Your dog was sane. My brothers dog used to chew on the piano. So we went and tried the whole hot sauce trick. We watched until he tried the chewing on the piano leg again (didn't take long). He recoiled and gave it one of those tilted head looks for a sec, then instead of just nibbling on it like he had been he started chewing on it full force like he'd finally found the ultimate food.
ISK is the in-game money.
Cynosural fields: http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=343
sovereignty: http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=343
Actually you don't need the special ink. I've never used it and printed my own checks w/ software for that purpose.
The only problem I've ever had is when a Best Buy cashier got confused because his register couldn't just read it. He was new and didn't know how to manually put the numbers in and had to call a manager over.
You generally don't want to turn lights on and off frequently with incandescent either, this can cost you more in the frequent replacements than you save in electricity(though more likely reduce your saving significantly). Of course this depends on what your cost for each is.
If nothing else it's a pita changing a bathroom bulb(s) every few weeks, just leave it on and close the door, you may spend a few more pennies a month on electricity, but you'll save on the bulbs and costs of replacing them (including manufacturing side effects, landfill space, etc.).
My experience is limited, but out the 23 bulbs I put into the fixtures in this apartment (the bathroom mirrors had 5 '20 watt' sockets each) I've only had one go out.
I also had two bad ones out of the plastic, all from the same package from some dirt cheap no-name brand I've not seen before or since.
And prior to moving in here last may I've only had one other die in the three+ years I've been using them.
This far enough below my replace rate for incandescent to more than cover the price difference, the electric bill reduction is just bonus.
Certainly not a scientific study, but I would suspect some issue with the local electrical grid if you've had such a high failure rate across multiple locations and brands (assuming the locations are all on the same grid). Other than that variances in experience might be usage patterns or pure fluke.
All that said I've had a few non-positive results, I've got a couple '100watt' bulbs that are such a harsh blue-white I don't use them, and the cheaper ones need to 'warm up' to full brightness.
Not for everything, I've had to use restore twice because it auto-played that stupid player on some dvd's and scrambled my ability to watch a dvd with any other program (sometimes windows built in crap worked, but that's it).
This is on vista64 ultimate.
And another problem, Macrovision and such.
I bought an AIW card a few years back with every intent of converting a lot of my vhs to digital format(s) and found at the first sign of macrovision or such the image would get DELIBERATELY garbled.
Will these converters 'honor' macrovision, or will they actually work? If they don't ignore such crap they're useless, and If I bought one I'd send it back as not working as advertised.
Unfortunately MOST of the "studies" and such I've seen have come from known ant-gun ownership groups or otherwise have credibility problems (usually relying on the Kellermans work of creative fiction).
The one you linked quotes just such a study, and if you're right and they're just saying things to cover their butts rather than give the facts, well that's also not so good for being taken seriously.
Though I'm more inclined to believe that correlation does not equate to causation.
Also the deterrent effect of gun ownership is very difficult to study. The best 'evidence' is that in areas with high ownership have lower crime rates, especially violent crime. I put evidence in quotes because be a causative relation is not clearly established, and the studies are a bit few and weak last I checked.
Another factor I did NOT see in that study (though I didn't look to hard when I saw the Kellerman 'study' on the first page) you linked is any data concerning gun specific training or education or other non-physical measures to enhance safety, which is far superior to physical access restrictions. Indeed gun locks create a cumbersome mechanism around the trigger, and increasing complexity there seems a bit lacking in smarts in all cases except where very young children are involved (even then if there is ANY chance of discharge, including improper use of the lock).
Also I saw no indication one way or the other of whether gun ownership in the study correlated against real or perceived dangers prompting higher ownership. If so what are the rates verses those in the same risk group?
You can easily get faulty correlations by not properly sorting for various factors that may influence the numbers.
And personal protection is not the only reason for ownership.
"... it is not possible with this methodology to adequately assess whether access to a gun increases the risk of a violent death at the individual level"
And
"Blacks, persons less than 35 years of age or older than age 100 years, and persons who died from external causes of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury were oversampled in this survey. "
And they quote a long discredited 'study' to back up their claims as well.
And I personally don't consider 1 in 5 all that slim of odds.
Got any data to support that? How about the data concerning foiled burglaries, rapes, etc. Where no one got shot, I figure the odds of a crook staying around to get shot vs running are likely in favor of running.
Really off topic here, but it's NOT common courtesy, it's dangerous. On most roads with a speed limit of >20 mph (30ish KPH) it's stupid to ride a bike.
Yes the law may say all sorts of things about rights of way and so on, and yes when a car comes around a curve to suddenly find a 12mph 'vehicle' in front of him and his 2ton plus vehicle, and mangles the rider he may face some serious charges. The mangled bike rider will be lucky if he lives let alone walks again.
I used to live near a 45mph road with a LONG downhill slope that was fairly steep with an industrial park 1/2 mile past the bottom and no real shoulder to speak of. Yet idiot bicyclist would still ride down it, oblivious to the basic physics that says a loaded 16 wheeler CANNOT slow fast enough, or even try without serious repercussions (including possibly killing the driver).
And most bike riders are NOT following the law with regards to proper equipment in any event (amazing how fast they say they HAVE to be on the road because of the law, yet are totally clueless about what the law requires of THEM, including pulling over and letter traffic pass if they're under the speed limit and have more than x vehicles behind them.
And at least here the law may say a lot of things about where bicycles and cars and pedestrians can and can't go and how to react to each other, the FIRST law in that title says that NOTHING else in the law can require or be used an excuse to cause an accident or unsafe condition.
So I get a bit ticked at idiots riding bikes where it's stupid and potentially force me to choose between killing them or the several people in an oncoming car and myself. guess who's gonna loose that choice (aside from me, I'll lose no matter what).
Most drivers 'know' (yes wrongly according to the law) that bikes aren't supposed to be on the road, including the other idiot in the suv tailgating my butt, and he's more likely to kill me with his 'vehicle' than a bicycle is.
It's not about the law or courtesy, it's about not being a Darwin award.
It's essentially already there, just go into your preferences and assign a -6 modifier to anonymous posts, even if one gets rated +5 it'll still be at -1 for you, then as long as you're viewing threshold is at 0 or higher, bingo no a.c. posts will be visible to you.
One thing they've also done is add a few jump-gates to change the 'geography' around Jitta. That and you can now tell the autopilot to route around specific systems. These along with 'stackless I/0' should help.
Also if you try to log-in to a system that's so overloaded it can't take any more you'll be given the option to log into an adjacent system with the same sec rating.
That said I've never been to Jitta myself, heard the stories and just stay mostly in the Tash-Merkon region and surrounding.
The reason it's like that is because the card holders didn't like getting their id checked (just how lazy can they be, they've already got their wallet out?) and complained.
And since the credit card companies don't loose a red cent when a card is fraudulently charged, the company charging the card eats the loss if the cardholder catches it 'in time', otherwise the card holder has to pay the bill, they set the rules to maximized card use, not protect against fraud.
I have even had one 'customer' get royally ticked because the card they presented said "see-id" and they didn't have a matching id (or any for that matter) because it was their s.o.'s card. I told them I had to respect the card-holders expressed wishes.
I've got SEE-ID on mine and it gets ignored 99% of the time.
Strange, the actual copyright law itself specifically says otherwise. Unless they are arguing that said copy was not part of the necessary actions to use the game, but that seems a bit odd to me. (then again this law not reality, and I'm not a lawyer)
That's just not smart. One your giving advance notice to someone likely to be alone with your food/merchandise (usually food) that you're a jerk (yeah that's smart) and two MOST places will discipline an employee who gives more than the faintest hint at a tip.
At best he's rewarding the jerks who will push for a tip (and will spit in his food or worse) and stiffing the professionals who will do a good job for him regardless of tip.
Also in some cases you're not allowed to ask for ID, the PCI (payment card industry) rules currently prohibit asking for id if the card is signed (can't do anything that might make using the card and building that balance up the least bit unpleasant!).
If you want them to check id when your card is used write SEE ID on the sig line (don't just leave it blank, that gets ignored mostly).
If someone is in a tipped profession TIP them, especially in the food industry (if you can't afford the tip then you can't afford to eat out, get delivery, etc.) unless they PERSONALLY do something (or fail to do something) that causes bad service.
And delivery drivers are rarely getting you your food any later than they can help, unless they're taking deliveries to two or more locations and you're known to be a bad tipper or the other guy is known to tip very well (and with 10-30 deliveries a night it takes time to build a rep for one or the other), and even then they'll tend to take things in the order that get's them back to for the next run quickest, and rarely if ever 'dally' on the way, it costs them money if they go slower than needed.
I don't buy the whole conspiracy nonsense, however they did NOT refer to "WTC-7", but to the Soloman building (the proper name, if I spelled it right, of wtc-7), and gave brief mention of it's location and size.
However it's possible some researcher trying to add info to 'raw data' to make the newscaster/news sound better and such scrambled things a bit and the wrong data got fed to the teleprompter.
More complicated an explanation than simply saying WTC-7 when 3 or some other number was correct, but still far more probable than the bbc being secretly in on the whole deal screwing up the timing on when to release the next item.
I was under the impression most 'skyscrapers' were DESIGNED to collapse straight down if anything ever went wrong, including something asymmetric.
It stands to reason someone had to realize that a building tall enough to hit it's neighbors if it fell over sideways would be a bad idea (domino effect anyone?).
In a place as crowded with tall buildings as NYC is I would hope that at least a few people in lawmaking positions would cause such robust design to be mandated.
Skills aren't the ONLY thing in eve, you still want to do things and buy things, and build things and sell things and rent things, etc.
Eve has a pretty in-depth player economy, a crafting system, fighting, piracy, etc. Three things can limit you in Eve, skills to low (this part rigged to work for those who can't/won't spend every waking moment in-game), finances to low (rigged for those who do spend time online mostly), and your intelligence/imagination (rigged for those with some).
It is not however for those who expect to 'grind' to ubber godhood in a few weeks, though you can grind for cash in game if that's you're style.
So if you're looking for an instant gratification type game this likely isn't it.
I can certainly understand the attraction of many of the games out there, I just happen to like the balance CCP has struck with EVE.
Oh I wasn't arguing necessary, just usefull and more efficient to have multiple threads running at the same time.
And modern gpu's can help a lot with some of those tasks. I probably should have pointed out my own perspective might be a tad skewed as I run 3d rendering apps (well poser mostly) than can easilly peg all four cores and slam my ram, so naturally I'm all for bigger,better,faster,cheaper in computers.
Besides look at the laser, it was a solution looking for a problem at first, and have found a few nails for it.
EVE online is the only mmo I know that has one of the key progression metrics proceed regardless of online or offline statust (indeed regardless of paying customer status!), start a skill training and it'll keep training till you stop it or it hits the next level, and considering it can take weeks to train the 5th(last) level of some skills it's a good thing too.
EVE online does have some balance for the time strapped, and an indirect way to buy in game money with real-world money.
I've got a post further up on it with crude attempt at more detail, but it's (just my opinion, fan boy-ish I admit) the only mmo I've played that didn't seem geared towards instant gratification of little whiny 12-14 year olds (they do try to put things in for adults, but only as long as it don't kill the pre/early teen cash cow, can't upset mommy or daddy's little precious you know).
If you're willing to think about the game you're playing, try EVE online. It's NOT for the instant gratification crowd, eve takes time, both due to complexity and the scale of it.
But it balances those with time and without, and rewards thinking more than just who has the coolest uber item. YOU can swap ISK(gold) for cash indirectly (you can buy game time and re-sell it for ISK as long as you follow thier rules).
What you can do depends on both your skills and 'gold'. Skills take time to train, and only time. Though getting the skill in the first place (except those you start with, dependent on char creation) costs in game money.
Once you start a skill training it keeps on going till you finish training to the next level or change what your training. you don't have to be online or even have an active account for this to occure (some have saved some real world cash by starting a LONG skill (some can take over a month!) suspending their account, and reactivating it about time the skill finishes.
Of course if you aren't actively playing you can't earn money (except from items you've already put up for sale, those stay for sale for as long as you put them up for untill you pull them or they sell).
And things are highly interconnected, especially the skill and ships. At first some of the skills seem kinda weak compared to the benefit (other than a pre-requisits for some things and some skills) but those 15% bonuses for 3 weeks of training a skill plus the ships bonus per level of skill plus the other skill, etc. add up better than may be obvious.
I like it because a) it requires more thinking than most, and b) working 50+ hours a week limits online time.
Games, 3d rendering in general, but games are a big common app that can utilize good multi-threading. And multiple cores? Just the O.S. alone runs many things at once, then you've got your drivers, the applications, the widgets, the viruses(hey they're processes too, just because some people have a bit of prejudice:)), the bittorrent running in the background, and the list goes on.
Slashdot Mirror
Your dog was sane.
My brothers dog used to chew on the piano.
So we went and tried the whole hot sauce trick.
We watched until he tried the chewing on the piano leg again (didn't take long).
He recoiled and gave it one of those tilted head looks for a sec, then instead of just nibbling on it like he had been he started chewing on it full force like he'd finally found the ultimate food.
Mycroft
ISK is the in-game money.
Cynosural fields: http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=343
sovereignty: http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=343
That's a starter, hope it helps.
Mycroft
Actually you don't need the special ink. I've never used it and printed my own checks w/ software for that purpose.
The only problem I've ever had is when a Best Buy cashier got confused because his register couldn't just read it. He was new and didn't know how to manually put the numbers in and had to call a manager over.
Mycroft
You generally don't want to turn lights on and off frequently with incandescent either, this can cost you more in the frequent replacements than you save in electricity(though more likely reduce your saving significantly). Of course this depends on what your cost for each is.
If nothing else it's a pita changing a bathroom bulb(s) every few weeks, just leave it on and close the door, you may spend a few more pennies a month on electricity, but you'll save on the bulbs and costs of replacing them (including manufacturing side effects, landfill space, etc.).
Mycroft
My experience is limited, but out the 23 bulbs I put into the fixtures in this apartment (the bathroom mirrors had 5 '20 watt' sockets each) I've only had one go out.
I also had two bad ones out of the plastic, all from the same package from some dirt cheap no-name brand I've not seen before or since.
And prior to moving in here last may I've only had one other die in the three+ years I've been using them.
This far enough below my replace rate for incandescent to more than cover the price difference, the electric bill reduction is just bonus.
Certainly not a scientific study, but I would suspect some issue with the local electrical grid if you've had such a high failure rate across multiple locations and brands (assuming the locations are all on the same grid). Other than that variances in experience might be usage patterns or pure fluke.
All that said I've had a few non-positive results, I've got a couple '100watt' bulbs that are such a harsh blue-white I don't use them, and the cheaper ones need to 'warm up' to full brightness.
Mycroft
Not for everything, I've had to use restore twice because it auto-played that stupid player on some dvd's and scrambled my ability to watch a dvd with any other program (sometimes windows built in crap worked, but that's it).
This is on vista64 ultimate.
Mycroft
And another problem, Macrovision and such.
I bought an AIW card a few years back with every intent of converting a lot of my vhs to digital format(s) and found at the first sign of macrovision or such the image would get DELIBERATELY garbled.
Will these converters 'honor' macrovision, or will they actually work?
If they don't ignore such crap they're useless, and If I bought one I'd send it back as not working as advertised.
Mycroft
Unfortunately MOST of the "studies" and such I've seen have come from known ant-gun ownership groups or otherwise have credibility problems (usually relying on the Kellermans work of creative fiction).
The one you linked quotes just such a study, and if you're right and they're just saying things to cover their butts rather than give the facts, well that's also not so good for being taken seriously.
Though I'm more inclined to believe that correlation does not equate to causation.
Also the deterrent effect of gun ownership is very difficult to study.
The best 'evidence' is that in areas with high ownership have lower crime rates, especially violent crime. I put evidence in quotes because be a causative relation is not clearly established, and the studies are a bit few and weak last I checked.
Another factor I did NOT see in that study (though I didn't look to hard when I saw the Kellerman 'study' on the first page) you linked is any data concerning gun specific training or education or other non-physical measures to enhance safety, which is far superior to physical access restrictions. Indeed gun locks create a cumbersome mechanism around the trigger, and increasing complexity there seems a bit lacking in smarts in all cases except where very young children are involved (even then if there is ANY chance of discharge, including improper use of the lock).
Also I saw no indication one way or the other of whether gun ownership in the study correlated against real or perceived dangers prompting higher ownership. If so what are the rates verses those in the same risk group?
You can easily get faulty correlations by not properly sorting for various factors that may influence the numbers.
And personal protection is not the only reason for ownership.
Mycroft
"... it is not possible with this methodology to adequately assess whether access to a gun increases the risk of a violent death at the individual level"
And
"Blacks, persons less than 35 years of age or older than age 100 years, and persons who died from external causes of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury were oversampled in this survey. "
And they quote a long discredited 'study' to back up their claims as well.
And I personally don't consider 1 in 5 all that slim of odds.
Mycroft.
Got any data to support that?
How about the data concerning foiled burglaries, rapes, etc. Where no one got shot, I figure the odds of a crook staying around to get shot vs running are likely in favor of running.
Mycroft
Really off topic here, but it's NOT common courtesy, it's dangerous.
On most roads with a speed limit of >20 mph (30ish KPH) it's stupid to
ride a bike.
Yes the law may say all sorts of things about rights of way and so on, and yes when a car comes around a curve to suddenly find a 12mph 'vehicle' in front of him and his 2ton plus vehicle, and mangles the rider he may face some serious charges. The mangled bike rider will be lucky if he lives
let alone walks again.
I used to live near a 45mph road with a LONG downhill slope that was fairly steep with an industrial park 1/2 mile past the bottom and no real shoulder to speak of. Yet idiot bicyclist would still ride down it, oblivious to the basic physics that says a loaded 16 wheeler CANNOT slow fast enough, or even try without serious repercussions (including possibly killing the driver).
And most bike riders are NOT following the law with regards to proper equipment in any event (amazing how fast they say they HAVE to be on the road because of the law, yet are totally clueless about what the law requires of THEM, including pulling over and letter traffic pass if they're
under the speed limit and have more than x vehicles behind them.
And at least here the law may say a lot of things about where bicycles and cars and pedestrians can and can't go and how to react to each other, the FIRST law in that title says that NOTHING else in the law can require or be used an excuse to cause an accident or unsafe condition.
So I get a bit ticked at idiots riding bikes where it's stupid and potentially force me to choose between killing them or the several people in an oncoming car and myself. guess who's gonna loose that choice (aside from me, I'll lose no matter what).
Most drivers 'know' (yes wrongly according to the law) that bikes aren't supposed to be on the road, including the other idiot in the suv tailgating my butt, and he's more likely to kill me with his 'vehicle' than a bicycle is.
It's not about the law or courtesy, it's about not being a Darwin award.
Mycroft
It's essentially already there, just go into your preferences and assign a -6 modifier to anonymous posts, even if one gets rated +5 it'll still be at -1 for you, then as long as you're viewing threshold is at 0 or higher, bingo no a.c. posts will be visible to you.
One thing they've also done is add a few jump-gates to change the 'geography' around Jitta. That and you can now tell the autopilot to route around specific systems. These along with 'stackless I/0' should help.
Also if you try to log-in to a system that's so overloaded it can't take any more you'll be given the option to log into an adjacent system with the same sec rating.
That said I've never been to Jitta myself, heard the stories and just stay mostly in the Tash-Merkon region and surrounding.
Mycroft
The reason it's like that is because the card holders didn't like getting their id checked (just how lazy can they be, they've already got their wallet out?) and complained.
And since the credit card companies don't loose a red cent when a card is fraudulently charged, the company charging the card eats the loss if the cardholder catches it 'in time', otherwise the card holder has to pay the bill, they set the rules to maximized card use, not protect against fraud.
I have even had one 'customer' get royally ticked because the card they presented said "see-id" and they didn't have a matching id (or any for that matter) because it was their s.o.'s card. I told them I had to respect the card-holders expressed wishes.
I've got SEE-ID on mine and it gets ignored 99% of the time.
Mycroft
Actually the law was updated to specifically include copies to hard drive and ram.
Mycroft
Strange, the actual copyright law itself specifically says otherwise. Unless they are arguing that said copy was not part of the necessary actions to use the game, but that seems a bit odd to me. (then again this law not reality, and I'm not a lawyer)
Mcyroft
That's just not smart. One your giving advance notice to someone likely to be alone with your food/merchandise (usually food) that you're a jerk (yeah that's smart) and two MOST places will discipline an employee who gives more than the faintest hint at a tip.
At best he's rewarding the jerks who will push for a tip (and will spit in his food or worse) and stiffing the professionals who will do a good job for him regardless of tip.
Also in some cases you're not allowed to ask for ID, the PCI (payment card industry) rules currently prohibit asking for id if the card is signed (can't do anything that might make using the card and building that balance up the least bit unpleasant!).
If you want them to check id when your card is used write SEE ID on the sig line (don't just leave it blank, that gets ignored mostly).
If someone is in a tipped profession TIP them, especially in the food industry (if you can't afford the tip then you can't afford to eat out, get delivery, etc.) unless they PERSONALLY do something (or fail to do something) that causes bad service.
And delivery drivers are rarely getting you your food any later than they can help, unless they're taking deliveries to two or more locations and you're known to be a bad tipper or the other guy is known to tip very well (and with 10-30 deliveries a night it takes time to build a rep for one or the other), and even then they'll tend to take things in the order that get's them back to for the next run quickest, and rarely if ever 'dally' on the way, it costs them money if they go slower than needed.
Mycroft
I don't buy the whole conspiracy nonsense, however they did NOT refer to "WTC-7", but to the Soloman building (the proper name, if I spelled it right, of wtc-7), and gave brief mention of it's location and size.
However it's possible some researcher trying to add info to 'raw data' to make the newscaster/news sound better and such scrambled things a bit and the wrong data got fed to the teleprompter.
More complicated an explanation than simply saying WTC-7 when 3 or some other number was correct, but still far more probable than the bbc being secretly in on the whole deal screwing up the timing on when to release the next item.
Mycroft
I was under the impression most 'skyscrapers' were DESIGNED to collapse straight down if anything ever went wrong, including something asymmetric.
It stands to reason someone had to realize that a building tall enough to hit it's neighbors if it fell over sideways would be a bad idea (domino effect anyone?).
In a place as crowded with tall buildings as NYC is I would hope that at least a few people in lawmaking positions would cause such robust design to be mandated.
Mycroft
Skills aren't the ONLY thing in eve, you still want to do things and buy things, and build things and sell things and rent things, etc.
Eve has a pretty in-depth player economy, a crafting system, fighting, piracy, etc.
Three things can limit you in Eve, skills to low (this part rigged to work for those who can't/won't spend every waking moment in-game), finances to low (rigged for those who do spend time online mostly), and your intelligence/imagination (rigged for those with some).
It is not however for those who expect to 'grind' to ubber godhood in a few weeks, though you can grind for cash in game if that's you're style.
So if you're looking for an instant gratification type game this likely isn't it.
I can certainly understand the attraction of many of the games out there, I just happen to like the balance CCP has struck with EVE.
Mycroft
Oh I wasn't arguing necessary, just usefull and more efficient to have multiple threads running at the same time.
And modern gpu's can help a lot with some of those tasks.
I probably should have pointed out my own perspective might be a tad skewed as I run 3d rendering apps (well poser mostly) than can easilly peg all four cores and slam my ram, so naturally I'm all for bigger,better,faster,cheaper in computers.
Besides look at the laser, it was a solution looking for a problem at first, and have found a few nails for it.
Mycroft
EVE online is the only mmo I know that has one of the key progression metrics proceed regardless of online or offline statust (indeed regardless of paying customer status!), start a skill training and it'll keep training till you stop it or it hits the next level, and considering it can take weeks to train the 5th(last) level of some skills it's a good thing too.
Mycroft
EVE online does have some balance for the time strapped, and an indirect way to buy in game money with real-world money.
I've got a post further up on it with crude attempt at more detail, but it's (just my opinion, fan boy-ish I admit) the only mmo I've played that didn't seem geared towards instant gratification of little whiny 12-14 year olds (they do try to put things in for adults, but only as long as it don't kill the pre/early teen cash cow, can't upset mommy or daddy's little precious you know).
Mycroft
If you're willing to think about the game you're playing, try EVE online.
It's NOT for the instant gratification crowd, eve takes time, both due to complexity
and the scale of it.
But it balances those with time and without, and rewards thinking more than just who has the coolest uber item.
YOU can swap ISK(gold) for cash indirectly (you can buy game time and re-sell it for ISK as long as you follow thier rules).
What you can do depends on both your skills and 'gold'. Skills take time to train, and only time. Though getting the skill in the first place (except those you start with, dependent on char creation) costs in game money.
Once you start a skill training it keeps on going till you finish training to the next level or change what your training. you don't have to be online or even have an active account for this to occure (some have saved some real world cash by starting a LONG skill (some can take over a month!) suspending their account, and reactivating it about time the skill finishes.
Of course if you aren't actively playing you can't earn money (except from items you've already put up for sale, those stay for sale for as long as you put them up for untill you pull them or they sell).
And things are highly interconnected, especially the skill and ships. At first some of the skills seem kinda weak compared to the benefit (other than a pre-requisits for some things and some skills) but those 15% bonuses for 3 weeks of training a skill plus the ships bonus per level of skill plus the other skill, etc. add up better than may be obvious.
I like it because a) it requires more thinking than most, and b) working 50+ hours a week limits online time.
Mycroft
Games, 3d rendering in general, but games are a big common app that can utilize good multi-threading.
And multiple cores? Just the O.S. alone runs many things at once, then you've got your drivers, the applications, the widgets, the viruses(hey they're processes too, just because some people have a bit of prejudice:)), the bittorrent running in the background, and the list goes on.
Mycroft