i disagree, with postal spam at least if they provide a pre-paid return envelope i have the satisfaction of putting everything they sent me in that envelope, along w/ a few rusty washers (to add weight), and maybe a sunday paper glossy ad or two (more weight, and thickness) and sending it back to them on their dime.
Obligatory bash.org anecdote:
#127039 +(10530)- [X]
[wolf] 1. Save every Free Credit Card Offer you get, Put it in pile A
[wolf] 2. Save every Free Coupon You get, put that in pile B
[wolf] 3. Now open the credit card mail from pile A and find the Business Reply Mail Envelope.
[wolf] 4. Take the coupons from pile B and stuff them in the envelope you hold in your hand.
[wolf] 5. Drop the stuffed to the brim envelopes in your mail and walk away whistling.
[wolf] I have now received two phone calls from the credit card companies telling me that they received a stuffed envelope with coupons rather then my application. They informed me that it they are not pleased that they footed the bill for the crap I sent them. I reply with "It says Business Reply Mail" I'm suggesting coupons to you to ensure that your business is more successful. They promptly hang up on me.
[wolf] Now, I did this for about a month before it got boring, so I got an added idea! I added exactly 33 cents worth of pennies to the envelope so they paid EXTRA due to the weight. I got a call informing me about the money, I said it was a mistake and I demanded my change back. After yelling at the clerk and then to the supervisor they agreed to my demands and cut me a check for the money. I hold in my hand at this very moment a check from GTE Visa for exactly 33 cents.
The Gamecube did this with Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Unfortunately, the implementation was fairly asinine. You could play the game in single player mode using just a regular game cube controller, but doing multiplayer required you to use Gameboys (Advanced or SP) attached with a proprietary cable as the controllers. Essentially this meant that unless you already had a few gameboys sitting around and had money for the cables ($25 each at the time IIRC, though they've undoubtedly dropped in price since then), multiplayer was a decidedly cost prohibitive endeavor. Another problem was that character levels were not normalized. The enemies you fought came in at the same level as your highest level character, which functionally meant that you either played together as a party, or someone ended up getting left behind. Add in a small but noticeable delay in synching each gameboy with the gamecube, and the experience was more frustrating than fun.
From wikipedia:
The game was noted in IGN for its Phantasy Star Online-like multiplayer cooperative play, but the use of the Game Boy Advance, while innovative, was thought to be detrimental to the gameplay.
Moral of the story: things tend to function much better in theory than they do in practice.
Had a similar experience back in college. I was playing about 2 hours a day of UT2k4 with instagib activated and fencing (the kind with swords) for 4 hours a week. My reflexes were noticeably faster than my compatriots, and I had a much easier time picking out and recognizing small details. The place that it was most apparent was actually in my entomology class when we had to go out and collect insects. I had an easier time acquiring specimens simply because I noticed them when others didn't. The faster reflexes also helped me catch some of the more evasive ones. So yeah, if ya ever take an entomology class, the videogames do help.
I'm not a virologist either, but I have taken classes in the subject (some time ago, so don't take what I say as doctrine or anything). The idea of a competing virus does have some merit. IIRC, research was done on the topic with ex vivo models, but I don't think it ever made its way to animal subject or human trials.
For this to work, you'd ideally want a virus which used the same antigen for cellular entry (gp120, CD40 ligand); this keeps your virus to the same cells that are susceptible to HIV, limiting your spread within the organism. As for an anti-HIV payload, you'd probably want to try siRNA transcripts targeted against HIV's Reverse Transcriptase or coat proteins. It would be fairly trivial to engineer your own virus to avoid the siRNAs. Select your upstream promoters very carefully and you can control the spread of your engineered virus to some extent.
What you end up getting is a way to regulate how much HIV spreads within the organism. This *would not* prevent infection with HIV, but it theoretically *could* prevent AIDS. Making it work really depends on the specificity of the siRNAs and the choice of promoters/regulatory elements in your virus' design (antibody-activated promoters are a good idea).
But like I said, it's been a while since my virology and recombinant DNA tech classes, so I'm sure there's plenty of necessary details that I'm leaving out.
The chance of it surviving in the wild is a fairly remote possibility. All the extra genes and modified genes create an extra metabolic payload that puts this strain at a disadvantage compared to the wild strains. It is possible that the sugars liberated by these extra enzymes may be enough to overcome the difference, but it's unlikely. Additionally, (and I haven't RTFA) normally when genes are modified/added to an organism, the vector that carries them also carries the genetic switch to turn certain genes on and off. For instance, it may only produce the worrisome enzyme when in the presence of a certain antibiotic like ampicillin. In wild conditions such a trigger would be absent, and the enzymes wouldn't be produced anyway. Furthermore, most bacteria used in bioreactors only thrive within a certain temperature range. Since these ones appear to be derived from a wild strain in the Chesapeake bay, this may not be the case, but it really depends on the genetic tinkering that was done (mostly if the genes were taken and put into a new host strain or if the original host is still used).
Aside from that, it comes down to what I vaguely recall from my ecology classes; the rule of 10%. Basically (again, going from memory here, so I may be totally off), if you take a species and put it in a new environment, there's a 10% chance it will survive. Of those that survive, there's a 10% chance that a breeding population will become established. 10% of the breeding populations will become problematic. All in all, I'm not really worried.
Can the monitor you're working on right now even display a 12MP image(4000x3000)? Sure there will be higher and higher pixel counts available, but at some point they're simply superfluous outside of specialist niches.
Rather than a computer analogy, here's a car one. The speed your car travels is highly dependent on external factors. Legal issues aside, there aren't many circumstances in a typical daily commute that really warrant speeds in excess of 100mph. Road conditions and the need for safety start to impose diminishing returns on increases in speed. So why do you go after a car with an LS9 (6.2L supercharged V8) under the hood when a B16 (common 4 cylinder Honda engine) is more than sufficient for 99% of your needs?
Right now, 12MP is more than sufficient for a typical consumer - in fact, it's arguably excessive already. Their displays can't handle images at that resolution, storage media and inbox space fill up too quickly, and all that excess resolution is mostly noise anyway (joe average doesn't understand iso settings). Granted, niche areas exist where higher resolutions are necessary (in the analogy they'd be drag racers), but diminishing returns set in at some point and the typical consumer will be much better served by something simpler.
Momofuku Ando, the guy who invented ramen noodles thought something similar: "Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat."
The problem is, as you provide for peoples' needs, they start to bicker about pettier and pettier things. For instance, look at the violence that breaks out between fans of opposing sport teams.
Are photographers real artists? An artist with a brush creates real art; a photographer merely finds it lying around.
Seriously tho, The camera is a tool, just as photoshop and gimp are tools. Some artists know how to use a tool well, others don't. People who know and appreciate art are quickly able to separate the real artists from the filter-happy pretenders. Just as the real audiophiles will quickly be able to distinguish between a great musical performance and over-compressed auto-tuned garbage.
I'm not a biologist, but wouldn't this shorten your life span?
I remember reading about Telomeres and how they shorten as you age (and this is why you age).
Would this accelerated growth/generation cause these to shorten at a more rapid pace?
Short answer: probably not. Telomere shortening does occur, and it does limit the number of divisions that certain cells can undergo. However, as I understand it, it's not the primary cause of aging symptoms. In fact, the lengthening of telomeres is associated with many kinds of cancer - not eternal youth. One gene that may be at least partially responsible for aging is Klotho. Experiments have been done in mice doing both knockdown expression and upregulation of the gene. Also, this is the gene that was making Snake age prematurely in MGS4.
But you don't speak about the abyss of drug addiction, the income-sapping expense, the parents of kids that forget parenting while doing drugs, the accidents on the freeway, the madness of things like meth addiction and its incredible debilitating affects on the body.
all of which can also be said of legal drugs such as alcohol.
What we know is that Media Sentry used very shaky methods to insinuate that some people committed copyright infringement. Then they used this incredibly shaky evidence to cajole the courts into doing their work for them. This is wrong. Very wrong.
While I completely agree that their methods are abhorrent, I'm left wondering what legal means the RIAA had of pursuing their case. The fact is that wanton copyright infringement is occurring. As copyright holders, the RIAA does in fact have the right to go after the infringers. Their methods under the guise of Media Sentry are obviously less than ideal (both morally and legally), so what *should* they have done? Getting a PI license is obvious, but the evidence gained this way is still shaky. Getting warrants for each and every individual infringer? Probably, but as I understand it, the evidence necessary to justify a warrant needs to be a little more significant than just a name attached to an IP address. I suppose they could pay ISPs to monitor their traffic and get the same results they did with Media Sentry, but can ISPs legally monitor their own traffic that way (and report the results to a third party)?
I'm not trying to be an RIAA apologist. I'm just wondering if there's any course of action they could taken whereby their IP was protected and they weren't demonized by all of us.
Agreed. It irks me to no end when people do this while driving.
In fact, I deal with it daily on my commute home. There's a section of road where the two lanes merge into one, with the right lane ending. I cannot count the number of times that I've seen someone rushing along in the right lane trying to get as far ahead as they can before they're *forced* to merge (by which I mean they try and force the people in the left lane to let them in).
There are *plenty* of signs warning that the right lane ends, merge left. They're just under the delusion that somehow they don't have to merge until the very lsat possible moment; and furthermore, that it's the *responsibility* of those patient saints in the left lane to *let* them cut in.
I make a point of not letting them cut in front of me. I'm legally entitled to the area of space my vehicle ocupies (plus a buffer zone in front and behind sufficiently large to prevent fender benders no less). Yet these cheats are *demanding* (with screams and threatening gestures at times) that I *sacrifice my rights* for their momentary convenience.
Perhaps I'm over-reacting, but to Hell with them.
And yeah, I'll be leaving work in a few minutes, and I'm really not looking forward to the drive home.
Well, if his current modus operandi continues, I suspect the court's records will soon show his list of charges as being:
34 felony counts of awesomeness
11 felony counts of 1337 5ki11z.
7 felony counts of pwning n00bs.
6 felony counts of acting as an electronics deity.
4 felony counts of extreme overclocking.
3 felony counts of proving the Goldbach conjecture.
2 felony counts of saving the world from the Covenant.
1 felony count of conspiracy to pwn.
1 felony count of actually winning a fight against Chuck Norris.
I'm currently a student in a graduate-level biology program. We had a speaker from the USPTO (United States Patent and Trade Office) come and talk to us about a month ago. From what he was saying, the USPTO is dying to recruit more computational biologists. Basically, there's a lot of companies who are trying to patent biological database algorithms, and very few people at the trade office have enough know-how to properly determine if the patent should be granted or not, (or even if such algorithms are even patentable at all).
So, if you don't mind the paperwork and the lack of lab access, then there's a career that will accept you right away (according to the speaker).
When I was in school, i had to totally remove freecell from my computer. It got to the point where it was impacting my GPA. Yes. Seriously.
I'd sit down to write a paper and get in a sentence or two. Just as soon as I didn't immediately know what to type in next, I'd open freecell and start a game. 2 hours later, I might have only written a few more words. It was bad enough that starting up the program became instinctive (thank you windows "most recent programs used" list). I distinctively remember catching myself on several occasions where I didn't remember starting up the game; much less what I was supposed to be doing instead. Of course, once you had started a game, you had to finish it. Heaven forbid you quit the game half way through and damage your winning streak.
7 months without the game, and I more or less lost interest in freecell. Instead, I've ended up playing a lot of Go. (no, I'm no afiliated or pushing an agenda here; just merely admitting to my most recent game addiction.) As of yet, it's not as bad as solitaire or freecell.
Honestly tho, I think I just feel like I need to be addicted to *something*. It would probably be World of Warcraft if that one would load up a little faster.
Well, as long as we're at it, why not get some real use out of them before we 'off' them? Indentured servitude for the ones who can still work; life as lab rats for those who can't. Through their suffering and death we can enlarge our scientific understanding without having to torture those poor lab animals.
However, the real reason we don't do that is because life is more important than an insurance company's bottom line.
Personally, I don't mind a few inconspicuous ads here and there. However, I abhor ads that pop up in front of article text and begin to make noise without me asking them to.
Long story short, I didn't end up reading the article.
(5) (remember to have your name removed from the registry!) Rather, this is a boon to those already on the list. Now they can simply claim that their status as a listee was simply a vengeful prank courtesy of an unnamed drinking buddy.
From what I've seen, Warcraft merely provides context for a social scene. If leveling up your character really was all that the game had to it, most people would tire of it long before even hitting level 14.
However, it's the social aspect that makes it fun. It's the same idea as a family vacation; the importance is the shared experience. By insulating yourself from the social interactions in the game, you've essentially lost the real reason most people find the game to be fun.
In summary: the social aspect is what makes the game fun. The rest of the game is there merely to provide context for the social interactions.
Many people have asked why I have a moderately expensive sound system, and yet my TV is old enough to drink (seriously, it's a 15" 1986 panasonic with fake wood sides, pre-coax antenna connectors, and a slot underneath to store the remote). The answer I usually give is that,"I wear glasses, not hearing aids. I'm going to favor the senses that still work properly."
So yeah, there are people like me out there that would upgrade the sound card before upgrading the CPU (or video card).
Pro Corporate was one of the first widely pirated versions of XP, the.iso was available everywhere. It did require a key, but it didn't require any activation. This led to everyone using the exact same key. The big shortcoming it had was when MS started requiring a secondary activation in order to download service packs.
Anyway, my experience with this was when I built a new system, bought the XP home upgrade, and proceeded to install. I've bought enough machines over the years to have several 95/98/me licenses sitting around, so I feel buying the upgrade version rather than the full was justified. Unfortunately, the installer doesn't recognize the crapware-contaminated install media supplied by the oem. The pro corp disc however, validated just fine.
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i disagree, with postal spam at least if they provide a pre-paid return envelope i have the satisfaction of putting everything they sent me in that envelope, along w/ a few rusty washers (to add weight), and maybe a sunday paper glossy ad or two (more weight, and thickness) and sending it back to them on their dime.
Obligatory bash.org anecdote:
#127039 +(10530)- [X]
[wolf] 1. Save every Free Credit Card Offer you get, Put it in pile A
[wolf] 2. Save every Free Coupon You get, put that in pile B
[wolf] 3. Now open the credit card mail from pile A and find the Business Reply Mail Envelope.
[wolf] 4. Take the coupons from pile B and stuff them in the envelope you hold in your hand.
[wolf] 5. Drop the stuffed to the brim envelopes in your mail and walk away whistling.
[wolf] I have now received two phone calls from the credit card companies telling me that they received a stuffed envelope with coupons rather then my application. They informed me that it they are not pleased that they footed the bill for the crap I sent them. I reply with "It says Business Reply Mail" I'm suggesting coupons to you to ensure that your business is more successful. They promptly hang up on me.
[wolf] Now, I did this for about a month before it got boring, so I got an added idea! I added exactly 33 cents worth of pennies to the envelope so they paid EXTRA due to the weight. I got a call informing me about the money, I said it was a mistake and I demanded my change back. After yelling at the clerk and then to the supervisor they agreed to my demands and cut me a check for the money. I hold in my hand at this very moment a check from GTE Visa for exactly 33 cents.
From wikipedia:
The game was noted in IGN for its Phantasy Star Online-like multiplayer cooperative play, but the use of the Game Boy Advance, while innovative, was thought to be detrimental to the gameplay.
Moral of the story: things tend to function much better in theory than they do in practice.
So what about tourists taking photos on vacation? Do they have the right to take photos of interesting buildings?
Depends on the Building in question. For instance, night time photos of the Eiffel Tower are under copyright. From Wikipedia:
Images of the tower have long been in the public domain; however, in 2003 SNTE (Société nouvelle d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel) installed a new lighting display on the tower. The effect was to put any night-time image of the tower and its lighting display under copyright. As a result, it was no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in some countries.
Really? I needed a couple more points anyway.
Had a similar experience back in college. I was playing about 2 hours a day of UT2k4 with instagib activated and fencing (the kind with swords) for 4 hours a week. My reflexes were noticeably faster than my compatriots, and I had a much easier time picking out and recognizing small details. The place that it was most apparent was actually in my entomology class when we had to go out and collect insects. I had an easier time acquiring specimens simply because I noticed them when others didn't. The faster reflexes also helped me catch some of the more evasive ones. So yeah, if ya ever take an entomology class, the videogames do help.
I'm not a virologist either, but I have taken classes in the subject (some time ago, so don't take what I say as doctrine or anything). The idea of a competing virus does have some merit. IIRC, research was done on the topic with ex vivo models, but I don't think it ever made its way to animal subject or human trials.
For this to work, you'd ideally want a virus which used the same antigen for cellular entry (gp120, CD40 ligand); this keeps your virus to the same cells that are susceptible to HIV, limiting your spread within the organism. As for an anti-HIV payload, you'd probably want to try siRNA transcripts targeted against HIV's Reverse Transcriptase or coat proteins. It would be fairly trivial to engineer your own virus to avoid the siRNAs. Select your upstream promoters very carefully and you can control the spread of your engineered virus to some extent.
What you end up getting is a way to regulate how much HIV spreads within the organism. This *would not* prevent infection with HIV, but it theoretically *could* prevent AIDS. Making it work really depends on the specificity of the siRNAs and the choice of promoters/regulatory elements in your virus' design (antibody-activated promoters are a good idea).
But like I said, it's been a while since my virology and recombinant DNA tech classes, so I'm sure there's plenty of necessary details that I'm leaving out.
The chance of it surviving in the wild is a fairly remote possibility. All the extra genes and modified genes create an extra metabolic payload that puts this strain at a disadvantage compared to the wild strains. It is possible that the sugars liberated by these extra enzymes may be enough to overcome the difference, but it's unlikely. Additionally, (and I haven't RTFA) normally when genes are modified/added to an organism, the vector that carries them also carries the genetic switch to turn certain genes on and off. For instance, it may only produce the worrisome enzyme when in the presence of a certain antibiotic like ampicillin. In wild conditions such a trigger would be absent, and the enzymes wouldn't be produced anyway. Furthermore, most bacteria used in bioreactors only thrive within a certain temperature range. Since these ones appear to be derived from a wild strain in the Chesapeake bay, this may not be the case, but it really depends on the genetic tinkering that was done (mostly if the genes were taken and put into a new host strain or if the original host is still used).
Aside from that, it comes down to what I vaguely recall from my ecology classes; the rule of 10%. Basically (again, going from memory here, so I may be totally off), if you take a species and put it in a new environment, there's a 10% chance it will survive. Of those that survive, there's a 10% chance that a breeding population will become established. 10% of the breeding populations will become problematic. All in all, I'm not really worried.
Can the monitor you're working on right now even display a 12MP image(4000x3000)? Sure there will be higher and higher pixel counts available, but at some point they're simply superfluous outside of specialist niches.
Rather than a computer analogy, here's a car one. The speed your car travels is highly dependent on external factors. Legal issues aside, there aren't many circumstances in a typical daily commute that really warrant speeds in excess of 100mph. Road conditions and the need for safety start to impose diminishing returns on increases in speed. So why do you go after a car with an LS9 (6.2L supercharged V8) under the hood when a B16 (common 4 cylinder Honda engine) is more than sufficient for 99% of your needs?
Right now, 12MP is more than sufficient for a typical consumer - in fact, it's arguably excessive already. Their displays can't handle images at that resolution, storage media and inbox space fill up too quickly, and all that excess resolution is mostly noise anyway (joe average doesn't understand iso settings). Granted, niche areas exist where higher resolutions are necessary (in the analogy they'd be drag racers), but diminishing returns set in at some point and the typical consumer will be much better served by something simpler.
Momofuku Ando, the guy who invented ramen noodles thought something similar: "Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat."
The problem is, as you provide for peoples' needs, they start to bicker about pettier and pettier things. For instance, look at the violence that breaks out between fans of opposing sport teams.
Are photographers real artists? An artist with a brush creates real art; a photographer merely finds it lying around.
Seriously tho, The camera is a tool, just as photoshop and gimp are tools. Some artists know how to use a tool well, others don't. People who know and appreciate art are quickly able to separate the real artists from the filter-happy pretenders. Just as the real audiophiles will quickly be able to distinguish between a great musical performance and over-compressed auto-tuned garbage.
I'm not a biologist, but wouldn't this shorten your life span?
I remember reading about Telomeres and how they shorten as you age (and this is why you age).
Would this accelerated growth/generation cause these to shorten at a more rapid pace?
Short answer: probably not. Telomere shortening does occur, and it does limit the number of divisions that certain cells can undergo. However, as I understand it, it's not the primary cause of aging symptoms. In fact, the lengthening of telomeres is associated with many kinds of cancer - not eternal youth. One gene that may be at least partially responsible for aging is Klotho. Experiments have been done in mice doing both knockdown expression and upregulation of the gene. Also, this is the gene that was making Snake age prematurely in MGS4.
But you don't speak about the abyss of drug addiction, the income-sapping expense, the parents of kids that forget parenting while doing drugs, the accidents on the freeway, the madness of things like meth addiction and its incredible debilitating affects on the body.
all of which can also be said of legal drugs such as alcohol.
What we know is that Media Sentry used very shaky methods to insinuate that some people committed copyright infringement. Then they used this incredibly shaky evidence to cajole the courts into doing their work for them. This is wrong. Very wrong.
While I completely agree that their methods are abhorrent, I'm left wondering what legal means the RIAA had of pursuing their case. The fact is that wanton copyright infringement is occurring. As copyright holders, the RIAA does in fact have the right to go after the infringers. Their methods under the guise of Media Sentry are obviously less than ideal (both morally and legally), so what *should* they have done? Getting a PI license is obvious, but the evidence gained this way is still shaky. Getting warrants for each and every individual infringer? Probably, but as I understand it, the evidence necessary to justify a warrant needs to be a little more significant than just a name attached to an IP address. I suppose they could pay ISPs to monitor their traffic and get the same results they did with Media Sentry, but can ISPs legally monitor their own traffic that way (and report the results to a third party)?
I'm not trying to be an RIAA apologist. I'm just wondering if there's any course of action they could taken whereby their IP was protected and they weren't demonized by all of us.
Agreed. It irks me to no end when people do this while driving.
In fact, I deal with it daily on my commute home. There's a section of road where the two lanes merge into one, with the right lane ending. I cannot count the number of times that I've seen someone rushing along in the right lane trying to get as far ahead as they can before they're *forced* to merge (by which I mean they try and force the people in the left lane to let them in).
There are *plenty* of signs warning that the right lane ends, merge left. They're just under the delusion that somehow they don't have to merge until the very lsat possible moment; and furthermore, that it's the *responsibility* of those patient saints in the left lane to *let* them cut in.
I make a point of not letting them cut in front of me. I'm legally entitled to the area of space my vehicle ocupies (plus a buffer zone in front and behind sufficiently large to prevent fender benders no less). Yet these cheats are *demanding* (with screams and threatening gestures at times) that I *sacrifice my rights* for their momentary convenience.
Perhaps I'm over-reacting, but to Hell with them.
And yeah, I'll be leaving work in a few minutes, and I'm really not looking forward to the drive home.
Well, if his current modus operandi continues, I suspect the court's records will soon show his list of charges as being:
34 felony counts of awesomeness
11 felony counts of 1337 5ki11z.
7 felony counts of pwning n00bs.
6 felony counts of acting as an electronics deity.
4 felony counts of extreme overclocking.
3 felony counts of proving the Goldbach conjecture.
2 felony counts of saving the world from the Covenant.
1 felony count of conspiracy to pwn.
1 felony count of actually winning a fight against Chuck Norris.
why on earth jar-jar was allowed more than 3 seconds of screen time?
No, I still haven't gotten over the wanton abuse of my childhood memories.
I'm currently a student in a graduate-level biology program. We had a speaker from the USPTO (United States Patent and Trade Office) come and talk to us about a month ago. From what he was saying, the USPTO is dying to recruit more computational biologists. Basically, there's a lot of companies who are trying to patent biological database algorithms, and very few people at the trade office have enough know-how to properly determine if the patent should be granted or not, (or even if such algorithms are even patentable at all).
So, if you don't mind the paperwork and the lack of lab access, then there's a career that will accept you right away (according to the speaker).
When I was in school, i had to totally remove freecell from my computer. It got to the point where it was impacting my GPA. Yes. Seriously.
I'd sit down to write a paper and get in a sentence or two. Just as soon as I didn't immediately know what to type in next, I'd open freecell and start a game. 2 hours later, I might have only written a few more words. It was bad enough that starting up the program became instinctive (thank you windows "most recent programs used" list). I distinctively remember catching myself on several occasions where I didn't remember starting up the game; much less what I was supposed to be doing instead. Of course, once you had started a game, you had to finish it. Heaven forbid you quit the game half way through and damage your winning streak.
7 months without the game, and I more or less lost interest in freecell. Instead, I've ended up playing a lot of Go. (no, I'm no afiliated or pushing an agenda here; just merely admitting to my most recent game addiction.) As of yet, it's not as bad as solitaire or freecell.
Honestly tho, I think I just feel like I need to be addicted to *something*. It would probably be World of Warcraft if that one would load up a little faster.
Well, as long as we're at it, why not get some real use out of them before we 'off' them? Indentured servitude for the ones who can still work; life as lab rats for those who can't. Through their suffering and death we can enlarge our scientific understanding without having to torture those poor lab animals.
However, the real reason we don't do that is because life is more important than an insurance company's bottom line.
Personally, I don't mind a few inconspicuous ads here and there. However, I abhor ads that pop up in front of article text and begin to make noise without me asking them to.
Long story short, I didn't end up reading the article.
Rather, this is a boon to those already on the list. Now they can simply claim that their status as a listee was simply a vengeful prank courtesy of an unnamed drinking buddy.
I do hope they have validated archives somewhere.
From what I've seen, Warcraft merely provides context for a social scene. If leveling up your character really was all that the game had to it, most people would tire of it long before even hitting level 14.
However, it's the social aspect that makes it fun. It's the same idea as a family vacation; the importance is the shared experience. By insulating yourself from the social interactions in the game, you've essentially lost the real reason most people find the game to be fun.
In summary: the social aspect is what makes the game fun. The rest of the game is there merely to provide context for the social interactions.
Many people have asked why I have a moderately expensive sound system, and yet my TV is old enough to drink (seriously, it's a 15" 1986 panasonic with fake wood sides, pre-coax antenna connectors, and a slot underneath to store the remote). The answer I usually give is that ,"I wear glasses, not hearing aids. I'm going to favor the senses that still work properly."
So yeah, there are people like me out there that would upgrade the sound card before upgrading the CPU (or video card).
Pro Corporate was one of the first widely pirated versions of XP, the .iso was available everywhere. It did require a key, but it didn't require any activation. This led to everyone using the exact same key. The big shortcoming it had was when MS started requiring a secondary activation in order to download service packs.
Anyway, my experience with this was when I built a new system, bought the XP home upgrade, and proceeded to install. I've bought enough machines over the years to have several 95/98/me licenses sitting around, so I feel buying the upgrade version rather than the full was justified. Unfortunately, the installer doesn't recognize the crapware-contaminated install media supplied by the oem. The pro corp disc however, validated just fine.