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Comment Re:Reading the article..... (Score 2) 252

If people run torrents (the WoW updater) their connection is throttled. If they run WoW with a throttled connection, there is a problem. If they don't run WoW with a throttled connection, there is no problem.

Either way, the connection is throttled. It's just that if you don't play WoW during it you're less likely to notice.

Comment Re:Works as a game balancer too. (Score 1) 157

Keep an eye out for free to play games. These two are probably a different genre than you want, but League of Legends has a "first win" bonus, such that with 1-2 hours of play you'll have collected a big bonus and can't collect it again for another day. Bloodline Champions has a bonus pool that triples your earnings until you exhaust it, and that resets daily. It takes about an hour to work through that. You can still play the game afterwards for rewards and fun play, but exhausting that bonus makes for a nice stopping point.

I'd imagine some free to play MMO will pop up sooner or later that'll have a longer to achieve daily bonus (as MMOs tend to be slower paced than the above action games).

Comment Fast on the clicker (Score 2) 674

I didn't watch it all, but the thing I noticed was that, when Watson thought it had an answer, most of the time it'd click in first. The other contestants didn't have a chance to attempt to answer.

So Watson wins on reaction time, which isn't a surprise for a computer that knows exactly when it can first ring in. How would it have done with a human's reaction time on clicking, just answering on questions alone?

Comment Re:Cyclops, use your eyebeams! (Score 2, Interesting) 255

Maybe your frames are different, maybe you have a big nose, maybe your theater uses differently sized 3D glasses, who knows!

Come to think of it, if you use big framed glasses do they have a separate nosepiece? Mine are small, thin glasses, but the nosepiece adds extra space to them. It's not the glasses pressing into my face, it's the nosepiece on my nose.

If I ever go to another 3D showing, I'm tempted to take the lenses from the 3D glasses and attempt to make them into a clip-on. That'd solve the annoyance of the big frames and mean I only have to wear one pair of glasses!

Comment Haven't upgraded for a minor nitpick (Score 1) 261

This sounds like a nice feature. My flash and other processes don't crash on me often, but when they do they can be frustrating. There was one thing that kept me on firefox 3.5 rather than 3.6, though.

It's really silly, but.. when I use the autoscroll (middle click) and am slowly scrolling down through a page, I like to use the mousewheel to scroll faster occasionally, or back up a little bit, while the scroll is still moving. In 3.6 I found that moving the mousewheel canceled the autoscroll. This is also a problem because my mousewheel's a bit sensitive, so sometimes just brushing it would cancel autoscroll.

Anybody know if there's a way to change that behavior so mousewheel doesn't cancel autoscroll, or if it's been reverted in a later 3.6 release?

Comment Re:Very popular (Score 1) 136

I've had the same experience. The only people I used to talk to on it have moved to other IM services, and now it's just the occasional spammer. I don't really know why I keep it logged in.

My account's a 7-digit UIN starting with 9, haha. I must've had this account for around 10 years.

Comment It Just Disgusts Me (Score 2, Insightful) 419

Why is it that liberal's answer to every problem is to throw more money at it? Certainly if we cut all other spending to the bone we could fund individual tutors for every student, free laptops, massages, anything. The question is this: who's responsibility is it to ensure students work hard and strive to achieve excellence? THE PARENTS. Not the government. End of story.

No amount of government spending can make up for bad parenting. Entitlement spending is a deep, dark, bottomless hole.

Not only that, but forcing another year of high school on smart students seems like punishment. I'm sure most of us can recall horror stories of our own public education (if we're from the US and went to public school) and, at the time, wanted nothing more than to get the hell outta dodge. After all, if the public education system has failed, why force another year of it onto the students to "train" them? That sounds to me to seem more like the real problem in our society: Punish those who succeed.

If nothing else, he should be advocating less time in high school. Place them in accelerated programs and graduate them early, give them scholarships to university--anything--but get them out of the public education system as quickly as possible. After all, if the students are "brainy," chances are they're more well motivated and organized than their peers and need to be challenge. Only university can provide them with the challenge they need.

You're right, though. It does smack of the entitlement mindset. I think it's really rather disgusting, because the system is so broken and rewards mediocrity so much more that forcing extra time for "more training" isn't going to accomplish anything. I really don't think that the solution to a broken system is to say "Hey, we know it's not working, but just give us another year of your lives and we'll promise to make it better."

Yeah, that's really going to work.

Comment Re:Why Not? (Score 1) 706

I never said "school" was fun; I said "learning" was fun.

The discussion is specifically about doing well - and presumably learning - in school.

You have to change the schools until learning is fun.

Not only does this not make a difference, it's also something very few can afford.

Paying kids to read will not do anything in the long run other than make kids who won't move unless someone pays them.

Kids, like everyone else, do things that interest them without getting paid. If you want them to do something they don't want to - such as learn multiple tables - you use stick or carrot, reward - payment - or threat of punishment, as motivator. Payment usually works better.

So yes, paying kids to read is just fine. I liked to read, but there's plenty of people who liked to learn soccer or social skills instead. They are going to find reading boring, so either accept that they won't, or provide external motivation.

I want employees who are creative, who have incentive, and initiative.

I guess you'd better reward these traits then.

I don't want to have to pay them over and above for every little thing.

You don't want to pay them for doing those things, and they don't want to do those things, but they need money and you need someone to do them so you pay them and they do them. What, exactly speaking, do you want; that these people do things for your benefit without you having to return the favour?

Did you seriously mean your post to come accross as "I want people to work for me without getting paid, and indoctrinated for that end from early childhood"?

(And, yes, I've heard this already. "I want to get a bonus because I didn't take any sick days this year.")

Well, I'm sure he's learned his lesson about it being foolish to put in more effort than the minimum, since there's no reward for that.

Comment Isn't Google missing the point? (Score 4, Interesting) 202

I occasionally put websites together for small businesses and it seems increasingly hard to get these kinds of websites known. Google seems to be more and more indexing websites with lots of content and now with speedier response which will completely slant their rankings towards large companies with huge resources.

For example, I did a website for a lady that sells garden and landscaping lighting local to where I am from. Her business focus is not one that needs a large web page, she just wants her catalog to display basically but she does want people to find her with Google. I've done all the things like making sure the title is accurate and headers are relevant, etc. However, it seems to me that much of it is futile. Unless she is the type of business that focuses on inviting people to add content to her site (in other words an internet/web business) the sad truth is that she will basically get ignored by Google.

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