I think it's a bit more insidious when groups like Greenpeace and PeTA (both of whom use this as their usual MO) do it than when entertainment companies do it - maybe even worse than when news sites do it. When GP and PeTA spout nonsense and slather it all over billboards and in flyers they hand out in elementary schools, they are doing it a) under the guise of a nonprofit corporation, paying no taxes on what is essentially a giant publicity/fundraising scam and b) claiming to represent those who care about (the environment, animals). B leads to people thinking that all people who care about X, or at least all who go out and do something about it actively, are as crazy as these groups. This prevents many levelheaded people who would agree with the broader movements from getting involved, because they don't realize that the majority of people involved are sane and do NOT support either of these organizations.
Basically, they manage to do more harm than good for the causes they claim to support, while getting a huge tax write-off for all of it. Yes, news companies pull the wool over people's eyes when they get sensationalistic, but at least they generally don't have any kind of protected status while they do it.
Tech support/CS emails are always the best. I have a friend who used to have control over the mit.edu homepage, and was on the webmaster email list - now THOSE are some fun emails.
You must have at least a bit of a chip on your shoulder if you MUST jump onto a thread just because the word "professor" was mentioned and exclaim how horrible college was/would have been for you. Either that, or you just love spouting random facts about yourself whenever you can. Which, given how long you go on in this post, may actually be the case.
If you don't care about the specs, why not compare the $300 machine to a used Mac? You can *easily* get an Intel mini on eBay for $400, I'm sure you could get it for $300 with a little patience. If I only have $10,000 to spend on a car, you can bet I'd get a better model that's a year or two old rather than a brand-new crappier car.
I know everyone else has already said "so someone can pick you up," but I wanted to point out that in case you've missed them, many airports now have Cel Phone Lots a couple miles away from the terminal. Places specifically for people to sit in their cars (for free) and wait for the person they're picking up to call them and let them know the flight has landed.
Sucks to be you. College was a great time for me, and I know my degree was worth every penny. And now that I'm getting my PhD, I get paid for it. Sweet!
I've been using RTF for a while, because in about 80% of cases I can write something in TextEdit more easily than Word or NeoOffice. But now I'm faced with professors who want to use Word's commenting and track changes features for everything, so I have no choice. Given options, though, I still use RTF (or txt) for most things.
I'm pretty sure I have a Wikipedia account somewhere, but I almost never log in unless I'm going to do a big edit on something. 90% of the time I only visit to read; if I happen to notice a mistake, I don't want to go through the hassle of logging in to make a tiny edit. I'd bet a lot of anonymous editors are the same.
What about the Animal Crossing series? Or does that count as "3D with restricted movement?" I'm not sure what you mean by that label - personally, I like (and consider 2D) anything that doesn't make me swing the camera around, because that confuses me and sometimes makes me dizzy. If it has a fixed camera angle, even if the graphics are 3D-ish and you have 360 degrees of freedom in your movement, it's 2D for most intents and purposes.
Personally, I couldn't get used to controlling the water by pressing up to move it down, etc. I keep meaning to go back and try again, but so far it's just sitting on my game shelf, barely one level finished. I have enough trouble controlling 3D games, that one was just too much.
I don't know about you, but I tend to angle my paper so that my pen is obscuring my view as little as possible. I'm right-handed, and when I write I have the paper tilted far to the left (sometimes almost horizontal, but I think I'm weird) and my hand is moving away from me so that whatever I've just written is constantly being uncovered. (And besides that, the pen tip is much thinner than my actual fingers, which are hovering a couple inches above the page and thus further out of the way of the word I just wrote.) Yes, my hand might obscure the right side of the last few lines, but I'm not usually worrying about those while I'm writing the next line.
That's quite different from a touch interface where you finger must obscure the thing you are aiming at.
You can see where your fingers are even when they're not touching the screen. It would probably take a little getting used to, but it's not like you'd be guessing at it even the first time you use it.
You know, I would hope that a good defense lawyer would stay up on these kinds of developments and would *ask* clients if they've ever donated (or received) stem cells. The dangerous part is when umbilical cells are used and no one ever tells the kid.
a) It doesn't seem to be a creation vs evolution conversation; I haven't seen anyone argue for creationism yet.
b) Like many posters, you're forgetting or don't understand how evolution actually works. Humans are not "more evolved" than other animals. Every species that is currently still in existence is the pinnacle of evolution for its particular environmental niche. If that environment changes, the species will either die out or evolve further to survive in the niche.
The main evolutionary advantage humans have is our brains - they have allowed us to become more adaptable without evolution than many animals, and survive and thrive in many environments and through envrionmental changes. In order to have such a complex brain, it has to be of a certain minimum size, and our body has to be of a minimum size to support it. A brain as complex as ours most likely simply could not evolve in a mouse - but we couldn't live in the niches mice do, for a variety of reasons. Opposable thumbs have helped us as well - but would they be an advantage without the other advantages we have? What would a mouse *do* with opposable thumbs, without the brain structures to use them intelligently? Would they be an evolutionary advantage for a mouse at all? Or take a dolphin, who has one of the brains closest to ours in the animal kingdom - what would a dolphin do with opposable thumbs (assuming it evolved some fingers at the same time)? They wouldn't help it swim, which is one thing it has to be really good at to get food and escape predators. In fact, a dolphin with hands instead of fins would probably fare worse than other dolphins, because it couldn't swim as quickly and adeptly. What is an evolutionary advantage to one species can spell doom for another species.
This really came as a surprise to me when I toured the new evolution exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum last year. When I was a kid (in the 80s), the line was that dinosaurs branched into two evolutionary paths, reptiles and birds. Now this exhibit plainly states many times, "Dinosaurs were birds." Not being quite as into dinos as I was when I was seven (and obsessed), this was news to me.
As an example to back up the other responses, that's like suggesting that humans don't need to evolve as a species because when we hit the age of 13 we get secondary sex characteristics. Your genes still cause all that (with some environmental modulation, of course) - it's just that different genes are expressed at different times in your life. You pass on the gene for pubic hair to your kids, but they won't have any til they're 13 just like you did. The lizards may have genes that provide more defense later in life, but it doesn't mean the individual "evolved," just that the species evolved to keep the individuals capable of reproducing for longer by adding protections as other things break down.
I have to post my own anecdata refuting yours. A few months after I bought my eMac, strange things started happening. The guy on the phone was great, he didn't talk down to me, once I told him all the things I'd tried (resetting the PRAM, etc) he didn't try to explain to me how to reboot the computer or anything (unlike my other main tech support experiences, with cable companies). He told me where I could get to the RAM and how to test each stick, and said that if either was bad to take it to the Apple store. I took the bad stick of RAM to the store, they tested it, and handed me a new one. The whole process was amazingly painless. I was really worried I'd have to take the whole 51-lb monstrosity to the store, but just bringing the RAM was enough.
I'm sure that almost any treatment would have side effects, some of which may be very serious in some patients. Chemotherapy kills people, but if they'd die from the cancer anyhow it can be worth a calculated risk. Right now, Alzheimer's is terminal and the damage is irreversible (ie, letting a patient wait a few more years to see if we get a better treatment may very well render them untreatable) - I would be surprised if severe side effects in a very small minority of patients (in other words, two out of how many?) prevented a treatment from getting through.
I think you're arguing that $750 is fair because they're allowed to sue for 5x their actual damages. So you think that they actually lose $150 for EVERY song someone places in a publicly-available folder? I still don't buy it. If they were suing for $50/song, maybe that argument would sway me, but they're still horribly, horribly inflating things.
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That was my thought, too. I'm really hoping for something that will let you play NES/SNES/etc games bought via virtual console on your DS.
Basically, they manage to do more harm than good for the causes they claim to support, while getting a huge tax write-off for all of it. Yes, news companies pull the wool over people's eyes when they get sensationalistic, but at least they generally don't have any kind of protected status while they do it.
I'm still confused as to how any of this is the least bit relevant.
Tech support/CS emails are always the best. I have a friend who used to have control over the mit.edu homepage, and was on the webmaster email list - now THOSE are some fun emails.
You must have at least a bit of a chip on your shoulder if you MUST jump onto a thread just because the word "professor" was mentioned and exclaim how horrible college was/would have been for you. Either that, or you just love spouting random facts about yourself whenever you can. Which, given how long you go on in this post, may actually be the case.
If you don't care about the specs, why not compare the $300 machine to a used Mac? You can *easily* get an Intel mini on eBay for $400, I'm sure you could get it for $300 with a little patience. If I only have $10,000 to spend on a car, you can bet I'd get a better model that's a year or two old rather than a brand-new crappier car.
You can't buy them at CompUSA? That's odd, you can buy them from CompUSA.com. You can also see/buy them side-by-side with other computers at Best Buy.
I know everyone else has already said "so someone can pick you up," but I wanted to point out that in case you've missed them, many airports now have Cel Phone Lots a couple miles away from the terminal. Places specifically for people to sit in their cars (for free) and wait for the person they're picking up to call them and let them know the flight has landed.
Sucks to be you. College was a great time for me, and I know my degree was worth every penny. And now that I'm getting my PhD, I get paid for it. Sweet!
I've been using RTF for a while, because in about 80% of cases I can write something in TextEdit more easily than Word or NeoOffice. But now I'm faced with professors who want to use Word's commenting and track changes features for everything, so I have no choice. Given options, though, I still use RTF (or txt) for most things.
I'm pretty sure I have a Wikipedia account somewhere, but I almost never log in unless I'm going to do a big edit on something. 90% of the time I only visit to read; if I happen to notice a mistake, I don't want to go through the hassle of logging in to make a tiny edit. I'd bet a lot of anonymous editors are the same.
What about the Animal Crossing series? Or does that count as "3D with restricted movement?" I'm not sure what you mean by that label - personally, I like (and consider 2D) anything that doesn't make me swing the camera around, because that confuses me and sometimes makes me dizzy. If it has a fixed camera angle, even if the graphics are 3D-ish and you have 360 degrees of freedom in your movement, it's 2D for most intents and purposes.
Personally, I couldn't get used to controlling the water by pressing up to move it down, etc. I keep meaning to go back and try again, but so far it's just sitting on my game shelf, barely one level finished. I have enough trouble controlling 3D games, that one was just too much.
Aw, 1999 is so cute. I wanna pinch its widdle cheeks.
You think that's bad? I hear Zachary Quinto is from Earth. Pssh.
That's quite different from a touch interface where you finger must obscure the thing you are aiming at.
You can see where your fingers are even when they're not touching the screen. It would probably take a little getting used to, but it's not like you'd be guessing at it even the first time you use it.
You know, I would hope that a good defense lawyer would stay up on these kinds of developments and would *ask* clients if they've ever donated (or received) stem cells. The dangerous part is when umbilical cells are used and no one ever tells the kid.
b) Like many posters, you're forgetting or don't understand how evolution actually works. Humans are not "more evolved" than other animals. Every species that is currently still in existence is the pinnacle of evolution for its particular environmental niche. If that environment changes, the species will either die out or evolve further to survive in the niche.
The main evolutionary advantage humans have is our brains - they have allowed us to become more adaptable without evolution than many animals, and survive and thrive in many environments and through envrionmental changes. In order to have such a complex brain, it has to be of a certain minimum size, and our body has to be of a minimum size to support it. A brain as complex as ours most likely simply could not evolve in a mouse - but we couldn't live in the niches mice do, for a variety of reasons. Opposable thumbs have helped us as well - but would they be an advantage without the other advantages we have? What would a mouse *do* with opposable thumbs, without the brain structures to use them intelligently? Would they be an evolutionary advantage for a mouse at all? Or take a dolphin, who has one of the brains closest to ours in the animal kingdom - what would a dolphin do with opposable thumbs (assuming it evolved some fingers at the same time)? They wouldn't help it swim, which is one thing it has to be really good at to get food and escape predators. In fact, a dolphin with hands instead of fins would probably fare worse than other dolphins, because it couldn't swim as quickly and adeptly. What is an evolutionary advantage to one species can spell doom for another species.
This really came as a surprise to me when I toured the new evolution exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum last year. When I was a kid (in the 80s), the line was that dinosaurs branched into two evolutionary paths, reptiles and birds. Now this exhibit plainly states many times, "Dinosaurs were birds." Not being quite as into dinos as I was when I was seven (and obsessed), this was news to me.
As an example to back up the other responses, that's like suggesting that humans don't need to evolve as a species because when we hit the age of 13 we get secondary sex characteristics. Your genes still cause all that (with some environmental modulation, of course) - it's just that different genes are expressed at different times in your life. You pass on the gene for pubic hair to your kids, but they won't have any til they're 13 just like you did. The lizards may have genes that provide more defense later in life, but it doesn't mean the individual "evolved," just that the species evolved to keep the individuals capable of reproducing for longer by adding protections as other things break down.
I have to post my own anecdata refuting yours. A few months after I bought my eMac, strange things started happening. The guy on the phone was great, he didn't talk down to me, once I told him all the things I'd tried (resetting the PRAM, etc) he didn't try to explain to me how to reboot the computer or anything (unlike my other main tech support experiences, with cable companies). He told me where I could get to the RAM and how to test each stick, and said that if either was bad to take it to the Apple store. I took the bad stick of RAM to the store, they tested it, and handed me a new one. The whole process was amazingly painless. I was really worried I'd have to take the whole 51-lb monstrosity to the store, but just bringing the RAM was enough.
I thought I was the only one who noticed. Huzzah for actual editing!
I'm sure that almost any treatment would have side effects, some of which may be very serious in some patients. Chemotherapy kills people, but if they'd die from the cancer anyhow it can be worth a calculated risk. Right now, Alzheimer's is terminal and the damage is irreversible (ie, letting a patient wait a few more years to see if we get a better treatment may very well render them untreatable) - I would be surprised if severe side effects in a very small minority of patients (in other words, two out of how many?) prevented a treatment from getting through.
I think you're arguing that $750 is fair because they're allowed to sue for 5x their actual damages. So you think that they actually lose $150 for EVERY song someone places in a publicly-available folder? I still don't buy it. If they were suing for $50/song, maybe that argument would sway me, but they're still horribly, horribly inflating things.