kagerioshu

Like someone else has said before me, this is largely an issue based on your location and the providers in that area. However, I can at least comment on the ethics of these companies and on foulness in particular. Of all the businesses out there that provide phone service, the worst one that comes to mind is ATT.Don't get me wrong: I think ATT provides quality coverage and has some decent, feature-rich service options. That's not the point of my reply, however. I simply wish to point out how absolutely, unwaveringly predatory they are towards their customers.I've used their services periodically for the past three years and with every phone and plan I've had through them, they've set it up so that it's nearly impossible to keep your billing under control. From deceptive user agreement jargon to applications on phones you can't delete that misdirect you in ways to add unwanted charges to your account, they have every angle covered to walk you unknowingly into their service traps and to ensure that they can charge you what they please for it.For example, I just switched to a new phone that doesn't require a data plan. I was going to keep my line on this account as cheap as possible, but the phone comes with tons of system-locked applications and links that I can't disable or delete which immediately connect me to the internet upon activation, accidental or not, adding data charges to my phone. That alone would be pretty sinister, but what ATT does is automatically adds a data plan to my account of their choosing to ensure I don't "run up unnecessary charges." I have no use for internet on a phone, so I tried to disable it and guess what? This new phone has no option in the setup that allows me to do that, a feature which has been in every phone to date I've had with ATT.This behavior alone more than triples my bill! Just for an accident in most cases! Granted, I can call them and usually have it removed; however, this in itself is a huge hassle and they train their representatives to do their fare share of haranguing and wheedling to convince me that I NEED these added "services" after all, adding displeasure and inconvenience to the added charges.My girlfriend has a Blackberry through ATT and it's three years old. Apparently it's one of the last models that allowed customers to disable data -- now, if you want to buy a blackberry, you HAVE to purchase a data plan to go along with it in order to use it at all. Granted, you'd probably want a data plan if you're using a Blackberry, but the fact that they've made it mandatory just goes to prove my point.It isn't just Data plans though. They have all sorts of things set up to prevent a customer from being in full control of their charges. It isn't simply marketing flotsam that all the other competitors employ when they ask you if you're tired of mysterious charges. They're probably talking about ATT. You have to really examine your plan agreement and make certain you stress exactly what you want to pay for with these guys.I have no idea how the other providers stack up, but I can say this much at least: I used TracPhone and StraightTalk, which I believe utilize the Verizon network as a mobile virtual network operator. These two are essentially the same company, but with both services I got exactly what I agreed to paid for and no more, no less; they don't charge you for anything beyond what you choose to use whether it be on a per-minute basis or for a set monthly fee. They're not feature-rich but they do give you the basics if all you're looking for is texting, talking, and picture mail. I heard Metro PCS is good like this too, so if you want something simple, affordable and efficient, I'd recommend anybody to look into them. If you choose to go with ATT, I say to tread carefully and keep a hawk's eye on your monthly statement.

My main hobbies include photography, biking, cooking, and learning scripting (whether it is Flash, CSS, etc.)I find that photography is one of the most soothing, reflective activities one can get engaged in. It allows you to see the world on many levels; you develop senses to appreciate both the particular and the general, the small and large. Also, speaking for myself, it gives me inspiration to do lots of traveling -- which I guess counts as another major hobby, heh.Cooking has been something I've been gradually getting better at over time. I've been cooking for at least six years now, and I'd say that I'm quite capable despite lacking an "official" education. As for biking, that's one of those things that counts towards both photography and travel. :DI'm also a big geek, so I like to do studying and research on the side. My current interests are learning scripting skills so I can be better at maintaining websites and blogs.

Although I'm a man, like many of you I've been dealing with dry skin and eczema my entire life. I have tried many different "remedies", and while some of them have proven to be decent, none of them have really done my skin the justice it deserves. Some moisturizers leave the skin feeling filmy, others make me break out, etc.However, I came across a solution I found is quite remarkable. It may sound peculiar to most, but I started using olive oil a few years back and quite frankly, it has worked wonderfully ever since. Even Charles Atlas, the man that perhaps STARTED the body fitness trend in America, recommended olive oil as the superior solution for pampering one's skin. Of course, he recommended this for men, but I'm here saying that anybody can try it out if they're willing to think a little differently about skin treatment.Olive oil for dry skin is a very different kind of treatment compared to, let's say, a typical moisturizer. Most of them are developed to work anywhere, anytime. But olive oil should definitely be used right out of the shower. It works best when, after having taken a hot shower, youimmediately apply a generous amount to your face, torso, and wherever else you feel you need to treat your skin.The surprising thing about olive oil is that despite being a pure oil, it doesn't clog your pores nor will it cause your skin to break out or get dirty. Being wholly organic and natural, it absorbs quite easily and can be applied anytime you're done bathing. However, keep in mind that it can leave a peculiar "shine" to your complexion if you use too much at once (although this shine disappears in an hour or so).I won't say it's the ultimate solution for everyone, but I do believe that people without allergies to olives should definitely try it out at least once. I recommend using light olive oil as it is cleaner and has a smoother, lighter texture than the other types (extra virgin, regular).I really hope it works for others like it has for me. If not, then Godspeed and good luck on your search for skin treatment that expresses your beauty. :angel:

This is the single most fantastic, flamboyant act of computer hardware fraud I've ever heard of. There are so many ways to make money legitimately, it makes me wonder how something such as carefully creating mock processor units is managed -- and where? They must have some tools at their disposal to create such convincing look-a-like boxes and manufacturer so MANY of them. Wow. I bet it did make some criminals a lot of money -- and at the expense of every honest person who bought into them. A shame. :angel:

Sheepdog has a good point. As much of a bad rap tobacco has, it really fuels the economies of several nations simply due to absurd taxes levied against the product.I totally agree with HoRuS though. Tobacco is a choice people make for themselves, and while it may have an affect on others in congested areas, in almost all cases that is something people can choose to do something about (i.e leave the company of the smoker or ask him or her to put it out in their presence). There are many things that negatively affect air pollution and the world for the worse that should be addressed before the the choices each human being makes for himself or herself.Basically, if tobacco were to be made illegal, it would only produce more criminals; it won't change society's desire for it. The best thing to do is to work on continuing to educate people about its health risks and consequences. Some may call this method naive, but it actually works in America, where the number of smokers has dropped significantly in the past fifty years and now hovers around roughly 20%.I think the best thing to do is to just make a personal choice to avoid it. Wanting to illegalize what other people do should only be considered when it actually has a pronounced affect on your wealth being and freedom. Tobacco, whatever others may say about it, does neither and will continue to remain a choice that adults can make for themselves.

I suppose there's nothing definite about it, but yeah, the general consensus is that Facebook consists of a more intelligent, mature, and sociable audience than Myspace. The difference is quite easy to see in many ways when you compare the profiles of each site. I have accounts on both networks but I do greatly prefer Facebook over Myspace for several reasons.I think the most apparent one is that Facebook maintains a very professional, classy look. This is a given due to the fact that Facebook has an inherently attractive and formal design that you can't fundamentally alter. Same goes for the presentation of your profile. Another aspect that helps is that it gives users far greater control over the information they share with others, which helps to maintain professional and social boundaries with certain groups of people (and with the internet at large). You can honestly use Facebook as a means of supplementing a resume if you wanted to do so! Myspace on the other hand, while it does provide an avenue for more personal creativity, it is by and large dominated by incoherent design choices and poorly implemented script that really damage the reputation and stateliness of the service. It is theoretically able to be a wonderful network for all artists, but the reality of it is that when put in the hands of everyday people, most of whom don't possess canny tastes more or less, they relish their profiles with gaudy graphics and horrendous layouts that strain their credibility and character, which brings down the overall reputation and quality of the social networking site itself.Honestly though, I don't want to be a cynic but Facebook is starting to get that way too what with all the thousands of useless, pointless, nonsensical and sometimes even dangerous applications that made their way into the site. I can hardly check my friends updates without being bombarded by tons of useless boilerplate messages detailing their achievements in the latest farming clone or number grind game. Fortunately, you can disable pretty much all of them (a tedious process admittedly, but at least you can do it easily from within the site controls).Overall though, when you get down to it, you can't blame the social networking site on the users. Facebook is still Facebook, and while more and more regular people are using it, as long as the site stresses uniform appearance and strict quality control over the presentation of personal information, then it'll still be the better choice for those who opt for a respectable and objective public profile.To make a comparison of my own, I designed my own Myspace layout using my knowledge of CSS and html. It's not meant for professional purposes but it was fun and gave me a strong degree of personal expression that you can't get with Facebook. On the other hand, if I ever want to introduce myself to someone I'll definitely use Facebook. While it doesn't give me artistic expression, it does give users the opportunity to present information in a safe, approachable manner that can be scaled to suit the need of your public image.Basically, what it boils down to is that Facebook is perfect for networking professionally and presenting a comprehensible, objective, accurate image while Myspace is good for doing whatever the heck you want. Don't expect Myspace to be a good way of showing a future employer who you are, though! Haha.

I have no official stance as to what should be done with libraries, but it's my personal opinion that they remain an element of our society and culture. I've always enjoyed going to the library (and still do -- monthly), and well, I can never imagine a situation where a library does not exist, either due to obsolescence or lack of interest. Even with the internet growing everyday and taking up a larger aspect of information gathering and research, I still believe that libraries hold the key to objective, authentic information on the local level that just can't be preserved or guaranteed on a world-wide, dynamic, open-ended basis. For instance, when was the last time you could investigate all the newspapers and local publications for your town, city, etc. on the internet? Not every community has that luxury and for those that do the efforts are still immature. This is exactly what local libraries do and they manage that task very well.Of course, another great aspect of libraries is simply the wealth of random books they contain. I think everyone should spent at least a couple of hours at the library a month, casually browsing the selection. I'm very certain that if people did this they'd be surprised at the amount of literature that piques their interest, whether it be theoretical science paperbacks or fantasy fiction, biographies to philosophy, or anything in-between. This is how I found so many of my favorite books and reading material.Of course, libraries need to improve in many ways -- or simply can't manage some aspects of our growing information age. The most basic example I can think of is instructional material for computer science or programming. Basically, if you go to almost any library you'll find an enormous amount of reading material dedicated to computers. The problem is though, that almost all of it is woefully out-of-date or just plain obsolete. What you end up with is piles of books that simply have no relation to the things that matter in today's world. I'm talking stuff like books on how to deal with Photoshop 4.0, how to make the transition to html 4.0 for the 21st century, etc..Of course, there are still many extremely valuable books that can be found on this subject that hardly lose their value. At my local library in this quiet town I live in, you can find huge tombs on C++, the art of using Adobe Flash successfully (published 2008), and many other things that still offer a great way to understand subjects that are very relevant.All in all, I think that libraries won't lose their value if we understand just what they do best and how to respect them for the preservation of knowledge and information and the distribution of literature they offer both to local communities and to the greater world at large.

I don't necessarily agree with companies prying into people's personal information to make cases such as these against their employees. They can and should have the right to protect their interests, but they need more substantial proof than uninformed observations of website content to deny people their benefits. At the very least, these sort of decisions should have an objective evaluation given by a neutral third party.However! In this particular case, something such as "major depression" is a very fuzzy concept without the clear boundaries you'd find with something such as say, a disabling injury or physical disease. If she's taking pictures on facebook and having a good time, then she certainly isn't as severely depressed as she should be in order to get leave benefits. It's the equivalent of being caught dancing when you got time off by showing up to your boss with a leg cast. Basically, she was just milking the system and now she got caught. And that's her OWN fault.

I don't mind single-player games at all because they almost always involve predetermined closure, such as a final level, end to a story, last boss to defeat, etc..However, I really don't like games like WoW and other MMORPGs because of the fact that they basically ruin the lives of those who play them by wasting their good health and resemble 1984 in design. Sounds cliche and bizarre, but it's just that the time and effort that goes into them can just as well be put into real-life hobbies that reward a person with personal growth and accomplishment -- the kind of accomplishment that is measured only on your own terms of what you want to get out of it. Working on building a patio, sculpting furniture, rebuilding a car, painting, martial arts, etc.. these are things with value that last much longer and give you rewards that spread far and wide in the real world.What I mean by being like 1984 is that the things we aim for in reality are consistent with what mankind does for well-being,. In a virtual world, there is an invisible and absolute authority that controls and oversees all, an exclusive elite will rules the virtual world and gives the players meaningless tasks with planned obsolescence that are simply meant to waste their time and present the illusion that they're making progress in some arbitrary way... is this not like how a despotic utopia would operate if you were to take the terms and factors and place them in real life? I'm not being a presumptuous prude here, I'm just saying is all... the basic point stands that it is basically worthless to play in a virtual world where other people set the rules and you can't gain personal sanctification on your own terms. Something like Second Life seems much safer in this regards, but it isn't much of a game either, but that's neither her nor there...

Astrology is based on psychology and the tactics it allows astrologists to convince and trick people into believing it. This effectively gives it similar qualities to being like weather forecasts, except less accurate. It isn't that there's a nugget of truth hidden with the layers of mystical jargon and vague descriptions; rather, there's simply classic psychological tricks at work that aren't too easy to observe unless one is careful enough to maintain clear objectivity and critical thinking.Basically, you got to look for the usual cases of cold fishing, confirmation bias, etc.. and understand how those things are meant to undermine your judgment and soften your view of things to convince you that there's something in astrology for you to accept.I wouldn't worry about it too much, though. Unlike other forms of mysticism, astrology is pretty much harmless fun except in those rare cases that someone becomes addicted to it. Basically, if you give up your judgment concerning reality in some way, those who claim mastery over it with astrology (much like those who claim mastery with various religions) will then have mastery over you. Gotta maintain self-ownership.

The 'stache as it is known is something only a certain hairstyle can grow, so you won't find too many people capable of sporting it. But yeah, it has a rather bad iconic image that really seems to stand the test of time.The name Adolf will always carry an infamous quality, and I don't think people will forget the connotations anytime soon. Recognize the name Napoleon? That's the same situation, and it has a 100 year lead on Adolf. The only thing that can really go so far to remove the name's stigma from history would be to erase history altogether, and that would take another world war or a big brother society where naming wouldn't matter anyhow. Let's all hope nothing of the sort happens in our lifetime or in the far future!

Welcome aboard to Xisto. I've only been here for a somewhat short time myself, but I wholeheartedly recommend the service that's provided here. The forums are a great place to be, and there's something for everyone to discuss and friendly faces to chat with at pretty much any time of the day.I hope you enjoy it here like I do, and I wish you happy forum travels :]

Someof the best games in this particular genre go unnoticed and unappreciated by so many people. I can easily recommend the Gothic series for the PC to get your open-world RPG fix. I can go further and say that you should play the Sacred series, even though it's isometric 2d, it's still very much one of the finest games of its kind. Think Diablo II meets Oblivion, and you'll have a pretty decent idea of what to expect from it.Other games to consider are the following:Siverfall -- This was rather weak when it was first released, but several patches and a monstrous expansion pack later, it's now a fantastic RPG.Loki -- Loki is a very nice game with a rather brutal aesthetic. It plays more similarly to Diablo II than anything else, but it's still pretty open-ending in the same way the Elder Scroll series is.Morrowind -- A bit of a peculiar choice, considering how old it is and that Oblivion has succeeded it in the series. However, I will stand by my belief that this is THE definitive Elderscrolls game in terms of true immersion and quality of content and that Oblivion is weaker compared to it. Take that, fanboys

I prefer not using steam whenever I can, but I really have nothing bad to say about the service. I simply don't trust it maintaining my rights to the software I buy, especially seeing as how it has to be maintained through the Steam system and how the offline mode is a joke when it comes to controlling your games without an internet connection.Yeah yeah, I know, we're fast approaching the next decade and concerns about having sufficient offline services seems antiquated, but I come from a background in IT where I feel you can never be too prudent or careful in regards to your system, your software, and the flexibility your have regarding the two. You never know when you may lose internet for whatever reason, or have to rebuild your OS entirely due to a catastrophe. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that Steam will stick around for the long haul, and if it were to disappear or go offline, what could you do about the games you bought through it? That's hardly something anybody has to worry about at this moment, but I'm just saying.

I can't wait for Tekken 6 to hit the ps3 this year. As a semi-retired tournament player, I'm going to get back into the series more than ever and see how far I can take my abilities with this latest installment. :]