Have you ever visited someone who lives in an apartment and not had a phone on you? Do this often enough and you've quickly get sick of buzzer systems that have evidently been broken for months or years, intercoms that require you to punch in a code that the person you're visiting didn't think to give you (and may not even know), and, in some cases, buildings that lack per-apartment doorbells entirely.
You think people loved working in coal mines? They did/do it because they have to.
Well, sometimes they went on strike. Fought with owners/management over working conditions. Occasionally fought with the government when it tried to clamp down on unions.
Not that I'm really going anywhere with this, but history does deserve mention.
Far me it from me to presume that I can actually explain the reasoning behind legislative language, but could these loopholes perhaps be intentional? The thinking might be "we don't want space exploration to be all about getting humans to Mars, so if you want to go that way, make it gradual and make it part of larger-scale research". Given that the original moon landing was not so much about furthering scientific knowledge (although it surely did, as a side-effect) as it was about proving our superiority over the dang ol' commies, Congress might well be worried that a race to Mars would end up as a similar (but much more expensive) political gesture and divert attention from the actual research side of space exploration.
(Yeah, yeah, this may be an overly charitable interpretation, I know.)
Where's David X. Cohen? He did write that algorithms paper before going on to write things slightly less technical and notably more amusing. And anyone on the Futurama DVD commentary tracks is totally a celebrity.
At least she isn't a mandatory boss, so you can continue the game and perhaps come back later. Although I always recommend getting all the summons as soon as possible.
Evil Wall isn't mandatory either, assuming your version of the game has a certain bug. Not to spoil the game here, but you can get the item you're looking for in that dungeon well before you even enter it, at least if I'm correctly recalling how this trick works.
Calbrena (or however you choose to translate it) and the subsequent "coming back from near defeat" fight have always been my least favorite parts of that game. But I do echo the sentiment of others in that if you want really hard games you need to look a bit earlier. People have already mentioned the first NES TMNT game, but I haven't seen anything about the Japanese version of Mario 2 (the Lost Levels on Super Mario All-Stars); I've recently been reintroduced to the unrelenting combination of hammers, wind, fire, and a notable lack of solid ground that is that game.
Suikoden II is the best game I've seen for eliciting an emotional response from the player. It doesn't do it with angst-ridden pretty boys or tragic love stories, either; it shows the cost of war (especially on young people) in a straight-forward and powerful way.
"Every year, corporate philanthropic foundations pour $30 billion into their endeavors in the U.S. alone," said Benioff. "Many of these efforts occur in isolation with little or no relationship to the communities in which they operate, the people they employ, or their corporate missions. Compassionate Capitalism calls for a new model - one that closely aligns business and community goals and focuses on serving the communities in which a business operates."
That's probably the strongest paragraph in the press release that makes me doubt just how compassionate this whole idea is. So instead of doing things "the old way" - spending money on unrelated good causes - companies should concentrate on donating time and money locally... but why in particular? Not because local needs are higher, but because in the end this helps the company. It's really more "profitable philanthropy" than "compassionate capitalism".
Now I'm not saying that this isn't preferrable to giving nothing back and putting excess profits entirely towards ivory back-scratchers, but at its core this is a philosophy of self-interest, not good will. And it's not exactly a new idea, either... plenty of organizations from well-meaning companies to corrupt political machines have known that helping out your community in the right way can be very profitable in the long run. In a broader sense, the fact that helping the people close to you is in your best interest is just one of the basic features of living in a society.
So while I'm glad that communities are benefitting from this strategy - and they are, I think, as I do have a few local examples I've witnessed of this sort of behavior - it isn't compassion that's motivating people here. It's concern with the bottom line, just like everywhere else in business. And call my cynical, but a business being concerned with the bottom line just doesn't inspire very much admiration in me.
I didn't see this mentioned in the article or in the comments so far, but I've found combinatorics to be very applicable to Computer Science. It's even crosslisted with CS at my school, along with discrete math and a few other courses. If taught well, a combinatorics course can give you a lot of insight into why certain problems in CS get approached the way they do.
I applied for a PayPal account at the suggestion of a friend long before I had any reason to use it. Luckily, I didn't store any money in the account, becaue when I came back several months later to make a purchase, I found that it had been frozen. The "customer support" responses asked me to fax them various forms of identification to make sure that it was, in fact, my bank account - I had registered my checking account as I did not yet have a credit card. This is understandable, in a way - I'm sure there are people who try to use PayPal to steal money from other people's accounts - so I paid a rather high price at my local copy shop to fax them what they needed.
They did not unlock my account, however; their stated reason was that the address on my driver's license did not match that on my bank statement. When I explained that I was a college student, they simply repeated their first request, but now they wanted a credit card statement as well, despite the fact that I never entered (and did not own) a credit card. Without anything else to do, I simply removed all of my banking info from their records. I would have closed my account, but it's not possible to do that when you're suspended.
I have a credit card now, so I could probably get it unlocked. I don't feel like spending the time and money to do that, though, and I don't have enough confidence in PayPal to trust them with my money, either. So I've made do with waiting for people to process personal checks, or paying the extra few dollars for money orders.
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Have you ever visited someone who lives in an apartment and not had a phone on you? Do this often enough and you've quickly get sick of buzzer systems that have evidently been broken for months or years, intercoms that require you to punch in a code that the person you're visiting didn't think to give you (and may not even know), and, in some cases, buildings that lack per-apartment doorbells entirely.
If ever any brain needed to be put in a robot body, it would be that one.
Well, sometimes they went on strike. Fought with owners/management over working conditions. Occasionally fought with the government when it tried to clamp down on unions.
Not that I'm really going anywhere with this, but history does deserve mention.
Far me it from me to presume that I can actually explain the reasoning behind legislative language, but could these loopholes perhaps be intentional? The thinking might be "we don't want space exploration to be all about getting humans to Mars, so if you want to go that way, make it gradual and make it part of larger-scale research". Given that the original moon landing was not so much about furthering scientific knowledge (although it surely did, as a side-effect) as it was about proving our superiority over the dang ol' commies, Congress might well be worried that a race to Mars would end up as a similar (but much more expensive) political gesture and divert attention from the actual research side of space exploration.
(Yeah, yeah, this may be an overly charitable interpretation, I know.)
Unfortunately, this seems about in line with how most mathematicians use the word "simple", at least in my experience.
Where's David X. Cohen? He did write that algorithms paper before going on to write things slightly less technical and notably more amusing. And anyone on the Futurama DVD commentary tracks is totally a celebrity.
Hamiltonet and Teslanet?
At least she isn't a mandatory boss, so you can continue the game and perhaps come back later. Although I always recommend getting all the summons as soon as possible.
Evil Wall isn't mandatory either, assuming your version of the game has a certain bug. Not to spoil the game here, but you can get the item you're looking for in that dungeon well before you even enter it, at least if I'm correctly recalling how this trick works.
Calbrena (or however you choose to translate it) and the subsequent "coming back from near defeat" fight have always been my least favorite parts of that game. But I do echo the sentiment of others in that if you want really hard games you need to look a bit earlier. People have already mentioned the first NES TMNT game, but I haven't seen anything about the Japanese version of Mario 2 (the Lost Levels on Super Mario All-Stars); I've recently been reintroduced to the unrelenting combination of hammers, wind, fire, and a notable lack of solid ground that is that game.
The Xbox 640 ought to be enough for anybody.
Suikoden II is the best game I've seen for eliciting an emotional response from the player. It doesn't do it with angst-ridden pretty boys or tragic love stories, either; it shows the cost of war (especially on young people) in a straight-forward and powerful way.
Ask them if they've ever read a media story about something they knew a lot about.
I can see some potential problems with this when "them" refers to "upper management".
Of course when my wife figured out most of the bill was because of my computer gear I had to build her a dome
So what he's saying is that if anyone needs her she'll be in the angry dome?
"Every year, corporate philanthropic foundations pour $30 billion into their endeavors in the U.S. alone," said Benioff. "Many of these efforts occur in isolation with little or no relationship to the communities in which they operate, the people they employ, or their corporate missions. Compassionate Capitalism calls for a new model - one that closely aligns business and community goals and focuses on serving the communities in which a business operates."
That's probably the strongest paragraph in the press release that makes me doubt just how compassionate this whole idea is. So instead of doing things "the old way" - spending money on unrelated good causes - companies should concentrate on donating time and money locally... but why in particular? Not because local needs are higher, but because in the end this helps the company. It's really more "profitable philanthropy" than "compassionate capitalism".
Now I'm not saying that this isn't preferrable to giving nothing back and putting excess profits entirely towards ivory back-scratchers, but at its core this is a philosophy of self-interest, not good will. And it's not exactly a new idea, either... plenty of organizations from well-meaning companies to corrupt political machines have known that helping out your community in the right way can be very profitable in the long run. In a broader sense, the fact that helping the people close to you is in your best interest is just one of the basic features of living in a society.
So while I'm glad that communities are benefitting from this strategy - and they are, I think, as I do have a few local examples I've witnessed of this sort of behavior - it isn't compassion that's motivating people here. It's concern with the bottom line, just like everywhere else in business. And call my cynical, but a business being concerned with the bottom line just doesn't inspire very much admiration in me.
I didn't see this mentioned in the article or in the comments so far, but I've found combinatorics to be very applicable to Computer Science. It's even crosslisted with CS at my school, along with discrete math and a few other courses. If taught well, a combinatorics course can give you a lot of insight into why certain problems in CS get approached the way they do.
I applied for a PayPal account at the suggestion of a friend long before I had any reason to use it. Luckily, I didn't store any money in the account, becaue when I came back several months later to make a purchase, I found that it had been frozen. The "customer support" responses asked me to fax them various forms of identification to make sure that it was, in fact, my bank account - I had registered my checking account as I did not yet have a credit card. This is understandable, in a way - I'm sure there are people who try to use PayPal to steal money from other people's accounts - so I paid a rather high price at my local copy shop to fax them what they needed.
They did not unlock my account, however; their stated reason was that the address on my driver's license did not match that on my bank statement. When I explained that I was a college student, they simply repeated their first request, but now they wanted a credit card statement as well, despite the fact that I never entered (and did not own) a credit card. Without anything else to do, I simply removed all of my banking info from their records. I would have closed my account, but it's not possible to do that when you're suspended.
I have a credit card now, so I could probably get it unlocked. I don't feel like spending the time and money to do that, though, and I don't have enough confidence in PayPal to trust them with my money, either. So I've made do with waiting for people to process personal checks, or paying the extra few dollars for money orders.