So much about this post screams BS... doesn't know it's HIPAA, and doctors have MDs, and I can tell you as someone married to a physician the 'make tons of money' myth is utter bullshit. A FEW doctors in sub-specialties are highly paid (surgeons, cardiologists, anesthesiologist) but the bulk of doctors you see (primary care, pediatrics, internal medicine and family medicine) are grossly UNDERpaid given the amount of training relative to other jobs. A primary care/internal medicine doc working for an HMO might make 130-140k/yr, not much considering...
4 yrs undergrad (which yes, most of will do anyway hopefully) 4 yrs of medical school (not only not making any money at this point, but going into about 150k+ debt) 3-6 yrs of residency (dependent on specialty, as resident you barely make shit, maybe 30k or so a year, basically a stipend to cover living expenses, and working 80/hr weeks, used to be more when my wife was a resident but they legally maxxed it to 80 now, so that translates to about $7.50/hr..)
So by the time you're around 30 and starting 'real' work, you're looking at pretty substantial debt and having delayed making any money to speak of for 10yrs. And even then, expect long hours (for my wife 60/hr week is the norm, plus the occasional overnights during hospital rounding)
And most of the doctors I know, don't feel 'superior', but they are highly educated, often very high achieving and very bright -- it's not they're fault you feel inferior.
It might be a 'marketing thing', but the only PR it's gotten them is bad, and rightfully so; so I'm not sure it was in any way successful if that was the intent.
I think it benefits Gamestop only at the expense of the consumer more than anything else, and in the end I hope it hurts their bottom line and reputation -- what little's left of it -- even further.
There's no conscience there, they're just p*ssed they got caught yet again, exposing their terrible business practices, I'm amazed honestly that anyone even shops there anymore, you don't even know if the game you're buying is new, legit, etc. I'll just stick with Steam, Amazon or even Best Buy.
Their management is running that company into the ground, the sooner the better I say. They deserve to die screaming and in flames.
I mean it's a matter of perspective. For some it means fame and wealth, for others, a contented, quiet low-stress life, for another it's being a great parent.
Interesting question about geeks as successful adults, but the whole notion is so subjective and arbitrary it's rather hard to quantify in any logical or meaningful way really.
As someone who is happy to pay $50 for a good game, there's many games I wanted to play, but simply refused to buy b/c of draconian anti-piracy measures; be they DRM, rootkits, or even requiring an online connection, especially when it's a single-player game with no online play.
While I don't personally install pirated games (too concerned about what else may come with it), I could see why people would if they really wanted to play game X. For me, there are enough other games typically that I'll just pass and go buy something else. I think the overboard DRM etc stuff does nothing to stop people from hacking it eventually, and just stops consumers like me, willing to pay for it, from buying the game(s) at all. And then there's also a certain about of ill will you feel towards the companies who do it -- maybe not a tangible, but I think it impacts my thinking and spending towards those publishers.
That comment alone gives me the image of a clueless Dilbert-esque pointy-haired boss who has no business leading anything. Whoever is funding the start-up, needs to fire him and get someone else.
If he's going to make broad (and stupid) decisions based on something like this, he should at least be able to distinguish between a framework and a programming language. And even then, he's STILL an idiot...
I really hope they focus the development with the PC in mind. So many games now are being ported to PCs as an afterthought, usually with disastrous results -- or at a minimum the game gets dumbed down for the consoles.
A lot of studios are going console crazy now, even ones that traditionally were strong PC supporters like Bioware (compare Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights to the upcoming Dragon Age II).p>
As a PC gamer it's a trend I'm very bummed about... more and more games with lots of glitz and less substance.
My reply was mainly to point out that the person above who said "there's no study showing an actual link between violent behaviors and violent people" was simply wrong, there ARE studies that point to such links. You can argue about methodologies, you may disagree, etc - but for someone to say flat out there's no studies pointing to this relationship is misinformed. I think the issue is sill under debate for a reason, and I'm interested to see further studies, whatever their conclusions/results.
"Oh right, there's no study showing an actual link between violent behaviors and violent people...."
Actually that's incorrect, there's been several recent studies which do show some relationship. And these aren't just op-eds from right-wing bible beaters with an agenda to prove.
I'm not arguing for censorship or banning games, etc, I've been a gamer for years myself, but it's not accurate to say there's no study indicating links between violence and some games.
"stupid people decided that the realism of a VIRTUAL game is somehow parallel to how "realistic" an idea is."
I know, it's amazing there's people here trying to say it's ok. Probably the same Generation Me types who think they're entitled to everything, are 'special' and 'unique', and feel that common sense rules don't apply to them. Here's some simple, obvious reasons why it's NOT ok.
1) You're paid to do a job, not slack off (or jack off in this case). Do your job and quit whining about how stressful it is, blah blah blah.
2) Porn sites are notorious for spyware, viruses, bots, keyloggers. You are putting the company's network at risk, and even worse, you could be exposing company data or other confidential information -- which could cost the company millions of dollars, damage their reputation, and hurt future business. You're also using company resources (hardware, bandwidth, etc) at their expense and NOT using it for work.
3) "Hostile Work Environment" Many people may be offended by porn, especially women (given much of porn's nature), religious individuals etc. They would most certainly win any lawsuits especially if the company was complicit or outright condoned the behavior.
Want to watch porn, fine... but do it at home, on your own time, with your own PC, and using your own resources.
"The police overstepped and violated her civil and constitutional rights" Lol, wtf? Clearly you didn't bother to read the article, or the attached police report, or the US Constitution for that matter. You just read the headline and stopped there to begin your rant.
She wouldn't obey the teacher, has a history or run ins with the cops, lied to the teacher, then to the cops (like a dozen times easy from the looks of it), then hid the phone -- in the crack of her ass no less. You know damn well if a teacher even touched her anywhere near there to take the phone away, it would be lawsuit city. The girl left the teacher/school no choice, she got what she deserved, and I hope the judge gives her a swift kick in the ass too.
And luckily for us, the mother isn't sue happy like you, and actually took responsibility -- instead of blaming everyone else as you seem to. She actually told them to keep the phone and she was clearly embarrassed by her daughter's behavior... as she should have been. So she won't be suing (not counter suing by the way, the school isn't suing the student or parent(s) for anything)
Post something publicly and lo and behold the public might see it. Once it's out there, you're going to lose control of it; especially when it's not your site/server and you agree to the TOS (whether or not you read it), it's just the nature of the beast.
I'm baffled at the kind of things people will post about themselves, either in text, or worse, in forms of images -- to the public at large, and then freak when it's used in a way they weren't anticipating.
We have developed a kind of confessional, exhibitionist culture obsessed with 'sharing'. Fine, share all you want, but stop whining when the information isn't used just to boost your self-inflated ego and to have people tell you how cool you are. If you don't want everyone to know something about you, then don't freakin' post it where everyone can read it, hullo?
Say what you want about TOS's etc, but you're unbelievably naive if you think those won't change, sites won't be hacked, etc. The slashdot community should know this better than anyone. And Social networking sites (or blog hosts, etc) don't give a rat's ass about you, they are there to generate revenue via ads or other means -- not to serve humanity.
I think the op has an interesting idea, but his use of the term 'philosophy' in this context is a bit broad. I was double philosophy/psych major in college, and currently work mainly as a web developer (e-commerce / finance)
There's a lot of branches to philosophy, most are basically entire disciplines unto themselves. I think in terms of logic and ethics, yes there's some overlap -- as those are two branches in the field.
But when talking about areas like phenomenology, epistemology & cosmology I don't see any real connection, or any kind of overlap (without really forcing it). Not that it's a bad thing -- it's just an apples and oranges kind of thing.
Ethics is relevant anywhere imo, not only CS and certainly in the business world it's valuable. I would say the one place where philosophy and CS overlap the closest is in Logic, for pretty obvious reasons.
But, there's simply too many areas of study in philosophy for the disciplines to merge entirely
Apple... a slick marketing company that happens to sell overpriced computers and phones.
Personally, I laugh at all the people who think they're 'hipper' and 'fighting the man' by owning a mac. If you like your mac for its performance and functionality, great... but I have a feeling a lot of people are just victims of marketing and little else.
Given the sheer scale of the universe, there is a decent chance that some other evolved forms of life do exist.
I always liked Carl Sagan's example of a beach. Each grain of sand is a star (with the potential of an orbiting planet able to host life). Add up all the sand of all beaches on Earth, and you might get some sense of how many stars are out there.
Now, the chance of intelligent life being within "earshot" (pardon the pun) is indeed incredibly small, that much I will give you. But I think it's sheer hubris to assume we're the only planet hosting intelligent life in the entire massive universe. It's hard to comprehend how really huge it is...
I've played WoW pretty intensely since it came out, but it's lost its luster for me. It's NOT that it's a bad game, heck it's terrific, BUT how much of the same thing can you swallow? That's true of ANY mmorpg. I've played EQI/II, Anarchy Online, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot & Guild Wars. They each had something fun and interesting to offer -- but at some point the content, quests, graphics & 'feel' of the games become too familiar imo. How many times can you visit the same zone/terrain, and kill the same monsters? Change is good.
WoW has become a game of grinding, 'dailies' (daily quests) are just repetitive and boring, essentially a way to move the carrot a bit further out while they work on the next expansion. Personally for me, the carrot's no longer appetizing.
People get so defensive about the greatness of their mmorpg of choice -- fact is, no mmorpg will reign supreme forever. New graphic engines come out, new ideas grow, etc. Personally I'm glad it's that way, I'd hate to think I'd be playing WoW 3 years from now
"Many, many MMORPG players are 13 year old kids. Immature kids. These people are not adults. They do not behave like adults..."
I keep hearing people saying this, where's the proof? People just make up stats on the fly and like to blame kids -- there's PLENTY of adult players who act like complete asshats.
Here's some actual stats --
"Also of note is the fact that the average age of the typical gamer is 33."
"...female gamers over the age of 18 make up 31 percent of all gamers, a larger percentage than that of male gamers under the age of 17 (20 percent), a group traditionally seen as the majority."
I will say I've seen my share of immature players in WoW - BUT that doesn't mean I actually know they're age. Also, WoW is also just ONE mmorpg, albeit the largest.
I've played mmorpgs for about 9 yrs starting with EQ. Currently, I play EQII as well as WoW -- and the maturity level is vastly different there. Played AO, DAoC, CoH, GW and generally had good experiences with the player base. Anonymity is really the big issue with mmorpgs, it let's some people (mainly adults) act like idiots without any real repercussions.
Most of my WoW guild is 30 and 40-somethings. One however is a 12 year old boy, and his online behavior is often much more mature/conservative than the adults.
'Very little "good" help available (Doctors throwing pills, diets selling useless books'
I must disagree. My fiancee is a physician (in the US), and she's constantly dealing with patients wanting quick fixes for everything -- usually in the form of pills. They don't want to be told, stop smoking, eat less/better, get exercise. Instead of taking on the responsibility themselves and making changes, they want magic in a bottle -- and of course, with no side effects either.
I think the good help and advice is out there, the problem is, no one wants to hear it. They don't want to told you're overweight because of your own lifestyle/eating choices and you sit around too much. Though information and knowledge has grown with time, I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that they don't know the key to weight management is exercise and reducing your caloric intake.
...move along. Seriously, why even bother posting such an article? It's just going to be typical/. slamfest, like every other one that crops up the minute MS is mentioned.
Which means, all the MS haters/flamers posts will get modded up as insightful or interesting (and will by in large be neither), anyone saying anything contrary will be left untouched or modded down. Nothing new or valuable will be said, all the same flames will be rehashed yet again.
And I'm sorry, love them or hate them, but to say MS is doomed and going to fold is beyond stupid, with no basis in reality. If you have any sense of the scope of their software suites and the size of their user base, no one in their right mind would say that. You might WANT it to happen, but hope and reality are not the same thing
I don't think the article is so much saying that computers are replacing work done by hand, but that it focusing too much or exclusively on it can impact ones creative or artistic skills -- there's some validity to that.
There's been a lot of cognitive studies done on right brain / left brain in regards to creative expression. For example, left handed people, tend to use their right side of the brain (which is believed to contain most of the creative and artistic processes). But many left-handers, myself included, learned to use a mouse right handed and type with both hands. So say a left hander has gone from freehand drawing (a right brained activity) to electronic using right or both (mostly a left brained, or logical activity) -- that would be a different process.
Reason I mention this, is a larger proportion of artistic people are left-handed then in the general population; I think lefties make up about 10%, but notice how many artistic people are left-handed, a lot.
I also can say from experience, the mechanical process of typing and using a mouse is WAY differt than feeling a pencil/charcoal on textured paper, or the sensation of working with oil or acrylic paint on canvas, or better yet in true 3d in clay or stone. I started college as a studio art major, so have some experience here.
I've also seen studies that when writing a letter to say a friend, by hand, versus an email, they've found different parts of the brain are used. And also, the nature of the letter itself is different (hand written letters I believe have more 'emotional content'). Can't find the article, but I'll look for it.
Given these kinds of things; I think it's likely there is an effect of creating works of art on a PC than the 'old fashioned way'. Doesn't mean it's good or bad, but I could see it affecting how people work and create.
Lastly, I would argue that learning to draw things proportionately by hand, with proper depth and shading, is damn hard; but software can mask or add to those shortcomings since they offer so many filters and tools to do it so easily. In a sense, maybe you don't develop you artistic 'muscles' as much?
"Trademark laws exist to protect the consumer, not the producer."
You have it utterly and completely backwards, trademark laws are there to protect the producer/owner, and maximize their ability to capitalize on their trademark and profit from it.
IANAL, but I actually worked as a developer/researcher for a large intellectual property company, and worked closely with IP attorneys on a daily basis; so I actually do know something about this topic:)
Utterly and completely wrong. If you're going to do the typical knee-jerk slashdot MS slam, could you try to be at least a little bit informed? Please?
You could probably get away with your remark IF you talking about VB 4.0 or something, some of the points could apply perhaps to VB 6.0; BUT I'm 99% certain you've never touched VB.NET, or you wouldn't say that. It hardly resembles the VB of pre-.NET days, and has all the features of any fully flushed out OO language. VB.NET used in conjunction with something like Visual Studio.NET enforces sound coding practices and the.NET framework isn't going to "allow for poorly writen applications to run anyway."
The OP was asking a legitimate question, try giving a useful answer instead of just using it to slam MS without anything to back it up.
In answer to the OP, VB.NET is fine to start learning, though compared to C# the differences aren't that huge imo, and I see more job postings seem to be looking for C# over VB.NET (FYI, I moved to C# from VB 6/.NET for that reason). So given that, I'd say C#. However, VB.NET is just fine and with.NET 2.0 MS seems to be pushing VB.NET a bit more again, so it's not that big a deal either way really.
My g/f is a doc (Internal Medicine) and all people want are drugs, drugs, drugs. Slightly off-topic, but no one wants to hear her tell them to quit smoking, loose weight, eat better (and less), get regular exercise, sleep more. People always want magic pills -- that are also dirt cheap and side effect free, of course.
While sometimes you are simply going to need meds, a lot of people beat the hell out of their own bodies and immune system (see above) and could help themselves a lot by living better. But that takes work...
I know people like to say docs overprescribe antibiotics, and that's probably somewhat true -- though to a much lesser extent now as medicals schools really emphasize restraint. BUT my g/f will literally get into heated debates with patients (who apparently are experts even though they didn't go through med school & residency) that demand antibiotics, needed or not. She, along with many of her fellow docs, get several formal complaints a month from patients saying they aren't being properly taken care of because they didn't get the drugs they wanted. So, to a large degree, we (patients) have done this by demanding them -- and trying to kill things with a nuke when a bullet would work fine too.
Slashdot Mirror
So much about this post screams BS... doesn't know it's HIPAA, and doctors have MDs, and I can tell you as someone married to a physician the 'make tons of money' myth is utter bullshit. A FEW doctors in sub-specialties are highly paid (surgeons, cardiologists, anesthesiologist) but the bulk of doctors you see (primary care, pediatrics, internal medicine and family medicine) are grossly UNDERpaid given the amount of training relative to other jobs. A primary care/internal medicine doc working for an HMO might make 130-140k/yr, not much considering...
4 yrs undergrad (which yes, most of will do anyway hopefully)
4 yrs of medical school (not only not making any money at this point, but going into about 150k+ debt)
3-6 yrs of residency (dependent on specialty, as resident you barely make shit, maybe 30k or so a year, basically a stipend to cover living expenses, and working 80/hr weeks, used to be more when my wife was a resident but they legally maxxed it to 80 now, so that translates to about $7.50/hr..)
So by the time you're around 30 and starting 'real' work, you're looking at pretty substantial debt and having delayed making any money to speak of for 10yrs.
And even then, expect long hours (for my wife 60/hr week is the norm, plus the occasional overnights during hospital rounding)
And most of the doctors I know, don't feel 'superior', but they are highly educated, often very high achieving and very bright -- it's not they're fault you feel inferior.
... that's the one that will be of most influence on me :)
It might be a 'marketing thing', but the only PR it's gotten them is bad, and rightfully so; so I'm not sure it was in any way successful if that was the intent.
I think it benefits Gamestop only at the expense of the consumer more than anything else, and in the end I hope it hurts their bottom line and reputation -- what little's left of it -- even further.
There's no conscience there, they're just p*ssed they got caught yet again, exposing their terrible business practices, I'm amazed honestly that anyone even shops there anymore, you don't even know if the game you're buying is new, legit, etc. I'll just stick with Steam, Amazon or even Best Buy.
Their management is running that company into the ground, the sooner the better I say. They deserve to die screaming and in flames.
Interesting question about geeks as successful adults, but the whole notion is so subjective and arbitrary it's rather hard to quantify in any logical or meaningful way really.
While I don't personally install pirated games (too concerned about what else may come with it), I could see why people would if they really wanted to play game X. For me, there are enough other games typically that I'll just pass and go buy something else. I think the overboard DRM etc stuff does nothing to stop people from hacking it eventually, and just stops consumers like me, willing to pay for it, from buying the game(s) at all. And then there's also a certain about of ill will you feel towards the companies who do it -- maybe not a tangible, but I think it impacts my thinking and spending towards those publishers.
That comment alone gives me the image of a clueless Dilbert-esque pointy-haired boss who has no business leading anything. Whoever is funding the start-up, needs to fire him and get someone else.
If he's going to make broad (and stupid) decisions based on something like this, he should at least be able to distinguish between a framework and a programming language. And even then, he's STILL an idiot...
A lot of studios are going console crazy now, even ones that traditionally were strong PC supporters like Bioware (compare Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights to the upcoming Dragon Age II).p>
As a PC gamer it's a trend I'm very bummed about... more and more games with lots of glitz and less substance.
My reply was mainly to point out that the person above who said "there's no study showing an actual link between violent behaviors and violent people" was simply wrong, there ARE studies that point to such links. You can argue about methodologies, you may disagree, etc - but for someone to say flat out there's no studies pointing to this relationship is misinformed. I think the issue is sill under debate for a reason, and I'm interested to see further studies, whatever their conclusions/results.
Actually that's incorrect, there's been several recent studies which do show some relationship. And these aren't just op-eds from right-wing bible beaters with an agenda to prove.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR2008110202392.html
http://www.scienceblogs.de/weitergen/bloody%20games%20hostile.pdf
I'm not arguing for censorship or banning games, etc, I've been a gamer for years myself, but it's not accurate to say there's no study indicating links between violence and some games.
"stupid people decided that the realism of a VIRTUAL game is somehow parallel to how "realistic" an idea is."
Read the second link and also this if you think that. This article shows VR being used to help people with PTSD, so the realism can be viewed as relevant http://www.disaboom.com/disabled-veterans-general/video-game-helps-disabled-veterans-conquer-ptsd
1) You're paid to do a job, not slack off (or jack off in this case). Do your job and quit whining about how stressful it is, blah blah blah.
2) Porn sites are notorious for spyware, viruses, bots, keyloggers. You are putting the company's network at risk, and even worse, you could be exposing company data or other confidential information -- which could cost the company millions of dollars, damage their reputation, and hurt future business. You're also using company resources (hardware, bandwidth, etc) at their expense and NOT using it for work.
3) "Hostile Work Environment" Many people may be offended by porn, especially women (given much of porn's nature), religious individuals etc. They would most certainly win any lawsuits especially if the company was complicit or outright condoned the behavior.
Want to watch porn, fine... but do it at home, on your own time, with your own PC, and using your own resources.
"The police overstepped and violated her civil and constitutional rights" Lol, wtf? Clearly you didn't bother to read the article, or the attached police report, or the US Constitution for that matter. You just read the headline and stopped there to begin your rant.
She wouldn't obey the teacher, has a history or run ins with the cops, lied to the teacher, then to the cops (like a dozen times easy from the looks of it), then hid the phone -- in the crack of her ass no less. You know damn well if a teacher even touched her anywhere near there to take the phone away, it would be lawsuit city. The girl left the teacher/school no choice, she got what she deserved, and I hope the judge gives her a swift kick in the ass too.
And luckily for us, the mother isn't sue happy like you, and actually took responsibility -- instead of blaming everyone else as you seem to. She actually told them to keep the phone and she was clearly embarrassed by her daughter's behavior... as she should have been. So she won't be suing (not counter suing by the way, the school isn't suing the student or parent(s) for anything)
I'm baffled at the kind of things people will post about themselves, either in text, or worse, in forms of images -- to the public at large, and then freak when it's used in a way they weren't anticipating.
We have developed a kind of confessional, exhibitionist culture obsessed with 'sharing'. Fine, share all you want, but stop whining when the information isn't used just to boost your self-inflated ego and to have people tell you how cool you are. If you don't want everyone to know something about you, then don't freakin' post it where everyone can read it, hullo?
Say what you want about TOS's etc, but you're unbelievably naive if you think those won't change, sites won't be hacked, etc. The slashdot community should know this better than anyone. And Social networking sites (or blog hosts, etc) don't give a rat's ass about you, they are there to generate revenue via ads or other means -- not to serve humanity.
There's a lot of branches to philosophy, most are basically entire disciplines unto themselves. I think in terms of logic and ethics, yes there's some overlap -- as those are two branches in the field.
But when talking about areas like phenomenology, epistemology & cosmology I don't see any real connection, or any kind of overlap (without really forcing it). Not that it's a bad thing -- it's just an apples and oranges kind of thing.
Ethics is relevant anywhere imo, not only CS and certainly in the business world it's valuable. I would say the one place where philosophy and CS overlap the closest is in Logic, for pretty obvious reasons.
But, there's simply too many areas of study in philosophy for the disciplines to merge entirely
Apple... a slick marketing company that happens to sell overpriced computers and phones.
Personally, I laugh at all the people who think they're 'hipper' and 'fighting the man' by owning a mac. If you like your mac for its performance and functionality, great... but I have a feeling a lot of people are just victims of marketing and little else.
I always liked Carl Sagan's example of a beach. Each grain of sand is a star (with the potential of an orbiting planet able to host life). Add up all the sand of all beaches on Earth, and you might get some sense of how many stars are out there.
Now, the chance of intelligent life being within "earshot" (pardon the pun) is indeed incredibly small, that much I will give you. But I think it's sheer hubris to assume we're the only planet hosting intelligent life in the entire massive universe. It's hard to comprehend how really huge it is...
I've played WoW pretty intensely since it came out, but it's lost its luster for me. It's NOT that it's a bad game, heck it's terrific, BUT how much of the same thing can you swallow? That's true of ANY mmorpg. I've played EQI/II, Anarchy Online, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot & Guild Wars. They each had something fun and interesting to offer -- but at some point the content, quests, graphics & 'feel' of the games become too familiar imo. How many times can you visit the same zone/terrain, and kill the same monsters? Change is good.
WoW has become a game of grinding, 'dailies' (daily quests) are just repetitive and boring, essentially a way to move the carrot a bit further out while they work on the next expansion. Personally for me, the carrot's no longer appetizing.
People get so defensive about the greatness of their mmorpg of choice -- fact is, no mmorpg will reign supreme forever. New graphic engines come out, new ideas grow, etc. Personally I'm glad it's that way, I'd hate to think I'd be playing WoW 3 years from now
I keep hearing people saying this, where's the proof? People just make up stats on the fly and like to blame kids -- there's PLENTY of adult players who act like complete asshats.
Here's some actual stats --
"Also of note is the fact that the average age of the typical gamer is 33."
"...female gamers over the age of 18 make up 31 percent of all gamers, a larger percentage than that of male gamers under the age of 17 (20 percent), a group traditionally seen as the majority."
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/38-percent-of-g.html
I will say I've seen my share of immature players in WoW - BUT that doesn't mean I actually know they're age. Also, WoW is also just ONE mmorpg, albeit the largest.
I've played mmorpgs for about 9 yrs starting with EQ. Currently, I play EQII as well as WoW -- and the maturity level is vastly different there. Played AO, DAoC, CoH, GW and generally had good experiences with the player base. Anonymity is really the big issue with mmorpgs, it let's some people (mainly adults) act like idiots without any real repercussions.
Most of my WoW guild is 30 and 40-somethings. One however is a 12 year old boy, and his online behavior is often much more mature/conservative than the adults.
I must disagree. My fiancee is a physician (in the US), and she's constantly dealing with patients wanting quick fixes for everything -- usually in the form of pills. They don't want to be told, stop smoking, eat less/better, get exercise. Instead of taking on the responsibility themselves and making changes, they want magic in a bottle -- and of course, with no side effects either.
I think the good help and advice is out there, the problem is, no one wants to hear it. They don't want to told you're overweight because of your own lifestyle/eating choices and you sit around too much. Though information and knowledge has grown with time, I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that they don't know the key to weight management is exercise and reducing your caloric intake.
Well, and whoever made that horrific WC movie, I hate them too...
Which means, all the MS haters/flamers posts will get modded up as insightful or interesting (and will by in large be neither), anyone saying anything contrary will be left untouched or modded down. Nothing new or valuable will be said, all the same flames will be rehashed yet again.
And I'm sorry, love them or hate them, but to say MS is doomed and going to fold is beyond stupid, with no basis in reality. If you have any sense of the scope of their software suites and the size of their user base, no one in their right mind would say that. You might WANT it to happen, but hope and reality are not the same thing
There's been a lot of cognitive studies done on right brain / left brain in regards to creative expression. For example, left handed people, tend to use their right side of the brain (which is believed to contain most of the creative and artistic processes). But many left-handers, myself included, learned to use a mouse right handed and type with both hands. So say a left hander has gone from freehand drawing (a right brained activity) to electronic using right or both (mostly a left brained, or logical activity) -- that would be a different process.
Reason I mention this, is a larger proportion of artistic people are left-handed then in the general population; I think lefties make up about 10%, but notice how many artistic people are left-handed, a lot.
I also can say from experience, the mechanical process of typing and using a mouse is WAY differt than feeling a pencil/charcoal on textured paper, or the sensation of working with oil or acrylic paint on canvas, or better yet in true 3d in clay or stone. I started college as a studio art major, so have some experience here.
I've also seen studies that when writing a letter to say a friend, by hand, versus an email, they've found different parts of the brain are used. And also, the nature of the letter itself is different (hand written letters I believe have more 'emotional content'). Can't find the article, but I'll look for it.
Given these kinds of things; I think it's likely there is an effect of creating works of art on a PC than the 'old fashioned way'. Doesn't mean it's good or bad, but I could see it affecting how people work and create.
Lastly, I would argue that learning to draw things proportionately by hand, with proper depth and shading, is damn hard; but software can mask or add to those shortcomings since they offer so many filters and tools to do it so easily. In a sense, maybe you don't develop you artistic 'muscles' as much?
Just some thoughts...
You have it utterly and completely backwards, trademark laws are there to protect the producer/owner, and maximize their ability to capitalize on their trademark and profit from it.
IANAL, but I actually worked as a developer/researcher for a large intellectual property company, and worked closely with IP attorneys on a daily basis; so I actually do know something about this topic :)
You could probably get away with your remark IF you talking about VB 4.0 or something, some of the points could apply perhaps to VB 6.0; BUT I'm 99% certain you've never touched VB.NET, or you wouldn't say that. It hardly resembles the VB of pre-.NET days, and has all the features of any fully flushed out OO language. VB.NET used in conjunction with something like Visual Studio .NET enforces sound coding practices and the .NET framework isn't going to "allow for poorly writen applications to run anyway."
The OP was asking a legitimate question, try giving a useful answer instead of just using it to slam MS without anything to back it up.
In answer to the OP, VB.NET is fine to start learning, though compared to C# the differences aren't that huge imo, and I see more job postings seem to be looking for C# over VB.NET (FYI, I moved to C# from VB 6/.NET for that reason). So given that, I'd say C#. However, VB.NET is just fine and with .NET 2.0 MS seems to be pushing VB.NET a bit more again, so it's not that big a deal either way really.
While sometimes you are simply going to need meds, a lot of people beat the hell out of their own bodies and immune system (see above) and could help themselves a lot by living better. But that takes work...
I know people like to say docs overprescribe antibiotics, and that's probably somewhat true -- though to a much lesser extent now as medicals schools really emphasize restraint. BUT my g/f will literally get into heated debates with patients (who apparently are experts even though they didn't go through med school & residency) that demand antibiotics, needed or not. She, along with many of her fellow docs, get several formal complaints a month from patients saying they aren't being properly taken care of because they didn't get the drugs they wanted. So, to a large degree, we (patients) have done this by demanding them -- and trying to kill things with a nuke when a bullet would work fine too.