..well, so pretty much have all the FUD-spreaders in the CDC, government, and NGOs who've been all telling us that "any moment" we could get a "deadly flu" since the (ha ha ha) Sars "epidemic".

All I've ever gotten is the "Cry Wolf" heebie jeebies.

If I have a $7.6 billion cushion, I frankly don't care if you knock me from my perch.

Granted this was beta, but here's what I found:

- a slavish determination to mimic World of Warcraft's aesthetic. Unsurprising, since the dev team AFAIK largely came from Blizzard. IMO this is a little too slavish, coming off like "WoW sci fi with guns". To me it's jarring that you have nicely-detailed characters with hi-rez textures, but you're running around a world with a klunky geometry that screams "this is all computers can handle in 2004". TF2 showed that you could adhere to a non-representational, 'cartoony' theme without necessarily deliberately going so far as to mimic the design compromises of a decade ago.

- Obviously this is entirely subjective, but there's a very fine line between quirky/kitschy and cheesy. The "bad guys" n00b island story line in Wildstar is cheesy; the good guys story is cheesy AND sappy. WoW had a certain sort of self-referential humor to a lot of what it did (at its best), and that has seemed to dominate latter releases *cough* *cough* Pandas *cough*. Wildstar continues this unfortunate narrative/editorial choice, with everything from animations to storyline being so "over the top" that it has to be self-mocking (with the 'good guy' side adding a further drippy saccharine layer of narrative - the tutorial quest has you saving a guy's pregnant wife...)

- They've already very much adopted the modern-mmo paradigm of "go to quest hub, get a bunch of quests, complete those quests, move to next hub". There's almost never (at least in the first 12-15 levels) a point where you go backward, for any reason. Everything is very conveniently placed; when you hit a place where you level up, there's a new-skill trainer already waiting for you.

- Some clever design ideas in UI, communicating what enemies are doing and what you're doing (and the area effects) clearly and intuitively.

It's WoW40k, nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I don't find the modern design choices in MMOs for 'everything to be easy' to be interesting or engaging, but that's not Wildstar's fault at all. They're very solidly in the current mainstream.

IF the system asked "do you want us to save your cc# for later purchases?" and they affirmed, it's the parents' problem.

If, OTOH the cc# was saved without advising the user that it WOULD be saved, that's just economic opportunism, and SHOULD be illegal - saving cc# data in a format that it can be executed for a transaction without affirmative confirmation by the sole cardholder is pretty much the same as making a copy of their cc, no?

"...what else is the government supposed to do with the money?..."

Maybe not take it in the first place?

I know, you're a democrat, that's inconceivable.

Sure, that's a lot of applicants, but really the most important thing is DO ENOUGH OF THEM HAVE VAGINAS?

I mean, really, otherwise it's obviously sexism at work.

My daughter is in AP Calc in high school, has a 4.0 GPA, and scored 34 on the math portion of the ACT.

Yet we were in a store with a 10% discount, she held up a $50 item and said "so how much would this be?". /facepalm.

Sometimes, if you're pretty, it's easier just to not think.

I could be that PERHAPS there IS a difference in some math skill between males and females?

I know it's heinously non-politically-correct to suggest that the sorts of hormonal variations that developmentally result in gross anatomical changes might actually have an impact on the subtle chemistry of brain development as well...we're perfectly willing to recognize that (speaking broadly) women are in fact better at multitasking or that men are better at 3d shape understanding. Is it impossible that there isn't actually some real difference in, say, instinctual math that vanishes in a focused, testing setting?

I'm 46; I've found over my life that often these sorts of 'common perceptions' commonly HAVE a kernel of truth in them. Often misapplied, misunderstood, or blown out of proportion, but nevertheless a root in fact.

I will say that I've far more often seen women spend 15 minutes trying to precisely divide a dinner tab more precisely than men, who'll tend instead to just throw down roughly their share plus some, even if that results in the wait staff getting a huge tip. I know that's not specifically a math skill, but it's one of those real-world anecdotes that feed this perception.

Simple: the feds need to stop subsidizing water redistribution.

If California needs water to have a bountiful strawberry industry, then California (or better still, strawberry farmers) can pay for it.

Yes, that means the price of strawberries go up.
But who should pay for strawberries:
- the person that buys and eats them, or
- the person that buys and eats them PLUS the hundreds of millions of taxpayers dinged little tiny bits of money to go to make sure that strawberry is affordable?

Considering how ubiquitous they are, one would imagine that would be a great candidate for DNA mining, retrieval, reassembly, and ultimately, recreation.

"I'm at a boarding school, and I'm annoyed that I don't get to do anything I want. Here's a way that I can prove I'm clever, and try to gain sympathy by making it sound ("...school TRICKS people into installing...") like it's the perpetration of some sort of subterfuge or a liberty/civil rights issue."

Want freedom? Don't go to boarding school aka juvenile prison.

Don't like the idea of someone looking over your shoulder while you're surfing? Become an adult, pay for your own web connection, and wank, er, surf away.

I'm pretty certain that people haven't wanted their kids to look at porn for, well, nearly ever. So this isn't something "new" being invented, it's something very, very old being reformulated to recognize a new delivery technology.

You DID read that the OP said he was at a boarding school, right?

That means that the school's responsibility doesn't start when they get off the bus in the morning, and stop when they get on the bus to go home. This means that the kids are functionally wards of the school...meaning the school is responsible for them 24/7....ie, what they do in their spare time.

Considering that any possible harm that comes to the child - be it physical, emotional, psychological - ends up being the schools financial liability, then they are entirely within their remit to lock-down any computer systems used on their grounds. Don't like it? Don't browse the internet at their school.

"... which was deliberately designed to set speed records. It was not a fighter, and was never intended to be a fighter...."
Which exactly ALSO describes THIS plane.

My point wasn't to suggest the 109 was the EXACT plane that won that race; instead it was to point out that the plane that was eventually the combat fighter Bf109 had its tech origins in the Bf209, or at least in the heads of the same design team, and probably was about as like the Bf209 as the (eventual combat-deployed successor) had to this one.

I'm 46.
I've seen so many radical reversals as far as what's healthy to eat, what's not, that frankly NOTHING "the experts" say about diet today is credible.

I follow a pretty simple set of guidelines:
- don't over eat
- eat food as close to its natural form as you can: sugar, not 'sweetener'; eggs, not "egg product"
- fewer names is better. "Coke" instead of "Caffeine Free Diet Vanilla Coke with Lemon".