So we can assume out of all the windows users out there only 100 million out of all the people who have Windows PCs are actually upgrading their system. Is it just me or is that kida scary.
Actually, you also have to take into account IE7 requires validation of the license/installation of Windows to be installed and used. So 100mil is a decent figure (counting or not counting people who auto updated). But then you have to figure in the millions of people who can't install IE7 or at least don't due to it needing a legit copy of Windows to do so. I'd love to use IE7 for the few seldom times I need IE (sadly there are still a few sites on the net that only allow IE to be used for their services) but unfortunately I can't install it for *ahem* reasons being.
Ah well that's where you take audience belief into hand. It's a Starfleet ship after all, and even though the Enterprise-D housed families, functions like the holodeck, the gym etc probably had priority given to Starfleet personale slash crew members. They do make references to people signing up for holodeck time, usually Geordi or Deanna had a line of dialogue now and then saying they had reserved a block of time. Then again you had guys like Barclay who'd just walk into the holodeck at any old time and stay there for hours on end during his duty shift;p
"money is nessicary when there is scarcity and a market economy... and they definitly didn't eliminate scarcity (after all, dilithium crystals are still rare and valuable... there is only one holodeck on the Enterprise, not one for every crew memeber, definitly meaning it would require some sort of rationing...
Actually, the Enterprise-D had several Holodecks. If memory serves me, it was the first starship in the Fleet' that the audience saw with holodecks. It had several, with at least two main ones located on Deck's 10 and 12, I believe there were four total holodecks, two per deck. Prior to the 23rd century Federation ships didn't have holographic technology. By the 23rd century there were holographic recreational units (like those seen in Search for Spock) but no holodecks. It wasn't until the 24th century that the Federation developed such technology of their own.
I've dabbled with some amateur photoshopping stuff in the past (not with actual photoshop mind you). I always wanted to get into a job doing that but most places want people who can use stuff like Photoshop, Quark, Maya etc
Now, I haven't checked the prices of Quark and Maya but Photoshop is still over $600. You can build a nice little PC for $600. Maybe it's just my cynical outlook on software prices but you shouldn't need to pay $600 for like one very widely used piece of software. A reasonable price, yes but unless you've got $600 to blow on Photoshop you either don't get it or you pirate it which yea that can work but you shouldn't have too.
I'd love to really learn Photoshop or whatnot but not at the risk of having to pirate it for long periods and nor can I afford to buy it.
An Acer desktop was my first PC. Granted looking back in 1995/1996 $1800 for a Pentium 75 Mhz 8MB ram and 100 MB HDD was pretty ass, it was still a nice PC. Came with god knows how much free software, most of which was stuff you'd never even dream of hearing of but a few gems (Encarta, Jazz Jack Rabbit, some National Geographic application with movies of wild animals).
Kinda brings a tear to my eye to see them do something along these lines. S'like the first time you ever heard of MS or some big company you liked as a kid, were doing underhanded business.
Three things have made me kinda less enthused about BSG.
This entire character driven story arch lately. Especially the shit between Starbuck and Apollo. Don't get me wrong I wanted to see them together since the Mini Series, but my god...that one boxing episode it was like one giant emo trip. All Apollo needed was a myspace to record his feelings on and the plot line would have been complete. They didn't need to dedicate an entire episode to boxing. Run it in the background along some other story arcs that ya know, go with the "oh shit we're being chased by killer fucking robots" idea.
And yea the idea of being chased by Cylons is like, gone. I think the last real time they had to worry about it, was the attack on the Ressurrection Ship. Sure, the Cylons found them on New Caprica, held them against their will etc But in the end what did they do? Sack'ed the Pegasus, which we all knew was coming, for a very short brief action sequence that basically was the equal of them getting people off the planet and running away, again. Since then there's been no real "omg we're in danger" aspect. Sure they ran out of food and such but it's been kinda a subdued role of the Cylons really being this threat. It just seems like Season 3 has been about them running this parallel course to get to Earth, not really attacking them.
Cost is the real killer for me. After I had seen the majority of Season 1 reruns, I went out and bought BSG S1 on DVD, which included the mini series. Well worth my $40 for it. Now I enjoyed Season 2 as well. But over $80 for it? I can get 2 seasons of basically any other show for that. Hell if I wanna buy "slimcase" editions of X-Files, Buffy or Angel for example I could get 3 seasons of those for the price of BSG Season 2 ($45 for each part, two parts).. That's god damn highway robbery. Don't get me wrong, other tv shows are just as bad. Doctor Who is upwards of $83 (Best Buy price) for 13 episodes of content...I love science fiction, it's my life. I just can't give it an arm, a leg, a first born child and a soul to buy some dvds.
Mod me down if you must but damn, the one time I don't have mod points to use and like the majority of comments are just flamebait and trolling. Quite a few nerds are into Harry Potter, let's not forget nerds extend into the fantasy genre, and there has been plenty of news on such things as Lord of the Rings or Warhammer on/. in the past...So why the hate for HP? If you dislike the novels for their story and such, thats your opinion you are entitled too but damn, don't dis on Neil for putting up a story many of us are interested in.
That's basically what they've been for, for many years now. Back in the day hotmail was alright but not it's just a nice web based spambucket for website registration.
Sure, alot of sites have started to "not allow" public email sites like hotmail or yahoo to be used for registration. generally the rule of thumb for those sites is A) they are just too uptight about registration in the first place so going out-of-your-way to sign up must be really really worth it or a waste of time and B) that site that requires that tends to be plagued with people signing up tons of dummy accounts for any number of reasons (spamming, abusing the number of registrations per user, etc). While the second is more forgivable, the first is just the webmaster being lazy. I'm not going to use my ISP email for your basic web forum registration, nor am I using my Gmail account for most things like that either.
Worst comes to worst, you start Googling web mail services till you find one thats obscure, has been around a while and won't be going anywhere anytime soon, so you can register for sites anonymously and still have the email there later for password reminder if needed.
This is just bullshit. If this was like, a program or something there of that was designed to say, DDoS a WoW server, then I'd understand. If it was designed to keylog people's WoW account info or auto delete their in-game characters/items yea. But since when is creating a "cheat" for a game, againist the law?
I'll admit I've only briefly heard of the WoW Glider, since I'm not a WoW player and all. But dude doesn't charge money for it does he? If not then I'm pretty sure he's in no legal trouble.
What Blizzard is saying with this statement is "using cheats is illegal in our game but also creating them is too". So when that baseball pitcher who's hitting his 40's and lost alot of speed on his fast ball starts using hair gel, ben-gay etc to get a little extra speed on his throws, does Major League Baseball punish him and the companies that make those products?
When sports players use steroids, do the major sport companies go after the steroid manufacturers? (If so then this example is null)
It's bullshit. I'm sure they'll pull something out of their ass saying his usage of the WoW client to reverse engineer some kind of program has violated their Copyrights yadda yadda yadda but in terms of fair use, assuming he wasn't making profit off of WoW Glider, I think he could get away with it. WoW Players feel free to mod me down , I don't condone cheating in such a manner but at the same time Blizzard has been real asshatery in the last two years abou cheating (Warden, anybody?).
I've tried similar things. Like, you turned down something at one company to go do CAD at another. While I'm more knowledgeable in terms of hardware/software I've also tried even the most menial jobs even relating to computers from transcription to data entry. Transcription isn't bad, I mean it's just typing but most places want their own software to be used, since you're usually doing this from home. And they don't offer that software for free (at least the few companies I've looked into, don't).
So to get the job, I'd need to get a resume to quality for it, interview for it and plop down around $100-200 for the software. I have issues paying $200 for an OS, I can't afford some transcription software. Data entry isn't as bad but honestly, on a ten key/number pad I'm not so fast. I can do just fine typing fast with words and such, not a problem. Using ten key to input numbers always turned up slower than companies wanted. I've practiced here and there and gotten a little faster but just never had a knack for it. As a gamer/internet user you are often using words typed alot more often than long series of numbers.
I know, for some of these get-your-foot-in-the-door fields of work you gotta start small and work up, problem is getting the chance to start small. Some will say "bite the bullet, and just start as a telephone tech support." Maybe I'm stubborn but that falls under what I said before; spending a large sum of money of an education, to start not even at the lowest rung on the ladder but far below it. If you gotta pay your dues to get up there, I honestly think I paid them, quite literally. That $30,000 shoulda at least got me some kinda entry position job that's doing what I learned to do, within 6 months to a year after graduation.
I still maintain that Computer Science/Technology is an awful field or career to go into. Now I'll admit, I had it a little easier since I studied up more so on the technical aspect and not networking/IT. So while IT jobs were being taken by people in India, you still needed a physical person in America to say, fix your PC or upgrade it.
I was wrong. For every 1 job that opens there are like hundreds of potential candidates in any city. And that's just assuming you meet their requirements. So just to get a job repairing PC's, you got waltz in and put on the dog and pony show. I see so many companies that hire people who might be average skilled, yet they are more "people oriented", so guys who can chum up the boss next to the water cooler get the job while the really skilled guys who know their trade but are say, more of an individual or more reserved, end up jobless.
That's just for the jobs you qualify for. Right out of college, I found no jobs that I had "experience" for. Every job I found, that I met the other requirements on, was always a dead end since they wanted 3-5 years experience. Sure there were the occasional few jobs at "entry" level but that's like dropping a turkey leg in a feeding frenzy, it's gone within seconds by the dozens apon dozens of other guys gunning for the same job.
So where's that leave me? Finished school three years ago, with the knowledge for an entry level job at a variety of computer technical related areas, that has been unemployed since. I know in the end that looks bad cause "gaps" on your resume supposedly look bad to employers but what are you gonna do? Spend $30,000 on an education, then work at Walmart in the mean time while you job hunt? Sorry but that's just too damn counter productive. Granted I am living off my family but they don't mind and they also agree it's pretty damn silly to spend so much money to get a job in the first place, then not be able to find one.
I'd recommend, another field. Something that needs people, all the time. Nurses, Doctor's, Lawyers, a really good Mechanic, etc Something that you really never can have enough of (assuming you end up good at what you do).
Not that I plan on buying Vista since my PC couldn't run it due to hardware but, the whole "only relicense it once" ordeal seems kinda, monopolistic. I mean, people who've replied have cited a dozen or more reasons, hardware failure, buying a new pc, recieving a new pc, replacing this or that etc How can Microsoft, who has teetered on the edge of monopoly even after their lawsuits thereof, say "even though your hardware fails or you build a new pc, you can only use this version of Windows you paid for X amount of times." ?
This is a lawsuit in the making imho. Kinda like the whole Jack Thompson/Bully thing demanding a copy before release right? Why can't some consumer agencey step up and say as a result of the new EULA Microsoft is basically baiting and switching customers (before the OS is even released since we now know about it ? That's what it is effectively, a bait and switch. You buy a Home edition, for your home, only to find that it's useable only a couple of times despite any number of problems out of your control, so you are forced to buy it again if you want to continue using it OR You're forced from the beginning into buying the more expensive versions that are less restrictive.
Wouldn't this also fall under a small portion of Faulty Advertising? I mean sure the Home Edition does things for just a Home enviroment, but there are so many situations where you need more than the one relicense in your Home enviroment that the Home Edition is not built for. As said, hardware fails a few times, your Home Edition is now worthless, unless you buy it again.
That's what kinda concerns me is the license stuff. Sure the DRM and virtulization could prove problems but at least you'd still be able to use the OS. A bad HDD or a mother board going out more than once kinda screws the pooch on that.
Ok, call me stupid (kidding..) but obviously as many have pointed out traditional nuclear weapons are useless. If we use them someone else does in response. If someone else does we might use them in response. And of course the nucler winter/fall out is the main concern etc right?
So, shouldn't we at this point in technology after like 50 years of having nuclear capabilities, have developed a bomb that has the destructive force of a nuclear weapon without the 30-40 years of radioactivity?
Several have pointed it out but yea that's the main issue. As cell phones are becoming smaller and smaller, more ergonomic, etc the size is the issue. I mean there are cell phones out there roughly the size of an iPod Nano, and that's damn small. The screen is sooooooo tiny. It kinda reminds me of things in the old days, when tv's weren't so readily avaible you'd listen to your team on the radio as the announcers called the game. Maybe that's what cell phones need, just a radio component to listen to the games that some radio stations dish out. The screen size is really too tiny to see who's doing what and where. Imagine football where they need to zoom out to show both sides of the line when a play starts, all the guys look like tiny pixel dots and you can't see the ball or even who has it.
That and, I'm not sure on the price, but with the way companies ass rape you for the costs of something as simple as text messages, live tv coverage of a sports game on your cellphone sounds uber fucking expensive. Again I don't know the price but if I had to guess, I'm sure Motorola, Verison, Sprint etc are watering at the mouth in terms of what they could charge for such content onto your phone.
And is it just me, or should we really be concentrating on more important things? Like, better reception nation wide. Making less areas where you completely drop your signal at random, or really bad reception all the time? Developing longer lasting batteries that don't die out in a few hours after being fully charged, and by die out I mean not inconstant use but the phone is "on" aka waiting to be called or call out. How about making phones and minutes more affordable? (Yes I know there are several pay as you go services but for people on fixed incomes or limited incomes thats still not a viable option and cellphones can be life savers in emerganices).
Ok so maybe I don't want to anger the sleeping giant so to speak, but people shouting "Omg, boycott Walmart!" have to release for some people in middle and lower class America, Walmart is a lifesaver.
Sure you can say such expensives aren't really translated to entertainment or electronics. I mean, when you're poor and shoping for house hold items, medicine etc that brand new DVD isn't a top priority. But some people can't really afford to boycott it. Not all towns/cities have other discount stores that are cheaper or equal to Walmart, and those that do often aren't as cheap as Walmart for some items.
For example, a family doctor recommended some over the counter vitamins and supplements for my grandparents. At a pharmacy they cost around $10 a bottle. At a grocery store it's slightly less. And then at places like Target, K-Mart, it's again slightly less than the pharmacy. Now Walmart? That same $10 bottle of vitamins is now like $2.50 or $3.00 at most. Name brand. They end up saving like 2/3 the cost. That's just medicine that's not crucial for day to day living too. Imagine how much you save on every day stuff like pet food, paper towels, etc
People on fixed incomes, low income jobs, and people living pay check to pay check depend on Walmart. People think it's silly that you buy groceries at Walmart/Super Walmart but hey, when it's cheaper on bread, eggs, soda etc at Walmart than it is at a grocery store, you buy there.
"Yea I saw Phantom Menance and Attack of the Shit. It was like your uncle sticking his weiner in your mouth. Not like when you were a kid but grown up. You don't expect it either, your uncle's your favorite person, got you high, bought you your first beer, hate your mom hate your dad but your uncle is cool.
You're at your parents for christmas, everyone's in bed, you're watching Letterman and you look over and see your uncle trying to put his weiner in your mouth. That's what Phantom Menace was like.
I'm not even gonna see the third one (ROTS). It'll just be me walking into an empty theater and there will be Lucas ready to rape me some more. And I'll just do it to get it over with.
Then he'll put on a Greedo mask and call it the Special Edition."
I know for a fact this probably has cost me a job at some point in job hunting and applying for. I've had bad credit for quite a while and it's often a hole that many honest people get stuck in and looked down apon for because of it.
Post highschool, bills started to stack up from college. I was still living at home, with a single parent who was also out of work. Bills for things like the mortgage and utilities were eating us alive, and still are to a degree. I eventually had to leave school early due to an illness of my grandparents (we only had one car and the campus was downtown so you can see how getting to and from class could be a problem without a vehicle.) So between say, 2000 and 2003 I probably maxed out my credit cards to help pay for my home, put food on the table etc Come 2003, I decide to make another run at college and enroll in a local trade school. To this day after graduating I still owe them almost $10,000 for Studen Loans, which I had a somewhat hard time obtaining a full loan setup due to credit and such.
So I finish college in the computer science field, and we all know how hard it can be to get your foot in the door of that industry. It's 2006, two years after graduating I've still yet to find a job in the field I'm either qualified for or will give me the time of day. Often every application I fill out requries the credit and background check, and I'm punished because I've been unable to find work. Sure, if I could land a job anywhere like Walmart or a gas station I might have taken the job under normal circumstances. But A, I'm not physically able to be on my feet for 8 hours a day. Just not able to stand and move around that long every day. And B, after spending over $20,000 on an education with another $10,000 owed, I couldn't justify working for minimum wage at Walmart. It's just not right, spending 30k then getting paid $5.25 an hour. I've worked minimum wage jobs in highschool, after taxes you barely bring home $100-200 every two weeks, maybe another $100 for the full 8 hour shift (minimum wage is the same now as it was basically 10 years ago).
I've had HR people from my college, who are there to help post graduates find a job, tell me my credit would be an issue. Reminds me of the scene from Farenheit 9/11 where the single mother has to ride a city bus for 5 hours every morning to go work two minium wage jobs, get home super late every night (long past when her kids are asleep) and still not make enough money to pay for rent/mortgage. It's like, no matter how hard you try or honest you go through life, even the good people get shit on. I have no health insurance, dental insurance, no car, not a dime to my name and even if the boss of any local business (retail for example) offered me a job I couldn't physically do it. I feel like a war veteran who's been injured for life but his country just bends him over once he gets home.
Just from the main page, first movie I saw listed was Office Space. Funny movie, but they want $13.99 for it. The movie is like eight years old, for a digital download that has limitations on usage, almost $15 is way to expensive. You could get it cheaper by picking up the DVD for $5 at any Walmart...
Several people are citing how guns are the issue and compare them to melee combat and whatnot. Saying how most scifi MMORPGs haven't done guns "right" http://www.neocron.com/
A mix of cyberpunk and science fiction. Sure it's a low population game but it's the best gun combat there is. Collision objects work well, you don't shoot people through walls unless your weapon has splash damage. Your enemies generally know proper PVP (by enemies I mean players) so they know how to duck, get under cover, even move out of your firing range. There aren't a whole lot of kills from "long range" as theres only a handful of sniper type weapons and NO weapons in the game are instant one hitters, you always have a chance to notice you are taking damage and react.
Plus they included two "casting" classes one offensive and one defensive (think Shadowrun style). Toss in kick ass vehicles, even melee combat in the form of swords, knives, blunt objects etc And it works. Hell the game is actually cheaper to play than most others, I think it's like $11 a month whereas WoW is what, $15+ after tax? All the game needs is people to play it. It's even got longevity past "kill other players" since the world map has dozens if not hundred+ "outposts" that your clan/guild can take control of and defend/attack (kind of like in Planetside).
Just thought I'd point out one good scifi style MMORPG that did well, with guns and with a non fantasy setting.
When I was in school, they had a mega Z.T.P about fighting. Your senario, the guy has to just stand there and get his ass kicked to not be punished correct?
In my old school district, being involved in a fight in ANY MANNER, meant suspension. You literally could be walking down the hallway, be attacked by someone (even with a weapon..), you could stand there and let him beat the shit out of you until a teacher or staff member steps in. You would still be suspended. Why? You were involved in a fight. Regardless of if you defended yourself or not, you were engaged in physical violence between two people (or more).
Now THAT was retarded. Many people got suspended for no reason. Get jumped by some hormoned raging punk kid who's got a knife? Get suspended, all for simply being cut or stabbed (or worse). It got slightly better as time went on in HS but still.
My favorite indiscretion of student rights were fire drills. I'm not aganist drills at all, they are important in case of fire or other inicident. However the school policy was anal retentive when it came to it. Literally when the alarm rang, you were supposed to stop whatever you were doing, line up and proceed out of the room and outside of the building. You were not allowed to stop to bring anything with you nor anything of the such. Somewhat normal you say? Imagine it being winter, ice covered sidewalks (cause it rarely snows here) it's roughly 20 degree's outside plus raining and on the way out during a fire alarm, you aren't allowed to grab your coat, jacket, gloves, or anything. The kicker was the "drills" weren't like 5 minute time spans, sometimes they lasted 15 or 20 minutes. Now imagine standing outside in that weather, with no winter clothes on other than a pair of pants and maybe a light sweater you wear inside without your jacket, you see where I'm going... Ironically, staff were surprised when the percentage of students sick in the winter, especially those with pnemonia and such.... Of course the obligatory suspension was handed out if you stopped an extra few seconds during the drill, to pick up your coat.
I know, I know. You're gonna say something along the lines of how it's the correct procedure to get out of a building as fast as possible in case of emergency. I agree. But when there's a drill every week-to-every other week, especially in the winter you might kind of see the other side. Frankly I think it was the heating that caused the problem. Like most places in my area, the school was overheated in the winter. It'd be 20 degrees outside, inside a classroom or main building? Easily 80 degrees with the temperature locked in most of the times. I think in the winter they were worried about pushing the heating units so hard to warm the huge campus they might have a fire or something but that was just my guess.
And you'd honestly think, after the events at Columbine, people would understand having a cellphone in a high school (or even junior highschool) isn't always a bad thing.
(mod as you wish but..) While it's not a dupe per say, the whole "asked to train foreign replacements" has been discussed as TFA talks about. I can't quite remember the name but back in like 2003/2004 there was a large article in something like PC Word or Computing magazine where they interviewed dozens of people who were asked to do the whole "train your replacement" thing.
The real kicker that TFA didn't seem to mention was, alot of times the people "leaving", didn't know they were leaving. So while training a replacement when you know you're going to be fired is one thing. Training Abdul in MySQL database management only to get fired the same day his training is complete without warning or notice, is rather cold-fucking-hearted. I knew companies outsourced, when you notice large tech companies and even telecoms doing it (Dell, HP, Comcast, Time Warner etc) then it's a real kick to the gut to not just see replacement training for firees but not even telling the fired person what's going on.
You know in a movie or tv show when the bad guy and the good guy meet up for something and a situation occurs for say a hostage release or whatnot? And the good guy always hands over or does what the bad guy says cause he believes him at his word he'll let the hostage/bomb/whatever walk away unharmed? Yea what happens most of the time? The bad guy double crosses the good guy, gets what he wants then shoots the other guy in the back or goes aganist his word simply put. Thats what this feels like, yet you aren't even aware of it. Sure some, maybe half the companies based on what interviewed people said, do let you know in advance. Even thats kinda of lowball, but still not knowing is a pretty scum like move.
Slashdot Mirror
So we can assume out of all the windows users out there only 100 million out of all the people who have Windows PCs are actually upgrading their system. Is it just me or is that kida scary.
Actually, you also have to take into account IE7 requires validation of the license/installation of Windows to be installed and used. So 100mil is a decent figure (counting or not counting people who auto updated). But then you have to figure in the millions of people who can't install IE7 or at least don't due to it needing a legit copy of Windows to do so. I'd love to use IE7 for the few seldom times I need IE (sadly there are still a few sites on the net that only allow IE to be used for their services) but unfortunately I can't install it for *ahem* reasons being.
Ah well that's where you take audience belief into hand. It's a Starfleet ship after all, and even though the Enterprise-D housed families, functions like the holodeck, the gym etc probably had priority given to Starfleet personale slash crew members. They do make references to people signing up for holodeck time, usually Geordi or Deanna had a line of dialogue now and then saying they had reserved a block of time. Then again you had guys like Barclay who'd just walk into the holodeck at any old time and stay there for hours on end during his duty shift ;p
"money is nessicary when there is scarcity and a market economy... and they definitly didn't eliminate scarcity (after all, dilithium crystals are still rare and valuable... there is only one holodeck on the Enterprise, not one for every crew memeber, definitly meaning it would require some sort of rationing...
Actually, the Enterprise-D had several Holodecks. If memory serves me, it was the first starship in the Fleet' that the audience saw with holodecks. It had several, with at least two main ones located on Deck's 10 and 12, I believe there were four total holodecks, two per deck. Prior to the 23rd century Federation ships didn't have holographic technology. By the 23rd century there were holographic recreational units (like those seen in Search for Spock) but no holodecks. It wasn't until the 24th century that the Federation developed such technology of their own.
I've dabbled with some amateur photoshopping stuff in the past (not with actual photoshop mind you). I always wanted to get into a job doing that but most places want people who can use stuff like Photoshop, Quark, Maya etc
Now, I haven't checked the prices of Quark and Maya but Photoshop is still over $600. You can build a nice little PC for $600. Maybe it's just my cynical outlook on software prices but you shouldn't need to pay $600 for like one very widely used piece of software. A reasonable price, yes but unless you've got $600 to blow on Photoshop you either don't get it or you pirate it which yea that can work but you shouldn't have too.
I'd love to really learn Photoshop or whatnot but not at the risk of having to pirate it for long periods and nor can I afford to buy it.
An Acer desktop was my first PC. Granted looking back in 1995/1996 $1800 for a Pentium 75 Mhz 8MB ram and 100 MB HDD was pretty ass, it was still a nice PC. Came with god knows how much free software, most of which was stuff you'd never even dream of hearing of but a few gems (Encarta, Jazz Jack Rabbit, some National Geographic application with movies of wild animals).
Kinda brings a tear to my eye to see them do something along these lines. S'like the first time you ever heard of MS or some big company you liked as a kid, were doing underhanded business.
Three things have made me kinda less enthused about BSG.
This entire character driven story arch lately. Especially the shit between Starbuck and Apollo. Don't get me wrong I wanted to see them together since the Mini Series, but my god...that one boxing episode it was like one giant emo trip. All Apollo needed was a myspace to record his feelings on and the plot line would have been complete. They didn't need to dedicate an entire episode to boxing. Run it in the background along some other story arcs that ya know, go with the "oh shit we're being chased by killer fucking robots" idea.
And yea the idea of being chased by Cylons is like, gone. I think the last real time they had to worry about it, was the attack on the Ressurrection Ship. Sure, the Cylons found them on New Caprica, held them against their will etc But in the end what did they do? Sack'ed the Pegasus, which we all knew was coming, for a very short brief action sequence that basically was the equal of them getting people off the planet and running away, again. Since then there's been no real "omg we're in danger" aspect. Sure they ran out of food and such but it's been kinda a subdued role of the Cylons really being this threat. It just seems like Season 3 has been about them running this parallel course to get to Earth, not really attacking them.
Cost is the real killer for me. After I had seen the majority of Season 1 reruns, I went out and bought BSG S1 on DVD, which included the mini series. Well worth my $40 for it. Now I enjoyed Season 2 as well. But over $80 for it? I can get 2 seasons of basically any other show for that. Hell if I wanna buy "slimcase" editions of X-Files, Buffy or Angel for example I could get 3 seasons of those for the price of BSG Season 2 ($45 for each part, two parts).. That's god damn highway robbery. Don't get me wrong, other tv shows are just as bad. Doctor Who is upwards of $83 (Best Buy price) for 13 episodes of content...I love science fiction, it's my life. I just can't give it an arm, a leg, a first born child and a soul to buy some dvds.
Mod me down if you must but damn, the one time I don't have mod points to use and like the majority of comments are just flamebait and trolling. Quite a few nerds are into Harry Potter, let's not forget nerds extend into the fantasy genre, and there has been plenty of news on such things as Lord of the Rings or Warhammer on /. in the past...So why the hate for HP? If you dislike the novels for their story and such, thats your opinion you are entitled too but damn, don't dis on Neil for putting up a story many of us are interested in.
Vulcan Love Slave
That's basically what they've been for, for many years now. Back in the day hotmail was alright but not it's just a nice web based spambucket for website registration.
Sure, alot of sites have started to "not allow" public email sites like hotmail or yahoo to be used for registration. generally the rule of thumb for those sites is A) they are just too uptight about registration in the first place so going out-of-your-way to sign up must be really really worth it or a waste of time and B) that site that requires that tends to be plagued with people signing up tons of dummy accounts for any number of reasons (spamming, abusing the number of registrations per user, etc). While the second is more forgivable, the first is just the webmaster being lazy. I'm not going to use my ISP email for your basic web forum registration, nor am I using my Gmail account for most things like that either.
Worst comes to worst, you start Googling web mail services till you find one thats obscure, has been around a while and won't be going anywhere anytime soon, so you can register for sites anonymously and still have the email there later for password reminder if needed.
This is just bullshit. If this was like, a program or something there of that was designed to say, DDoS a WoW server, then I'd understand. If it was designed to keylog people's WoW account info or auto delete their in-game characters/items yea. But since when is creating a "cheat" for a game, againist the law?
I'll admit I've only briefly heard of the WoW Glider, since I'm not a WoW player and all. But dude doesn't charge money for it does he? If not then I'm pretty sure he's in no legal trouble.
What Blizzard is saying with this statement is "using cheats is illegal in our game but also creating them is too". So when that baseball pitcher who's hitting his 40's and lost alot of speed on his fast ball starts using hair gel, ben-gay etc to get a little extra speed on his throws, does Major League Baseball punish him and the companies that make those products?
When sports players use steroids, do the major sport companies go after the steroid manufacturers? (If so then this example is null)
It's bullshit. I'm sure they'll pull something out of their ass saying his usage of the WoW client to reverse engineer some kind of program has violated their Copyrights yadda yadda yadda but in terms of fair use, assuming he wasn't making profit off of WoW Glider, I think he could get away with it. WoW Players feel free to mod me down , I don't condone cheating in such a manner but at the same time Blizzard has been real asshatery in the last two years abou cheating (Warden, anybody?).
I've tried similar things. Like, you turned down something at one company to go do CAD at another. While I'm more knowledgeable in terms of hardware/software I've also tried even the most menial jobs even relating to computers from transcription to data entry. Transcription isn't bad, I mean it's just typing but most places want their own software to be used, since you're usually doing this from home. And they don't offer that software for free (at least the few companies I've looked into, don't).
So to get the job, I'd need to get a resume to quality for it, interview for it and plop down around $100-200 for the software. I have issues paying $200 for an OS, I can't afford some transcription software. Data entry isn't as bad but honestly, on a ten key/number pad I'm not so fast. I can do just fine typing fast with words and such, not a problem. Using ten key to input numbers always turned up slower than companies wanted. I've practiced here and there and gotten a little faster but just never had a knack for it. As a gamer/internet user you are often using words typed alot more often than long series of numbers.
I know, for some of these get-your-foot-in-the-door fields of work you gotta start small and work up, problem is getting the chance to start small. Some will say "bite the bullet, and just start as a telephone tech support." Maybe I'm stubborn but that falls under what I said before; spending a large sum of money of an education, to start not even at the lowest rung on the ladder but far below it. If you gotta pay your dues to get up there, I honestly think I paid them, quite literally. That $30,000 shoulda at least got me some kinda entry position job that's doing what I learned to do, within 6 months to a year after graduation.
I still maintain that Computer Science/Technology is an awful field or career to go into. Now I'll admit, I had it a little easier since I studied up more so on the technical aspect and not networking/IT. So while IT jobs were being taken by people in India, you still needed a physical person in America to say, fix your PC or upgrade it.
I was wrong. For every 1 job that opens there are like hundreds of potential candidates in any city. And that's just assuming you meet their requirements. So just to get a job repairing PC's, you got waltz in and put on the dog and pony show. I see so many companies that hire people who might be average skilled, yet they are more "people oriented", so guys who can chum up the boss next to the water cooler get the job while the really skilled guys who know their trade but are say, more of an individual or more reserved, end up jobless.
That's just for the jobs you qualify for. Right out of college, I found no jobs that I had "experience" for. Every job I found, that I met the other requirements on, was always a dead end since they wanted 3-5 years experience. Sure there were the occasional few jobs at "entry" level but that's like dropping a turkey leg in a feeding frenzy, it's gone within seconds by the dozens apon dozens of other guys gunning for the same job.
So where's that leave me? Finished school three years ago, with the knowledge for an entry level job at a variety of computer technical related areas, that has been unemployed since. I know in the end that looks bad cause "gaps" on your resume supposedly look bad to employers but what are you gonna do? Spend $30,000 on an education, then work at Walmart in the mean time while you job hunt? Sorry but that's just too damn counter productive. Granted I am living off my family but they don't mind and they also agree it's pretty damn silly to spend so much money to get a job in the first place, then not be able to find one.
I'd recommend, another field. Something that needs people, all the time. Nurses, Doctor's, Lawyers, a really good Mechanic, etc Something that you really never can have enough of (assuming you end up good at what you do).
Maybe I'm spoiled by letting FF update itself in the last few version updates but I can't seem to make it autoupdate from 1.5.5.whatever to 2.0
Not that I plan on buying Vista since my PC couldn't run it due to hardware but, the whole "only relicense it once" ordeal seems kinda, monopolistic. I mean, people who've replied have cited a dozen or more reasons, hardware failure, buying a new pc, recieving a new pc, replacing this or that etc How can Microsoft, who has teetered on the edge of monopoly even after their lawsuits thereof, say "even though your hardware fails or you build a new pc, you can only use this version of Windows you paid for X amount of times." ?
This is a lawsuit in the making imho. Kinda like the whole Jack Thompson/Bully thing demanding a copy before release right? Why can't some consumer agencey step up and say as a result of the new EULA Microsoft is basically baiting and switching customers (before the OS is even released since we now know about it ? That's what it is effectively, a bait and switch. You buy a Home edition, for your home, only to find that it's useable only a couple of times despite any number of problems out of your control, so you are forced to buy it again if you want to continue using it OR You're forced from the beginning into buying the more expensive versions that are less restrictive.
Wouldn't this also fall under a small portion of Faulty Advertising? I mean sure the Home Edition does things for just a Home enviroment, but there are so many situations where you need more than the one relicense in your Home enviroment that the Home Edition is not built for. As said, hardware fails a few times, your Home Edition is now worthless, unless you buy it again.
That's what kinda concerns me is the license stuff. Sure the DRM and virtulization could prove problems but at least you'd still be able to use the OS. A bad HDD or a mother board going out more than once kinda screws the pooch on that.
Ok, call me stupid (kidding..) but obviously as many have pointed out traditional nuclear weapons are useless. If we use them someone else does in response. If someone else does we might use them in response. And of course the nucler winter/fall out is the main concern etc right?
So, shouldn't we at this point in technology after like 50 years of having nuclear capabilities, have developed a bomb that has the destructive force of a nuclear weapon without the 30-40 years of radioactivity?
SUNNYDALE, California (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is set to allow....
:( Got me all exited and stuff...
Yea I mis-read the first line of the article
Several have pointed it out but yea that's the main issue. As cell phones are becoming smaller and smaller, more ergonomic, etc the size is the issue. I mean there are cell phones out there roughly the size of an iPod Nano, and that's damn small. The screen is sooooooo tiny. It kinda reminds me of things in the old days, when tv's weren't so readily avaible you'd listen to your team on the radio as the announcers called the game. Maybe that's what cell phones need, just a radio component to listen to the games that some radio stations dish out. The screen size is really too tiny to see who's doing what and where. Imagine football where they need to zoom out to show both sides of the line when a play starts, all the guys look like tiny pixel dots and you can't see the ball or even who has it.
That and, I'm not sure on the price, but with the way companies ass rape you for the costs of something as simple as text messages, live tv coverage of a sports game on your cellphone sounds uber fucking expensive. Again I don't know the price but if I had to guess, I'm sure Motorola, Verison, Sprint etc are watering at the mouth in terms of what they could charge for such content onto your phone.
And is it just me, or should we really be concentrating on more important things? Like, better reception nation wide. Making less areas where you completely drop your signal at random, or really bad reception all the time? Developing longer lasting batteries that don't die out in a few hours after being fully charged, and by die out I mean not inconstant use but the phone is "on" aka waiting to be called or call out. How about making phones and minutes more affordable? (Yes I know there are several pay as you go services but for people on fixed incomes or limited incomes thats still not a viable option and cellphones can be life savers in emerganices).
Sure you can say such expensives aren't really translated to entertainment or electronics. I mean, when you're poor and shoping for house hold items, medicine etc that brand new DVD isn't a top priority. But some people can't really afford to boycott it. Not all towns/cities have other discount stores that are cheaper or equal to Walmart, and those that do often aren't as cheap as Walmart for some items.
For example, a family doctor recommended some over the counter vitamins and supplements for my grandparents. At a pharmacy they cost around $10 a bottle. At a grocery store it's slightly less. And then at places like Target, K-Mart, it's again slightly less than the pharmacy. Now Walmart? That same $10 bottle of vitamins is now like $2.50 or $3.00 at most. Name brand. They end up saving like 2/3 the cost. That's just medicine that's not crucial for day to day living too. Imagine how much you save on every day stuff like pet food, paper towels, etc
People on fixed incomes, low income jobs, and people living pay check to pay check depend on Walmart. People think it's silly that you buy groceries at Walmart/Super Walmart but hey, when it's cheaper on bread, eggs, soda etc at Walmart than it is at a grocery store, you buy there.
"Yea I saw Phantom Menance and Attack of the Shit. It was like your uncle sticking his weiner in your mouth. Not like when you were a kid but grown up. You don't expect it either, your uncle's your favorite person, got you high, bought you your first beer, hate your mom hate your dad but your uncle is cool.
You're at your parents for christmas, everyone's in bed, you're watching Letterman and you look over and see your uncle trying to put his weiner in your mouth. That's what Phantom Menace was like.
I'm not even gonna see the third one (ROTS). It'll just be me walking into an empty theater and there will be Lucas ready to rape me some more. And I'll just do it to get it over with.
Then he'll put on a Greedo mask and call it the Special Edition."
Post highschool, bills started to stack up from college. I was still living at home, with a single parent who was also out of work. Bills for things like the mortgage and utilities were eating us alive, and still are to a degree. I eventually had to leave school early due to an illness of my grandparents (we only had one car and the campus was downtown so you can see how getting to and from class could be a problem without a vehicle.) So between say, 2000 and 2003 I probably maxed out my credit cards to help pay for my home, put food on the table etc Come 2003, I decide to make another run at college and enroll in a local trade school. To this day after graduating I still owe them almost $10,000 for Studen Loans, which I had a somewhat hard time obtaining a full loan setup due to credit and such.
So I finish college in the computer science field, and we all know how hard it can be to get your foot in the door of that industry. It's 2006, two years after graduating I've still yet to find a job in the field I'm either qualified for or will give me the time of day. Often every application I fill out requries the credit and background check, and I'm punished because I've been unable to find work. Sure, if I could land a job anywhere like Walmart or a gas station I might have taken the job under normal circumstances. But A, I'm not physically able to be on my feet for 8 hours a day. Just not able to stand and move around that long every day. And B, after spending over $20,000 on an education with another $10,000 owed, I couldn't justify working for minimum wage at Walmart. It's just not right, spending 30k then getting paid $5.25 an hour. I've worked minimum wage jobs in highschool, after taxes you barely bring home $100-200 every two weeks, maybe another $100 for the full 8 hour shift (minimum wage is the same now as it was basically 10 years ago).
I've had HR people from my college, who are there to help post graduates find a job, tell me my credit would be an issue. Reminds me of the scene from Farenheit 9/11 where the single mother has to ride a city bus for 5 hours every morning to go work two minium wage jobs, get home super late every night (long past when her kids are asleep) and still not make enough money to pay for rent/mortgage. It's like, no matter how hard you try or honest you go through life, even the good people get shit on. I have no health insurance, dental insurance, no car, not a dime to my name and even if the boss of any local business (retail for example) offered me a job I couldn't physically do it. I feel like a war veteran who's been injured for life but his country just bends him over once he gets home.
Just from the main page, first movie I saw listed was Office Space. Funny movie, but they want $13.99 for it. The movie is like eight years old, for a digital download that has limitations on usage, almost $15 is way to expensive. You could get it cheaper by picking up the DVD for $5 at any Walmart...
A mix of cyberpunk and science fiction. Sure it's a low population game but it's the best gun combat there is. Collision objects work well, you don't shoot people through walls unless your weapon has splash damage. Your enemies generally know proper PVP (by enemies I mean players) so they know how to duck, get under cover, even move out of your firing range. There aren't a whole lot of kills from "long range" as theres only a handful of sniper type weapons and NO weapons in the game are instant one hitters, you always have a chance to notice you are taking damage and react.
Plus they included two "casting" classes one offensive and one defensive (think Shadowrun style). Toss in kick ass vehicles, even melee combat in the form of swords, knives, blunt objects etc And it works. Hell the game is actually cheaper to play than most others, I think it's like $11 a month whereas WoW is what, $15+ after tax? All the game needs is people to play it. It's even got longevity past "kill other players" since the world map has dozens if not hundred+ "outposts" that your clan/guild can take control of and defend/attack (kind of like in Planetside).
Just thought I'd point out one good scifi style MMORPG that did well, with guns and with a non fantasy setting.
In my old school district, being involved in a fight in ANY MANNER, meant suspension. You literally could be walking down the hallway, be attacked by someone (even with a weapon..), you could stand there and let him beat the shit out of you until a teacher or staff member steps in. You would still be suspended. Why? You were involved in a fight. Regardless of if you defended yourself or not, you were engaged in physical violence between two people (or more).
Now THAT was retarded. Many people got suspended for no reason. Get jumped by some hormoned raging punk kid who's got a knife? Get suspended, all for simply being cut or stabbed (or worse). It got slightly better as time went on in HS but still.
My favorite indiscretion of student rights were fire drills. I'm not aganist drills at all, they are important in case of fire or other inicident. However the school policy was anal retentive when it came to it. Literally when the alarm rang, you were supposed to stop whatever you were doing, line up and proceed out of the room and outside of the building. You were not allowed to stop to bring anything with you nor anything of the such. Somewhat normal you say? Imagine it being winter, ice covered sidewalks (cause it rarely snows here) it's roughly 20 degree's outside plus raining and on the way out during a fire alarm, you aren't allowed to grab your coat, jacket, gloves, or anything. The kicker was the "drills" weren't like 5 minute time spans, sometimes they lasted 15 or 20 minutes. Now imagine standing outside in that weather, with no winter clothes on other than a pair of pants and maybe a light sweater you wear inside without your jacket, you see where I'm going... Ironically, staff were surprised when the percentage of students sick in the winter, especially those with pnemonia and such.... Of course the obligatory suspension was handed out if you stopped an extra few seconds during the drill, to pick up your coat.
I know, I know. You're gonna say something along the lines of how it's the correct procedure to get out of a building as fast as possible in case of emergency. I agree. But when there's a drill every week-to-every other week, especially in the winter you might kind of see the other side. Frankly I think it was the heating that caused the problem. Like most places in my area, the school was overheated in the winter. It'd be 20 degrees outside, inside a classroom or main building? Easily 80 degrees with the temperature locked in most of the times. I think in the winter they were worried about pushing the heating units so hard to warm the huge campus they might have a fire or something but that was just my guess.
And you'd honestly think, after the events at Columbine, people would understand having a cellphone in a high school (or even junior highschool) isn't always a bad thing.
Was hoping for an outline of Cobra Commander's long list of failures :(
The real kicker that TFA didn't seem to mention was, alot of times the people "leaving", didn't know they were leaving. So while training a replacement when you know you're going to be fired is one thing. Training Abdul in MySQL database management only to get fired the same day his training is complete without warning or notice, is rather cold-fucking-hearted. I knew companies outsourced, when you notice large tech companies and even telecoms doing it (Dell, HP, Comcast, Time Warner etc) then it's a real kick to the gut to not just see replacement training for firees but not even telling the fired person what's going on.
You know in a movie or tv show when the bad guy and the good guy meet up for something and a situation occurs for say a hostage release or whatnot? And the good guy always hands over or does what the bad guy says cause he believes him at his word he'll let the hostage/bomb/whatever walk away unharmed? Yea what happens most of the time? The bad guy double crosses the good guy, gets what he wants then shoots the other guy in the back or goes aganist his word simply put. Thats what this feels like, yet you aren't even aware of it. Sure some, maybe half the companies based on what interviewed people said, do let you know in advance. Even thats kinda of lowball, but still not knowing is a pretty scum like move.