Problem is that most services (currently) that can communicate with FB users requires that you have a FB account--so that it knows WHICH FB users to communicate with.

The main reason, in my mind, to upgrade is being able to effectively use 64-bit machines fully--and have more than 4GB of RAM.

Yes you need new machines to do this, but really, if you are buying NEW machines, you should probably upgrade. The question then becomes a matter of whether or not new machines are worthwhile. Your old machines may be still serviceable, but would newer machines result in getting work done enough faster to offset (even partially) the cost of the upgrade.

In many cases, the answer is no--a LOT of secretaries & folks that mainly do word processing are better off just staying where they are--their machines are fast enough for what they do, and additional RAM & extra cores aren't going to make a difference.

That said, if you are doing statistical analysis, engineering, graphic design, programming (and compiling), and a number of other jobs, then you should ABSOLUTELY be on a very aggressive upgrade schedule. Additionally, 8GB of RAM is more than just a good idea for many of those jobs--some of them should be stuffing as MUCH memory as they can into their machines so that they can do their jobs more efficiently.

In any work setting the bottleneck for employee performance should not be the environment or resources, but rather human capacities. That's the ideal. Obviously cost of achieving that and other considerations prevent most companies from getting to the point where that's true--but it should be the goal.

So either move to Win7-x64 OR move to another 64-bit OS with lots of power & memory in the hardware. Staying where you are only makes sense if you are doing mostly word processing.

You weren't? Cause I certainly was. My wife found it moving and touching and all that, but in the end, I'm just left wishing I has SOME FREAKING ANSWERS!!!!!! To ANYTHING IMPORTANT!!!!

The Dharma initiative? Gone--no explanations. The Light? No answers. The OTHER Light? Lame--and NOT an answer. The Island? Nope, not a single REAL answer. The Others? Nope, not a single answer! How did Jacob learn more about the island? Nope, nothing (in fact this question wasn't even RAISED until late season 6, so...). Who is the woman that killed Jacob's real mom? (Again a late-coming question).

Answers in general--NOPE!!

SO screw all this...I'm officially ticked at the waste of time it all was...

I think most Tolkien fans would agree that elves had higher morals than that.

Hollywood, however, has none. Thus we get...Frodo saving the shire from dinosaurs on frickin pogo sticks--30 years before he was born.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this:
if the doctor isn't an expert in statistics, how can he properly evaluate the effectiveness of the medicine he's handing you?

Can he say (with any really justified confidence) that it will actually help? Can he claim to know how the true probability that you have disease X when manifesting symptoms y & z? Does he understand the effect of false positives?

Without a solid grounding in stats, the answers are sadly, no he cannot make justified statements about the effectiveness of the medicine (sorry, relying on the pamphlets handed out by big pharma to tell him means taht i want to go elsewhere for my medical treatment).

My signature has NEVER been more appropriate.

MANY people using stats have NO CLUE what they are doing, but they do it VERY carefully.

I hate it when I see people double-dip on data sets....

For my thesis, approximately 5% of my correlations were statistically significant, and even THOSE were WEAK. I told my committee that I wasn't confident of any of the relationships.

Yes, I expect my doc to know stats. The THEORY behind them is just as important as the math.

They do.

I've been using Deposit@Home for a few years now. I'm not sure if you have to have a credit card through them or not to make it work, but it is a very slick process.

I was confused why this is news--the USAA iPhone app was featured on /. when it first became public information. Other banks are just slow I guess....

Huh? I use it with firefox all the time....you must have something wacky going on. I haven't tried it with IE64 bit since I loaded win7-64bit. I'll give it a shot tonight....

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

You don't seem to know much about USAA...

They are, if nothing else, extremely cautious about that sort of thing from my experience. I bank with them (as well as have my auto insurance through them). I wouldn't switch away for some imagined slight. Not after having dealt with the HELL that other banks put you through if there is some sort of customer service needed. USAA is by far and away the BEST customer service bank I have EVER dealt with. Bar none. Nope, I'm not switching banks.

I've been using their deposit@home service for a while now, and it's great. This is just a minor evolution of that (camera instead of scanner), and I don't see much to make me think it's a huge difference.

Since none of them support OS X unless you have an Intel processor, I'm ticked at them all. XBMC DOES, but so far I can't get it to stream Netflix OR Hulu (there are ways, but they require you to have another computer and to purchase Playon...FAIL).

Look, I'm not going to shell out hundreds of dollars just to have a media center computer. I happen to have some older hardware that is suitable for the task. PPC support makes sense because I think a fair number of people are walking the same path. So until Boxee gets off their collective butts and decides to support PPC, I'll pass.

YOU SUCK!

Seriously, does anyone REALLY this to work? All it will do is cut down on the absolutely MOST casual pirates and annoy legitimate customers. The tighter they make it, the more this is true. Determined individuals WILL ALWAYS find a way to circumvent their measures. ALWAYS.

I'm not likely to pirate an OS...I like being able to run it with all the updates and I'm happy knowing that my software is legit...but that's certainly not even a close consideration as to what most people are going to do.

Look, if you don't like paying MS for your OS, DON'T USE WINDOWS!!!

Enjoy your next baby, pal. Cause I guarantee that you WILL end up pregnant if you go bareback at all and you have a reasonably fertile wife and you aren't firing blanks.

That's how I (and a BUNCH of other fathers) ended up with my second kid. Sorry, but a reliable male contraceptive sounds great. And honestly, something that quits farking around with my wife's sex drive (as in, killing hers) sounds freaking awesome to me. Even if it drops mine by a bit, if she's up for it, I'd be happy.

I are confused. So /. is now an MMO? It's like the silly game 'Achievement Unlocked' a meta game on various flash-game aggregator sites like Kongregate. Bizarre.

Now what? I don't even know what to do.

This is correct, in principle, but I think you'll find that in practice what happens is that in MOST courses there is enough wiggle room for the 'teacher's ire' factor, which means that the teacher suddenly starts being much harsher regarding length of paper, grammar, and other 'soft' portions of the grading criteria. Of course, in some courses (physics) there may not be a paper, so that's out--but there are an AWFUL lot of courses with a 'class participation' grade, which very frequently boils down to 'don't tick me off'. It can often make the difference if you are near the edge of a letter grade (A vs. B, etc), and can either hurt you a lot or significantly help you if the teacher is pleased with your performance.

In any case, this is a VERY bad idea on the part of the teacher. It WILL backfire--if the teacher can't find a more creative way to prevent cheating then she needs to be fired.

Actually, what I would prefer to see, rather than a ribbon interface, is a completely CUSTOMIZEABLE interface. Separate the interface out from the core programming into a easily hacked XML-based language and script and make it accessible and you'll see a TON of USERS take over the interface design aspect of it.

Some of them will re-implement the MS Office ribbon. Some of them will re-implement the current 00.o interface. Others will come up with something completely new and innovative. Much of which will be completely unworkable for many people. Some of it will be fantastically brilliant however. BUT IT SHOULD BE DONE!

No, those are the US Senators FROM SC. Ford is a senator in the SC State Senate. Very different beast. At least pay some attention to the facts on the ground.

All that said...while I don't typically swear much, this guy's a moron and needs to be removed from office painfully.