When Applying For A Job And The Grades Listed Are 07/09/11. Will I Need To Apply For The Lowest

Why do so many women leave their phones to ring in a purse away from them instead of keeping it on their person?

I can't imagine the answers making much sense, since from an organizational standpoint, most pocketbooks and purses don't make sense. My take is that such accessories are often designed as much for style as they are for function. A totally functional pocketbook would have various pockets on the outside to store frequently used items, such as cell phones and car keys. As it stands, I constantly watch women digging through a heap of stuff in their pocketbooks looking for something or another.We have to remember that cell phones and smart phones are a relatively new technology, whereas purses have stated largely the same for many decades. The excuse of clothes being too tight and pockets being too small also indicates the relatively importance of form over function. In other words, the real question there might be "why shouldn't they have better pockets and a slightly looser fit?".

Will video games ever reach CGI-quality graphics?

I was watching T3:Rise of the Machines a few weeks ago. I almost broke out laughing at the big fight scene between Schwarzenegger and Kristanna Loken. The movie was fairly high-budget, but the (2003) CGI in that fight sequence was SO HORRIBLE that it was almost laughable.When you think about it, incredible scenes like this one in Skyrim, are meant to be rendered at 60 to 144 frames per second in real time, so there is by necessity going to be high levels of abstraction.CGI animators might require ten seconds or ten minutes per frame to render an extremely complex scene like some of those found in Avatar where every shade, color, detail, and nuance is considered for months.Games would be self-defeating if they were so detailed and photo-realistic that the most powerful GPU made could only render a few frames per second.The same principle even used to apply to movies too. A few years ago I purchased the 25th anniversary edition of The Last Starfighter, which had some fascinating documentary DVD extras chronicling the production of the film—which was actually the first film in history to be more than 50% CGI.The CGI by today’s standards is almost comical in its simplicity, but very cutting edge in 1984.Even so, it took something like 14 months running around the clock on a Cray X-MP supercomputer to render the film’s CGI frames. By about 1998, home video games running on a 3Dfx Voodoo II could surpass this level of quality in real time.

Does a $50 steak actually taste better than a $10 steak?

I work in a steak house where our steaks start at $50 and run up to $190 for a Wagyu 250gr (9oz) NY Strip. Each steak has a different country of origin, we have 2 main breeds of cattle (Angus and Wagyu) and i would suggest 2 different ways of feeding the cattle (i.e grain fed and grass fed). All told with area, cut and size we have over 30 options on our menu. I would say that each of the steaks is excellent at its peak and not that great at its nadir. The difference is if you're going to charge $50 your margin for error with the guest is very slim. If the guests isn't impressed by a $50 steak he's not trying it again, ever. A $10 steak you could probably talk them into it. So it's pretty important that we are consistently excellent with our steaks.You should also bear in mind that steaks aren't identical uniform products, like hamburgers. Why would a steak cost more than an other? The cost of producing it. From genetics of the cattle through feed, slaughter, butchery, aging and the expertise of cooking it. Some others may suggest some more factors out there and they may well be right. If you're willing to make the best decisions irrespectve of costs at each stage of production then you should consistently produce the best steaks. If not then you might get lucky once in a while but largely it will not taste great.What I will also tell you, I once went with a group of friends to a $7 steak night. I expected the worst and actually had a great steak. All my friends ate leather. On the flip side, at my place we still get legitimate complaints about our steaks despite all the lengths we go to, but they are few, well below 1% of the steaks that we sell. So the difference between a $10 steak and a $50 is an almost nailed on, guaranteed quality.

Which three books should every high school student in America be required to read in order to be able to graduate, and why?

My choices for 3 books are based on the books that affected and moved me as a teenager. Being Australian, they may not all be well known to foreign readers.1. 'Power without Glory' by Frank Hardy - This classic novel was based fairly closely on real events and people in Melbourne in the 1940's. It is gritty and full of authentic characters and a timeless story of corruption and greed and what happens to those who seek it and are trodden down by it. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pow... ]2. 'My Brother Jack' by George Johnson - another book set in Melbourne, the first in a trilogy. The characters, again are very authentic and the tale, full of truths about life and the human conditon.[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_... ]3. 'Tess of the d'Urbevilles' - This book of course is the Thomas Hardy classic. The power and drama of this book gripped me as a teenager, and I still remember vividly scenes and relationship dynamics between the central characters. The plight of Tess and particularly the flawed self righteous character of Angel Clare, haunted me for many years. (I also learned the word 'prestidigitation' from this book. (Angel Clare: "What gross prestidigitation is this?") Love that word...As an addendum, because the first two were Australian. I would include 'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding. (every teen should read this! Particularly now as the situations in the book correspond to what happens all too often on the web) Also, I would include 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell, for almost the same reasons. The lessons of these books are timeless.

SQL: How much worse is it to do two SELECTs rather than a SELECT with a JOIN?

I'll join in with Toby (and the rest) and add a little.Generally speaking, let the pieces of software that are responsible for doing things very well to do what they were designed to do. DB systems (in general) are very efficient in what they do (including JOINs), they are written with high performance in mind and will probably do a better job than you, given they are configured correctly, and also, by letting the DB engine do that JOIN, you are not calling outside your process (and sometimes machine) to another machine, which is a slow and costly operation.That said, sometimes configuring a system is very hard and it's just easier and faster to "just do it" on your side. If this is the reason you're doing it - I would strongly suggest to STOP doing that and invest in researching optimizations of the DB side - the knowledge and advantages are numerous. But I would add a small addition: sometimes, very rarely but it does happen, for pure technical reasons, you want to build a system that is very efficient in some aspects, sacrificing efficiency in others (for example, doing less checks and having less indexes so WRITE would be faster, but having to save on space and memory so you can't have many auxiliary tables) - and those cases it might be better, sometimes, to do some JOINs outside the normal scope. If you go down this path, have automatic performance tests in place in advance to always be sure (even a year from now, as the DB move to a new version and your code changes) you're still ahead of the curve, and always measure, measure, measure.

12/26 is Boxing Day. Go shop!!! Downtown Robson Street is where it's at.p.s. I'll definitely be going out that weekend. Hit me up if you want to hang out / see the night scene.