In fact, in Europe only less than 0.5% of terrorist attacks are carried out by Muslims. A great majority (84.8%) in 2006-2008 were attributed do separatists, with the second largest group of perpetrators being left wing extremists. Similarly, in the US only a fraction (6%) of all attacks from 1980 to 2005 were attributable to Muslim terrorists, with attacks by Jews actually being more common (at 7% of the total). One might argue that Islamic terrorists still have a higher tendency to blow themselves up as well, but do note that 209 of all 318 terrorist attacks that happened in the US in 1980-2005 were bombings. Clearly, more often than not, a bomb attack is carried out by someone who is not a Muslim. The idea that all, or even most, terrorists are Muslims is simply false.
I hated the heroes at first too, but later, once I learned to play the game and noticed all the cool tricks you could do with them (and still it was difficult to win a game with just a hero alone, it did require more than that), I began to love it. In the end they probably kept them game interesting for me long after I would have got bored of it otherwise.
On the other hand, heroes might not fit into StarCraft's world as well as they fit into WarCraft's. We'll see.
I just finished my comprehensive school. Educational systems of different countries have always been a bit confusing for me to compare, but that's the nine years of compulsory education you've got to go through in here Finland.
Well, I was an exceptionally good student for the first few years - yeah, it was basically just learning to draw letters and numbers and stuff, but I had learned to read several years before my school started, had gathered a substantial body of random knowledge and was clearly the brightest in my class. The rating system here is on a scale of 4 to 10, my grades were mostly 9 or 10 for the whole comprehensive school. For the first six years I wasn't so bored, even though weren't really many new things. I didn't consider myself exceptional either - even though I could get full points without reading from an exam, and somebody else received half that much and hadn't seen daylight in days.
Then I went to the next level of school, the last three years of comprehensive school, and at some point it occurred to me that I had wasted seven years and learned pretty much nothing - or at least everything I had learned I could have learned in less than half the time. I had rarely answered to teacher's questions in classes before, but now stopped that altogether, and spent most of my lessons chatting with other people, though rarely so loudly that it truly distracted the class.
I completely stopped reading to the exams, but my results didn't drop a bit. Yet, since I spent most of my lessons doing something else than exercises - ours were so easy I usually finished them in minutes, but I never bothered to ask for more, since I knew they wouldn't help me a bit - some teachers decided that I had some kind of an "attitude problem" that was never really explained to me. Well, in the end it wasn't so bad for me, though. Since I still got good results from exams, no teacher could drop my grades that much, and my average grade was still more than 9, which is "excellent", and I'll have no trouble entering a gymnasium.
But it was still a terrible waste of time. There were many teachers who seriously had nothing to teach me, but interpreted from my behaviour that I was a bit of a "rebel" or a "gangster". There are obviously some in every class, in ours too, but I doubt they get as good grades though.. So they proceeded to tell me all sorts of nice things such as that I was a lazy bastard and had these attitude problems, and I wasn't that nice to them then too.
A few teachers, such as my history teacher, did have something, and, miraculously, they never accused me of bad behaviour. The one who taught me native language didn't have anything, but she also realised that, I was just bored and already knew everything, and she apologised that she couldn't help it. Received 10 from her.
Teachers like that are a drop in the sand, though. I guess most of them had to work night and day for their grades, so they can not understand - or accept - someone being smarter than them. And because of our awesome educational system, those who do are somewhat powerless - Finland's system just is designed to treat everyone far too equally, even though it's obvious that everyone isn't equal. One MP even wrote a column in which he suggested that students with ADHD and such should be kept in normal classes in the name of equality. Well, guess everyone can deduce that the guy's an asshole and his words plain bullshit. There's help for students who are left behind, but none at all for those who are ahead. There WAS a class for mathematically gifted people in my former school - but they decided to save some money, fire some teachers and whoops, no such anymore. But we got brand new computers, whoo! Everyone used them to play Quake.
They say Finland's competitiveness is mostly hurt - yeah, because money and economy is all anyone cares about - by the fact that there aren't enough super-talented persons in the country. Well, big surprise, if the potential ones are made to bore to death and never recognised.
One thing I can never understand is why exactly everything takes so damn long.
For example, here in Finland there's a plan to have all the commuter trains in the Helsinki metropolitan area replaced by no later than 2025!
Well, in a huuuuge metropolis like Helsinki there may even be as many as twenty trains (well, I don't really know, but they can't have too many), so it's a good thing the wise men have left themselves plenty of time to fulfill their promises.
Well, for me, it's nowadays just because I've always used Google. Why I did start using it, though, was, basically, the simplicity.
MSN and Yahoo and what big search engines there are out there are portals. When you go to Google.com, the search is everything. MSN, Yahoo, the search isn't the main thing, it's just located in some small corner of the site. I've never paid much attention to it, but for my subconscious mind this gave the impression that the results aren't as good. While MSN and Yahoo have searches, for them it's just one thing among others. For Google it's the one and only thing they focus on, so it's prolly better.
And now I'm so used to using Google that I'm not going to change. But I think that's why I chose Google in the first place. So it's got something to do with Google being an information company, but in a different sense:>
I've never understood why it's so bad to make jokes about serious issues.
Really, as long as it's not something like "lol thousand gazillion people died hahah stoopid niggerrsss they should've moved to New York hahaha", I mean, actually laugh at the disaster itself, I think it's pretty ok to realize that Quake is also a video game.
We would need replicators
Replicators!? Are you mad? Those things beat the Asgard, it took a time dialation field to even stop them for a while..
Oh, wait
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, in Europe only less than 0.5% of terrorist attacks are carried out by Muslims. A great majority (84.8%) in 2006-2008 were attributed do separatists, with the second largest group of perpetrators being left wing extremists. Similarly, in the US only a fraction (6%) of all attacks from 1980 to 2005 were attributable to Muslim terrorists, with attacks by Jews actually being more common (at 7% of the total). One might argue that Islamic terrorists still have a higher tendency to blow themselves up as well, but do note that 209 of all 318 terrorist attacks that happened in the US in 1980-2005 were bombings. Clearly, more often than not, a bomb attack is carried out by someone who is not a Muslim. The idea that all, or even most, terrorists are Muslims is simply false.
Estonia is a collective noun, so in British English using the plural verb form is completely correct.
On the other hand, heroes might not fit into StarCraft's world as well as they fit into WarCraft's. We'll see.
Uh, she is not ineligible.
I just finished my comprehensive school. Educational systems of different countries have always been a bit confusing for me to compare, but that's the nine years of compulsory education you've got to go through in here Finland.
Well, I was an exceptionally good student for the first few years - yeah, it was basically just learning to draw letters and numbers and stuff, but I had learned to read several years before my school started, had gathered a substantial body of random knowledge and was clearly the brightest in my class. The rating system here is on a scale of 4 to 10, my grades were mostly 9 or 10 for the whole comprehensive school. For the first six years I wasn't so bored, even though weren't really many new things. I didn't consider myself exceptional either - even though I could get full points without reading from an exam, and somebody else received half that much and hadn't seen daylight in days.
Then I went to the next level of school, the last three years of comprehensive school, and at some point it occurred to me that I had wasted seven years and learned pretty much nothing - or at least everything I had learned I could have learned in less than half the time. I had rarely answered to teacher's questions in classes before, but now stopped that altogether, and spent most of my lessons chatting with other people, though rarely so loudly that it truly distracted the class.
I completely stopped reading to the exams, but my results didn't drop a bit. Yet, since I spent most of my lessons doing something else than exercises - ours were so easy I usually finished them in minutes, but I never bothered to ask for more, since I knew they wouldn't help me a bit - some teachers decided that I had some kind of an "attitude problem" that was never really explained to me. Well, in the end it wasn't so bad for me, though. Since I still got good results from exams, no teacher could drop my grades that much, and my average grade was still more than 9, which is "excellent", and I'll have no trouble entering a gymnasium.
But it was still a terrible waste of time. There were many teachers who seriously had nothing to teach me, but interpreted from my behaviour that I was a bit of a "rebel" or a "gangster". There are obviously some in every class, in ours too, but I doubt they get as good grades though.. So they proceeded to tell me all sorts of nice things such as that I was a lazy bastard and had these attitude problems, and I wasn't that nice to them then too.
A few teachers, such as my history teacher, did have something, and, miraculously, they never accused me of bad behaviour. The one who taught me native language didn't have anything, but she also realised that, I was just bored and already knew everything, and she apologised that she couldn't help it. Received 10 from her.
Teachers like that are a drop in the sand, though. I guess most of them had to work night and day for their grades, so they can not understand - or accept - someone being smarter than them. And because of our awesome educational system, those who do are somewhat powerless - Finland's system just is designed to treat everyone far too equally, even though it's obvious that everyone isn't equal. One MP even wrote a column in which he suggested that students with ADHD and such should be kept in normal classes in the name of equality. Well, guess everyone can deduce that the guy's an asshole and his words plain bullshit. There's help for students who are left behind, but none at all for those who are ahead. There WAS a class for mathematically gifted people in my former school - but they decided to save some money, fire some teachers and whoops, no such anymore. But we got brand new computers, whoo! Everyone used them to play Quake.
They say Finland's competitiveness is mostly hurt - yeah, because money and economy is all anyone cares about - by the fact that there aren't enough super-talented persons in the country. Well, big surprise, if the potential ones are made to bore to death and never recognised.
Nah, actually I think it's the opposite. I mean, he was so busy, he had to watch them simultaneously because he only had a few hours to spare :|
For example, here in Finland there's a plan to have all the commuter trains in the Helsinki metropolitan area replaced by no later than 2025!
Well, in a huuuuge metropolis like Helsinki there may even be as many as twenty trains (well, I don't really know, but they can't have too many), so it's a good thing the wise men have left themselves plenty of time to fulfill their promises.
Well, for me, it's nowadays just because I've always used Google. Why I did start using it, though, was, basically, the simplicity.
:>
MSN and Yahoo and what big search engines there are out there are portals. When you go to Google.com, the search is everything. MSN, Yahoo, the search isn't the main thing, it's just located in some small corner of the site. I've never paid much attention to it, but for my subconscious mind this gave the impression that the results aren't as good. While MSN and Yahoo have searches, for them it's just one thing among others. For Google it's the one and only thing they focus on, so it's prolly better.
And now I'm so used to using Google that I'm not going to change. But I think that's why I chose Google in the first place. So it's got something to do with Google being an information company, but in a different sense
I've never understood why it's so bad to make jokes about serious issues.
Really, as long as it's not something like "lol thousand gazillion people died hahah stoopid niggerrsss they should've moved to New York hahaha", I mean, actually laugh at the disaster itself, I think it's pretty ok to realize that Quake is also a video game.
I'd mod the joke up if I could.
We would need replicators Replicators!? Are you mad? Those things beat the Asgard, it took a time dialation field to even stop them for a while.. Oh, wait