MySpace is actually a really useful website for keeping in contact with people that you normally wouldn't have a chance to speak to very often. 

I made a lot of friends when I was in the military, and when I was discharged I made the stupid mistake of moving to the black hole of the universe, North Platte, Nebraska.  There were a lot of people that I lost contact with and really didn't have a way of tracking down.  About 5 months ago I got an account so I could keep in contact with my brother, who had just been deployed to the middle east.  He worked pretty nasty shifts over there and at least with myspace he could post messages to his friends and news on his life (as long as it wasn't work related).

Within a few days of creating the account I had a bunch people look me up.  Some of these people I hadn't seen in many years.  I found a couple of old comrades from my tech school in Monterey California that I now chat with on a pretty regular basis. We reminisce about old times and post bulletins and such about stuff related to our old jobs that our little clique might find interesting.  Here are some examples of some of the people I keep in contact with:

- 6 old friends from high school, one that now lives in San Diego, one that lives here in N.P. but almost never has any time to go out (single working mother with 3 kids will do that to you)
- 2 old friends from tech school, one living in Vegas, one in Okinawa.  I didn't even realize that I went to high school with the one in Vegas until she pointed it out on my profile.  I partied with this chick at Ft. Ord quite a few times and never made the connection until I was out of the service.
- 6 old buddies from when I was stationed overseas in Asia. 
- 11 relatives, half of which don't live anywhere near me, that I normally wouldn't remember to call or stay in touch with
- 1 person from PS that is interesting to chat with when I get the time
- a few others that I have met that we usually use MySpace to coordinate places to meet for get-togethers and such.

I do agree that meeting in person is much preferable to chatting online with some pictoral avatar and cute little phrases and jokes, but around here, the only entertainment venues for persons between 21 and 35 are bars and more bars.  During the 3 short months of summer we all go to the lake and raise hell, but this enables us to stay in contact with our friends, even when we are all in winter hibernation mode.

Edit: Fixed a really annoying run-on sentence

Edit again: http://www.myspace.com/goldir

Oh no!  I wasn't talking about myself.  I don't have that much self hatred.  Besides, my viewpoints are more like capitalista or centurion.

Hmm... I would have to say that overall, this partial wipe has some very distinct advantages.  Yes, my character was dropped to only 175K tria, but I also have to look at the point that so was everyone else!  This means that (due to the laws of supply and demand) prices for special or rare things will once again drop from the obscene to the merely expensive.  As for guild funds being heavily depleted, the guilds have survived this before.  All it means is that the guilds can't drive up the prices for bidding on things for a few days until they build up their wealth again.

Dang.  That looks like the kind of system you would put in as a control system on a space shuttle or one of those that physicists use to calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies or some crap.  I would say that it looks like the kind that NASA would use, but NASA would pay $34000 for the hardware and it would probably be a 5 year old 500 mhz AMD system purchased through Raytheon or one of those companies via a 30 year service contract.  Oh yeah and the OS would most likely be NT, with millions of dollars in non-functioning custom software.

I love building my own systems, rather than paying some company exorbitant prices to do it for me.  Have you ever tried to convince someone who thinks computers are a necessary evil to allow you to buy all the components for a high quality one?  However, I bet I could probably do some creative accounting and hide most of the expense from her... We shall see. hehehehe

True enough.  Unfortunately, all of the other High Performance Desktop manufacturers don't provide the financing.  I notice that in the last month Dell changed their website options again.  Now you can't get the 667 FSB DDR2 unless you get an XPS system, with which you pay a massive premium just for the spiffy XPS logo.  I would love to get one of the new quad cores, but in order to do that you have to buy their $4500 system. Also, they removed the option to add the IGEA Grafx Accelerator from all their systems except the XPS.  I hate being railroaded.  It isn't guaranteed I will go through Dell, but until I can find a better site that doesn't require I go to my bank for a personal loan, they look like the only option to get myself into massive debt and have fun doing it.

I was thinking on a system with overamped specs because, while PS may not have high requirements now, in about 2 years who knows what it might need?  Especially with Window$ Vi$ta coming out.  That OS will eat half your RAM before you even take it out of the box.  

Another issue that worries me is that even though you need the Nvidia Toolkit to compile PS, it seems to have issues when dealing with Nvidia Cards.  Mostly with particles (whatever that means, I am ignorant when it comes to video hardware and capabilities) Does ATI have SLI as part of its capabilities?  I will ask my Computer Hardware instructor, since I have to go to class in half an hour anyways.

Also, could a moderator please move this post to the Hydlaa Plaza?  I have a feeling this sucker is going to go off on a tangent, so it may as well move to the chatter board.

EDIT: Whups!  Karyuu beat me to it.  Thanks!

Since the people have decided that she was in some way guilty, then she now has recourse of her own.  Maybe this lady should sue the school district for not maintaining their network.  Somehow, I think there was more going on behind the scenes of this whole thing.  Either someone really wanted to use this woman as a Judas Goat, or she did a few other things not mentioned in the article.

As for interesting laws...

Here in Nebraska it is required by law to have a pot of soup or other food if an establishment serves alcohol.

It is also illegal for the bartender to mix hard alcohol and beer.  Boiler makers have to be mixed by the customer.  One bar in town got a pretty hefty fine a few years back for violating that one.