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User: Seeker310

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  1. Er... on Does Having Fun Make IT More Enjoyable? · · Score: 1

    Well I hate to be the killjoy here but you know I wouldn't be suprised if some of those things (like the pictures with captions among others) could be considered harassment of some form or another.

    What can I say, it's the world we live in I guess...but one person's jokes could definitely be another person's lawsuit.

    So Know your audience first....and remember that there -are- some things which are funny regardless of (insert sociological grouping here)'s orientation or whatever.

  2. Re:GRE (Graduate Record Exam, for those non-USians on Your Best Exam Stories? · · Score: 1

    You know non US-ians have to take GRE's too... At least if they want to go to Grad school in the US. In fact among Physics majors, its common knowledge that the foreign students -will- end up scoring higher on the Physics GRE than their American counterparts. Allegedly this is due to differing ways of teaching undergrad physics, ie teaching literally FOR the test... Well that and American universities require various and sundry other non major related courses (which I am in no way bashing, merely pointing out) But fortunately, something like 90% of American Physics students who do well enough to go to grad school (in America) get paid to go (simply due to their sheer minority).

  3. Re:Memorisation on Your Best Exam Stories? · · Score: 1

    Actually I did something similar once...

    Because my high school had an AP calc class but no AP physics classes, I ended up being much further ahead in my math education than in my physics one.

    So, when I had to take the E&M class at Penn State, I had already had ordinary and partial differential equations and calc 3 when most students were taking (as a co-requisite) calc 2.

    Basically most of the final was alot of questions about LRC circuits...and silly me I didn't memorize any of the various formulas therein...so I just derived them all from the differential equation :D

  4. Cryptonomicon on The Unspoken Taboo - The Never Expiring Password · · Score: 1

    I believe in cryptonomicon the thing to do for unbreakable "passwords" was to instead use passphrases, run them through the encryption program which would then fill out whatever "password" field you need with the now nonsense encrypted private passphrase.

    But I guess since you could always Van Ech Phreak the monitor, or use mic's to pick up the keystrokes, or....

    Yeah paranoia only gets you so far I guess.

  5. Re:A time bomb for the game industry? on Blizzard Sued for Death of Gamer · · Score: 1

    A "slightly physiologically addicting form of entertainment" could easily lead to neglecting aspects of real life. In fact one could say that all addicts end up neglecting aspects of their life. This could mean that the addict spends all his/her time/money on the addiction of the moment. It could mean they neglect the effects on their health (smokers anyone?), it could mean they end up falling of their chosen life path (or forced of as the case may be) e.g. broken marriages/relationships, getting kicked out of school, being born with a birth defect due to a parents use of in this case one of the more standard addictive behaviors... I mean its hard to say really that ANY addictive products -will- kill you. Its alot easier however to say that addictive products will negatively impact your life...and that some in fact could directly lead to death.

  6. Re:A time bomb for the game industry? on Blizzard Sued for Death of Gamer · · Score: 1

    You know the tools and skills people use to succeed in WoW are very similar to the tools and skills people use to succeed in any aspect of their lives.

    For instance managing your time, forming productive personal relationships, making/spending/saving money, developing plans so that you can reach your future goals, a willingness to research related fields of knowledge so you can be more successful, and perhaps most telling, a desire to be successful/rich/powerful etc.

    All of the above traits and infinitely useful in having a successful and rewarding life...one problem with all of this however, is that in WoW, doing all of those things is alot easier than in the real world.

    On top of that if you DO use these traits in wow...and you do desire to be successful/whatever, the way the game works is that you end up spending more and more time playing the game in order to reach your altogether understandable goals.

    Think for instance of the sheer amount of playtime someone has to have when they end up with multiple lvl 60 characters with epic level gear. 60+++++ DAYS is not uncommon.

    And this is for a game that came out literally a year ago. spending whole months (or MORE) in game is not going to further your real life of course, but its so much easier as I said...and the more you want to succeed the more you will play.

    And the more you play, the less time you are spending on other areas of your life.

    Its hard for me to condemn this lawsuit because quite frankly as has been mentioned in the parent, MMORPGS are designed to be time intensive...they are designed with the hope that alot of people will spend alot of time in game. They are designed with the hope that people will buy the game...start to play...and never ever leave. All mmorpgs attempt to approach these ideals however they can.

    My 2 cents from a former player of wow and ffxi, and former college student......

  7. Re:You couldn't make this up! on Presidential Candidates Arrested at Debates · · Score: 1

    Well in England originally fire companies came into existance as extensions of insurance companies. I.E. you have insurance with (I guess lloyds for instance) and they would put their sigil on your door. If there was a fire, all the insurance companies would send out their fire fighting branches and go to inspect the sigils on peoples door...with everyone ignoring burning houses that had insurance with a different provider (hopefully the lloyds company would get there to your house in time).

    Obviously as has been pointed out by others here...there are a number of problems with this approach. I merely intended to point out that instead of being a new idea (or concept/point/whatever) this is an old one, with all its problems and benefits (like in comparison to NO fire companies) already weighed in while fire departments became a public entity rather than a private one.

  8. Re:Of course, these antenna games are illegal ... on DefCon World Record Wi-Fi as Comic Strip · · Score: 3, Informative

    well these guys (if you read the article) were in fact hams.

  9. As a seller of Verizon and Sprint phones... on Verizon Crippled Bluetooth Features in Motorola V710 · · Score: 1

    In my experience I have not found any wireless carrier with greater coverage than Verizon. It is rated highest in the Various consumer magazines which I have checked not to mention the fact that Verizon does in fact spend more updating its network than anyone else. For people who say they are getting bad coverage with verizon (and aren't in a desert or mountain) try *228 (then send) and press option 2 to update your roaming list. Verizon builds towers quickly enough that you will notice a difference in coverage even if you do *228 as often as 3 months. As for the V710, I expect full bluetooth support to be available in the near future.

  10. Satelitte Comcast on Cable TV Versus Satellite TV? · · Score: 1

    I'll just chime in by saying that anything that would knock out your satelitte picture would knock out comcast too...since they get their good channels from a satelitte feed ;p Also unless you have more than 2 tv's going satelitte will be cheaper...

  11. The difference between induction and decuction on Universe Shaped Like A Soccer Ball? · · Score: 1

    Deductive logic takes general principles (which can be arbitrary but are usually assumed for some purpose) and from those, using the rules of deductive logic, more, subsidary principles arise; contrariwise, inductive logic lakes many observations and from those particulars, the general principle governing them is induced. This means that a deductively valid argument cannot go from true assumptions to false conclusions (which is simply not the case for an inductively valid argument). Thus if science used deductive logic, we would never need to revise our scientific theories. In other words, fundamentalism actually uses deductive research and empirical science uses inductive research, so from a purely logical point of view, a fundamentalist whose arguments were deductively valid would be better than any scientists' argument. If you don't like your own example of fundamentalism, mathematics is also a deductive field.