Well, I'm sure you know the reason - tradition. Turkeys are native to North America and surely figured largely into the original Thanksgiving feast we commemorate. I prefer to include venison as well, when it's available. Both need a little skill to prepare in a satisfying way. I can tell you the trick to a delicious turkey that isn't dry at all: raise it yourself and be sure to feed it liberally. This worked for us when I was a teenager, and produced incredibly good turkeys, several of which we sold. The only drawback was my brother not eating it because he "knew its name". Or you can deep-fry it, that has become popular in recent years. Personally I find turkey is best with bacon, cheese, etc. in a turkey club panini. But the tradition really is the point.

OMG, he's found Mel's Hole! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel's_hole ] But seriously, you are dead on, and I only wish I could be this direct with such people. Nice or not, I believe it's what he needs to hear.

sounds good, although you can get a fine bottle of 12 year old rum for that price here (Philippines). I only really drink non-coffee energy drinks when it's really hot or I'm driving and a shot of 5 Hour Energy is in order, which probably wouldn't be the time to try one of these.

caffeine and alcohol are a great combination. I'm living in a country where a popular drink, usually called a Boracay, is a mix of rum, milk, sugar, cocoa, and coffee. i guess that covers all the bases. Irish coffee is also quite nice. I think a little alcohol to loosen up the creative side, plus a lot of caffeine for the logical side, is a good way to get that initial boost into the right frame of mind for writing code. as for this Four Loko stuff, I think rum + Mt. Dew is close enough for me, and cheaper.

that might explain its arrival in Mexico, but the origin of the myth is in Puerto Rico, although it seems to be a modification of an old and less well-known Spanish myth about vampiric birds. This modern thing about dogs / coyotes with mange seems to be a result of someone seeing an ugly creature and calling it a 'Chupacabra' in south Texas, without having any idea what the original looked like - and the ensuing media frenzy picked that up and ran with it. It certainly didn't look like a canid, more like a short green humanoid alien with bright red eyes and spikes on its back, and one or two fangs for sucking blood.

you probably have and didn't know it - the original source was seaweed, but for a long time the main production was from wheat glutin, and now it is commercially produced by fermentation of various plant sugars.

dang, i was about to be all like "who the heck are the scientists 'warning', anyway?", and then you one-upped me. it wouldn't be funny now.

there really shouldn't be a Linux game market, just a game market. I know that's not likely to happen anytime soon and it wouldn't even make sense to most of the businessmen whose decisions could cause it to come about, but ideally there should be only one computer version of the game, alongside whatever console versions might be released. Computers have enough hardware in common, and the three major flavors of OS have some differences but they are not necessarily ones that affect games so much, at least now that most of the larger problems like graphics and sound are largely solved. Why make separate box versions for Windows and Mac when you can just put executables and installation systems for both in the same disc? With a little effort Linux can be added to that mix as well, as open source and indie games have proven - the game content itself is / should be platform independent anyway. It is my hope that in the future OS compatibility will just one of the bullets in the Compatibility section on the back of the box.

Steam for Linux would be like this if they made it, as Steam for Mac shows. If you buy the game for one OS, you can download and play it on the other as well (if it has a Mac version and supports "Steam Play"). I have no problem paying for games (other than having no money) and would pay full price, but it doesn't make sense to have different prices for different platforms. Id Software's games usually get a Linux port, and I've found that a great way to play them. Due to my GPU having been released before Nvidia's initiative to provide updated notebook video drivers, I simply cannot get new drivers for Windows (I dual boot). Since I do get the latest drivers for my Linux install, those games actually run much better in Linux for me - wish I could say the same for games running under Wine.

I realize it's unlikely and with Valve having opted not to get involved, any progress is likely to be slow, but Linux is an enjoyable operating system to use, even for gaming. Linux users pay full price for games all the time - they just usually have to play the games on a different platform unless they are made by Id or otherwise have a Linux port available. I agree that the game companies don't have much incentive to invest in cross-platform compatibility at this time, but as it slowly becomes easier and some companies start to do experiment with it, it will be interesting to see what the effects will be. Linux does have more to gain than the game companies do. The number one reason I hear from people who wanted to switch to Linux but decided not to is that they don't want to go without certain software which isn't available for Linux, be it games or things they need for work. It's hard to judge what effect more proprietary Linux software would have on things like market share. I'd love to find out, because once Linux has more market share, there would be more software available to me (so which comes first, the chicken or the egg? or will I get neither?). In the end, people just want the choice to use the software they like with the OS they prefer, and don't really like it that the reasons they sometimes can't are business reasons rather than technical ones. I may in fact be rambling now, so I'll leave it at that.

-Dan

this is true. saya belum lancar di bahasa Indonesia, but it is the simplest language i have yet encountered. I am told bahasa Malay is very close. I speak distantly related dialects from the Philippines, but they are much more complicated grammatically. on the other hand, you'll find that because of our history and way of thinking, Americans and westerners in general just don't like the idea of hacking up the spelling of loan words from other languages to fit our own simplified spelling and pronunciation. something about it just feels wrong. for example, in Tagalog, the word 'truck' has become 'trak'. Even worse, 'nurse' becomes 'nars'. it doesn't bother Filipinos of course because their language is built for that, like yours. but we find it inexplicably ridiculous. If you spell a word differently in English it's not the same word anymore, no matter how close it sounds. for example, 'beer' and 'bear' are closer in pronunciation than 'nurse' is to 'nars', and yet you can only drink one of them. i'm not sure if i can really explain why, other than that we think of a word primarily as a collection of letters, rather than sounds, that express an idea. it seems that the reverse is true for speakers of many Southeast Asian languages and elsewhere as well. so while it is clearly easier to learn as far as grammatical rules are concerned, you'll have to understand that it is still just as disorientingly foreign to us as English was to you.

I think the context of this poll is spoken human languages, so... yes! if you're referring to Basa Jawa (Javanese).

I got to mark 3, but only because I have been doing volunteer work in the southern Philippines for years. I'm the only native English speaker in my own house :) I do think that learning human languages and programming languages are very similar processes and require related skills. the only real difference is that instead of a compiler or interpreter, you have to speak your code and have it properly understood by a human to know you coded it right, and a human is more likely to laugh at you.

the taste is just as bad as the smell. guts got in my mouth once when i swatted one too enthusiastically. you must be / have been in southeast asia too - the millipedes are pretty impressive, though not scary. the ~10 inch centipedes, though, are the worst. one crawled into bed with someone i used to know and sent them to the hospital. can't believe how fast and aggressive they are.

and yet, for some reason, i love it here!

heck, i could give them actual cockroaches for free (plus shipping and handling)! way more lifelike that augmented reality and since the feeling of a cockroach crawling on you is much worse than just seeing one (trust me, i've woke up with them on my lips), I'm sure they would be more effective. That's assuming their strategy is to scare the poor patients to death, since dead people don't need counseling, unless it's from Bruce Willis. that seems to be what they're going for.

-dan

i had a Keyhole account before Google acquired them and rebranded their software as Google Earth. It was actually worth the $30, easily, but i was really happy when Google offered it for free because now i can easily use it as a way to encourage kids i volunteer with in the Philippines to learn geography.

this is a good answer. i found an Nvidia Geforce 8600 card via pricewatch for my dad's computer that has an hdmi port on it that would probably do for you if you don't want to pay a whole lot.. you can convert dvi to hdmi, but it's nice to have hdmi on the card itself because it can carry the audio also. on the other hand, it sounds like a PlayStation 3 would fit your requirements nicely.
-dan

yeah, i'll admit that python is the only calculator i use anymore, and i have gotten lazy enough to use it for a lot of things any really smart person would be able to compute mentally in a second or two. python is fun and makes sense to me.