ephoenix

Tanya Devereaux says that she is turning virgin surgeon in order to divest any nerd of his cherry–provided that they support a free web. One of the terms and conditions states that the act must not last for more than 30 minutes. Er, could any guy last more than 30 seconds on their first time?

Net Neutrality: Sexy Lady Offers to Harvest Virginity of Net Neutrality-Supporting Nerds NSFW

via Digg

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Well of course someone who is going to profit from privileged net access doesn’t like net neutrality. The problem is it clearly shows that Virgin is not thinking of it’s customers. No customer will ever benefit from a lack of net neutrality. I had considered Virgin to be a customer-friendly company, but with this sort of thinking that high up I have to start to wonder…

Cable - News - Virgin Media CEO attacks net neutrality - Digital Spy

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“April 12, 2008–A group of University of Iowa scientists is looking for marijuana smokers to help gain insight into the drug’s effects. And they plan to pay subjects as much as 600 dollars to smoke their pot.”

UI Scientists Seek Marijuana Smokers For Study - Des Moines- msnbc.com

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I’d just like to say how backwards it is that schools and universities do not accept Wikipedia (or any site with “wiki” in it’s title for that matter) as a source for research! It’s an incredible resource and offers a great starting point for researching topics you know nothing about.

“A good starting point” - This is what I was often told about wikipedia, and it’s true. It’s summarizes every relevant point in an easy to access manner. So even the schools tell us it’s a great starting point. The problem is, if you are unfortunate enough to have included wikipedia in a bibliography, you entire essay is written off as being worthless for it. Are we not to include every source we use? Is wikipedia not a source?!

Also, I have yet to realize why wikipedia is considered a poor resource by academia. I think it stems from an inaccurate idea of what wikipedia is. Yes, anyone can edit it. Yes, that means some people are going to fake stuff. BUT, there are also an enormous team of editors and wikipedia that reverse changes. Points need references and obvious graffiti is removed. Also, references are linked at the bottom. Would profs feel better if we just stole those references instead of the wikipedia page? Probably, but I don’t see any real difference.

So this is a message to all the profs and TAs out there: Wikipedia is LEGITIMATE! Yes, it’s not as good as one of your fancy scientific journals, but even those print errors. At least wikipedia can be updated instantly. Do not dismiss an essay simply because you see the word ‘Wiki’, it’s incredibly close-minded.

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Man, everyone loves to hate Microsoft. Now first off, I’m not Microsoft fan myself, I hate their business tactics, and vista is pretty damn slow, but come on, OSX is not that much better. Oh sure, it looks fancy, and has a neat dock, and has expose, but those are all programs. Countless clones of those programs have been made for windows and the only thing that prevents them from being as good as the OSX counterpart is a lack of developer dedication.

At the actual system level, what makes a good OS? Compatibility. Microsoft has this edge and is way beyond Apple in this respect. Yes, OSX is linux based, which is awesome, but have you ever tried to run a non-command-line linux program in OSX? What a Headache.

Windows on the other hand, has countless programs and countless manufacturers supporting it. Yes, you might think Microsoft has evil business tactics in not releasing source code and such, but Apple is even worse in not letting anyone but themselves sell computers with OSX! Nevermind the fact that Macs are incredibly overprices anyway.

All in all, Microsoft is hated because it’s successful. Everyone loves Apple because it’s the underdog. It’s the choice of the artist, it’s the ‘rebel’ computer. It’s so damn cool to own a Mac. Unfortunately, it’s not useful for shit. Sure, it has neat programs like iMail, iTunes, iPhoto, whatever, but these are often not much better than their windows counterparts, nevermind that there are far better downloadable programs for windows.

That said, all you Apple fanboys. Get over your Mac fetish and look at which platform actually helps you get stuff done. If I want to shiney reflections I’ll get a Mac. If I want to get something done or play a game or anything else, I’ll stay as far away from Macs as possible. They’re great in theory, but that’s about it.

(btw, ever wonder why such a great feature of Intel macs is their ability to run Windows? )

Read:Apple’s OS Edge Is a Threat to Microsoft

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