Brother... I find almost everything you said VERY disturbing. You literally are saying "give up, give everything away, let people walk over you and SMILE while they are doing it!". Time for a reality check. The world is not full of God fearing people... hell most people don't even believe in your god.

See: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups

Let me be very clear. I will not tolerate history being taught with any bearing on religion. Sure, talk about the facts, how religion was rarely used to promote good as history records but used to exploit the stupid and put the fear of god into the poor so they didn't usurp their masters/leaders. I'm much more comfortable talking about facts of history not bringing into account "facts" from a book that there are over 10,000 versions (here's just the accepted english versions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English_Bible_translations) written by monks who were listening to some guy who claimed to know the word of a being NOONE has ever seen only "HEARD" in 2000 years.

I'm sorry but I don't want my kids hearing this kind of dribble. If you want your kids to hear it fine... do it in religious studies or sunday school but keep it away from HISTORY. No TRUE historian can every say "God said..." he can say "Supposedly Peter said that god said.... ". That's how history and science works. They have to be provable facts and if not you have to use the words "supposedly".

People learn very differently and retain information differently. My parents are a great example. My father can read a book and recite passages and facts about the entire book. My mother on the other hand has to read the book, mark references, and look back at her notes before she's ready to "recall" facts.

College is no different. Just because someone has to take notes and study doesn't mean there is anything wrong with them or that they are stupid. It's how they learn.

A laptop is a much more efficient and "readable" note taking device. Ever take notes that you can't read for the life of you because you're trying to keep up with the professor? My laptop saved my ass as it also let me record the lecture. I actually proved that an answer on a test I took was correct according to his lecture example.

I think the issue at hand is that students are doing other things on their laptops. Unfortunately that's the students responsibility. In college if that student needs a parent to watch over them then they shouldn't be in college. Period.

I pity EvilMuppet. Guy is a tool. There are contractual agreements that are in place to prevent pictures, aka the "rules" but when the data center blatantly LIES they are breaking the trust and violating the agreement. Case Law exists where contracts can be violated when one accuses the other of violating said contract.

That's what happened. The data center was lying about what happened to avoid responsibility for the equipment it was being paid to host. Pictures were taken and are being used to prove the company did violate the trust of the contract.

You can argue the semantics and legality of it but if this goes to court the pictures will be admissible and the data center will lose.

If you look for a while you'll find them. The developers replied to me with "It's perfectly fine". While it seems they do parse this information isn't that screaming "Exploit me!"

For the price they are amazing especially for starting businesses. They offer EVERYTHING from linux boxes of a varying number of flavors to Windows servers. The biggest thing is they do VPS (Virtual Private Servers) which is a cheaper method of having your own box and complete control over it. No shared environments, no stupid rules with their apache setups etc.

I pay $39/month and get 2TB bandwith per year.

I'm no extremist on the view of DRM but this nailed in the coffin that I won't buy AC2. Sad... the first one was very enjoyable.

You just can't cure stupid. Congratulations... you're infected.

I'm not a democrat or a republican so lets clear that political nonsense up right now. I'm so sick and tired of having to protect people from themselves when it's something that THEY can control. Sure some people may need help but it shouldn't be the governments job to prevent this.

If someone doesn't do research on something they put money into... well... that's their loss. If they are STUPID enough to think that gambling will eventually pay off then they deserve to lose everything they bet. That's why it's called gambling.

There HAS to be a point where responsibility is the burden of the risk taker. "I didn't know" or "I'm addicted" just won't cut it. You pay the price for the decisions you make in life.

This isn't like insider trading, or drug testing. You know exactly what you are getting into simply via the title of what you're doing. I'm so sick and tired of hearing people complain about gambling addiction and then blaming the Casino's or online companies. NOONE forced you to bet the money, you did it.

I do not want this great country to start managing my life choices. If I want to be an idiot and gamble away something I can't afford... then that's MY responsibility.

If you want to have a chance at monitoring things like this then you need to set ground rules that CAN be enforced.

1) Anything over $10,000 must be claimed (just like current customs rules) and taxes applied. If caught not doing so, the penalty is severe (20% of amount brought in) + jailtime/community service

2) Gambling income is considered just like typical earnings. You have to pay appropriate taxes on income. Some people are good enough to make this profitable. Why stop them if they are willing to pay taxes on it.

There is ZERO need to regulate this. People go to Vegas for the experience. There is a world of difference between betting $1000 online and sitting at a table with a crowd around you as you bed $1000 and win. I'd know.

Except, know coders, some retard decided to make the app name the Primary Key in a database.

I'm an avid gamer... and my tastes are all over the place. The only issue I've had in ANY game in the following list was with World of Warcraft, and only during the loading of your character after the character selection screen. If in windowed mode, you go do something else then come back... it will crash wow. Otherwise, once it loads completely it's fine. (10-15second window).

World of Warcraft
Starcraft
Left 4 Dead
Half Life 2 (And all the mods: Zombie Panic, Team Fortress 2, Action Halflife 2... etc)
Quake 3
Doom 3
OpenArena
NeverWinter Nights (all expansions)
NeverWinter Nights 2
UT2003
UT3
Crysis
Battlefield 2
etc etc etc

Not a single error. Not a single problem with Windows 7. The only thing I can wonder about is the resources needed. I run a beef machine... GTX 275, quad core proc, 4gb ram... while not an elite gaming rig... it's pretty nice. I experience no lag, no latency... in any game, at least not due to what I would deem as a Windows 7 issue. The effects are not noticeable.

XP, while great, loads in less time, but seemed to crash more frequently with newer games. Most of the NVIDIA drivers I've used have been great.

The only complain I have about Windows 7 is how it buggers out my network when I do a fresh boot or a restart. I have to disable the network card and reenable it (5 second process) and everything is fine. Repeated motherboard driver updates and network card updates have had no change. Oddly enough... on a fresh install of Windows 7 Beta... it doesn't do this. Only after about a month. Could be hardware on my side but /shrug.

This will only encourage people to build add-ons for the game that allow LAN play. Its happened with dozens of games and frankly this is just plain stupid.

LANS are there for people to get together and have a good time. A LOT of people use wireless connections in their house and that shit is attrocious for LAN play. You can say what you want, but most home hardware that people buy just isn't designed for 6+ people gaming over the internet at the same time. Forget the connection... just the hardware.

A $20 hub lets 10 people play in a LAN where it costs a lot more to setup the same level of connection over the internet in one location. You can try to argue with me but the fact is you're wrong.

I love LANS. People in the same room, talking smack, eating pizza, it's so much better than being on a headset talking over ventrilo. You can see their expressions when you nail em or overwhelm their defenses... It's also being able to come to a physical location, and as we get older, there are no kids, no annoying significant others (we have women in our group so saying wives would be wrong) who keep interrupting. They are there and not being hit with interruptions.

I've lost all real desire to play SC2. I was so excited about it... but the whole point of SC2 is playing with friends and removing LAN play removes half of the reason I play games like that. Sure... we can play online... but it limits us, or requires us to move equipment to other parts of the house so we can all hook up to the router physically since wireless is terrible, and most of us don't have wireless cards for our Desktops. Any gamer who thinks they can beat me while using a laptop is in for one hell of a spanking.

That's the order of things. If you don't have content... your game is a pretty piece of trash. (Think most sports games from EA that are recycled). Sure... the first might be awesome... but we lack a tremendous amount of content these days. Content is what keeps a game interesting, it's what makes others want to buy it from friends recommending since most of us realize that the rating system on gamestop and most of the magazines is now manipulated completely. Look at the Final Fantasy series? A new story each time, each extremely enveloping... though most of us agree X-2 never happened.

Zelda, Metroid, Super Mario Brothers... each one has an amazing new amount of content and that's why they are classics and always a quick sell. How replay-able is the game?

Controls come in second to me. To be able to envelop myself in a game I need the controls to be configurable to how I want to play the game. I'm known to NOT buy games because of this. This is a joke to do.. and pure laziness by developers not to do it.

Graphics come in last of these three (not of all) because to me... there is a point where it's all candy and not needed but that also depends on the game. I wouldn't want to play Assassin's Creed in 8bit, but would settle for ps1 level if there was more content. The game kinda gets old after a while. In today's day an age with the engines available for development there just isn't any excuse for a fast paced game to look worse than the Quake 3 engine.

However, games played at a slower pace (Turn Based, etc) are complete different. They also range depending on the game itself and what it's trying to do. If all game manufactures would focus on that priority list we wouldn't have so many great looking paper weights on the market and their pockets would be much fuller.

 

What the hell is wrong with me?!? First... forget anything you know about this guy and look at the issue at hand.

1) We have a picture that's been photoshopped to have an underage persons on it.

The question at hand is if this should be illegal or not. Child pornography has become a major issue... and the definition of what child pornography is up in the air. My best friend was pulled on our way to canada and interogated for an hour about pictures and movies on his computer. It wasn't until after we left that we realized it was videos of his daughter doing the funky chicken dance.

To me this is EXTREMELY dangerous to say "yes... putting a kids head on a naked adult" is illegal.". That's a gray area to me as there are FAR too many possibilities for that happening. Jokes, funny images, etc.

What if he had Miley's face on some 90 year old dropping breast woman. Would it be the same to you? That's the problem... law has to be made so that anyone who reads it interprets it the same (or at least pretty damn close).

Tennessee law does NOT prevent what he did. It's not illegal according the law and whether it should be or not isn't the point. It's not.

People are screaming to burn this guy and they nothing about him nor care. There are thousands of creeps out there and this is like busting a pot head for wearing a shirt that shows a charicature of him smoking pot. SURE... I think this would be probable cause to search his house and home computer... but it's not illegal to do. And shouldn't be.

I love the right to be able to put Miley Cyrus's annoying face on midget porn. It's tasteless sick humor and we have hundreds of thousands of images that are similar. You may not like it and it's borderline crossing the law... but it's NOT. It disturbs me that so many people that are so conservative they can't accept peoples rights to do this. It's so stiffling.

Again... this guy is a creep and I think that HAVING pictures like this should be probable cause for investigating him further but it's stupid to try to put him in jail for this. Find something that is unquestionable.

People who argue how damaging things can be if they were made public completely forget that if certain things were known earlier... things like this wouldn't NEED to be kept hidden.

This huge cloud of people who just don't want to know and go on with their happy day lives is exactly what allows events to build up where releasing the information COULD be damaging.

But lets be honest. How worse off do you think the United States could be right now in the eyes of the world?

You will always have followers who don't want to know things and want the *smart* people to deal with it. The problem is, often enough those smart people aren't smart... or are greedy, power hungry... or otherwise influenced. Public eye on what they do is the ONLY thing stopping them. Watchdogs so to speak. Most of them in jobs just like you and me who happen to be there when something happens.

The fear is that people will overreact to the sheer amount of hidden crap and revolt, or some religious nutjob will start calling the end of days and 50,000 idiots will believe him. But if you start slowly... revealing the truth bit by bit people will gradually become adjusted to it.

The reason this will never happen is those in power will suddenly lose the ability to do things that might have been the "easy" way. It also will prevent us from doing things for "the good" that would be seen as "the bad". But that's a tradeoff I want to see simply because... the person making that decision does not have to answer to anyone if they were wrong. That should always be part of leadership.

You make the call... you take the fall.

Go to any doctors office and ask how much they like their software. There is so much crap out there it isn't even funny. I know for a fact, one software company that services more than 20 hospitals and 200 doctors office recently discovered that they had a rounding error in displaying pharmaceuticals. Obviously nothing extremely dangerous... but the fact is there just isn't that many affordable quality software companies out there.

Hell, http://www.physiciansehr.org/index.asp and companies like it make it their sole business to find software suitable for your office, and help in the transition. It's huge business.

I don't honestly believe most medical practitioners are worried about that being used as medical malpractice fodder when weighed against the benefits. The problem comes with the cost and quality. Most doctors don't understand nor care since they have little interaction with it.

I've evaluated over 20 small doctors office software apps that are rated high and let me tell you... 99% of them suck ass. I officially dub "suck ass" a technical term meaning, someone was smoking crack when designing the user interface and knew more about making an annoying, non-user friendly piece of trash than making ANYTHING remotely useable by the medical field.

The transition will happen eventually but some standards need to be in place and universally accepted accreditation certificates need to be available to say "Yes... this software meets these standards". We all know that this will be abused and the bare minimum met... but you have to understand... the standards are SO low... that companies release bugged software knowingly...

Just ask E-Cast. I can't wait for a federal investigation to happen to those guys.

Disclaimer: I do not work for E-Cast, nor have I ever worked, contracted for or through any group associated with E-Cast.