Let's say she broke no laws that she can be charged with. She badgered a vulnerable girl into killing herself. Is justice served if she gets to just walk away?
Wouldn't it be nice if the US actually was a free market and we were allowed to vote with our dollars? Sadly...
The problem is that we are allowed to vote with our dollars. It's just that puny consumers (citizens) don't have as many dollars as massive corporations.
Disagree. Most people with any tech savvy should know that Apple's ads are drastic exaggerations, if not outright lies. If Apple were targeting the tech savvy market, they'd be much better off by not insulting their intelligence.
The one good thing to come out of their most recent ad campaign is to at least put a recognizable face to the generic "Mac douche" stereotype.
I don't think that the GP poster was implying that trade schools are for the lazy -- just that they fill a different function than a University should.
If I go to ITT tech, I expect to learn how to write code or do some network admin stuff or whatever. If I go to a university, I'd expect to get a well rounded education with an emphasis in a particular subject.
The problem is that too many people confuse a university for a 4 year trade school, where you have some pesky 'core' classes to snore through on your way to your degree and big money. If that's a person's attitude, then they're not right for a university.
Unfortunately, at least when I was finishing my degree, that attitude was the prevailing outlook for a shockingly large percentage of my classmates. Few of them had any respect for learning for learning's sake whatsoever.
This would be a valid argument if genes had anything to do with obesity. Our parents and grandparents had the same damn genes we do, but it's only in the last 30 years or so that the US has ballooned into morbid obesity.
I know it's not popular to think for a lot of people, but your health and your weight are generally a *direct* result of your choices. People would *much* rather just blame their genes and then feel sorry for themselves.
If I had mod points I'd mod you down, for being arrogantly wrong.
So you admit you abuse the moderation system here? There's a reason why "I Agree" and "I Disagree" aren't options to moderation. You're not supposed to mod down people for merely disagreeing. I never do that, no matter how much I disagree, because I know it's petty and cheap.
This is the second time you've made this mistake, which is particularly funny because earlier in the thread you were chastising someone for their reading comprehention in regards to your sig.
Never did he say that he would mod down for disagreeing. He said he'd mod you down because you're *WRONG*. You may believe that the data doesn't make you wrong, but that doesn't mean you're not. (I'm not arguing either way -- I just think you're a tool that has been abusive to many of your responders in the thread.)
BTW: your credibility was shot as soon as you mentioned avoiding people at clubs. I'll go out on a limb and assume that you're referring to actual night clubs, filled with 18-35 year-olds with nothing better to do. Clubs are, by far, the most shallow hang-outs a person can associate themselves with.
It already has predominantly switched to trojans -- in the shop where I work, *most* of the 'infected' machines we run into are just infested with spyware/adware that the user chose to install through their own indiscretion. Toolbars, free web game clients, cursor packs... Maybe 1 in 4 will be a genuine malware problem, the rest are all just "my computer runs too slowly" and it's entirely because of all the junk they installed all by themselves.
What I find interesting is that if this woman had scammed this girl to manipulate her out of her money, it would be a clear-cut case of fraud, and she would likely face criminal charges.
Instead, she scammed her out of her *life*, and may not have to suffer *any* criminal consequences.
Fortunately, a civil case could almost certainly be brought against her, I can't imagine that any jury in the world would let her off without some judgement against her.
Is she criminally responsible? No, probably not, in the eyes of the law. And unfortunately, it would be difficult to define a law to protect someone in a case like this. Does that absolve her of *any* responsibility for her actions? Hell no. Mob justice would be too good for her.
As a former CS student and a holder of a degree in computer science, I noticed that most of my classmates were incompetent programmers. They were scared to death of anything other than text interfaces, had no idea how to use an IDE, and thought that "printf" was the alpha and the omega of debugging.
Maybe things have changed, and maybe your school is different, but I thought I'd put my anecdote up anyway.
Nice response -- unfortunately, it didn't even come close to answering the question. And, as you did, I'm going to write a respone that completely ignores the offtopic questions that you pose.
You suggest that it's impossible to have order without a creator, because "in any other context, order... means there is a designer."
Ok, fine. There's order in a snowflake. Was it designed? There's a semblence of order on, say, a sandy beach or a desert that has dunes and hills created by wind or water. Were those intelligently designed? Or were they just created through natural processes?
"But!" most IDers (perhaps not yourself) will argue, "the designer created the processes that create that order!" Ok, I'll grant you that. Where did the designer come from? What created the designer? Another designer?
And then, the standard response is that "the designer is infinite, and always existed." Well, that's awesome, but the problem is that it's not a very interesting answer. In fact, it's functionally no different than the assumption that the universe "just is," and that the reason order exists is because it *has* to exist for *anything* to exist. For those of us who are truly interested in where everything came from, "God did it" is a boring, uninteresting cop-out.
And all of this ignores the fact that, and repeat after me please; in fact, repeat it until you understand it: EVOLUTION SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF LIFE, OR THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE. EVOLUTION MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO PREDICTIONS ABOUT HOW LIFE COULD HAVE FORMED. Evolution starts with the base assumption that "life exists." If you want to insert your god in before evolution, and say that god created evolution, fine -- but it's still not an interesting answer, and it *STILL* isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with the theory of evolution.
I really hate evolution debates. You've got one side arguing "X!", and the other side arguing "Not Y! Therefore Z!", and you have to spend most of the debate getting the other side to understand that X != Y, and if you manage that, then you have to explain that Not Y doesn't necessarily imply Z.
There's a reason your karma was trashed: you don't understand what evolution is. Hint: it has nothing to do with the origin of life, and to accept that evolution exists requires no specific acceptance or denial of *how* life began.
Your description suggests that you also apparently don't even know what science is, which must make it easier to hold your creationist belief.
Super Nintendo provided 65,000 colors but computer gamers were already looking at 16 million colors.
History pedant...
SNES, early '90s. Most games ran in 256 color mode, on a 480i display. You could potentially get more colors (65,536) by using alpha blending with the overlay blitter.
PC games of that time (this is pre-Doom, even) were in VGA mode 13h, which was 320x200 with a 256 color palette. Even Quake (1996) ran in 256 color modes, though it would use SVGA resolutions. PC gamers may have been looking at 16 bit color at times, but that was mostly if they were using Windows or other things that weren't very graphically demanding. 486s didn't have the horsepower, and graphics cards didn't have the memory to drive games at 16 bit color or higher -- not to mention, the only graphics hardware acceleration you got back in those days was for the Windows GDI -- games were *entirely* software driven. When you have 64k pixels to update and only, say, 33 million clock ticks per second on a 486DX to do it in, you had to be pretty stingy with your graphics code. Oh, and you were doing all your sound mixing (probably 22kHz mono) in software, too, because the Gravis UltraSound and wavetable synthesis hadn't been invented yet.
It's really only been since the advent of dedicated 3d hardware that PCs have overtaken consoles in graphical capabilities, and only because 3d chipsets have been on a much faster upgrade cycle than consoles.
That said, I gave up on most PC gaming a long time ago after I'd been sold one too many shrink-wrapped beta products that wouldn't work right until the 2nd or 3rd patch, if ever.
Eh, I fix computers, and I'd estimate that a good 1/4 at least come in with Limewire installed. I don't think that 36% is an outrageous number.
Think of it this way -- younger people are more likely to own computers, almost every college student has their own personal PC (sometimes more than one, with a desktop and a laptop), and most college students care more about the latest RIAA garbage than their classes.
Bankruptcy is pretty severe, but it would actually probably help out a lot of people. The ones that are worse off are the ones with no health insurance, barely keeping up with bills, and then suddenly have to make a trip to the doctor for a common illness. Then they're out another $75-$100, which isn't enough to *bankrupt* them, but sure as hell makes it tough to buy groceries or pay rent.
Oh, and did I mention that a doctor's visit these days is a joke anyway? You spend 90 minutes waiting (even if you had an appointment), then you have your blood pressure taken by a nurse, maybe your temperature and weight as well. Doctor is in the room for all of 5 minutes to ask you questions while he runs through an expert system on his computer to diagnose your problem, and write up a prescription (probably suggested by the expert system).
Yeah, a lot of things in the US are the best in the world*, even health care.
*for those who can afford them, anyone else is worthless trash and SOL, and you're a socialist terrorist-supporting hippie if you believe otherwise
Nintendo knew what they were getting into, and they have been in the business far too long to cry ignorance.
Yes, they've got enough experience to expected normal console sales. What they've experienced with the Wii is completely unprecedented. Nobody has *ever* sold 15 million consoles in 1 year. How do you expect them to plan for beating their best estimates by a factor of 2?
And before you say "well, just build more factories!"... how much does it cost to open a factory? How long does it take to tool it up and get it running? How long does it take your entire supply chain to catch up (maybe IBM can only produce 1.8 million processors per month?)? And then what happens if you get the factory running, and demand slacks off to only 1.1 million per month, now that you've upped your capacity to 2.5 million per month? Yeah, that's right, you just wasted millions (or, more likely, billions) of dollars.
my PS2 (which has better graphics imo)
Ahh, that explains your post. You live in a world where the PS2 doesn't have the weakest hardware of last generation. Well, in your world, everything you posted is probably correct and insightful. So, my apologies.
Slashdot Mirror
The law != justice.
Let's say she broke no laws that she can be charged with. She badgered a vulnerable girl into killing herself. Is justice served if she gets to just walk away?
--Jeremy
Was the GP post malicious? Do you understand what "malice" is?
--Jeremy
Might as well ask for a pony with that, while you're at it.
--Jeremy
Wouldn't it be nice if the US actually was a free market and we were allowed to vote with our dollars? Sadly...
The problem is that we are allowed to vote with our dollars. It's just that puny consumers (citizens) don't have as many dollars as massive corporations.
--Jeremy
By your criteria, any OS that can't be run on any hardware in existence would be 'firmware'?
Last I checked, if you tried to run a PC OS (Windows XP, for instance) on non-PC hardware (Say, a PS3), it wouldn't work, so that makes it firmware?
I think you need to rethink your definition.
--Jeremy
Wow. Just wow.
Stopped reading there.
--Jeremy
Disagree. Most people with any tech savvy should know that Apple's ads are drastic exaggerations, if not outright lies. If Apple were targeting the tech savvy market, they'd be much better off by not insulting their intelligence.
The one good thing to come out of their most recent ad campaign is to at least put a recognizable face to the generic "Mac douche" stereotype.
--Jeremy
I don't think that the GP poster was implying that trade schools are for the lazy -- just that they fill a different function than a University should.
If I go to ITT tech, I expect to learn how to write code or do some network admin stuff or whatever. If I go to a university, I'd expect to get a well rounded education with an emphasis in a particular subject.
The problem is that too many people confuse a university for a 4 year trade school, where you have some pesky 'core' classes to snore through on your way to your degree and big money. If that's a person's attitude, then they're not right for a university.
Unfortunately, at least when I was finishing my degree, that attitude was the prevailing outlook for a shockingly large percentage of my classmates. Few of them had any respect for learning for learning's sake whatsoever.
--Jeremy
This would be a valid argument if genes had anything to do with obesity. Our parents and grandparents had the same damn genes we do, but it's only in the last 30 years or so that the US has ballooned into morbid obesity.
I know it's not popular to think for a lot of people, but your health and your weight are generally a *direct* result of your choices. People would *much* rather just blame their genes and then feel sorry for themselves.
--Jeremy
This is the second time you've made this mistake, which is particularly funny because earlier in the thread you were chastising someone for their reading comprehention in regards to your sig.
Never did he say that he would mod down for disagreeing. He said he'd mod you down because you're *WRONG*. You may believe that the data doesn't make you wrong, but that doesn't mean you're not. (I'm not arguing either way -- I just think you're a tool that has been abusive to many of your responders in the thread.)
BTW: your credibility was shot as soon as you mentioned avoiding people at clubs. I'll go out on a limb and assume that you're referring to actual night clubs, filled with 18-35 year-olds with nothing better to do. Clubs are, by far, the most shallow hang-outs a person can associate themselves with.
--Jeremy
Source, please ... no, wait.
Objective, unbiased source, please.
Or are you the only one that gets to make unsubstantiated claims?
--Jeremy
It already has predominantly switched to trojans -- in the shop where I work, *most* of the 'infected' machines we run into are just infested with spyware/adware that the user chose to install through their own indiscretion. Toolbars, free web game clients, cursor packs... Maybe 1 in 4 will be a genuine malware problem, the rest are all just "my computer runs too slowly" and it's entirely because of all the junk they installed all by themselves.
--Jeremy
Wait, am I reading Slashdot, or Uncyclopedia?
--Jeremy
What I find interesting is that if this woman had scammed this girl to manipulate her out of her money, it would be a clear-cut case of fraud, and she would likely face criminal charges.
Instead, she scammed her out of her *life*, and may not have to suffer *any* criminal consequences.
Fortunately, a civil case could almost certainly be brought against her, I can't imagine that any jury in the world would let her off without some judgement against her.
Is she criminally responsible? No, probably not, in the eyes of the law. And unfortunately, it would be difficult to define a law to protect someone in a case like this. Does that absolve her of *any* responsibility for her actions? Hell no. Mob justice would be too good for her.
--Jeremy
As a former CS student and a holder of a degree in computer science, I noticed that most of my classmates were incompetent programmers. They were scared to death of anything other than text interfaces, had no idea how to use an IDE, and thought that "printf" was the alpha and the omega of debugging.
Maybe things have changed, and maybe your school is different, but I thought I'd put my anecdote up anyway.
--Jeremy
Nice response -- unfortunately, it didn't even come close to answering the question. And, as you did, I'm going to write a respone that completely ignores the offtopic questions that you pose.
... means there is a designer."
You suggest that it's impossible to have order without a creator, because "in any other context, order
Ok, fine. There's order in a snowflake. Was it designed? There's a semblence of order on, say, a sandy beach or a desert that has dunes and hills created by wind or water. Were those intelligently designed? Or were they just created through natural processes?
"But!" most IDers (perhaps not yourself) will argue, "the designer created the processes that create that order!" Ok, I'll grant you that. Where did the designer come from? What created the designer? Another designer?
And then, the standard response is that "the designer is infinite, and always existed." Well, that's awesome, but the problem is that it's not a very interesting answer. In fact, it's functionally no different than the assumption that the universe "just is," and that the reason order exists is because it *has* to exist for *anything* to exist. For those of us who are truly interested in where everything came from, "God did it" is a boring, uninteresting cop-out.
And all of this ignores the fact that, and repeat after me please; in fact, repeat it until you understand it: EVOLUTION SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF LIFE, OR THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE. EVOLUTION MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO PREDICTIONS ABOUT HOW LIFE COULD HAVE FORMED. Evolution starts with the base assumption that "life exists." If you want to insert your god in before evolution, and say that god created evolution, fine -- but it's still not an interesting answer, and it *STILL* isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with the theory of evolution.
I really hate evolution debates. You've got one side arguing "X!", and the other side arguing "Not Y! Therefore Z!", and you have to spend most of the debate getting the other side to understand that X != Y, and if you manage that, then you have to explain that Not Y doesn't necessarily imply Z.
--Jeremy
There's a reason your karma was trashed: you don't understand what evolution is. Hint: it has nothing to do with the origin of life, and to accept that evolution exists requires no specific acceptance or denial of *how* life began.
Your description suggests that you also apparently don't even know what science is, which must make it easier to hold your creationist belief.
--Jeremy
History pedant...
SNES, early '90s. Most games ran in 256 color mode, on a 480i display. You could potentially get more colors (65,536) by using alpha blending with the overlay blitter.
PC games of that time (this is pre-Doom, even) were in VGA mode 13h, which was 320x200 with a 256 color palette. Even Quake (1996) ran in 256 color modes, though it would use SVGA resolutions. PC gamers may have been looking at 16 bit color at times, but that was mostly if they were using Windows or other things that weren't very graphically demanding. 486s didn't have the horsepower, and graphics cards didn't have the memory to drive games at 16 bit color or higher -- not to mention, the only graphics hardware acceleration you got back in those days was for the Windows GDI -- games were *entirely* software driven. When you have 64k pixels to update and only, say, 33 million clock ticks per second on a 486DX to do it in, you had to be pretty stingy with your graphics code. Oh, and you were doing all your sound mixing (probably 22kHz mono) in software, too, because the Gravis UltraSound and wavetable synthesis hadn't been invented yet.
It's really only been since the advent of dedicated 3d hardware that PCs have overtaken consoles in graphical capabilities, and only because 3d chipsets have been on a much faster upgrade cycle than consoles.
That said, I gave up on most PC gaming a long time ago after I'd been sold one too many shrink-wrapped beta products that wouldn't work right until the 2nd or 3rd patch, if ever.
--Jeremy
Cite a source, please. Those numbers sound a lot like you pulled them out of your ass.
Also, most burglars aren't murderers. They try to get in, get your stuff, and get out without even being detected, let alone having to shoot anyone.
--Jeremy
Did this MS defense/rant conjure up images of the "Leave Britney alone" clip for anyone else?
--Jeremy
-1, panicky sheep
Seriously, when did Americans become such pussies that they live in a constant state of fear of all things?
--Jeremy
Key word there being 'parolee'. There's a difference between a parolee and someone who has completed their sentence.
--Jeremy
Eh, I fix computers, and I'd estimate that a good 1/4 at least come in with Limewire installed. I don't think that 36% is an outrageous number.
Think of it this way -- younger people are more likely to own computers, almost every college student has their own personal PC (sometimes more than one, with a desktop and a laptop), and most college students care more about the latest RIAA garbage than their classes.
--Jeremy
Good job confirming the GP's point.
Bankruptcy is pretty severe, but it would actually probably help out a lot of people. The ones that are worse off are the ones with no health insurance, barely keeping up with bills, and then suddenly have to make a trip to the doctor for a common illness. Then they're out another $75-$100, which isn't enough to *bankrupt* them, but sure as hell makes it tough to buy groceries or pay rent.
Oh, and did I mention that a doctor's visit these days is a joke anyway? You spend 90 minutes waiting (even if you had an appointment), then you have your blood pressure taken by a nurse, maybe your temperature and weight as well. Doctor is in the room for all of 5 minutes to ask you questions while he runs through an expert system on his computer to diagnose your problem, and write up a prescription (probably suggested by the expert system).
Yeah, a lot of things in the US are the best in the world*, even health care.
*for those who can afford them, anyone else is worthless trash and SOL, and you're a socialist terrorist-supporting hippie if you believe otherwise
--Jeremy
Nintendo knew what they were getting into, and they have been in the business far too long to cry ignorance.
... how much does it cost to open a factory? How long does it take to tool it up and get it running? How long does it take your entire supply chain to catch up (maybe IBM can only produce 1.8 million processors per month?)? And then what happens if you get the factory running, and demand slacks off to only 1.1 million per month, now that you've upped your capacity to 2.5 million per month? Yeah, that's right, you just wasted millions (or, more likely, billions) of dollars.
Yes, they've got enough experience to expected normal console sales. What they've experienced with the Wii is completely unprecedented. Nobody has *ever* sold 15 million consoles in 1 year. How do you expect them to plan for beating their best estimates by a factor of 2?
And before you say "well, just build more factories!"
my PS2 (which has better graphics imo)
Ahh, that explains your post. You live in a world where the PS2 doesn't have the weakest hardware of last generation. Well, in your world, everything you posted is probably correct and insightful. So, my apologies.
--Jeremy