The rest of your points are bollocks as well, but this. Wow. This isn't just wrong, it's actively misinterpreting one of the most significant advantages of PCs.

It is not that you *must* replace your model every 3-4 years, the fact is that you *can* replace it every 3-4 years. (In practice you probably only need to think about replacing the video card, as a quad core bought in 2008/9 is just as fast today as it was then, and CPUs haven't been the bottleneck in the majority of games for quite a long time.)

Those PC games will scale to your hardware, and your 2008 graphics card will still produce better graphics at higher resolutions than either the PS3 or Xbox 360, it's just that a 2012/3 card will do even more - if you want to go there.

Because it's expensive to develop exclusively for the PC, and because the console market is more lucrative, the consoles have effectively been holding better graphics on the PC back for seven years. All PC owners get is higher resolution basically for free, and if we're very, very lucky some kind of texture pack.

Please note that the PS3 originally released in the same week as nVidia launched the 8800 series, the first DX10 cards. Sony made such a hoo-hah at the time about how the truly next gen experience could begin. But the truth was, it was already last generation at launch.

That you can be arrested for admitting to crimes on Facebook is only news these days for the people getting arrested.

Treating this story as news in this day and age smacks of the "Same old crime.... but on a COMPUTER!!!" syndrome that we've been criticising for a decade or more.

If they're passing the courses, who cares if they're attending the lectures? What are the chances that someone who can pass degree level courses through disciplined self-study is likely to be *less* of an asset to their country?

The University is treating the students like criminals because the UK Border Agency encourages this. But the UK Border Agency know fuck all about Universities, so why should we take their opinion on Universities over that of the instituions themselves? Hell, the UKBA can barely manage their own house, let alone our centuries old and rapidly losing its edge (but once world class) Higher Education system.

Everybody imagines accountancy and the legal professions to be dry, bookish jobs dealing in facts, history and obscurae.

But the truth is that those jobs are just as creative as writers, painters or musicians.

If anything, we should be paying them more!

Did you really just have an uncalled for, violent, frothing rage at people with "social ineptitude disease"? You know, it pays to look both ways before crossing Irony Street.

It got popular, because it just got sooo mucy easier to use over time, and the tools got better. Some were really, really spectacularly mature. The changes were welcomed as they made it more convenient for the knowledgeable, but things also more accessible for the novice demographic. If it had been anything other than the internet's last dirty little secret, usenet would have exploded in the next two years.

Agreed that we shouldn't quoted figures as gospel, but I think the discrepancy is between rockets fired out of Gaza, and interceptor missiles fired in response.

What I've heard is that about 60% of missiles out of Gaza have been shot down, but that Israel is not targeting rockets other than those with a reasonable chance of hitting urban areas. So, of the missiles they have *tried* to hit, somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent are being hit.

That is a fantastic double entendre, in context...

...but given that you're in full on Grammar Crusader mode, I'm assuming it was accidental.

I don't like the insinuation that success can only be defined in pure numbers, or by sheer monitization. This is art. Sometimes it can do that, but it's not for that.

Also, whilst artists must know the rules, in order to be competent, nobody ever made art worth salt by merely following them.

May not even be a case of settling.

I wrote a novel aimed at a small student community, and released the ebook for free. i wanted it to be a gift, so i made the ebook free (creative commons) and also gave away a lot of physical copies to the people i thought would appreciate them most (within a certain community).

the really interesting thing is that i got feedback (remember, from people who i was offering the book to for free) that they were really happy to have the ebook version, but they didn't want the physical book version becase it was 'stuff' that they didn't need. they're students, they move around a lot, books aren't that light, plus they don't really have a place they keep 'things' any more, now they've moved out of home, and probably won't for a few years to come.

now sure, they might not have been interested at all, and been letting me down gently, but it made me realise that there'd need to be more to any future business model i might come up with than 'electronic is free, physical is not'. i know this may seem obvious in retrospect, but i think there's still an assumption held by many people that physical copy = upgrade of electronic copy, and this may not be true.

i'm sure many people on slashdot feel that way already, but mostly i would expect for functional/practical reasons. however, my experience suggests that the sentimental value of a physical book may no longer exceed the value of the ebook, either.

that could be the seeds of an interesting change in our perception of books altogether.

Call me old fashioned, but my time on Slashdot has taught me that it's much better to *imagine* a cluster than to create one.

I don't need to show you anything. You are the one who made a positive statement. You said "Placebos don't work when you've got a real disease".

I didn't even disagree with the statement. I simply asked you if you had evidence, or if you were forming a conclusion based on what you expect to be the case.

That's ironic for at least two reasons, and this irony is only further compounded by your calling me a 'shaman' for asking for evidence of your positive statement.

I think you're missing the point. A placebo has to be administered. Homeopathy, for the context of this argument, could be seen as a method of administration. As such, it probably is more effective than some other placebos, such as those which the patient knows to be placebos, or those which the patient is more skeptical of. (Although it's not 'some effect vs. no effect'; studies have also shown, IIRC, that there is *some* placebo effect even where the patient knows they are taking a placebo). But at any rate, if some kook is demanding homeopathic remedies, giving them to that person is likely to be more effective than any other placebo.

Whether using this particular (or any other) placebo is ethical and whether the benefits outweigh the costs of, effectively, keeping people ignorant is a different conversation, where we probably have more in common. But let's not rail against the facts simply because we don't like those fucking charlatan liars, the actual homeopaths.

Evidence, please? Or is that just an assumption you made because the conclusion seems obvious?

That would be ironic coming from someone who is clearly championing empiricism.

Quite so. Law enforcement, with sufficient motivation to investigate a person, will tend to get the information they need from other sources, using available facts, clues, and investigative logic. It's time consuming and expensive to actually work things out, of course, and they only do it when there's a strong reason to do it. And that is a desirable outcome.

On the other hand, having my internet history, my transactions and medical information, my relationships, any affairs I may be having, rough financial status, sexual preference and political views directly accessible to who knows who simply because it is politically convenient... That is not acceptable. That is open to abuse. Access to that kind of database will be available to, for example, tabloid reporters for a price, because access to databased information that is widely available to a law enforcement community is always available for a price. And that's NOT ok.

When you make just a little effort to hide what you are doing, I agree, that you are not anonymous. However, that information then requires effort to obtain. It requires co-ordination, intelligence, time and effort. It's only used when there is a strong reason. And a strong reason, even in this day and age, is usually a good reason.

In many ways, consistent use of obfuscating technology serves merely to put the warrant back in to the process. We should all be doing it.

What changed in the market was that everybody started using computers, and a lot of those people are using them because they *have to* use them, for work or school, or what have you. They don't care about X or Y, because more fundamentally, they don't care about the computer at all, other than its utility to perform the functions they purchased it for. They're not interested in computers, any more than an average commuter is interested in engines.

But don't let the numbers blind you. There are ****millions**** more people who care about the precise same things you care about than there were in the 70s, 80s, and 90s combined. I've been around for much of that time too, and I feel like there's never really been a better time for expandability, or configurability, either.

Building computers isn't just a money saver, these days. Heck, it isn't *even* a money saver. It's a hobbyist thing. Has been since the late 90's. What further vindication could you need?