Most people don't care about Office or Photoshop for a home machine. Sure, they'd like both, if available, but that's not why they buy a laptop or netbook. It's to watch films and check facebook.
As it happens, there is already some Adobe software on the AppStore. iWork is "good enough" for the majority..microsoft may wise up, or not. Doesn't really matter.
So maybe not HDMI (which would be wrong in any case) or it's ilk, but a design standard designed for the brain, with a neural interface to dictate what's in focus etc. instead of the retina.
We've already gotten good enough brainwave-reading to control a mouse cursor, or select menu items (or raise the wee ball thingy on the Star Wars Force toys), so this would be the way to go.
A visual interface on the retina/optic nerve. An "out" port on your head, so you can wear a camera array (a la Geordi) so you get stereoscopic vision, maybe even with infra-red, thermographic and other options, and then you can take the visor thing off and jack straight into a terminal, controlling the focussing bit using a neural-headset.
Fantasy? For the moment. Resolution isn't anywhere near high enough for a computer display, and we've not gotten colour yet, so it's still in the realms of "helping the blind to see". But when it gets good enough, I'd sign up for it. Being able to see perfectly at night with just a tap of a button? Being able to interface on a whole new level in a computer system? Awesome.
If they could somehow develop the interfacing part in a way that allows you to retain natural vision as well (if you're not blind) this could make it's way into a great many places...
This, as my post title suggests, is not a revolution. It's an evolution of the existing tech. We've seen this before, but the achievable resolution is increasing. There's another project in Germany I read about recently where they're working on colour Don't get me wrong, this is amazing work, and another step on the road to full Geordi's VISOR-like treatment for people that have an optic nerve but non-functioning eyes, but it's not a "new" thing, merely another refinement in the process
When the resolution achieves life-like levels, and we have control of a full gamut, so technically infra-red vision (or ultraviolet etc.) can be switched on or off, put me down for one. I'm tired of glasses and deviating vision...
If you did that, you'd definitely get the armed cops out, assuming the local plod you called wasn't a nice guy (they've done away with common-sense possessors in recent years, in favour of social-studies graduates who wouldn't know what a criminal was if he was standing in front of them, picking his pocket, but can tell you the 47 different ways you can break someone's human rights by referring to them in the wrong tense in a sentence, or how to avoid offending someone by the correct use of politically correct language!) In addition, since badgers are a protected species, you'd also have the wildlife protection bunch come down to help add a dozen extra offences to the list. This, along with the armed response team, the local plod who'll attend because it's in their patch and it's more interesting than sudoku, the forensics boys, the "victim counselling" people in case anyone has been traumatised, the "community relations" team in case you're a member of an ethnic community (to try and avoid a race-riot) will mean it's now a "major incident", which gives higher-ups a chance to attend, along with their crew of media-relations folks etc. so you might get the news crew too if there's nothing else interesting occurring
Basically, it's all about job-justification. Armed-response teams aren't really in much demand. The entire UK had about 100 gun-related deaths last year, and this is mostly down to inner-city gangs. Compare with the US which has about 4 times the population but about 15,000 gun deaths. Outside of London and a few other inner-city gang-wars, there isn't much need for ARU's. But of course they have to have one since if something *does* happen, they can't borrow a team from London etc. This means they're constantly trying to justify why they have 5 team members not four etc. so if there's anything they can remotely attend, they will, and they'll escalate it to where some dumb kids playing with firecrakers (one of whom has a sun-tan) is suddenly an Al-Queada training-camp. It's a mad, mad world...
Given that shotgun licences aren't very easy to obtain, and you need to show just cause for having one (being a farmer is usually good enough), they're not as common as once was the case. Also, if you go brandishing a shotgun, the armed police will be called. In the US, "armed police" means a fat 45+ normal cop with a donut, coffee and a 92F. In the UK, the only armed police are the ones that do armed standoffs, terrorist incidents etc., somewhat like your SWAT teams, and they carry MP5's and are the serious, young, very-fit used-to-be-in-the-special-forces types, who will shoot you if you look dodgy. And get away with it in court, too.
And yes, merely walking around the church-yard with a 12-bore will get them called out. Even if the vicar knows they're there, a local old biddy can make the call and the cops will show up. In 3 or 4 off-roaders, and a helicopter.
Think I'm kidding? "Cool story, bro" time. My dumb-ass moron neighbours (i live in a shitty area) decided they were gonna go rabbit-hunting in the woods on the hill behind our 'hood. Being they a) drug-addled idiots, b) teenagers and c) completely lacking in any knowledge about firearms or the armed police, they thought it'd be fine to go waving around their air-rifles. Yep, air-rifles, not even.22's. They also had BB pistols which, to a blind, half-dead dickhead old person might look like something resembling a 9mm. So they started threatening some normal dog-walking folks with their BB's. Normal folk think "meh, moron neds with BB's, suppose I should phone the cops though, they'll only be out causing trouble later otherwise". Cops get phoned, are told someone has a handgun and was threatening people. They respond in force, helicopter, dogs teams, the works. Cops come to my neighbours flat-block where the wee shits have since ran too, having heard the chopper. We then have an armed stand-off as the wee shits are pulled out the house one by one, by the 12+ armed response guys standing out from of the building (not to mention the ones surrounding the rear etc.) with the loudspeaker etc. Neighbourhood is cordoned off, the gardens behind the buildings got the guys coming in, vaulting fences etc. moving the old grannies out sunbathing (now shitting themselves, LOL) etc.
For a BB airgun. In the woods, near a somewhat isolated housing estate.
Now imagine the response for someone discharging an actual real firearm, in the centre of a busy town. Then ask again if anyone who needs a firearm for their livelihood (as in, they'll lose their farm if they don't have one because of livestock regulations etc.) would be willing to come do the dirty deed on jeremy the badger
#98th Best Selling of the 21st Century??! I can dig the rest of what you're saying, but don't you think that only 10 years in, it's a little too early to say she's going to retain this till 2100? I think what you meant was #98th best selling of the 2000's. Or #98th Best Selling of the 21st Century so far
I'm not just snarking on you, more the shitty record companies that play that shit all the time like the "Best Selling album of the year" shit, when it's February, or the "best song ever", as voted for by a bunch of people who have a vested interest in selling the recent and marketable..hence why these best song lists rarely contain anything that's over 10 years old. Even though I'd say most late 20th century music was bland, insipid and lacking in talent (a few notable exceptions of course exist in various genres, but they try to sell records, so pop is going to feature heavily even though most of it is shit).
Hence why you rarely see Mozart, Beethoven or other classic composers on these lists. Don't perpetuate their marketing drivel is I guess what I'm trying to (badly) articulate (no coffee makes me a very dull boy!)
Actually, you'd want "does not conduct light". Something that transmits light, ie. originates it is different from something that merely acts as a conduit for already existent work
Not only that, but oft times with service contracts, a company is brought in to manage (arms-length stylee) the entire IT system in a local authority (Glasgow, as Scotlands largest, and the UK's fifth or sixth largest Council comes to mind at this point) The upshot of this is that from the enormous fees they charge, THEY have to pay licence fees for microsoft. Hardware is written off as a capital investment by the Council, but from my understanding, software isn't, it's seen as a service provided and managed by the arms length. If the arms-length jobby persuades the Council (which is usually fairly easy, given it's usually run by pals of the Councillors/Officers. Nice and corrupt, from when it was "formed" by the Council) to switch to Open-Source, they get to make a small reduction in the fee they charge, and a massive reduction in the amount they have to pay Microsoft, and then pocket the (sizeable) difference. Expect to see a lot of local authorities running this trick...
That's not doubt in the legitimacy of your elected officials. They could be complete out-and-out vermin, but if the people fairly elected them, so be it. That's the danger of democracythe people can speak, but you don't know what they're going to say.
On the other hand, a candidate might win who is everything you could want in a representative; smart, kind, engaging, dedicated, filled with a zeal to make things better etc. and yet be completely illegitimate because the voting system used was riddled with holes and got hacked by someone who didn't like the opposition. Worst of all, if the "decent guy" candidate finds that out, they'll step down. If you get some shitbag instead who finds out their election is dubious, they'll start covering that fact up, so in a dodgy system, you're more likely to get assholes than decent reps.
Party nominations etc. may mostly be in the gift of the political elite, with dodgy deals and all sorts occurring, but the actual vote in most parts of the US is fair, the people really do elect Moron 1 or Moron 2. That's nothing to do with the vote being fair. That's the fault of a third party in the US not doing enough to convince people to vote for them.
At the end of the day, the biggest problem American democracy has is the same problem we have in Scotland (where the Labour party could pin a red rosette to a dogshit and it'll be elected) or France, England, Germany etc. and that is that people are allowed to vote, and sometimes the dumb sheep-like bastards do just that.
I don't see where you show that prostitution is unhealthy. Sure, street-workers, usually heroin addicts or trafficking victims, that's obviously unhealthy. But how are the higher class escorts unhealthy? They have sex, for money. Nothing unhealthy in and of itself with that. They almost always use protection, which is a lot more than you can say for a lot of girls you can pickup in a bar for a one-night stand. Escorts are professional, tend to work with security people to ensure their safety, get medically tested from time to time and take care of themselves.
I don't know how things stand in your neck of the woods, but here in Scotland, their job isn't illegal, the police ignore them if they don't cause a mess (like brothels can become a nuisance for the community, but escorts generally don't) and they pay their taxes. They also get paid very well for something a lot of us find a pleasant activity anyway.
I don't know many escorts (and I've never had any "professional" dealings with one) but I knew a couple of girls who plied the trade for a while and they loved the job. Their only caveat was that because some people are a bit bigoted, it can make it tricky when people ask what you do for a living
Well, if you've been lucky enough for Microsoft to approach you and offer these "inducements" I've heard about, jump on with both feet. You're being paid up front to develop and support a game; you don't have to worry about sales, you get paid by M$.
On the other hand, if it's plonking down cash so you can get a hardware-device, maybe a separate dev machine, books for the coding API's etc. all on the basis that this phone *might* sell well, and that your app *might* be high enough up the store-rank for people who *might* want to buy games to see, so they then *might* buy your game That's a lot of *might*'s.
Yes, but iPhone is the big elephant in the room Microsoft are trying not to talk about. I know for fact they've been offering "inducements" to major iPhone game-devs to come and make a similar game or an outright port for WP7, and just paying them upfront.
Microsoft can do that, because they want the games and don't mind taking the financial hit. But in the long-term, it's not a good strategy. iPhone is very similar to the WP7 (naturally; MS are trying very hard to copy it after all), but in addition to an easy-to-use SDK (that costs only $99 to put actual paid-games on, free otherwise), respectable graphics (particularly on the iPhone4, that thing is amazingly powerful for a handheld device!), it also has one thing the WP7 doesn't, and if past experiences hold true probably will never have: millions of sold devices. On the other hand, there are coming close to 500,000 released apps for the iPhone, a literally staggering amount of apps. Probably more apps than exist for Windows, although that's just speculation. Now, a lot of those apps are crapware, like fart-apps and light-apps. But there are a lot of very good titles in there, so making your mark can be hard. But if you hit it big, you're in there. No such thing exists on WP7 yet since it's not even shipped. So where's the inducement to go WP7 instead of iPhone? Aside from Microsoft bribing you with a large wad of upfront?
If the idea of "phases" as you posit, is true, then in fact, you have shown biology NOT to be the 'queen' you espouse.
Whilst biology does indeed have subsets such as neurosciences, medicine, ecology etc., I''d argue they're phase-2 related, or at the very most, phase 2.5. They all pretty much concern thee physical study of life-forms. Since phase two was the growth of carbon-based systems, be it organic chem., or life itself, biochemists, biologists, doctors of medicine etc. are all studying the physical properties of phase 2, namely, life. Stage three is as you said, a purely mental thing; an abstraction to thought, not mere atoms, but a thinking process, only carried out in the highest forms of stage-2. Whilst biologists study those forms of life, they do NOT study the thinking process. Indeed, they shun away from it.
So be it computer scientists, who with their flakes of silicon and traces of gold have made a new phase (albeit not one as sophisticated an intelligence as humanity...yet), philosophers who ponder the thinking process, and the meaning of the entire universe (they are literally the "observers" you spoke of) or even the misguided religious types, also, in their own somewhat addled way, trying to define what this thought thing is, and where the universe is headed; all these folks are above the physicists, the chemists, and yes, the biologists, who whilst study previous phases of our universe, and engage in a lot of thought, are not themselves studying the third phase, thought itself.
Came back after a week and noticed this: it's even more insane here in Scotland, where you can have sex aged 16, indeed you can even marry at 16. If you wife takes a video of you doing the deed, you're both guilty of producing child pornography.
In fact, if a 17 year old girl takes a photo of her snooch and sends it to her boyfriend (also 17 for the sake of argument), she's a child-abuser, and he has child-porn.
What the Anon. who also replied to said, basically.
Photoshop, for all it has a large windows base, is used by an awful lot of mac users. Like, a large percentage of large-volume sales of CS4 were Mac. Then you have illustrator, which I personally detest/use on a daily basis. Add on InDesign and you're talking a LOT of sales here. Sure, web-devs etc. aren't usually mac users, and most flash programmers etc. are windows based. But a large percentage, if not a majority of graphics designers and photographers are Mac only. And any CEO which tells a substantial part of his company's cash-cow-customers to go fuck themselves, they don't stay CEO for very long.
Nice idea though. Probably be cheaper if we could outsource; get them to run it for us, for a small profit Obviously they'd have to be trained in Scots law. I might put that to the convener of the Justice Committee
Agreed Apple treat devs like shit, but Adobe are seriously fucking with us if you expect us to believe the switch to intel should have been a problem.
You had TEN FUCKING YEARS to switch to Cocoa. Apple said all along that cocoa was the future, then followed it up by saying there wouldn't be much future development of Carbon and that over time it would be deprecated.
So it gets deprecated and all of a sudden Adobe realise they've done sweet fuck all to change to Cocoa. The people to blame here aren't Apple. It's Adobe thinking they can release hacked-together badly-coded shit and not have it bite them in the ass. Apple are utterly shit to developers and this must change, but Adobe are a lazy company. One of the worst. And sure Photoshop et al are a huge codebase. But that doesn't mean you get a free pass on taking 10 years to switch to Cocoa.
And of the course the entire world uses the US system of justice.
Wish we did actually. Here in Scotland, any picture which depicts an act in which a child is sexually active, or is witnessing sexual acts or involved in any way, can be deemed child pornography.
Only in the UK would a stick drawing of lisa simpson watching marge fuck homer land you in jail!
Well caffeine isn't anywhere near as bad as nicotine, and that's putting aside the issue that you're not getting the nicotine in a nice way, you're getting it in a rape-your-lungs-to-death way. Speaking as a person of high-to-genius level IQ, who watched both my parents die at a young age (when I was young, that is) of obstructive pulmonary lung damage (ie. asthma & smoking fucking their lungs; yeah they were both asthmatics AND smokers!) I can tell you that smoking is not very good for your lungs. This is not the early-death you're looking for. I think the amount of people who have lost a few years due to coffee isn't gonna be very high, and the number of years not that many
Besides, don't go for coffee then, or get decaf. Try green-tea, and make it properly, according to japanese tea ceremony. That's a ritual-based affair that you'll soon take to doing like an addiction, the green-tea is good for you, and once you get proficient at it, you'll start focussing on other things as you do it, helping with the concentration thing. Indeed, many Japanese people use tea-ceremony in an almost meditative fashion
Well, the founding fathers kept slaves, and thought that was just dandy so yeah, holding the same views as 18th century folks in the 21st century does make you fucking crazy
Not in 30-40 degree heat as well. Sadly, deserts are both dusty AND hot. Worst place in the world for computers. Except maybe the arctic, since LCD's just don't work. Even there though, you can always add heat to the equation. It's a lot harder to remove heat.. I think the best suggestion so far has been the "buy a decent machine and stick it in a bar-fridge and run the cables out to cheapo monitors and keyboards".
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't matter.
Most people don't care about Office or Photoshop for a home machine. Sure, they'd like both, if available, but that's not why they buy a laptop or netbook. It's to watch films and check facebook.
As it happens, there is already some Adobe software on the AppStore. iWork is "good enough" for the majority..microsoft may wise up, or not. Doesn't really matter.
So maybe not HDMI (which would be wrong in any case) or it's ilk, but a design standard designed for the brain, with a neural interface to dictate what's in focus etc. instead of the retina.
We've already gotten good enough brainwave-reading to control a mouse cursor, or select menu items (or raise the wee ball thingy on the Star Wars Force toys), so this would be the way to go.
A visual interface on the retina/optic nerve. An "out" port on your head, so you can wear a camera array (a la Geordi) so you get stereoscopic vision, maybe even with infra-red, thermographic and other options, and then you can take the visor thing off and jack straight into a terminal, controlling the focussing bit using a neural-headset.
Fantasy? For the moment. Resolution isn't anywhere near high enough for a computer display, and we've not gotten colour yet, so it's still in the realms of "helping the blind to see". But when it gets good enough, I'd sign up for it. Being able to see perfectly at night with just a tap of a button? Being able to interface on a whole new level in a computer system? Awesome.
If they could somehow develop the interfacing part in a way that allows you to retain natural vision as well (if you're not blind) this could make it's way into a great many places...
This, as my post title suggests, is not a revolution. It's an evolution of the existing tech. We've seen this before, but the achievable resolution is increasing. There's another project in Germany I read about recently where they're working on colour
Don't get me wrong, this is amazing work, and another step on the road to full Geordi's VISOR-like treatment for people that have an optic nerve but non-functioning eyes, but it's not a "new" thing, merely another refinement in the process
When the resolution achieves life-like levels, and we have control of a full gamut, so technically infra-red vision (or ultraviolet etc.) can be switched on or off, put me down for one. I'm tired of glasses and deviating vision...
Yeahhe's "walking on sunshine", apparently...
If you did that, you'd definitely get the armed cops out, assuming the local plod you called wasn't a nice guy (they've done away with common-sense possessors in recent years, in favour of social-studies graduates who wouldn't know what a criminal was if he was standing in front of them, picking his pocket, but can tell you the 47 different ways you can break someone's human rights by referring to them in the wrong tense in a sentence, or how to avoid offending someone by the correct use of politically correct language!)
In addition, since badgers are a protected species, you'd also have the wildlife protection bunch come down to help add a dozen extra offences to the list. This, along with the armed response team, the local plod who'll attend because it's in their patch and it's more interesting than sudoku, the forensics boys, the "victim counselling" people in case anyone has been traumatised, the "community relations" team in case you're a member of an ethnic community (to try and avoid a race-riot) will mean it's now a "major incident", which gives higher-ups a chance to attend, along with their crew of media-relations folks etc. so you might get the news crew too if there's nothing else interesting occurring
Basically, it's all about job-justification. Armed-response teams aren't really in much demand. The entire UK had about 100 gun-related deaths last year, and this is mostly down to inner-city gangs. Compare with the US which has about 4 times the population but about 15,000 gun deaths.
Outside of London and a few other inner-city gang-wars, there isn't much need for ARU's. But of course they have to have one since if something *does* happen, they can't borrow a team from London etc. This means they're constantly trying to justify why they have 5 team members not four etc. so if there's anything they can remotely attend, they will, and they'll escalate it to where some dumb kids playing with firecrakers (one of whom has a sun-tan) is suddenly an Al-Queada training-camp.
It's a mad, mad world...
Given that shotgun licences aren't very easy to obtain, and you need to show just cause for having one (being a farmer is usually good enough), they're not as common as once was the case.
Also, if you go brandishing a shotgun, the armed police will be called.
In the US, "armed police" means a fat 45+ normal cop with a donut, coffee and a 92F.
In the UK, the only armed police are the ones that do armed standoffs, terrorist incidents etc., somewhat like your SWAT teams, and they carry MP5's and are the serious, young, very-fit used-to-be-in-the-special-forces types, who will shoot you if you look dodgy. And get away with it in court, too.
And yes, merely walking around the church-yard with a 12-bore will get them called out. Even if the vicar knows they're there, a local old biddy can make the call and the cops will show up. In 3 or 4 off-roaders, and a helicopter.
Think I'm kidding? "Cool story, bro" time. My dumb-ass moron neighbours (i live in a shitty area) decided they were gonna go rabbit-hunting in the woods on the hill behind our 'hood. Being they a) drug-addled idiots, b) teenagers and c) completely lacking in any knowledge about firearms or the armed police, they thought it'd be fine to go waving around their air-rifles. .22's. They also had BB pistols which, to a blind, half-dead dickhead old person might look like something resembling a 9mm. So they started threatening some normal dog-walking folks with their BB's.
Yep, air-rifles, not even
Normal folk think "meh, moron neds with BB's, suppose I should phone the cops though, they'll only be out causing trouble later otherwise". Cops get phoned, are told someone has a handgun and was threatening people. They respond in force, helicopter, dogs teams, the works. Cops come to my neighbours flat-block where the wee shits have since ran too, having heard the chopper.
We then have an armed stand-off as the wee shits are pulled out the house one by one, by the 12+ armed response guys standing out from of the building (not to mention the ones surrounding the rear etc.) with the loudspeaker etc. Neighbourhood is cordoned off, the gardens behind the buildings got the guys coming in, vaulting fences etc. moving the old grannies out sunbathing (now shitting themselves, LOL) etc.
For a BB airgun. In the woods, near a somewhat isolated housing estate.
Now imagine the response for someone discharging an actual real firearm, in the centre of a busy town.
Then ask again if anyone who needs a firearm for their livelihood (as in, they'll lose their farm if they don't have one because of livestock regulations etc.) would be willing to come do the dirty deed on jeremy the badger
#98th Best Selling of the 21st Century??!
I can dig the rest of what you're saying, but don't you think that only 10 years in, it's a little too early to say she's going to retain this till 2100?
I think what you meant was #98th best selling of the 2000's. Or #98th Best Selling of the 21st Century so far
I'm not just snarking on you, more the shitty record companies that play that shit all the time like the "Best Selling album of the year" shit, when it's February, or the "best song ever", as voted for by a bunch of people who have a vested interest in selling the recent and marketable..hence why these best song lists rarely contain anything that's over 10 years old. Even though I'd say most late 20th century music was bland, insipid and lacking in talent (a few notable exceptions of course exist in various genres, but they try to sell records, so pop is going to feature heavily even though most of it is shit).
Hence why you rarely see Mozart, Beethoven or other classic composers on these lists. Don't perpetuate their marketing drivel is I guess what I'm trying to (badly) articulate (no coffee makes me a very dull boy!)
Actually, you'd want "does not conduct light". Something that transmits light, ie. originates it is different from something that merely acts as a conduit for already existent work
Not only that, but oft times with service contracts, a company is brought in to manage (arms-length stylee) the entire IT system in a local authority (Glasgow, as Scotlands largest, and the UK's fifth or sixth largest Council comes to mind at this point)
The upshot of this is that from the enormous fees they charge, THEY have to pay licence fees for microsoft. Hardware is written off as a capital investment by the Council, but from my understanding, software isn't, it's seen as a service provided and managed by the arms length.
If the arms-length jobby persuades the Council (which is usually fairly easy, given it's usually run by pals of the Councillors/Officers. Nice and corrupt, from when it was "formed" by the Council) to switch to Open-Source, they get to make a small reduction in the fee they charge, and a massive reduction in the amount they have to pay Microsoft, and then pocket the (sizeable) difference.
Expect to see a lot of local authorities running this trick...
That's not doubt in the legitimacy of your elected officials. They could be complete out-and-out vermin, but if the people fairly elected them, so be it. That's the danger of democracythe people can speak, but you don't know what they're going to say.
On the other hand, a candidate might win who is everything you could want in a representative; smart, kind, engaging, dedicated, filled with a zeal to make things better etc. and yet be completely illegitimate because the voting system used was riddled with holes and got hacked by someone who didn't like the opposition. Worst of all, if the "decent guy" candidate finds that out, they'll step down. If you get some shitbag instead who finds out their election is dubious, they'll start covering that fact up, so in a dodgy system, you're more likely to get assholes than decent reps.
Party nominations etc. may mostly be in the gift of the political elite, with dodgy deals and all sorts occurring, but the actual vote in most parts of the US is fair, the people really do elect Moron 1 or Moron 2. That's nothing to do with the vote being fair. That's the fault of a third party in the US not doing enough to convince people to vote for them.
At the end of the day, the biggest problem American democracy has is the same problem we have in Scotland (where the Labour party could pin a red rosette to a dogshit and it'll be elected) or France, England, Germany etc. and that is that people are allowed to vote, and sometimes the dumb sheep-like bastards do just that.
I don't see where you show that prostitution is unhealthy. Sure, street-workers, usually heroin addicts or trafficking victims, that's obviously unhealthy.
But how are the higher class escorts unhealthy? They have sex, for money. Nothing unhealthy in and of itself with that. They almost always use protection, which is a lot more than you can say for a lot of girls you can pickup in a bar for a one-night stand. Escorts are professional, tend to work with security people to ensure their safety, get medically tested from time to time and take care of themselves.
I don't know how things stand in your neck of the woods, but here in Scotland, their job isn't illegal, the police ignore them if they don't cause a mess (like brothels can become a nuisance for the community, but escorts generally don't) and they pay their taxes. They also get paid very well for something a lot of us find a pleasant activity anyway.
I don't know many escorts (and I've never had any "professional" dealings with one) but I knew a couple of girls who plied the trade for a while and they loved the job. Their only caveat was that because some people are a bit bigoted, it can make it tricky when people ask what you do for a living
You'd risk precision-engineered engine parts by putting them in Bushmills?
Well, if you've been lucky enough for Microsoft to approach you and offer these "inducements" I've heard about, jump on with both feet. You're being paid up front to develop and support a game; you don't have to worry about sales, you get paid by M$.
On the other hand, if it's plonking down cash so you can get a hardware-device, maybe a separate dev machine, books for the coding API's etc. all on the basis that this phone *might* sell well, and that your app *might* be high enough up the store-rank for people who *might* want to buy games to see, so they then *might* buy your game
That's a lot of *might*'s.
Yes, but iPhone is the big elephant in the room Microsoft are trying not to talk about.
I know for fact they've been offering "inducements" to major iPhone game-devs to come and make a similar game or an outright port for WP7, and just paying them upfront.
Microsoft can do that, because they want the games and don't mind taking the financial hit. But in the long-term, it's not a good strategy.
iPhone is very similar to the WP7 (naturally; MS are trying very hard to copy it after all), but in addition to an easy-to-use SDK (that costs only $99 to put actual paid-games on, free otherwise), respectable graphics (particularly on the iPhone4, that thing is amazingly powerful for a handheld device!), it also has one thing the WP7 doesn't, and if past experiences hold true probably will never have: millions of sold devices.
On the other hand, there are coming close to 500,000 released apps for the iPhone, a literally staggering amount of apps. Probably more apps than exist for Windows, although that's just speculation. Now, a lot of those apps are crapware, like fart-apps and light-apps. But there are a lot of very good titles in there, so making your mark can be hard.
But if you hit it big, you're in there. No such thing exists on WP7 yet since it's not even shipped. So where's the inducement to go WP7 instead of iPhone? Aside from Microsoft bribing you with a large wad of upfront?
If the idea of "phases" as you posit, is true, then in fact, you have shown biology NOT to be the 'queen' you espouse.
Whilst biology does indeed have subsets such as neurosciences, medicine, ecology etc., I''d argue they're phase-2 related, or at the very most, phase 2.5.
They all pretty much concern thee physical study of life-forms. Since phase two was the growth of carbon-based systems, be it organic chem., or life itself, biochemists, biologists, doctors of medicine etc. are all studying the physical properties of phase 2, namely, life.
Stage three is as you said, a purely mental thing; an abstraction to thought, not mere atoms, but a thinking process, only carried out in the highest forms of stage-2. Whilst biologists study those forms of life, they do NOT study the thinking process. Indeed, they shun away from it.
So be it computer scientists, who with their flakes of silicon and traces of gold have made a new phase (albeit not one as sophisticated an intelligence as humanity...yet), philosophers who ponder the thinking process, and the meaning of the entire universe (they are literally the "observers" you spoke of) or even the misguided religious types, also, in their own somewhat addled way, trying to define what this thought thing is, and where the universe is headed; all these folks are above the physicists, the chemists, and yes, the biologists, who whilst study previous phases of our universe, and engage in a lot of thought, are not themselves studying the third phase, thought itself.
Extra irony factor - captcha: "tribal"
Came back after a week and noticed this:
it's even more insane here in Scotland, where you can have sex aged 16, indeed you can even marry at 16.
If you wife takes a video of you doing the deed, you're both guilty of producing child pornography.
In fact, if a 17 year old girl takes a photo of her snooch and sends it to her boyfriend (also 17 for the sake of argument), she's a child-abuser, and he has child-porn.
Madness.
What the Anon. who also replied to said, basically.
Photoshop, for all it has a large windows base, is used by an awful lot of mac users. Like, a large percentage of large-volume sales of CS4 were Mac.
Then you have illustrator, which I personally detest/use on a daily basis. Add on InDesign and you're talking a LOT of sales here. Sure, web-devs etc. aren't usually mac users, and most flash programmers etc. are windows based.
But a large percentage, if not a majority of graphics designers and photographers are Mac only. And any CEO which tells a substantial part of his company's cash-cow-customers to go fuck themselves, they don't stay CEO for very long.
US law applies to them, but English and Scots law also applies if they knowingly distribute to persons in Scotland or England&Wales
Stupid, I know. And actually, merely representing a child in the same drawing as a sexual activity is enough to get you collared now.
Awesome. I am *so* stealing that!
touché..
Nice idea though. Probably be cheaper if we could outsource; get them to run it for us, for a small profit
Obviously they'd have to be trained in Scots law. I might put that to the convener of the Justice Committee
Stolen!
Agreed Apple treat devs like shit, but Adobe are seriously fucking with us if you expect us to believe the switch to intel should have been a problem.
You had TEN FUCKING YEARS to switch to Cocoa. Apple said all along that cocoa was the future, then followed it up by saying there wouldn't be much future development of Carbon and that over time it would be deprecated.
So it gets deprecated and all of a sudden Adobe realise they've done sweet fuck all to change to Cocoa.
The people to blame here aren't Apple. It's Adobe thinking they can release hacked-together badly-coded shit and not have it bite them in the ass.
Apple are utterly shit to developers and this must change, but Adobe are a lazy company. One of the worst. And sure Photoshop et al are a huge codebase. But that doesn't mean you get a free pass on taking 10 years to switch to Cocoa.
And of the course the entire world uses the US system of justice.
Wish we did actually. Here in Scotland, any picture which depicts an act in which a child is sexually active, or is witnessing sexual acts or involved in any way, can be deemed child pornography.
Only in the UK would a stick drawing of lisa simpson watching marge fuck homer land you in jail!
Well caffeine isn't anywhere near as bad as nicotine, and that's putting aside the issue that you're not getting the nicotine in a nice way, you're getting it in a rape-your-lungs-to-death way. Speaking as a person of high-to-genius level IQ, who watched both my parents die at a young age (when I was young, that is) of obstructive pulmonary lung damage (ie. asthma & smoking fucking their lungs; yeah they were both asthmatics AND smokers!) I can tell you that smoking is not very good for your lungs. This is not the early-death you're looking for.
I think the amount of people who have lost a few years due to coffee isn't gonna be very high, and the number of years not that many
Besides, don't go for coffee then, or get decaf.
Try green-tea, and make it properly, according to japanese tea ceremony. That's a ritual-based affair that you'll soon take to doing like an addiction, the green-tea is good for you, and once you get proficient at it, you'll start focussing on other things as you do it, helping with the concentration thing. Indeed, many Japanese people use tea-ceremony in an almost meditative fashion
Well, the founding fathers kept slaves, and thought that was just dandy so yeah, holding the same views as 18th century folks in the 21st century does make you fucking crazy
Not in 30-40 degree heat as well. Sadly, deserts are both dusty AND hot. Worst place in the world for computers. Except maybe the arctic, since LCD's just don't work. Even there though, you can always add heat to the equation. It's a lot harder to remove heat..
I think the best suggestion so far has been the "buy a decent machine and stick it in a bar-fridge and run the cables out to cheapo monitors and keyboards".