I think it's because most people understand, even if it's only on a subconscious level, that if people only follow the rules of society when they are being watched or forced to then that society won't last for very long.

Except precise controls have never been something that most people who play video games cares about. It's really not that much of an advantage except in twitch games like multiplayer COD. You certainly don't need pin point precision for rpg games, platformers, action adventure games, ect. They just need to be good enough.

The biggest perceived advantage that a console has over a PC is ease of use. There is no installation to worry about. You simply put the CD in the drive and play. You also don't have to worry about spending hundreds of dollars on upgrades in order to play the latest games. I don't know if this last point is true or not, but that perception is pretty prevalent in my experience.

I think this was my favorite quote from the article:

"Unfortunately there is deliberate jamming by Libya ... which is illegal," CEO Samer Halawi told Al Arabiya television.

I'm pretty sure Gaddafi stopped caring about what is legal when he had his army open fire on the protests.

That's a shame. I'll admit I got my hopes up a little bit that new episodes were at least being considered. Thanks for the clarification.

That's what I was confused about. I didn't know if they were buying the IP so that they could eventually make new episodes or if they were just buying the rights to show the old episodes. Apparently it is the latter.

Someone else on another board ( perhaps on this one as well ) mentioned that The Science Channel didn't buy the Firefly IP rights but only bought the syndication rights. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Those are some of the advantages that online interactions have over face to face interactions, although I disagree with a couple of the ones you listed which I'll get to shortly. However, face to face interactions also have advantages that online interactions do not have. Face to face interactions allow instant feedback. When I post something on Slashdot or a similar forum, at the very least I have to wait a few minutes for a response and often times I have to wait longer or I simply don't get a response back at all. This instant feedback leads to an overall flow of back and forth conversation which is also an advantage that face to face interactions have over online interactions.

One of the advantages that you listed for online interactions is that it is easier and more convenient to interact with those of similar intelligence levels. I would argue that unless a person is uncommonly gifted, they should not have trouble finding people who are their intellectual equals in a college environment. At a larger university that has thousands of students, I also don't see how time would be that much of an advantage. My university has 50,000 students and I can go on campus at any time of the day or night and find people who are studying or otherwise involved in academic work.

Again though, I would like to reiterate that I do not think online interactions are worthless or even less valuable than face to face interactions. I simply think they are different and each one is valuable for different reasons. And in relation to my original post, I think face to face interactions as well as other reasons justify the existence of colleges and universities.

I agree that different does not necessarily mean better. It wasn't my intention to imply otherwise. My original argument was meant to be against the idea that college is a waste of time because it's just a bunch of professors standing in front of a lecture hall full of students. I was merely using the social interactions that one experiences as an example of something else that can be gained by attending college. There are certainly other benefits to going to college that I think justify their existence.

Yes, I'm interacting with humans right now, but you would agree that social interaction over the internet is different than social interaction in person, right?

I think you are suggesting that we should do away with colleges and universities. If that's the case, then I'm going to have to disagree with you. I'm currently a college student and while I think it's overly expensive, I do think it is valuable nonetheless. What I get from college is more than just listening to lectures and doing homework. I get the opportunity to interact with highly intelligent people who specialize in the kind of work that I would someday like to do. I also get to interact with a wide variety of people who share the same interests that I do through student organizations. These opportunities would be lost, for the worse in my opinion, if college were to be completely eliminated.

I don't know whether it's a big deal or not, but from reading the article it is more than just about documents from Wikileaks being leaked to another site. This Domschiet-Berg guy did something that compromised the anonymity of people who submit things to the Wikileaks website.

Because instability in the Middle East raises oil prices and as of 2009 Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil exporter.

Would they be useful for small team reconnaissance missions perhaps a Marine sniper team or something similar?

How can this be anything but awesome? Soon they will bring back the T-Rex, I will be able to outfit it with a missile and laser platform and then I will change my name to Krulos and conquer the world.

Doesn't that 20 cents pay for more than just SMS messaging though? I've never run a business before, but it wouldn't make much sense to me if I found out that these carriers are only investing the money they make from SMS messages into SMS messaging. I would think that the 20 cents helps pay for the company as a whole.