space. This was construed by faculty as assaulting him first.
Most bullies are manipulators, and they know how the system works. They will attempt to provoke you in a way that can make their assault seem like they are the ones defending themselves.
When growing up (as a slightly awkward, brainy, geeky kid), I found the only way to deal with bullies at a school was never to fight them, but to never back down. Get back up in their face, show them that you aren't afraid of them and aren't afraid to fight, but that you aren't stupid enough to play their game and throw the first punch and let them work the system to get you in more hot water than themselves.
Make it sound like it's irrational for people to want to get to max level, while you overlook many of the common reasons for doing so.
1) Many games put more work and emphasis in end-game content, so players feel like that is where they need to be in order to really get what the game offers. It's where the content that lets players set themselves apart by something more than levels occurs (such as high level pvp, raiding, getting the best gear, etc).
2) The older a game gets, the player population tends to be clumped on the higher level end instead of lower levels, making it harder to find groups at lower levels.
3) Often new people join because of friends, so now the new person wants to be able to catch up with their veteran friends.
4) Many MMO's include Player vs. Player combat (even if just optional). Quite often, there is a desire to be higher level in order to have an advantage against other players.
5) Many MMO's include Player vs. Player combat (deja-vu?)... Quite often, players want to get to a higher level in order to defend themselves against higher level players preying on the weak.
6) MMO cultures tend to equate game achievements, such as level, with your skill. It's flawed, but it still exists.
The reasons may not apply to you, and you may not agree with the reasons, but there certainly are many reasons, at least a few of which are completely reasonable.
Thanks, that's exactly the message I was vaguely remembering! Indeed, how could I have forgotten Graphics Workshop? I used it almost as much as my beloved X-Tree Gold. (I still miss that program sometimes)
I remember many shareware authors writing strange things in their terms and licenses.
I recall that a common graphics viewer those cool new GIF files (among many other formats) wrote that if you continued using their software after 30 days without paying then a demon would be visited by demons who would torment you.
I was just a kid, didn't have a job, and I never paid. Demons rarely ever visited, and when they did it was just to borrow a cup of sugar or use the phone.
If it took you this long to realize that Sony can't be trusted, you haven't been paying attention. In my opinion, Sony is one of the most diabolical customer-screwing companies in existence.
I remember years ago people saying they bought a PS2 instead of an XBox because Microsoft was evil, and I thought that these people were morons who were just parroting the usual "M$ is the evil!" sentiments frequently heard on the internet.
Don't get me wrong. MIcrosoft is no angel, but they haven't done nearly as much to screw their customers over as much as Sony has. Now, if we talk about their competition, that might be a different story, but not when it comes to their customers.
When it comes to "biting the hand that feeds you", you almost have to go into the realm of politics to find individuals or organizations that can out-evil Sony. ;-)
A coupling of an older man with a younger woman has a greater chance of bearing children than that of an older woman and a younger man.
It seems to me that the Cougar scenario contains more safety from creating a Family than the other
You are right that it's a great starting point, and I'd never do any kind of scholarly research relying only on Wikipedia. For some subjects, it's probably comparable in quality to an "authoritative reference", but that's by no means universal.
However, I disagree with the implied sentiment of many here that seems to be, "you can't depend on Wikipedia to be useful, accurate, and relevant, so why are these pompous editors trying to make Wikipedia more useful, accurate, and relevant!?"
The word is completely made up as a joke, that while very current, hasn't really proven itself to be noteworthy beyond a few days.
Just because the joke is related to Wikipedia doesn't make it anymore relevant to Wikipedia than other made up joke words such as "Witchalok" (from Penny-Arcade).
What does one have to do with the other? I'm critical of how that money is spent too, but the loans weren't what reduced competition. The move to broadband squeezed out most of the small players that used to be in great numbers back when dial-up was the norm.
If Net Neutrality was good for big business, as you suggest is possible, then why is big business so strongly against it? I'm baffled by how many people buy into the arguments coming from big businesses that this will help big businesses step over consumers. Since when has Big Business been a watchdog for themselves in order to protect Average Joe?
The reason it took off without government regulation enforcing net neutrality was because competition was so much greater. There were tons of small internet service providers popping up everywhere offering dial-up service at increasingly cheaper prices and with better service and features. As more and more dial-up providers were born and competed, we went from paying by the minute or e-mail to unlimited usage because of competition. It led to many providers offering other services like Usenet access, extra e-mail accounts, free homepage space, and better customer support.
With so much competition and a culture of internet freedom, nobody would even think about trying to violate net neutrality without dooming their business.
Then came the rise of broadband. As broadband became more ubiquitous, suddenly the huge number of dial-up based ISPs began to dry up and internet access became dominated by telephone companies and cable companies. These companies usually had strong footholds in their areas, and enjoyed the luxury of limited competition.
Now, we have less and less competition, and we see consumers gradually losing what we gained due to competition. Not many ISPs give free homepages anymore. More and more are cutting free Usenet. Dealing with many of these businesses has become much more bureaucratic than it used to be. They want to bring back caps and paying by the byte, and they want to have more control over how you use the internet with less responsibility to their customers.
It's also important to remember what ignoring net neutrality can mean for Comcast. It's not just about them controlling the level of bandwidth customers use, it's about them controlling who is piping all that data to you. As they try to make you sympathetic to them by invoking images of bandwidth hogs committing rampant piracy, they are setting themselves up so that they can potentially make it more costly for you to stream any video that is not from their service (or NBC) and reduce the performance of VoIP services that are from competitors. I won't even go into the other potential cans of worms that this could open up, if they are allowed to continue on this course.
I don't believe that much regulation is needed as long as market forces are working in healthy ways, but when the number of competing companies shrink while their individual power grows, then sometimes regulation is needed to keep them from abusing this position of power.
"Properly metered" is just your opinion. The industry has set itself up with a non-metered model (just like cable TV, local phone service, etc). Changing the model now would cause consumer confusion and very likely be abused by the industry to get more money from consumers.
If this were to happen, I'd expect that the lowest-usage customers will get a small savings, but I don't expect it to be a huge cut. On the other hand, I think they will try to make moderate and heavy users pay out the nose. It could have a very negative impact on digital distribution, streaming services, and many other legitimate uses of the internet that use a lot of bandwidth. It will likely kill HD streaming online as well. Also, do you expect the average user to understand how much bandwidth various sites or applications use?
Finally, Comcast will really have trouble getting sympathy from me regarding their profitability. Remember, they are the ones that just acquired majority shares in NBC.
Of course that brings up the old problem with that this can also help them give preferential treatment toward the content they want you to have. How about being metered for Hulu and Netflix, but you can have unlimited access to online shows at NBC.com?
Metering is an awful idea... Tiered pricing may be reasonable, but only if the tiers are set reasonably and take into account that the average user is using the internet for a lot more than they used to (such as watching TV online).
I bought my first LCD HDTV about 2 years ago. It was a 27" 720P, and I paid $650 it on a Black Friday Sale (it was normally $1,000). Now, in just a couple minutes, I can find several new 40" 1080p televisions for the same price I paid for my old one, or find 26" - 32" 1080p sets for significantly less than what I paid for mine.
LCDs (for the *equivalent* quality and features) *ARE* going down.
If I had to guess, your perception that they aren't going down is likely due to the fact that there are many new sets with higher specifications that keep the price point the same, but offer more features and quality.
If you compare 60hz 720p HDTVs from a few years ago with newer 1080p displaying at 120hz, then yeah, the prices don't seem to have changed much. However, if you ignore specifications in a price analysis, then computers haven't really gotten cheaper in the last 20 years either.
Sudden flashes of light that seem to zip away quickly across the sky just aren't convincing to me, when more conventional explanations (such as various atmospheric illusions) are a far more likely explanation.
Without actual physical evidence or any type of proof that it is clearly even an actual flying object, then I'm going to be inclined to believe that it's far more likely to be some sort of mirage rather than alien visitors whose existence is hidden by vast conspiracies.
By a similar token, if I were to hear of ghost ships sailing in the sky, I would tend to believe it is likely the result of a Fata Morgana rather than jumping to the conclusion some supernatural occurrence.
I'm not sure which time period you are referring to movies being $90. I don't ever recall DVDs being that high, but I do remember when VHS movies were that high (in the 80's).
However back then (and please take this as the anecdotal account that it is, and may not reflect everyone) many consumers didn't seem to be buying many films, but renting them instead. Home movie collections tended to be more based on pirated copies or recorded off of Cable movie channels (HBO, Showtime, or Skinemax).
However, I definitely agree that the price of movies have become down, and that has led to people commonly actually having legitimate video collections.
From the classified UFO documents that UFO conspiracy theorists like to use to justify their paranoia have shown once they have been declassified have been quite disappointing. What we have always ended up finding is that they weren't classified because there was some massive UFO cover-up, but rather that governments were paranoid regarding sharing how data was distributed and communication protocols. The actual data was pretty boring and has done nothing to vindicate conspiracy nuts.
When DVDs became more popular and fell in price, I found that I could get a full 2 hour movie on DVD for $20, while a 45 minute music only CD cost $17. I began to buy more movies than music, and my personal CD consumption fell. I don't know how many others out there were like me, but I doubt I'm alone. I frequently wondered how many folks like me were fueling record companies claims that CD sales slumps had to be caused by piracy.
Now, for the last several years I've been witnessing format wars between Blu-Ray and HDVD, both of which are poising to replace DVDs and convince me to buy my collection of movies a second time. Blu-Ray has "won" the format war, only to be threatened by streaming video and digital distribution. For the last several years I've been reluctant to invest in DVDs that may soon become obsolete, or to invest in new technology such as BluRay (for which I'm also not comfortable with certain consumer-unfriendly aspects). I don't like the modern DRM models either, so I find myself not buying movies anymore and instead rent and stream through services like NetFlix.
Again, I wonder how many people are like me, and how many "lost sales" that are blamed on piracy have absolutely nothing to do with piracy.
And that's even before considering inflated numbers, people who download digital copies of media they already own physical copies to, people who are only downloading because it's "free" and would not buy anyway, and fake torrents planted by copyright holders themselves to trap pirates.
Piracy is an easy scapegoat.
That analogy is extremely flawed. Microsoft is not at fault because Corel doesn't port Wordperfect to Mac, and your office environment insists on using Wordperfect. Your office is locked into Wordperfect.
It decided the best tool for the job was Wordperfect, and Microsoft was not the company that decided whether or not Wordperfect would be supported on Mac. For many years, many artists, publishers, and graphic designers worked on Macs instead of under Windows because that's where the better tools were. Did that mean Apple locked them into the Mac platform? Of course not!
I have a lot of criticism for Microsoft, however that doesn't mean I'm going to turn a blind eye to Apple. What frightens me about Apple is the trend of less consumer control over what they can do on their own devices and developers being required to meet secret and fickle standards (sometimes which change retroactively) in order to have their work distributed in the sole distribution channel for the platform.