BlueLancer

Yeah, you're talking about this. It's an AIM bot, and pretty amazingly smart one. Quite interesting.

The site just redirects to some selection page. I also was under the impression that the turing test is something that is a combination of numbers and letters, but so complicated that only a human could decipher it. It's used to prevent macro-account creators and spammers online. I can't remember the site, maybe somebody has it, there is a turing test game. After level 15 or so the turing code is nearly impossible to decipher.

One thing I must agree with is that home work sucked. Once I got fed up of it at around grade 6, me and some of my friends set up a network and occassionally did each other's homework/provided answers, or paid small cash like $2-$5 for the correct answers from a geek, though usually I wouldn't participate other than buying answers or trading them for favors. You may say I'm setting a bad example for kids. No, I don't encourage anybody to do that. But I did. Why spend 2 hours of your time every day after already being 7 hours at school studying something you already know just to please your teacher? I don't get it. As long as you've learned something, whether you've finished an excercise or test is irrelevant. But I guess the 'education system' disagrees. Needless to say I was disclipined several times, but did get out of school with average grades.

What the hell? If the tattoo needle is re-used, and the person before you had HIV, you can get HIV too. that is why the tattoo shop standards require that you have to have sterile needles for every customer. Well, to tell the truth, he could be in jail wanting a tattoo and the only person there is Bubba with his shoelaces :) Another good reason not to do crimes :wink: Exactly, it's funny how people automatically associate "tattoos" with "crime" and "jail" subconsciously without even realising it. Not very open minded and realistic. that's steve-o's pickup line :P No, I'm not going to get one, it stays forever, and imagine how it looks when you are old and wrinkly. Disagree on that one. If I live long enough to be old and wrinkly, I wont exactly care about what people think of my appearance. Do people really look at 80 year olds when they're swimming for any tattoos? I don't. I do have one small tattoo, about the size of ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâý (about 1ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâý centimeters) an inch just in the upper part of my left bicep. It's my last name's first initial S which is a snake and it wears a crown. Once I buy a working webcam I could upload a picture.

Wrong. Read about 'operation northwoods' and tell me why it's absolutely impossible? It involved exactly similar strategies, hijacking aeroplanes, conducting terrorist strikes on civilians, to gain public support to wage war against Cuba. On a factual basis, not on a 'conspiracy' theory one. 24 is horrible. Watching Jack Bauer do stuff is awesome, but then it cuts back to CTU and you have to sit through 10 minutes of idiotic and useless women whining and betraying each other. 24 needs to be Bauer and Chloe only. Holy *, thanks for that post. Now if only I could force feed that message to the producers. The exact reason why I don't really care that much about 24, though in other aspects it's a good series.

That's unusual. I've been in airports of every continent and most of the time, shops and facilities at the airport work 24/7 (given that people are constantly arriving from different timezones). The only exception I met was in an argentinian airport at night, at 1:20am local time only the bathrooms and a caf̮̩̉̉ with some sandwich and drinks on sale were open. The taxfree shop and everything else was closed. The first statement is correct. They wouldn't even be able to pass through the metal detector let alone the inspector with knives or grenades, and if they really detected them, tens of security reinforcements and special ops would be there before you could blink your eyes. They use those programs in most airports, so don't be surprised when your bag is being scanned and the monitor insists you have a semiautomatic machine gun in your bag. It's just a distinctly similar shape.

Any of you here play the great game of poker regularly (real life or online?) There are 2 casinos near my area, and those are the only places where I spend real money at (usually just in the hundreds though, but it's fun watching the $50k+ games sometimes, not to mention, damn, those betting plates are cooler than chips) Online, I just play for fun on partypoker and occassionally other sites. I know darkrick plays too but I'm wondering if anybody else here likes playing sometimes. I only play Texas Hold'em though. It's fun, and if you know how to play and control yourself/read other players, you can make stable profits and lose little.

I'm amazed I read that line, I was going to make a post contrary on the opposite. But I pondered on this realistically and you are right. For example, my cousin who I've seen grow up from 10 to 16, is a very socially active and non-shy person. However, especially after the year 2000, it has become 'obvious' amongst his friends that spending time on video games and internet is more fun than just 'hanging out' for no good reason at the mall. And no, he's not even nearly fat nor are the friends of his (that I have seen). You don't have to overdo it by spending all of your time on the internet. You can *still* go to the movies and do other stuff. That's the problem, when these kids grow up, they wont have anything to teach to their children, like how to ride a bike, how to lure fish, other than how their "bal-zorgoroth warrior level 142 with gandalf sword+7 will pwn everyone in EverQuest 4", that is if they even have children.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori? :-s I don't think you can beat dying defending your family and friends from a peoples that want to destroy your country and [assault] all the women you know. Especially if its in your town. Yes, it is sweet and right to die for your country. ...People have outdated ideas about war. Say, if America was assaulted for political reasons, I doubt the US army and airforce would just sit there helplessly, letting ships and airplanes carry the whole army of Iraqi insurgents into a village in central Texas and let them pillage and loot. In a modern war of aggression (unlike Iraq, because they knew they have no nuclear deterrent but used it as a 'reason') necessarily any fight will not even take place. The threat of annihilation is enough.

Wouldn't beating Adam and Eve be a sin? Not to mention if you take the Bible literally, they are your first parents. Way to respect them by showing up in jeans chewing bubble gum and 'busting their face'. You could replace the apple with a wal-mart apple though. I wonder what God would say since technically it's a different apple even if it's on the same tree. My guess is that he would be confused. Or save mankind from all the misery of wars and plagues and sneak a bomb in the apple so they can't reproduce, and have their own children reproduce with each other, and so on. Then live your life to the fullest in an empty world millenias later (with no inventions, technology or buildings though...)

I don't care about having my name on a front page. I'd rather have something like "By the time you finish reading this headline, you have wasted 9 seconds of your life on nothing", and below is an ordinary article about world economy. Confusing people is great.

I bet jesus is going to be pissed if u die like that Yeah, in heaven they have a surveillance monitor for tracking the lives and deaths of 6 billion people simultaneously. They must've hired some of the dead people up there to work as secretaries to recognise hanging on a cross. Bah, I don't want there anyways. Anyways, the coolest way (and also the least painful) to die would be by melting. A single wave with a heat level of 60 million celsius degrees would just leave a wet trail on the ground and you couldn't even feel anything before you're dead. And think if somebody caught it on video and posted it on youtube, you'd be famous. "Dude melts, click here". Imagine their faces when they realise it's not an innocent clip of somebody who froze in snow.

Not quite, but the stock fluctuates between $80k-$100k in any given year, which basically means if you are very rich and buy this stock, chances are that you'll get filthy rich. Warren Buffet is a man to trust, look at his past performance and it is an exception in the investing world, it is almost a guarantee for future success.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 23/1918246 Wow... :shock: And he can't be arrested due to the complexity of the laws surrounding virtual property... Even if he's a scammer, just pure genius is what I can say that scheme is. Though, if I played that game, I wouldn't take it too seriously if I lost like $20 worth of game money to him. It says some people even threatened him with death..

How do you plan to execute your idea in reality? :P You don't know their language and wear strange clothes, they'd probably imprison you after you failed to answer their accusations of being a foreign assassin. I doubt a greek king would take a kid wearing blue pants in his personal retinue of companions and allow him to make war strategies with him, especially if you don't know his language. By the way Zonorhc, don't be so fast to put them down. 8-) If you had even moderate wealth 2,000+ years ago, you could have a better standard of living and more utilities and services than the richest people of the early 1900's.

You also won't need to retire if all you need to do is sit in front of a computer :P Yeah, I wonder how in the movies the guys who apparently 'day trade' just sit on a harbor in the bahamas for a few minutes, click a bit here and there, admire the landscape and call it a day. :-k But yes, once you have more money you can probably cut yourself some slack like that and not be so hellbent on gaining more profits by constantly following stock values and news.

The internet has been filled with "investment" sites that will 'take your money and invest it into Forex and the stock markets' for years now. The rate of returns on some sites is as high as 10%+ daily, anybody with half a brain should avoid those sites like the plague, unless you like to play it as a sort of a 'game' and try to actually profit before they shut down. That's what I read on some HYIP forums about why people do use these 'programs' that shut down almost daily (high yield investment programs). Real HYIPS organised by wealthy banks for selected individuals by the way will have minimum deposits in the millions, not $5. :lol:

In principle, almost *all* companies should offer dividends at least once per year, namely to keep the investors happy. Few people are interested in long-term investments in the stock market with dividends of $0.01 per stock. Then there are 'super companies' that will pay over $1 per share, needless to say if the stock isn't expensive and you own hundreds of thousands of them, the sum you get just by dividends is astronomical. The executive management board of the company decides how much gets paid out, usually this is a great part of the company's yearly profits, as a thanks for the investors. They are organised by banks and all companies have a different date for paying dividends. Actually, many companies will pay 2 dividends annually, an 'interim' dividend and later on, a 'final' dividend. Even that is not a formal limit, in rare cases companies may choose to pay even more regularly. 'If they increase in value' is an interesting question to ask, and a good one. Generally investors will always expect dividends to rise up each year. If they don't, at least by a few cents, it's usually a bad market signal and will make the stock value go down after the low dividend announcement. You will need a very significant sum of money to live off dividends as it's calculated by 'per-stock' value like indy500fan correctly said. Edit- didn't see this one... Ah, this may sound disheartening, but it did happen largely because I did get a significant inheritance years ago from my mother's side of the family. (No, not even nearly millions, but still significant enough to start serious investing) I did start with a lot of my own money as well which I had saved up since I was a teen. Might I add, at first I was obviously inexperienced and lost money in the first year of investing, after which I started to learn more about 'day trading'. It just sounded like a more profitable 'career' than sitting in an office for a fixed salary. The only minus is I wont have any pension, but then again, if I live for that long I'll try to live off personal funds...

Really nice that somebody (especially your age) made a thread like this, so I'll try to reply extensively. Nobody is qualified to give direct stock advice, not even analysts and economists. Giving stock hints and others is another field, but I wouldn't go too far into that. Nobody who really has good information is going to spread it around to everyone. Making your own decisions based on facts about the company is obviously the best option. Cisco is usually not a very interesting stock to buy in the Nasdaq because it's long term prospects are currently pathetic (and even the current ROI [return on investment] is under 0% which means you lose money if you bought it last year and waited) I think it's great though that you're interested in investing already at age 17. It's a much better alternative than just spending cash on useless entertainment or trying to use poker for gaining profits (for the sake of being fair that is possible too, but I don't recommend it to you) You said you would like to "day trade" stocks. That's basically how I get most of my income. Still, not that I want to disappoint you, it is impossible to 'daytrade' with $1,500. It's a very low amount to get a real income from. Maybe impossible is a heavy word, but in the traditional sense you wont be getting much short-term profit. Daytrading basically means your laptop is tuned to 4-5 news sites, you have reliable contacts with information, and immediately after a dividend annoucement or quarterly sales announcement, you get as much of the stock as your risk level allows you to. Usually you will be 'daytrading' since the market opens (in my case, I prefer high short-term profits and volatile stocks, like the NASDAQ technology stock exchange). The NASDAQ for example opens for trading every weekday at 9:30am and closes at 4.00pm after which no trades can be made. Markets don't react 100% instantly, which means if you buy a soaring stock 1 minute after a positive news about the company, 60 minutes later it could be worth 10% more. Then you sell short the stock, making a handsome profit, and you can re-buy the stock when it hits a bottom when everybody else is selling it off after the news clout (also called 'shorting'), and make yet another big profit after it climbs up to it's normal level and you sell it off again. Another good option, if you want real profits instead of your bank's ridiculous 3%/annum, is waiting for a new, promising stock IPO like Google. Google's stock started at about $85, now it's worth over $400 dollars. That's 400%+ return in a year with almost no risk because to most experienced investors it was common knowledge the stock would 'bubble' for an extended period.

That's going to be my online nickname for a badass spanish street fighter, if a game with such a character is released. - On the issue of $1000, I wouldn't really agree with those who said 'put it in stocks'. The risk-reward ratio is horrible if you're planning to grow it into a significant sum, say millions. You may also want to diversify the funds, and if you diversify $1k, you are investing almost literally nothing. The returns will barely go up and the losses are heavy if the stock goes down. You could try selling short some stocks that are almost sure to climb back up in price, and make good money with just $1k. But I wont go further into that. I must agree with Zonorhc. Viktor, while you personally are in no way naive (in my opinion), the person who created this argument of what you'd do with $1,000 was. That sum of money doesn't mean anything. People who couldn't care less about poor people gamble 100 times that amount just by chipping a bet chip on a poker table in seconds. Also, how would you maximise the helping effect of the money? Let's see, we can't send it to poor countries where people really need it. The aircraft fee would almost exceed the value of the food. Most importantly, it doesn't help nearly anybody. You could give it to any charity or do whatever you want, it wont make a real difference (sadly). Maybe it would if all people committed $1,000 to helping others who are less fortunate.

Majoras Mask was IMO almost as great as Ocarina of Time, and the time factor just added more challenge to it. Getting all 20 masks to get the ultimate 'fierce deity' mask was actually fun, the quests were not repetitive. Heck, if I remember correctly, you could start some of the mask quests only during a certain time of the night on a certain hour, and perform some task. I also don't understand how it could be classified as "horribly programmed". It runs on the same game engine as OoT, just with new character models. It was not coded from scratch, it would seem you have little idea what you're talking about. Literally hundreds of programmers worked on getting the game engine playable and compatible with all the things in the game. You could not code a better one by yourself, those guys have years of experience in professional companies and eventually got into Nintendo. What are your qualifications..

Hahaha, what a sissy. He broke down already on that moment. As if his supervisor sitting in his comfy chair sipping his coffee can liberate you from strangling aliens.

Just play both of them and you'll be sad you ever touched the boredom called RuneScape. I'm not biased, I actually quit both games because they became boring. I'd just say WoW is a much more entertaining game with more things to do, more players, better customer support, and so on. Runescape on the other hand is all about just clicking around mindlessly, going to a 'bank' to deposit resources, repeat 450 times and you advance from skill level 84 to 85. Don't say "I just don't get it", I did advance to the 108th combat level before becoming utterly bored maybe 4 years ago and did level some other skills too, to a lesser extent (mining for example... Is kind of..Blank) WoW on the other hand has quests, nice dungeons, etc. and you don't necessarily have to even use the mouse for moving. It's difficult to put them both in the same series. RS gets bonus for being accessible from any computer with a java compatible browser though. :)

It's not my theory, hence I'm unable to comment on that. I'm just trying to look at it from the point of the Jedis. Personally I'm not a jedi even if that sounds awesome. Even though I know most of them take it as a joke/protest, there are *always* some who will believe it's authenticity.

But eventually, you'll fail at life. Unless technology in the future makes you immortal in which case you can kick me in the nuts for being clueless.