I don't have any mod points, but someone please mod this way up.

My wife and I are both teachers, and the number one problem we run into is parent apathy and/or values. All the folks in this discussion blaming teachers don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's not our training, it's not our unions, it's the parents. Parent who commute 2 hrs each way just to put food on the table don't have time to sit down with their kid and help with homework, let alone instill in the child the VALUE of doing the homework. Parents are either too busy chasing a dollar or chasing tail (look at the high divorce rate) or playing WoW or whatnot...to teach their children manners, respect, and the value of education.

So, take the average middle school child. He sees on TV and in magazines the high value we place on athletes and whores (Paris Hilton, etc) and pimps and gangsters (watch a movie, any movie), he sees how lavishly they live and the coin they make..... Compare that to the teacher he sees every day wearing crappy clothing because we can't afford any, he sees the crappy car we drive, pictures of the crappy homes we live in.... If there's no moderating influence at home, there simply will be no respect for teachers and education in general. Of course that directly translates into receiving a poor education.

But go ahead, blame us teachers who could all be making better money in the private sector but opt not to in order to try and make a better world.

Emmerich is one of the worst directors in contemporary cinema. Please, the PTB need to keep him as far away from Foundation as humanly possible.

I use Google Voice in conjunction with Gizmo on my PC, and it works brilliantly for free, cell-phone free calling. So I guess now we need a Gizmo app to complete the circuit, no?

I have Kodak's Easyshare EX811, one of their earlier models, and like some of the above posters, it's simply shocking how poor the firmware is in the device. It's a real near miss. The tech is there, the hardware is there, but the software feels like shackles on the user. Surely there are folks smarter than I in the open source community who've come up with their own, better firmware. I tried to Google some, but came up empty.

Bazinga!

"...screeners get a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, strictly to keep weapons and explosives off planes, not to help police enforce other laws."

Hmm. Does this means it's ok now to carry my blow in my pocket when I fly home to visit the folks during Xmas? I'm tired of carrying it...up there.

"Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings."

Godzilla had the munchies?

"Oh Maggie, Maggie what did we do?"

I, too, blame Thatcher. Her legacy still stands strong. *sigh*

This is arguably the single stupidest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. Ugh. Congrats on such an acclaim.

Though Aliens was fun, Alien is far superior a film since it was a true Sci-Fi/Horror experience. If they can recapture that slow, moody fear of the first film, I'm in! But the second I see explosion after explosion and excessive gunplay in any trailer, I'm out.

Religious nuts who believe in the necessity of an Armageddon/Apocalypse/Second Coming/End of Days are infinitely more dangerous than any robot.

I've tried the past week fews in beta to like this game, but it's just not happening. Here's why:

-the graphics are too "cutesy." Everything has a soft glow to it, from the login screen to the actual environments. Even the Asmodean (sp?) lands feel too Hello Kitty-ish.

-the mobs are also "cutesy." Wheres the menace? Killing cute little bunny-bear hybrids isn't very viscerally exciting.

-the combat animations are apocalyptic. My dagger hits a mob and things EXPLODE! Wow, what happen when I'm level 20 and I hit a mob with my dagger? The nearby village detonates?

-the sounds effects are "cutsey." When you click on damn near anything, you hear a little "twinkle" effect. From NPC givers to loot, I constantly hear Mario gathering stars. (Oh, not to mention the choral music in the beginning which is simply dreadful and music I think I heard 10 years ago in a Final Fantasy game).

-the battle/combat sounds are hilariously bad. Every time my female scout take damage, I hear a 5 yr old child scrape her knee. Again, where's the grit, the menace, where's the fact that I'M FIGHTING, not picking flowers?

Sorry, but these are all deal-breakers. You can add a good story onto this (which btw, I didn't see), you can add flying onto this (nothing new here, AO let you do this, what, almost 10 years ago?), you can add PvP on top of this (what, to hear LOTS of 5 yr old girls scraping their knees)...but the game will still look and sound the same.

There is almost NOTHING I liked about UO, EQ, DAOC, AO, AC, WoW, you name it, there is almost NOTHING aesthetically in common in Aion with those great games of the past

No thanks, Aion, I outgrew Link and Mario and Princess Peach's cuteness 20 years ago.

Try slacker.com, not sure if it works outside the US.

Yep. It's amazing folks can kid themselves into thinking Mario and Sonic were actually superior to the games we play today. Sorry, it's simple nostalgia.

So, we're supposed to just take the word of a former KGB operative-turned journalist that what he wrote in his notebooks is historical truth? Sorry, till a Western historian gets access to the KGB archives (I personally know a couple who have) and publishes their results in a peer-review, Western historical journal, I won't believe a word I read.