That's really funny - I don't remember that though. I had (still have) a legitimate copy of the game and it definitely didn't have that feature, I'm sure I'd remember. I do remember plenty of games where you had to look up stuff in the manual - there's a huge binder with the photocopied manual for the classic F-117A game in my parents house;)
Well, I did buy the game as part of a collection of LucasArts games, and I don't think it came with a manual for any of them, so that could have been the reason:)
Couldn't you have just watched the video on the phone? Seems like all the time you took trying every other option might have been spent better watching the video the easy way... sure, if it's some vacation video and your brother wanted to narrate it'd be nicer to watch on a larger screen, but not necessary.
I'm not disagreeing that having to do everything through itunes is ridiculous - I love my macbook pro but will never buy an i-product (I use a Nexus One) - but it sure does seem like once in five years you could accept doing things a different way than you like - unless of course it was an elaborate ruse to avoid watching your brother's vacation video;)
The power button breaking on Nexus Ones is an unfortunately common problem - design defect (otherwise, great device). With a custom ROM, you can set it so the trackball button wakes the screen, and any other functions the power button has can be duplicated on screen.
But - the only way to turn it on once it's off is to remove the battery, plug in a power source, and put the battery back in (sometimes a couple times before it decides to turn on). A bit of a hassle, to say the least.
Normally, one doesn't need to turn it off. I leave it on for weeks at a time without even a restart. The only time it's necessary is during takeoff and landing. I fly fairly frequently, and have flown twice since the button broke a couple months ago. If I want to use it in flight to listen to music or something, it's not a *huge* deal to take out my laptop to plug in the USB cable for power, though annoying. The thing that's tough is if you need to make a call quickly once you land. Realistically, there is time to take out your laptop again to plug in the USB cable before the doors open. But, it's annoying to have to do that. Likewise, you could hunt for a power outlet in the terminal (if you have time to). Again, a big hassle just to turn on your phone.
So, I just put it in airplane mode and silent mode and left it on. It's quite clear that it's not going to cause any problems if you understand how your devices work. I appreciate their caution, though, since most people aren't going to realize if their devices transmit or not. Still, I'd guess at least 5% of cell phones get left on - not in airplane mode - by people simply because they forget.
One thing that always bothered me is their list of items you can and can't use. I'm an amateur photographer with fairly expensive cameras, and I like to take photos out of airplane windows sometimes. Take-off and landing are some of the best times to get interesting stuff. But if you look in the safety brochure regarding electronic devices, cameras are never mentioned. They mention basically every other type of electronic device possible, but not cameras. In the US, if they see you using a camera they'll tell you to turn it off. They changed their speech a few years ago to say "any device with an on/off switch" to reduce this confusion. On Asian carriers, they don't care if you use a digital camera even during takeoff and landing. A Korean Air stewardess did make me turn off my Sony e-reader - while I was deeply engrossed in a story - for takeoff, though, and that's a much, much less complicated device. It is true that the well-known models of e-book reader feature wireless connectivity so I guess it's fair.
RE: #4, if I understand you correctly, Lightroom has the same feature. It stores the low-res but full-screen "preview" image locally even if the RAW is stored elsewhere so you can view them anytime. You can change this setting (it could presumably take up a lot of local storage depending on the quality setting of the previews) but that's the default.
Your solution of taking identical photos of a clock is charming, but it raises the question - if you're doing a coordinated effort to get the time right anyway, why not just synchronize the clocks on the cameras?:)
There's a compromise, and it makes the most sense (and is what I do). Keep everything, but sort through them as soon as possible and pick the good ones. Keep a copy of the good ones someplace easily accessible, in case you want to show someone. Also not a bad idea to upload these to Flickr, or your service of choice. But there really is no reason to throw out the rest, even if you probably won't look at them - you just don't know if you'll want any of them later.
Personally, every six months or so I browse through almost all of my archive of photos, which number in the tens of thousands and is probably 150+ G. I mean, I don't scroll through one by one - I randomly open a few photos from each date (they're stored in folders by date) and if I come across anything interesting, or simply an event or something that I forgot about, I'll browse through more from that day. Often, I'll find a photo that didn't stand out to me originally for whatever reason but that now I like. My tastes and aesthetic sensibilities have changed (and been vastly refined). One other thing that's changed is how many photos I take - vastly reduced from my "spray and pray" days, a point at which most amateurs never get past. I simply don't take a photo in the first place unless I know it's going to be good or interesting.
Even if you don't browse your old archives frequently, you still have your collection of good shots - which I agree should be kept as small as possible - which you'll never forget, and which your grandchildren will find decades from now - and they'll be thankful that they exist (presuming they're not assholes or something). And you have a few sub-$100 disks lying around that your grandchildren might not know what to do with... but it isn't hurting anyone.
Likewise, some of the most popular *paid* apps in the app market are ones that require root access - they're literally at the top of the most popular list. That tells you two possible things - one is that it's true that android users really don't pay for any apps, or that they do, but tons of people have at least rooted (not necessarily custom roms) and find these apps useful.
I don't want to sound like a smug asshole who likes foreign films (though I do and probably am), but it sounds like your problem really stems from the fact that you don't watch foreign stuff. I rarely watch english-language indie films, because I don't generally enjoy them. But I watch loads of foreign films, from all eras, indie and studio.
The big problem many people have with foreign films I think stems from the way the big-name ones are imported to the US. I mean stuff like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Decent film, but it wouldn't be anywhere near my top choices for Chinese (and Hong Kong) films - I could probably name at least thirty or forty I would rank higher, few to none of which most people in the US have even heard of. And, those big-name ones are released dubbed, which *always* ruins it. Even worse, sometimes US versions of foreign films are heavily edited from the original, with the idea being that US audiences won't understand cultural references and/or they want something shorter. But for me, learning about other cultures - from their own point of view - is one of the great things about foreign films.
That rant aside, there's also the matter of TV. Your take on TV describes it very well - in the US. Elsewhere, stories on TV take a very different course (many of them anyway, not all obviously). Even just British stuff - no language barrier - is vastly different in how they handle storylines. Many shows are designed with a complete story arc in mind, and will run for only one season (or however long it takes to tell the story). Then there's foreign language TV, which largely follows the British model - strictly with a single story arc in mind. No matter how popular the shows are, they aren't brought back for a second season - because the story completely wrapped up. The cast and crew move on to something fresh.
Most available and accessible in the US is perhaps anime from Japan, the good examples of which run for 24 episodes (the ones that are played on TV in the US with endlessly produced episodes are crap). Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion are good, highly accessible places to start. Japan also makes good drama series, generally of 12 or 13 episodes. You can find these on the internet - with fan-produced english subtitles - but it's less accessible. Odoru Daisousasen is a great example, and one of my favorite shows of all time.
Some rental discs at Blockbuster are rental editions also, with no special features and extra ads. The Inception blu-ray I rented there had a big gray "RENTAL" silk-screened on the disc along with the film logo. Quite disappointing - there's no indication of this on the box, and you can't see the disc before paying - as I was looking forward to seeing some special features from that.
I've never used RedBox (I don't ever rent movies myself, I know of Blockbuster because I've rented movies there recently for my parents) so can't comment there. I've looked and have never been interested in anything I saw in a RedBox machine, and anyway if I'm going to rent something it's going to be on blu-ray and RedBox is still mostly DVD. However, the point of my comment is that if Blockbuster physical rentals are moving to rental editions, I wouldn't be surprised if RedBox will be forced down that road also at some point.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a licensing issue, as they're quite liberal with their use of popular music. I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with their America bashing, which at least for me (as an American) is one of the best parts* of the show:)
* in fairness I would probably say that every part of the show is one of the best parts;)
That all may be true, but that doesn't mean that 24fps isn't pleasing - because it is! It may have just been a happy side effect, but it worked out quite well I'd say.
Yes, but... that's not what it actually looks like to our eyes. Same with HDR still photography, which I've dabbled in a bit. The actual video or photograph may be HDR, but in order to display properly on an inexpensive screen, the depth is compressed. Thus, you need expensive screens to properly see. That's not to say you can't get impressive results that are indistinguishable from the real thing to the untrained eye, but the ability to truly display HDR video has the potential to blow people away - it'd be able to trick our minds into thinking it's a window into another world, even without 3D... and combined (assuming the 3D is done well) it'd be astonishing.
There's a very nice android app that runs as a service and automatically backs up your SMS and call history to a gmail account (they show up marked as read in a separate folder, so it doesn't clutter your inbox or anything), and can then restore them to the phone later. It's called SMS Backup+ and I highly recommend it, especially if you like to play around with different ROMs and so on, because you really will never lose anything.
Part of the appeal of the Worms games to me was the sound too - you could pick from dozens of different sets of humorous voices for your worm squad, and all the weapons had appropriately fun sounds.
I downloaded Angry Birds on my android phone a couple weeks ago, because I had heard so much about it. Also I saw two cute asian girls playing it on separate occasions in NYC within a few hours of each other. Anyway, I don't play a lot of games on my phone (though I've tried a lot, so long as they're free or there's a demo - Angry Birds is free on android, with ads), but I think this one ranks pretty highly in the "hard to define details" category, which so many android games fail at (iphone games are better in this area in my experience). I've only done maybe 15 levels so far.
And... the whole time I had the sound muted. Thanks for your informative post:)
I think it's largely for show, although I'm sure in certain regions they're big on eating them regularly. Many - I would venture to say "most" even - Thais are just as repulsed by the thought of eating insects as farangs, and will smile nervously at the sight of trays of insects in tourist markets just like we do.
My girlfriend, who is Thai (and from a remote village where they eat some "interesting" things of their own), her sister, and all her friends won't eat insects, and neither would anyone I worked with at the university. But, that's in Chiang Mai (northwest) - I think eating insects is an Issan (northeast) thing, and - not to imply anything - a lot of the girls a foreigner might meet in Bangkok are from Issan.
I think the key part of your post is "deactivate during exams" - meaning that at least some portion of your network is still in university, and from that we can imply that you yourself and most of your closer friends are still in university or just out of it. Things *do* change once you leave university:)
Of course, it's clear that the people who most often prophesize the downfall of facebook here on slashdot are people who don't see a use in their particular case for facebook - whether they have a large real-life social network or not (I don't mean to imply they don't have any friends). It has to be endlessly pointed out to them that plenty of other people *do* find a use for facebook.
Of course, this is possible with Facebook already. Which isn't to say that it's "figured out right" as you say - it's a little clunky - but if you put some effort into organizing your "friends" on facebook, what you say is entirely possible. I use it to exclude my mom from most of my facebook activity (not that I use it much).
The point is, clearly there is something else required to wipe out facebook. Apparently few people care about that feature, and those who do are using it already (I presume).
It's a silly position to take, unless you don't actually want to watch the movies. Like many geeks, I like them enough that I want to watch them once in a while. As a kid, that meant several times a year. Now, it means every couple years maybe... about as frequently as new editions come out, now that I think of it:)
I haven't bought all the editions, naturally. My parents bought me a VHS set back in the day, and I bought the first DVD set when it came out. I was only 11 when the special editions were out in theaters (all three of which, naturally, I went to see), so didn't "appreciate" the shittier of the changes Lucas introduced. When I saw the DVD special editions I was disgusted, and I won't be giving him any more money. I did watch Return of the Jedi a couple weeks ago when I happened to come across it on TV, on an HD station. I had to do something else while watching it, though (probably was browsing slashdot), because there were commercials.
Anyway, what I really want to say is that there is a point where we can more-or-less stop worrying about a newer edition coming out, and we can just buy it and be done with it. That point is when Lucas authorizes the release of an edition of the *original* films in a 1080p-capable format. If it's Blu-Ray or a future disc format, it'll be ripped to a format you can keep on a hard drive like Blu-Rays are today, which is more-or-less future-proof. The only caveat that makes the release of the Star Wars films different from the re-release of other films is the changes. Cleaning up the special effects was a good idea, but all the other stuff has to go. I will not buy another edition that includes Greedo shooting first, CGI background elements and monsters that look totally out of place (the band in Jabba's Palace being the worst example), etc. Frankly I think Lucas is scared by the idea of releasing an HD version of the pre-special-edition original films, because there's really no point in exceeding this. We can keep the rips around forever, safe in knowing that there won't be a better consumer-usable copy essentially ever. Few will care about a 3D version, and there's not much you can add beyond that.
I suppose you're being sarcastic, but the magsafe connector is much more useful than you apparently think it is. I've seen several laptops with broken power ports, because of pulling from side to side - and not from putting the cable across walkways (which is sometimes unavoidable, anyway). If you do anything besides sit your laptop down in one spot on a desk and never move it, you will get a lot of lateral force on the power cable.
On my macbook pro, the magsafe connector gets pulled off frequently - pretty much any time I'm not at a desk, which is fairly frequently (sitting in airports, sitting on a couch - anywhere you might take your laptop that isn't a desk). Rather than being annoyed by this, which I would be if it was any other type of connector, I'm glad - it means the connector and the port aren't getting undue stresses and won't prematurely break (not to mention that it's really easy to plug and unplug).
I don't know if they're there all the time, but people (I don't know if they're SWAT teams or not) with M4 assault rifles regularly just stand around in some places in New York - I saw them in front of the NYSE on a few different occasions that I've been there on weekdays. It's a little fuzzy but I think I may have seen some in Washington as well.
Two things: PS3s are no longer backwards compatible, so you can't just throw in your old PS1 discs. You can get a lot of older games re-packaged for PS3 on their online store, though.
Secondly, arcade-style racers and other more casual multiplayer style games are still being released for consoles. They just aren't very good. I suppose the Wii ones are good - if you buy the Nintendo-made ones, anyway. Other than Nintendo first-party games, this type of game (approachable by casual or non-gamers, fun for local multiplayer, and well-polished and maybe even some depth if you play it a lot) has been thrown to the shovelware companies. So you don't get those gems that used to exist in the old days.
The indie game scene has picked up the slack to a certain extent, but to me that always seemed less approachable for some reason, even if you can download them straight from the console. Most (on the PS3 anyway) don't even have demos (not that the old games we're talking about did either).
A few years ago (before internet-enabled phones were ubiquitous) I ordered something online for in-store pickup at Best Buy... from one of the laptops on display in the same Best Buy, because the price was cheaper. I guess that was before they tried any of the trickery you describe.
Slashdot Mirror
That's really funny - I don't remember that though. I had (still have) a legitimate copy of the game and it definitely didn't have that feature, I'm sure I'd remember. I do remember plenty of games where you had to look up stuff in the manual - there's a huge binder with the photocopied manual for the classic F-117A game in my parents house ;)
Well, I did buy the game as part of a collection of LucasArts games, and I don't think it came with a manual for any of them, so that could have been the reason :)
Couldn't you have just watched the video on the phone? Seems like all the time you took trying every other option might have been spent better watching the video the easy way... sure, if it's some vacation video and your brother wanted to narrate it'd be nicer to watch on a larger screen, but not necessary.
I'm not disagreeing that having to do everything through itunes is ridiculous - I love my macbook pro but will never buy an i-product (I use a Nexus One) - but it sure does seem like once in five years you could accept doing things a different way than you like - unless of course it was an elaborate ruse to avoid watching your brother's vacation video ;)
Once you're old enough to drink, *any* woman can be a Hot Chick, depending only on how much you drink - is that what you're implying? ;)
The power button breaking on Nexus Ones is an unfortunately common problem - design defect (otherwise, great device). With a custom ROM, you can set it so the trackball button wakes the screen, and any other functions the power button has can be duplicated on screen.
But - the only way to turn it on once it's off is to remove the battery, plug in a power source, and put the battery back in (sometimes a couple times before it decides to turn on). A bit of a hassle, to say the least.
Normally, one doesn't need to turn it off. I leave it on for weeks at a time without even a restart. The only time it's necessary is during takeoff and landing. I fly fairly frequently, and have flown twice since the button broke a couple months ago. If I want to use it in flight to listen to music or something, it's not a *huge* deal to take out my laptop to plug in the USB cable for power, though annoying. The thing that's tough is if you need to make a call quickly once you land. Realistically, there is time to take out your laptop again to plug in the USB cable before the doors open. But, it's annoying to have to do that. Likewise, you could hunt for a power outlet in the terminal (if you have time to). Again, a big hassle just to turn on your phone.
So, I just put it in airplane mode and silent mode and left it on. It's quite clear that it's not going to cause any problems if you understand how your devices work. I appreciate their caution, though, since most people aren't going to realize if their devices transmit or not. Still, I'd guess at least 5% of cell phones get left on - not in airplane mode - by people simply because they forget.
One thing that always bothered me is their list of items you can and can't use. I'm an amateur photographer with fairly expensive cameras, and I like to take photos out of airplane windows sometimes. Take-off and landing are some of the best times to get interesting stuff. But if you look in the safety brochure regarding electronic devices, cameras are never mentioned. They mention basically every other type of electronic device possible, but not cameras. In the US, if they see you using a camera they'll tell you to turn it off. They changed their speech a few years ago to say "any device with an on/off switch" to reduce this confusion. On Asian carriers, they don't care if you use a digital camera even during takeoff and landing. A Korean Air stewardess did make me turn off my Sony e-reader - while I was deeply engrossed in a story - for takeoff, though, and that's a much, much less complicated device. It is true that the well-known models of e-book reader feature wireless connectivity so I guess it's fair.
RE: #4, if I understand you correctly, Lightroom has the same feature. It stores the low-res but full-screen "preview" image locally even if the RAW is stored elsewhere so you can view them anytime. You can change this setting (it could presumably take up a lot of local storage depending on the quality setting of the previews) but that's the default.
Your solution of taking identical photos of a clock is charming, but it raises the question - if you're doing a coordinated effort to get the time right anyway, why not just synchronize the clocks on the cameras? :)
There's a compromise, and it makes the most sense (and is what I do). Keep everything, but sort through them as soon as possible and pick the good ones. Keep a copy of the good ones someplace easily accessible, in case you want to show someone. Also not a bad idea to upload these to Flickr, or your service of choice. But there really is no reason to throw out the rest, even if you probably won't look at them - you just don't know if you'll want any of them later.
Personally, every six months or so I browse through almost all of my archive of photos, which number in the tens of thousands and is probably 150+ G. I mean, I don't scroll through one by one - I randomly open a few photos from each date (they're stored in folders by date) and if I come across anything interesting, or simply an event or something that I forgot about, I'll browse through more from that day. Often, I'll find a photo that didn't stand out to me originally for whatever reason but that now I like. My tastes and aesthetic sensibilities have changed (and been vastly refined). One other thing that's changed is how many photos I take - vastly reduced from my "spray and pray" days, a point at which most amateurs never get past. I simply don't take a photo in the first place unless I know it's going to be good or interesting.
Even if you don't browse your old archives frequently, you still have your collection of good shots - which I agree should be kept as small as possible - which you'll never forget, and which your grandchildren will find decades from now - and they'll be thankful that they exist (presuming they're not assholes or something). And you have a few sub-$100 disks lying around that your grandchildren might not know what to do with... but it isn't hurting anyone.
Likewise, some of the most popular *paid* apps in the app market are ones that require root access - they're literally at the top of the most popular list. That tells you two possible things - one is that it's true that android users really don't pay for any apps, or that they do, but tons of people have at least rooted (not necessarily custom roms) and find these apps useful.
I don't want to sound like a smug asshole who likes foreign films (though I do and probably am), but it sounds like your problem really stems from the fact that you don't watch foreign stuff. I rarely watch english-language indie films, because I don't generally enjoy them. But I watch loads of foreign films, from all eras, indie and studio.
The big problem many people have with foreign films I think stems from the way the big-name ones are imported to the US. I mean stuff like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Decent film, but it wouldn't be anywhere near my top choices for Chinese (and Hong Kong) films - I could probably name at least thirty or forty I would rank higher, few to none of which most people in the US have even heard of. And, those big-name ones are released dubbed, which *always* ruins it. Even worse, sometimes US versions of foreign films are heavily edited from the original, with the idea being that US audiences won't understand cultural references and/or they want something shorter. But for me, learning about other cultures - from their own point of view - is one of the great things about foreign films.
That rant aside, there's also the matter of TV. Your take on TV describes it very well - in the US. Elsewhere, stories on TV take a very different course (many of them anyway, not all obviously). Even just British stuff - no language barrier - is vastly different in how they handle storylines. Many shows are designed with a complete story arc in mind, and will run for only one season (or however long it takes to tell the story). Then there's foreign language TV, which largely follows the British model - strictly with a single story arc in mind. No matter how popular the shows are, they aren't brought back for a second season - because the story completely wrapped up. The cast and crew move on to something fresh.
Most available and accessible in the US is perhaps anime from Japan, the good examples of which run for 24 episodes (the ones that are played on TV in the US with endlessly produced episodes are crap). Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion are good, highly accessible places to start. Japan also makes good drama series, generally of 12 or 13 episodes. You can find these on the internet - with fan-produced english subtitles - but it's less accessible. Odoru Daisousasen is a great example, and one of my favorite shows of all time.
Some rental discs at Blockbuster are rental editions also, with no special features and extra ads. The Inception blu-ray I rented there had a big gray "RENTAL" silk-screened on the disc along with the film logo. Quite disappointing - there's no indication of this on the box, and you can't see the disc before paying - as I was looking forward to seeing some special features from that.
I've never used RedBox (I don't ever rent movies myself, I know of Blockbuster because I've rented movies there recently for my parents) so can't comment there. I've looked and have never been interested in anything I saw in a RedBox machine, and anyway if I'm going to rent something it's going to be on blu-ray and RedBox is still mostly DVD. However, the point of my comment is that if Blockbuster physical rentals are moving to rental editions, I wouldn't be surprised if RedBox will be forced down that road also at some point.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a licensing issue, as they're quite liberal with their use of popular music. I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with their America bashing, which at least for me (as an American) is one of the best parts* of the show :)
* in fairness I would probably say that every part of the show is one of the best parts ;)
That all may be true, but that doesn't mean that 24fps isn't pleasing - because it is! It may have just been a happy side effect, but it worked out quite well I'd say.
Yes, but... that's not what it actually looks like to our eyes. Same with HDR still photography, which I've dabbled in a bit. The actual video or photograph may be HDR, but in order to display properly on an inexpensive screen, the depth is compressed. Thus, you need expensive screens to properly see. That's not to say you can't get impressive results that are indistinguishable from the real thing to the untrained eye, but the ability to truly display HDR video has the potential to blow people away - it'd be able to trick our minds into thinking it's a window into another world, even without 3D... and combined (assuming the 3D is done well) it'd be astonishing.
There's a very nice android app that runs as a service and automatically backs up your SMS and call history to a gmail account (they show up marked as read in a separate folder, so it doesn't clutter your inbox or anything), and can then restore them to the phone later. It's called SMS Backup+ and I highly recommend it, especially if you like to play around with different ROMs and so on, because you really will never lose anything.
Good idea! Hold on a second while I remove my iPhone's battery... oh, wait :)
(disclaimer: I use a Nexus One and have never owned an iPhone)
Part of the appeal of the Worms games to me was the sound too - you could pick from dozens of different sets of humorous voices for your worm squad, and all the weapons had appropriately fun sounds.
I downloaded Angry Birds on my android phone a couple weeks ago, because I had heard so much about it. Also I saw two cute asian girls playing it on separate occasions in NYC within a few hours of each other. Anyway, I don't play a lot of games on my phone (though I've tried a lot, so long as they're free or there's a demo - Angry Birds is free on android, with ads), but I think this one ranks pretty highly in the "hard to define details" category, which so many android games fail at (iphone games are better in this area in my experience). I've only done maybe 15 levels so far.
And... the whole time I had the sound muted. Thanks for your informative post :)
I think it's largely for show, although I'm sure in certain regions they're big on eating them regularly. Many - I would venture to say "most" even - Thais are just as repulsed by the thought of eating insects as farangs, and will smile nervously at the sight of trays of insects in tourist markets just like we do.
My girlfriend, who is Thai (and from a remote village where they eat some "interesting" things of their own), her sister, and all her friends won't eat insects, and neither would anyone I worked with at the university. But, that's in Chiang Mai (northwest) - I think eating insects is an Issan (northeast) thing, and - not to imply anything - a lot of the girls a foreigner might meet in Bangkok are from Issan.
I think the key part of your post is "deactivate during exams" - meaning that at least some portion of your network is still in university, and from that we can imply that you yourself and most of your closer friends are still in university or just out of it. Things *do* change once you leave university :)
Of course, it's clear that the people who most often prophesize the downfall of facebook here on slashdot are people who don't see a use in their particular case for facebook - whether they have a large real-life social network or not (I don't mean to imply they don't have any friends). It has to be endlessly pointed out to them that plenty of other people *do* find a use for facebook.
Of course, this is possible with Facebook already. Which isn't to say that it's "figured out right" as you say - it's a little clunky - but if you put some effort into organizing your "friends" on facebook, what you say is entirely possible. I use it to exclude my mom from most of my facebook activity (not that I use it much).
The point is, clearly there is something else required to wipe out facebook. Apparently few people care about that feature, and those who do are using it already (I presume).
It's a silly position to take, unless you don't actually want to watch the movies. Like many geeks, I like them enough that I want to watch them once in a while. As a kid, that meant several times a year. Now, it means every couple years maybe... about as frequently as new editions come out, now that I think of it :)
I haven't bought all the editions, naturally. My parents bought me a VHS set back in the day, and I bought the first DVD set when it came out. I was only 11 when the special editions were out in theaters (all three of which, naturally, I went to see), so didn't "appreciate" the shittier of the changes Lucas introduced. When I saw the DVD special editions I was disgusted, and I won't be giving him any more money. I did watch Return of the Jedi a couple weeks ago when I happened to come across it on TV, on an HD station. I had to do something else while watching it, though (probably was browsing slashdot), because there were commercials.
Anyway, what I really want to say is that there is a point where we can more-or-less stop worrying about a newer edition coming out, and we can just buy it and be done with it. That point is when Lucas authorizes the release of an edition of the *original* films in a 1080p-capable format. If it's Blu-Ray or a future disc format, it'll be ripped to a format you can keep on a hard drive like Blu-Rays are today, which is more-or-less future-proof. The only caveat that makes the release of the Star Wars films different from the re-release of other films is the changes. Cleaning up the special effects was a good idea, but all the other stuff has to go. I will not buy another edition that includes Greedo shooting first, CGI background elements and monsters that look totally out of place (the band in Jabba's Palace being the worst example), etc. Frankly I think Lucas is scared by the idea of releasing an HD version of the pre-special-edition original films, because there's really no point in exceeding this. We can keep the rips around forever, safe in knowing that there won't be a better consumer-usable copy essentially ever. Few will care about a 3D version, and there's not much you can add beyond that.
The disgraceful thing, in my opinion, is that many of these kinds of artifacts are *still visible* in the "most special" edition (currently, the DVD).
I suppose you're being sarcastic, but the magsafe connector is much more useful than you apparently think it is. I've seen several laptops with broken power ports, because of pulling from side to side - and not from putting the cable across walkways (which is sometimes unavoidable, anyway). If you do anything besides sit your laptop down in one spot on a desk and never move it, you will get a lot of lateral force on the power cable.
On my macbook pro, the magsafe connector gets pulled off frequently - pretty much any time I'm not at a desk, which is fairly frequently (sitting in airports, sitting on a couch - anywhere you might take your laptop that isn't a desk). Rather than being annoyed by this, which I would be if it was any other type of connector, I'm glad - it means the connector and the port aren't getting undue stresses and won't prematurely break (not to mention that it's really easy to plug and unplug).
I don't know if they're there all the time, but people (I don't know if they're SWAT teams or not) with M4 assault rifles regularly just stand around in some places in New York - I saw them in front of the NYSE on a few different occasions that I've been there on weekdays. It's a little fuzzy but I think I may have seen some in Washington as well.
Here's a photo of a cute girl posing with a police officer in SWAT gear in front of the NYSE, here's a photo from LIFE showing a patrol of police officers with M-14s literally just walking around on the street, and an image search along the lines of "police at new york stock exchange" will yield you plenty more.
Two things: PS3s are no longer backwards compatible, so you can't just throw in your old PS1 discs. You can get a lot of older games re-packaged for PS3 on their online store, though.
Secondly, arcade-style racers and other more casual multiplayer style games are still being released for consoles. They just aren't very good. I suppose the Wii ones are good - if you buy the Nintendo-made ones, anyway. Other than Nintendo first-party games, this type of game (approachable by casual or non-gamers, fun for local multiplayer, and well-polished and maybe even some depth if you play it a lot) has been thrown to the shovelware companies. So you don't get those gems that used to exist in the old days.
The indie game scene has picked up the slack to a certain extent, but to me that always seemed less approachable for some reason, even if you can download them straight from the console. Most (on the PS3 anyway) don't even have demos (not that the old games we're talking about did either).
A few years ago (before internet-enabled phones were ubiquitous) I ordered something online for in-store pickup at Best Buy... from one of the laptops on display in the same Best Buy, because the price was cheaper. I guess that was before they tried any of the trickery you describe.