Please mod this question up - I wanted to ask it also.

I literally just purchased $110 (minus $.02) of video games from steam yesterday after browsing titles on TPB to see what was popular. The first one was plastered with "BUY NOW" everywhere as though you could buy it and play it, and then I didn't realize until afterward it was just a preorder. (BF3). Then I bought the GTA collection and had to go through a mountain of arcane technical hassle with windows marketplace (after buying on steam) just to be able to save games in gta4.

Also the collection included two games I've already paid for in the past, but whatever.

Those artifical losses due to piracy numbers can suck it.

Then for your paranoid sake, stay the hell away from Javascript! Actually... you'd better stay away from computers all together. Just back away slowly, and get a friend to unplug it for you. If you don't have any friends, just set the house on fire and you'll make some new ones pretty quick.

It's called HipHop for PHP. Facebook made it and it's been out for two years now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_for_PHP

Look, I haven't read any Harry Potter books or seen any of the movies, but even *I* know what a muggle is! God forbid you try to look it up yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggle

You know you can receive money at multiple addresses and manage them all with the same wallet, right?

AGREED - I was jarred by this headline, then followed it with a heavy groan when I realized what was actually meant.

Say what you mean, mean what you say...

Go ask any fresh high school graduate what Pi *means*, not the numerical expression of it, then tell me that schools aren't completely broken. The numerical illiteracy in this country would be shocking if it wasn't so ordinary. Do kids really need to waste that time in the broken schools to achieve such ignorance?

If you know anything about Woz, you'd know that he has zero influence on Apple's legal activities. Just because he's a celebrity and collects a check doesn't mean he actually works for them or tells them what to do. He's admitted in many different ways he just wants to build and hack, not run a company.

Here's what it has to do with what you wrote: Electronic assignments are a highly effective, real-world means of letting kids know what they have to do. The entire institution of academia seems to support bad teaching. I've had plenty of bad teachers at each different school I've been to from kindergarten to university. So if that's the case, then why NOT have a simple policy to defend against the bad teachers they harbor and give the kids a break?

*That's* kids learning to take responsibility. The alternative is learning to take inadequate behavior from adults who have an audience that's forced by law to be there.

In the school where I picked up habits, there was no consistency as to how homework was assisgned. Sometimes it would be written on the board. Sometimes it would be given verbally. Sometimes it would be given verbally after the bell had rung and all the students were shuffling out of their chairs. I can't even count the number of times I would appear to class and be shocked to find out work had been assigned and was now due. I grew to start off every morning knowing that anything could go wrong and I would be punished for it. I became hypervigilant and excruciatingly literal at following directions.

And what I got for that? More punishment. I got called to the front of the class and humiliated for heading a paper the way I had been taught previous years. I repeatedly got in trouble for doing what I was told, not what the teacher meant. I was afraid to talk to the teachers because they made it clear I was on the losing side of their authority.

Basically all I learned in school was that the generation before me was intellectually lazy, stubborn, angry, and punitive. Holding their hands to help them perform basic computer operation has only lowered my opinion of them. I learned not only to take responsibility for myself, but for the shortcomings of others and the miseducation they forced upon me as a kid. Those are not good lessons to be had.

Oh yeah... but giving assignments electronically? That's *really* gonna mess kids up /sarcasm

I don't know if that's really the analogy you want to go with. Sherman tanks were light, fast, and highly capable. But as far as protecting the crew inside? Look up why they were nicknamed "Ronson".

As I see it, the military works for the people, but are controlled by congress, who are supposed to be working for the people, but have been corrupted and now work for the 1%. I don't see the military as victims because it's voluntary service, and I don't see them as neutral because they get blown up and shot at a lot more than most lines of honest work.

Uh oh... did I just imply that the military is honorable? Here it comes...

(joke) I think we can all agree that the lawyer is the villain, and that he will prosecute you and me both for assault and theft respectively, taking all the money in the process while everyone else starves.
(serious) I directly know a handful of people in the legal industry who I respect and appreciate very much, as well as others that I don't know personally.