This article really inspired me, so I went and made some experiments myself. I don't have one of those guitar controller, but I do own a Fender Stratocaster made from something very heavy, so I reckoned I could modify it slightly and use it as a sledgehammer. It worked! I actualy managed to demolish a small garden in my neighbor's garden, but then it developed a HW related fault, and I had to stop, but it sure shows that the principle is sound.
I don't really think it is the quality of teaching in general that is to blame. The American education system is recognised internationally as one of the best in the world, and it is of course not without reason that American universities are still considered the best.
I suspect it is a cultural thing. For one thing, Far-Eastern parents really take education seriously; just take Chinese children - they study very long hours at home, because the parents make them do it. This is not a modern thing either - China has for centuries had a system of exams by which in principle anybody could enter into public office, and it has always been extremely demanding and competitive, hence the strong emphasis on studying.
On the other side of the cultural fence is the pervasive, American idea, that education is not essential in order to be successful; you can see it even in Disney's Scrooge McDuck character - you just have to work hard and save money, and you will end up fabulously rich. Or the myth that all you need is some "talent" and become a rock-star or actor. And of course, there is a large segment of Americans that are simply anti-intellectual for religious or political reasons.
Where do I want to spend eternity? Well, here on Earth, of course, but failing that, I want my children to cremate me, share the ashes and stuff them under a tree or similar of their choice in their garden. That way they don't stupidly waste money on a block of granite in a cemetery, and hopefully I will be some benefit, albeit in a rather small way.
I don't think it is all that obvious. I would think the right to make money from one's looks belongs to the person, at least until he/she sells that right to somebody else. And while it may not be all that bad for a footballer to be put into a football game, I think everybody would agree that it wouldn't be all that nice to have your face put on the victim in a game dedicated to, say, gang-rape or similar.
Why is it that certain writers always try to pin down "the one thing that made us human"? Yes, cooking food was one of the important steps towards what we are now in that it made a far wider range of foods available to us, but there are so many other things that have furthered that process - pointing to just one of them simply skews the picture. Using fire was important, but so was walking on our feet, learning to talk, using tools and so on. Personally, the one thing that I find most "human" is our ability to empathise with other species than our own.
But we should not forget that all the things that set us apart do so only by degrees; we can use more tools than any other animal, we can communicate more than others, we are more intelligent - but none of our traits are unique.
Soda? Who would like to consume NaCO3 in any form?
Jokes aside, the whole area of luxury consumption - like junk food and sugar-drinks - is highly inflamed and mired down in huge, economic interests. Whole sectors of industry all across the world would collapse if people suddenly started to eat and drink only healthily; yet there is no doubt that this same consumer life-style is the biggest cause of preventable, early death, disability and general bad health.
People often say "nobody is forcing you to buy junk food", when you criticize the junk-food industry; but that is a superficial argument that is not justified. As all modern research into the causes of obesity shows very clearly, it is not simply a matter of personal choice, whether you eat too much junk; and anybody who has tried to fight a serious weight problem will know from experience that it takes more than mere will-power to stay away from the calories. Our bodies and instincts are programmed to make us fatten up when we are surrounded by abundance. When you turn on the tv you are constantly indoctrinated to go and consume junk food, and when you go to the supermarket the displays are brimming with it; you will be hard put to find a quick and easy, healthy option. So is it really a matter of personal choice? I don't think so.
What one should remember is that these things are neither human fundamental rights nor basic food-stuffs; they are luxuries. And while luxury can be nice from time to time, it simply get trivial and not actually enjoyable when you have it all the time.
I don't know what is the best way forward, but the present situation is simply not sustainable. Personally, I would like to see a situation where basic, healthy necessities were abundant and easy to find everywhere, but luxury items were something you would have to go out of your way to find; not the other way around.
I wonder what this tells those that still fawn over Reagan and see him as a great president - as opposed to, say, a senile B-movie actor, who should have been in a care home.
Don't get me wrong, I don't "hate America" - but it does make me very angry, the way you guys again and again put unimaginable, destructive power in the hands of incompetent idiots who suffer from tunnel vision and are blinded by absurd ideology and/or religion. The fact that the world still stands, it would seem, is only due to the fact that leaders in other countries - USSR and China - have backed away from copying the American leaders' insane excesses.
I fear what the future will bring. In a hundred years, perhaps, we will have peace, but at what price? It will only take one idiot like Reagan or Bush in America and an Ahmadinejad or Kim Jon Il with nuclear weapons who is not going to back down and is willing to sacrifice everything. In a hundred years there will be peace, but will there be people?
Sometimes I wish for some apocalypse just so the "Please won't someone take care of me!" dolts realize that the only person who can take care of you - IS YOU!.
Hmm, I think the "thought" that gone into this statement have run something like: "I would hate having somebody keeping a tag on me; ergo, this is crap and evil".
The sad facts are that:
1. It is not safe for children to go out on their own in many areas. 2. Young children are not equipped to take care of themselves; nor should they be.
One can discuss at which age children can fend for themselves - it is probably earlier than many parents think. But you don't learn to be a strong, independently minded member of society by growing up having to fend for yourself; the social skills required can only be learned in a good, nurturing family environment. Neglected children are much more likely to end up at the bottom of society.
Did I say anything that sounded like "one size fits all"? I was commenting on an article that stated that it was surprising that people didn't care about the impressive graphics etc - and I argue that this shouldn't surprise anybody.
so perhaps everybody in the world is a moron - except you, no doubt - or maybe you are just a nerd who hasn't seen the outside for too long, who knows. Whatever it may be, real life is what it is, no matter what we feel about it; if game developers want to survive by selling to the real public, they have to know what those people do and don't like. If they don't care about profits, then they are free to do whatever they like, of course.
The most important thing to hammer into everybody is: "You have to learn how to recognize and avoid security threats; technology only goes so far, but it is often surprisingly easy to spot security threats."
Other than that, there are a few rules:
1. Turn off all HTML and scripting in your email reader; if that is not possible, get one that can. 2. Use AdBlock Plus and NoScript (for Firefox) or similar.
It is a tiny bit inconvenient to have to explicitly allow scripting every time, but it has saved me no end of grief. In my workplace I am just about the only one that has never had any malware attack, and I get next to no SPAM either; the company filter captures about 5 per week, and sometimes one or two slip through to my inbox.
First of all let me state that I am not at all in favour of Chiropractics; I know little about it and can't judge whether their claims are generally valid. At the face of it I would say that it should be a relatively simple matter to determine whether there is any scientific evidence for or against it, and it shouldn't really come to a libel case in thefirst place; that is probably a question of the judge simply not doing his job properly.
What I find dishonest in this post is the way that it is being blown up to be about "Freedom of Whatever" - once again. If we want to be taken serious, we should really avoid sounding hysterical and underhanded.
In Britain, libel laws don't have any presumption of innocence -- any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it's true. Journalists are running scared.'
It is a basic court principle that if you make a damaging statement, you are required to be able to produce solid evidence; that is why we in criminal cases have the assumption of guilt, which means that the prosecutor has to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. When it comes to libel, we are AFAIK into the domain of civil law, where the requirements are as strict - maybe they should be, I'm no expert. The other thing worth noting is that in the case of libel, it is the "defendant" that has made an accusation, an that is why he has to produce evidence for his statements.
From what I can see in the other responses, we are dealing with two issues:
1. The issue of per-mile taxing 2. The issue of the proposed method
Personally I can see a lot of sense in drivers having to pay more if they drive more; perhaps I could even accept having my journeys tracked in detail with a GPS device or similar. Whether we like it or not, the more advanced society gets, the more eyes there will be to look at you and remember what you did, and as far as I can see, there is much to be said for having something record your behaviour objectively, rather than having a bunch of witnesses remember you "behaving suspiciously" because you are the wrong colour or wear the wrong clothes or whatever. A reliable, neutral record will work both ways. What I am so sure about is the fully automated reporting; when we rely too much on autonomous technology, things can go wrong in a big way without anybody finding out; and it can be very expensive.
The second issue is what I can't accept - the details of the proposal stink. It is ridiculously expensive, easy to circumvent, there are dubious business interests involved - and there are far cheaper ways of achieving more or less the same. Eg. one could use a modernised form of the system used in many lorries in Europe - a device that records your mileage and drive time on a paper disc; just make it fully electronic. And instead of using the excuse of "avoiding cheating" to make it very expensive, just make cheating difficult enough that most people won't bother; the loss to fraudsters will still be cheaper than trying to make a watertight system.
If a doctor signs-off, and says "person X has condition Y" and the policy covers condition Y, then anything that does the job of helping with condition Y should be fair game.
Hey, what are you doing, man, talking sense on/.? Don't you know it is a treasonable offense? Go wash your mouth with soap. Or your keyboard, whatever. Just do it!
This is a good demonstration of the importance of good punctuation; of course, when they said "man eating bird", what they mean was not "a bird that eats people", but "a man who eats a bird". See, it all much clearer now.
I think perhaps you are not aware that the majority of gameplayers are, in fact, not chronic players. Playing computer games is no longer the reserve of the all-out nerd, it has long been mainstream, and that means it has to appeal to people who may play every day, but only for a relatively short time; the very same people who enjoy their soap operas and sports shows along with nattering with their friends. Ordinary people, in other words. And just like most people don't really want to read heavy and deep books, they don't care much for games that require full-body immersion in an alien universe.
The fact that the results of this study surprises only goes to show that those who create the games are out of contact with their audience; it didn't surprise me at all, I have been saying for years that the gaming industry is way off the mark. The success of fairly weak games like The Sims and Wii* demonstrate that most want something simple and easy that looks and feel a bit like everyday life.
As for older gamers - I think it depends on how much older; I grew up with Adventure, which I played on the university's old Cyber from time to time. It didn't have much in the way of game-play features, but I still think that kind of game is far superior to most modern games; the best contemporary game I know of is the graphically quite simple Crossfire. What makes it nice is that you can play and enjoy it without really knowing much about it, but you can also immerse yourself and become a super-expert; there is a lot of scope for learning and interaction.
Not to defend the South African internet quality, of which I know nothing, but I don't really think this is anything more than an advertising stunt. One can prove that just about any method is "faster" than, say, a 1 Tbit line, if one is allowed to load an unlimited amount of data on your alternative transport medium. So how about loading a barge with 500 tons of DVDs packed with data or something like that? Is transport by barge going to be faster than a 1Tbit line? It is easy to make it look that way.
Harry Potter is a clumsy metaphor for Jesus, and... anything else?
If that is all you have found in the stories, perhaps you should read them again with a bit more care and attention. In my view the clumsy Jesus metaphor is the Narnia books; they are nothing more than a shallow retelling of that theme, whereas the Potter books tell with real psychological insight about what goes on in the mind of a young person who is landed with far too heavy a burden; Rowling's portrayal of the delusional state of mind of Tom Riddle is not bad either. She is a very clever lady.
I don't see how Narnia and Harry Potter could blend in a meaningful way, but we'll see.
I guess there's no profit in it, and our state religion won't allow that.
I take it you mean the worship of the almighty dollar? In a way you are right, I think, but perhaps not like you think. The American space program has been privatised far too much, and a lot of companies make a huge amount of money because they are being allowed to overcharge grossly for their services; this is yet another area where the illusion of the free market is being used to cover up the fact that this kind of joint venture between commercial and state projects is always hugely over budget and behind schedule. Military spending is another example.
Public services, broadly defined, should only be operated and funded by public resources; what one has to remember is that the primary purpose of a private company is not to offer a service to the benefit of its customers, but to generate the maximum profit for the minimun investment, which means that they will try to milk the public finances as much as possible. And since public servants are generally paid less that their counterparts in the private sector, they are often not good at handling private companies. And I think the experiences of the last 30 years or so show that privatising public services always means getting less service for more money.
Before anybody starts on telling me how bad public projects are always managed, let me just point out that those mismanaged projects are always the fruit of public-private joint-ventures; look it up if you don't believe me. There have been many well-managed, public projects in the past - the European educational systems are, by and large, examples of this; European universities were the top until they were forced into private sponsorships - the same goes for state schools. Health care is another good example - in spite of what myths Americans are being fed about UK's NHS, the decline has only begun since they were part privatised. The indisputable fact is that the less private involvement in health care there is, the cheaper it is - without the standards suffering, mind you.
Linux's overlap with Windows is much smaller than its overlap with HP, IBP, and Sun/Oracle.
This may be a large part of their considerations, although helping your enemy's enemies is a strategy that has backfired many times in the past. Another part of it is likely that they want to be seen as not so much of a threat by the growing crowd of FOSS users; by betting so heavily on the corporate world, Microsoft have managed to push away a large part of the people who are going to be important and influential decision makers in the future: the students, who can't afford to pay for an expensive OS, MS Office, Visual Studio and other applications, but can easily learn how to use Linux. And now they are in the uncomfortable situation that there is a large group of people out there, who are comfortable with Linux, which by now offers a large suite of very mature programs. They have to try to win back the minds and hearts of that group.
And one shouldn't be blind to the possibility that they are still poised to try to take over Linux, if the chance emerges. Being very permissive with patents is not the same as giving them away; maybe they hope that the patents will be worked into the FOSS code base, and then when the time is ripe they will call in the debts.
What nonsense is this? Touch typing can be useful if 1) you write a lot and 2) you use a keyboard. But, if you write a lot on a keyboard, you will inevitably get fluent at typing; this is not a fundamental skill, like the others - it is only a single skill.
In fact, there are many other skills that are far more fundamental, such as basic cookery, childcare and general life-management that would be far more beneficial for young people to learn. It is appalling to see how many young families rely on cheap and nasty ready-meals because the very concept of boiling an egg, baking a bread or preparing a simple meal is alien to them. And I would say that the current financial crisis has a lot to do with a culture where young families rely completely on easy credit because they have never learned to manage their private finances. Touch typing, or even "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic", won't give you the life skills needed for that.
software patents 'fueled the explosive growth of open source software development'
It is true, in a way, that intellectual property rights were the direct cause for the growths and indeed the very existence of open source - if proprietary systems and SW hadn't been so obscenely expensive and restrictive, Stallman would most likely not have started on what he did etc etc. I know, this is probably not what IBM were thinking of in their statement, but it's true none the less.
I don't care what it looks like; what I am interested in/worried about is what goes on inside. Firefox has become more and more of a strawman for Google, I feel, and has an increasing number of features I'd rather not have. So far I have been able to turn them off, but who knows what the future will bring?
I think it is rather bigheaded of people to think that the world would automatically opt for an American model - other countries have a view on these matters too, you know. We can be very sure that China will weigh in heavily on this matter.
So, here is a guy who has time on his hand - enough time, in fact, to go and point out that not only does he feel offended by the logical inaccuracies in Star Wars, but he can't stay away from the damned thing. A bit like the preachers who are secretly gay, but in public thunder against "that foul sin", perhaps?
Was Star Wars ever intended to be a scientifically accurate portrayal? Of course not, it's entertainment; a glittery space opera. I can think of a million more glaring inaccuracies - for starters, how about the setting in a galaxy "far, far away, long, long ago", but they all look remarkably like your average Earth life-forms, somehow. It's just entertainment, have some fun.
I must admit, I'm impressed; and here was I, thinking that the Tories were a bunch of rather wet whiners, who couldn't do much better than complaing about Gordon Brown, and then it turns out that David Cameron has a creative talent as well. Oh, wait, it said James Cameron; never mind.
Slashdot Mirror
This article really inspired me, so I went and made some experiments myself. I don't have one of those guitar controller, but I do own a Fender Stratocaster made from something very heavy, so I reckoned I could modify it slightly and use it as a sledgehammer. It worked! I actualy managed to demolish a small garden in my neighbor's garden, but then it developed a HW related fault, and I had to stop, but it sure shows that the principle is sound.
I don't really think it is the quality of teaching in general that is to blame. The American education system is recognised internationally as one of the best in the world, and it is of course not without reason that American universities are still considered the best.
I suspect it is a cultural thing. For one thing, Far-Eastern parents really take education seriously; just take Chinese children - they study very long hours at home, because the parents make them do it. This is not a modern thing either - China has for centuries had a system of exams by which in principle anybody could enter into public office, and it has always been extremely demanding and competitive, hence the strong emphasis on studying.
On the other side of the cultural fence is the pervasive, American idea, that education is not essential in order to be successful; you can see it even in Disney's Scrooge McDuck character - you just have to work hard and save money, and you will end up fabulously rich. Or the myth that all you need is some "talent" and become a rock-star or actor. And of course, there is a large segment of Americans that are simply anti-intellectual for religious or political reasons.
Where do I want to spend eternity? Well, here on Earth, of course, but failing that, I want my children to cremate me, share the ashes and stuff them under a tree or similar of their choice in their garden. That way they don't stupidly waste money on a block of granite in a cemetery, and hopefully I will be some benefit, albeit in a rather small way.
Of course they are.
I don't think it is all that obvious. I would think the right to make money from one's looks belongs to the person, at least until he/she sells that right to somebody else. And while it may not be all that bad for a footballer to be put into a football game, I think everybody would agree that it wouldn't be all that nice to have your face put on the victim in a game dedicated to, say, gang-rape or similar.
*Sigh*
Why is it that certain writers always try to pin down "the one thing that made us human"? Yes, cooking food was one of the important steps towards what we are now in that it made a far wider range of foods available to us, but there are so many other things that have furthered that process - pointing to just one of them simply skews the picture. Using fire was important, but so was walking on our feet, learning to talk, using tools and so on. Personally, the one thing that I find most "human" is our ability to empathise with other species than our own.
But we should not forget that all the things that set us apart do so only by degrees; we can use more tools than any other animal, we can communicate more than others, we are more intelligent - but none of our traits are unique.
Soda? Who would like to consume NaCO3 in any form?
Jokes aside, the whole area of luxury consumption - like junk food and sugar-drinks - is highly inflamed and mired down in huge, economic interests. Whole sectors of industry all across the world would collapse if people suddenly started to eat and drink only healthily; yet there is no doubt that this same consumer life-style is the biggest cause of preventable, early death, disability and general bad health.
People often say "nobody is forcing you to buy junk food", when you criticize the junk-food industry; but that is a superficial argument that is not justified. As all modern research into the causes of obesity shows very clearly, it is not simply a matter of personal choice, whether you eat too much junk; and anybody who has tried to fight a serious weight problem will know from experience that it takes more than mere will-power to stay away from the calories. Our bodies and instincts are programmed to make us fatten up when we are surrounded by abundance. When you turn on the tv you are constantly indoctrinated to go and consume junk food, and when you go to the supermarket the displays are brimming with it; you will be hard put to find a quick and easy, healthy option. So is it really a matter of personal choice? I don't think so.
What one should remember is that these things are neither human fundamental rights nor basic food-stuffs; they are luxuries. And while luxury can be nice from time to time, it simply get trivial and not actually enjoyable when you have it all the time.
I don't know what is the best way forward, but the present situation is simply not sustainable. Personally, I would like to see a situation where basic, healthy necessities were abundant and easy to find everywhere, but luxury items were something you would have to go out of your way to find; not the other way around.
I wonder what this tells those that still fawn over Reagan and see him as a great president - as opposed to, say, a senile B-movie actor, who should have been in a care home.
Don't get me wrong, I don't "hate America" - but it does make me very angry, the way you guys again and again put unimaginable, destructive power in the hands of incompetent idiots who suffer from tunnel vision and are blinded by absurd ideology and/or religion. The fact that the world still stands, it would seem, is only due to the fact that leaders in other countries - USSR and China - have backed away from copying the American leaders' insane excesses.
I fear what the future will bring. In a hundred years, perhaps, we will have peace, but at what price? It will only take one idiot like Reagan or Bush in America and an Ahmadinejad or Kim Jon Il with nuclear weapons who is not going to back down and is willing to sacrifice everything. In a hundred years there will be peace, but will there be people?
Sometimes I wish for some apocalypse just so the "Please won't someone take care of me!" dolts realize that the only person who can take care of you - IS YOU!.
Hmm, I think the "thought" that gone into this statement have run something like: "I would hate having somebody keeping a tag on me; ergo, this is crap and evil".
The sad facts are that:
1. It is not safe for children to go out on their own in many areas.
2. Young children are not equipped to take care of themselves; nor should they be.
One can discuss at which age children can fend for themselves - it is probably earlier than many parents think. But you don't learn to be a strong, independently minded member of society by growing up having to fend for yourself; the social skills required can only be learned in a good, nurturing family environment. Neglected children are much more likely to end up at the bottom of society.
Did I say anything that sounded like "one size fits all"? I was commenting on an article that stated that it was surprising that people didn't care about the impressive graphics etc - and I argue that this shouldn't surprise anybody.
so perhaps everybody in the world is a moron - except you, no doubt - or maybe you are just a nerd who hasn't seen the outside for too long, who knows. Whatever it may be, real life is what it is, no matter what we feel about it; if game developers want to survive by selling to the real public, they have to know what those people do and don't like. If they don't care about profits, then they are free to do whatever they like, of course.
The most important thing to hammer into everybody is: "You have to learn how to recognize and avoid security threats; technology only goes so far, but it is often surprisingly easy to spot security threats."
Other than that, there are a few rules:
1. Turn off all HTML and scripting in your email reader; if that is not possible, get one that can.
2. Use AdBlock Plus and NoScript (for Firefox) or similar.
It is a tiny bit inconvenient to have to explicitly allow scripting every time, but it has saved me no end of grief. In my workplace I am just about the only one that has never had any malware attack, and I get next to no SPAM either; the company filter captures about 5 per week, and sometimes one or two slip through to my inbox.
First of all let me state that I am not at all in favour of Chiropractics; I know little about it and can't judge whether their claims are generally valid. At the face of it I would say that it should be a relatively simple matter to determine whether there is any scientific evidence for or against it, and it shouldn't really come to a libel case in thefirst place; that is probably a question of the judge simply not doing his job properly.
What I find dishonest in this post is the way that it is being blown up to be about "Freedom of Whatever" - once again. If we want to be taken serious, we should really avoid sounding hysterical and underhanded.
In Britain, libel laws don't have any presumption of innocence -- any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it's true. Journalists are running scared.'
It is a basic court principle that if you make a damaging statement, you are required to be able to produce solid evidence; that is why we in criminal cases have the assumption of guilt, which means that the prosecutor has to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. When it comes to libel, we are AFAIK into the domain of civil law, where the requirements are as strict - maybe they should be, I'm no expert. The other thing worth noting is that in the case of libel, it is the "defendant" that has made an accusation, an that is why he has to produce evidence for his statements.
From what I can see in the other responses, we are dealing with two issues:
1. The issue of per-mile taxing
2. The issue of the proposed method
Personally I can see a lot of sense in drivers having to pay more if they drive more; perhaps I could even accept having my journeys tracked in detail with a GPS device or similar. Whether we like it or not, the more advanced society gets, the more eyes there will be to look at you and remember what you did, and as far as I can see, there is much to be said for having something record your behaviour objectively, rather than having a bunch of witnesses remember you "behaving suspiciously" because you are the wrong colour or wear the wrong clothes or whatever. A reliable, neutral record will work both ways. What I am so sure about is the fully automated reporting; when we rely too much on autonomous technology, things can go wrong in a big way without anybody finding out; and it can be very expensive.
The second issue is what I can't accept - the details of the proposal stink. It is ridiculously expensive, easy to circumvent, there are dubious business interests involved - and there are far cheaper ways of achieving more or less the same. Eg. one could use a modernised form of the system used in many lorries in Europe - a device that records your mileage and drive time on a paper disc; just make it fully electronic. And instead of using the excuse of "avoiding cheating" to make it very expensive, just make cheating difficult enough that most people won't bother; the loss to fraudsters will still be cheaper than trying to make a watertight system.
If a doctor signs-off, and says "person X has condition Y" and the policy covers condition Y, then anything that does the job of helping with condition Y should be fair game.
Hey, what are you doing, man, talking sense on /.? Don't you know it is a treasonable offense? Go wash your mouth with soap. Or your keyboard, whatever. Just do it!
This is a good demonstration of the importance of good punctuation; of course, when they said "man eating bird", what they mean was not "a bird that eats people", but "a man who eats a bird". See, it all much clearer now.
I think perhaps you are not aware that the majority of gameplayers are, in fact, not chronic players. Playing computer games is no longer the reserve of the all-out nerd, it has long been mainstream, and that means it has to appeal to people who may play every day, but only for a relatively short time; the very same people who enjoy their soap operas and sports shows along with nattering with their friends. Ordinary people, in other words. And just like most people don't really want to read heavy and deep books, they don't care much for games that require full-body immersion in an alien universe.
The fact that the results of this study surprises only goes to show that those who create the games are out of contact with their audience; it didn't surprise me at all, I have been saying for years that the gaming industry is way off the mark. The success of fairly weak games like The Sims and Wii* demonstrate that most want something simple and easy that looks and feel a bit like everyday life.
As for older gamers - I think it depends on how much older; I grew up with Adventure, which I played on the university's old Cyber from time to time. It didn't have much in the way of game-play features, but I still think that kind of game is far superior to most modern games; the best contemporary game I know of is the graphically quite simple Crossfire. What makes it nice is that you can play and enjoy it without really knowing much about it, but you can also immerse yourself and become a super-expert; there is a lot of scope for learning and interaction.
Not to defend the South African internet quality, of which I know nothing, but I don't really think this is anything more than an advertising stunt. One can prove that just about any method is "faster" than, say, a 1 Tbit line, if one is allowed to load an unlimited amount of data on your alternative transport medium. So how about loading a barge with 500 tons of DVDs packed with data or something like that? Is transport by barge going to be faster than a 1Tbit line? It is easy to make it look that way.
Harry Potter is a clumsy metaphor for Jesus, and ... anything else?
If that is all you have found in the stories, perhaps you should read them again with a bit more care and attention. In my view the clumsy Jesus metaphor is the Narnia books; they are nothing more than a shallow retelling of that theme, whereas the Potter books tell with real psychological insight about what goes on in the mind of a young person who is landed with far too heavy a burden; Rowling's portrayal of the delusional state of mind of Tom Riddle is not bad either. She is a very clever lady.
I don't see how Narnia and Harry Potter could blend in a meaningful way, but we'll see.
I guess there's no profit in it, and our state religion won't allow that.
I take it you mean the worship of the almighty dollar? In a way you are right, I think, but perhaps not like you think. The American space program has been privatised far too much, and a lot of companies make a huge amount of money because they are being allowed to overcharge grossly for their services; this is yet another area where the illusion of the free market is being used to cover up the fact that this kind of joint venture between commercial and state projects is always hugely over budget and behind schedule. Military spending is another example.
Public services, broadly defined, should only be operated and funded by public resources; what one has to remember is that the primary purpose of a private company is not to offer a service to the benefit of its customers, but to generate the maximum profit for the minimun investment, which means that they will try to milk the public finances as much as possible. And since public servants are generally paid less that their counterparts in the private sector, they are often not good at handling private companies. And I think the experiences of the last 30 years or so show that privatising public services always means getting less service for more money.
Before anybody starts on telling me how bad public projects are always managed, let me just point out that those mismanaged projects are always the fruit of public-private joint-ventures; look it up if you don't believe me. There have been many well-managed, public projects in the past - the European educational systems are, by and large, examples of this; European universities were the top until they were forced into private sponsorships - the same goes for state schools. Health care is another good example - in spite of what myths Americans are being fed about UK's NHS, the decline has only begun since they were part privatised. The indisputable fact is that the less private involvement in health care there is, the cheaper it is - without the standards suffering, mind you.
Linux's overlap with Windows is much smaller than its overlap with HP, IBP, and Sun/Oracle.
This may be a large part of their considerations, although helping your enemy's enemies is a strategy that has backfired many times in the past. Another part of it is likely that they want to be seen as not so much of a threat by the growing crowd of FOSS users; by betting so heavily on the corporate world, Microsoft have managed to push away a large part of the people who are going to be important and influential decision makers in the future: the students, who can't afford to pay for an expensive OS, MS Office, Visual Studio and other applications, but can easily learn how to use Linux. And now they are in the uncomfortable situation that there is a large group of people out there, who are comfortable with Linux, which by now offers a large suite of very mature programs. They have to try to win back the minds and hearts of that group.
And one shouldn't be blind to the possibility that they are still poised to try to take over Linux, if the chance emerges. Being very permissive with patents is not the same as giving them away; maybe they hope that the patents will be worked into the FOSS code base, and then when the time is ripe they will call in the debts.
What nonsense is this? Touch typing can be useful if 1) you write a lot and 2) you use a keyboard. But, if you write a lot on a keyboard, you will inevitably get fluent at typing; this is not a fundamental skill, like the others - it is only a single skill.
In fact, there are many other skills that are far more fundamental, such as basic cookery, childcare and general life-management that would be far more beneficial for young people to learn. It is appalling to see how many young families rely on cheap and nasty ready-meals because the very concept of boiling an egg, baking a bread or preparing a simple meal is alien to them. And I would say that the current financial crisis has a lot to do with a culture where young families rely completely on easy credit because they have never learned to manage their private finances. Touch typing, or even "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic", won't give you the life skills needed for that.
software patents 'fueled the explosive growth of open source software development'
It is true, in a way, that intellectual property rights were the direct cause for the growths and indeed the very existence of open source - if proprietary systems and SW hadn't been so obscenely expensive and restrictive, Stallman would most likely not have started on what he did etc etc. I know, this is probably not what IBM were thinking of in their statement, but it's true none the less.
I don't care what it looks like; what I am interested in/worried about is what goes on inside. Firefox has become more and more of a strawman for Google, I feel, and has an increasing number of features I'd rather not have. So far I have been able to turn them off, but who knows what the future will bring?
I think it is rather bigheaded of people to think that the world would automatically opt for an American model - other countries have a view on these matters too, you know. We can be very sure that China will weigh in heavily on this matter.
So, here is a guy who has time on his hand - enough time, in fact, to go and point out that not only does he feel offended by the logical inaccuracies in Star Wars, but he can't stay away from the damned thing. A bit like the preachers who are secretly gay, but in public thunder against "that foul sin", perhaps?
Was Star Wars ever intended to be a scientifically accurate portrayal? Of course not, it's entertainment; a glittery space opera. I can think of a million more glaring inaccuracies - for starters, how about the setting in a galaxy "far, far away, long, long ago", but they all look remarkably like your average Earth life-forms, somehow. It's just entertainment, have some fun.
I must admit, I'm impressed; and here was I, thinking that the Tories were a bunch of rather wet whiners, who couldn't do much better than complaing about Gordon Brown, and then it turns out that David Cameron has a creative talent as well. Oh, wait, it said James Cameron; never mind.