I think you are right here. I was a full-time EMT and a volunteer firefighter. EVERY fire district throughout the nation is different. At my fire station, we were on call 24 hours a day and were only required to show up if we could, since we were volunteers.

As an EMT, when I went home that pager was turned off. I just spent the whole goddamn day seeing nasty shit, and they can go to hell if they were to require us to be on call. We were already extremely overworked and I highly doubt the union would allow it. Basically - At the station = "On-call." At home = "Go to hell, you have guys at the station."

"When they were no longer able to shape demand, then they failed because they were unprepared for what people actually wanted to buy." That is exactly what the person who you were replying to was trying to prove. They failed because the customers didn't want what they were trying to sell.

You are very much missing the point. People take pride in the smallest of things. It is all relative. I only used the Marines as an example.

I think that the the person who you replied to has a different type of mindset; one which is not too uncommon. If they had to work so hard for something, then it should not be handed so easily to those who don't put in nearly amount of effort. What was once difficult becomes easy for the newcomers due to the changes in the game. It basically boils down to a matter of pride.

The only thing I can compare this to is the Marine Corps. I was punched, kicked, tackled, thrown, slammed on a table repeatedly, forced to drink water until everyone in the platoon puked, etc... not to mention the mental abuse. I've never been punched in the face until I joined the Marine Corps. BTW, I joined in 2002 (I don't care if you believe or not, that shit still happens).

It would upset me if someone is handed that Eagle, Globe, and Anchor for doing anything less.

It is a much more... less PC... way of thinking. It has more to do with pride, and "I had to go through this bullshit in order to acquire whatever, so you should have to do the same.... blah blah blah."

I'm not saying that you are wrong, I'm just trying to point out a possible explanation to why people might get upset when someone who does far less work achieves something much easier than the work that they put into it. I'm sure many people could relate to this in many different situations. (I don't play WoW btw).

I am in the same position as the OP. I'm not able to afford college (even community college) anymore, but was just recently in school up until a few weeks ago. I would have loved to have some sort of computer club, or at the very least an IT organization available. Unfortunately, they didn't have any such thing at my "technical school", and the only way to get one would be to start my own. That could be one option, but as it was for me, might be way more than you could handle. I haven't looked in a few months, but I was not able to find any sort of local computer club that is designed for beginning programmers to help mentor, etc. Surprisingly, my school (and where I live) is about 5 miles from the Microsoft campus. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I couldn't find anything that wasn't an internship or didn't involve one of the large universities around here. Like the previous advice given, I figure the best way is to join some sort of open source project. Good luck!

I'm not sure if this is a recent change, but I use T-Mobile in the US and am able to send text messages up to 1000 characters. I confirmed this a few days ago by texting my wife (also uses T-Mobile). I used all 1000 characters and she received the entire text in one message. I don't remember being able to send such large messages in the past, so perhaps this is somewhat new.

Ironically, people install NoScript for the specific reason of not trusting others on the internet.

SO be it. Give them what they want. Take down all music related content everywhere that isn't on their own sites. That means: Discussion boards about their music, Fan sites about their music, album reviews, links to amazon, etc. All of it.

Boycott these people up the wazoo... and just to make it fun... pick on someone specific to make and example of them.

What will there be to boycott then? Nothing...

I agree with you. Those unfortunate fools don't realize what they are doing to themselves.

How the hell did this woman's DNA get on ALL of these cotton swabs?

Pencils are dangerous as well. My friend got stabbed multiple times with a pencil (in the eye too) in Jr. High School. Surprisingly, the school still allows pencils to be used. I am going to write my local school board to suggest that they remove any pointy objects from all schools. Perhaps they can replace pencils with cute and fuzzy bunnies.

Read or completed? I currently have about 10 or more partially read books on my nightstand right now. Not to mention school textbooks that I have to read, other books I grab off of the bookshelf to rotate on my nightstand, books online, and always more new books. I just bought two more a couple of days ago. I love reading, but I just can't finish a book. I tend to get bored very easily. I'll start finishing them some day.