Fuck everything, we're doing 7 cores!

Well, I fear you may have shortchanged yourself. It makes for a more enjoyable, and often more productive, college experience to be surrounded by peers with similar interests and motivation.

Now, I do believe that if you're sufficiently motivated you can learn what you need to be productive/successful just about anywhere, assuming you at least have reasonable resources to learn. But part of the whole college experience would ideally be, well, collegial. Doesn't sound like you're getting much of that. Good luck in your studies.

With all due respect, then your classmates probably shouldn't be in college. I don't think kids are getting that much dumber. There have always been dumb or more often just unmotivated kids, but in the past fewer of them went to college. Some institutions have lowered the bar because undergraduate education is profitable for them.

As someone who teaches at a top institution, the kids I see there are coming in at least as prepared in all subjects as 20 years ago. Maybe some differences in independence and work ethic, but not in overall literacy, math skills, etc. There are still plenty of smart US kids out there.

I believe the logical conclusion is that the GP is a woman.

That would have been voted higher, but it's only funny in Boston.

Huh? I'm definitely not eating off your dishes.

The key is the probability of a Toyota Yaris exploding while traveling at 100 mph? Wait, what were we talking about?

Well, I can say that workstations from the big boys may be even better made today than 10 years ago, but we're talking $3k to $6k computers. I've had recent Dell, Lenovo, and HP workstations and they're all very well put together. They're even pretty easy to access to add cards, RAM, drives, etc., which had not been a strength of Dell workstations in the past in particular (lots of strange cabling, plastic pieces you had to snap off and couldn't snap back on properly, sharp corners, etc.).

It isn't so hard to understand that when they're trying to assemble a reasonably performing PC for $500 that they're going to cut some corners to save a few bucks, is it? When you build your own computer, you're usually going to choose better components than you get in a commodity Dell. They have higher quality power and capacitors, which I think is where the cheap ones usually fail.

But with a little shopping, you can find a decent quad core desktop for $500. If it's not mission critical, how can you complain too much about that? If it goes out in a couple of years, replace it with a faster crappy $500 computer. It makes more sense than paying $1000 for one that will last twice as long, unless you can't tolerate the down time.

Come on, they're still great. I think they've had a great track record of merging a real-time action game with an interesting story line. Granted, the Halo story is not nearly as flushed out, quirky, and just downright brilliant as the Marathon series. And I still have never had more fun playing multi than the LAN Marathon 2 tournaments we had in grad school. Perhaps some of that was the time and that FPS multi was still so new...

But I think they transitioned quite gracefully from the Marathon games in which most of the story had to be told from text-based console interactions into one which was largely told through in-game action and cut scenes. I think it limits to some degree what you can do with the story in terms of detail, and most console (or even PC maybe) gamers are just not going to have the patience anymore to read a bunch of rantings from a deranged AI anymore...

What do you mean change? Regardless of what you think of Microsoft or his role in it, he's been one of the most philanthropic guys for the past two decades and has long had plans to give away the majority of his fortune. He's just only recently begun to talk a lot about it, perhaps because he's been convinced that his voice is an asset to the cause in addition to the money, perhaps because he enjoys the celebrity, perhaps both. But the giving of mucho dinero is nothing new.

But isn't this just a technicality. That only helps if Activision tries to sell off IW. But it still doesn't help the people who don't work for IW anymore. They (former IW staff) still wouldn't own any IP, right?

I'm sure they all made a lot of money from the original deal. When you make a deal with the devil...

Not sure they've learned their lesson, as now they're making deals with probably a worse devil (EA). Guess you need funding from somewhere. They better hope they get good lawyers to draw up their agreement.

You've got to be kidding me. Because he sat on the board in the past he's never allowed to build a competing device? What kind of twisted logic is that? Unless you're drinking the cool-aid enough to believe they violated Apple's IP, which from what I can tell is pretty ridiculous. Do you think he used insider information while on the board to design the product? The Android platform came out several years after iPhone, so I'm not seeing a big advantage here. No evil in my book, at least not for this.

The goal, although you can certainly argue that they haven't achieved it to a significant level with their current devices, is to build a mobile device platform that is more open than existing platforms. I care about that to some degree, but what attracts me much more to the Android platform over Apple (will be coming from WM, not iPhone) is the wider array of hardware options (HW KB, etc.), the ability to exchange the battery, and the ability to exchange memory cards. The battery issue is pretty much a deal-breaker for me, and I know you can get external batteries but that's just not a very good option to me. The memory issue is slightly less of a big deal, but right now, I love being able to carry a tiny micro-SD USB adapter on my key chain such that if I want to quickly get music, pictures, PDF's, etc on my phone, I don't need to have a cable.

Plus, when I'm in the airport, I have a huge issue now finding a plug for my laptop. Why? I'd say 75% of the plugs are taken up by teenagers and twenty-somethings (maybe the occasional old fart) charging their iPhones on layovers, etc. I travel with two spare batteries for my phone, and two for my notebook. The reason I need two notebook batteries is that I can't depend on being able to plug it in anymore. (Obligatory "get off my lawn" comment here, if you wish).

So, that answer seems a bit glib, perhaps to be expected from your user name. The unit comes with an AC adapter, correct? So, is there a DC accessory, are you using an inverter, is the output of the wall wart 12V such that you can just cut it off and wire it directly to the auto DC power? Because your answer suggests that you have not actually done what you describe.

My bulllshit detector went off on that one. I've not encountered an auto tranny that didn't feel like it was engaging the actual transmission, and we test drove a lot of cars just last year. Do you have a link? Maybe your car is that way, but I have a hard time believing "a lot of vehicles" are currently designed that way.

I'd more believe that the car locks the shifter than it not having a true shifter.

Yeah, I'm sure you make fewer mistakes than a computer. That's such a ridiculous argument. In most cases, the errors are human, not computer. They are design errors. I'm willing to bet that mechanical failures are more common than computer/electronic ones.

The complexity of modern cars certainly makes strange problems like this more likely, but overall car safety has improved dramatically from stability, traction control, and impact standpoints. And most of this would not be possible without computers controlling/modifying acceleration, tire spin, steering, and air bag deployment.