Bravo. Most people aren't willing to go through any amount of effort for something like that. Honestly, I know I'm not.
Also, total agreement on the RealNetworks thing. I'm always astounded when I find things in realaudio/video format online. Every time it happens, I think "people still use that? I thought it died 5 years ago."
umm.... okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay? So because most people are willing to accept bad quiality music, the rest of us are? I was just pointing out the fact that not everyone is content to only have mp3, as you claim.
They're about the same, so what's your point? You can use a shitty format with awesome encoders or a good format with bad encoders. They both come out the same and one has room for upward movement. Also, it's a whole lot easier just to have iTunes take my CD and rip it to mp4.
"We have compatibility with everyone's favourite digital format: mp3."
Yeah, nope. Any audiophile will tell you, mp3 sucks. mp4 (AAC, or m4a, as it's known) all the way, baby!
It's just a crapshoot with AMD mobos. As a general rule, I stick with ASUS or MSI boards, as both have treated me very well and been very stable. A friend of mine went through 4-5 different mobos in the course of 6 months. Cheap mobos aren't worth it.
On another note, I've got an old k6 350mhz that's been running perfect for over a decade now. Now I'm curious as to what mobo my uncle used when he made it.
Summary: AMD mobos are a crapshoot, but 90% of cheap ones are complete shit. Find one that works for you and stick with it. Everyone I know has a certain brand they swear by that works great for them that doesn't work for anyone else (cept ASUS, everyone likes those =P).
I think they just have their cause/effect mixed up. The IT industry is mostly white males because the highest percentage of computer geeks are white males. Go to convention or D&D games, it's pretty obvious. I'm not saying there aren't black and/or female geeks, just that they're a lower percentage. Look at statistics from colleges about CS majors. Just the way it is.
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation has given, with inflation accounted for, three times as much money to charity as Rockefeller, who gave the most to charity before Gates.
That's the Gates Foundation plan for the next few years. He also gives money through several other organizations other than his own foundation. For example, I know he has given a pretty tidy sum of money to his wife's high school (Ursuline Academy in Dallas, Tx... it's my high school's sister school).
Gates also plans to give away the majority of his money before his death. He wants his children to be cared for, but doesn't want them to be stupendously rich. He wants them to have to work for a living.
Oh, and your math was wrong, Carnegie's donations would equate to ~$3 billion today, according to the Carnegie Foundation. Gates added $5 billion to the Gates Foundation's finances around the time of the lawsuit.
"Don't forget that Bill Gates has caused immense harm for the world too."
Are you kidding me? I agree that Windows isn't the best choice out there, but do you seriously think computers would have developed as far as they have if it weren't for Microsoft?
Open-source software is a relatively recent development in computing. Apple is closed-source, Unix is closed source (SCO, anyone?), Microsoft is closed source, OS/2 was closed source. It's the closed-source guys that made computing big. OSS is great now that the market has developed, but the computing industry got big because companies were willing to spend the money to make it big, so that they could make money themselves.
There are very few altruist capitalists. Just about any company that makes an awesome product does it to make money first. Everything else arises out of that.
Just so you know, Gates doesn't run the company anymore. He hasn't for a long time, in fact. He advises Ballmer, but Ballmer pretty much does his own thing.
I'm not saying that Bill Gates is a saint, I'm just saying that there's no reason to get so angry at him when you compare him to people with similar wealth.
Bill Gates has given more to charity than anyone EVER.
Other billionaires, on the other hand (Trump, for example), have given almost nothing to charity.
I think the guy deserves a little credit, regardless of why he's doing it. We can't judge his motives, since we don't know them. We can judge his actions though, and they speak pretty loudly.
The amendments concerning equal rights and suffrage have also been applied to the states. While the Bill of Rights is applied to states on an amendment-by-amendment basis, it's clearly moving toward all of them applying.
You could just put an older version of Windows on it. Windows 98 is a good and proven OS (I know people who still use it in favor of XP) that'll run on just about anything.
Nothing against Linux, it's just that some of us still prefer Windows, and Linux isn't the only operating system you can put on an old computer. I've still got an old AMD 350MHz running 98 that works great.
I'm definitely coming back. Me getting my degree has always been a certainty, but yeah, there's definitely a lack of commitment involved. Mostly, I don't know what I want to major in, and am going to spend some time trying to figure out out. But a lot of it is just the need to do something different for the first time in 14 years now. That's a long time to have been in school, and I need a break if I'm going to make it.
Glad to hear your daughter's so self-disciplined. That's a cool and rare thing. I was definitely not.
The thing is, the "minimum" approach works a lot better in programming than in other things.
For example: English. I would read the book assigned to take a month or more in a night or two. As a result, I would forget the little details that teachers like to quiz on (especially in a college prep school. Trying to remember the color of the upholstry in a stagecoach in the middle of The Great Gatsby is impossible when you finished the book two weeks ago).
Yeah, it's true that a kid could keep himself occupied doing math problems, but how many kids are actually going to do that? That's just asking too much of a kid. Call it lazy if you want, but in the end, it's human nature. Especially since I don't enjoy math anyways, I certainly wasn't going to do more voluntarily. In the end, I would just sit and think/daydream, which kept me both occupied and happy, at least until the teacher got on me about it. I'm perfectly capable of keeping myself occupied, even with nothing more than a blank wall, just not in the ways our educational system considers valid.
Re:The children will ask themselves
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
He's speaking in general, and I agree with him. My biggest problem with school is that it was all just so incredibly boring that I gave up. I tested to have an IQ of 186, but have trouble in classes because I can't bring myself to do the incredibly repetitive homework when I've learned it by watching the teacher do it once. I've found that this is generally true of people with very high IQs, though not always. When you spend 12 years doing something that is neither interesting nor challenging to you, yeah, you tend to just stop caring. In fact, that's the reason I'm taking a year off of college. I need some time to refresh and prepare myself to continue this. I go to a very good and "difficult" tech school (University of Texas at Dallas, easily the best tech school in Texas and the surrounding states), and after my second year of college, I've yet to take a class that actually challenges me, so I'm having hte same problems.
The best I ever did in school was the year my teacher just let me take the tests at the beginning of each unit and spend the rest of my time reading. I got straight As that year.
And, in case you're wondering, I never got moved ahead a grade because of my bad grades. Ironic, I think. Medication helped me to actually do my work, but it wasn't worth it to me to change my personality (which it did... drastically and definitely for the worse) for my grades.
You know something's wrong with your schooling system when it sucks the life and motivation out of the brightest kids.
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Bravo. Most people aren't willing to go through any amount of effort for something like that. Honestly, I know I'm not. Also, total agreement on the RealNetworks thing. I'm always astounded when I find things in realaudio/video format online. Every time it happens, I think "people still use that? I thought it died 5 years ago."
umm.... okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay? So because most people are willing to accept bad quiality music, the rest of us are? I was just pointing out the fact that not everyone is content to only have mp3, as you claim.
They're about the same, so what's your point? You can use a shitty format with awesome encoders or a good format with bad encoders. They both come out the same and one has room for upward movement. Also, it's a whole lot easier just to have iTunes take my CD and rip it to mp4.
"We have compatibility with everyone's favourite digital format: mp3." Yeah, nope. Any audiophile will tell you, mp3 sucks. mp4 (AAC, or m4a, as it's known) all the way, baby!
So, you don't watch DVDs?
It's just a crapshoot with AMD mobos. As a general rule, I stick with ASUS or MSI boards, as both have treated me very well and been very stable. A friend of mine went through 4-5 different mobos in the course of 6 months. Cheap mobos aren't worth it. On another note, I've got an old k6 350mhz that's been running perfect for over a decade now. Now I'm curious as to what mobo my uncle used when he made it. Summary: AMD mobos are a crapshoot, but 90% of cheap ones are complete shit. Find one that works for you and stick with it. Everyone I know has a certain brand they swear by that works great for them that doesn't work for anyone else (cept ASUS, everyone likes those =P).
"Too bad I don't have any suggestion to make the patent system better."
Damn... If you did, you could patent it.
I think they just have their cause/effect mixed up. The IT industry is mostly white males because the highest percentage of computer geeks are white males. Go to convention or D&D games, it's pretty obvious. I'm not saying there aren't black and/or female geeks, just that they're a lower percentage. Look at statistics from colleges about CS majors. Just the way it is.
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation has given, with inflation accounted for, three times as much money to charity as Rockefeller, who gave the most to charity before Gates.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/gates1.html
That's the Gates Foundation plan for the next few years. He also gives money through several other organizations other than his own foundation. For example, I know he has given a pretty tidy sum of money to his wife's high school (Ursuline Academy in Dallas, Tx... it's my high school's sister school).
Gates also plans to give away the majority of his money before his death. He wants his children to be cared for, but doesn't want them to be stupendously rich. He wants them to have to work for a living.
Oh, and your math was wrong, Carnegie's donations would equate to ~$3 billion today, according to the Carnegie Foundation. Gates added $5 billion to the Gates Foundation's finances around the time of the lawsuit.
"Don't forget that Bill Gates has caused immense harm for the world too."
Are you kidding me? I agree that Windows isn't the best choice out there, but do you seriously think computers would have developed as far as they have if it weren't for Microsoft?
Open-source software is a relatively recent development in computing. Apple is closed-source, Unix is closed source (SCO, anyone?), Microsoft is closed source, OS/2 was closed source. It's the closed-source guys that made computing big. OSS is great now that the market has developed, but the computing industry got big because companies were willing to spend the money to make it big, so that they could make money themselves.
There are very few altruist capitalists. Just about any company that makes an awesome product does it to make money first. Everything else arises out of that.
Just so you know, Gates doesn't run the company anymore. He hasn't for a long time, in fact. He advises Ballmer, but Ballmer pretty much does his own thing.
I'm not saying that Bill Gates is a saint, I'm just saying that there's no reason to get so angry at him when you compare him to people with similar wealth.
Bill Gates has given more to charity than anyone EVER. Other billionaires, on the other hand (Trump, for example), have given almost nothing to charity. I think the guy deserves a little credit, regardless of why he's doing it. We can't judge his motives, since we don't know them. We can judge his actions though, and they speak pretty loudly.
Unless you're using their definition of "literally," in which case it would mean it's kind of hot.
The amendments concerning equal rights and suffrage have also been applied to the states. While the Bill of Rights is applied to states on an amendment-by-amendment basis, it's clearly moving toward all of them applying.
Wow... You're an ass.
Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955; meanwhile, AMD points and laughs.
More at 11.
It's sold in Dallas too, at a couple of places. I think all Central Markets in Dallas sell it, as well as the occasional Tom Thumb.
You could just put an older version of Windows on it. Windows 98 is a good and proven OS (I know people who still use it in favor of XP) that'll run on just about anything. Nothing against Linux, it's just that some of us still prefer Windows, and Linux isn't the only operating system you can put on an old computer. I've still got an old AMD 350MHz running 98 that works great.
As opposed to /.'s permanent "no to Microsoft boycott?"
Um... Actually. yeah, it is. Check school rankings some time.
Hey, I'm losing my scholarship anyways. I was just as happy not having mentioned it. =P
Oh, and my computer could beat your computer's ass. hehehehe
Damn Freshmen.
I'm definitely coming back. Me getting my degree has always been a certainty, but yeah, there's definitely a lack of commitment involved. Mostly, I don't know what I want to major in, and am going to spend some time trying to figure out out. But a lot of it is just the need to do something different for the first time in 14 years now. That's a long time to have been in school, and I need a break if I'm going to make it. Glad to hear your daughter's so self-disciplined. That's a cool and rare thing. I was definitely not.
The thing is, the "minimum" approach works a lot better in programming than in other things.
For example: English. I would read the book assigned to take a month or more in a night or two. As a result, I would forget the little details that teachers like to quiz on (especially in a college prep school. Trying to remember the color of the upholstry in a stagecoach in the middle of The Great Gatsby is impossible when you finished the book two weeks ago).
Yeah, it's true that a kid could keep himself occupied doing math problems, but how many kids are actually going to do that? That's just asking too much of a kid. Call it lazy if you want, but in the end, it's human nature. Especially since I don't enjoy math anyways, I certainly wasn't going to do more voluntarily. In the end, I would just sit and think/daydream, which kept me both occupied and happy, at least until the teacher got on me about it. I'm perfectly capable of keeping myself occupied, even with nothing more than a blank wall, just not in the ways our educational system considers valid.
He's speaking in general, and I agree with him. My biggest problem with school is that it was all just so incredibly boring that I gave up. I tested to have an IQ of 186, but have trouble in classes because I can't bring myself to do the incredibly repetitive homework when I've learned it by watching the teacher do it once. I've found that this is generally true of people with very high IQs, though not always. When you spend 12 years doing something that is neither interesting nor challenging to you, yeah, you tend to just stop caring. In fact, that's the reason I'm taking a year off of college. I need some time to refresh and prepare myself to continue this. I go to a very good and "difficult" tech school (University of Texas at Dallas, easily the best tech school in Texas and the surrounding states), and after my second year of college, I've yet to take a class that actually challenges me, so I'm having hte same problems. The best I ever did in school was the year my teacher just let me take the tests at the beginning of each unit and spend the rest of my time reading. I got straight As that year. And, in case you're wondering, I never got moved ahead a grade because of my bad grades. Ironic, I think. Medication helped me to actually do my work, but it wasn't worth it to me to change my personality (which it did... drastically and definitely for the worse) for my grades. You know something's wrong with your schooling system when it sucks the life and motivation out of the brightest kids.