I don't know, I'd personally pay twice as much for the cherry ones over the strawberry ones - the strawberry ones are pretty awful (not that any of them are particularly good, or that I ever buy them myself).
A shave with a double-bladed safety razor is amazing. It's what I use also. The parent is, kind of ironically given the themes in his posts, stuck on a brand - Merkur - which while assumedly excellent (I've seen them in cutlery shops) are definitely overkill.
In Thailand, I bought a plastic-handled safety razor (the part you put against your face is metal) that came with some blades for about $5. You can get packs of 10 blades at some Wal-Marts in the US (about half of the wal-marts out there seem to carry them) and many grocery stores for $1.50-2. You can get really picky about using esoteric brands of blade, but the cheap ones work great for me - I'm sure there's a difference, but you have to see if the cheap ones work for you before trying the more expensive ones.
In London I upgraded my safety razor because I saw one in a store, for something like $8. Then I found a 1960's Gillette safety razor at a flea market for $4. It's a similar model to the one you see Jack Lemmon use in "The Apartment" - it's got a neat mechanism.
You also don't need a fancy brush and fancy soap. Good quality shaving soap is important, don't get me wrong - but you can use relatively inexpensive shaving cream. It has to be *cream* though, not foam or gel, which is what's most popular for some reason (and cheapest). Trader Joe's makes a great one, but there are always some available at other grocery stores and, indeed, wal-mart. Expect to pay $4-5 for it. A disc of shaving soap works well too, but it's a little fussy and you do need a brush and mug. I have tried a few different disc soaps and I never really liked them, the cream works better for me.
Anyway, you can get unbelievably close, and you don't have as big a problem with certain parts of your face not getting shaved enough, and there's no irritation. There are a couple of trade offs, though. First is that the marketing bit about "you take one stroke, it takes five" is true - you will have to go over your whole face several times if you want a really close shave. There is a lot of technique involved with using a safety razor rather than a modern disposable. You can read all about it online to find out "best practices", but you develop your own way of doing it after a while based on the specifics of your face.
You will spend more time shaving than you would with the modern disposables, but most people who try it seem to find it well worth it. I have had to use a modern razor occasionally since starting with a safety razor (you can't put safety razors in your carry-on), and find it intolerable in comparison.
The key to my comment, though, is that you don't have to spend $60-80 as per the parent's post to start using a safety razor. Look for an inexpensive one (probably have to go online unless you travel overseas regularly, or get lucky at a flea market), and if it doesn't come with blades, try the cheap ones from the grocery store or wal-mart before spending any money on more expensive blades. Try the cream shaves before getting into spending money on fancy disc soaps and brushes and everything. Unlike a lot of things where the cheap stuff can be categorically disregarded, you really can start out on the cheap end here, and go up as you feel is necessary. Remember, this is how *everyone* used to shave - it's a long-perfected technology. It's cheap.
Wegmans is great! I'm from the Buffalo area (Amherst) and grew up going to Wegmans. I went to other grocery stores a few times for one reason or another, and never understood why anyone would go there when Wegmans is right next door (or down the road). I went to the University of Rochester for my undergrad degree and again, Wegmans was the place to be. Students from out of the area were always amazed. There's a bus that takes you from campus to Wegmans! They have one of those here in Amherst for SUNY Buffalo - go at the right time to the store nearby the university and it's packed full of students from all over the country (and the world).
Anyway, I moved to Southern California for grad school and was shocked at the quality of the grocery stores, and their prices. I mean, I'd done a lot of traveling around the US and Canada and had been to a lot of mediocre grocery stores, but I assumed that in huge population centers there would be better options. Whole Foods is OK but they have a weird selection, and they really do earn their nickname of Whole Paycheck - I couldn't afford to shop there regularly. All of the "regular" chains are awful, or have one or two decent stores but always way too far away to make sense for me.
I ended up going to Trader Joe's for almost all of my food. Excellent quality and excellent prices for the most part, but they're small stores and don't have everything. However, now I find myself missing some of the great stuff in Trader Joe's, despite having easy access to Wegmans again. It would be interesting to see Trader Joe's and Wegmans competing in the same area - their range doesn't seem to overlap (they've got Trader Joe's on Long Island, but no Wegmans, for example).
I guess this is kind of pointless but oh well. I typed it out so here it is.
I completely agree, but thought I'd note that even Jackie Chan is using wires and CGI these days as he's getting older. Not just for the more outrageous stuff, either, like some of the ancient warrior stuff in The Myth. There's a kids movie where he plays a spy that came out this year, forgot what it's called (I saw it in Thailand, dubbed in Thai with no subtitles), but in the bloopers during the credits you see him dealing with wires - for one of his archetypal stunts where he uses a prop (in this case a chair) as an elaborate weapon. In the film, I assumed he was actually doing it, like he would have in the past. When I saw the bloopers, I felt really cheated. It's almost worse than if it was obvious in the film.
His 80's and early 90's films, though - wow! And, I mean, I still think he's great - still excellent physical stuff, and very funny.
There's a major trend in Asia toward returning to real, physically possible stunts in martial arts films. A lot of the wire-work films from the 90's, though, were meant to be great stories first, and martial arts second. Unfortunately the wire-work crept its way into pure martial arts films, which ruined everything for a while.
It's such a minor movie the title isn't worth mentioning? Yes, there *are* other people (lots of them actually) who appreciate doing things for real and might be interested!
I like your rant, but I'd also like to point out that there is plenty of "good" stuff (TV and film) being made these days. Just because Hollywood is shoving crap down our throats left and right doesn't mean there isn't anything else - if you ignore the crap (which is incredibly easy to do) you'll find some good stuff. And more often than not, the good stuff is widely recognized as good. The latest 3D CGI-fest may do well for a couple of weeks with the under-25 crowd (with some exceptions that do really well, like Avatar), but come "awards season" everyone's talking about the truly good films that came out that year and no one remembers the stupid stuff.
Honestly, do you really care that they push out endless Twilight and Harry Potter films to pre-teen girls? Sure, if it were up to us we'd spend the money on better films, but better films don't always get the same ROI. If it means having some money available for more risky films, then I don't care if they spend hundreds of millions on Twilight films that I don't have to watch. If people only made "good" films based on good material, the industry wouldn't be as large and there wouldn't be as much money available for movies.
1 square mile, are you fucking kidding me or what?
Yes, he was kidding:)
Why you still accept it is beyond me.
We "accept" it because there's no choice. There's nothing we can do about the carriers being greedy assholes, not building out new infrastructure, and providing poor service on the existing infrastructure. It's either this, dedicated business lines for hundreds of dollars a month (if you can get the carrier to give you one), or nothing.
They're government-mandated monopolies, and the government apparently doesn't care that they took billions of dollars from the taxpayers meant for upgrading the infrastructure and put it into bank accounts on the Cayman Islands (or whatever).
I think there is a portion of gamers like us who are really into co-op games, and make decisions whether to buy games or not based on the co-op modes. Unfortunately I think we're a rather small minority.
I don't play a lot of games while in the same time zone as my game-playing friends (not that I have many) anymore, but in high school and college I did quite a bit. One of our favorites was Star Wars Battlefront 2 - it's a Battlefield-style big-battle game and has 4-player split-screen coop (Battlefront 1 is good too but only has two-player splitscreen), with dozens of AI troops. You can set the AI difficulty to the highest and all go on one team and dominate, or you can split up into two teams and fight it out. Great fun to reenact Star Wars battles from the movies with your friends.
The key thing though is that it's highly accessible - you don't have to be great at console shooters to play and have fun (you won't necessarily get high scores, but you won't be dying every three seconds). It's a last-generation game, but the xbox version will run on an Xbox 360. I really am not sure why they haven't come out with a new one - it's the best post-glory-days (ending around Jedi Knight) Star Wars game by far.
There are a few other FPS games in the past few years with decent split-screen co-op, like the Gears of War series, and Call of Duty games. But it's one thing to play through the campaign co-op (or specific co-op scenarios as in the last couple CoD games), and another to have free-form battles like in Star Wars Battlefront that are endlessly replayable. It's a great formula - when Battlefield 1942 originally came out (Battlefront is just a Star Wars rip-off of that), we'd play it in the same way on a LAN - you can have a bunch of bots in the game to fill out the battle, and you and your friends take sides. I would love to have updated versions of these games with this functionality.
I don't see why he wouldn't want to film them now, with the same actors - they're all still alive. So Mark Hamill has scars from a car crash, or whatever it was... well, you expect a Jedi Knight to pick up a few scars over the years. There's a real potential for another three good (if not as great as the originals) movies. Of course, you'd then introduce younger characters (like the children of the original characters, who are in some of the books), and you've basically got an endless potential for sequels and spin-offs. That means and endless supply of money - not that Lucas doesn't already have that from the existing films.
Really though, if you think about it, it doesn't make sense to not do this - and the sooner the better. And you can't say that Lucas isn't doing it because of the integrity of the original films or anything - he already proved from episodes 1-3 and the "special" editions that he doesn't care about anything like that. And, we know he'd ruin it in one way or another. But I'd definitely go and pay to see the original cast reprise their roles, even if the films were centered around new, younger characters that are as bad as the ones in the prequels.
It'd be pretty similar to the later Star Trek films with the original cast - the characters aged really well. With good writing, the Star Wars characters have the potential to age well too - unfortunately this would mean getting someone good to write, which the prequels proved Lucas isn't interested in doing.
I wasn't bothered by it, and found it amusing. Having never watched soccer/football before the world cup this year (I was in Thailand where it was very popular, and got sucked into it a bit), I'm pretty sure I'd think there was something missing from a non-vuvuzela broadcast. It just seemed so natural for it to be there!
Bicycle helmets, red-light cameras, etc., all create paradoxical effects that result in more accidents and injuries, while costing more money as well.
I'm with you regarding red-light cameras, and I'm sure I could come up with many other safety features or similar regulations that cause more problems than they're worth, but I can't quite figure what the problem with bicycle helmets is that you're suggesting. How could bicycle helmets possibly cause more problems than they're worth? Unless you consider getting your hair messed up a big problem (riding without a helmet causes the wind to mess up your hair anyway of course). I don't like wearing a helmet myself, and I generally don't wear one when riding, but I recognize that the inconvenience and the hit to my fashionability does not actually outweigh the safety benefit in case of crash.
I think the idea is that these will come on automatically when the car's in reverse, overriding whatever is on the screen at the moment. I've never used one, but I understand that this is how these work as it is. You can probably turn that feature off now, though I don't understand why you would. Basically your described situation doesn't make sense (not that I don't believe you) - I think if it was always there when reversing, you'd notice and use it. Do the cars default to not automatically turning the camera on? Also, I imagine that when using these you'd still want to look at the mirrors or out the windows too, so maybe people are using them, but just as a supplement and not exclusively?
I solved that by turning the level for the center speaker several notches above the other speakers. You're "not supposed" to do that for the best quality, but while I care about quality, I care about hearing the dialog more. I set my levels very carefully, using an SPL meter and everything, and then after trying it basically threw those settings out and adjusted it to what sounded right. It did take some fiddling to get it so that when a sound changes position, it doesn't become too noticeably louder or softer when it goes to a different speaker, and at the same time the dialog is visible over other sounds.
If you go to a real movie theater, generally the front speakers are ridiculously loud, and you almost never consciously hear the surrounds except in loud action scenes. I think the sound in movies is generally mixed with that in mind, not home theater setups where you're supposed to get every speaker to output at the same level... in my opinion, this recommended way to tune your home theater system is wrong for that reason.
I suspect the reason many people in the US don't know about electric kettles, immersion heaters, etc. (besides the fact that we don't drink tea as much and that the parent was joking) is because they basically don't work at 110 volts! "Half the time" the GP Said... yeah right, try ten times as long, if it ever boils at all.
You can buy these kinds of things in the US - I've seen them in stores - but it's not a kitchen staple like in the UK. More likely, if anyone in the US has one it's shoved in the back of the cupboard and forgotten.
I always disliked numbers in user names too, and "back in the day" I had some more creative ones. I think that if your "clever" or "cool" username was already taken, then it clearly wasn't actually clever or cool (or it is, but you copied it from somewhere else).
However, at one point I decided on "penguinchris". Wasn't trying to be clever or anything, it just seemed good at the time. My name is Chris and I like penguins. There is someone else out there who uses or has used this username, but not prolifically and never on anything I use regularly (it was taken on Yahoo, and something else I've forgotten). I feel now that it's clever in that it's rather generic-sounding (doesn't call attention to itself), yet not indiscreetly anonymous, fairly memorable, and not something that anyone else would normally try to register.
I am telling you how clever I am because actually I think the same is true for yours - despite being apparent gibberish, most everything I said above applies to yours too:)
I'll spare you the "let me google that for you" link, but google's instructions for using alternate DNS servers are here - I use the google servers myself. I set my own computers and routers to use it, but also change it in the router settings of others if anyone ever has me do any network configuration (e.g. my parents, friends, etc.)
Then all it takes is to get a copy of the key, or to pick the lock. I'm sure we've all seen enough heist movies to know that this is almost always one of the simplest parts of a plan (The Great Train Robbery notwithstanding, where getting all four keys was the whole plan, and was very difficult).
I think the point of the epoxy idea is that it is essentially permanent - you could probably drill it out, or remove it in some other time-consuming way, but not without anyone noticing. If it's that important, replacing the entire computer when the mouse breaks (better start with high-quality mice, anyway) is probably cheaper than coming up with a really good solution that allows you to block the USB ports non-permanently yet somehow still securely.
Or, you know... they could use a PS/2 mouse and keyboard...
FWIW in Thailand there are also a lot of Nokias, but also a huge percentage of people have brands I've never heard of, like TWZ. I assume they're mostly Chinese brands, but there could be some Thai cell phone makers too for all I know. Very few Korean (Samsung or LG) phones there, and not too many Sonys. iPhones are considered cool, but few people have them (I know one person who has one and only saw a couple strangers with them in several months there).
Anyway what I really wanted to reply to you about was your assertion that the portable music player market is dead. I agree to a large extent - just a few years ago when I was attending a private university, practically every student had an iPod because they were cool. Other groups of younger (affluent) people I interacted with along the way also had a huge number of iPods. Nowadays, you almost never see the old-style iPods (which I think you can still buy new?), and it is true that many (most?) use their phone for music. I do myself - I have a (non-iPod - it's Korean actually, a Cowon X5L) mp3 player that I used for years, but my Nexus One is good enough now.
But there's something you may be missing - the market for the iPod touch is not just limited to people who want a music player. I know many people who have them, and some of them rarely even play music on it - they use it to play games or for other apps, and to browse the internet and so on. Basically a lot of people use them as mini-iPads, because they're inexpensive enough to be accessible to many young people (whose parents probably pay for their cell phone, but wouldn't pay for an iPhone data plan).
Also, there is still a decent market for devices that just play music. It's just changed - there's little need for the chunky 30 GB + players anymore (just get a smartphone or an iPod touch if you need that, and if you care about audio quality there are still the bigger devices with better sound available), but lots of people like to have the really small players (including the small iPods of course) for working out or whatever you might want something really small for.
I've used the drive in mine. Not frequently, but almost every time I did use it was not a time when I would have had an external drive easily accessible (e.g. travel) - not that I even have an external drive at all, now that I think about it. If I'm not going to use it frequently, I'm not going to bother bringing it with me if I travel - and then I'm stuck without it if I unexpectedly need it, which is what's happened to me in the past (didn't expect to need it - but finding blank discs is much easier than finding an inexpensive external drive).
And for those who do use it frequently, perhaps even while traveling - well that sucks, because now you've got to carry around (and pay for) an external drive.
That said, I don't mind losing the weight and size of the drive, and whatever else they shove into that space I'm sure will be much more useful overall. But it does seem a tad too early to effectively obsolete the ability to burn "emergency" CDs/DVDs while traveling.
I do expect to get another year or two, at least, out of this macbook pro - so perhaps by then I'll not mind. Hopefully then LightPeak will be widely used too, or if not, that the macbook pros at that time will have USB3 and won't skimp on any necessary ports.
By the way, the first time I used the drive was the day I got the computer. It was right after Snow Leopard came out, but the computers they were selling didn't all have it installed yet. So they included the disc for free. That's a situation where you want to make sure your customers can all use the disc without having to buy anything!
The lesson is that you get what you pay for! In your case, first-class service. You can have even better service, and skip the security, if you have enough money - just get a private jet. Or, become a congressman.
Stewardesses in the US sometimes try, but usually don't care about you at all if you're in economy class. Especially if it's a smaller plane, they'll probably be bitter and mean instead. However, there is a different set of flight attendants (usually the younger, more attractive ones) that work in first class on the larger planes. Your (usually astronomically expensive) first-class ticket partly goes towards that better service.
On Asian airlines, which generally are very good even for economy passengers (the seats are bigger for one, despite most Asians being much smaller than most Americans...), the only difference between the quality of the flight attendants is that the *really* cute ones are in first class. The other ones in economy are just as nice and friendly (and almost always still cute). It's astonishing how bad flying in or to/from the US has become, especially considering that it's still enjoyable in most of the rest of the world.
Yes, you're right. But it's entirely a context thing. If I'm playing a WW2 game, I expect to see a lot of swastikas. I expect to see them on my character if I'm playing as the Germans, which you can do in any WW2 game with multiplayer.
However, here it has nothing to do with the context of the game. It's being used to be provocative - and you would only do this using a swastika if you're a neo-nazi (which probably some of these people are), or if you're ignorant as I suggested. Every teenage boy recognizes the Nazis, yes, but it's ridiculous to suggest that they all *truly* understand the implications of donning the swastika - primarily, they don't understand that it makes them look like an idiot, and it doesn't make them look cool. Especially once you've played this game online with them and you've heard what they have to say - they're ignorant.
No, the players themselves have the power to create logos. There's a fairly extensive set of graphics (clip art essentially) which you can arrange in any way imaginable - choose the colors, size, arrangement, etc. - to create your logo. Lots of people find creative ways to make penises, and lots of people were finding creative ways to make Nazi swastikas. I made a much longer post about it here already, but you've been modded up, and you're misinformed.
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I don't know, I'd personally pay twice as much for the cherry ones over the strawberry ones - the strawberry ones are pretty awful (not that any of them are particularly good, or that I ever buy them myself).
A shave with a double-bladed safety razor is amazing. It's what I use also. The parent is, kind of ironically given the themes in his posts, stuck on a brand - Merkur - which while assumedly excellent (I've seen them in cutlery shops) are definitely overkill.
In Thailand, I bought a plastic-handled safety razor (the part you put against your face is metal) that came with some blades for about $5. You can get packs of 10 blades at some Wal-Marts in the US (about half of the wal-marts out there seem to carry them) and many grocery stores for $1.50-2. You can get really picky about using esoteric brands of blade, but the cheap ones work great for me - I'm sure there's a difference, but you have to see if the cheap ones work for you before trying the more expensive ones.
In London I upgraded my safety razor because I saw one in a store, for something like $8. Then I found a 1960's Gillette safety razor at a flea market for $4. It's a similar model to the one you see Jack Lemmon use in "The Apartment" - it's got a neat mechanism.
You also don't need a fancy brush and fancy soap. Good quality shaving soap is important, don't get me wrong - but you can use relatively inexpensive shaving cream. It has to be *cream* though, not foam or gel, which is what's most popular for some reason (and cheapest). Trader Joe's makes a great one, but there are always some available at other grocery stores and, indeed, wal-mart. Expect to pay $4-5 for it. A disc of shaving soap works well too, but it's a little fussy and you do need a brush and mug. I have tried a few different disc soaps and I never really liked them, the cream works better for me.
Anyway, you can get unbelievably close, and you don't have as big a problem with certain parts of your face not getting shaved enough, and there's no irritation. There are a couple of trade offs, though. First is that the marketing bit about "you take one stroke, it takes five" is true - you will have to go over your whole face several times if you want a really close shave. There is a lot of technique involved with using a safety razor rather than a modern disposable. You can read all about it online to find out "best practices", but you develop your own way of doing it after a while based on the specifics of your face.
You will spend more time shaving than you would with the modern disposables, but most people who try it seem to find it well worth it. I have had to use a modern razor occasionally since starting with a safety razor (you can't put safety razors in your carry-on), and find it intolerable in comparison.
The key to my comment, though, is that you don't have to spend $60-80 as per the parent's post to start using a safety razor. Look for an inexpensive one (probably have to go online unless you travel overseas regularly, or get lucky at a flea market), and if it doesn't come with blades, try the cheap ones from the grocery store or wal-mart before spending any money on more expensive blades. Try the cream shaves before getting into spending money on fancy disc soaps and brushes and everything. Unlike a lot of things where the cheap stuff can be categorically disregarded, you really can start out on the cheap end here, and go up as you feel is necessary. Remember, this is how *everyone* used to shave - it's a long-perfected technology. It's cheap.
Wegmans is great! I'm from the Buffalo area (Amherst) and grew up going to Wegmans. I went to other grocery stores a few times for one reason or another, and never understood why anyone would go there when Wegmans is right next door (or down the road). I went to the University of Rochester for my undergrad degree and again, Wegmans was the place to be. Students from out of the area were always amazed. There's a bus that takes you from campus to Wegmans! They have one of those here in Amherst for SUNY Buffalo - go at the right time to the store nearby the university and it's packed full of students from all over the country (and the world).
Anyway, I moved to Southern California for grad school and was shocked at the quality of the grocery stores, and their prices. I mean, I'd done a lot of traveling around the US and Canada and had been to a lot of mediocre grocery stores, but I assumed that in huge population centers there would be better options. Whole Foods is OK but they have a weird selection, and they really do earn their nickname of Whole Paycheck - I couldn't afford to shop there regularly. All of the "regular" chains are awful, or have one or two decent stores but always way too far away to make sense for me.
I ended up going to Trader Joe's for almost all of my food. Excellent quality and excellent prices for the most part, but they're small stores and don't have everything. However, now I find myself missing some of the great stuff in Trader Joe's, despite having easy access to Wegmans again. It would be interesting to see Trader Joe's and Wegmans competing in the same area - their range doesn't seem to overlap (they've got Trader Joe's on Long Island, but no Wegmans, for example).
I guess this is kind of pointless but oh well. I typed it out so here it is.
I completely agree, but thought I'd note that even Jackie Chan is using wires and CGI these days as he's getting older. Not just for the more outrageous stuff, either, like some of the ancient warrior stuff in The Myth. There's a kids movie where he plays a spy that came out this year, forgot what it's called (I saw it in Thailand, dubbed in Thai with no subtitles), but in the bloopers during the credits you see him dealing with wires - for one of his archetypal stunts where he uses a prop (in this case a chair) as an elaborate weapon. In the film, I assumed he was actually doing it, like he would have in the past. When I saw the bloopers, I felt really cheated. It's almost worse than if it was obvious in the film.
His 80's and early 90's films, though - wow! And, I mean, I still think he's great - still excellent physical stuff, and very funny.
There's a major trend in Asia toward returning to real, physically possible stunts in martial arts films. A lot of the wire-work films from the 90's, though, were meant to be great stories first, and martial arts second. Unfortunately the wire-work crept its way into pure martial arts films, which ruined everything for a while.
It's such a minor movie the title isn't worth mentioning? Yes, there *are* other people (lots of them actually) who appreciate doing things for real and might be interested!
I like your rant, but I'd also like to point out that there is plenty of "good" stuff (TV and film) being made these days. Just because Hollywood is shoving crap down our throats left and right doesn't mean there isn't anything else - if you ignore the crap (which is incredibly easy to do) you'll find some good stuff. And more often than not, the good stuff is widely recognized as good. The latest 3D CGI-fest may do well for a couple of weeks with the under-25 crowd (with some exceptions that do really well, like Avatar), but come "awards season" everyone's talking about the truly good films that came out that year and no one remembers the stupid stuff.
Honestly, do you really care that they push out endless Twilight and Harry Potter films to pre-teen girls? Sure, if it were up to us we'd spend the money on better films, but better films don't always get the same ROI. If it means having some money available for more risky films, then I don't care if they spend hundreds of millions on Twilight films that I don't have to watch. If people only made "good" films based on good material, the industry wouldn't be as large and there wouldn't be as much money available for movies.
1 square mile, are you fucking kidding me or what?
Yes, he was kidding :)
Why you still accept it is beyond me.
We "accept" it because there's no choice. There's nothing we can do about the carriers being greedy assholes, not building out new infrastructure, and providing poor service on the existing infrastructure. It's either this, dedicated business lines for hundreds of dollars a month (if you can get the carrier to give you one), or nothing.
They're government-mandated monopolies, and the government apparently doesn't care that they took billions of dollars from the taxpayers meant for upgrading the infrastructure and put it into bank accounts on the Cayman Islands (or whatever).
I think there is a portion of gamers like us who are really into co-op games, and make decisions whether to buy games or not based on the co-op modes. Unfortunately I think we're a rather small minority.
I don't play a lot of games while in the same time zone as my game-playing friends (not that I have many) anymore, but in high school and college I did quite a bit. One of our favorites was Star Wars Battlefront 2 - it's a Battlefield-style big-battle game and has 4-player split-screen coop (Battlefront 1 is good too but only has two-player splitscreen), with dozens of AI troops. You can set the AI difficulty to the highest and all go on one team and dominate, or you can split up into two teams and fight it out. Great fun to reenact Star Wars battles from the movies with your friends.
The key thing though is that it's highly accessible - you don't have to be great at console shooters to play and have fun (you won't necessarily get high scores, but you won't be dying every three seconds). It's a last-generation game, but the xbox version will run on an Xbox 360. I really am not sure why they haven't come out with a new one - it's the best post-glory-days (ending around Jedi Knight) Star Wars game by far.
There are a few other FPS games in the past few years with decent split-screen co-op, like the Gears of War series, and Call of Duty games. But it's one thing to play through the campaign co-op (or specific co-op scenarios as in the last couple CoD games), and another to have free-form battles like in Star Wars Battlefront that are endlessly replayable. It's a great formula - when Battlefield 1942 originally came out (Battlefront is just a Star Wars rip-off of that), we'd play it in the same way on a LAN - you can have a bunch of bots in the game to fill out the battle, and you and your friends take sides. I would love to have updated versions of these games with this functionality.
I don't see why he wouldn't want to film them now, with the same actors - they're all still alive. So Mark Hamill has scars from a car crash, or whatever it was... well, you expect a Jedi Knight to pick up a few scars over the years. There's a real potential for another three good (if not as great as the originals) movies. Of course, you'd then introduce younger characters (like the children of the original characters, who are in some of the books), and you've basically got an endless potential for sequels and spin-offs. That means and endless supply of money - not that Lucas doesn't already have that from the existing films.
Really though, if you think about it, it doesn't make sense to not do this - and the sooner the better. And you can't say that Lucas isn't doing it because of the integrity of the original films or anything - he already proved from episodes 1-3 and the "special" editions that he doesn't care about anything like that. And, we know he'd ruin it in one way or another. But I'd definitely go and pay to see the original cast reprise their roles, even if the films were centered around new, younger characters that are as bad as the ones in the prequels.
It'd be pretty similar to the later Star Trek films with the original cast - the characters aged really well. With good writing, the Star Wars characters have the potential to age well too - unfortunately this would mean getting someone good to write, which the prequels proved Lucas isn't interested in doing.
I wasn't bothered by it, and found it amusing. Having never watched soccer/football before the world cup this year (I was in Thailand where it was very popular, and got sucked into it a bit), I'm pretty sure I'd think there was something missing from a non-vuvuzela broadcast. It just seemed so natural for it to be there!
An AC mentioned this already, that link is simply the page you're redirected to if you use an incompatible browser.
Bicycle helmets, red-light cameras, etc., all create paradoxical effects that result in more accidents and injuries, while costing more money as well.
I'm with you regarding red-light cameras, and I'm sure I could come up with many other safety features or similar regulations that cause more problems than they're worth, but I can't quite figure what the problem with bicycle helmets is that you're suggesting. How could bicycle helmets possibly cause more problems than they're worth? Unless you consider getting your hair messed up a big problem (riding without a helmet causes the wind to mess up your hair anyway of course). I don't like wearing a helmet myself, and I generally don't wear one when riding, but I recognize that the inconvenience and the hit to my fashionability does not actually outweigh the safety benefit in case of crash.
I think the idea is that these will come on automatically when the car's in reverse, overriding whatever is on the screen at the moment. I've never used one, but I understand that this is how these work as it is. You can probably turn that feature off now, though I don't understand why you would. Basically your described situation doesn't make sense (not that I don't believe you) - I think if it was always there when reversing, you'd notice and use it. Do the cars default to not automatically turning the camera on? Also, I imagine that when using these you'd still want to look at the mirrors or out the windows too, so maybe people are using them, but just as a supplement and not exclusively?
I solved that by turning the level for the center speaker several notches above the other speakers. You're "not supposed" to do that for the best quality, but while I care about quality, I care about hearing the dialog more. I set my levels very carefully, using an SPL meter and everything, and then after trying it basically threw those settings out and adjusted it to what sounded right. It did take some fiddling to get it so that when a sound changes position, it doesn't become too noticeably louder or softer when it goes to a different speaker, and at the same time the dialog is visible over other sounds.
If you go to a real movie theater, generally the front speakers are ridiculously loud, and you almost never consciously hear the surrounds except in loud action scenes. I think the sound in movies is generally mixed with that in mind, not home theater setups where you're supposed to get every speaker to output at the same level... in my opinion, this recommended way to tune your home theater system is wrong for that reason.
I suspect the reason many people in the US don't know about electric kettles, immersion heaters, etc. (besides the fact that we don't drink tea as much and that the parent was joking) is because they basically don't work at 110 volts! "Half the time" the GP Said... yeah right, try ten times as long, if it ever boils at all.
You can buy these kinds of things in the US - I've seen them in stores - but it's not a kitchen staple like in the UK. More likely, if anyone in the US has one it's shoved in the back of the cupboard and forgotten.
I'll buy THAT for a dollar.
I always disliked numbers in user names too, and "back in the day" I had some more creative ones. I think that if your "clever" or "cool" username was already taken, then it clearly wasn't actually clever or cool (or it is, but you copied it from somewhere else).
However, at one point I decided on "penguinchris". Wasn't trying to be clever or anything, it just seemed good at the time. My name is Chris and I like penguins. There is someone else out there who uses or has used this username, but not prolifically and never on anything I use regularly (it was taken on Yahoo, and something else I've forgotten). I feel now that it's clever in that it's rather generic-sounding (doesn't call attention to itself), yet not indiscreetly anonymous, fairly memorable, and not something that anyone else would normally try to register.
I am telling you how clever I am because actually I think the same is true for yours - despite being apparent gibberish, most everything I said above applies to yours too :)
I'll spare you the "let me google that for you" link, but google's instructions for using alternate DNS servers are here - I use the google servers myself. I set my own computers and routers to use it, but also change it in the router settings of others if anyone ever has me do any network configuration (e.g. my parents, friends, etc.)
Then all it takes is to get a copy of the key, or to pick the lock. I'm sure we've all seen enough heist movies to know that this is almost always one of the simplest parts of a plan (The Great Train Robbery notwithstanding, where getting all four keys was the whole plan, and was very difficult).
I think the point of the epoxy idea is that it is essentially permanent - you could probably drill it out, or remove it in some other time-consuming way, but not without anyone noticing. If it's that important, replacing the entire computer when the mouse breaks (better start with high-quality mice, anyway) is probably cheaper than coming up with a really good solution that allows you to block the USB ports non-permanently yet somehow still securely.
Or, you know... they could use a PS/2 mouse and keyboard...
FWIW in Thailand there are also a lot of Nokias, but also a huge percentage of people have brands I've never heard of, like TWZ. I assume they're mostly Chinese brands, but there could be some Thai cell phone makers too for all I know. Very few Korean (Samsung or LG) phones there, and not too many Sonys. iPhones are considered cool, but few people have them (I know one person who has one and only saw a couple strangers with them in several months there).
Anyway what I really wanted to reply to you about was your assertion that the portable music player market is dead. I agree to a large extent - just a few years ago when I was attending a private university, practically every student had an iPod because they were cool. Other groups of younger (affluent) people I interacted with along the way also had a huge number of iPods. Nowadays, you almost never see the old-style iPods (which I think you can still buy new?), and it is true that many (most?) use their phone for music. I do myself - I have a (non-iPod - it's Korean actually, a Cowon X5L) mp3 player that I used for years, but my Nexus One is good enough now.
But there's something you may be missing - the market for the iPod touch is not just limited to people who want a music player. I know many people who have them, and some of them rarely even play music on it - they use it to play games or for other apps, and to browse the internet and so on. Basically a lot of people use them as mini-iPads, because they're inexpensive enough to be accessible to many young people (whose parents probably pay for their cell phone, but wouldn't pay for an iPhone data plan).
Also, there is still a decent market for devices that just play music. It's just changed - there's little need for the chunky 30 GB + players anymore (just get a smartphone or an iPod touch if you need that, and if you care about audio quality there are still the bigger devices with better sound available), but lots of people like to have the really small players (including the small iPods of course) for working out or whatever you might want something really small for.
I've used the drive in mine. Not frequently, but almost every time I did use it was not a time when I would have had an external drive easily accessible (e.g. travel) - not that I even have an external drive at all, now that I think about it. If I'm not going to use it frequently, I'm not going to bother bringing it with me if I travel - and then I'm stuck without it if I unexpectedly need it, which is what's happened to me in the past (didn't expect to need it - but finding blank discs is much easier than finding an inexpensive external drive).
And for those who do use it frequently, perhaps even while traveling - well that sucks, because now you've got to carry around (and pay for) an external drive.
That said, I don't mind losing the weight and size of the drive, and whatever else they shove into that space I'm sure will be much more useful overall. But it does seem a tad too early to effectively obsolete the ability to burn "emergency" CDs/DVDs while traveling.
I do expect to get another year or two, at least, out of this macbook pro - so perhaps by then I'll not mind. Hopefully then LightPeak will be widely used too, or if not, that the macbook pros at that time will have USB3 and won't skimp on any necessary ports.
By the way, the first time I used the drive was the day I got the computer. It was right after Snow Leopard came out, but the computers they were selling didn't all have it installed yet. So they included the disc for free. That's a situation where you want to make sure your customers can all use the disc without having to buy anything!
The lesson is that you get what you pay for! In your case, first-class service. You can have even better service, and skip the security, if you have enough money - just get a private jet. Or, become a congressman.
Stewardesses in the US sometimes try, but usually don't care about you at all if you're in economy class. Especially if it's a smaller plane, they'll probably be bitter and mean instead. However, there is a different set of flight attendants (usually the younger, more attractive ones) that work in first class on the larger planes. Your (usually astronomically expensive) first-class ticket partly goes towards that better service.
On Asian airlines, which generally are very good even for economy passengers (the seats are bigger for one, despite most Asians being much smaller than most Americans...), the only difference between the quality of the flight attendants is that the *really* cute ones are in first class. The other ones in economy are just as nice and friendly (and almost always still cute). It's astonishing how bad flying in or to/from the US has become, especially considering that it's still enjoyable in most of the rest of the world.
Hehe, that's a good point, but the Nazi swastika is certainly a lot more eye-catching.
Yes, you're right. But it's entirely a context thing. If I'm playing a WW2 game, I expect to see a lot of swastikas. I expect to see them on my character if I'm playing as the Germans, which you can do in any WW2 game with multiplayer.
However, here it has nothing to do with the context of the game. It's being used to be provocative - and you would only do this using a swastika if you're a neo-nazi (which probably some of these people are), or if you're ignorant as I suggested. Every teenage boy recognizes the Nazis, yes, but it's ridiculous to suggest that they all *truly* understand the implications of donning the swastika - primarily, they don't understand that it makes them look like an idiot, and it doesn't make them look cool. Especially once you've played this game online with them and you've heard what they have to say - they're ignorant.
No, the players themselves have the power to create logos. There's a fairly extensive set of graphics (clip art essentially) which you can arrange in any way imaginable - choose the colors, size, arrangement, etc. - to create your logo. Lots of people find creative ways to make penises, and lots of people were finding creative ways to make Nazi swastikas. I made a much longer post about it here already, but you've been modded up, and you're misinformed.