You've got that right. I'm 99% sure my EE advisor was the antichrist. I don't know how anyone can be that bad with people and get a job as a student advisor.
In all seriousness I'm rather dismayed that I dropped my EE major as a freshmen. I ended up switching it for a CS major, then once I found that to be about as challenging as a race with a snail I picked up a second major, mathematics. I still wish I would have stuck with an EE degree. We touch on the EE side of things on occasion in my CS program but never in any great depth and always very easy. Just a forewarning to all those who think EE is too hard and are thinking about switching to CS, you might want to think about it a bit before you switch.
Education is NOTHING. Start thinking about what you want to do and start doing it. No-one needs a degree from anywhere. Universities in US seem to be overpriced daycare centers for spoiled kids anyway.
Education is everything, it's the very fabric of our species. From living in caves to sending a probe outside of our solar system, education is what makes us who we are. I will agree that kids tend to go to university for the wrong reasons, whether it's for money, because they're expected to, or they do it to delay real life. Then again I'm a senior at university and I've come to understand what university really is. It's not a place which teaches you some skill set, it's a place which teaches you how to teach yourself. It focuses your interests and allows you to pursue them yourself. If you go to university and do the homework, finish the projects, pass classes, and that's it then you've missed the point. You'll learn a lot from your classes don't get me wrong, but you'll spend a lot of time learning on your own.
To the GP, if you're passionate about programming then you may enjoy university. I myself am a double major, math and computer science. I will admit my true passion is in math though. I tend to buy many books in mathematics to learn on my own time in much the same way that many of my computer science peers write programs for fun in their own time. You already program in your free time, so perhaps you've already got what it takes. But you don't have to go to MIT or CalTech for this, in fact I'd advise against it for an undergraduate degree. Many of your basic classes can be fulfilled by AP credit or in community college. After you're done with that go to a good state university to complete your degree. If you decide to go on for a masters or PhD then you can start looking at the schools like MIT and CalTech depending on your specific interests. I hope that helps.
Now I'm not saying it's the best game in world, but it's certainly a success.
Well that's what EA does. They're not in this industry to make great games and have a loyal fan base*, they're in it to make truck loads of cash in any way they can. This usually boils down to buying companies who have a loyal fan base and game names with good reputation, then driving them into the ground. I'm not saying EA is incapable of making good or original games, just that this is what they tend to do.
*I realize all companies are in it to make money. A lot of them consider good products and a loyal following to be a good move financially.
IANAA (I am not an astrophysicist) but from the physics and astrophysics classes I've taken I can venture a guess. Of course I may be wrong so feel free to correct me if I am.
When interstellar gas contracts to form a solar system it has a certain angular momentum. Now let's assume it has a counter-clockwise rotation about the z-axis as well as a counter-clockwise rotation about the x-axis. Then really it has a counter-clockwise rotation in a plane which intersects the origin at 45 degrees between the x-axis and z-axis. Okay I think I totally screwed that example up... It's too late at night to think in 3-dimensions I think;). Anyway, the point is you're going to get rotation in a plane. So when the solar system begins to take shape this would be the plane in which it rotates. Planets form in a similar fashion to a solar system, so the spin of the planet would be in a plane and hence the debris which is caught in the planet's gravity would similarly rotate in this plane.
Of course this is all theory on how solar systems/planets form, but to my understanding this is why. I'm sure the explanation for a galaxy would be very similar. At least this is how I understand it to be.
I agree on the build quality. The hard drive in my PowerBook G4 died back in November and I decided to upgrade to one of the new Intel Macs. Now the PowerBook was the first Mac I ever owned but I found it to be an extremely durable machine. With the amount of abuse I put it through I was thoroughly impressed that it was still working just perfectly, although it is dented in certain areas.
So when I upgraded I decided to go with a MacBook, partly because I didn't want a 15" screen (my PowerBook was 12") and partly because I didn't want to spend a ton. Well I'm typing on my PowerBook right now as I had to send in my MacBook after some things went wrong. The exhaust fan is rattling, the hard drive was having really weird problems, and the white plastic case (which must be manufactured by Mattel) was developing hairline cracking. Now I understand that sometimes people get faulty components, but the case cracking was unacceptable. Furthermore their tech support (which I never had to deal with with my PowerBook) was terrible. You can only call their customer support for 90 days after buying it, and after being thrown around for a bit I drove to an Apple Store where you apparently have to make an appointment to get your laptop fixed. I finally called them again and told them to send me a box to send it to them. Between school, work, and a dying car it was rather infuriating to say the least.
Perhaps the MacBook Pros are better, I don't know. But one thing is for sure, Apple has lost my business. I may prefer OSX for what I do but I'd rather make my own linux distro than buy another product from Apple.
I'm going to have to guess that this move is to attract a larger user base and get some more ad revenue. Having a site devoted to geeky tech articles limits your user base considerably. Internet/Tech pop-culture is an extremely easy way to widen your target audience. Sites like Digg have tapped into this audience and Slashdot apparently wants a piece of the pie.
On the plus side it's in its own section with a design so gaudy I can easily avoid it. That's the only plus though. The bad part is it will attract Digg-like users. Now as I stated in this comment I come to Slashdot to read what others have to say about an article. The article itself isn't the most important part, it just gives a topic of discussion. I've seen the quality of comments slipping for a while now. People don't so much debate things any more as they bicker over them. Comments which are flat out wrong will be modded informative/insightful implying that not only do the users have no desire to do a little research before they shoot off their two cents, but moderators aren't even willing to do a little research to make sure a comment deserves an insightful/informative modifier.
Slashdot now has an idle section for internet/tech pop-culture, it has the firehouse, and it has a new comment system even though the old one was picture perfect (I still use it). There's only so many "Web 2.0" features you can add before this becomes another Digg.
Now it's not like I'm going to e-mail CmdrTaco and complain, but I may look for an alternative to Slashdot. This is just my opinion though.
The music and movie industries could learn a thing or six from Valve.
Let me preface this by saying I've not used any other services except iTunes so this may be different elsewhere. Recently my laptop hard drive died and I lost most of my music. For the most part this was stuff I ripped from CDs however, I had bought about 4 albums off of iTunes but only had 2 of them backed up somewhere. After I reinstalled everything I was kind of pissed I would have to buy the 2 albums I lost again, instead I just pirated them. If there's one thing I like about Steam it's that if your hard drive crashes or you want to play on a different computer then that's cool, you can just redownload it. I really do wish the music and movie industry were more like this, but then again they would prefer to make more money by having you repurchase the same thing.
While I suppose you don't "own" physical copies of Steam games...
With Steam it's like they give you the right to play the game, you bought it so you get to play it until your eyes bleed, it's yours*. With the music and movie industry they sell you the right to listen to it until they want more money from you which is around the time you lose your physical copy or they want you to buy it on a new format**.
(*) I'm aware of all the things that could go wrong with Steam and its business model, but so far it's been pretty good. There are things I don't like about it but I think it'll continue to improve. (**) Higher definition video and sound is great, but with even more (potential) DRM I'm not sure it's worth the money to buy my movie collection over again.
This is why I love being Canadian. The solution to a big huge problem is usually nothing more than a smaller tiny problem.
Sorry, but solving a problem through taxation is definitely not limited to Canada. That's pretty much the solution to all problems for a government.
But who knows, maybe one day we'll have our income taxed 100% and the government will provide us with food, healthcare, entertainment, etc... That sounds familiar actually... Hmm...
In the same way that every Republican/Democrat/ is exactly the same and agree 100% on everything? Not to mention there's a difference between a libertarian and Libertarian.
This has spoilers, so don't read further if you're still playing the game. It's also opinion so feel free to disagree;).
Crysis was pretty and the physics were awesome, but I'm not sure if I'd describe it as "fun". The only thing that stopped me from quitting was the fact that I paid for it. Oddly enough everyone despises the alien plot theme, however that was the *only* saving grace for me. Running around the jungle got old. From the helicopter pulled directly from Half-Life that could find you if you were crouched in a bush being completely still at night under a heavy canopy of trees to the human enemies taking *clips* of ammo into them without dying. And when you first explore the alien base in 0G it's one of the most aggravating levels I have ever played in my life and I was constantly confused as to where I was actually supposed to go. It only got interesting after that and even then you had annoying shit like escorting your friend to fires to warm up when sometimes the fires weren't there (nice bug) and flying your airship through a swirling vortex which killed me a number of times. Let's hope the sequel is better.
Slashdot has a much more focused story selection, the front page isn't rife with spelling errors, grammatical errors, and poor headlines, and finally the moderated comments on Slashdot are usually pretty good and I enjoy reading them. If I want to see some funny picture from 2001 complete with a terrible headline and mind numbingly stupid comments I'll go to digg. I'm not trying to bash digg too hard since I do visit it about as frequently as slashdot, but slashdot is definitely easier to read and the comments are really what makes slashdot special to me.
Part of the problem is we don't have the language, technically speaking, to describe such a phenomenon. Our species has always viewed time as a fixed quantity and our language definitely reflects this. That said I'll offer two possible ways of thinking about it. The second will probably be the more accurate...
First, imagine time can be described in term of space, that is perhaps 1 second = 1 meter. Now as you move through just the time axis you take a measurement with a piece of string, say to about 0.5m, then you keep going down the time axis for a bit and you take another measurement with another piece of string to 0.5m again. Then you compare the string lengths, the second would be shorter if this theory were correct.
Okay, that first one doesn't make a whole lot of sense so let's move on! Consider Spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold. Now consider the metric on this space, at least the time portion of it, as tending to zero as t->infinity. That is the distance between points shrinks on the t-axis*.
That may not be the best of explanations but hopefully that helps a bit. My second example is very colloquial, I'm not a physicist so this is just how I can picture it =P.
... see them make the console itself have a lifespan of a few years (as opposed to the lifetime of this current console generation). Mine bricked back in May, if it wasn't for them extending the warranty I wouldn't have got a replacement (even though the replacement was bricked out of the box). Looking back on things I think I made a mistake buying a 360. I had mine less than a year, and currently I've been without one since May (thanks to the wonderful 6+ weeks wait time).
If they want to have a PS2-like lifespan they better work on fixing the console. It's not much fun owning a video game console which is being repaired/replaced for months on end.
A car? What the hell for, I have a horse and buggy!
A color TV? Pfft, I can buy a black and white TV already.
What is this PC thing these foreigners are selling? It must not be important or have any value.
So basically if you don't know what it is you don't need it, if Sony makes it you don't need it, and if it's a competing product with new/improved features you don't need it. Basically to sum everything up you don't need anything. How in the hell did you ever buy a computer if you're so dead set against tech products? Someone hold a gun to your head?
Honestly, I don't know how you were even modded up.
Without that jury instruction, it's entirely possible she would have been found not liable, as the music company didn't even look for infringement, just for the possibility of it.
Are you sure about that? I don't think it would have made any difference judging by what that juror said.
Not quite, math is merely a language so it doesn't really describe anything. Other more practical fields can use this language, or subsets of it, to describe their observations. More accurately the math doesn't describe reality so much as it represents a simplified model of what we think reality is.
To put this in the form of a (poor) analogy, the English language doesn't describe history. However, a history book can use English to describe, more or less, past events in a simplified way, e.g. WW2 was started by Nazi Germany. The English language can also be used in a fiction book to convey fictitious events, e.g. Einstein traveled back in time to assassinate Hitler.
Alright, that really was a poor analogy... Basically I agree with you but I just wanted to add that math is a language and as such can be used in a number of ways, not all of which will agree with reality if put in a physical context.
The problem with schooling is that it's not "old-school" schooling. We just cater to the lowest common denominators who aren't interested in schooling which just makes it boring for those who are interested. I count myself lucky that my father instilled a great sense of curiosity in me at a young age. Yes I have an Xbox 360, gaming PC, iPod, cell phone, and all of that stuff, but as much as I like being entertained I also love learning. I have a deep interest in astrophysics, math, electrical engineering, computer science, and organic chemistry just to name a few.
Kids aren't interested these days because no one is showing them why they should be interested. All the kids see is their parents consuming mass amounts of entertainment, no wonder they choose their Playstation 3 over their algebra homework.
... and I'm not trying to troll or anything, but is there anything humans do that isn't considered some form of pollution? It seems that all of our advancements have come at the price of some form of pollution. With the number of people on Earth is it even possible for us not to pollute or pollute very little to the point where it has no significant impact on the environment?
Now I'm fairly ignorant on the subject I'll admit and please, please feel free to correct me, but if everything we do somehow injures the environment then wouldn't that insinuate that we're some form of blight on this planet? It just seems sort of unfair that no matter what we do we'll always be the "bad neighbor" in the ecosystem. I suppose it all comes down to how much of the environment we're willing to sacrifice to advance our species technologically.
I'd appreciate opinions on the matter or any corrections to my statements you may have.
When all the average Joe had to do was insert a dollar to get back $10 or $20, as in *no* game play at all, that's not "luck", that's "a stupid idiot who thinks he can rip off a casino".
Right, because casinos in no way rip people off. Look, the casino put a bugged machine on the floor and despite all the surveillance and personnel there they didn't catch it until they lost half a million dollars. They took a gamble by not testing the machine and they lost.
Now I'm sure you're thinking I'm completely anti-gambling now when in fact I'm not. I visit Las Vegas quite frequently. The difference is I know the probabilities of winning and - providing I don't cheat or count-cards - I know I will lose in the long run. Despite this most people think they have a chance at striking it rich in Las Vegas and of course the casinos want you to think this.
So is it wrong for people to get lots of money from this machine? No more so than the casino offering games that are all in their favor - usually heavily. So if you're going to call this theft then I'm going to say what the casinos are doing is theft.
A product that was given the kiss of death by the ESRB. Remember, the console market won't sell an AO game and you can't by AO games in stores. So that leaves self-distribution (or online-distribution like Steam) for the PC... But wait, they weren't developing Manhunt 2 for the PC. I'd be kinda miffed if this happened to me.
So yeah, this kind of is news. I'd like to play it, but who the hell knows when I will be able to or how toned down it will be. I'm actually curious if it's even that bad, if anyone has some movies or screenshots of this please show me. I have a feeling that they're getting the AO rating because of the hot coffee bullshit (yes, it was bullshit and it didn't deserve an AO for that).
I don't like that Nintendo and Sony won't allow production of AO games, but at the very least they have the right to do so. Their consoles, their rules.
Last time I check it was *my* console. I didn't pay a huge chunk of change for them to tell me what I can and cannot play.
Slashdot Mirror
...the dearth of quality counseling ...
You've got that right. I'm 99% sure my EE advisor was the antichrist. I don't know how anyone can be that bad with people and get a job as a student advisor.
In all seriousness I'm rather dismayed that I dropped my EE major as a freshmen. I ended up switching it for a CS major, then once I found that to be about as challenging as a race with a snail I picked up a second major, mathematics. I still wish I would have stuck with an EE degree. We touch on the EE side of things on occasion in my CS program but never in any great depth and always very easy. Just a forewarning to all those who think EE is too hard and are thinking about switching to CS, you might want to think about it a bit before you switch.
Education is NOTHING. Start thinking about what you want to do and start doing it. No-one needs a degree from anywhere. Universities in US seem to be overpriced daycare centers for spoiled kids anyway.
Education is everything, it's the very fabric of our species. From living in caves to sending a probe outside of our solar system, education is what makes us who we are. I will agree that kids tend to go to university for the wrong reasons, whether it's for money, because they're expected to, or they do it to delay real life. Then again I'm a senior at university and I've come to understand what university really is. It's not a place which teaches you some skill set, it's a place which teaches you how to teach yourself. It focuses your interests and allows you to pursue them yourself. If you go to university and do the homework, finish the projects, pass classes, and that's it then you've missed the point. You'll learn a lot from your classes don't get me wrong, but you'll spend a lot of time learning on your own.
To the GP, if you're passionate about programming then you may enjoy university. I myself am a double major, math and computer science. I will admit my true passion is in math though. I tend to buy many books in mathematics to learn on my own time in much the same way that many of my computer science peers write programs for fun in their own time. You already program in your free time, so perhaps you've already got what it takes. But you don't have to go to MIT or CalTech for this, in fact I'd advise against it for an undergraduate degree. Many of your basic classes can be fulfilled by AP credit or in community college. After you're done with that go to a good state university to complete your degree. If you decide to go on for a masters or PhD then you can start looking at the schools like MIT and CalTech depending on your specific interests. I hope that helps.
Now I'm not saying it's the best game in world, but it's certainly a success.
Well that's what EA does. They're not in this industry to make great games and have a loyal fan base*, they're in it to make truck loads of cash in any way they can. This usually boils down to buying companies who have a loyal fan base and game names with good reputation, then driving them into the ground. I'm not saying EA is incapable of making good or original games, just that this is what they tend to do.
*I realize all companies are in it to make money. A lot of them consider good products and a loyal following to be a good move financially.
We have deleted the article about Burger King for not being noteworthy. Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
IANAA (I am not an astrophysicist) but from the physics and astrophysics classes I've taken I can venture a guess. Of course I may be wrong so feel free to correct me if I am.
;). Anyway, the point is you're going to get rotation in a plane. So when the solar system begins to take shape this would be the plane in which it rotates. Planets form in a similar fashion to a solar system, so the spin of the planet would be in a plane and hence the debris which is caught in the planet's gravity would similarly rotate in this plane.
When interstellar gas contracts to form a solar system it has a certain angular momentum. Now let's assume it has a counter-clockwise rotation about the z-axis as well as a counter-clockwise rotation about the x-axis. Then really it has a counter-clockwise rotation in a plane which intersects the origin at 45 degrees between the x-axis and z-axis. Okay I think I totally screwed that example up... It's too late at night to think in 3-dimensions I think
Of course this is all theory on how solar systems/planets form, but to my understanding this is why. I'm sure the explanation for a galaxy would be very similar. At least this is how I understand it to be.
I agree on the build quality. The hard drive in my PowerBook G4 died back in November and I decided to upgrade to one of the new Intel Macs. Now the PowerBook was the first Mac I ever owned but I found it to be an extremely durable machine. With the amount of abuse I put it through I was thoroughly impressed that it was still working just perfectly, although it is dented in certain areas.
So when I upgraded I decided to go with a MacBook, partly because I didn't want a 15" screen (my PowerBook was 12") and partly because I didn't want to spend a ton. Well I'm typing on my PowerBook right now as I had to send in my MacBook after some things went wrong. The exhaust fan is rattling, the hard drive was having really weird problems, and the white plastic case (which must be manufactured by Mattel) was developing hairline cracking. Now I understand that sometimes people get faulty components, but the case cracking was unacceptable. Furthermore their tech support (which I never had to deal with with my PowerBook) was terrible. You can only call their customer support for 90 days after buying it, and after being thrown around for a bit I drove to an Apple Store where you apparently have to make an appointment to get your laptop fixed. I finally called them again and told them to send me a box to send it to them. Between school, work, and a dying car it was rather infuriating to say the least.
Perhaps the MacBook Pros are better, I don't know. But one thing is for sure, Apple has lost my business. I may prefer OSX for what I do but I'd rather make my own linux distro than buy another product from Apple.
You know, given the choice between "accomplishments" like The Patriot Act and nothing, I'll choose nothing.
I'm going to have to guess that this move is to attract a larger user base and get some more ad revenue. Having a site devoted to geeky tech articles limits your user base considerably. Internet/Tech pop-culture is an extremely easy way to widen your target audience. Sites like Digg have tapped into this audience and Slashdot apparently wants a piece of the pie.
On the plus side it's in its own section with a design so gaudy I can easily avoid it. That's the only plus though. The bad part is it will attract Digg-like users. Now as I stated in this comment I come to Slashdot to read what others have to say about an article. The article itself isn't the most important part, it just gives a topic of discussion. I've seen the quality of comments slipping for a while now. People don't so much debate things any more as they bicker over them. Comments which are flat out wrong will be modded informative/insightful implying that not only do the users have no desire to do a little research before they shoot off their two cents, but moderators aren't even willing to do a little research to make sure a comment deserves an insightful/informative modifier.
Slashdot now has an idle section for internet/tech pop-culture, it has the firehouse, and it has a new comment system even though the old one was picture perfect (I still use it). There's only so many "Web 2.0" features you can add before this becomes another Digg.
Now it's not like I'm going to e-mail CmdrTaco and complain, but I may look for an alternative to Slashdot. This is just my opinion though.
The music and movie industries could learn a thing or six from Valve.
Let me preface this by saying I've not used any other services except iTunes so this may be different elsewhere.
Recently my laptop hard drive died and I lost most of my music. For the most part this was stuff I ripped from CDs however, I had bought about 4 albums off of iTunes but only had 2 of them backed up somewhere. After I reinstalled everything I was kind of pissed I would have to buy the 2 albums I lost again, instead I just pirated them. If there's one thing I like about Steam it's that if your hard drive crashes or you want to play on a different computer then that's cool, you can just redownload it. I really do wish the music and movie industry were more like this, but then again they would prefer to make more money by having you repurchase the same thing.
While I suppose you don't "own" physical copies of Steam games...
With Steam it's like they give you the right to play the game, you bought it so you get to play it until your eyes bleed, it's yours*. With the music and movie industry they sell you the right to listen to it until they want more money from you which is around the time you lose your physical copy or they want you to buy it on a new format**.
(*) I'm aware of all the things that could go wrong with Steam and its business model, but so far it's been pretty good. There are things I don't like about it but I think it'll continue to improve.
(**) Higher definition video and sound is great, but with even more (potential) DRM I'm not sure it's worth the money to buy my movie collection over again.
This is why I love being Canadian. The solution to a big huge problem is usually nothing more than a smaller tiny problem.
Sorry, but solving a problem through taxation is definitely not limited to Canada. That's pretty much the solution to all problems for a government.
But who knows, maybe one day we'll have our income taxed 100% and the government will provide us with food, healthcare, entertainment, etc... That sounds familiar actually... Hmm...
In the same way that every Republican/Democrat/ is exactly the same and agree 100% on everything? Not to mention there's a difference between a libertarian and Libertarian.
Mod this whole subthread as offtopic.
This has spoilers, so don't read further if you're still playing the game. It's also opinion so feel free to disagree ;).
Crysis was pretty and the physics were awesome, but I'm not sure if I'd describe it as "fun". The only thing that stopped me from quitting was the fact that I paid for it. Oddly enough everyone despises the alien plot theme, however that was the *only* saving grace for me. Running around the jungle got old. From the helicopter pulled directly from Half-Life that could find you if you were crouched in a bush being completely still at night under a heavy canopy of trees to the human enemies taking *clips* of ammo into them without dying. And when you first explore the alien base in 0G it's one of the most aggravating levels I have ever played in my life and I was constantly confused as to where I was actually supposed to go. It only got interesting after that and even then you had annoying shit like escorting your friend to fires to warm up when sometimes the fires weren't there (nice bug) and flying your airship through a swirling vortex which killed me a number of times. Let's hope the sequel is better.
Slashdot has a much more focused story selection, the front page isn't rife with spelling errors, grammatical errors, and poor headlines, and finally the moderated comments on Slashdot are usually pretty good and I enjoy reading them. If I want to see some funny picture from 2001 complete with a terrible headline and mind numbingly stupid comments I'll go to digg. I'm not trying to bash digg too hard since I do visit it about as frequently as slashdot, but slashdot is definitely easier to read and the comments are really what makes slashdot special to me.
Part of the problem is we don't have the language, technically speaking, to describe such a phenomenon. Our species has always viewed time as a fixed quantity and our language definitely reflects this. That said I'll offer two possible ways of thinking about it. The second will probably be the more accurate...
First, imagine time can be described in term of space, that is perhaps 1 second = 1 meter. Now as you move through just the time axis you take a measurement with a piece of string, say to about 0.5m, then you keep going down the time axis for a bit and you take another measurement with another piece of string to 0.5m again. Then you compare the string lengths, the second would be shorter if this theory were correct.
Okay, that first one doesn't make a whole lot of sense so let's move on! Consider Spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold. Now consider the metric on this space, at least the time portion of it, as tending to zero as t->infinity. That is the distance between points shrinks on the t-axis*.
That may not be the best of explanations but hopefully that helps a bit. My second example is very colloquial, I'm not a physicist so this is just how I can picture it =P.
*For an example of a Non-Euclidean Metric check out The Riemann Sphere.
... see them make the console itself have a lifespan of a few years (as opposed to the lifetime of this current console generation). Mine bricked back in May, if it wasn't for them extending the warranty I wouldn't have got a replacement (even though the replacement was bricked out of the box). Looking back on things I think I made a mistake buying a 360. I had mine less than a year, and currently I've been without one since May (thanks to the wonderful 6+ weeks wait time).
If they want to have a PS2-like lifespan they better work on fixing the console. It's not much fun owning a video game console which is being repaired/replaced for months on end.
So basically if you don't know what it is you don't need it, if Sony makes it you don't need it, and if it's a competing product with new/improved features you don't need it. Basically to sum everything up you don't need anything. How in the hell did you ever buy a computer if you're so dead set against tech products? Someone hold a gun to your head?
Honestly, I don't know how you were even modded up.
Without that jury instruction, it's entirely possible she would have been found not liable, as the music company didn't even look for infringement, just for the possibility of it.
Are you sure about that? I don't think it would have made any difference judging by what that juror said.
Not quite, math is merely a language so it doesn't really describe anything. Other more practical fields can use this language, or subsets of it, to describe their observations. More accurately the math doesn't describe reality so much as it represents a simplified model of what we think reality is.
To put this in the form of a (poor) analogy, the English language doesn't describe history. However, a history book can use English to describe, more or less, past events in a simplified way, e.g. WW2 was started by Nazi Germany. The English language can also be used in a fiction book to convey fictitious events, e.g. Einstein traveled back in time to assassinate Hitler.
Alright, that really was a poor analogy... Basically I agree with you but I just wanted to add that math is a language and as such can be used in a number of ways, not all of which will agree with reality if put in a physical context.
The problem with schooling is that it's not "old-school" schooling. We just cater to the lowest common denominators who aren't interested in schooling which just makes it boring for those who are interested. I count myself lucky that my father instilled a great sense of curiosity in me at a young age. Yes I have an Xbox 360, gaming PC, iPod, cell phone, and all of that stuff, but as much as I like being entertained I also love learning. I have a deep interest in astrophysics, math, electrical engineering, computer science, and organic chemistry just to name a few.
Kids aren't interested these days because no one is showing them why they should be interested. All the kids see is their parents consuming mass amounts of entertainment, no wonder they choose their Playstation 3 over their algebra homework.
... and I'm not trying to troll or anything, but is there anything humans do that isn't considered some form of pollution? It seems that all of our advancements have come at the price of some form of pollution. With the number of people on Earth is it even possible for us not to pollute or pollute very little to the point where it has no significant impact on the environment?
Now I'm fairly ignorant on the subject I'll admit and please, please feel free to correct me, but if everything we do somehow injures the environment then wouldn't that insinuate that we're some form of blight on this planet? It just seems sort of unfair that no matter what we do we'll always be the "bad neighbor" in the ecosystem. I suppose it all comes down to how much of the environment we're willing to sacrifice to advance our species technologically.
I'd appreciate opinions on the matter or any corrections to my statements you may have.
Cuba.
Granted their situation is a bit unique because of the USSR's involvement there.
When all the average Joe had to do was insert a dollar to get back $10 or $20, as in *no* game play at all, that's not "luck", that's "a stupid idiot who thinks he can rip off a casino".
Right, because casinos in no way rip people off. Look, the casino put a bugged machine on the floor and despite all the surveillance and personnel there they didn't catch it until they lost half a million dollars. They took a gamble by not testing the machine and they lost.
Now I'm sure you're thinking I'm completely anti-gambling now when in fact I'm not. I visit Las Vegas quite frequently. The difference is I know the probabilities of winning and - providing I don't cheat or count-cards - I know I will lose in the long run. Despite this most people think they have a chance at striking it rich in Las Vegas and of course the casinos want you to think this.
So is it wrong for people to get lots of money from this machine? No more so than the casino offering games that are all in their favor - usually heavily. So if you're going to call this theft then I'm going to say what the casinos are doing is theft.
A product that was given the kiss of death by the ESRB. Remember, the console market won't sell an AO game and you can't by AO games in stores. So that leaves self-distribution (or online-distribution like Steam) for the PC... But wait, they weren't developing Manhunt 2 for the PC. I'd be kinda miffed if this happened to me.
So yeah, this kind of is news. I'd like to play it, but who the hell knows when I will be able to or how toned down it will be. I'm actually curious if it's even that bad, if anyone has some movies or screenshots of this please show me. I have a feeling that they're getting the AO rating because of the hot coffee bullshit (yes, it was bullshit and it didn't deserve an AO for that).
I don't like that Nintendo and Sony won't allow production of AO games, but at the very least they have the right to do so. Their consoles, their rules.
Last time I check it was *my* console. I didn't pay a huge chunk of change for them to tell me what I can and cannot play.