I hate to break this to you, but that is a myth. All of the medical care I have seen there is about what you would expect from a third world country. Neither much better nor much worse. Actually, with the possible exception of one or two hospitals in Havana, particularly Cira Garcia, which very few Cubans could ever afford, I would rate health care there as being at a somewhat lower level than most of the third world countries I have traveled to. Certainly it could never hope to compare to countries like Colombia or Mexico or Argentina or Thailand. If there are any foreigners traveling to Cuba for medical care they are very, very stupid. And indeed I have never met any myself.
Re:If you want to see the real Cuba, go now...
on
Fidel Castro Resigns
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· Score: 5, Informative
None of the places where you would need a resident's card to get into, It is painfully obvious you have never been to the island. You don't have the slightest fucking clue what you are talking about. There is no such 'resident' card and no such restricted areas. I'm not sure there is anything that could be called a 'slum' in Cuba either. The nice/rich areas like Miramar and (to a lesser extent) parts of Vedado are the exception. Otherwise most of the housing in Cuba is pretty similar.
I'm not even going to respond to the rest of your post. You are so far beyond clueless I cannot believe you recieved a +5 moderation. I don't think there is even one sentence in your entire post that is not completely wrong. Just a heads up to anyone reading that. I lived there for 14 months. I know what I am talking about and every single statement that applekid has made is factually incorrect. He knows absolutely nothing about the place. When you don't know anything about a topic how about it if you just STFU instead of spreading misinformation. Try talking about something about which you actually have a clue.
Actually things have changed. They never stamp now unless you specifically ask them to. And that has been the case for at least a few years. Unfortunately the lack of a stamp is, along with the third country exit/entry stamps, a sort of proof that you have been there. It is not possible for a US citizen to travel to Cuba risk free. Especially with the new necessity of carrying a passport instead of a drivers license and birth certificate to travel to Mexico/Canada (and presumably the Bahamas and Jamaica as well). I wasn't aware that Israel could also be a source for the lack of a stamp. If there are any direct flights to Israel from Canada/Mexico/Bahamas/Jamaica or any of the Latin American countries with direct flights to Havana (Argentina, Venezueula, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia etc.) that could be a source of plausible deniability for travel to Cuba. Interesting.
While I don't care to debate with you about the nature of exactly what communism really is, Fidel was nothing if not a Marxist. And if you are going by such strict definitions then there has never been a purely laissez faire capitalist economy nor a purely communist economy in human history. So I'm not sure how useful such strict definitions are.
And as for point 4, I cannot agree. You are both underestimating and overestimating the Cuban people. You are underestimating them in that they already know what they are missing. They are well aware of the difference between their economy and most others in the world. While there are a few that have been taken in by Fidel's propaganda, a large percentage of the population believes very little of what the government tells them. A few McDonalds and Starbucks in Vedado are not going to change life in the slightest for the average Cuban, who makes less than US $15 per month if they are 'lucky' enough to even have a full time job. A doctor might make $30 to $40 a month.
You are overestimating the Cuban people when you say that seeing what they are missing in terms of consumer goods is going to incite them to violently overthrow the government. If that were going to happen it would have happened many years ago. Cuban culture is a very laid back and relatively non-violent one. Most Cubans are not willing to kill and die in some bloody struggle for the ability to have even a Sony color TV or a Dell laptop, let alone a Starbucks Latte. They are not so different from American slashdotters in that respect. As enraged and frustrated as we are at the growing list of government power and abuses and the control of our government by large corporations to help the ultra rich get even richer. Is there any amount of injustice that would provoke all of us to go into battle and die to take down the corrupted structure of our growing police state.
Dropping the US embargo/trade restrictions, while certainly a good and reasonable thing to do, would not really accomplish much at all. They already have plenty of goods in the stores that almost no one can afford to buy from China and Europe. Dropping the travel restrictions would accomplish a bit more actually. Canadian tourism already accounts for a large percentage of their economy. US tourism would no doubt increase that significantly. However, until/unless there is fundamental political change, the Cuban government will be keeping most of that money for themselves. The average Cuban will still be dirt poor and unless their political system moves a great deal in the direction of capitalism, that is not going to change anytime soon.
While the Cubans are not the Chinese, I happen to think that if a capitalist government were elected (or even appointed), Cuba would have real potential to turn into a sort of Miami. Despite the laid back island atmosphere and attitude of many, there are enough Cubans who are smart and willing to work very hard to produce a real economy there. Cubans are some of the most money conscious people I have ever met. If there is anything more important to them I don't know what it is. Although after half a century of communism (or quasi-communism if you prefer), it might take a while for people to adapt to a more capitalist way of doing things.
I also was slightly annoyed at his use of 'a few years' without giving any examples of a destination that could be reached in that time. In fact there is no known destination outside of our system that could ever be reached in that time. The closest star, proxima centauri, is 4.2 light years away, but it seems like a relatively uninteresting system. The next closest is Barnard's Star, which sounds a bit more interesting and that is about 6 light years away. And of course accelerating any ship into the range of 0.7-0.9C would be quite a feat even if a suitable space drive were to be invented. And then if you take into account a reasonable level of acceleration and deceleration, we are probably in the range of at least 6 years to the nearest star and certainly no less than 5 years. And, yes, this is from the POV of the astronauts, not mission control. Of course, a Voyager-like craft would be capable of reaching Proxima Centauri in only 80,000 years and we wouldn't have to worry about relativistic paradoxes or having to slow down by some nearly unimaginable amount before arrival.
As someone who has actually lived in Cuba for more than a year, I thought I should inform some of you that, while it is of some historical importance, this news changes very little politically. His brother Raul is as much of a communist as Fidel. It is highly unlikely that any Cuban policies will change due to this development. I think what we are all waiting for is for both Fidel and Raul to actually die. When that happens there is at least some possibility of real change. And since Bush didn't change his position wrt cuba when Fidel 'temporarily' stepped down due to illness I doubt if he will do so now that the change has been made permanent.
There seems to be some misunderstanding of 'gringo' here on slashdot. First of all the term nearly always includes canadians and sometimes even includes europeans not actually from Spain. Second, it is often not even used pejoratively, although, like the japanese use of 'gaijin', it is controversial in that some people are offended by it while others are not. Like gaijin, it sometimes is used pejoratively, but in my experience it is more often used as a neutral label. However my experience with its use is almost exclusively outside of the US. Perhaps spanish speakers in the US use it more often in the way you are describing. Personally I am slightly offended by gaijin, but only wondering if i should be offended when I hear myself referred to as 'el gringo'. For a while i thought 'usians' might stick around especially since it was almost always used pejoratively, but it hasn't. IMO, we should just ask the australians to come up with a pejorative term for americans that is catchy enough to stick. Aren't they usually the best at inventing such things? The british are so politely inoffensive with 'yank'.
It's the one thing that digital technology doesn't really help with
Actually in many cases it's the 'digital technology' that is causing the problems. To save money, some amateur productions shoot on video. Often digital video. One problem that video suffers from vs. film is a greatly reduced dynamic range. The darks suffer from 'black crush' turning subtle shadows into complete blackness, and from wash out at the other end of the exposure spectrum, which causes outdoor scenes to resemble home movies.
They typically cannot afford to hire experienced DOPs/lighting experts to light their sets. Instead they often just use available light or poorly thought out lighting which rarely works out as well as they hope.
Have *you* actually tried this? I have. Not on an expensive blu-ray disc (which would be insane), but on a DVD-R with the same exact coating. I sacrificed one of my discs by lightly scrubbing my wood floor with the play (not the label) side. It swirled up quit nicely. Sorry folks. This ubermagic scratch resistant coating you are all hoping to make your BluRay discs indestructible doesn't exist, which shouldn't be too surprising to anyone acquainted with the laws of physics. The coating is not in fact made of transparent aluminum, and even if it were it would still scratch. That's not to say that it does not work at all. It *does* work extremely well. They are much harder to scratch than the uncoated butter soft surface, But you still need to treat the disc with care to prevent scratches. Anyone remember back when CDs first came out and everyone was saying that they were virtually indestructable? Same thing. Sorry to disappoint anyone.
I know many parents who still use VCRs regularly (like me!).
Gotta agree with all that. While a young kid could probably tell the difference between an animated movie on VHS and a DVD most wouldn't care. Hell even most adults didn't care about the obvious quality difference until they were pounded over the head with it by a uber-gigantic marketing campaign.
Also, cassette tapes are a hell of a lot more resistant to being thrown and scratched and slimed with greasy, suck-their-thumb, pick-their-nose, kid fingers, than even anti-scratch coated discs. I use some anti-scratch coated DVD+Rs for backing up my DVDs and some of them have been scratched up badly enough to be thrown out, although they really are *much* harder to scratch. Well worth the additional cost IMO. I would never buy another DVD+R that didn't have it.
One nice compromise in terms of quality-durability for young kids would be to record a DVD with S-VHS tape or with a feature that some JVC decks have called "S-VHS ET" which can record with near S-VHS quality on regular crappy tapes. S-VHS is pretty damn close to DVD quality and there is simply no disc format that can take the kind of abuse that a tape can. And tape degrades more gracefully than disc formats as well. A truly perfect format for the kiddies.
And if they are even a little bit tech savvy: "I already have a HiDef player. My DVD player upscales to 1080 anyway." I was unsuccessful in convincing my father that genuine HiDef was superior to upscaled 'HiDef'. I tried to use the GIGO argument, but he wasn't buying it. Do those upscaling players even say 'HD' on them? The manufacturers have only themselves to blame. They really shot themselves in the foot this time. I want to see how they are going to try to squirm out of it. [I do have a JVC VCR that can record in near S-VHS quality on a regular VHS tape. It really works too. Almost put me off buying those expensive S-VHS tapes. But that's recording technology. The GIGO rule doesn't apply.]
Except that they're not a "Robin Hood" because the people they're giving to aren't exactly the oppressed and poor.
Har! Wrong, matey. That is exactly what most of them are. I don't know too many rich people who bother to download games/movies/music. Why should they? The ones who most object to paying for a 'free' copy of something are the ones who have to work at some shite job that they can't stand doing, where they are counting every minute of every hour until they can escape from their wage slave existence.
Of course, you have to have money at least to some degree to have a computer and an internet connection. Most of the poor people I have met in the third world have neither. The computer alone is often more than a year's salary.
Robin Hood is actually an excellent analogy. The people they/we are 'stealing' from are pretty much about as rich as you can get. I mean they ain't exactly Bill Gates, but most do make more in a week than I make in a whole year. And for accomplishing very little of any real value to the world. You can argue about the relative wealth of the recipients, but the wealth of the 'victims' is indisputable. And the story does play like a sort of geek folk tale, a David-Golaith story where we all know who ultimately is going to win.
I don't believe that 'information' is something that can be stolen. I do believe in copyright actually (and it is like a religion), but I don't believe it is ethical to enforce against anyone who is not actually making a profit from it. thepiratebay doesn't make a dime of profit from the copyrighted files they help distribute. Might as well throw all the postal services in jail. And thepiratebay folks barely even qualify as messengers anyway. If you don't like the precariousness of selling binary data, go do something else. I dunno. Learn how to cook or something. You can't copy a hamburger. Then you won't feel so cheated when nearly perfect (except for the cracked binary) copies of your hard work are given away to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.
That* game got me interested in not only gaming but programming and changed my life, in a positive way, forever.
Isn't it amazing how much other people can affect our life choices? My nephew is 9 (about the same age that I started playing spacewar (star trek) on my friend's DEC PDP-11). To lose out on the fun of playing today's much better games at that age seems horrific to me. His father absolutely *hates* computer games though. He does have an old Pentium 133 in his room (with a Viewsonic 21" monitor no less), but he is only allowed to play educational software. Even RTS games are verboten. Nor is he allowed to watch movies or television much. Or even go over other children's houses to 'play' very often which I suspect has something to do with their suspicion that he would be able to play video games there. Nor is he allowed to eat candy or sugary cereal or go sledding in the winter. It's just sad. It is nearly always better from a geek/tech standpoint to grow up at a later time in history, but it is not for everyone. At least he is allowed to read books. It makes me appreciate the parents with enough wisdom to allow their child more freedom so that they can at least live a little before they die.
You STILL have your original Atari 2600? That is just sick. Although I had my Atari 400 up until like 1987. I remember when my father basically forced me to throw it away (one of those order freaks). I had a similar experience to yours however. I absolutely loved games like Castle Wolfenstein, Archon, Choplifter, and Crush Crumble and Chomp. But I tried downloading an emulator and the ROMs recently for my nephew to play, and I was shocked at how bad even Castle Wolfenstein seemed. In the days when no one really even played computer games, the idea itself was such a novelty that I can see why we cut the game devs so much slack. But I would have to agree that even the better designed games of that era (late 70s and early-mid 80s) do seem like an utterly unplayable waste of time and only of interest as something for a beginning game programmer to try to re-code. IIRC, my Atari 400 ROMs were limited to like 48KB of system RAM (which should be enough for everyone). So I guess we can't expect too much, but still. God knows how little the PDP-11 or 2600 had. I wonder if 20 years from now people will be looking back at Oblivion or Crysis and wondering how anywone could have ever played that mess of flat, jaggy, blocky graphics and repetitive, simplistic gameplay.
Hey that was my first computer game too! Star Trek or Super Star Trek. It was on my friend's DEC PDP-11. His father worked for 'Digital' so he had one of those slick puppies at home. Check this out. I also played the original Adventure (Colossal Cave?) on that PDP-11 but that's all I can remember. I was about 9 I think. I really loved that machine. To this day I wonder what happened to it. Probably got thrown away. Everything is so much more intense when you are a child, and it was so exciting because computer gaming was not something that anyone really did. Of course later on my friends and I would pay visits to the one kid on the block with a brand new Atari 2600 and play that tank game (great fun), and the 2600 Adventure game with that chalice.
Not too long after this my friend managed to score a starter kit for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (in addition to Gamma World and Top Secret). He even found out about some lecture at MIT on AD&D which we attended. Haha. Unfortunately he was never as enthusiastic about actually playing it, and I didn't really have any friends who were. I mostly ended up playing it with my sister, who hated it and was mostly humoring me. Shows the importance of having sufficiently geeky friends. I used to map and write out my own modules but I had no one to play them with. As much as I loved computers, there was nothing on the computer that could even remotely compare to PnP D&D. I really feel that I missed out on something important by not having the right friends at the time. I knew of other people in my school who seemed to play it in groups but I was too shy to try to really make friends with them. And they didn't really appeal to me as friends except for their shared interest in D&D.
I didn't get my own game machine until I could afford to buy one (~$300?). An Atari 400 with that huge and loud external disk drive (although not as big as the 8" one on the DEC). By that time my friend also had an Atari 400, but with the cassette tape reader instead of a disk drive. Damn that thing was SLOW. My favorite games on that were Archon, Choplifter, Castle Wolfenstein, Crush Crumble and Chomp, Lode Runner, and Pole Position. I especially played Archon and Castle Wolfenstein endlessly. I bought Zork as soon as it was released after reading Isaac Asimov's review of it in Creative Computing, but I never liked it all that much. Adventure games at that time could be so frustrating. Those stupid dam controls. Argh. The only thing more annoying were the very first graphical adventure games like Wizard and the Princess. I used to call the help line when I got stuck on that one. I don't know why I put myself through that torture.
It is a little hard for me to describe the intense feelings of fascination and longing I had when looking at the more expensive machines of that era like the Apple IIe. So beautiful. Still love that logo. Or the TRS-80. There was a certain amount of rivalry between those who owned Apples and those (poorer folks) who only had Atari 400/800, but really everyone wanted the Apples. They were just so cool. And there was at least one game on the Apple (Cranston Manor) and one on the TRS-80 (can't remember the name but it sort of reminds me of Rikki Tikki Tavi for some reason) that I really wanted but was never able to play on my lowly Atari.
I went away to boarding (high) school and didn't touch a computer until college when I bought a 486-33DX for like $3000 from Tri-Star, a company I found in Computer Shopper of course. In high school I remember seeing those magazine ads in Omni or Discover for the Amiga. I wanted one of those so badly but I didn't have the money. Actually those ads were pure marketing genius. They seemed (at least to my teenage brain) to offer a glimpse into a whole world of uber-cool tech that would be mine if I could just come up with the cash. Although by that time I was more interested in programming than gaming.
Ah, the nostalgia. I envy kids these days with their high powered graph
Ah. The optimism of the young. Talk to me in 30 years when we *still* have no flying cars, or HAL9000 computers, or fusion power, or affordable moon and outer planet tourism, let alone immortality. Of course you can't reason with an optimist. What saddens me is just how similar our world is to the one of the 1950s. So much of our basic tech is the same. Souped up and improved, but there haven't been many completely new concepts. I guess the biggest difference is from improved computer tech and the birth of the internet (although that wasn't until the late 90s). As far as immortality in your lifetime: I wouldn't hold your breath.
Why does everyone assume there is going to be a winner? If you look at the history of previous format wars, you can see that most of the time no one wins. For a recent example look at CD/DVD +/-R formats. We are stuck with somewhat more expensive players because of that stalemate. Although they are so cheap at this point that no one cares except for the manufacturers perhaps. OTOH, some formats obviously lost like DVD-RAM. Of course this is a little different because it is the studios that get to decide.
If in fact blu-ray does end up the 'winner', is there anyone else here who attributes this more to the early success of hackers and the AnyDVD devs at HD-DVD ripping? For all we know blu-ray is in fact unhackable, with that ability to change the DRM whenever they want.
Blu-ray supports region encoding. Don't tell me the studios don't love that annoying ability. Blu-ray discs have a thinner protective layer, so that a scratch can more easily result in an unplayable disc and hence a resale of the same disc multiple times, especially since blu-rays are so much harder to backup. And the much greater data density is also of great value from a copy protection and distribution POV. Hard drive storage of ripped movies becomes much more expensive. Internet downloads are even more prohibitive in terms of both bandwidth (not everyone has unlimited high bandwidth connections) and time (not everyone has the patience to wait 3-6 weeks to download a movie they want to see). It has always been obvious that from the studio POV manufacturing cost savings was the only advantage of HD-DVD. In every other way, blu-ray was a win-win for them.
So from the POV of anyone who would like to be able to backup their HiDef movie collection to something that is not so vulnerable to scratches, this is bad news. Of course from a pure videophile perspective this would be good news. More space should equal higher bitrates. Although in practice we may see the studios don't give a rats arse about higher bitrate transfers. After all, superbit DVDs never really took off even though they clearly had superior picture quality.
Wrong. I was 'randomly' selected for secondary inspection on my last flight to escape from the US of A and I remained in that inspection area for over 90 minutes. Most of that time they were simply asking me the same questions over and over again. I guess they were trying to trip me up. I was quite terrified. My adrenaline was going crazy. I was sweating like mad. They patted me down thoroughly several times. But mostly they just interrogated me.
They asked me about all of my passport stamps, especially the ones from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Why did I go to those countries. I have a lot of passport stamps and they scrutinized every single one. They asked me all kinds of questions about my life. What did I do for work. When I told them that I was unemployed they became even more suspicious, but I was frankly afraid to lie to them. So much for the 'war on terror'. They also questioned me about why I was going to where I was going (although by that point it seemed like I wouldn't be going). Unfortunately, my life is quite unconventional and any of my answers to these questions do sound kind of suspicious because they are not normal.
Admittedly I also had a few prescription medications which they had to 'call in' to check on, and I had some NIMH AA batteries for powering my MP3 player which definitely contributed to my delay.
I genuinely thought I was going to miss my flight. They finally released me (after finding nothing), and I just barely caught my flight. Actually to give those rat bastards at least some credit, I think the only reason they released me when they did is because I told them that my flight would be leaving soon. I guess they didn't feel that their fishing expedition was worth causing a passenger to actually miss his flight. But who knows how those eggheads think. I do know that they are pure evil and deserve a slow, painful death.
[blockquote]For example, in some cultures people don't make eye contact with people in authority.[/blockquote]
I seldom make eye contact with TSA officers, police or other such 'people in authority'. Which is quite sensible since they would quickly see my ever so strong desire to cut them up into little pieces and feed them to sharks. I fucking hate these overgrown-schoolyard-bully morons. I do not exaggerate when I say that I would so happily kill any one of them without even a moments hesitation if the chance arose to do it without dying or going to prison. And all of my fellow Americans who want to keep this country headed right into the oh so super secure abyss of totalitarianism. F U. And please die. I look at these modern day SS officers with the hate and disgust that they so richly deserve. Seriously folks it's getting to the point where our government needs to go down. Hard.
I cannot wait until the day Windows 7 is rolled out and all the people with their snide Vista comments begin to proclaim Vista to have been the be-all and end-all of Windows OS' and that Windows 7 is a failure on all counts.
Might you consider the idea that this is not because slashdotters have some kind of fear of the new or the unknown but rather because Microsoft produces worse and worse operating systems with each new release? So with each new release a 'downgrade' is the real upgrade. I still run Windows 2000 and I can assure you it has nothing to do with disliking new things. I am an early adopter whenever I can afford it. Yes, WindowsXP had higher memory and CPU requirements than Windows 2000. It also took up more hard drive space. And it ran most applications slightly slower. And the reliability was not significantly better (unlike Win9x to Win2k). Windows XP certainly was not a significant upgrade over 2000 but now the difference between being able to run with only 256MB or 384MB with Windows 2000 for the the same performance that 512MB would get you on WindowsXP seems a trivial difference. So most people just run XP instead of 2000. But 384MB(comfortable) or 256MB(minimum) to 1024MB(minimum) is not a trivial difference. And even the relatively high memory requirements of the slightly more bloated XP to Vista is a doubling of the memory requirements for no real benefit.
Sheeple will always go for whatever is newest and shiniest. So go ahead and waste that 2GB of RAM and 10GB of hard drive space just to run your OS. As a programmer I will happily put the rest of my RAM to good use thank you very much. And I am currently running Windows 2000 on 384MB and it runs fast and smoothly and bug free. I see no reason to 'upgrade' the OS when I upgrade this machine to one with a shiny new 45nm Penryn quad core CPU and 2GB (or more) of RAM and a Nvidia 9800 GTX (or whatever it will be called) as soon as it's released. But I will be sticking with Windows 2000 for that box. Since it is the best Windows OS ever made by all the standards that matter. I know Linux is better, but I mostly run windows only apps and I'm a gamer. So the best I could do is dual boot with Ubuntu or whatever. Which I am planning to do. If Microsoft ever releases an OS that takes up less hard drive space and uses less system memory (leaving more for my programs), then I will consider an upgrade, but until that day comes and an awfully cold day in hell will it be, I will stick with the best Microsoft OS, not the newest and shiniest. Hope you enjoy using all your new found and expensive system power just to run your new fancy OS. Some of us have programs that might want to take advantage of the extra RAM and CPU speed provided by our new systems.
In the final swim scene Hawke's character says something like (after his brother asks him how he's doing it) "You want to know how I beat you? I never left anything for the return swim." And then he goes and saves his genetically superior brother from drowning on the return swim. And swims all the way back not just alone but pulling his brother. Talk about plot holes. Yikes. Still I liked that movie a lot despite those flaws. And the soundtrack, especially during that swim scene is just incredible. You could make anything seem dramatic with that music. And there is a valid point in there somewhere. You just have to look for it. It is hard for us to really answer the essential question as to whether genetic testing can really completely predict who will truly be the best at something. Since we don't have the techonology yet. I don't think this is a simple issue of technological advancement. I don't really agree with the point the movie was belaboring however. Something about the human spirit overcoming... blah blah. Totally weak.
BTW, for those short slashdotters out there, that technique for making you taller they used in the movie is a very old one, supposedly becoming very popular in China at the moment. It is called the ilizarov technique.
Just thought I should mention that Colombia is also now fingerprinting foreigners applying for tourist visa renewals. They use some kind of sophisticated machine. So at least I didn't have to suffer from the indignity of black/blue ink on my fingers. It was annoying that they fingerprinted every finger on my hand. As if one weren't enough. Grrr. Still better than the US and now Japan though since you do not need to submit fingerprints just to enter the country.
Phase change and LN2 cooled quads are already running at over 5GHZ. This is just intel themselves overclocking as is mentioned in the article. Is this even news? It's not like Intel is actually going to be selling a phase change or LN2 cooler to go along with their new platform. And even if they were this doesn't sound like any sort of advance in silicon as is implied by the article summary.
It doesn't matter how 'nice' or confident you are if you've got the looks. That's the only value system that matters in the dating world. It will get you through the door (99% of the battle) and often times keep you in the pink for an awfully long time. Especially if you have the 'self-confidence' of knowing that most girls think you're hot. If you don't have the looks you can try to fake confidence all you want but chicks will know it's just a sham. Real confidence is based on past performance, not standing in front of a mirror reciting "I love myself" 10,000 times. The only exception to the 'looks is everything' rule is in a handful of very poor 3rd world countries where a small fraction of the women genuinely value money more than looks. But this only comes from living in a tin-roofed shack with 16 other family members and no shoes. True hunger and poverty is an excellent aphrodisiac, but you would be surprised at how seldom you can get anywhere without looks even in these countries. Usually they will just try to scam the ugly guys long enough to make their escape from poverty. Then they will find the good looking guy that they feel entitled to as a hot girl. They want someone they find physically attractive and perhaps even more importantly someone all of their friends will find attractive as well. Just reality 101. And common sense. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to accept.
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I hate to break this to you, but that is a myth. All of the medical care I have seen there is about what you would expect from a third world country. Neither much better nor much worse. Actually, with the possible exception of one or two hospitals in Havana, particularly Cira Garcia, which very few Cubans could ever afford, I would rate health care there as being at a somewhat lower level than most of the third world countries I have traveled to. Certainly it could never hope to compare to countries like Colombia or Mexico or Argentina or Thailand. If there are any foreigners traveling to Cuba for medical care they are very, very stupid. And indeed I have never met any myself.
I'm not even going to respond to the rest of your post. You are so far beyond clueless I cannot believe you recieved a +5 moderation. I don't think there is even one sentence in your entire post that is not completely wrong. Just a heads up to anyone reading that. I lived there for 14 months. I know what I am talking about and every single statement that applekid has made is factually incorrect. He knows absolutely nothing about the place. When you don't know anything about a topic how about it if you just STFU instead of spreading misinformation. Try talking about something about which you actually have a clue.
Actually things have changed. They never stamp now unless you specifically ask them to. And that has been the case for at least a few years. Unfortunately the lack of a stamp is, along with the third country exit/entry stamps, a sort of proof that you have been there. It is not possible for a US citizen to travel to Cuba risk free. Especially with the new necessity of carrying a passport instead of a drivers license and birth certificate to travel to Mexico/Canada (and presumably the Bahamas and Jamaica as well). I wasn't aware that Israel could also be a source for the lack of a stamp. If there are any direct flights to Israel from Canada/Mexico/Bahamas/Jamaica or any of the Latin American countries with direct flights to Havana (Argentina, Venezueula, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia etc.) that could be a source of plausible deniability for travel to Cuba. Interesting.
While I don't care to debate with you about the nature of exactly what communism really is, Fidel was nothing if not a Marxist. And if you are going by such strict definitions then there has never been a purely laissez faire capitalist economy nor a purely communist economy in human history. So I'm not sure how useful such strict definitions are.
And as for point 4, I cannot agree. You are both underestimating and overestimating the Cuban people. You are underestimating them in that they already know what they are missing. They are well aware of the difference between their economy and most others in the world. While there are a few that have been taken in by Fidel's propaganda, a large percentage of the population believes very little of what the government tells them. A few McDonalds and Starbucks in Vedado are not going to change life in the slightest for the average Cuban, who makes less than US $15 per month if they are 'lucky' enough to even have a full time job. A doctor might make $30 to $40 a month.
You are overestimating the Cuban people when you say that seeing what they are missing in terms of consumer goods is going to incite them to violently overthrow the government. If that were going to happen it would have happened many years ago. Cuban culture is a very laid back and relatively non-violent one. Most Cubans are not willing to kill and die in some bloody struggle for the ability to have even a Sony color TV or a Dell laptop, let alone a Starbucks Latte. They are not so different from American slashdotters in that respect. As enraged and frustrated as we are at the growing list of government power and abuses and the control of our government by large corporations to help the ultra rich get even richer. Is there any amount of injustice that would provoke all of us to go into battle and die to take down the corrupted structure of our growing police state.
Dropping the US embargo/trade restrictions, while certainly a good and reasonable thing to do, would not really accomplish much at all. They already have plenty of goods in the stores that almost no one can afford to buy from China and Europe. Dropping the travel restrictions would accomplish a bit more actually. Canadian tourism already accounts for a large percentage of their economy. US tourism would no doubt increase that significantly. However, until/unless there is fundamental political change, the Cuban government will be keeping most of that money for themselves. The average Cuban will still be dirt poor and unless their political system moves a great deal in the direction of capitalism, that is not going to change anytime soon.
While the Cubans are not the Chinese, I happen to think that if a capitalist government were elected (or even appointed), Cuba would have real potential to turn into a sort of Miami. Despite the laid back island atmosphere and attitude of many, there are enough Cubans who are smart and willing to work very hard to produce a real economy there. Cubans are some of the most money conscious people I have ever met. If there is anything more important to them I don't know what it is. Although after half a century of communism (or quasi-communism if you prefer), it might take a while for people to adapt to a more capitalist way of doing things.
I also was slightly annoyed at his use of 'a few years' without giving any examples of a destination that could be reached in that time. In fact there is no known destination outside of our system that could ever be reached in that time. The closest star, proxima centauri, is 4.2 light years away, but it seems like a relatively uninteresting system. The next closest is Barnard's Star, which sounds a bit more interesting and that is about 6 light years away. And of course accelerating any ship into the range of 0.7-0.9C would be quite a feat even if a suitable space drive were to be invented. And then if you take into account a reasonable level of acceleration and deceleration, we are probably in the range of at least 6 years to the nearest star and certainly no less than 5 years. And, yes, this is from the POV of the astronauts, not mission control. Of course, a Voyager-like craft would be capable of reaching Proxima Centauri in only 80,000 years and we wouldn't have to worry about relativistic paradoxes or having to slow down by some nearly unimaginable amount before arrival.
As someone who has actually lived in Cuba for more than a year, I thought I should inform some of you that, while it is of some historical importance, this news changes very little politically. His brother Raul is as much of a communist as Fidel. It is highly unlikely that any Cuban policies will change due to this development. I think what we are all waiting for is for both Fidel and Raul to actually die. When that happens there is at least some possibility of real change. And since Bush didn't change his position wrt cuba when Fidel 'temporarily' stepped down due to illness I doubt if he will do so now that the change has been made permanent.
There seems to be some misunderstanding of 'gringo' here on slashdot. First of all the term nearly always includes canadians and sometimes even includes europeans not actually from Spain. Second, it is often not even used pejoratively, although, like the japanese use of 'gaijin', it is controversial in that some people are offended by it while others are not. Like gaijin, it sometimes is used pejoratively, but in my experience it is more often used as a neutral label. However my experience with its use is almost exclusively outside of the US. Perhaps spanish speakers in the US use it more often in the way you are describing. Personally I am slightly offended by gaijin, but only wondering if i should be offended when I hear myself referred to as 'el gringo'. For a while i thought 'usians' might stick around especially since it was almost always used pejoratively, but it hasn't. IMO, we should just ask the australians to come up with a pejorative term for americans that is catchy enough to stick. Aren't they usually the best at inventing such things? The british are so politely inoffensive with 'yank'.
Actually in many cases it's the 'digital technology' that is causing the problems. To save money, some amateur productions shoot on video. Often digital video. One problem that video suffers from vs. film is a greatly reduced dynamic range. The darks suffer from 'black crush' turning subtle shadows into complete blackness, and from wash out at the other end of the exposure spectrum, which causes outdoor scenes to resemble home movies.
They typically cannot afford to hire experienced DOPs/lighting experts to light their sets. Instead they often just use available light or poorly thought out lighting which rarely works out as well as they hope.
Have *you* actually tried this? I have. Not on an expensive blu-ray disc (which would be insane), but on a DVD-R with the same exact coating. I sacrificed one of my discs by lightly scrubbing my wood floor with the play (not the label) side. It swirled up quit nicely. Sorry folks. This ubermagic scratch resistant coating you are all hoping to make your BluRay discs indestructible doesn't exist, which shouldn't be too surprising to anyone acquainted with the laws of physics. The coating is not in fact made of transparent aluminum, and even if it were it would still scratch. That's not to say that it does not work at all. It *does* work extremely well. They are much harder to scratch than the uncoated butter soft surface, But you still need to treat the disc with care to prevent scratches. Anyone remember back when CDs first came out and everyone was saying that they were virtually indestructable? Same thing. Sorry to disappoint anyone.
Gotta agree with all that. While a young kid could probably tell the difference between an animated movie on VHS and a DVD most wouldn't care. Hell even most adults didn't care about the obvious quality difference until they were pounded over the head with it by a uber-gigantic marketing campaign.
Also, cassette tapes are a hell of a lot more resistant to being thrown and scratched and slimed with greasy, suck-their-thumb, pick-their-nose, kid fingers, than even anti-scratch coated discs. I use some anti-scratch coated DVD+Rs for backing up my DVDs and some of them have been scratched up badly enough to be thrown out, although they really are *much* harder to scratch. Well worth the additional cost IMO. I would never buy another DVD+R that didn't have it.
One nice compromise in terms of quality-durability for young kids would be to record a DVD with S-VHS tape or with a feature that some JVC decks have called "S-VHS ET" which can record with near S-VHS quality on regular crappy tapes. S-VHS is pretty damn close to DVD quality and there is simply no disc format that can take the kind of abuse that a tape can. And tape degrades more gracefully than disc formats as well. A truly perfect format for the kiddies.
And if they are even a little bit tech savvy: "I already have a HiDef player. My DVD player upscales to 1080 anyway." I was unsuccessful in convincing my father that genuine HiDef was superior to upscaled 'HiDef'. I tried to use the GIGO argument, but he wasn't buying it. Do those upscaling players even say 'HD' on them? The manufacturers have only themselves to blame. They really shot themselves in the foot this time. I want to see how they are going to try to squirm out of it. [I do have a JVC VCR that can record in near S-VHS quality on a regular VHS tape. It really works too. Almost put me off buying those expensive S-VHS tapes. But that's recording technology. The GIGO rule doesn't apply.]
Har! Wrong, matey. That is exactly what most of them are. I don't know too many rich people who bother to download games/movies/music. Why should they? The ones who most object to paying for a 'free' copy of something are the ones who have to work at some shite job that they can't stand doing, where they are counting every minute of every hour until they can escape from their wage slave existence.
Of course, you have to have money at least to some degree to have a computer and an internet connection. Most of the poor people I have met in the third world have neither. The computer alone is often more than a year's salary.
Robin Hood is actually an excellent analogy. The people they/we are 'stealing' from are pretty much about as rich as you can get. I mean they ain't exactly Bill Gates, but most do make more in a week than I make in a whole year. And for accomplishing very little of any real value to the world. You can argue about the relative wealth of the recipients, but the wealth of the 'victims' is indisputable. And the story does play like a sort of geek folk tale, a David-Golaith story where we all know who ultimately is going to win.
I don't believe that 'information' is something that can be stolen. I do believe in copyright actually (and it is like a religion), but I don't believe it is ethical to enforce against anyone who is not actually making a profit from it. thepiratebay doesn't make a dime of profit from the copyrighted files they help distribute. Might as well throw all the postal services in jail. And thepiratebay folks barely even qualify as messengers anyway. If you don't like the precariousness of selling binary data, go do something else. I dunno. Learn how to cook or something. You can't copy a hamburger. Then you won't feel so cheated when nearly perfect (except for the cracked binary) copies of your hard work are given away to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.
Isn't it amazing how much other people can affect our life choices? My nephew is 9 (about the same age that I started playing spacewar (star trek) on my friend's DEC PDP-11). To lose out on the fun of playing today's much better games at that age seems horrific to me. His father absolutely *hates* computer games though. He does have an old Pentium 133 in his room (with a Viewsonic 21" monitor no less), but he is only allowed to play educational software. Even RTS games are verboten. Nor is he allowed to watch movies or television much. Or even go over other children's houses to 'play' very often which I suspect has something to do with their suspicion that he would be able to play video games there. Nor is he allowed to eat candy or sugary cereal or go sledding in the winter. It's just sad. It is nearly always better from a geek/tech standpoint to grow up at a later time in history, but it is not for everyone. At least he is allowed to read books. It makes me appreciate the parents with enough wisdom to allow their child more freedom so that they can at least live a little before they die.
You STILL have your original Atari 2600? That is just sick. Although I had my Atari 400 up until like 1987. I remember when my father basically forced me to throw it away (one of those order freaks). I had a similar experience to yours however. I absolutely loved games like Castle Wolfenstein, Archon, Choplifter, and Crush Crumble and Chomp. But I tried downloading an emulator and the ROMs recently for my nephew to play, and I was shocked at how bad even Castle Wolfenstein seemed. In the days when no one really even played computer games, the idea itself was such a novelty that I can see why we cut the game devs so much slack. But I would have to agree that even the better designed games of that era (late 70s and early-mid 80s) do seem like an utterly unplayable waste of time and only of interest as something for a beginning game programmer to try to re-code. IIRC, my Atari 400 ROMs were limited to like 48KB of system RAM (which should be enough for everyone). So I guess we can't expect too much, but still. God knows how little the PDP-11 or 2600 had. I wonder if 20 years from now people will be looking back at Oblivion or Crysis and wondering how anywone could have ever played that mess of flat, jaggy, blocky graphics and repetitive, simplistic gameplay.
Hey that was my first computer game too! Star Trek or Super Star Trek. It was on my friend's DEC PDP-11. His father worked for 'Digital' so he had one of those slick puppies at home. Check this out. I also played the original Adventure (Colossal Cave?) on that PDP-11 but that's all I can remember. I was about 9 I think. I really loved that machine. To this day I wonder what happened to it. Probably got thrown away. Everything is so much more intense when you are a child, and it was so exciting because computer gaming was not something that anyone really did. Of course later on my friends and I would pay visits to the one kid on the block with a brand new Atari 2600 and play that tank game (great fun), and the 2600 Adventure game with that chalice.
Not too long after this my friend managed to score a starter kit for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (in addition to Gamma World and Top Secret). He even found out about some lecture at MIT on AD&D which we attended. Haha. Unfortunately he was never as enthusiastic about actually playing it, and I didn't really have any friends who were. I mostly ended up playing it with my sister, who hated it and was mostly humoring me. Shows the importance of having sufficiently geeky friends. I used to map and write out my own modules but I had no one to play them with. As much as I loved computers, there was nothing on the computer that could even remotely compare to PnP D&D. I really feel that I missed out on something important by not having the right friends at the time. I knew of other people in my school who seemed to play it in groups but I was too shy to try to really make friends with them. And they didn't really appeal to me as friends except for their shared interest in D&D.
I didn't get my own game machine until I could afford to buy one (~$300?). An Atari 400 with that huge and loud external disk drive (although not as big as the 8" one on the DEC). By that time my friend also had an Atari 400, but with the cassette tape reader instead of a disk drive. Damn that thing was SLOW. My favorite games on that were Archon, Choplifter, Castle Wolfenstein, Crush Crumble and Chomp, Lode Runner, and Pole Position. I especially played Archon and Castle Wolfenstein endlessly. I bought Zork as soon as it was released after reading Isaac Asimov's review of it in Creative Computing, but I never liked it all that much. Adventure games at that time could be so frustrating. Those stupid dam controls. Argh. The only thing more annoying were the very first graphical adventure games like Wizard and the Princess. I used to call the help line when I got stuck on that one. I don't know why I put myself through that torture.
It is a little hard for me to describe the intense feelings of fascination and longing I had when looking at the more expensive machines of that era like the Apple IIe. So beautiful. Still love that logo. Or the TRS-80. There was a certain amount of rivalry between those who owned Apples and those (poorer folks) who only had Atari 400/800, but really everyone wanted the Apples. They were just so cool. And there was at least one game on the Apple (Cranston Manor) and one on the TRS-80 (can't remember the name but it sort of reminds me of Rikki Tikki Tavi for some reason) that I really wanted but was never able to play on my lowly Atari.
I went away to boarding (high) school and didn't touch a computer until college when I bought a 486-33DX for like $3000 from Tri-Star, a company I found in Computer Shopper of course. In high school I remember seeing those magazine ads in Omni or Discover for the Amiga. I wanted one of those so badly but I didn't have the money. Actually those ads were pure marketing genius. They seemed (at least to my teenage brain) to offer a glimpse into a whole world of uber-cool tech that would be mine if I could just come up with the cash. Although by that time I was more interested in programming than gaming.
Ah, the nostalgia. I envy kids these days with their high powered graph
Ah. The optimism of the young. Talk to me in 30 years when we *still* have no flying cars, or HAL9000 computers, or fusion power, or affordable moon and outer planet tourism, let alone immortality. Of course you can't reason with an optimist. What saddens me is just how similar our world is to the one of the 1950s. So much of our basic tech is the same. Souped up and improved, but there haven't been many completely new concepts. I guess the biggest difference is from improved computer tech and the birth of the internet (although that wasn't until the late 90s). As far as immortality in your lifetime: I wouldn't hold your breath.
Why does everyone assume there is going to be a winner? If you look at the history of previous format wars, you can see that most of the time no one wins. For a recent example look at CD/DVD +/-R formats. We are stuck with somewhat more expensive players because of that stalemate. Although they are so cheap at this point that no one cares except for the manufacturers perhaps. OTOH, some formats obviously lost like DVD-RAM. Of course this is a little different because it is the studios that get to decide.
If in fact blu-ray does end up the 'winner', is there anyone else here who attributes this more to the early success of hackers and the AnyDVD devs at HD-DVD ripping? For all we know blu-ray is in fact unhackable, with that ability to change the DRM whenever they want.
Blu-ray supports region encoding. Don't tell me the studios don't love that annoying ability. Blu-ray discs have a thinner protective layer, so that a scratch can more easily result in an unplayable disc and hence a resale of the same disc multiple times, especially since blu-rays are so much harder to backup. And the much greater data density is also of great value from a copy protection and distribution POV. Hard drive storage of ripped movies becomes much more expensive. Internet downloads are even more prohibitive in terms of both bandwidth (not everyone has unlimited high bandwidth connections) and time (not everyone has the patience to wait 3-6 weeks to download a movie they want to see). It has always been obvious that from the studio POV manufacturing cost savings was the only advantage of HD-DVD. In every other way, blu-ray was a win-win for them.
So from the POV of anyone who would like to be able to backup their HiDef movie collection to something that is not so vulnerable to scratches, this is bad news. Of course from a pure videophile perspective this would be good news. More space should equal higher bitrates. Although in practice we may see the studios don't give a rats arse about higher bitrate transfers. After all, superbit DVDs never really took off even though they clearly had superior picture quality.
Secondary inspections don't take much time.
Wrong. I was 'randomly' selected for secondary inspection on my last flight to escape from the US of A and I remained in that inspection area for over 90 minutes. Most of that time they were simply asking me the same questions over and over again. I guess they were trying to trip me up. I was quite terrified. My adrenaline was going crazy. I was sweating like mad. They patted me down thoroughly several times. But mostly they just interrogated me.
They asked me about all of my passport stamps, especially the ones from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Why did I go to those countries. I have a lot of passport stamps and they scrutinized every single one. They asked me all kinds of questions about my life. What did I do for work. When I told them that I was unemployed they became even more suspicious, but I was frankly afraid to lie to them. So much for the 'war on terror'. They also questioned me about why I was going to where I was going (although by that point it seemed like I wouldn't be going). Unfortunately, my life is quite unconventional and any of my answers to these questions do sound kind of suspicious because they are not normal.
Admittedly I also had a few prescription medications which they had to 'call in' to check on, and I had some NIMH AA batteries for powering my MP3 player which definitely contributed to my delay.
I genuinely thought I was going to miss my flight. They finally released me (after finding nothing), and I just barely caught my flight. Actually to give those rat bastards at least some credit, I think the only reason they released me when they did is because I told them that my flight would be leaving soon. I guess they didn't feel that their fishing expedition was worth causing a passenger to actually miss his flight. But who knows how those eggheads think. I do know that they are pure evil and deserve a slow, painful death.
[blockquote]For example, in some cultures people don't make eye contact with people in authority.[/blockquote]
I seldom make eye contact with TSA officers, police or other such 'people in authority'. Which is quite sensible since they would quickly see my ever so strong desire to cut them up into little pieces and feed them to sharks. I fucking hate these overgrown-schoolyard-bully morons. I do not exaggerate when I say that I would so happily kill any one of them without even a moments hesitation if the chance arose to do it without dying or going to prison. And all of my fellow Americans who want to keep this country headed right into the oh so super secure abyss of totalitarianism. F U. And please die. I look at these modern day SS officers with the hate and disgust that they so richly deserve. Seriously folks it's getting to the point where our government needs to go down. Hard.
Might you consider the idea that this is not because slashdotters have some kind of fear of the new or the unknown but rather because Microsoft produces worse and worse operating systems with each new release? So with each new release a 'downgrade' is the real upgrade. I still run Windows 2000 and I can assure you it has nothing to do with disliking new things. I am an early adopter whenever I can afford it. Yes, WindowsXP had higher memory and CPU requirements than Windows 2000. It also took up more hard drive space. And it ran most applications slightly slower. And the reliability was not significantly better (unlike Win9x to Win2k). Windows XP certainly was not a significant upgrade over 2000 but now the difference between being able to run with only 256MB or 384MB with Windows 2000 for the the same performance that 512MB would get you on WindowsXP seems a trivial difference. So most people just run XP instead of 2000. But 384MB(comfortable) or 256MB(minimum) to 1024MB(minimum) is not a trivial difference. And even the relatively high memory requirements of the slightly more bloated XP to Vista is a doubling of the memory requirements for no real benefit.
Sheeple will always go for whatever is newest and shiniest. So go ahead and waste that 2GB of RAM and 10GB of hard drive space just to run your OS. As a programmer I will happily put the rest of my RAM to good use thank you very much. And I am currently running Windows 2000 on 384MB and it runs fast and smoothly and bug free. I see no reason to 'upgrade' the OS when I upgrade this machine to one with a shiny new 45nm Penryn quad core CPU and 2GB (or more) of RAM and a Nvidia 9800 GTX (or whatever it will be called) as soon as it's released. But I will be sticking with Windows 2000 for that box. Since it is the best Windows OS ever made by all the standards that matter. I know Linux is better, but I mostly run windows only apps and I'm a gamer. So the best I could do is dual boot with Ubuntu or whatever. Which I am planning to do. If Microsoft ever releases an OS that takes up less hard drive space and uses less system memory (leaving more for my programs), then I will consider an upgrade, but until that day comes and an awfully cold day in hell will it be, I will stick with the best Microsoft OS, not the newest and shiniest. Hope you enjoy using all your new found and expensive system power just to run your new fancy OS. Some of us have programs that might want to take advantage of the extra RAM and CPU speed provided by our new systems.
In the final swim scene Hawke's character says something like (after his brother asks him how he's doing it) "You want to know how I beat you? I never left anything for the return swim." And then he goes and saves his genetically superior brother from drowning on the return swim. And swims all the way back not just alone but pulling his brother. Talk about plot holes. Yikes. Still I liked that movie a lot despite those flaws. And the soundtrack, especially during that swim scene is just incredible. You could make anything seem dramatic with that music. And there is a valid point in there somewhere. You just have to look for it. It is hard for us to really answer the essential question as to whether genetic testing can really completely predict who will truly be the best at something. Since we don't have the techonology yet. I don't think this is a simple issue of technological advancement. I don't really agree with the point the movie was belaboring however. Something about the human spirit overcoming... blah blah. Totally weak.
BTW, for those short slashdotters out there, that technique for making you taller they used in the movie is a very old one, supposedly becoming very popular in China at the moment. It is called the ilizarov technique.
Just thought I should mention that Colombia is also now fingerprinting foreigners applying for tourist visa renewals. They use some kind of sophisticated machine. So at least I didn't have to suffer from the indignity of black/blue ink on my fingers. It was annoying that they fingerprinted every finger on my hand. As if one weren't enough. Grrr. Still better than the US and now Japan though since you do not need to submit fingerprints just to enter the country.
Phase change and LN2 cooled quads are already running at over 5GHZ. This is just intel themselves overclocking as is mentioned in the article. Is this even news? It's not like Intel is actually going to be selling a phase change or LN2 cooler to go along with their new platform. And even if they were this doesn't sound like any sort of advance in silicon as is implied by the article summary.
It doesn't matter how 'nice' or confident you are if you've got the looks. That's the only value system that matters in the dating world. It will get you through the door (99% of the battle) and often times keep you in the pink for an awfully long time. Especially if you have the 'self-confidence' of knowing that most girls think you're hot. If you don't have the looks you can try to fake confidence all you want but chicks will know it's just a sham. Real confidence is based on past performance, not standing in front of a mirror reciting "I love myself" 10,000 times. The only exception to the 'looks is everything' rule is in a handful of very poor 3rd world countries where a small fraction of the women genuinely value money more than looks. But this only comes from living in a tin-roofed shack with 16 other family members and no shoes. True hunger and poverty is an excellent aphrodisiac, but you would be surprised at how seldom you can get anywhere without looks even in these countries. Usually they will just try to scam the ugly guys long enough to make their escape from poverty. Then they will find the good looking guy that they feel entitled to as a hot girl. They want someone they find physically attractive and perhaps even more importantly someone all of their friends will find attractive as well. Just reality 101. And common sense. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to accept.