Aside from a check bouncing, I wouldn't feel comfortable mailing my cousin (as the AC who posted mentioned) $1000 in cash. But I feel fine mailing a check. A check could be lost, but if it is, you can cancel it and re-send it. Sure it costs a little bit ($20 lets say), but that's better than losing the $1000 (the last check I had to cancel didn't cost me anything). If the exchange is done in person, there's also carrying around $1000 that would make me nervous. Also, if they want to deposit the money, people do not feel comfortable depositing cash in ATMs. Cash deposits in excess of a certain amount can also trigger safety checks in the US, IRS forms, and other unpleasantries. Checks do not for some reason.
In addition to this, most people, if given a check for an event (wedding, graduation, new child), will deposit the money and save it or pool it for something larger. Cash is more likely to be spent fairly quickly on small things, like gas, food, and other day-to-day costs.
I'm not sure what credit transfer is. I tried to google for it, but all I could find is how to tranfer college credits. If this is like an electronic tranfer or wire tranfer of funds, that has a high cost associated with it in the US ($40-50 according to my bank, but this was a couple of years ago that I last checked), which makes it undesireable for the person tranferring the money.
Well lets be serious about the US too -- very few young people I know write checks anymore either.
I've had my current bank account for 4 1/2 years. I'm on check #12. 6 of those have been to set up direct deposit (paycheck goes directly into bank account rather than having a physical check).
I've only been handed 2 checks in the past year. One was from a friend who was paying me back a sum of approx US$300. The other was a bill refund where I accidently overpaid about $20.
Also in the past year, I've written one check.
If I want to give money to a friend for a special event (for example, they get married, graduate college, new child, etc), what choices are there beyond cash or check? Is there a 3rd option I'm missing beyond cash and check? For person to person transactions, check can be easier and safer than cash.
And then there are dual-monitor systems. This is where Photoshop really starts to be annoying, unless there is some way I don't know of to detach the tools (probably is) -- it's possible to put the image itself, completely maximized, on one monitor, and all of the tools on another monitor. This has been doable since Win2K/PhotoShop 7. You have to set the monitors up as different screens, not one large screen. There was something introduced in Win2K that allowed a sub-window (the toolkits) to be movable outside of the main window. I currently use CS3 on XP, and if I don't have the window maximized, I can move the tools outside of the edge of the program (but an image I'm editing will always stay inside of the app). To move the tool, you just click on its top bar and drag it outside of the window.
One of the GP's complaints about the many gimp programs on the tool bar can be fixed with a plugin called something like Anti-Weird, or De-Weird, or so. This will make the gimp app run as a single item on the task bar.
A word of caution about GimpShop -- I tried it and it was very unstable. It may be due to having both Gimp and GimpShop installed on the same machine, but I didn't really look into it. It also tends to run about 1-2 minor releases behind the Gimp.
There is an organization in New Jersey that has been using the old NYC subways for artificial reefs for at least 5-6 years ( founded in 1993 - http://www.reefball.org/ ). And from NJ.gov ( PDF Link http://nj.gov/dep/fgw/pdf/2003/reef_news03.pdf ). Looks like NJ has been doing artificial reefs since 1984, using all sorts of things, not just old subway cars.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm trying to look at this from those opposing the changes to education. I had this arguement w/ my philosophy prof in college -- because it matters to them, it should matter to us for the purposes of this discussion. Outright dismissal of them as 'crazy nutjob wacko religious loonies' doesn't help much.
Neither does modding down my post as 'Overrated' just because you disagree with it (directed at the mod, you know who you are). Discussion and debate doesn't go anywhere when everyone agrees with each other. I know Group Think is bad, unless you agree w/ that side, in which case it is good.
As to being pronounced dead: It was a real concern at one point, even in the late 1700's-early 1800's about being burried alive. If you see http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriques/hist615/vmhb.htm , and scroll down, it says
The idea of being buried alive was a more realistic concern then than it would be today This is in reference to George Washington (1st President of US). So you can take this either way, but there was a fear of being pronounced dead without being dead, although there may have been no basis for it.
But science really cannot offer an explanation for the Easter story. I really do not want to see the outcry if someone were to ever try to say that it did not happen.
I went back and re-read the article. It is definitly written up as a piece to divide everyone, and offers very little specifics. If the only change to the course is calling it a "Theory" instead of a "Law", what is really lost? Its the same information, presented in the same way.
But isn't that the crux of the whole argument about teaching evolution in school.
Essentially, evolution is a part of the gospel of the Atheist religion. Religious parents, whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or other, feel that the teachings of the gospel of one Atheism as truth, and students being required to learn it, is an affront to their own religion. Just as Atheist families would feel offended if the book of Genesis were required readings, and it was taught as truth. Many of the parents/grandparents remember when the Lord's Prayer was said every day in school, public ones included. I know there is still resentment, even ~40 years later.
I personally don't feel that children in in K-6 should be have evolution forced upon them, especially if the parents do not want it. It would be best to teach them about the scientific method, and teach them how to learn and discover. If they are in high school, then they are old enough to make up their own minds about what is truth and what they personally wish to believe.
It is very sad though, that the word "theory" has fallen to mean "a good guess" or "maybe true, probably not" in the greater population.
Yeah, I know. 1and1 was still worse. At least my static pages load in any reasonable time with DH.
Most of the problems have not been my cluster. I'm not too thrilled about the clear text passwords, but the site I have with them is all backed up. The DB site is more important than the files anyways. I don't run anything that is critical to my survival or my bank account on the DH site. I'm not familiar w/ the 200+ CPU load issue though.
As to the billing -- that didn't affect me. My CC expired the month before the billing issue and I didn't update the info yet.
The newsletter gets deleted as soon as it comes in, maybe I should read it more.
It becomes a question of what is worse. I can pay more for a website that never loads, customer service that can't answer a simple question, and has all of the same issues, or pay less for a website that loads in reasonable time and has ok customer service. DH is low pain compared to 1and1.
From experience, this is not the case. For example, the site says that they had 100% uptime in January of this year. On their own status page ( http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/ ) they show several outages for January. There was one night in January where some DH routers had issues and the Web servers and MySQL servers could not communicate. Any web site which did not require MySQL was fine, but those that did require it were not working.
There was also a couple DNS outages late last year, in which all websites that used DH's DNS were down (web servers were fine, its the DNS servers that were not).
I'm not complaining about DH, as they are fantastic compared to 1and1, who I was with before. I'm just saying that I don't believe 99.99% uptime is accurate for DH (it may be accurate for Yahoo!), and 100% for the past 6 months is incorrect.
The case-fatality rate varied from 20% to 60% and left most survivors with disfiguring scars. The case-fatality rate in infants was even higher, approaching 80% in London and 98% in Berlin during the late 1800s. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1200696
Perhaps the NIH is lying? Or does 20-60% mean something other than 20-60% of the people who contracted the disease died from it? Maybe it is written in the 'incorrect' way because its easier to understand. 38% per week doesn't mean much to most people, 'correct' or not.
Furthur down in same article as above
During the past years, there has been a growing recognition of Benjamin Jesty (1737-1816) as the first to vaccinate against smallpox. Ok, so someone who died in 1816 tried to vaccinate, disease gone by the late 1970's. That sounds like an effort spanning the 19th and 20th centuries to me.
As to the AIDS mortality -- it was phrased poorly. But the question remains, those people who died from the opportunistic infections, would have lived longer if not for HIV? If yes, then I believe that HIV is responsible for their death. You obviously feel differently. However, the CDC would agree with me in that HIV/AIDS is a cause of death. See http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/slides/mortality/ where they say on slide 2 "Deaths due to HIV disease".
I will admit that the life expectancy is longer than I previously believed. Everything I had heard was 10 years from initial infection to AIDS, then about 2 years until death after that. However, if you will turn your attention to slides 2 and 3 of the previous link (which is http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/slides/mortality/ ), you will see that most people who die with HIV/AIDS, die due to HIV/AIDS. I admit, not 100%, but a fairly high percentage. My initial post was more aimed towards the way that Small Pox was eliminated (immunization) and 100% was not really intended to be gospel.
You appearantly also have some pent-up hatred towards wikipedia which you are bringing out against me. I've cited my sources, all CDC and NIH links (which are as respected as the WHO, even if they are US government run organizations).
Small Pox was eradicated due primarily to an immunization effort that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. Unlike HIV (as far as I am aware), there are two viruses that appear to the human immune system as the same. One causes small pox, the other causes Cow Pox. Essentially, the immunization to small pox is to expose a person to cow pox. They get a feaver for a couple days to a week (along the lines of Chicken Pox), but then become immune to Small Pox.
With the Small Pox vaccine, once exposed to the alternative, you become immune to Small Pox. HIV is the opposite, once you are exposed, it will kill you.
As bad as it was, Small Pox was a 20-60% mortality rate (see wikipedia), which is horrible, but there was a chance. HIV is a 100% mortality rate, it just takes a bit longer. If we could find a way to create immunity from HIV, it would die out.
Most of the treatments for HIV simply extend the person's life, probably with the hope that they live long enough to find a cure. The drugs are not pleasant, and often make the person ill while trying to swallow them.
I too am too young to really appreciate not having to worry about Small Pox. I'm not even sure I was given the shot, as I was born after it was declared eradicated (1979).
I had a 98 Cirrus, it was cheap. One cold January morning, the battery died. To replace it, took over an hour and was not a cheap experience (that is, of course, after I had to bug my boss to come out and help me jump start the car). This was a reasonably trustworthy mechanic shop too.
Chrysler, in their infinite wisdom, placed the battery behind the wheel on some car models in the late 90's and early 00's.
I was a double major, Math and Comp Sci in college.
However, my senior year, I took a couple photography courses, one of which was a 400-level art course, and got an A- in it.
I not only found out that I'm fairly good at photography, but I also enjoyed it a lot. I especially enjoyed working with the chemicals, and making small changes in water temp to affect the final prints. I'm sure it helped me stand out on the interview, especially being someone who is obviously left-brained doing well in an area typically reserved for right-brainers. My prof was Don Camp, who is fairly well known for his photography.
Also my senior year, I did some independent research. It was in the math department, but that was only b/c I needed one more math class to graduate on time. It used OpenGL and fractal algorithms to generate random terrain patterns.
Best advice I can give someone in college is to look at what they are interested in and try to find a prof who will let you do an independent project under them if there is no course offered.
At the same time as this research project and the 400-level photography class, I had a 300-level course in the classics department simply called "Mythology". This made for a very difficult, but rewarding, final semester in college.
If you've ever bought a couple songs for 2-3 days in a row, you've noticed that you only get 1 charge on the credit card. Apple will hold off charging you for a couple days to try to lump a couple purchases together to save on the CC transaction charges.
I prefer to think of this as a Tiered system of movie quality. From highest to lowest quality
1) Willing to see more than once in theater -and/or- willing to run out within 48 hours of its release and purchase 2) Buy DVD first week it is out 3) Buy DVD at full price within 2 months of release 4) Buy DVD, maybe, eventually, at no more than 75% normal cost, or a 2-for-1 deal 5) I'll buy it if I see it in the $5 bin at Best Buy 6) Would watch it on TV/Airplane if nothing else on and I can't sleep.
If most of the $6B is from people pirating movies like Gigli, or the animated Spirit Stallion of the Simeron [sp?] just to see how bad it was, you can hardly count them as Tier 1-3. But the $6B probably DOES count them in the higher tiers. Very rarely does a movie found in tier 5 or 6 turn out to be good, although I did see Wild Hogs on an airplane and found The Magnificent 7 in the $5 pile, both of which were much better than anticipated.
Those who will go for tier 1-3 will buy the movie no matter what. Tier 4 people might buy the movie, but they might forget it existed with the latest over-hyped Harry Potter flick or w/ever. Tier 4 movies might end up just getting rented or Netflicked. Tier 5-6 movies are very likely to never be purchased, if simply because they are not worth seeing more than once.
That is Hollywood's problem. Too few of the films are worth seeing more than once, unless you are really drunk or nostalgic for a bad movie from your childhood. So it doesn't make sense for someone to spend $20-$25 for something that will take up space and never be watched again.
I recently purchased a 360 Elite from GameStop. I was told by 3 different GameStops that it had a built-in HD-DVD player.
Sure, I looked online, but they were inconclusive. Amazon.com even said that buying this product would make you elegible for 5 free hd-dvds, which implies that it had a built in player (there is an offer to recieve 5 free movies by mail if you buy a certain HD-DVD player).
Also, xbox.com didn't deny that it was built in. It also did not mention an included player, so I suspected the GS employees were lying.
There is no included HD player in the 360 Elite. Not that it really mattered, as I wanted the system anyways. I just take offence to being lied to by 5 employees of 3 different stores (Vienna, VA; Reston, VA; and Herndon, VA).
I talked to a friend who used to work at a GameStop in Texas who said "We lie to customers all the time".
I live in Virginia, and last year there was a change to the state constitution to furthur define marriage (which had the added effect of preventing legal gay marriage w/o another ammendment).
I kept getting robot calls from 'ministers' who were very against the change. Before I got the calls, I probably would have skipped the question or not voted. After the calls, I decided to go out and vote against the change just b/c they were annoying me so much. It wasn't until afterwards that I wondered which side actually made the calls.
As soon as this hits mainstream media (CNN/FOX/ABC/NBC/Local/News Journal shows [20/20, 60 minutes, etc]), I can't wait for each side to fake a joe job against themselves, then play the pity card (Person A fakes being Person B faking being Person A running a smear campaign).
This is why I don't like watching the news, or TV in general.
Picasa was OK the last time I tried it, but has some issues. Mostly, I felt like the software was in control and I was not.
The GIMP gives you a ton of control, perhaps too much in some areas, and not enough in others. For example, I couldn't figure out how to turn an image to black and white in the GIMP, but I could separate the color chanels w/o trouble. This just seems wrong. For Photoshop, you can convert to b&w with an option that's on the menu, while in the GIMP, I had to really hunt for it.
In Photoshop, I feel at least, they much better balance the level of control that the user has vs the control the software just takes, then builds many tools with different levels of control, depending on what the user feels comfortable with. But its expensive. I'd like to use PS, but don't want to spend the money which could go into a new scanner, or camera piece.
Personally (I do photo editing on Windows b/c it has the tools I need), I use GIMP and Paint.NET. Both are good tools for the job, and Paint.NET is very simple to use - but not nearly as powerful as something like GIMP, Photoshop, etc. I personally find the crop tool and rotation tool in Paint.NET superior to GIMP, but that's just my personal feelings. Also, Paint.NET has some very good tutorials in their forum section. The only down-side to Paint.NET is that its based on the.NET framework, so versions for Mac/Linux are probably never going to happen.
I find remarkable parallels to the success of the Wii and the game WoW.
WoW is successfull largely in part to much of the content being available to those who only have 1-2 hours per day to play (ie non-hardcore gamers). There is still stuff for the hardcore players to enjoy too.
The Wii is successful (I believe at least) b/c of Wii Sports, and whatever follows this game. It is a fun game that you can play for 10 mins to 5 hours if you want. My father who hates video games loves Wii sports. He hasn't played a video game since the original Mario Bros, but asks me to bring my Wii over whenever I come - and likes to play Wii sports.
Then there are some other decent games like Super Paper Mario and Zelda: Twilight Princess for the old time fans.
Nintendo has done well to capture the non-hard core market that the 360 mostly misses, just like WoW does. People who were in elementry school when the original NES came out are now in their 20's-30's, have jobs, and may or may not have kids. Both the Wii and WoW cater to this low playtime crowd, which is appearantly quite large. Many people I work with who have families play, and enjoy, WoW. Many of them also have a Wii. Both the Wii and WoW also expanded the target market - and in some cases added age groups to the market that were never expected. I've seen the Wii Sports used in nursing homes for older people as well. How many of them were considered a target market for video games a year ago? In the MMO market, how many considered a person with 1-2 hours per day of playtime as a target market before WoW came out?
That being said, I'd like to see the numbers in a month from now after Halo 3 comes out. I think that Halo 3 alone will sell 400,000-500,000 systems over the next 4-6 months. I don't think that the Wii has any kind of blockbuster release coming up on the scale of the final halo game.
I think much of this comes from the "I enjoy this, you should too" mentality.
You could say the same thing bad about someone's favorite hobby, and I'm sure they would defend it just like people defend their own MMO -- b/c it is a hobby for many.
For others, a MMO is some sort of justification of their existance. "Oh, I killed the big bad mega-boss, I'm awesome, will you date me now?".
Even withing each MMO there are different levels of dedication and the same sort of 'tribes'.
I play FFXI, I don't deny it. In this game, there are many groups that consider themselves to be "end game", whatever that means. You have the hard-core players who will stay up to 5am just to see if some monster will pop. Then you have the people who will play from 9pm - midnight 4-5 days per week. The more casual players sometimes look down on the hardcore players b/c they spend too much time, but question anything they do, and they will defend their decision and call you a gimp or noob or tell you that you just don't know how to play.
The same is probably true for WoW. One person will argue that the rewards for beating X or Y instance are not worth the time and effort to get to that point. Someone who has put the time and effort will tell you exactly why it is worth the effort.
Its nice, to a point. I don't think that the best sword of 2004 should still be the best sword of 2007 (Ridill). And the 21-24 hour spawn timers have got to go -- when its generally the same people claiming the monsters over and over, it gets boring. There should be a point where people are either finished with certain monsters, or they have enough incentive to move on to other monsters and leave the old ones for the round 2 group.
As it is now, it is almost impossible for a guild/linkshell to ever finish with some monsters, if only because selling drops is one of the only ways to make money anymore.
As another player who has been playing since 2004, I agree.
My server (Diabolos) is fairly unique in that we had a split in the end-game groups very early, which prevented 1 all powerful linkshell (guild) from forming. We have no less than 7 who can kill just about anything in the game, and that's just the english speaking world. I have screen shots of the zone "Dragon's Aery" with over 200 people waiting for what was definitly a Fafnir (not Nidhogg) pop day (2 days after Nidhogg popped). I also have screenshots of Aspid running free with no competition.
The other issue is Dynamis (an end-game, non-instanced area). While some servers have calenders, Diabolos does not. There is a policy of/randoming for the zone, which leads to groups sending 2-3 people to 'reserve' a zone, or try to force a/random as another group is about to enter. I really believe that Limbus and Dynamis need to be instanced, or at the very least, double the number of available zones (DynamisSanA, DynamisSanB). Diabolos has new 'end game' and 'dynamis' groups forming every week or two, and while I enjoy the cheap currency and pop items they sell the following week, it is very crowded.
Sky is usually packed. My ls has just stopped going to sky farm after 8 PM EST, its just not worth it. And there is no reason to even bother to try to camp any hnms, as they are all botted.
21-24 hour spawns might have worked well 3 years ago, but they have been too dated for the server's actual population for at least 1 1/2 years. I'd really like to see a true instanced area where you have exclusive rights to the big monsters that have been around for years, and has the same drops as the original, and isn't some sort of KS/BCNM with only some of the drops. Or, give us obtainable gear that is better than the 4 year old stuff. Really, we shouldn't be fighting the exact same monsters as 3 years ago, and instances that last for 30 minutes are kind of a cop-out. I'd really like to see WoW-style instancing, and no more "here, have exclusive use of this zone for a little while" type activities. It might give the feeling of community more, but it really gets old and obnoxious fast.
SE really needs to make us forget about the old stuff. Instead, we get crap that is half of what the old stuff offers, with a couple real gems for a handful of jobs. I've personally been in sky for 2 years now off and on. I'm sick of it. You are correct, SE had the perfect chance to make everything obtainable. Instead, they give us somewhat meh gear in assault. The Nyzle Isle could have been the perfect place to make really good stuff fall, instead we get new stuff that is mostly meh until you get the whole set.
The gear dropped from the "Sky" areas and the "3 Kings" are still the best in the game. Sure we got a "replacement" item for the dalmatica, sort of, if you get the whole set. There are still so many items that are amazing, but unobtainable. I've never seen a ridil drop, and defending rings are amazingly rare. I really think that the whole "end game" needs to be revamped, with WoW style instancing for everything, unless SE really wants the same linkshells that have dominated all end-game gear for years to continue to dominate it.
I'm kind of hoping that the next expansion fixes some of these issues, and offers another way to get the ancient currency, but I really doubt it.
let me tell you that the majority of folks at American universities who graduate with masters or doctoral degrees are non-Americans
My brother just tried to get into graduate school. Near 4.0 GPA undergrad, taking graduate level classes from his sophomore year on, doing research projects in his freshman year.
He could not get accepted to any graduate school. It actually appears as though American universities do not want american students.
I personally was published in a math journal based on something I did my senior year in college, and my little brother is way better and smarter than I am. He started reading, and understanding, my college calculus book as a 10th grader, linear algebra as an 11th grader, and by 12th grade was on to abstract algebra, which he loved, for some reason.
I'm really not sure how there could have been so many better, more qualified, american students wanting to attend grad school that he would not have had at least one acceptance (out of about 5).
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from a check bouncing, I wouldn't feel comfortable mailing my cousin (as the AC who posted mentioned) $1000 in cash. But I feel fine mailing a check. A check could be lost, but if it is, you can cancel it and re-send it. Sure it costs a little bit ($20 lets say), but that's better than losing the $1000 (the last check I had to cancel didn't cost me anything). If the exchange is done in person, there's also carrying around $1000 that would make me nervous. Also, if they want to deposit the money, people do not feel comfortable depositing cash in ATMs. Cash deposits in excess of a certain amount can also trigger safety checks in the US, IRS forms, and other unpleasantries. Checks do not for some reason.
In addition to this, most people, if given a check for an event (wedding, graduation, new child), will deposit the money and save it or pool it for something larger. Cash is more likely to be spent fairly quickly on small things, like gas, food, and other day-to-day costs.
I'm not sure what credit transfer is. I tried to google for it, but all I could find is how to tranfer college credits. If this is like an electronic tranfer or wire tranfer of funds, that has a high cost associated with it in the US ($40-50 according to my bank, but this was a couple of years ago that I last checked), which makes it undesireable for the person tranferring the money.
Well lets be serious about the US too -- very few young people I know write checks anymore either.
I've had my current bank account for 4 1/2 years. I'm on check #12. 6 of those have been to set up direct deposit (paycheck goes directly into bank account rather than having a physical check).
I've only been handed 2 checks in the past year. One was from a friend who was paying me back a sum of approx US$300. The other was a bill refund where I accidently overpaid about $20.
Also in the past year, I've written one check.
If I want to give money to a friend for a special event (for example, they get married, graduate college, new child, etc), what choices are there beyond cash or check? Is there a 3rd option I'm missing beyond cash and check? For person to person transactions, check can be easier and safer than cash.
One of the GP's complaints about the many gimp programs on the tool bar can be fixed with a plugin called something like Anti-Weird, or De-Weird, or so. This will make the gimp app run as a single item on the task bar.
A word of caution about GimpShop -- I tried it and it was very unstable. It may be due to having both Gimp and GimpShop installed on the same machine, but I didn't really look into it. It also tends to run about 1-2 minor releases behind the Gimp.
Wow, didn't know the idea went back that far.
There is an organization in New Jersey that has been using the old NYC subways for artificial reefs for at least 5-6 years ( founded in 1993 - http://www.reefball.org/ ). And from NJ.gov ( PDF Link http://nj.gov/dep/fgw/pdf/2003/reef_news03.pdf ). Looks like NJ has been doing artificial reefs since 1984, using all sorts of things, not just old subway cars.
Neither does modding down my post as 'Overrated' just because you disagree with it (directed at the mod, you know who you are). Discussion and debate doesn't go anywhere when everyone agrees with each other. I know Group Think is bad, unless you agree w/ that side, in which case it is good.
As to being pronounced dead: It was a real concern at one point, even in the late 1700's-early 1800's about being burried alive. If you see http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriques/hist615/vmhb.htm , and scroll down, it says The idea of being buried alive was a more realistic concern then than it would be today This is in reference to George Washington (1st President of US). So you can take this either way, but there was a fear of being pronounced dead without being dead, although there may have been no basis for it.
But science really cannot offer an explanation for the Easter story. I really do not want to see the outcry if someone were to ever try to say that it did not happen.
I went back and re-read the article. It is definitly written up as a piece to divide everyone, and offers very little specifics. If the only change to the course is calling it a "Theory" instead of a "Law", what is really lost? Its the same information, presented in the same way.
But isn't that the crux of the whole argument about teaching evolution in school.
Essentially, evolution is a part of the gospel of the Atheist religion. Religious parents, whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or other, feel that the teachings of the gospel of one Atheism as truth, and students being required to learn it, is an affront to their own religion. Just as Atheist families would feel offended if the book of Genesis were required readings, and it was taught as truth. Many of the parents/grandparents remember when the Lord's Prayer was said every day in school, public ones included. I know there is still resentment, even ~40 years later.
I personally don't feel that children in in K-6 should be have evolution forced upon them, especially if the parents do not want it. It would be best to teach them about the scientific method, and teach them how to learn and discover. If they are in high school, then they are old enough to make up their own minds about what is truth and what they personally wish to believe.
It is very sad though, that the word "theory" has fallen to mean "a good guess" or "maybe true, probably not" in the greater population.
Yeah, I know. 1and1 was still worse. At least my static pages load in any reasonable time with DH.
Most of the problems have not been my cluster. I'm not too thrilled about the clear text passwords, but the site I have with them is all backed up. The DB site is more important than the files anyways. I don't run anything that is critical to my survival or my bank account on the DH site. I'm not familiar w/ the 200+ CPU load issue though.
As to the billing -- that didn't affect me. My CC expired the month before the billing issue and I didn't update the info yet.
The newsletter gets deleted as soon as it comes in, maybe I should read it more.
It becomes a question of what is worse. I can pay more for a website that never loads, customer service that can't answer a simple question, and has all of the same issues, or pay less for a website that loads in reasonable time and has ok customer service. DH is low pain compared to 1and1.
My host is dreamhost. Their uptime is also listed as 99.99% ( http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/DreamHost.html ).
From experience, this is not the case. For example, the site says that they had 100% uptime in January of this year. On their own status page ( http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/ ) they show several outages for January. There was one night in January where some DH routers had issues and the Web servers and MySQL servers could not communicate. Any web site which did not require MySQL was fine, but those that did require it were not working.
There was also a couple DNS outages late last year, in which all websites that used DH's DNS were down (web servers were fine, its the DNS servers that were not).
I'm not complaining about DH, as they are fantastic compared to 1and1, who I was with before. I'm just saying that I don't believe 99.99% uptime is accurate for DH (it may be accurate for Yahoo!), and 100% for the past 6 months is incorrect.
Also looking at the site for 1and1 ( http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/11InternetInc.html ), I know those numbers are not correct. I left 1and1 after my site had daily outages in March/April 07.
Perhaps the NIH is lying? Or does 20-60% mean something other than 20-60% of the people who contracted the disease died from it? Maybe it is written in the 'incorrect' way because its easier to understand. 38% per week doesn't mean much to most people, 'correct' or not.
Furthur down in same article as above During the past years, there has been a growing recognition of Benjamin Jesty (1737-1816) as the first to vaccinate against smallpox. Ok, so someone who died in 1816 tried to vaccinate, disease gone by the late 1970's. That sounds like an effort spanning the 19th and 20th centuries to me.
As to the AIDS mortality -- it was phrased poorly. But the question remains, those people who died from the opportunistic infections, would have lived longer if not for HIV? If yes, then I believe that HIV is responsible for their death. You obviously feel differently. However, the CDC would agree with me in that HIV/AIDS is a cause of death. See http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/slides/mortality/ where they say on slide 2 "Deaths due to HIV disease".
I will admit that the life expectancy is longer than I previously believed. Everything I had heard was 10 years from initial infection to AIDS, then about 2 years until death after that. However, if you will turn your attention to slides 2 and 3 of the previous link (which is http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/slides/mortality/ ), you will see that most people who die with HIV/AIDS, die due to HIV/AIDS. I admit, not 100%, but a fairly high percentage. My initial post was more aimed towards the way that Small Pox was eliminated (immunization) and 100% was not really intended to be gospel.
You appearantly also have some pent-up hatred towards wikipedia which you are bringing out against me. I've cited my sources, all CDC and NIH links (which are as respected as the WHO, even if they are US government run organizations).
Small Pox was eradicated due primarily to an immunization effort that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. Unlike HIV (as far as I am aware), there are two viruses that appear to the human immune system as the same. One causes small pox, the other causes Cow Pox. Essentially, the immunization to small pox is to expose a person to cow pox. They get a feaver for a couple days to a week (along the lines of Chicken Pox), but then become immune to Small Pox.
With the Small Pox vaccine, once exposed to the alternative, you become immune to Small Pox. HIV is the opposite, once you are exposed, it will kill you.
As bad as it was, Small Pox was a 20-60% mortality rate (see wikipedia), which is horrible, but there was a chance. HIV is a 100% mortality rate, it just takes a bit longer. If we could find a way to create immunity from HIV, it would die out.
Most of the treatments for HIV simply extend the person's life, probably with the hope that they live long enough to find a cure. The drugs are not pleasant, and often make the person ill while trying to swallow them.
I too am too young to really appreciate not having to worry about Small Pox. I'm not even sure I was given the shot, as I was born after it was declared eradicated (1979).
In reply to #7, its Chrysler.
I had a 98 Cirrus, it was cheap. One cold January morning, the battery died. To replace it, took over an hour and was not a cheap experience (that is, of course, after I had to bug my boss to come out and help me jump start the car). This was a reasonably trustworthy mechanic shop too.
Chrysler, in their infinite wisdom, placed the battery behind the wheel on some car models in the late 90's and early 00's.
-CPM
Some anecdotal comments.
I was a double major, Math and Comp Sci in college.
However, my senior year, I took a couple photography courses, one of which was a 400-level art course, and got an A- in it.
I not only found out that I'm fairly good at photography, but I also enjoyed it a lot. I especially enjoyed working with the chemicals, and making small changes in water temp to affect the final prints. I'm sure it helped me stand out on the interview, especially being someone who is obviously left-brained doing well in an area typically reserved for right-brainers. My prof was Don Camp, who is fairly well known for his photography.
Also my senior year, I did some independent research. It was in the math department, but that was only b/c I needed one more math class to graduate on time. It used OpenGL and fractal algorithms to generate random terrain patterns.
Best advice I can give someone in college is to look at what they are interested in and try to find a prof who will let you do an independent project under them if there is no course offered.
At the same time as this research project and the 400-level photography class, I had a 300-level course in the classics department simply called "Mythology". This made for a very difficult, but rewarding, final semester in college.
-CPM
If you've ever bought a couple songs for 2-3 days in a row, you've noticed that you only get 1 charge on the credit card. Apple will hold off charging you for a couple days to try to lump a couple purchases together to save on the CC transaction charges.
I prefer to think of this as a Tiered system of movie quality. From highest to lowest quality
1) Willing to see more than once in theater -and/or- willing to run out within 48 hours of its release and purchase
2) Buy DVD first week it is out
3) Buy DVD at full price within 2 months of release
4) Buy DVD, maybe, eventually, at no more than 75% normal cost, or a 2-for-1 deal
5) I'll buy it if I see it in the $5 bin at Best Buy
6) Would watch it on TV/Airplane if nothing else on and I can't sleep.
If most of the $6B is from people pirating movies like Gigli, or the animated Spirit Stallion of the Simeron [sp?] just to see how bad it was, you can hardly count them as Tier 1-3. But the $6B probably DOES count them in the higher tiers. Very rarely does a movie found in tier 5 or 6 turn out to be good, although I did see Wild Hogs on an airplane and found The Magnificent 7 in the $5 pile, both of which were much better than anticipated.
Those who will go for tier 1-3 will buy the movie no matter what. Tier 4 people might buy the movie, but they might forget it existed with the latest over-hyped Harry Potter flick or w/ever. Tier 4 movies might end up just getting rented or Netflicked. Tier 5-6 movies are very likely to never be purchased, if simply because they are not worth seeing more than once.
That is Hollywood's problem. Too few of the films are worth seeing more than once, unless you are really drunk or nostalgic for a bad movie from your childhood. So it doesn't make sense for someone to spend $20-$25 for something that will take up space and never be watched again.
I recently purchased a 360 Elite from GameStop. I was told by 3 different GameStops that it had a built-in HD-DVD player.
Sure, I looked online, but they were inconclusive. Amazon.com even said that buying this product would make you elegible for 5 free hd-dvds, which implies that it had a built in player (there is an offer to recieve 5 free movies by mail if you buy a certain HD-DVD player).
Also, xbox.com didn't deny that it was built in. It also did not mention an included player, so I suspected the GS employees were lying.
There is no included HD player in the 360 Elite. Not that it really mattered, as I wanted the system anyways. I just take offence to being lied to by 5 employees of 3 different stores (Vienna, VA; Reston, VA; and Herndon, VA).
I talked to a friend who used to work at a GameStop in Texas who said "We lie to customers all the time".
-CPM
Non-logged in user see the same page, so its basically a static page that gets updated every couple of minutes.
Logged in users can have a bunch of customization options on the front-end, which would take more resources.
I find it just as interesting that the logged-in readers use up that much more CPU.
I got a lot of this last election.
I live in Virginia, and last year there was a change to the state constitution to furthur define marriage (which had the added effect of preventing legal gay marriage w/o another ammendment).
I kept getting robot calls from 'ministers' who were very against the change. Before I got the calls, I probably would have skipped the question or not voted. After the calls, I decided to go out and vote against the change just b/c they were annoying me so much. It wasn't until afterwards that I wondered which side actually made the calls.
As soon as this hits mainstream media (CNN/FOX/ABC/NBC/Local/News Journal shows [20/20, 60 minutes, etc]), I can't wait for each side to fake a joe job against themselves, then play the pity card (Person A fakes being Person B faking being Person A running a smear campaign).
This is why I don't like watching the news, or TV in general.
Interesting, I must play now, thank you. I had never thought of this before.
-CPM
Picasa was OK the last time I tried it, but has some issues. Mostly, I felt like the software was in control and I was not.
.NET framework, so versions for Mac/Linux are probably never going to happen.
The GIMP gives you a ton of control, perhaps too much in some areas, and not enough in others. For example, I couldn't figure out how to turn an image to black and white in the GIMP, but I could separate the color chanels w/o trouble. This just seems wrong. For Photoshop, you can convert to b&w with an option that's on the menu, while in the GIMP, I had to really hunt for it.
In Photoshop, I feel at least, they much better balance the level of control that the user has vs the control the software just takes, then builds many tools with different levels of control, depending on what the user feels comfortable with. But its expensive. I'd like to use PS, but don't want to spend the money which could go into a new scanner, or camera piece.
Personally (I do photo editing on Windows b/c it has the tools I need), I use GIMP and Paint.NET. Both are good tools for the job, and Paint.NET is very simple to use - but not nearly as powerful as something like GIMP, Photoshop, etc. I personally find the crop tool and rotation tool in Paint.NET superior to GIMP, but that's just my personal feelings. Also, Paint.NET has some very good tutorials in their forum section. The only down-side to Paint.NET is that its based on the
-CPM
I find remarkable parallels to the success of the Wii and the game WoW.
WoW is successfull largely in part to much of the content being available to those who only have 1-2 hours per day to play (ie non-hardcore gamers). There is still stuff for the hardcore players to enjoy too.
The Wii is successful (I believe at least) b/c of Wii Sports, and whatever follows this game. It is a fun game that you can play for 10 mins to 5 hours if you want. My father who hates video games loves Wii sports. He hasn't played a video game since the original Mario Bros, but asks me to bring my Wii over whenever I come - and likes to play Wii sports.
Then there are some other decent games like Super Paper Mario and Zelda: Twilight Princess for the old time fans.
Nintendo has done well to capture the non-hard core market that the 360 mostly misses, just like WoW does. People who were in elementry school when the original NES came out are now in their 20's-30's, have jobs, and may or may not have kids. Both the Wii and WoW cater to this low playtime crowd, which is appearantly quite large. Many people I work with who have families play, and enjoy, WoW. Many of them also have a Wii. Both the Wii and WoW also expanded the target market - and in some cases added age groups to the market that were never expected. I've seen the Wii Sports used in nursing homes for older people as well. How many of them were considered a target market for video games a year ago? In the MMO market, how many considered a person with 1-2 hours per day of playtime as a target market before WoW came out?
That being said, I'd like to see the numbers in a month from now after Halo 3 comes out. I think that Halo 3 alone will sell 400,000-500,000 systems over the next 4-6 months. I don't think that the Wii has any kind of blockbuster release coming up on the scale of the final halo game.
I think much of this comes from the "I enjoy this, you should too" mentality.
You could say the same thing bad about someone's favorite hobby, and I'm sure they would defend it just like people defend their own MMO -- b/c it is a hobby for many.
For others, a MMO is some sort of justification of their existance. "Oh, I killed the big bad mega-boss, I'm awesome, will you date me now?".
Even withing each MMO there are different levels of dedication and the same sort of 'tribes'.
I play FFXI, I don't deny it. In this game, there are many groups that consider themselves to be "end game", whatever that means. You have the hard-core players who will stay up to 5am just to see if some monster will pop. Then you have the people who will play from 9pm - midnight 4-5 days per week. The more casual players sometimes look down on the hardcore players b/c they spend too much time, but question anything they do, and they will defend their decision and call you a gimp or noob or tell you that you just don't know how to play.
The same is probably true for WoW. One person will argue that the rewards for beating X or Y instance are not worth the time and effort to get to that point. Someone who has put the time and effort will tell you exactly why it is worth the effort.
I believe it is still the only one which allows this. Even PSO had different servers for the 360 and PC clients.
I guess you could argue that WoW is cross platform as PC and Mac play on the same servers, but I don't really agree.
Its nice, to a point. I don't think that the best sword of 2004 should still be the best sword of 2007 (Ridill). And the 21-24 hour spawn timers have got to go -- when its generally the same people claiming the monsters over and over, it gets boring. There should be a point where people are either finished with certain monsters, or they have enough incentive to move on to other monsters and leave the old ones for the round 2 group.
As it is now, it is almost impossible for a guild/linkshell to ever finish with some monsters, if only because selling drops is one of the only ways to make money anymore.
As another player who has been playing since 2004, I agree.
/randoming for the zone, which leads to groups sending 2-3 people to 'reserve' a zone, or try to force a /random as another group is about to enter. I really believe that Limbus and Dynamis need to be instanced, or at the very least, double the number of available zones (DynamisSanA, DynamisSanB). Diabolos has new 'end game' and 'dynamis' groups forming every week or two, and while I enjoy the cheap currency and pop items they sell the following week, it is very crowded.
My server (Diabolos) is fairly unique in that we had a split in the end-game groups very early, which prevented 1 all powerful linkshell (guild) from forming. We have no less than 7 who can kill just about anything in the game, and that's just the english speaking world. I have screen shots of the zone "Dragon's Aery" with over 200 people waiting for what was definitly a Fafnir (not Nidhogg) pop day (2 days after Nidhogg popped). I also have screenshots of Aspid running free with no competition.
The other issue is Dynamis (an end-game, non-instanced area). While some servers have calenders, Diabolos does not. There is a policy of
Sky is usually packed. My ls has just stopped going to sky farm after 8 PM EST, its just not worth it. And there is no reason to even bother to try to camp any hnms, as they are all botted.
21-24 hour spawns might have worked well 3 years ago, but they have been too dated for the server's actual population for at least 1 1/2 years. I'd really like to see a true instanced area where you have exclusive rights to the big monsters that have been around for years, and has the same drops as the original, and isn't some sort of KS/BCNM with only some of the drops. Or, give us obtainable gear that is better than the 4 year old stuff. Really, we shouldn't be fighting the exact same monsters as 3 years ago, and instances that last for 30 minutes are kind of a cop-out. I'd really like to see WoW-style instancing, and no more "here, have exclusive use of this zone for a little while" type activities. It might give the feeling of community more, but it really gets old and obnoxious fast.
SE really needs to make us forget about the old stuff. Instead, we get crap that is half of what the old stuff offers, with a couple real gems for a handful of jobs. I've personally been in sky for 2 years now off and on. I'm sick of it. You are correct, SE had the perfect chance to make everything obtainable. Instead, they give us somewhat meh gear in assault. The Nyzle Isle could have been the perfect place to make really good stuff fall, instead we get new stuff that is mostly meh until you get the whole set.
The gear dropped from the "Sky" areas and the "3 Kings" are still the best in the game. Sure we got a "replacement" item for the dalmatica, sort of, if you get the whole set. There are still so many items that are amazing, but unobtainable. I've never seen a ridil drop, and defending rings are amazingly rare. I really think that the whole "end game" needs to be revamped, with WoW style instancing for everything, unless SE really wants the same linkshells that have dominated all end-game gear for years to continue to dominate it.
I'm kind of hoping that the next expansion fixes some of these issues, and offers another way to get the ancient currency, but I really doubt it.
-CPM
My brother just tried to get into graduate school. Near 4.0 GPA undergrad, taking graduate level classes from his sophomore year on, doing research projects in his freshman year.
He could not get accepted to any graduate school. It actually appears as though American universities do not want american students.
I personally was published in a math journal based on something I did my senior year in college, and my little brother is way better and smarter than I am. He started reading, and understanding, my college calculus book as a 10th grader, linear algebra as an 11th grader, and by 12th grade was on to abstract algebra, which he loved, for some reason.
I'm really not sure how there could have been so many better, more qualified, american students wanting to attend grad school that he would not have had at least one acceptance (out of about 5).