I think you're using the term "third world country" when you really mean "industrialized country that's just not quite as globally powerful as the US." If you really, truly mean third world in all of the places you say it, then you are incredibly ignorant. Believe me, not being able to afford to own a house within a few miles of your job, or having kids ten years LATER than you would have liked, are the least of the worries of anyone living in the third world. Try not being able to afford electricity in the one-room shack that houses five people, or having kids far before you were economically or emotionally ready to because you have zero access to birth control or any kind of sex ed (abstinence or otherwise) - or better yet, because you were forced into it, and that's perfectly legal in your country.
I find myself in the oddest of paradoxes: I can afford whatever electronic toys I wish, yet cannot afford the basic necessities of family life.
I think this is also known as "UR Doin it Rong." If you can't afford the basic necessities, then NO, by definition, you CANNOT afford the electronics.
Same here - but my birthday's not for a few more months, so I'm still waiting... Maybe they'll give it the boost when they do their iPod-centric show (with new & improved Jobs?) in September.
Question their motives? So what if their motive is that they want to draw fictional naked children? As long as no real children are portrayed or in any way harmed in the making of those drawings, why should anyone care? The original point of child porn laws was to protect the children in the pornography. In this case, there are none.
That doesn't really help the case in question, where the chargebacks were legitimate and the result of stolen credit cards. You'd just be punishing the people whose cards were stolen even more, if you could even hold them to it since they're not the one who agreed to the ToS.
Did you not even read my comment? Or maybe you just haven't seen Cambridge - it's not like there's tons of open, empty space to throw up more dorms. I suppose there's an argument to be made for getting rid of the football field.... but really. They have about 1000 people per class. Say there are 2500 applicants who would do great there (about an accurate estimate, from the people I've seen). They would need to increase their total housing capacity from 4000 students to 10,000 students - that's not just one or two new dorms! They'd have to buy out half of East Cambridge to do that. And then you get to all the professors required to teach that many more courses, no small investment. Plus smaller things - like the fact that right now 75-80% of MIT students have a research job at some point, and 2.5 times as many students would mean more competition for those jobs, which leads to a worse educational experience for the average MIT student and a loss of a big selling point.
You can shout "elitism" all you want, but until you can address these simple logistical problems there will be far more people taking MIT seriously as an educational institution than taking you seriously in this argument.
The bad thing is that journals may selectively not publish papers they would have previously accepted from a researcher if they require open access.
This is precisely why this sort of thing HAS to start at schools like MIT (and Harvard and Stanford). If Podunk State U tried this, their faculty would suffer - but any journal in a field where MIT is dominant will be hard-pressed to stop accepting any and all publications from their faculty. And when you get a few other big names in there together, the journal would be putting their own reputation in serious peril if, say, they published nothing by professors in the top 10 schools in their field. Journals cherish their impact scores (which are exactly what are used when deciding whether you've published in good enough journals to get tenure), and if they are suddenly not being cited they will feel it.
I don't see how any of this means that the peer-review process, or the prestige associated with certain journals over others, has to end. Could you explain how you got from point A to point B?
The main reason it limits the size of each class is simply space. Since passing the (idiotic) "Freshmen on campus" rule several years ago, MIT has to have room for every member of its freshman class in its 11 dormitories. This caused it to cut the size of each class from about 1100 to 1000. Though, even before that, housing of some sort (dorm, frat/sorority, or independent living group) was guaranteed for four years (as it still is), so there were still limits. And trust me, in a housing market like boston/cambridge, guaranteed housing is important - if you think $45K/ year is expensive, try multiplying your housing costs by 4 or 5.
Though they also have very generous financial aid, which is getting more generous every year, so only the wealthiest students are actually paying the full $45K. I had a yearly required family contribution of near $0, and I have more loans from my two-year master's program (at a public school) than from my 5 years of undergrad at MIT.
One prescription-strength ibuprofen = 4 normal (OTC) ibuprofen. It's the same drug, you can get the same dosage by just taking more pills of the OTC stuff.
It just makes the whole thing even more insane - it's bad that the policy couldn't differentiate between an illegal substance and a legitimate prescription, it's completely ridiculous that it can differentiate between pot and an extra-large OTC pill.
Doubly annoying because we keep getting told that the reason no one will do a la carte cable services is because companies bundle their niche channels in with their popular ones, and the niche channels would die out if you bought channels individually b/c there wouldn't be enough people in the niche to support it. So... if the current structure of cable subscriptions is partially meant to support the niche channels, why does every channel need to un-niche itself?
More importantly, between the internet and Netflix, why would anyone "tech-savvy" enough to be included in their focus group still be paying $50+/month for cable?
Yes - as is pointed out below, LaTeX is only the standard in technical fields. I'm in education/psychology, and Word is definitely the standard, and Track Changes is used constantly. It is completely expected that you will pass a document around and it will accumulate a variety of colored edits and little comments to the side. This is even how many profs and TAs prefer to grade papers (I don't really prefer it, but was expected to do it this way by the prof I TAd for).
We'd been warned to skip season 1, so we started at the start of season 2 but couldn't stomach more than 4 or 5 episodes. We'll probably give it another chance at some point. The overarching storyline did seem interesting, but the acting and episode-level writing were both so bad.
We'd been warned to skip the first season, so we started with the start of season 2, and quickly understood why, since it seemed like they were scrapping whatever old storylines they had and started over. But we couldn't stomach more than 4 or 5 episodes. We might give it another chance at some point.
Honestly, Season 1 of TNG was nearly as painful, but it had a few terrific actors (Stewart, Spiner, and Burton) that kept it afloat. B5 (or what we saw of it) didn't even have that.
There's a big difference between a company fighting back by making the hacked item obsolete, and the company claiming that what you did is illegal and going after you in court. Companies are welcome to do whatever they want to try and design and market their products in such a way that they can only be used in the way the company wishes - the government doing it for them is not cool.
I'm not necessarily in the market for a "netbook," but I'm very very much in the market for a touchscreen/tablet Mac. I have a friend with a tablet PC and I would LOVE the freedom to switch between typing, writing, and drawing at will. I've been wanting that for a very long time. I've definitely considered saving up the extra $1000 for a ModBook, but I'd prefer a solution straight from Apple. Though, it looks like the modbooks have gotten a little bit cheaper than last time I looked...
Ok, you keep telling yourself that none of the people you buy for think that there is any difference at all between receiving a gift card or receiving cash, just because that's how you feel. Don't bother to ask them their preferences, and if you do, be sure to dismiss them quickly and easily. Remember, gift-giving is all about the giver.
How on earth would that help this problem?? Paramount losing the copyright on TOS would have absolutely no impact whatsoever on their ability to create a new star trek series. Whoever owns the copyright on, say, Starsky & Hutch losing it would not have prevented the S&H movie being made - in fact, it just would have made it EVEN EASIER for any studio to grab it, without paying anyone a licensing fee!
A copyright ending does not mean that the original author/owner can no longer create things based on the original material - it just means that when other people made derivative stuff, they don't have to pay that person. It would make it easier to rehash old ideas, not harder.
Given how difficult it seemed to be to even get into Starfleet Academy when Wesley was trying to get in, it would be a show about the four or five most brilliant teenagers in the entire universe and that's it.
Seriously, on rewatching TNG, it seems completely impossible that hundreds of Enterprise crewmembers made it through the Academy when it takes Wesley several tries to get in, and at one point seems to be competing with other child prodigies for one spot.
But assuming they have no problem throwing out that bit of bad writing, I think that would be a really cool show.
I disagree. In the past couple of years, my husband and I have been Netflixing all of TNG, as well as BSG (though we're caught up now) and, for a couple weeks, Babylon 5. We agree that while TNG was a very good show once it hit its stride in season 3, a bit more continuity would have made it really great. In fact, we're noticing the bits of continuity that we never noticed when it was on and we were in jr high (like Worf's several-season dealing-with-the-empire arc), and that alone is making the series even better for us. We love BSG for its serialness, and Babylon 5 we appreciated the serial nature but couldn't get past how bad each individual episode was.
And there is definitely a happy medium to be found between "cliffhanger at the end of every episode" and "everything tied up with a neat little bow." To leave sci-fi, Scrubs strikes this balance very nicely. There are a lot of multi-episode arcs (often found in the subplots), and continuity in general is something that happens consistently rather than once a season, but the actual main plot line of each episode is almost always resolved at the end. You get actual character development over time, unlike many traditional sitcoms, but you can also watch a single episode and be satisfied at the end.
why give somebody the equivalent of cash that can only be used at one store and which becomes worthless if that store declares bankruptcy, when you could just as easily give them cash, or a money order, or a check, or any number of other instruments that could be redeemed anywhere.
Maybe because they'd prefer to get a gift card? When I get cash, I feel like I need to put it in savings, use it responsibly, etc etc. A gift card to a restaurant or store I like to buy fun stuff in is permission to have fun with it. If you're giving them a gift with the intention of them having fun, a gift card says that clearly. Of course, not everyone feels the same way I do, but part of the point of giving one gift over another is knowing which one the receiver would like most to receive, rather than just which one you'd rather give...
And when you're pressed for time and stop at that fast food place, it's somehow faster and more convenient to grab a burger over a grilled chicken sandwich? Soda over water or unsweetened tea? Believe it or not, most fast food places have plenty of healthy offerings these days. I'm not saying that absolutely no willpower or thought is involved whatsoever, but claiming that it's not 100% under your control or that it takes some kind of special amount of discipline to eat a generally-healthy diet is just making excuses for poor choices. It takes discipline to follow a strict diet, yes, but a healthy diet doesn't have to be strict. It just has to involve making good choices more often than bad ones.
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I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born..
Aw, that's cute. We'll see what he says when he's forty and he gives his kid an iPod to play with.
I think you're using the term "third world country" when you really mean "industrialized country that's just not quite as globally powerful as the US." If you really, truly mean third world in all of the places you say it, then you are incredibly ignorant. Believe me, not being able to afford to own a house within a few miles of your job, or having kids ten years LATER than you would have liked, are the least of the worries of anyone living in the third world. Try not being able to afford electricity in the one-room shack that houses five people, or having kids far before you were economically or emotionally ready to because you have zero access to birth control or any kind of sex ed (abstinence or otherwise) - or better yet, because you were forced into it, and that's perfectly legal in your country.
I find myself in the oddest of paradoxes: I can afford whatever electronic toys I wish, yet cannot afford the basic necessities of family life.
I think this is also known as "UR Doin it Rong." If you can't afford the basic necessities, then NO, by definition, you CANNOT afford the electronics.
Same here - but my birthday's not for a few more months, so I'm still waiting... Maybe they'll give it the boost when they do their iPod-centric show (with new & improved Jobs?) in September.
Question their motives? So what if their motive is that they want to draw fictional naked children? As long as no real children are portrayed or in any way harmed in the making of those drawings, why should anyone care? The original point of child porn laws was to protect the children in the pornography. In this case, there are none.
That doesn't really help the case in question, where the chargebacks were legitimate and the result of stolen credit cards. You'd just be punishing the people whose cards were stolen even more, if you could even hold them to it since they're not the one who agreed to the ToS.
Did you not even read my comment? Or maybe you just haven't seen Cambridge - it's not like there's tons of open, empty space to throw up more dorms. I suppose there's an argument to be made for getting rid of the football field.... but really. They have about 1000 people per class. Say there are 2500 applicants who would do great there (about an accurate estimate, from the people I've seen). They would need to increase their total housing capacity from 4000 students to 10,000 students - that's not just one or two new dorms! They'd have to buy out half of East Cambridge to do that. And then you get to all the professors required to teach that many more courses, no small investment. Plus smaller things - like the fact that right now 75-80% of MIT students have a research job at some point, and 2.5 times as many students would mean more competition for those jobs, which leads to a worse educational experience for the average MIT student and a loss of a big selling point.
You can shout "elitism" all you want, but until you can address these simple logistical problems there will be far more people taking MIT seriously as an educational institution than taking you seriously in this argument.
The bad thing is that journals may selectively not publish papers they would have previously accepted from a researcher if they require open access.
This is precisely why this sort of thing HAS to start at schools like MIT (and Harvard and Stanford). If Podunk State U tried this, their faculty would suffer - but any journal in a field where MIT is dominant will be hard-pressed to stop accepting any and all publications from their faculty. And when you get a few other big names in there together, the journal would be putting their own reputation in serious peril if, say, they published nothing by professors in the top 10 schools in their field. Journals cherish their impact scores (which are exactly what are used when deciding whether you've published in good enough journals to get tenure), and if they are suddenly not being cited they will feel it.
I don't see how any of this means that the peer-review process, or the prestige associated with certain journals over others, has to end. Could you explain how you got from point A to point B?
The main reason it limits the size of each class is simply space. Since passing the (idiotic) "Freshmen on campus" rule several years ago, MIT has to have room for every member of its freshman class in its 11 dormitories. This caused it to cut the size of each class from about 1100 to 1000. Though, even before that, housing of some sort (dorm, frat/sorority, or independent living group) was guaranteed for four years (as it still is), so there were still limits. And trust me, in a housing market like boston/cambridge, guaranteed housing is important - if you think $45K/ year is expensive, try multiplying your housing costs by 4 or 5.
Though they also have very generous financial aid, which is getting more generous every year, so only the wealthiest students are actually paying the full $45K. I had a yearly required family contribution of near $0, and I have more loans from my two-year master's program (at a public school) than from my 5 years of undergrad at MIT.
One prescription-strength ibuprofen = 4 normal (OTC) ibuprofen. It's the same drug, you can get the same dosage by just taking more pills of the OTC stuff.
It just makes the whole thing even more insane - it's bad that the policy couldn't differentiate between an illegal substance and a legitimate prescription, it's completely ridiculous that it can differentiate between pot and an extra-large OTC pill.
Doubly annoying because we keep getting told that the reason no one will do a la carte cable services is because companies bundle their niche channels in with their popular ones, and the niche channels would die out if you bought channels individually b/c there wouldn't be enough people in the niche to support it. So... if the current structure of cable subscriptions is partially meant to support the niche channels, why does every channel need to un-niche itself?
More importantly, between the internet and Netflix, why would anyone "tech-savvy" enough to be included in their focus group still be paying $50+/month for cable?
In many developing countries, internet cafes are very popular. Maybe that's where this will be installed.
Yes - as is pointed out below, LaTeX is only the standard in technical fields. I'm in education/psychology, and Word is definitely the standard, and Track Changes is used constantly. It is completely expected that you will pass a document around and it will accumulate a variety of colored edits and little comments to the side. This is even how many profs and TAs prefer to grade papers (I don't really prefer it, but was expected to do it this way by the prof I TAd for).
We'd been warned to skip season 1, so we started at the start of season 2 but couldn't stomach more than 4 or 5 episodes. We'll probably give it another chance at some point. The overarching storyline did seem interesting, but the acting and episode-level writing were both so bad.
We'd been warned to skip the first season, so we started with the start of season 2, and quickly understood why, since it seemed like they were scrapping whatever old storylines they had and started over. But we couldn't stomach more than 4 or 5 episodes. We might give it another chance at some point.
Honestly, Season 1 of TNG was nearly as painful, but it had a few terrific actors (Stewart, Spiner, and Burton) that kept it afloat. B5 (or what we saw of it) didn't even have that.
There's a big difference between a company fighting back by making the hacked item obsolete, and the company claiming that what you did is illegal and going after you in court. Companies are welcome to do whatever they want to try and design and market their products in such a way that they can only be used in the way the company wishes - the government doing it for them is not cool.
I'm not necessarily in the market for a "netbook," but I'm very very much in the market for a touchscreen/tablet Mac. I have a friend with a tablet PC and I would LOVE the freedom to switch between typing, writing, and drawing at will. I've been wanting that for a very long time. I've definitely considered saving up the extra $1000 for a ModBook, but I'd prefer a solution straight from Apple. Though, it looks like the modbooks have gotten a little bit cheaper than last time I looked...
Ok, you keep telling yourself that none of the people you buy for think that there is any difference at all between receiving a gift card or receiving cash, just because that's how you feel. Don't bother to ask them their preferences, and if you do, be sure to dismiss them quickly and easily. Remember, gift-giving is all about the giver.
How on earth would that help this problem?? Paramount losing the copyright on TOS would have absolutely no impact whatsoever on their ability to create a new star trek series. Whoever owns the copyright on, say, Starsky & Hutch losing it would not have prevented the S&H movie being made - in fact, it just would have made it EVEN EASIER for any studio to grab it, without paying anyone a licensing fee!
A copyright ending does not mean that the original author/owner can no longer create things based on the original material - it just means that when other people made derivative stuff, they don't have to pay that person. It would make it easier to rehash old ideas, not harder.
Given how difficult it seemed to be to even get into Starfleet Academy when Wesley was trying to get in, it would be a show about the four or five most brilliant teenagers in the entire universe and that's it.
Seriously, on rewatching TNG, it seems completely impossible that hundreds of Enterprise crewmembers made it through the Academy when it takes Wesley several tries to get in, and at one point seems to be competing with other child prodigies for one spot.
But assuming they have no problem throwing out that bit of bad writing, I think that would be a really cool show.
I disagree. In the past couple of years, my husband and I have been Netflixing all of TNG, as well as BSG (though we're caught up now) and, for a couple weeks, Babylon 5. We agree that while TNG was a very good show once it hit its stride in season 3, a bit more continuity would have made it really great. In fact, we're noticing the bits of continuity that we never noticed when it was on and we were in jr high (like Worf's several-season dealing-with-the-empire arc), and that alone is making the series even better for us. We love BSG for its serialness, and Babylon 5 we appreciated the serial nature but couldn't get past how bad each individual episode was.
And there is definitely a happy medium to be found between "cliffhanger at the end of every episode" and "everything tied up with a neat little bow." To leave sci-fi, Scrubs strikes this balance very nicely. There are a lot of multi-episode arcs (often found in the subplots), and continuity in general is something that happens consistently rather than once a season, but the actual main plot line of each episode is almost always resolved at the end. You get actual character development over time, unlike many traditional sitcoms, but you can also watch a single episode and be satisfied at the end.
why give somebody the equivalent of cash that can only be used at one store and which becomes worthless if that store declares bankruptcy, when you could just as easily give them cash, or a money order, or a check, or any number of other instruments that could be redeemed anywhere.
Maybe because they'd prefer to get a gift card? When I get cash, I feel like I need to put it in savings, use it responsibly, etc etc. A gift card to a restaurant or store I like to buy fun stuff in is permission to have fun with it. If you're giving them a gift with the intention of them having fun, a gift card says that clearly. Of course, not everyone feels the same way I do, but part of the point of giving one gift over another is knowing which one the receiver would like most to receive, rather than just which one you'd rather give...
Mark Twain was born in Missouri - what other steps did he need to take to become a citizen?
Exactly which part of my post are you calling bollocks and think you're arguing against?
And when you're pressed for time and stop at that fast food place, it's somehow faster and more convenient to grab a burger over a grilled chicken sandwich? Soda over water or unsweetened tea? Believe it or not, most fast food places have plenty of healthy offerings these days. I'm not saying that absolutely no willpower or thought is involved whatsoever, but claiming that it's not 100% under your control or that it takes some kind of special amount of discipline to eat a generally-healthy diet is just making excuses for poor choices. It takes discipline to follow a strict diet, yes, but a healthy diet doesn't have to be strict. It just has to involve making good choices more often than bad ones.