By now I'm guessing nobody else will be reading this article so:
The photo was taken on Rannoch, the Quarian homeworld, where they evolved with a weak immune system since virtually all of the germs on the planet were either harmless or they had a symbiotic relationship with Quarians. The game notes that quarians would take time to fully re-adapt to the quarian homeworld, but brief exposure would not necessarily be fatal. (She'd already survived suit exposure via gunshot, and extended...contact with Shepard by this point).
The photo becomes available to the player immediately after the player finishes Shepard's mission to Rannoch, the player just has to talk to Tali after the mission, at which time she tells him/her to go see what she left in his/her room.
I was surprised to find out that people were upset about this. I actually liked getting a photo instead of an in-game rendering. They were able to present this secret in a special way and an intimate private context in their relationship. I mean, Shepard's already seen her face, so seeing Tali's face in-game might be special to the player, but it wouldn't be a significant event to Shepard in the game's context. This way, they set it up to mean something to both Shepard, Tali, and the player at the same time. The fact that the picture could even be taken in that spot was an acknowledgement of a very significant thing Shepard had just done for her, so framing that moment in a picture makes for a very special memento for Shepard to thank him for it.
Besides, while ME3's faces looks much better than the previous iterations, I still think the photo looked better.
(I also noticed that in ME1 and ME2, Shepard was the player's avatar, but in ME3, the game sets up Shepard as a separate character that has his/her own emotional responses unprompted by the player. It bothered me a little at first to have them decide what Shepard is feeling, but I got used to it.
She was in a place where she could take off her mask and not die. If you've seen the picture in-game, you should know what place I'm talking about. The game spends quite a lot of time in this place, and talking about why it's so significant.
Also, she's taken her mask off in the past without dying, she just takes risks when she does so. She got some sniffles but not much else.
On a related note, one of the problems plaguing the the poorer parts of the continent is rampant corruption. Efforts to improve conditions are sabotaged by corruption and greed. You can't feed the starving if the food is just being taken by the government and sold off for profit, or if warlords roll in and take the food from the mouth of the starving. You can't even build businesses without rule of law. You need order. But you can't have order if you have incompetent and powerless governance, and where can you get competent administrators and staff if the country is poor and lacking in education? The problems plaguing the poor parts of Africa overlap each other, and efforts to improve one area are hamstrung without matching improvements in another area.
There is easy access to wealth in the exploitation of natural resources there, and industrialized nation provide ravenous demand. The "blessing" of natural resources becomes a curse since creates conditions that tempt those in power away from pushing for fundamental growth. It's much easier to get rich by just selling resources and property than to build a comparatively high-risk, low-margin, business. So instead greed wins out, and those who would try to make Africa better off are swarmed under by corruption all around them.
What's even worse is that this DRM only affects paying customers.
Pirates don't care about DRM, it's already been bypassed so it has no effect on them. Years from now when they take down their online authentication servers, the paying customers can't play anymore, only the pirates can.
Also, when they split out on-disc DLC and try to wring more money from the customer after release day, the pirates still get all of that on release day. The pirates even get early access to a lot of games before the official street dates.
To cut down on piracy they should take initiatives to reward those that pay instead. Give them all of the advantages listed above that pirates get to enjoy to start with. Then focus energies on finding ways they can reward customers over what pirates enjoy. Like multiplayer rewards for ongoing customers, added online privileges, sharing loot between friends. Small perks with little value individually, but they can add up to form an advantage for paying. The "stick" clearly isn't working, so try some "carrot". These aren't even good ideas, I'm sure they could come up with much better possibilities if they focus their creative energies in this direction instead.
There's a lot of ways. I was asking that anon if he knew of specifics so I could follow-up if there was any actual situation to deal with, but it is definitely true that there is a lot of room for play within GAAP. Cash is actually relatively low risk in most industries because it's easily tracable through banks, but in casinos a lot of it is on-hand, so it's a high-risk area of audit in this industry.
Revenue and expense are just accounting concepts that are easier to play with since a lot of them have to do with estimates. For example, you should expense a building over the course of it's useful life. But what is the useful life of a building? Management gets to say if the $3m building will be useful for 30 years ($100k expense per year), or 10 years ($300k expense per year), and they even get to change up that estimate partway through if they can convince auditors that they have a reasonable basis for doing so.
A recent well known example: Lehman brothers hid their financial health behind repo 105 transactions which their auditors gave a pass for being "in line with GAAP", which was arguably true. However, the E&Y auditors are also obligated to consider whether the financials fairly represents the company, and they are in hot water for giving them a pass on repo 105.
Well to put this in perspective, while Tropicana AC's (a.k.a "East") Net revenues was $279m, their operating income was only $2.3m after operating expenses are deducted.
So no, Tropicana AC's management definitely does feel a $6m hit. It's not a lot of money compared to consolidated net revenues of $623m. However, on a consolidated level, Tropicana entertainment had a net loss of $2.8m.
Bear in mind that Tropicana AC had also gone through a bankruptcy reorganization in March 2010.
A $6m hit still stings them considerably when margins run tight. Atlantic City in general has not been doing well over the past few years due to the recession. While house odds are in their favor, they're not wildly in their favor, so to make money they need lots of people playing a lot of lot of rounds. When attendance drops, their operating costs can't be cut as quickly, they do have unionized employees.
What bothers me is wondering what sort of changes in the weather can be expected during the rest of the year after such an unusually warm winter. As mentioned, there is very little data, perhaps nothing at all, or perhaps even more bizarre weather will follow. As a layman, I have no idea, but I imagine that having strange weather for a full season will have residual effects somewhere.
It's a pretty good movie, I second the recommendation.
I also recommend that you do not do any kind of research into this movie, and watch it cold. It's a better experience with no spoilers from trailers and the like.
Let's not get carried away. While Star Trek has had awesome stories, and been a great source of inspiration for decades, it has also shoveled out crap like this:
As a fan of star trek, I watch these episodes and just laugh these scenes off. New audiences going to see the new star trek movie would not respond so kindly to Star Trek's fondness for periodically flying up it's own ass with their plot lines and themes. They did a good job of turning the franchise into something watchable, and ensuring that it will still have a future. After getting all the set-up out of the way in the first movie of the reboot, they have room to expand and develop more thoughtful material in subsequent iterations and manifestations.
To clarify GP's post, It's not actually based on GAAP, but on a tax basis. Companies track both GAAP and tax basis accounting. GAAP is for for financial presentation (they must be kept consistent with everyone else's financial presentation, i.e generally accepted accounting principles), and 1 book for tax purposes (kept consistent with U.S tax treatments). However, with regard to the calculation of accumulated earnings vs. retained earnings, they are nearly the same thing.
The law he's referring to is detailed in the link above. You can simply google for more authoritative literature, but I'm linking this article because the authoritative literative is gobbledy-gook unless you have time to digest it. This article explains it in layman's terms.
The tax on accumulated earnings on C-Corp is to avoid having them being used as a means of deferring income tax for their owners. But since companies may need to build up cash for big undertaking, there is an exception: Most companies dodge the accumulated earnings by demonstrating to the IRS that they have a plan for how they will use all that cash buildup to grow their business. Slashdot has discussed this subject many times since the death of Steve Jobs, "Where do they go from here?". They are conceding that they can't think of any new projects that would require so much cash, so they are releasing some.
All major public accounting firms have 60hour minimum work-weeks for Jan-April ("busy season") every year. If you enter only 58h during a week, there will be a follow-up inquiry on monday morning for why you missed your quota by 2 hours. This is only a minimum, you are also expected to be available to work all nights and all weekends. Further, such work conditions are not restricted to busy season, and the majority of employees should expect these conditions for at least 6 mo. of the year.
It just becomes the new normal. A 60-hour week becomes a treasured vacation, you get to go home and eat with your family, maybe even talk to them a little before bed. When the hours creep up to 70, 80, and beyond, you have no choice but to eat at your laptop in a conference room with the rest of the team, get home after everyone is already asleep, then wake up and leave before they wake up. Hopefully you can work from home on the weekends and at least have breakfast with your family.
Can hardly complain when I see some clients who have it worse though. SVP of Finance hasn't left the office in 4 days. The finance department just collapses onto a couch for a few hours a day.
These work conditions are demanded by the market. There are set filing dates for public companies, and they, as well as their auditors from the public accounting firms, need to work to match those deadlines. The client I mentioned above missed their filing deadline and filed for a 1 week extension. Their stock price fell by 10% that day.
It's just accepted. This is standard industry practice, and everyone is expected to suffer through it for years, because public accounting experience is the most rapid way to accelerate a career in accounting. Ultimately everyone hopes to leave for private accounting after accumulating 3-6 years of public accounting experience. Nobody was forced to take jobs in this line of work, everyone chooses to give up 3-6 years of their life for the promise of a better life when they can someday quit and take an advanced private accounting position. I hate my life during these stretches of insanity, and I definitely wish I could work more reasonable hours. But like everyone else in public accounting, we take on these ridiculous hours because we know it's the best way to move our career forward. I fantasize about quitting all the time, but I need to make as much money as possible so that I can take care of my family. If I give up early so that I can have it easier, my family won't be able to afford the same kind of lifestyle. I wish I was more clever, or had some valuable talent that would allow me to make a lot of money with a more reasonable workweek, but that's just not the case. In a few years, I will be able to have time with them, and I'll have the money to take care of them. We're all just chasing the American Dream I guess.
An easy way to make a complex password and different password for each site is to:
1) L33t the name of the site 2) capitalize the 4th letter 3) Extend to 10 character minimum with "a", ending on 1.
Examples: sl@sHdota1 b@nK0f@m3r1c@ g00G13aaa1
Obviously, they are asked to choose their own parameters for step 2 and 3 so their passwords are individualized.
It's effectively 1 password to remember, that you use all the time. But now you have 10-char minimum passwords, with numbers, letters, symbols, and capitalization. It's also unique for every website, and you're given a reminder of your password everytime before you log in. All you actually need to remember is 3 easy steps. 1) L33t it 2) Capitalize "(num)", 3) Minimum 10, or else add "(char)", end on 1.
(Further, increment the last number as needed when passwords expire and you're required to enter a new one).
Obviously I don't use the steps above or else I wouldn't be posting it, I just use a variant that achieves similar effects.
1) For reviews that are not paid for, see www.giantbomb.com. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for refusing to bow to pressure to raise his review score on a game which was paying Gamespot for advertising. 3 others eventually followed him to Giantbomb. They've given bad reviews even games from their friends on several occassions. The one time where they felt they could not stay objective they abstained from reviewing the game (Bastion).
2) Giantbomb doesn't care what publishers think about them. Giantbomb doesn't choose to review every game in existence, just the ones they feel matter enough for them to play. If the publishers don't want to send a review copy, GB just buys one after release and puts out a review later. If a gamer can't wait until after release to find out whether a game is good or not, then a bad game is just part of the risk for jumping in early.
3) They have 30-60min "quicklooks" to demonstrate games. They either go in cold, or have saves prepared to show off parts of the game they feel you should see. Either way, it's unedited gameplay with ad-libbed commentary, you can just watch these and judge for yourself.
You sound like the crazy Anonymous poster I love to hear from so much, a quick review of your post history seems to support this. I love the stream-of-thought presentation in your writings, the sprinklings of "::", "/", extraneous comma delimited descriptors, and mash-up lingo provide a window into into your special world view where hyper-paranoia has overwhelmed the senses such that it all comes spilling across the page in a frenzy of rage against the machine. It's like high-pressure crazy has concentrated all those disparate fears of the system until those thoughts all start to run together. It's like the Time-Cube guy redux. Heh, I kind of hope that you keep this up, I really enjoy reading these.
I would like to listen to a podcast or youtube channel, because I really want to hear what these thoughts sound like when spoken out loud. Maybe you sound completely normal in everyday conversation. I have to imagine that would be the case since it seems that you're employed and must have been able to hide this sort of thing in your daily interactions well enough to avoid getting taken away by the men in white coats.
Realistically, I'm going to guess that you're actually a pretty normal guy with a little difficulty in getting your thoughts across. I realize that I must sound like a terrible troll here, so I'm sorry if that was a bit harsh but perhaps you could take a step back and take an objective look at the tone you're communicating? It comes across sounding like the narrator in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_3gLnZqcs That's exactly what I'm imagining when I read these posts.
From what I've heard, I concur that the War on Drugs, is probably causing more harm than good.
That said, the goal of precluding human suffering from abusive drug use is still a worthy one IMO. I'd rather see the funding for the war on drugs flowing into alternative approaches to discouraging drug abuse, rather than waiting for addicts to flame out and die. They are indeed addicts and many will never become anything more. But there was a time when they had value to society, and potential to become more. It's still a waste when they are consumed by their addiction.
Perhaps I could have addictive tendencies myself. I don't know, I've never tried addictive substances (though I am pretty strongly attached to my hobbies). Maybe the only thing keeping me from falling to pieces is that I was informed of the negative potential there and decided that the fun of trying it out wasn't really worth tempting fate. Maybe legalizing the drugs, then shifting the funding to drug use discouragement (educating/informing the public) rather than law enforcement would be a better combination.
Agreed, people play games in different ways. There was a time when I would take every opportunity to shoot every scientist in the face just to see what would happen.
But when the game is doing a good job I settle into it. I wonder what my character would be feeling. I look where the game wants me to look, because I want to extract maximum value from the game with the short time I have with it before I get back to work. I'm not always actively looking to break the game. I get that jaffe doesnt like storytelling in games and/or wishes it could be done better. I'm already enjoying it and I want more of it.
Heck, multiplayer is all about gameplay and I don't give a damn about multiplayer modes because there's no story to unwrap (with a few exceptions of games with story nuggets in the multiplayer which are able to coax me online).
There's also a combined gift and estate tax lifetime exclusion of up to $1mil, so he'll still be ok.
A simpler example for a situation where taxes could liquidate the house is one where there the parents already had a huge outstanding tax liability at the time of their death, and no other assets to liquidate to extinguish that tax liability but the house. But the house would never really be given to the son if the estate/trustee was paying attention.
The rich benefit FAR more from society than anyone else.
That business depends on roads so that trucks can make it to customers to make the sales that made that rich guy rich.
The schools educate the employees that work for the rich guy so that he can have a successful business.
The courts protect his business from vendors and customers blowing off contracts at will, so that he can have a stable business environment to make money in.
The police protect him and his money, from simply being carried off whenever someone pleases.
The army protects him from other armies. He doesn't need to pay for his private army to protect him and his wealth from bandits and angry mobs.
Without getting into technical details, in the general case, and under 2011 tax law, a married couple can waive paying federal tax on up to $500k($250k exclusion each) of realized gains on your house. Even if the parents had 0 basis on the house, the maximum realized gain would be $500k, so they don't have to pay anything on that.
Further, the son will take that property with a basis at fair market value(step-up in basis, see link below), i.e he'll have a full $500k basis in that house. It could appreciate to $750mil and he'd still pay no taxes when selling it.
The summary is wrong. The article isn't claiming that EBITDA is falling (which would imply that profits are being reduced). It's claiming that EBITDA/margins/ are falling (i.e that EBITDA as a percentage of revenue is falling).
So it's as you described, they're selling more, at a lower margin, to get a higher overall profit.
Go home and work on your own game. Keep it simple, and polished. If you don't know how to do something, find out how and do it (game developers wear many hats). The resulting game is your resume to get into the gaming industry. It doesn't need to be a widespread hit, just a working example of what you are capable of, both in terms of technical prowess, and in terms of personal passion for the work.
Yes, that means working all day and all night, but that's the kind of work/life balance you're looking for anyway, since it's what you'll have for the first several years working your way up.
The difference between PC and console gaming has always been "control".
Hardware doesn't matter, software doesn't matter, it's who chooses what goes where. On PCs, users have full control to install or tweak hardware and software(even changing the games themselves through mods). On consoles, it's up to the manufacturer. Giving users access to hardware upgrades would erode the difference between PC and console, but it wouldn't eliminate it.
There are obvious advantages to both approaches. I'd like for consoles and PCs to stay separate so that I can continue to enjoy the advantages of each.
Slashdot Mirror
*spoilers*
By now I'm guessing nobody else will be reading this article so:
The photo was taken on Rannoch, the Quarian homeworld, where they evolved with a weak immune system since virtually all of the germs on the planet were either harmless or they had a symbiotic relationship with Quarians. The game notes that quarians would take time to fully re-adapt to the quarian homeworld, but brief exposure would not necessarily be fatal. (She'd already survived suit exposure via gunshot, and extended...contact with Shepard by this point).
The photo becomes available to the player immediately after the player finishes Shepard's mission to Rannoch, the player just has to talk to Tali after the mission, at which time she tells him/her to go see what she left in his/her room.
I was surprised to find out that people were upset about this. I actually liked getting a photo instead of an in-game rendering. They were able to present this secret in a special way and an intimate private context in their relationship. I mean, Shepard's already seen her face, so seeing Tali's face in-game might be special to the player, but it wouldn't be a significant event to Shepard in the game's context. This way, they set it up to mean something to both Shepard, Tali, and the player at the same time. The fact that the picture could even be taken in that spot was an acknowledgement of a very significant thing Shepard had just done for her, so framing that moment in a picture makes for a very special memento for Shepard to thank him for it.
Besides, while ME3's faces looks much better than the previous iterations, I still think the photo looked better.
(I also noticed that in ME1 and ME2, Shepard was the player's avatar, but in ME3, the game sets up Shepard as a separate character that has his/her own emotional responses unprompted by the player. It bothered me a little at first to have them decide what Shepard is feeling, but I got used to it.
She was in a place where she could take off her mask and not die. If you've seen the picture in-game, you should know what place I'm talking about. The game spends quite a lot of time in this place, and talking about why it's so significant.
Also, she's taken her mask off in the past without dying, she just takes risks when she does so. She got some sniffles but not much else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_curse
On a related note, one of the problems plaguing the the poorer parts of the continent is rampant corruption. Efforts to improve conditions are sabotaged by corruption and greed. You can't feed the starving if the food is just being taken by the government and sold off for profit, or if warlords roll in and take the food from the mouth of the starving. You can't even build businesses without rule of law. You need order. But you can't have order if you have incompetent and powerless governance, and where can you get competent administrators and staff if the country is poor and lacking in education? The problems plaguing the poor parts of Africa overlap each other, and efforts to improve one area are hamstrung without matching improvements in another area.
There is easy access to wealth in the exploitation of natural resources there, and industrialized nation provide ravenous demand. The "blessing" of natural resources becomes a curse since creates conditions that tempt those in power away from pushing for fundamental growth. It's much easier to get rich by just selling resources and property than to build a comparatively high-risk, low-margin, business. So instead greed wins out, and those who would try to make Africa better off are swarmed under by corruption all around them.
What's even worse is that this DRM only affects paying customers.
Pirates don't care about DRM, it's already been bypassed so it has no effect on them. Years from now when they take down their online authentication servers, the paying customers can't play anymore, only the pirates can.
Also, when they split out on-disc DLC and try to wring more money from the customer after release day, the pirates still get all of that on release day. The pirates even get early access to a lot of games before the official street dates.
To cut down on piracy they should take initiatives to reward those that pay instead. Give them all of the advantages listed above that pirates get to enjoy to start with. Then focus energies on finding ways they can reward customers over what pirates enjoy. Like multiplayer rewards for ongoing customers, added online privileges, sharing loot between friends. Small perks with little value individually, but they can add up to form an advantage for paying. The "stick" clearly isn't working, so try some "carrot". These aren't even good ideas, I'm sure they could come up with much better possibilities if they focus their creative energies in this direction instead.
There's a lot of ways. I was asking that anon if he knew of specifics so I could follow-up if there was any actual situation to deal with, but it is definitely true that there is a lot of room for play within GAAP. Cash is actually relatively low risk in most industries because it's easily tracable through banks, but in casinos a lot of it is on-hand, so it's a high-risk area of audit in this industry.
Revenue and expense are just accounting concepts that are easier to play with since a lot of them have to do with estimates. For example, you should expense a building over the course of it's useful life. But what is the useful life of a building? Management gets to say if the $3m building will be useful for 30 years ($100k expense per year), or 10 years ($300k expense per year), and they even get to change up that estimate partway through if they can convince auditors that they have a reasonable basis for doing so.
A recent well known example: Lehman brothers hid their financial health behind repo 105 transactions which their auditors gave a pass for being "in line with GAAP", which was arguably true. However, the E&Y auditors are also obligated to consider whether the financials fairly represents the company, and they are in hot water for giving them a pass on repo 105.
Do you know of any specific examples of fraud or non-GAAP financial reporting? Even if you only know of rumors or hearsay, I would like to know.
Well to put this in perspective, while Tropicana AC's (a.k.a "East") Net revenues was $279m, their operating income was only $2.3m after operating expenses are deducted.
So no, Tropicana AC's management definitely does feel a $6m hit. It's not a lot of money compared to consolidated net revenues of $623m. However, on a consolidated level, Tropicana entertainment had a net loss of $2.8m.
Bear in mind that Tropicana AC had also gone through a bankruptcy reorganization in March 2010.
A $6m hit still stings them considerably when margins run tight. Atlantic City in general has not been doing well over the past few years due to the recession. While house odds are in their favor, they're not wildly in their favor, so to make money they need lots of people playing a lot of lot of rounds. When attendance drops, their operating costs can't be cut as quickly, they do have unionized employees.
All of this information can be found on their latest 10-K: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1476246/000144530512000602/a20111231-10k.htm#s18F7C3BC4B5443E4BDFBC1717B852C6C
What bothers me is wondering what sort of changes in the weather can be expected during the rest of the year after such an unusually warm winter. As mentioned, there is very little data, perhaps nothing at all, or perhaps even more bizarre weather will follow. As a layman, I have no idea, but I imagine that having strange weather for a full season will have residual effects somewhere.
It's a pretty good movie, I second the recommendation.
I also recommend that you do not do any kind of research into this movie, and watch it cold. It's a better experience with no spoilers from trailers and the like.
Let's not get carried away. While Star Trek has had awesome stories, and been a great source of inspiration for decades, it has also shoveled out crap like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQA-06kSLU&feature=related
As a fan of star trek, I watch these episodes and just laugh these scenes off. New audiences going to see the new star trek movie would not respond so kindly to Star Trek's fondness for periodically flying up it's own ass with their plot lines and themes. They did a good job of turning the franchise into something watchable, and ensuring that it will still have a future. After getting all the set-up out of the way in the first movie of the reboot, they have room to expand and develop more thoughtful material in subsequent iterations and manifestations.
http://www.cbiz.com/page.asp?pid=8438
To clarify GP's post, It's not actually based on GAAP, but on a tax basis. Companies track both GAAP and tax basis accounting. GAAP is for for financial presentation (they must be kept consistent with everyone else's financial presentation, i.e generally accepted accounting principles), and 1 book for tax purposes (kept consistent with U.S tax treatments). However, with regard to the calculation of accumulated earnings vs. retained earnings, they are nearly the same thing.
The law he's referring to is detailed in the link above. You can simply google for more authoritative literature, but I'm linking this article because the authoritative literative is gobbledy-gook unless you have time to digest it. This article explains it in layman's terms.
The tax on accumulated earnings on C-Corp is to avoid having them being used as a means of deferring income tax for their owners. But since companies may need to build up cash for big undertaking, there is an exception: Most companies dodge the accumulated earnings by demonstrating to the IRS that they have a plan for how they will use all that cash buildup to grow their business. Slashdot has discussed this subject many times since the death of Steve Jobs, "Where do they go from here?". They are conceding that they can't think of any new projects that would require so much cash, so they are releasing some.
IAACPA
All major public accounting firms have 60hour minimum work-weeks for Jan-April ("busy season") every year. If you enter only 58h during a week, there will be a follow-up inquiry on monday morning for why you missed your quota by 2 hours. This is only a minimum, you are also expected to be available to work all nights and all weekends. Further, such work conditions are not restricted to busy season, and the majority of employees should expect these conditions for at least 6 mo. of the year.
It just becomes the new normal. A 60-hour week becomes a treasured vacation, you get to go home and eat with your family, maybe even talk to them a little before bed. When the hours creep up to 70, 80, and beyond, you have no choice but to eat at your laptop in a conference room with the rest of the team, get home after everyone is already asleep, then wake up and leave before they wake up. Hopefully you can work from home on the weekends and at least have breakfast with your family.
Can hardly complain when I see some clients who have it worse though. SVP of Finance hasn't left the office in 4 days. The finance department just collapses onto a couch for a few hours a day.
These work conditions are demanded by the market. There are set filing dates for public companies, and they, as well as their auditors from the public accounting firms, need to work to match those deadlines. The client I mentioned above missed their filing deadline and filed for a 1 week extension. Their stock price fell by 10% that day.
It's just accepted. This is standard industry practice, and everyone is expected to suffer through it for years, because public accounting experience is the most rapid way to accelerate a career in accounting. Ultimately everyone hopes to leave for private accounting after accumulating 3-6 years of public accounting experience. Nobody was forced to take jobs in this line of work, everyone chooses to give up 3-6 years of their life for the promise of a better life when they can someday quit and take an advanced private accounting position. I hate my life during these stretches of insanity, and I definitely wish I could work more reasonable hours. But like everyone else in public accounting, we take on these ridiculous hours because we know it's the best way to move our career forward. I fantasize about quitting all the time, but I need to make as much money as possible so that I can take care of my family. If I give up early so that I can have it easier, my family won't be able to afford the same kind of lifestyle. I wish I was more clever, or had some valuable talent that would allow me to make a lot of money with a more reasonable workweek, but that's just not the case. In a few years, I will be able to have time with them, and I'll have the money to take care of them. We're all just chasing the American Dream I guess.
An easy way to make a complex password and different password for each site is to:
1) L33t the name of the site
2) capitalize the 4th letter
3) Extend to 10 character minimum with "a", ending on 1.
Examples:
sl@sHdota1
b@nK0f@m3r1c@
g00G13aaa1
Obviously, they are asked to choose their own parameters for step 2 and 3 so their passwords are individualized.
It's effectively 1 password to remember, that you use all the time. But now you have 10-char minimum passwords, with numbers, letters, symbols, and capitalization. It's also unique for every website, and you're given a reminder of your password everytime before you log in. All you actually need to remember is 3 easy steps. 1) L33t it 2) Capitalize "(num)", 3) Minimum 10, or else add "(char)", end on 1.
(Further, increment the last number as needed when passwords expire and you're required to enter a new one).
Obviously I don't use the steps above or else I wouldn't be posting it, I just use a variant that achieves similar effects.
1) For reviews that are not paid for, see www.giantbomb.com. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for refusing to bow to pressure to raise his review score on a game which was paying Gamespot for advertising. 3 others eventually followed him to Giantbomb. They've given bad reviews even games from their friends on several occassions. The one time where they felt they could not stay objective they abstained from reviewing the game (Bastion).
2) Giantbomb doesn't care what publishers think about them. Giantbomb doesn't choose to review every game in existence, just the ones they feel matter enough for them to play. If the publishers don't want to send a review copy, GB just buys one after release and puts out a review later. If a gamer can't wait until after release to find out whether a game is good or not, then a bad game is just part of the risk for jumping in early.
3) They have 30-60min "quicklooks" to demonstrate games. They either go in cold, or have saves prepared to show off parts of the game they feel you should see. Either way, it's unedited gameplay with ad-libbed commentary, you can just watch these and judge for yourself.
You sound like the crazy Anonymous poster I love to hear from so much, a quick review of your post history seems to support this. I love the stream-of-thought presentation in your writings, the sprinklings of "::", "/", extraneous comma delimited descriptors, and mash-up lingo provide a window into into your special world view where hyper-paranoia has overwhelmed the senses such that it all comes spilling across the page in a frenzy of rage against the machine. It's like high-pressure crazy has concentrated all those disparate fears of the system until those thoughts all start to run together. It's like the Time-Cube guy redux. Heh, I kind of hope that you keep this up, I really enjoy reading these.
I would like to listen to a podcast or youtube channel, because I really want to hear what these thoughts sound like when spoken out loud. Maybe you sound completely normal in everyday conversation. I have to imagine that would be the case since it seems that you're employed and must have been able to hide this sort of thing in your daily interactions well enough to avoid getting taken away by the men in white coats.
Realistically, I'm going to guess that you're actually a pretty normal guy with a little difficulty in getting your thoughts across. I realize that I must sound like a terrible troll here, so I'm sorry if that was a bit harsh but perhaps you could take a step back and take an objective look at the tone you're communicating? It comes across sounding like the narrator in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_3gLnZqcs That's exactly what I'm imagining when I read these posts.
From what I've heard, I concur that the War on Drugs, is probably causing more harm than good.
That said, the goal of precluding human suffering from abusive drug use is still a worthy one IMO. I'd rather see the funding for the war on drugs flowing into alternative approaches to discouraging drug abuse, rather than waiting for addicts to flame out and die. They are indeed addicts and many will never become anything more. But there was a time when they had value to society, and potential to become more. It's still a waste when they are consumed by their addiction.
Perhaps I could have addictive tendencies myself. I don't know, I've never tried addictive substances (though I am pretty strongly attached to my hobbies). Maybe the only thing keeping me from falling to pieces is that I was informed of the negative potential there and decided that the fun of trying it out wasn't really worth tempting fate. Maybe legalizing the drugs, then shifting the funding to drug use discouragement (educating/informing the public) rather than law enforcement would be a better combination.
Agreed, people play games in different ways. There was a time when I would take every opportunity to shoot every scientist in the face just to see what would happen.
But when the game is doing a good job I settle into it. I wonder what my character would be feeling. I look where the game wants me to look, because I want to extract maximum value from the game with the short time I have with it before I get back to work. I'm not always actively looking to break the game. I get that jaffe doesnt like storytelling in games and/or wishes it could be done better. I'm already enjoying it and I want more of it.
Heck, multiplayer is all about gameplay and I don't give a damn about multiplayer modes because there's no story to unwrap (with a few exceptions of games with story nuggets in the multiplayer which are able to coax me online).
There's also a combined gift and estate tax lifetime exclusion of up to $1mil, so he'll still be ok.
A simpler example for a situation where taxes could liquidate the house is one where there the parents already had a huge outstanding tax liability at the time of their death, and no other assets to liquidate to extinguish that tax liability but the house. But the house would never really be given to the son if the estate/trustee was paying attention.
The rich benefit FAR more from society than anyone else.
That business depends on roads so that trucks can make it to customers to make the sales that made that rich guy rich.
The schools educate the employees that work for the rich guy so that he can have a successful business.
The courts protect his business from vendors and customers blowing off contracts at will, so that he can have a stable business environment to make money in.
The police protect him and his money, from simply being carried off whenever someone pleases.
The army protects him from other armies. He doesn't need to pay for his private army to protect him and his wealth from bandits and angry mobs.
Not in this scenario.
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p523/ar02.html#en_US_2010_publink1000200711
Without getting into technical details, in the general case, and under 2011 tax law, a married couple can waive paying federal tax on up to $500k($250k exclusion each) of realized gains on your house. Even if the parents had 0 basis on the house, the maximum realized gain would be $500k, so they don't have to pay anything on that.
Further, the son will take that property with a basis at fair market value(step-up in basis, see link below), i.e he'll have a full $500k basis in that house. It could appreciate to $750mil and he'd still pay no taxes when selling it.
http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/126098.html
IAACPA. (Albeit, a financial accountant, not a tax accountant:P)
The summary is wrong. The article isn't claiming that EBITDA is falling (which would imply that profits are being reduced). It's claiming that EBITDA /margins/ are falling (i.e that EBITDA as a percentage of revenue is falling).
So it's as you described, they're selling more, at a lower margin, to get a higher overall profit.
Work any job to get food and rent.
Go home and work on your own game. Keep it simple, and polished. If you don't know how to do something, find out how and do it (game developers wear many hats). The resulting game is your resume to get into the gaming industry. It doesn't need to be a widespread hit, just a working example of what you are capable of, both in terms of technical prowess, and in terms of personal passion for the work.
Yes, that means working all day and all night, but that's the kind of work/life balance you're looking for anyway, since it's what you'll have for the first several years working your way up.
The difference between PC and console gaming has always been "control".
Hardware doesn't matter, software doesn't matter, it's who chooses what goes where. On PCs, users have full control to install or tweak hardware and software(even changing the games themselves through mods). On consoles, it's up to the manufacturer. Giving users access to hardware upgrades would erode the difference between PC and console, but it wouldn't eliminate it.
There are obvious advantages to both approaches. I'd like for consoles and PCs to stay separate so that I can continue to enjoy the advantages of each.
What's wrong with waving hello?