Randox

Just a thought, but if quality isn't paramount, then perhaps you could play the clips in a media player that understands them, and then record them with another program at the same time into a format that is actually useful. A bit cumbersome, and probably time consuming, but it might be of some use. Following my gripe about trying to open doors while I'm doing my thing, are people who don't knock on my bedroom door, and people who do knock, and take silence as an invitation to come in see if I'm there. Someone came up while I had headphones in, and I thought my heart was going to stop (my room is up a flight of stairs, with the door at the bottom, and its not possible to see if its open from inside my room). I've also had people get as far as opening my door while I'm still asleep (sleeping in, not middle of the night people being creepy), which instantly wakes me up.

I think she's moved on, but is trying to hide that from you as long as possible, to sort of ween you off of her or something. She's already pretty much strait up told you that she isn't willing to be in a relationship with you, so I think its time to back off and let her go.

I agree with your second point, but as for the first: http://www.treelobsters.com/2009/05/relativism.html I'd say terrorism is frequently justified, based on the above. I'd make a distinction between people who attack military and people who attack civilian targets first.

snopes Awww :cry: Now I just feel silly -.-

It would be pretty difficult to prove either way, though that really wasn't my point. The best your going to be able to get are logical assumptions really. The first one would be that people don't have an unlimited entertainment budget. I think we can assume this one is pretty solid, unless everyone but me has discovered a way to grow money. The second assumption would be that people will put a priority on spending money on things that they can't obtain for free. In this case, concerts and movie tickets, since neither can be downloaded. Now, maybe you disagree with me, but the preference for spending on things I can't get for free before spending money on something I can get for free makes perfect sense to me, so I'll continue on. The logical conclusions would be twofold. First, people are probably moving money out of their 'entertainment budget' entirely, to spend on other things that make them happy, because they aren't paying for things they can get for free. The second would be that with more money available to treat yourself with, that if you consider things like a movie theater or concert to be a treat, then you have more money available to spend on them. I'm not trying to argue that all the money gets redistributed, I'm just saying that it is logical for some of the money to be recaptured in other areas. I have no real point with this other than digital theft is not as strait forward as say shoplifting. Mostly I'm interested in the question of, if your stealing things you were never in a position to pay for, and the theft doesn't actually cost anyone anything, is it still wrong? No one loses profit, because it was never going to be paid for anyway, and no one loses money because nothing with an individual production value has been stolen (like there would be with a DVD). Or would I just be trying to justify my own guilt?

Just a thought, but there is one very specific corner of the movie world that probably benefits from piracy. Move Theaters. Going back to what the music industry has with piracy moving peoples music budgets from songs to concerts, not paying for DVD's would free up people's money for the theater, which is again, an experience you can't download for free (unless you have a theater in your own house, in which case your probably not the king of piracy). Since Hollywood seems to be doing everything they possibly can to hose the theaters as much as they possibly can (and the theaters in turn screw their customers with high concession prices, because they sure as hell aren't staying in business on ticket revenue), this seems a bit like universal justice to me. I actually make a point of waiting as long as I can to see a movie because of the way proffits work, and I would rather the theater get the money. For anyone who doesn't know, on opening day the production company gets virtually all the ticket revenue. As time goes on, the theater gets to keep more and more of the revenue, which would be awesome except by the time their making money off it, everyone has already seen the movie, which is why your popcorn costs more than your ticket. Since Hollywood is directly responsible for every time I've felt like I'm being robed at gun point by my popcorn and soda, I prefer to make sure they get as little of my ticket price as possible.

I think its 25 for a rental. Something 22 to 25 anyway. I think the states is roughly the same as us. It's an insurance thing. If they made it any lower than whatever it is right now, their insurance would go way up, so all the dealerships and rental agencies use the same age. Public transit is decent where I live, at least as far as I'm concerned. I can't say I have sampled the public transit elsewhere enough to say how it compares. In terms of coverage, if you have the time you can get anyplace within the city by bus, and I live in a pretty good place, within walking distance of plenty of routes, so I can normally get anyplace I care to go in one bus. The main routes will be normally a 15-20 minute wait tops, depending on the time of day, and the slower routs are in the 40-60 range if I recall correctly.

What kind of cereal do you eat to cut your gums? Kibbles n' Tacks? Ever tried Captain Crunch? Yeah, but I used my teeth. I almost fell off my chair laughing at that response. I'm going to take this as a sign that you don't put milk on your cereal (*high five*). I never put milk on my cereal either, because I can't stand damp food. I can't say any of the cereals I ever ate managed to cut me though. Seems like they wouldn't be able to sell it if this were a common problem. People who don't knock before trying to open a bathroom door that is 100% closed. That's enough to mess up the waterworks for a good 5 minutes after they go into emergency lock down incase you have to jump and pull your pants up in a hurry (because my body always fears the lock might give out I guess).

I'm wondering if this is why Jagex waited a week to announce the win; to see if they would appeal or not. An appeals process wouldn't be free, so they wouldn't pursue that unless they really thought they could win. I don't know if the house being up for collateral is a standard practice, or if that's a sign that they already owe Jagex so much money now that its putting them in financial trouble, and the house is on the line because the courts weren't sure they could actually pay the whole amount.

In all honesty, in a perfect world, I would love to certain people who partake in certain practices receive little or no healthcare at the expense of the public, and to be treated as second priority anyway. Part of what I mean by a perfect world is where we know with 100% certainty whether you have done x or not. So if you half blow yourself up making drugs, or fry yourself stealing from a transformer, then no, in my perfect world we would leave you to die, or at least give you the absolute bare minimum treatment required to keep you alive. Although a case could be made where while people are not totally forced, they are definitely somewhat driven to certain activities by circumstance, and I don't believe in punishing people because they weren't lucky to be born into boat loads of money. So the perfect world would have to go beyond knowing if you did x to knowing why you did x. If you tried to cook meth for shits in giggles, you don't get help, if you did it because you were trying to find a way to pay for food for your family, well then not helping you wouldn't really be fair. Then you have things like drunk driving, where the list of reasons you could possibly deserve help is a lot smaller, and a lot less likely. The one that is coming to mind is if your trying to save someone else's life, and the only way to facilitate that is to drive them, then you might make a case. But then your into things like is trying to save a life justification for endangering the lives of countless others (I'm going to go with no). So even in a perfect world scenario, where you know what everyone did, and why, its still not a clear cut thing. For me, while I still believe everyone needs to see justice for their actions regardless of intent or reason, I do feel that certain motivations would merit your life not being forfeit. But in the real world, you can pretty much never know even one of those things with 100% certainty, so I don't think it would ever be fair to try and deny care because you thought someone injured themselves doing something stupid or criminal. In the real world, even though it doesn't feel as good, a rehabilitation approach (some European countries I think are really into this) to the legal system as a whole instead of a vengeance oriented system (USA being the prime example in the developed world) is probably your best bet, since that actually fights the crime rate itself so that you have less criminals immolating themselves and getting shot, and that not only lowers the legal costs, but the medical ones as well. Or, if you can get around all those pesky things that give people on death row all those appeals, you can go for the ultimate vengeance oriented system and make everything punishable by death. All the potential issues from that kind of law aside, it would certainly stop the criminals from seeking (public funded) medical help, since that would be tantamount to signing your own death warrant.

Come to Canada where 19 is drinking age (in most of the provinces. Some are 18 I think). If I recall correctly for us it's: 16 - Drivers license 18 - Vote & Gamble 19 - Booze 25 - Can drive a rental car I think that's all right (for this province at least). I've done the wake up at 5 thing before (actually, 4:30). Cept I had to go out in like an hour, so the first hour of my day was a huge panic. By contrast the first hour of my day normally looks like this: 0-20 Lay in bed listening to the TV 20-55 Bathroom/Shower/Hygiene (I actually spelled that right on the first try :blink: ) 55-60 Getting dressed After that, its either breakfast or go to class. Depends on how I'm doing (seeing as that 'hour' can sometimes take up to 90 minutes).

Loved that article. Really got me thinking. The first thing I would love to say is that I hadn't really thought about the huge disconnect that exists in the music, video and even software industries. Just about all the costs in producing a product in those industries are in development. Once you have a product, it can be duplicated in a digital format free of charge. The point is, that the decision to make something or not is based pretty much entirely on whether someone thinks it will be profitable or not. As long as piracy isn't so rampant that people can't actually profit, then creativity should be fairly safe. I suppose this would be a larger problem for smaller developers and bands, but then you have all these fringe bands that probably would never get anyplace without digital distribution so even they seem to be holding out. As it relates to jobs, after the fact spending has no impact on jobs for that production. Now, some of the profits are reinvested back into the industry to make more profit. An album pays for the next one to be produced, a block buster probably funds multiple movies (seeing as a lot of them tank), and version one of software x pays for version 2. Again, as long as piracy doesn't steal proffits beyond a certain point, its affecting profit but not production or jobs. This also ties into the way people buy things. There is a maximum profit already built into these industries, because people only have so much money to spend on music and movies and software on a yearly basis. After that, people just stop getting more, because they can't afford it. So the question then becomes how much of the piracy is based off people who either lack an entertainment budget (like students going through post secondary education on loans), or have a very tiny one (people with anual incomes below the poverty line for example). Yes, there are probably plenty of people who could pay for things, and don't, but how do we know that a lot of the piracy isn't being perpetrated by people who would be spending next to nothing on this stuff either way because they simply can't. Then, as the article Omar pointed out, and I found this really neat, you also have an effect where the money shifts. You can't pirate a live concert. At least not unless you have perfected matter synthesis and have a power source many times greater than our sun. So what they seem to be seeing is people moving their music budget from music to concerts, so its likely that for some people the same net money is being spent, just in different places. I'm not trying to say that piracy is harmless, or good, or not stealing, just that it isn't a clear cut issue. I also find it interesting that there is some level of piracy (for very specific reasons and circumstances) that literally costs the world nothing but electricity, bandwidth and electricity, because its in no way displacing any spending that would have occurred if piracy didn't exist at all. And as an extra little bit of philosophy, if you have someone who downloads say a movie for free that there was no way they were ever going to pay for anyway (so it hasn't cost anyone money), is it really wrong? I mean, yes they got something for nothing, and its not supposed to work that way, but if there was no way they were ever going to pay for it, then there isn't a victim. A true victimless crime so to speak. To make it even better, if that person sees the video, and loves it, and tells all their friends and just one friend actually buys it, then that is a sale they wouldn't have made without piracy (I suspect the music industry probably benefits more from this effect). Of course, its hard to know if that's actually a higher profit, since maybe because of the finite movie budget, so maybe that sale displaced another one. And kudos to anyone who is still following my train of thought. So yeah, your dealing with theoretical max profits, industries where sales have no direct correlation to jobs, and cases where sales are being displaced rather than replaced. Fun times.

I went through the news and bestiary on my Blackberry 9800, and all the fonts look just fine to me.

[spoiler=quote tree] GPU barely matters, I can max RS on my Intel HD 3000. What matters is single core speed; Runescape only runs on a single core which means 6 cores in your case won't help at all, you want the fastest possible cores which are Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge. An i3 2100 paired with a 5770 would max Runescape fine, and if anyone reading this is buying I suggest a Z68 chipset to allow upgrading to a 2500k or Ivy Bridge in future. My computer's managed to split it over multiple cores, since I watch it do it. Every once in a while, you can tell its all on one core becuase that one will be near max and the others will all be near idle, but most of the time they balance out, or at least most of them do, and if you look at the cpu usage for Java, its using a lot more resources than any one core is reporting at a given time. How? Jagex has multi-core support disabled. Not sure, I just know that the Java usage is actually more than any one of my cores can handle. 23% usage, which is the processes norm when playing RuneScape, would represent ~4GHz of usage. The individual cores can do 2.9 each, and the highest they run for runescape is ~65% (only one, the others are all lower). Unless the java process itself includes a lot more than just the game, and the game is being put on one core while everything else related to the java process is being run through the others. My laptop shows the same thing on its dual core, where starting the game nearly maxes them both out, not just one. So I'm not sure what their doing, but the extra cores seem to be doing something related to the game.

GPU barely matters, I can max RS on my Intel HD 3000. What matters is single core speed; Runescape only runs on a single core which means 6 cores in your case won't help at all, you want the fastest possible cores which are Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge. An i3 2100 paired with a 5770 would max Runescape fine, and if anyone reading this is buying I suggest a Z68 chipset to allow upgrading to a 2500k or Ivy Bridge in future. My computer's managed to split it over multiple cores, since I watch it do it. Every once in a while, you can tell its all on one core becuase that one will be near max and the others will all be near idle, but most of the time they balance out, or at least most of them do, and if you look at the cpu usage for Java, its using a lot more resources than any one core is reporting at a given time.

Here's a secret. These are all real questions people asked about Canada when we were hosting the Vancouver Olympics (The answers sadly, are not real). Even though I'm sure at least a few people here have seen that list already (I don't know if we sent it to the non Canadians or not though).

I have to say I agree with this. I have all my own cooking stuff here for a couple reasons, but I also need a clear sink to wash since I never make a large enough mess to run the dishwasher. The group this year is pretty good about it, but other people I have lived with would just pile shit up in the sink until you needed to do the dishes just to get a glass of water. In my parents house, dirty dishes go on the counter if their to be done by sink, or in the dishwasher. Dishes get done every night, and the dishwasher gets run and emptied every day or two. There are always clean dishes, and the mess never gets so bad that you want to go hide from it (unless we have company over). I love that system. It's currently snowing, slated for 2-4cm followed by 15mm of rain this evening, and 10 tonight. That should be interesting. And earwigs are disgusting. I can handle most bugs, provided they aren't too big (too big being I can feel the crunch when I step on them), but earwigs are seemingly designed to just be horrible. And you can't find just one, there's always like at least 20 of them.

Also, the University would probably demand that you all be graded on a curve (so that they don't look stupid), so the marks will go up a bit. Yes, she added 10 points for each of us to our essays, so my boosted grade was actually a 24/100. And I'm 15 heh Debate in the same history class one week from today. I have to argue pro Japanese-American internment during WWII. Every argument I've come up with for my own side, I've also shot it down from the other. What do? Heh, its funny. I only notice now that I'm so used to dealing pretty much exclusively with post high school people now, that I just assume everyone else is near my peer group unless you give me reason to believe otherwise. I figure you can take that as a compliment though :) I achieved victory over my helmet. Took it apart and put it back together the next size up. I'll find out for sure next time I go skating, but my test run indicated that it wasn't going to cause a headache next time.

Another possibility, and I am playing devils advocate here, is one of basic honesty. Someone honest enough to admit that they download music illegally, might also be the sort of person who is honest enough that when they find something they like, they go out and actually pay for it. In other words, these might be the people who use the free downloads as a way to sample music before paying for it. I agree that a follow up about how 'into' music they are would be helpful. Anyway, just throwing out something for everyone to think about.

Also, the University would probably demand that you all be graded on a curve (so that they don't look stupid), so the marks will go up a bit.

I'm pretty sure the laces on my sneakers (particularly the right one) are made of Teflon. Possibly greased Teflon. The right [bleep]er wont stay tied for more than 20 minutes, and the left one is just perpetually lose feeling. Except when I'm with other people. Other people magically glue my laces in place. Round laces blow. Skating was fun, but I really need to adjust the helmet since it and my skull were having a pretty hearty disagreement about the volume of my head. On the other hand, for anyone who uses a coat hanger around the head to deal with migraines, try adjusting a hockey helmet just a tad too small and see if that's a more practical solution. But I'm still having a great day :thumbsup: And grats Skeptic :shades:

I figure most of your trouble is the graphics card. It looks like its some sort of integrated chip. My 2 core @1.7GHz, 2GB laptop can play the game at maxed, but it actually has its own graphics card in there, I think that really makes a difference. This reminds me that I would like to find something to monitor GPU usage. I'd love to see how much of my PC's is being consumed by that game because it's not getting the CPU over 20%, yet my fps likes to drop into the 30's.

You know what, my extreme desire to not spend 3 hours of my life for a chance to find out if I can prayer swap fast enough or not (I'm pretty sure I can't from every experience I have ever had trying it), means I'm going to wait and see if I need the fire cape to keep my quest cape or not.

Did I miss something where it was said we would need fire capes for this quest? If that's the case then I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend, though it seems unlikely since Jagex already recognized that they have players who either through disability or age or whatever, are not physically capable of beating Jad (hence why you can buy the ability to fight ice wyrms without the cape). Other than that, looks nice.

They've already tried once. Obviously that worked really well for them. I guess corporations with billion dollar profits are a bit harder to take down. My money would be on youtube being the last holdout of all the uploading sites. (not counting photo uploading sites)