I haven't inherited any yet, but I certainly "borrowed" dozens of books from my parents' bookshelves over the years. As a teenager I discovered a large stash of Asimov and Heinlein that gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment, and fueled my interest in SF in general. I know I've found some history, travel, and modern lit on those shelves, too. Oh, and that's where I stumbled on Tolkien, too. I'm not sure what I would have done if all those books were tied up on a single reader that was sitting on my mom's or dad's night stand and being used daily so I couldn't have at it.
I've posted a 1-star review before. I wasn't angry, just thought the product (a game in this case) didn't have enough good qualities to merit a second star.
Of course I am fully aware you are trying to purposely confuse renting something with purchasing something, but that's no ones problem but your own.
Sure, kinda. But I think the "you should only get paid once for your work" argument is weird attempt to wriggle around other perfectly valid business models, which includes things like rent, or interest, or selling a book in large volumes at a small cost to make it worthwhile. I think it's silly to pretend the only way to make money is in a direct, one-time exchange for an hour's effort, and no number of plumber analogies will convince me there's something inherently wrong with *some* business models that don't work that way. It gets old seeing people insist there's one and only one way to do business. Or only one "moral" way to do it.
While probably not underappreciated, I'll agree that Good Omens is fantastic. Probably the funniest book I've read. It makes me yearn for amnesia, just so I could read it for the first time again.
Ah, Steakley. He's depressing, but he's *good*. The grittiness is at least balanced by a vivid intensity of action and a fantastic sense of humor. It's very sad that he died before he could write a sequel to Armor - or any other books, for that matter. I found him first through 'Vampire$' which I like even more, but I've read both books several times. I admit, though: after the second time through (apparently didn't remember it well enough the first time), I simply skip the 'puppy in the well' section because it's some of the evilest few pages in literature.
Curious fact for people who may not know him: 'Armor' is basically set in the same background universe as Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers.' I think I remember seeing Steakley quoted as saying, "I wouldn't have had to write this book if Heinlein could write action."
I'm late to the discussion, but glad someone mentioned this one. It's been 20 years since I read 'Sea of Glass' but I still remember it vividly, and it came immediately to mind for the most depressing book. You've got a society on the brink of collapse, a government that watches everyone, a child who is taken from his parents and put in an orphanage where he's physically and sexually abused, tries to escape, is roped into becoming an agent for the oppressive government, and at the end is forced to choose between triggering a psychohistory-style device which is designed to prevent a total population collapse by triggering social factors which will increase general mortality (higher suicide and murder rate, etc.) or not triggering it and letting the world implode in all-out war. As a teenager I was left feeling shocked at just how brutally painful the entire book was. As an adult, I'm a little more concerned at how prescient the novel could turn out to be, given a few more decades.
Also, the author had this thing for older movies and liked to work in references constantly. I've carried a frustration ever since for futuristic books which focus on older pop culture and basically skip or ignore decades of what would be intermediate entertainment. It makes no sense to imagine a futuristic society, and then spend all your time focused on the past. It would be like if all the space aliens from Hitchhiker's Guide talked only about Earth movies from the 70's and earlier - very out of place. Yes, I understand why if I write a book in the year 2012 about the year 2050, my audience won't know anything about movies not yet created in the 20's, 30's and 40's, but the answer most certainly isn't to make movies from the 2000's a primary theme of the book.
I can back up all the ePub books I have for my Nook, yes. Most of what I own were public domain or Baen free books, with no DRM, and it's simple to make backup copies. With a few that I've purchased online I'm mostly trusting the vendor to keep a copy for me, though if I wanted to take the time I could probably strip the DRM and then make a copy. Other than the one example of the 1984 pull, I can't think of many other incidents of that happening, and I'm not going to live my life in fear of a repeat until it seems a common practice. Heck, in most cases after reading the book if they wanted to take it back in exchange for a full refund, I'd probably be okay with that.
You obviously haven't had a shelf full of books fall on you recently. I had to cut back on book purchases because I didn't have physical space to store them all and I re-read books over and over so I don' get rid of them.
Never had that happen. But having moved 9 times since college, it certainly gets old packaging and repackaging and carrying a wall of books. I realized a couple of moves ago that half of my books had been in boxes through several moves, and decided it was time to get rid of them. That was a tough choice, as I hate giving up reading material, and I would have been thrilled if those hundreds of pounds of books could have been condensed into a few weightless magnetic bits on my computer.
I used to, but I'm so far behind on games I tend to buy them several years old and used. BB carries some used games, but the discount is fairly small, and given a couple of years of age I can generally find the same used game on Amazon for much, much less. If you're willing to pay new-game price, you're still likely to find a discount on Amazon or a sale on Steam that beats BB's in-store price, though maybe not by much.
I think I got maybe a quarter through the first Mission Earth book before dropping it. All I can remember was a desperate and dishonest main character doing increasingly desperate and dishonest things and digging himself deeper into a hole while trying and failing to get the better of the "good guy". The only thing I found vaguely interesting was wondering whether the good guy was completely dumb and oblivious as he foiled the MC's plots, or just played dumb and oblivious while being superior to the plots. In the end I decided I didn't care.
Mostly it reminded me of the Looney Tunes adaptation of the Tortoise and the Hare story, where if the hare just ran he'd win easily, but the hare irrationally spends all his time trying to cheat instead, botches everything repeatedly, and through his own idiocy eventually loses the race to the oblivious, plodding tortoise.
Really? About the only thing I've ever programmed successfully was a game, because that's what I was interested in. Admittedly I've never had much interest in any non-game, because I can usually find existing software for the practical stuff.
That said, I stuck with what I knew: I had some web background, so I built a web-based RPG out of PHP and MySQL. It was more akin to the classic choose your own adventure games, with minimal static graphics, than anything flashy. However, that route is very affordable--you can do development on a cheapo hosting account for just dollars a month, or possibly for free if you want to install that stuff on your local system.
In another month or two coursera.org has an upcoming class for programming games. If I remember correctly, it's python programming, and the class covers a couple of old classics that you'd learn how to code, including pong and asteroids. It's free, there's at least a bit of community to discuss things with if you need extra help, and it's got games. At worst if it doesn't seem to be working out, you've lost nothing but a little time.
Also, as the customer, I tend to get someone in online chat in seconds rather than after a 10-minute battle with the phone menu. If there is a delay, I don't have to listen to hold music. My hands are free for the entire conversation rather than trying to hold a phone and do computer stuff at the same time. And when you type at me, I don't have to decipher your thick accent, so I can focus on the problem at hand.
Of course I'm on the computer all day, I can type quickly and thoroughly, so I'm not prone to the problems being identified here.
Heh, sorry, but I can't help but laughing. Invoking "common sense" is a frequent trick of political rhetoric. Generally they mean it in terms of a "providing common-sense solutions to today's problems" but most of what that rhetoric boils down to is and empty phrase that means "if you agree with me, you'll like my policies" rather than any actual demonstration of thought that is both "common" and "sensible." I know that's not the common sense you're talking about, but considering the political track record of using that phrase, I don't like its chances of working here, either.
Shame. There's guys like me who decided to make an 'interesting enough' MMO on their own time on evenings and weekends using almost no money at all. It wasn't a huge commercial success, but it was a minimum-wage hobby for five years, and it made a lot of players happy in the meantime. Sometimes you don't need to go big to do something good.
A decade or two ago there was a commercial which started out as a parody of a bad movie trailer, with lots of explosions, and a title like "Blow'd Up!" I remember thinking it looked so bad it might actually be good, before catching on that it was a fake trailer that turned into an ad for something else. I still think I'd like to see it.
And well, we do already have Mythbusters, so there's that.
That's one of the things I miss most, is the old familiar enemy who returns for another round. With the trilogies they just burn through them and kill them off. I was actually kind of surprised when the Joker *didn't* die in Batman 2, and had small hopes for an eventual return (well, assuming they'd let someone take Ledger's role) until I realized it was a planned trilogy and they'd probably wrap things up in a way that didn't allow for revisiting that world. Haven't seen Batman 3 yet, so I don't know, but considering the tagline has something to do with the series ending, I assume so.
Absolutely. My brother and his team were once harangued by the CEO because he thought the team "didn't prepare enough" for what they had been told by their boss (who reported to the CEO) was a "voluntary brainstorming session." It included such delights as "I ought to fire one of you right now just to teach you a lesson." Naturally, my brother's boss failed to stand up for the crew and let them get yelled at. Scenes like that were a weekly occurrence at that company.
That's not certain groups, that's almost universal. It takes a certain enlightenment to be able to understand people you disagree with or explain their positions without demonizing them. Very few people seem to be able to do that.
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Wheaton's law is a great one too.
Had to look that one up. Didn't know it by name, but I've understood it in principle for a long time.
I haven't inherited any yet, but I certainly "borrowed" dozens of books from my parents' bookshelves over the years. As a teenager I discovered a large stash of Asimov and Heinlein that gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment, and fueled my interest in SF in general. I know I've found some history, travel, and modern lit on those shelves, too. Oh, and that's where I stumbled on Tolkien, too. I'm not sure what I would have done if all those books were tied up on a single reader that was sitting on my mom's or dad's night stand and being used daily so I couldn't have at it.
I've posted a 1-star review before. I wasn't angry, just thought the product (a game in this case) didn't have enough good qualities to merit a second star.
Of course I am fully aware you are trying to purposely confuse renting something with purchasing something, but that's no ones problem but your own.
Sure, kinda. But I think the "you should only get paid once for your work" argument is weird attempt to wriggle around other perfectly valid business models, which includes things like rent, or interest, or selling a book in large volumes at a small cost to make it worthwhile. I think it's silly to pretend the only way to make money is in a direct, one-time exchange for an hour's effort, and no number of plumber analogies will convince me there's something inherently wrong with *some* business models that don't work that way. It gets old seeing people insist there's one and only one way to do business. Or only one "moral" way to do it.
You don't pay the builders, painters, cleaners of your house every time you use it, why should you pay for the background music there?
Try telling that to your landlord. "I paid you rent last month. I shouldn't have to pay to live in this house *again*."
I lived in a city where the road Western was east of East, and North was miles south of the road named South.
While probably not underappreciated, I'll agree that Good Omens is fantastic. Probably the funniest book I've read. It makes me yearn for amnesia, just so I could read it for the first time again.
Ah, Steakley. He's depressing, but he's *good*. The grittiness is at least balanced by a vivid intensity of action and a fantastic sense of humor. It's very sad that he died before he could write a sequel to Armor - or any other books, for that matter. I found him first through 'Vampire$' which I like even more, but I've read both books several times. I admit, though: after the second time through (apparently didn't remember it well enough the first time), I simply skip the 'puppy in the well' section because it's some of the evilest few pages in literature.
Curious fact for people who may not know him: 'Armor' is basically set in the same background universe as Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers.' I think I remember seeing Steakley quoted as saying, "I wouldn't have had to write this book if Heinlein could write action."
I'm late to the discussion, but glad someone mentioned this one. It's been 20 years since I read 'Sea of Glass' but I still remember it vividly, and it came immediately to mind for the most depressing book. You've got a society on the brink of collapse, a government that watches everyone, a child who is taken from his parents and put in an orphanage where he's physically and sexually abused, tries to escape, is roped into becoming an agent for the oppressive government, and at the end is forced to choose between triggering a psychohistory-style device which is designed to prevent a total population collapse by triggering social factors which will increase general mortality (higher suicide and murder rate, etc.) or not triggering it and letting the world implode in all-out war. As a teenager I was left feeling shocked at just how brutally painful the entire book was. As an adult, I'm a little more concerned at how prescient the novel could turn out to be, given a few more decades.
Also, the author had this thing for older movies and liked to work in references constantly. I've carried a frustration ever since for futuristic books which focus on older pop culture and basically skip or ignore decades of what would be intermediate entertainment. It makes no sense to imagine a futuristic society, and then spend all your time focused on the past. It would be like if all the space aliens from Hitchhiker's Guide talked only about Earth movies from the 70's and earlier - very out of place. Yes, I understand why if I write a book in the year 2012 about the year 2050, my audience won't know anything about movies not yet created in the 20's, 30's and 40's, but the answer most certainly isn't to make movies from the 2000's a primary theme of the book.
I can back up all the ePub books I have for my Nook, yes. Most of what I own were public domain or Baen free books, with no DRM, and it's simple to make backup copies. With a few that I've purchased online I'm mostly trusting the vendor to keep a copy for me, though if I wanted to take the time I could probably strip the DRM and then make a copy. Other than the one example of the 1984 pull, I can't think of many other incidents of that happening, and I'm not going to live my life in fear of a repeat until it seems a common practice. Heck, in most cases after reading the book if they wanted to take it back in exchange for a full refund, I'd probably be okay with that.
You obviously haven't had a shelf full of books fall on you recently. I had to cut back on book purchases because I didn't have physical space to store them all and I re-read books over and over so I don' get rid of them.
Never had that happen. But having moved 9 times since college, it certainly gets old packaging and repackaging and carrying a wall of books. I realized a couple of moves ago that half of my books had been in boxes through several moves, and decided it was time to get rid of them. That was a tough choice, as I hate giving up reading material, and I would have been thrilled if those hundreds of pounds of books could have been condensed into a few weightless magnetic bits on my computer.
I used to, but I'm so far behind on games I tend to buy them several years old and used. BB carries some used games, but the discount is fairly small, and given a couple of years of age I can generally find the same used game on Amazon for much, much less. If you're willing to pay new-game price, you're still likely to find a discount on Amazon or a sale on Steam that beats BB's in-store price, though maybe not by much.
I think I got maybe a quarter through the first Mission Earth book before dropping it. All I can remember was a desperate and dishonest main character doing increasingly desperate and dishonest things and digging himself deeper into a hole while trying and failing to get the better of the "good guy". The only thing I found vaguely interesting was wondering whether the good guy was completely dumb and oblivious as he foiled the MC's plots, or just played dumb and oblivious while being superior to the plots. In the end I decided I didn't care.
Mostly it reminded me of the Looney Tunes adaptation of the Tortoise and the Hare story, where if the hare just ran he'd win easily, but the hare irrationally spends all his time trying to cheat instead, botches everything repeatedly, and through his own idiocy eventually loses the race to the oblivious, plodding tortoise.
Really? About the only thing I've ever programmed successfully was a game, because that's what I was interested in. Admittedly I've never had much interest in any non-game, because I can usually find existing software for the practical stuff.
That said, I stuck with what I knew: I had some web background, so I built a web-based RPG out of PHP and MySQL. It was more akin to the classic choose your own adventure games, with minimal static graphics, than anything flashy. However, that route is very affordable--you can do development on a cheapo hosting account for just dollars a month, or possibly for free if you want to install that stuff on your local system.
In another month or two coursera.org has an upcoming class for programming games. If I remember correctly, it's python programming, and the class covers a couple of old classics that you'd learn how to code, including pong and asteroids. It's free, there's at least a bit of community to discuss things with if you need extra help, and it's got games. At worst if it doesn't seem to be working out, you've lost nothing but a little time.
Also, as the customer, I tend to get someone in online chat in seconds rather than after a 10-minute battle with the phone menu. If there is a delay, I don't have to listen to hold music. My hands are free for the entire conversation rather than trying to hold a phone and do computer stuff at the same time. And when you type at me, I don't have to decipher your thick accent, so I can focus on the problem at hand.
Of course I'm on the computer all day, I can type quickly and thoroughly, so I'm not prone to the problems being identified here.
Heh, sorry, but I can't help but laughing. Invoking "common sense" is a frequent trick of political rhetoric. Generally they mean it in terms of a "providing common-sense solutions to today's problems" but most of what that rhetoric boils down to is and empty phrase that means "if you agree with me, you'll like my policies" rather than any actual demonstration of thought that is both "common" and "sensible." I know that's not the common sense you're talking about, but considering the political track record of using that phrase, I don't like its chances of working here, either.
Shame. There's guys like me who decided to make an 'interesting enough' MMO on their own time on evenings and weekends using almost no money at all. It wasn't a huge commercial success, but it was a minimum-wage hobby for five years, and it made a lot of players happy in the meantime. Sometimes you don't need to go big to do something good.
Brilliant, thanks!
A decade or two ago there was a commercial which started out as a parody of a bad movie trailer, with lots of explosions, and a title like "Blow'd Up!" I remember thinking it looked so bad it might actually be good, before catching on that it was a fake trailer that turned into an ad for something else. I still think I'd like to see it.
And well, we do already have Mythbusters, so there's that.
There was the Elektra movie, but I think that was pretty awful.
That's one of the things I miss most, is the old familiar enemy who returns for another round. With the trilogies they just burn through them and kill them off. I was actually kind of surprised when the Joker *didn't* die in Batman 2, and had small hopes for an eventual return (well, assuming they'd let someone take Ledger's role) until I realized it was a planned trilogy and they'd probably wrap things up in a way that didn't allow for revisiting that world. Haven't seen Batman 3 yet, so I don't know, but considering the tagline has something to do with the series ending, I assume so.
Absolutely. My brother and his team were once harangued by the CEO because he thought the team "didn't prepare enough" for what they had been told by their boss (who reported to the CEO) was a "voluntary brainstorming session." It included such delights as "I ought to fire one of you right now just to teach you a lesson." Naturally, my brother's boss failed to stand up for the crew and let them get yelled at. Scenes like that were a weekly occurrence at that company.
Just before final exams, we carefully cut the bag open just before final exams.
Next time I'll be deadly serious next time!
That's not certain groups, that's almost universal. It takes a certain enlightenment to be able to understand people you disagree with or explain their positions without demonizing them. Very few people seem to be able to do that.