Given no one's modded it up and it basically makes an informational point? I get the feeling that someone tired of "In Soviet Russia..." jokes and modded me down without reading content... *shrug* Life.
Or at least in Rostov-on-Don in 1996, they had about the same system. How do I know? One of the other people on our trip cast a vote for Yeltsin when our host family took us to the polls.
I will admit that staging an exchange trip in Russia during the election season was interesting. We were told at the beginning of the trip that if Gennady Zyuganov has announced as the winner, there was a plan to quickly move our group out of the country. *wry grin* Remember, this is the Communist candidate who promised to take back Alaska if elected...
There's also the bit from Nietzsche where he basically stated that suicide is the ultimate expression of free will, basically telling God that you win because you choose not to play. *shrug* I can see a point in that. Honestly, suicide really is the most final message you can send. I think it may be more that than the lack of atonement that led to suicides not being buried in hallowed ground. (And for those who are reacting in horror, there was a different term than "suicide" for people who took their life due to mental instability. Cul-de-something or another)
Click Me. Menu. Actions. Tasks. Open Here.
Interestingly enough, that's what they wound up doing. On Windows 95, you may notice that if often came up with a little moving arrow pointing to the Start button, saying "Click here"
Anyhow, if you're interested in an actual explanation of the start button's history, there have been blog entries from Microsoft engineers explaining it. To summarize their reasoning for labelling it 'Start', "it sent our usability numbers through the roof, because all of a sudden, people knew what to click when they wanted to do something."
As with almost all people here, IANAL. Although I have played one on stage... eh, anyhow, I know that I've seen a lot of fiddly small print on photo contracts saying that they reserve the right to use the work for publicity purposes. Honestly, even if the Olan Mills (Gah... just saying the name brings back traumatic childhood memories of family photos) work fits as "work-for-hire" which I'm mildly doubtful of in this case, I would not be surprised if you sign away all rights to duplication etc. of the picture. I know that the portrait place in my hometown has pursued action against classmates who scanned in their senior pictures and placed them online... I have no idea if anything came of it other than a bunch of spooked kids removing photos from their webpages.
No cite because I don't have the book here at work, but a book I have back home on gambling (primarily pushing the fellow's point-based blackjack card counting scheme) stated that there is not actually a legal contract involved in gambling. If you accrue substantial debts with the casino, you may no longer be able to play in that town anymore, but they can't legally pursue you to pay off those gambling debts. (Of course, he added a sidenote saying that you may still find two large fellows named Guido and Nunzio waiting for you at home to "extract payment" but we're talking legal methods...) Similarly, of course, if you're making large amounts of money, the casino is not legally obligated to pay you. They likely will, of course, as anything else would be bad publicity, but technically, if they catch you counting cards or doing any of those other legal things that they still don't like, you may never see your winnings if you hadn't already cashed them in.
That said, the author could have been outdated, referring to a specific region, or simply talking out of his ass. And I've no idea how this applies to online gambling.
I received a letter recently from Adelphia stating that my cable connection had been disabled due to a letter from the distributors of Harry Potter in the US stating that I had distributed copies of their books. Small problem, the files they listed were all pieces of fanfiction, several of them obviously not by JK Rowling. While fanfiction is a grey area, they represented to Adelphia that they owned all literature listed in the letter. Adelphia cut off my connection immediately and when I contacted them, said that they could restore my connection for now since it was a first offense, but that any second notification would automatically terminate my service. When I pointed out that the people who had sent the letter did not even own the works in question, they said that it did not matter, that for liability reasons, they had to respond to all letters as being legitimate. I personally plan on trying to get the notifying authourity to send some apology note so as to clear off my record, but I'm doubtful as to whether it will be possible.
In short, be careful if you're going through an ISP, as they may terminate your connection without warning as a CYA move.
On one hand, the New Frontier books are some of the best Star Trek books I've read in a long time. On the other hand, one of the reasons they're so enjoyable is that they're essentially pulp sci-fi. We have a captain who's more charismatic than Kirk, fights better than Worf, and shows better tactical skills than Picard. We have the requisite half-Vulcan who struggles with her emotions. There's crew members with immortal relatives, crew members who are members of cosmic collectives... *shrug* It's fun reading, but isn't the main criticism leveled at current Star Trek series that they're not cerebral enough, that they're relying on cheap thrills?
That's not even considering the money they'd have to go through to get Ashley Judd back as Lieutenant Robin Lefler...
Honestly? Because whichever party gets the most vote in your state, it's their electoral college people who get to vote. (I'm still kind of hazy as to what happens if a third-party person should win in a state.) While theoretically, the electoral college could vote for whoever they want, the fact of the matter is that cases where they haven't are few and far between. (And those cases where they have, it's usually something insane (or a political statement) where someone votes for Mickey Mouse or some random third-party candidate. And really, cases where the electoral college total result and the popular vote results differ are very rare. You can find some history and neat-o facts here.
*smile* Well, not all, but I am registered as a marrow donor, so I may get a chance to dontate some of them.
To bring the topic somewhat back on topic, there is some debate as to whether celebrities or the invocation thereof are causing the bias in the media towards use of infant stem cells, implying that to oppose infant stem cell research is to oppose the curing of diseases. *shrug* Certainly, the death of Ronald Reagan spurred on a number of proposals to lift the ban on federal funds for infant stem cell research.
There was an article in Discover magazine several years back in which they covered a study where they tried two forms of treatment on people with Alzheimer's, injecting the stem cells and simply sticking empty needles in. The improvement was the same. (Wish I had a cite, but the magazine is sitting in a dusty box at home with all the other issues we've saved. And it was some years ago) *shrug* And at that, the ban is on embryonic stem cell research AFAIK. Babies aren't the only source of stem cells after all.
I have no problem with genetic research or stem cell research. I have a problem with the methods and the source of the material.
If you have to provide your own toiletries, I would stress that you should not skimp on this area. *wry grin* It may seem like a bargain to save a buck and buy the low-quality stuff, but when you find yourself using 4-5 sheets to provide enough thickness, or you drip water on the toilet paper roll and the top half of it dissolves, you'll regret the decision. Besides which, if you treat college like most, in the recovery the next morning after a bender, you'll appreciate having something that won't tear in your hand and won't dissolve on contact with the more watery results of the prior night's beer.
Another thing which I found invaluable was keeping coffee in my room. The average dorm faucet could produce water hot enugh for instant coffee and being able to drink it on the way to class without having to stop anywhere was a great boon, as I had trouble waking on time. That said, be wary of dorm water... while it passes more safety tests than your average bottle of spring water, I've seen sore throat epidemics due to differences in the amounts and types of minerals. Drinking fountains are almost always safe, but faucets may be less so.
Shower shoes or a cheap set of flip-flops are invaluable for shared showers. Also, bring a shower caddy for your soap and stuff, preferably one that runs a chance of hooking to the shower curtain bar or faucet in case your shower stall's hooks and soap dishes have been ripped off.
Lastly, as regards data transfer, invest in a decent-size USB memory stick and buy a lanyard for it. There are few things more invaluable than quick data transfer when you find out that all the printers in the lab you're in have died and you need to sneakerware your paper to the next building. And a lanyard means you'll be keeping the USB stick with you at all times, sparing you that trouble of remembering which floppy or CD you put your paper on. And backups are invaluable... if you get mail space or server space, consider keeping a copy of all of your papers and programming assignment in both of those places as well as a hardcopy version. It will save your bacon numerous times as well as make you popular to friends who take the class later. Oh, and for books, buy or borrow as many as you can from people who've already taken the class. The book store prices are ridiculous both for buying and selling, and from another person, you get a good chance of getting their notes as well. Just beware of versioning issues...
Above all, have fun! While the next 4 (or 5, or, 6, or whatever) years will determine your life, the experience of college is also highly enjoyable and is a big part of the growing experience. Join a few clubs. Go to parties. Form study groups. Enjoy yourself.
Go ahead and pay for a U-Bolt. While you're not too likely to find someone walking around with wire-cutters on campus unless you have a really expensive bike, I've watched a bike cable severed in less than a minute, more than enough time to snatch the bike while you're talking to a classmate.
That said, I'd actually reccomend against an expensive bike if you're just using it on-campus. A decent 10-speed will get you everywhere you need and can cost you less than $50 at your local Walmart, much much less if you check out yard sales. Since you're on campus, equipment breakdowns are less of an emergency and more of an inconvenience.
I was a bit perplexed when I saw you mentioning Billy Elliot getting a PG-13 rating for language, when the version I have is marked R, but it seems there was an editted version that got the PG-13 rating. I've only seen the R-rated one, and that on DVD, so I've no idea what the theater version was. IMDB does not have an "alternate versions" listing for this movie.
As for the actual topic of the conversation, I agree that the PG-13 rating isn't really worth much. Either make your movie family friendly and give it a PG rating, or require kids to bring a parent with them. Heck, they can probably explain most of it to the perplexed parent while they're at it...
Lastly, IMNSHO, the ratings don't mean too much anyhow. They're allowing more and more stuff in PG and PG-13 movies. Bah... evidence of the changing of times, I guess.
That was resurrected by petition way back in 1967.
*wry grin* And what followed was a third season of bad episodes that put the nail in the coffin. Spock's Brain, anyone? *shrug* On the other hand, from what I saw of Farscape, it was indeed ended far too early. We will see how things go.
*wry grin* Yeah, because that's been so effective with CDs and DVDs. Both of them still effectively die with a single small scratch. Somehow I'm doubting this medium will be much better. That said, I'm hoping maybe they'll figure something out. After all, with that size, they're talking about more than just losing a single movie or someone's Word document.
Another big benefit of Google's ads is that they're entirely text-based (although I think they said that was planned to change?) so they take almost no time to load. Back when I was on dial-up, a banner ad could add an easy 5 minutes to the loading of a webpage. Today's Flash ads do the same thing with broadband connections. (Although I think a lot of that is plug-in overhead. I know that it generally took that long for IE to bring up the prompt telling me Flash wanted to load itself on my computer and please hit yes.)
Me, I have no problem with inobtrusive in-game advertisements. Something like the advertising boards on sports games or billboards in an FPS are perfectly reasonable to me, as they're natural in-game. (That said, tune the ads to the game... I'd hate to be playing some shooter set in 2275 and see an ad for a 2004 Jeep Cherokee... although if they could work out some way of it being peddled as reto kitsh, I could see that.) Or heck, those little sumbliminal bits like characters getting cans that are actually labelled Coke or wearing Converse shoes. (Although please... no long close-ups with loving product descriptions like in I, Robot...) So long as the ad looks natural for the world, I have no problem with it.
Simple. It's amazingly easy to change search engines. You just type a different name into the address bar. If you feel like it, you try several different search engines in succession. There's no real commitment and no personal settings to move over. (This has changed a little in these days of search bars, but not that much, really.) In contrast, a new IM client requires downloading software, re-installing it, setting one's user preferences again, and often rebuilding one's friend list and away messages. (The rebuilding is, in my opinion, actually generally for the best to clear out the cruft accounts of people who never get online anymore, but that's another matter) Gaim does the best of the lot IMNSHO, in that it imports your contact lists and away messages and is reasonably transparent in usage, but even there, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make the switch. And at that, you lose some functionality of extra features such as video, games, and whiteboards.
I could have sworn that they stated it was just information in one of the episodes. Something along the lines of that Riker had gotten stuck in the system. They'd transmitted his info, vaporized the one at the other pad, and then couldn't retrieve him on the other side. All I really remember about the episode though was that they occasionally showed Riker's viewpoint, and there were some funky eel-like things swimming through the air. *shrug* Or it could be I'm conflating episodes.
If you think I'm kidding, then explain to me why evil people would use VOIP for criminal activity after feds advertized openly to the world that they're tapping it?
*shrug* Why does anyone use phones for criminal activity when they can be tapped? Or heck, voice transmission...
Really, what I'm wondering is why the government hasn't tapped the RIAA to start getting the IPs of the people who download illegal pornography... Honestly, there is an insecure medium that people transact crime across every day. Bleh.
^_^ I'm guessing you looked at POVray before they had the clock variable built in? That said, animation in POVray is much like anything else in POVray. You have to code it in. Which is probably less easy then the point-click-drag idea for some people.
^_^ I'll bite too. Bottled water does not go through the same kind of rigorous testing as tap water does. Now one might go on to debate whether the tests are testing for the right things (I've never had a problem with chlorination or flouridation of water, myself), but the fact of the matter is that tap water undergoes more testing for things like bacterial contamination and heavy metals.
Personally, I also prefer the taste of tap water. It has one besides the taste of plastic.
In Mexico they think a cold drink will lead to a throat infection - and so do not use ice to cool their drinks (seems a bit strange in our modern scientific age).
Huh, I got the same comment when I was up in Russia. Our host told us that we'd catch pneumonia having ice in our drinks. *shrug* Me, I tend to have my drinks warm when I can get them. More flavor in most stuff that way. *shiver* And don't even get me onto the subject of how so many US bars serve only drinks with ice in them, then crank up the AC... I know I get cold easily, but it's ridiculous when you're shivering in a bar in the middle of summer.
I will admit that the cinemas are a ripoff when it comes to the concession stand - I used to work as a manager at a movie theatre, and most of our money came not from ticket sales (it was a dollar movie - so this could be different at first run cinemas) but from the concession stand.
My impression talking to people in movie theaters is that it's the case all over. The distributors charge obscenely high prices to show the movies such that 90% of the ticket price goes to paying them. Were it not for concessions, I suspect that movie theaters would be out of business. *wry grin* Well, hopefully, first the price of licensing showing the movie would drop, but I'm doubtful.
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Given no one's modded it up and it basically makes an informational point? I get the feeling that someone tired of "In Soviet Russia..." jokes and modded me down without reading content... *shrug* Life.
I will admit that staging an exchange trip in Russia during the election season was interesting. We were told at the beginning of the trip that if Gennady Zyuganov has announced as the winner, there was a plan to quickly move our group out of the country. *wry grin* Remember, this is the Communist candidate who promised to take back Alaska if elected...
There's also the bit from Nietzsche where he basically stated that suicide is the ultimate expression of free will, basically telling God that you win because you choose not to play. *shrug* I can see a point in that. Honestly, suicide really is the most final message you can send. I think it may be more that than the lack of atonement that led to suicides not being buried in hallowed ground. (And for those who are reacting in horror, there was a different term than "suicide" for people who took their life due to mental instability. Cul-de-something or another)
Interestingly enough, that's what they wound up doing. On Windows 95, you may notice that if often came up with a little moving arrow pointing to the Start button, saying "Click here"
Anyhow, if you're interested in an actual explanation of the start button's history, there have been blog entries from Microsoft engineers explaining it. To summarize their reasoning for labelling it 'Start', "it sent our usability numbers through the roof, because all of a sudden, people knew what to click when they wanted to do something."
As with almost all people here, IANAL. Although I have played one on stage... eh, anyhow, I know that I've seen a lot of fiddly small print on photo contracts saying that they reserve the right to use the work for publicity purposes. Honestly, even if the Olan Mills (Gah... just saying the name brings back traumatic childhood memories of family photos) work fits as "work-for-hire" which I'm mildly doubtful of in this case, I would not be surprised if you sign away all rights to duplication etc. of the picture.
I know that the portrait place in my hometown has pursued action against classmates who scanned in their senior pictures and placed them online... I have no idea if anything came of it other than a bunch of spooked kids removing photos from their webpages.
That said, the author could have been outdated, referring to a specific region, or simply talking out of his ass. And I've no idea how this applies to online gambling.
In short, be careful if you're going through an ISP, as they may terminate your connection without warning as a CYA move.
On one hand, the New Frontier books are some of the best Star Trek books I've read in a long time. On the other hand, one of the reasons they're so enjoyable is that they're essentially pulp sci-fi. We have a captain who's more charismatic than Kirk, fights better than Worf, and shows better tactical skills than Picard. We have the requisite half-Vulcan who struggles with her emotions. There's crew members with immortal relatives, crew members who are members of cosmic collectives... *shrug* It's fun reading, but isn't the main criticism leveled at current Star Trek series that they're not cerebral enough, that they're relying on cheap thrills?
That's not even considering the money they'd have to go through to get Ashley Judd back as Lieutenant Robin Lefler...
Honestly? Because whichever party gets the most vote in your state, it's their electoral college people who get to vote. (I'm still kind of hazy as to what happens if a third-party person should win in a state.) While theoretically, the electoral college could vote for whoever they want, the fact of the matter is that cases where they haven't are few and far between. (And those cases where they have, it's usually something insane (or a political statement) where someone votes for Mickey Mouse or some random third-party candidate. And really, cases where the electoral college total result and the popular vote results differ are very rare. You can find some history and neat-o facts here.
To bring the topic somewhat back on topic, there is some debate as to whether celebrities or the invocation thereof are causing the bias in the media towards use of infant stem cells, implying that to oppose infant stem cell research is to oppose the curing of diseases. *shrug* Certainly, the death of Ronald Reagan spurred on a number of proposals to lift the ban on federal funds for infant stem cell research.
I have no problem with genetic research or stem cell research. I have a problem with the methods and the source of the material.
--2 Gmail invites for people that want them...
Eh, still got a GMail invite you could send to Dream at innocent dot com?
Another thing which I found invaluable was keeping coffee in my room. The average dorm faucet could produce water hot enugh for instant coffee and being able to drink it on the way to class without having to stop anywhere was a great boon, as I had trouble waking on time. That said, be wary of dorm water... while it passes more safety tests than your average bottle of spring water, I've seen sore throat epidemics due to differences in the amounts and types of minerals. Drinking fountains are almost always safe, but faucets may be less so.
Shower shoes or a cheap set of flip-flops are invaluable for shared showers. Also, bring a shower caddy for your soap and stuff, preferably one that runs a chance of hooking to the shower curtain bar or faucet in case your shower stall's hooks and soap dishes have been ripped off.
Lastly, as regards data transfer, invest in a decent-size USB memory stick and buy a lanyard for it. There are few things more invaluable than quick data transfer when you find out that all the printers in the lab you're in have died and you need to sneakerware your paper to the next building. And a lanyard means you'll be keeping the USB stick with you at all times, sparing you that trouble of remembering which floppy or CD you put your paper on. And backups are invaluable... if you get mail space or server space, consider keeping a copy of all of your papers and programming assignment in both of those places as well as a hardcopy version. It will save your bacon numerous times as well as make you popular to friends who take the class later. Oh, and for books, buy or borrow as many as you can from people who've already taken the class. The book store prices are ridiculous both for buying and selling, and from another person, you get a good chance of getting their notes as well. Just beware of versioning issues...
Above all, have fun! While the next 4 (or 5, or, 6, or whatever) years will determine your life, the experience of college is also highly enjoyable and is a big part of the growing experience. Join a few clubs. Go to parties. Form study groups. Enjoy yourself.
That said, I'd actually reccomend against an expensive bike if you're just using it on-campus. A decent 10-speed will get you everywhere you need and can cost you less than $50 at your local Walmart, much much less if you check out yard sales. Since you're on campus, equipment breakdowns are less of an emergency and more of an inconvenience.
As for the actual topic of the conversation, I agree that the PG-13 rating isn't really worth much. Either make your movie family friendly and give it a PG rating, or require kids to bring a parent with them. Heck, they can probably explain most of it to the perplexed parent while they're at it...
Lastly, IMNSHO, the ratings don't mean too much anyhow. They're allowing more and more stuff in PG and PG-13 movies. Bah... evidence of the changing of times, I guess.
That was resurrected by petition way back in 1967.
*wry grin* And what followed was a third season of bad episodes that put the nail in the coffin. Spock's Brain, anyone? *shrug* On the other hand, from what I saw of Farscape, it was indeed ended far too early. We will see how things go.
*wry grin* Yeah, because that's been so effective with CDs and DVDs. Both of them still effectively die with a single small scratch. Somehow I'm doubting this medium will be much better. That said, I'm hoping maybe they'll figure something out. After all, with that size, they're talking about more than just losing a single movie or someone's Word document.
Me, I have no problem with inobtrusive in-game advertisements. Something like the advertising boards on sports games or billboards in an FPS are perfectly reasonable to me, as they're natural in-game. (That said, tune the ads to the game... I'd hate to be playing some shooter set in 2275 and see an ad for a 2004 Jeep Cherokee... although if they could work out some way of it being peddled as reto kitsh, I could see that.) Or heck, those little sumbliminal bits like characters getting cans that are actually labelled Coke or wearing Converse shoes. (Although please... no long close-ups with loving product descriptions like in I, Robot...) So long as the ad looks natural for the world, I have no problem with it.
Simple. It's amazingly easy to change search engines. You just type a different name into the address bar. If you feel like it, you try several different search engines in succession. There's no real commitment and no personal settings to move over. (This has changed a little in these days of search bars, but not that much, really.) In contrast, a new IM client requires downloading software, re-installing it, setting one's user preferences again, and often rebuilding one's friend list and away messages. (The rebuilding is, in my opinion, actually generally for the best to clear out the cruft accounts of people who never get online anymore, but that's another matter) Gaim does the best of the lot IMNSHO, in that it imports your contact lists and away messages and is reasonably transparent in usage, but even there, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make the switch. And at that, you lose some functionality of extra features such as video, games, and whiteboards.
I could have sworn that they stated it was just information in one of the episodes. Something along the lines of that Riker had gotten stuck in the system. They'd transmitted his info, vaporized the one at the other pad, and then couldn't retrieve him on the other side. All I really remember about the episode though was that they occasionally showed Riker's viewpoint, and there were some funky eel-like things swimming through the air. *shrug* Or it could be I'm conflating episodes.
*shrug* Why does anyone use phones for criminal activity when they can be tapped? Or heck, voice transmission...
Really, what I'm wondering is why the government hasn't tapped the RIAA to start getting the IPs of the people who download illegal pornography... Honestly, there is an insecure medium that people transact crime across every day. Bleh.
I'm amused by the 1st-place entry being a sphere. A nicely lit sphere, but still a sphere. Not only that, but it apparently got third place too?
^_^ I'm guessing you looked at POVray before they had the clock variable built in? That said, animation in POVray is much like anything else in POVray. You have to code it in. Which is probably less easy then the point-click-drag idea for some people.
^_^ I'll bite too.
Bottled water does not go through the same kind of rigorous testing as tap water does. Now one might go on to debate whether the tests are testing for the right things (I've never had a problem with chlorination or flouridation of water, myself), but the fact of the matter is that tap water undergoes more testing for things like bacterial contamination and heavy metals.
Personally, I also prefer the taste of tap water. It has one besides the taste of plastic.
Huh, I got the same comment when I was up in Russia. Our host told us that we'd catch pneumonia having ice in our drinks. *shrug* Me, I tend to have my drinks warm when I can get them. More flavor in most stuff that way. *shiver* And don't even get me onto the subject of how so many US bars serve only drinks with ice in them, then crank up the AC... I know I get cold easily, but it's ridiculous when you're shivering in a bar in the middle of summer.
I will admit that the cinemas are a ripoff when it comes to the concession stand - I used to work as a manager at a movie theatre, and most of our money came not from ticket sales (it was a dollar movie - so this could be different at first run cinemas) but from the concession stand.
My impression talking to people in movie theaters is that it's the case all over. The distributors charge obscenely high prices to show the movies such that 90% of the ticket price goes to paying them. Were it not for concessions, I suspect that movie theaters would be out of business. *wry grin* Well, hopefully, first the price of licensing showing the movie would drop, but I'm doubtful.