You'd probably also have trouble attending a lecture from Dr. Richard Superfine (though he does not go by Dick) at Duke's Gay Love Auditorium (named for Gay, Mr. Love's wife).
There is also plenty of fun to be had from playing with only one controller just swapping it around in quick play mode.
Sadly while GH2 is a great two player game it's hampered by co-op mode often being a tad boring for one of the players (depending heavily on the song choice) and pro face-off being problematic if you have varying skills levels. The ability to choose individual skill levels in co-op mode is great, but many bass parts aren't even remotely challenging at hard and only require slight concentration at expert.
I can acknowledge and respect that, but I've always disliked that midnight/noon are set as the beginning of their respective time segments rather than the middle. A more accurate idea would be to replace them with 6. Having 12 PM be the beginning of the PM cycle rather than the end has always been distressing to me.
In my ideal system 6 AM would be noon (and, as you stated, a constant) and 6 PM would be midnight (again, constant and finally fixing the idea that mid-night is the beginning of a new day) 1 AM would be roughly sunrise (and also would be beginning of a new day) while 1 PM would be close to sunset. Thus day and night cycles would be, more or less, analogous to AM/PM, would begin with 1, end with 12, and new days would begin roughly with the rising of the sun which is commonly acknowledged as the beginning of a new day rather than midnight which is, in common practice, still considered part of the previous day's night.
While this will, of course, never come to pass, I feel that it has several significant improvements over the current system reflecting both common practices as relate to time as well as making the clock more reflective of the solar cycle in an intuitive manner.
I have to say that I'm greatly anticipating this. After just getting out of daylight savings time and having to deal with the depressing, irritating new time where everything gets dark far too early and I'm constantly failing to properly estimate the time I wish we'd stick with the earlier, DST time year-round.
Then again I also think that times should be shifted by 6 hours making midnight 6 PM, dawn (roughly) 1 AM noon 6 AM and dusk 12 AM (12 should be the end of a time section, not the beginning, it's amazingly counter-intuitive).
Of course the issue remains: should time be localized to where the sun is in one particular place (Zulu time) or should everyone use GMT?
Yet another sad casualty to our society based almost entirely around litigation. When I was a kid (not that long ago, I was born in '81) if you got hurt playing tag it was just a harmless accident. I mean, if someone was actively antagonizing you, well, the teachers would say there wasn't anything they could do about it and tell your parents that you should just avoid them in the future (yeah great idea, I wasn't trying to do that before), but if you fall down playing a friendly game of tag then someone might sue.
Hell, I got punched in the face on the way home from school my Junior year of high school and the school didn't even do anything about it (nor did the cops actually, despite having the guy's license plate number and the jackass being stupid enough to drive by my house about 20 minutes later).
I have to wonder how these schools would respond to classic schoolyard games like Red Rover where the object is clearly to knock other people down (hell, my debate squad had an annual game of it in high school and nobody bitched) and the always fun, albeit poorly named, Smear the Queer. A game whose entire point was to pound on the kid who had the ball until you could steal the ball from him... never said we were very smart.
I honestly wanted to like Second Life. As a sci-fi fan who's been interested in an alternate reality like this for some time I decided that if people are putting the Matrix together, well, better to get in on the ground floor (which is no longer possible of course... that ship sailed a long time ago). Sadly I found it a bit clunky and awkward. Far moreso than I've experienced with any online games. Over a cable modem I found it incredibly laggy and largely futile to try going anywhere. When you do... well, there's not a lot to do unless you've got cash to spend. In this case that cash comes either from giving Linden cash or making something popular enough that you can sell it. So largely unless you have solid graphics talent or plenty of cash it seems pretty easy to get stuck very early on as prices are well above what you can reasonably hope to afford on the miniscule stipend they give you for free. Sure you can get a crap job there, but honestly it never really seemed to be worth it at this stage of development.
Maybe in the future it'll be worthwhile, but at present I'm staying away until they deliver an experience where I can actually walk down the street without it taking 45 minutes to go half a block because of lag and tons and tons of textures taking forever to load.
Not always the case. A friend of mine graduated with a degree in engineering (EE, IIRC) and spent about 2-3 years or so working at Costco before he was finally able to wrangle his way into an engineering job. His wife majored in history and worked as a bank teller during college. While her degree languishes largely unused she's been able to obtain a pretty good job at a mortgage company.
I understand exactly where you're coming from. I graduated in Spring 2004 with degrees in Biology and Microbiology (CS minor stymied by one necessary course not being offered). While I was in school I spent three semesters doing undergraduate research that directly relates to my research interests (molecular genetics) and after I graduated my research advisor went on to take a position as assistant dean. I spent a year working at a crappy local call center because my girlfriend was finishing school and there's little to no work in this area. Eventually it got to be too much and I quit putting my time into searching for a job full-time. That was a year ago and in that time I've had exactly one job interview out of only two places that have even responded to my applications.
Scientific research isn't really an area where you can just work on projects in your spare time or learn new skills at home. Personally I worry that part of my problem is a mix of not having experience and a lack of good references: I've been long out of contact with my professors and even then there was only really one that would have given me a reference. At my previous job the rate of turn-over is so high that there isn't anyone there who could act as a reference and the one former boss who liked me no longer has any valid contact information.
My girlfriend and I are moving next month and hoping that that helps us find jobs, but honestly it seems like the entry-level job market is particularly terrible right now with what would normally be an entry-level job seemingly wanting a degree of experience that counters the idea of it being "entry-level".
That's exactly what I do most of the time because I personally find the idea of HTML e-mail to be abhorrant. The problem is that there are a small minority of e-mails that are almost completely broken unless they're in HTML. Thunderbird doesn't currently offer the option to set viewing preferences in the address book. It wisely allow you to specify that outgoing mail should be plain text for certain addresses, but doesn't do the reverse.
It also is incapable of allowing different viewing settings for different accounts. This is only really an issue if I want to be viewing RSS feeds through it or such and thus want them to come out in HTML, but want my e-mail to be in plain text.
Overall I find this to be an interesting change of events since I was a Eudora user for many, many years. Had to be considering that Eudora was more or less the e-mail standard on Windows before Outlook/Outlook Express came along. A while back I switched over to Thunderbird and have never looked back. Now, it seems, they've finally caught up with me.
It's not that teenagers (and college students who are also a very large group for piracy) lack credit cards it's that as a group they largely lack money. Pirated music is readily available and since they're not physically stealing it from a store, but rather violating the copyright by acquiring it illegally it's easily justified. Combine this with a very, very low chance of being caught and punished people are going to do it.
A similar example would be speeding. It's viewed as technically illegal, but socially acceptable. While there is a (admittedly higher) risk of being caught it's low enough that most people do not view being caught and punished as a significant deterrant.
People have often shown that if they think they have a strong chance of getting away with it and especially if others feel the same way then there is no fundamental power behind something being illegal.
When LJ started it was filled with University of Washington college students. I should know, I joined back in April of 2000 (user number 2008 for reference) when I was a college freshman myself (albeit at a different school). The only reason I even found the site was because there was a piece of software of up on Freshmeat called "Loser Jabber" which sounded interesting. Turns out it was the Linux client for LJ.
I told some friends about the site and a few people moved there, but for a while it seemed pretty small and ignored. I basically ignored mine until I was home on a break and heard friends talking about their accounts. When I headed back I found that they'd turned me into an "early adopter" account and yeah, lots of teens were starting to fill up the service and it was going a bit downhill.
The thing is, they kept the same stuff we'd always had. Early adopter accounts didn't get downgraded when they opened up the free/paid tiering and while free accounts have a few less features they've kept their promise that, at least for those of us who got there first, we've never had something taken away just to have it monetized.
Since the buyout by Six Apart things have continued to get a bit worse, but honestly, the original staff seems to be of the opinion that while they might add in new stuff that you don't want, they're not ever taking away what you already had.
The highly acclaimed Nintendo Wavebird has had almost universal acclaim as one of the best implementations of a wireless controller as well as the first first-party wireless controller. It's largely responsible for almost every new console using a wireless controller.
The thing is, it also lacked rumble, yet this didn't really stop people from buying and gushing over them. Personally, I like rumble, so no, I didn't buy one. This is where we get into the meat of this problem. In my case I felt that rumble outweighed wireless. Yeah, a wireless controller would have been nice, but my living room is small enough that if I pull out the Gamecube a bit there's no problem sitting on the couch and playing. It came down to giving up a feature for a small convenience and I had to side with the wired controller.
This same argument is what's going on here. The tilt sensor is largely seen as a last-minute rip-off of what Nintendo's doing. Unlike Nintendo it's not very well integrated or a focal point of the experience, just a "me too!" bullet point for the back of the box. Rumble is an established technology that's been put to use well in almost every game released. While there are rumble detractors it would seem that the vast majority prefer what would probably be commonly used rumbling or what would likely be infrequent (and if I may editorialize further for a moment, awkwardly designed and implemented) tilting.
It won't cause people not to buy the PS3. They loved the Wavebird and felt that wireless outweighed a a benefit. But from inital musings it seems like people don't feel the same way about the tilt sensor Sony has planned.
While I don't disagree that a number of people have been swayed into the cheap, easy route of using iTunes to rip for them I doubt the preferences are considered scary. Frankly, I've always been disturbed that iTunes has so few preferences. Then again, I got in with the 2nd generation iPod where the included Windows software was MusicMatch Jukebox, which practically nobody used, so I used ephPod.
Frankly, the very idea of ripping a CD using some sort of built-in system that doesn't even use the term "rip" rather bothers me. I don't even know what encoder the damn thing is using. That's why all of my mp3s are ripped properly with Exact Audio Copy. Honestly, it doesn't really require much more effort once you get past the intial setup (and even then it's usually pretty simple if you just go with defaults).
As for AAC being better than MP3, while I haven't heard much on the subject (and due to DRM I honestly can't say I'm curious) neither is as good as FLAC, yet you don't see anyone jumping over to use it.
Eh, I'm not in what I'd call good shape, but I'm slowly getting into better shape (i.e. I'm at the tail end of a diet: 5'10" and 159 lbs. at present). As far as hills go, well, this is Kansas, but I'm in one of the few places that, while not mountainous, has a fair share of hills. The one I live on top of is steep enough that we avoid driving on it during the winter. Going out of our way because it doesn't seem wise to risk it. Also, as other have mentioned, this is a good area to get hit by a car in. The closest roads that actually go anywhere are all about 45 mph and you'd probably get ticketed for riding a bike on them. For a college town this place is amazingly unfriendly to bikes (and the campus is actually worse in most cases).
Probably the most important part is that I've never really enjoyed bicycling. Not even as a child. While I agree that it's a great way to get and stay in shape I usually just want to get where I'm going (and often, carry something with me... like passengers), not get in a workout.
The thing is, this is actually a pretty typical move for the Sci-Fi Channel. Due to a lack of material (largely since they seem to spend most of their budget financing terrible B-movies) they will often fill just about every day of the week with a long 5-8 hour block of one show. Often this seems a bit random and haphazard as they do have a decent library of older shows and they sometimes take the time to revisit a series they haven't aired in a while. Since they bought the rebroadcast rights to Firefly they're simply doing a big block of Firefly episodes.
I would also say that they both still have the problem that hills are a nightmare. Considering the one that I live on neither is a feasible form of transportation. Likewise, while some will disagree with me, I would say that having to pedal my ass off to get anywhere is not exactly what I'm looking for in a method of transportation.
Good to hear. Honestly I hadn't really thought about it being a proprietary output until it was mentioned and I realized how often console do this. The Nintendo component cable is a great example of this. Sure they make a large number of games in progressive scan, but not only do newer Gamecubes not come with the necessary digital out port, but they were the only ones to ever sell the component cables which they no longer make (and I stupidly thought about, and then decided against buying). These cables now draw in an unreasonable price on eBay.
Sony did the same thing with video out on the PS2. Sure there was digital audio out (and while on this subject, why in the hell didn't it support Dolby Digital? It had everything it needed to support it, but games only ever seem to support the half-assed matrixing of Dolby Pro Logic II), but if you wanted to hook up component video you needed to track down an overpriced cable that matched their proprietary video output rather than purchase a completely functional standard component cable that could see future use elsewhere and run maybe $10 if you know where to shop.
The ability to actually use any standard cable is a serious breath of fresh air. At the same time it makes sense since there would seem to be little reason to develop a proprietary output for something like HDMI.
"parents do *not* pay enough attention to kids' gaming. One of her kids spent all his free time playing Vice City. I don't believe that game restrictions need to be draconian but if the line be drawn, 3rd graders don't make it by a long shot."
That's your opinion and you're certainly entitle to it, but keep in mind that not everyone necessarily shares it. While I don't have a child (I'm child-free so it's ultimately a moot issue) if I did I wouldn't have any problem with them playing any game they choose to. If I notice that it actually is negatively affecting their behavior in some way then some time would be needed to discuss with them how that is not acceptable and why, and if it continues perhaps restrictions would need to be placed, but otherwise I feel that children should largely be free to make their own media choices.
Responsible parenting is the other part of the equation where they learn (and really it's disturbing that this would even be an issue) what behavior is acceptable and what is not. I grew up watching horror movies on TV (as an elementary school child I saw The Shining and my mother often notified me that there would be a Friday the 13th marathon whenever those particular days showed up) and the only way it ever affected me is that I love horror movies.
Now I'm not saying that this parent might not have objected, but the point is that you are not necessarily an irresponsible or uninformed parent just because your child is doing something that others might disapprove of.
Oddly my girlfriend falls into an interesting, but ignored market. She'll play (often intensely) and enjoy games, but she rarely seeks out or purchases them on her own. Sure she's bought a few (Dungeon Siege, Warcraft III, Diablo II, X-Men Legends, etc.) but mainly only after after I got her interested or showed her a demo or she played my copy or something. Many times she's be heavily interested in a game, but often they're games that I bought rather than that she bought or influenced the purchase of in any way.
This classification, though, reveals its own flaw: they don't tend to buy their own games very often and they don't tend to follow gaming news enough that marketing to them is rather challenging. Still, I've seen that anecdotally this is a a large enough group that it warrants consideration. Perhaps marketing to gamers in such a way as to get them to influence others or be influenced by others in their purchases. If there's a good game that we can play together and would both be interested in (e.g. X-Men Legends, since we prefer co-op and are both big X-Men fans) there's a much greater chance that it can be sold to me. The same goes for the Harvest Moon series which, while I find it interesting and bought it mainly for myself, she went through a period of obsession with that would cause me to purchase other games for her.
A while back in Wired (I believe this was around '95-'97 or so) one of their standard features (Future Watch IIRC) consisted of brief blurbs from various relevant parties about technology that may or may not be available in the future and when (or if) they thought it would come to pass or become commonplace in the USA.
One of the blurbs from this was about when bidets (and since it was Wired they're probably hoping we'll assume this means computerized auto-bidets such as seen in various Japanese models) has stuck with me for a long time because of the essential rightness of the thought behind it, essentially the quote was: "I've never understood how Americans will fastidiously wash their hands after going to the bathroom, yet are content to merely use a handful of wadded paper on their bottoms."
Why indeed? From a rational point of view is it not the clean, hygenic, and proper thing to do? No more crude "wiping" for me. I want my ass washed, dried, and factory-fresh when I get up from my comfortable, lightly-padded seat.
Eliminating is already unpleasant enough, why continue to make it worse than needs to be?
Teens, maybe, but a great, great many of us in our early to mid-twenties have a very strong love of Nintendo going back to childhood. These franchises took root then and are going to be a hard habit to kick now.
While it wasn't the first time this has been covered The Gamer's Quarter had a longer, more in-depth article about the previously released Shadowrun games back in issue #5. Sure it didn't include anything about the crappy-sounding Microsoft title, but then again... who really cares about it?
Something that's much harder to change, though, is state politics. A single high-tech, liberal, progressive community composed of intelligent people does not cancel out a state that is often at odds with that. Lawrence, Kansas, mainly due to the University of Kansas, is a rather nice, suburban, liberal community (the only county in the state that wasn't won by Bush in '04). At the same time this is the state where Brownback is still making the lot of us look like complete idiots pretty frequently. Where a referendum on a state amendment against same-sex marriage passed by a disturbingly large margin a few years back. A place that in recent years is most known politically for repeatedly having a school board that pushes creationism.
While the city or town you live in might always be nice you have to take the state and its politics as a whole into consideration much of the time. Sometimes this is less of an issue due to living in a state with one (or more) dominant cities that tend to sway the voting, but not always.
Actually it was always my understanding that they did both. A small number of people are picked to have a Nielsen People Meter/Set Meter installed which records what they're watching, but a larger number of people are asked to fill out viewing diaries. The diary system being done during the sweeps weeks, common for networks trying stunts in order to grab more viewers.
I could be wrong on this, but I believe that the Nielsen system is not currently compatible with TiVo or any other DVR. As a result they're likely ignoring the audiece of people who care about TV, the tech-savvy, and those with specifc viewing habits rather than people like my mother who just turns the TV on to one channel for pretty much the entire night and watches whatever they show because there are one or two shows she wants to watch.
The ratings also increaasingly fail to report the growing number of people who discover shows late and catch up by renting DVDs (yes, some buy, but I suspect that's much, much smaller than the number who merely rent) or who choose to exclusively watch shows only when they've been released on DVD. The latter argument almost exactly mirroring the same argument in the comic book community about whether to read single issues or wait until they're collected.
As you stated though it wouldn't just be retirees with nothing else to do, there would be an overrepresentation for cult shows and those with strong fanbases. While there might be more numbers behind mass-market pablum a much larger portion of the fanbase for Arrested Development, Firefly, or Futurama would be certain to record their favorite shows just to keep them on the air. I know I would personally be tempted to under-report shows that I only sorta like, but get high ratings already as compared to struggling shows that I really love. Then again I'm always willing to spend extra time just to see that my opinions are counted. I always enjoy it when called for telephone opinion surveys since we live in a society where increasingly surveys and ratings are the only way to make yourself heard. Nobody cares how you feel most of the time, if you don't show up on the limited means they use to view the world then your feelings simply don't register.
I have the exact same problem with TiVo. Oh sure there are plenty of shows that I watch as soon as they show up on the list. And there are those other shows (like Futurama for example) that come on just about every night and I watch regularly, but I've seen them all and if I miss an episode it's no big deal. There are the shows that I enjoy, but that take time to watch. Either it's because my girlfriend and I wait to watch them together or they just rank in the middle as far as priority goes. Then there are the things that just sit around forever. I've got movies that have sat on "Save Until I Delete" for years (right now the oldest will turn 2 in August) because I know that I have them around to watch whenever I feel like it. Or shows that I'm into, but I fail to watch and eventually they just build up and build up and build (thus explaining why I have 14 episodes of Alias on my machine). It's not that I don't want to watch them or that I never intend to it's just that I'm very picky about exactly what I'm in the mood for and that coupled with the perceived time investment in watching something that's an hour or two long lets me shift the priority down a bit and keep it there.
If I'd rent any of these movies from the shop instead of just recording it for future viewing I'd have seen them because they were due five days later. Instead my TiVo is massively crowded with tons of things that I eventually intend to watch.
Likewise the problem exists compared to recorded shows (either on TiVO or DVD) and live shows. If, for whatever reason, I have to watch something live and don't have the choice to record it I'm much more likely to watch it since, well, I don't have any choice it's either watch it now or miss it. When I get the option of whether or not to watch it though I'm more likely not to watch it, knowing that it'll be around and I'll watch it when I'm good and ready.
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You'd probably also have trouble attending a lecture from Dr. Richard Superfine (though he does not go by Dick) at Duke's Gay Love Auditorium (named for Gay, Mr. Love's wife).
There is also plenty of fun to be had from playing with only one controller just swapping it around in quick play mode.
Sadly while GH2 is a great two player game it's hampered by co-op mode often being a tad boring for one of the players (depending heavily on the song choice) and pro face-off being problematic if you have varying skills levels. The ability to choose individual skill levels in co-op mode is great, but many bass parts aren't even remotely challenging at hard and only require slight concentration at expert.
I can acknowledge and respect that, but I've always disliked that midnight/noon are set as the beginning of their respective time segments rather than the middle. A more accurate idea would be to replace them with 6. Having 12 PM be the beginning of the PM cycle rather than the end has always been distressing to me.
In my ideal system 6 AM would be noon (and, as you stated, a constant) and 6 PM would be midnight (again, constant and finally fixing the idea that mid-night is the beginning of a new day) 1 AM would be roughly sunrise (and also would be beginning of a new day) while 1 PM would be close to sunset. Thus day and night cycles would be, more or less, analogous to AM/PM, would begin with 1, end with 12, and new days would begin roughly with the rising of the sun which is commonly acknowledged as the beginning of a new day rather than midnight which is, in common practice, still considered part of the previous day's night.
While this will, of course, never come to pass, I feel that it has several significant improvements over the current system reflecting both common practices as relate to time as well as making the clock more reflective of the solar cycle in an intuitive manner.
I have to say that I'm greatly anticipating this. After just getting out of daylight savings time and having to deal with the depressing, irritating new time where everything gets dark far too early and I'm constantly failing to properly estimate the time I wish we'd stick with the earlier, DST time year-round.
Then again I also think that times should be shifted by 6 hours making midnight 6 PM, dawn (roughly) 1 AM noon 6 AM and dusk 12 AM (12 should be the end of a time section, not the beginning, it's amazingly counter-intuitive).
Of course the issue remains: should time be localized to where the sun is in one particular place (Zulu time) or should everyone use GMT?
Yet another sad casualty to our society based almost entirely around litigation. When I was a kid (not that long ago, I was born in '81) if you got hurt playing tag it was just a harmless accident. I mean, if someone was actively antagonizing you, well, the teachers would say there wasn't anything they could do about it and tell your parents that you should just avoid them in the future (yeah great idea, I wasn't trying to do that before), but if you fall down playing a friendly game of tag then someone might sue.
Hell, I got punched in the face on the way home from school my Junior year of high school and the school didn't even do anything about it (nor did the cops actually, despite having the guy's license plate number and the jackass being stupid enough to drive by my house about 20 minutes later).
I have to wonder how these schools would respond to classic schoolyard games like Red Rover where the object is clearly to knock other people down (hell, my debate squad had an annual game of it in high school and nobody bitched) and the always fun, albeit poorly named, Smear the Queer. A game whose entire point was to pound on the kid who had the ball until you could steal the ball from him... never said we were very smart.
I honestly wanted to like Second Life. As a sci-fi fan who's been interested in an alternate reality like this for some time I decided that if people are putting the Matrix together, well, better to get in on the ground floor (which is no longer possible of course... that ship sailed a long time ago). Sadly I found it a bit clunky and awkward. Far moreso than I've experienced with any online games. Over a cable modem I found it incredibly laggy and largely futile to try going anywhere. When you do... well, there's not a lot to do unless you've got cash to spend. In this case that cash comes either from giving Linden cash or making something popular enough that you can sell it. So largely unless you have solid graphics talent or plenty of cash it seems pretty easy to get stuck very early on as prices are well above what you can reasonably hope to afford on the miniscule stipend they give you for free. Sure you can get a crap job there, but honestly it never really seemed to be worth it at this stage of development.
Maybe in the future it'll be worthwhile, but at present I'm staying away until they deliver an experience where I can actually walk down the street without it taking 45 minutes to go half a block because of lag and tons and tons of textures taking forever to load.
Not always the case. A friend of mine graduated with a degree in engineering (EE, IIRC) and spent about 2-3 years or so working at Costco before he was finally able to wrangle his way into an engineering job. His wife majored in history and worked as a bank teller during college. While her degree languishes largely unused she's been able to obtain a pretty good job at a mortgage company.
I understand exactly where you're coming from. I graduated in Spring 2004 with degrees in Biology and Microbiology (CS minor stymied by one necessary course not being offered). While I was in school I spent three semesters doing undergraduate research that directly relates to my research interests (molecular genetics) and after I graduated my research advisor went on to take a position as assistant dean. I spent a year working at a crappy local call center because my girlfriend was finishing school and there's little to no work in this area. Eventually it got to be too much and I quit putting my time into searching for a job full-time. That was a year ago and in that time I've had exactly one job interview out of only two places that have even responded to my applications.
Scientific research isn't really an area where you can just work on projects in your spare time or learn new skills at home. Personally I worry that part of my problem is a mix of not having experience and a lack of good references: I've been long out of contact with my professors and even then there was only really one that would have given me a reference. At my previous job the rate of turn-over is so high that there isn't anyone there who could act as a reference and the one former boss who liked me no longer has any valid contact information.
My girlfriend and I are moving next month and hoping that that helps us find jobs, but honestly it seems like the entry-level job market is particularly terrible right now with what would normally be an entry-level job seemingly wanting a degree of experience that counters the idea of it being "entry-level".
That's exactly what I do most of the time because I personally find the idea of HTML e-mail to be abhorrant. The problem is that there are a small minority of e-mails that are almost completely broken unless they're in HTML. Thunderbird doesn't currently offer the option to set viewing preferences in the address book. It wisely allow you to specify that outgoing mail should be plain text for certain addresses, but doesn't do the reverse.
It also is incapable of allowing different viewing settings for different accounts. This is only really an issue if I want to be viewing RSS feeds through it or such and thus want them to come out in HTML, but want my e-mail to be in plain text.
Overall I find this to be an interesting change of events since I was a Eudora user for many, many years. Had to be considering that Eudora was more or less the e-mail standard on Windows before Outlook/Outlook Express came along. A while back I switched over to Thunderbird and have never looked back. Now, it seems, they've finally caught up with me.
It's not that teenagers (and college students who are also a very large group for piracy) lack credit cards it's that as a group they largely lack money. Pirated music is readily available and since they're not physically stealing it from a store, but rather violating the copyright by acquiring it illegally it's easily justified. Combine this with a very, very low chance of being caught and punished people are going to do it.
A similar example would be speeding. It's viewed as technically illegal, but socially acceptable. While there is a (admittedly higher) risk of being caught it's low enough that most people do not view being caught and punished as a significant deterrant.
People have often shown that if they think they have a strong chance of getting away with it and especially if others feel the same way then there is no fundamental power behind something being illegal.
When LJ started it was filled with University of Washington college students. I should know, I joined back in April of 2000 (user number 2008 for reference) when I was a college freshman myself (albeit at a different school). The only reason I even found the site was because there was a piece of software of up on Freshmeat called "Loser Jabber" which sounded interesting. Turns out it was the Linux client for LJ.
I told some friends about the site and a few people moved there, but for a while it seemed pretty small and ignored. I basically ignored mine until I was home on a break and heard friends talking about their accounts. When I headed back I found that they'd turned me into an "early adopter" account and yeah, lots of teens were starting to fill up the service and it was going a bit downhill.
The thing is, they kept the same stuff we'd always had. Early adopter accounts didn't get downgraded when they opened up the free/paid tiering and while free accounts have a few less features they've kept their promise that, at least for those of us who got there first, we've never had something taken away just to have it monetized.
Since the buyout by Six Apart things have continued to get a bit worse, but honestly, the original staff seems to be of the opinion that while they might add in new stuff that you don't want, they're not ever taking away what you already had.
The highly acclaimed Nintendo Wavebird has had almost universal acclaim as one of the best implementations of a wireless controller as well as the first first-party wireless controller. It's largely responsible for almost every new console using a wireless controller.
The thing is, it also lacked rumble, yet this didn't really stop people from buying and gushing over them. Personally, I like rumble, so no, I didn't buy one. This is where we get into the meat of this problem. In my case I felt that rumble outweighed wireless. Yeah, a wireless controller would have been nice, but my living room is small enough that if I pull out the Gamecube a bit there's no problem sitting on the couch and playing. It came down to giving up a feature for a small convenience and I had to side with the wired controller.
This same argument is what's going on here. The tilt sensor is largely seen as a last-minute rip-off of what Nintendo's doing. Unlike Nintendo it's not very well integrated or a focal point of the experience, just a "me too!" bullet point for the back of the box. Rumble is an established technology that's been put to use well in almost every game released. While there are rumble detractors it would seem that the vast majority prefer what would probably be commonly used rumbling or what would likely be infrequent (and if I may editorialize further for a moment, awkwardly designed and implemented) tilting.
It won't cause people not to buy the PS3. They loved the Wavebird and felt that wireless outweighed a a benefit. But from inital musings it seems like people don't feel the same way about the tilt sensor Sony has planned.
While I don't disagree that a number of people have been swayed into the cheap, easy route of using iTunes to rip for them I doubt the preferences are considered scary. Frankly, I've always been disturbed that iTunes has so few preferences. Then again, I got in with the 2nd generation iPod where the included Windows software was MusicMatch Jukebox, which practically nobody used, so I used ephPod.
Frankly, the very idea of ripping a CD using some sort of built-in system that doesn't even use the term "rip" rather bothers me. I don't even know what encoder the damn thing is using. That's why all of my mp3s are ripped properly with Exact Audio Copy. Honestly, it doesn't really require much more effort once you get past the intial setup (and even then it's usually pretty simple if you just go with defaults).
As for AAC being better than MP3, while I haven't heard much on the subject (and due to DRM I honestly can't say I'm curious) neither is as good as FLAC, yet you don't see anyone jumping over to use it.
Eh, I'm not in what I'd call good shape, but I'm slowly getting into better shape (i.e. I'm at the tail end of a diet: 5'10" and 159 lbs. at present). As far as hills go, well, this is Kansas, but I'm in one of the few places that, while not mountainous, has a fair share of hills. The one I live on top of is steep enough that we avoid driving on it during the winter. Going out of our way because it doesn't seem wise to risk it. Also, as other have mentioned, this is a good area to get hit by a car in. The closest roads that actually go anywhere are all about 45 mph and you'd probably get ticketed for riding a bike on them. For a college town this place is amazingly unfriendly to bikes (and the campus is actually worse in most cases).
Probably the most important part is that I've never really enjoyed bicycling. Not even as a child. While I agree that it's a great way to get and stay in shape I usually just want to get where I'm going (and often, carry something with me... like passengers), not get in a workout.
The thing is, this is actually a pretty typical move for the Sci-Fi Channel. Due to a lack of material (largely since they seem to spend most of their budget financing terrible B-movies) they will often fill just about every day of the week with a long 5-8 hour block of one show. Often this seems a bit random and haphazard as they do have a decent library of older shows and they sometimes take the time to revisit a series they haven't aired in a while. Since they bought the rebroadcast rights to Firefly they're simply doing a big block of Firefly episodes.
I would also say that they both still have the problem that hills are a nightmare. Considering the one that I live on neither is a feasible form of transportation. Likewise, while some will disagree with me, I would say that having to pedal my ass off to get anywhere is not exactly what I'm looking for in a method of transportation.
Good to hear. Honestly I hadn't really thought about it being a proprietary output until it was mentioned and I realized how often console do this. The Nintendo component cable is a great example of this. Sure they make a large number of games in progressive scan, but not only do newer Gamecubes not come with the necessary digital out port, but they were the only ones to ever sell the component cables which they no longer make (and I stupidly thought about, and then decided against buying). These cables now draw in an unreasonable price on eBay.
Sony did the same thing with video out on the PS2. Sure there was digital audio out (and while on this subject, why in the hell didn't it support Dolby Digital? It had everything it needed to support it, but games only ever seem to support the half-assed matrixing of Dolby Pro Logic II), but if you wanted to hook up component video you needed to track down an overpriced cable that matched their proprietary video output rather than purchase a completely functional standard component cable that could see future use elsewhere and run maybe $10 if you know where to shop.
The ability to actually use any standard cable is a serious breath of fresh air. At the same time it makes sense since there would seem to be little reason to develop a proprietary output for something like HDMI.
"parents do *not* pay enough attention to kids' gaming. One of her kids spent all his free time playing Vice City. I don't believe that game restrictions need to be draconian but if the line be drawn, 3rd graders don't make it by a long shot."
That's your opinion and you're certainly entitle to it, but keep in mind that not everyone necessarily shares it. While I don't have a child (I'm child-free so it's ultimately a moot issue) if I did I wouldn't have any problem with them playing any game they choose to. If I notice that it actually is negatively affecting their behavior in some way then some time would be needed to discuss with them how that is not acceptable and why, and if it continues perhaps restrictions would need to be placed, but otherwise I feel that children should largely be free to make their own media choices.
Responsible parenting is the other part of the equation where they learn (and really it's disturbing that this would even be an issue) what behavior is acceptable and what is not. I grew up watching horror movies on TV (as an elementary school child I saw The Shining and my mother often notified me that there would be a Friday the 13th marathon whenever those particular days showed up) and the only way it ever affected me is that I love horror movies.
Now I'm not saying that this parent might not have objected, but the point is that you are not necessarily an irresponsible or uninformed parent just because your child is doing something that others might disapprove of.
Oddly my girlfriend falls into an interesting, but ignored market. She'll play (often intensely) and enjoy games, but she rarely seeks out or purchases them on her own. Sure she's bought a few (Dungeon Siege, Warcraft III, Diablo II, X-Men Legends, etc.) but mainly only after after I got her interested or showed her a demo or she played my copy or something. Many times she's be heavily interested in a game, but often they're games that I bought rather than that she bought or influenced the purchase of in any way.
This classification, though, reveals its own flaw: they don't tend to buy their own games very often and they don't tend to follow gaming news enough that marketing to them is rather challenging. Still, I've seen that anecdotally this is a a large enough group that it warrants consideration. Perhaps marketing to gamers in such a way as to get them to influence others or be influenced by others in their purchases. If there's a good game that we can play together and would both be interested in (e.g. X-Men Legends, since we prefer co-op and are both big X-Men fans) there's a much greater chance that it can be sold to me. The same goes for the Harvest Moon series which, while I find it interesting and bought it mainly for myself, she went through a period of obsession with that would cause me to purchase other games for her.
A while back in Wired (I believe this was around '95-'97 or so) one of their standard features (Future Watch IIRC) consisted of brief blurbs from various relevant parties about technology that may or may not be available in the future and when (or if) they thought it would come to pass or become commonplace in the USA.
One of the blurbs from this was about when bidets (and since it was Wired they're probably hoping we'll assume this means computerized auto-bidets such as seen in various Japanese models) has stuck with me for a long time because of the essential rightness of the thought behind it, essentially the quote was: "I've never understood how Americans will fastidiously wash their hands after going to the bathroom, yet are content to merely use a handful of wadded paper on their bottoms."
Why indeed? From a rational point of view is it not the clean, hygenic, and proper thing to do? No more crude "wiping" for me. I want my ass washed, dried, and factory-fresh when I get up from my comfortable, lightly-padded seat.
Eliminating is already unpleasant enough, why continue to make it worse than needs to be?
Teens, maybe, but a great, great many of us in our early to mid-twenties have a very strong love of Nintendo going back to childhood. These franchises took root then and are going to be a hard habit to kick now.
While it wasn't the first time this has been covered The Gamer's Quarter had a longer, more in-depth article about the previously released Shadowrun games back in issue #5. Sure it didn't include anything about the crappy-sounding Microsoft title, but then again... who really cares about it?
Something that's much harder to change, though, is state politics. A single high-tech, liberal, progressive community composed of intelligent people does not cancel out a state that is often at odds with that. Lawrence, Kansas, mainly due to the University of Kansas, is a rather nice, suburban, liberal community (the only county in the state that wasn't won by Bush in '04). At the same time this is the state where Brownback is still making the lot of us look like complete idiots pretty frequently. Where a referendum on a state amendment against same-sex marriage passed by a disturbingly large margin a few years back. A place that in recent years is most known politically for repeatedly having a school board that pushes creationism.
While the city or town you live in might always be nice you have to take the state and its politics as a whole into consideration much of the time. Sometimes this is less of an issue due to living in a state with one (or more) dominant cities that tend to sway the voting, but not always.
Actually it was always my understanding that they did both. A small number of people are picked to have a Nielsen People Meter/Set Meter installed which records what they're watching, but a larger number of people are asked to fill out viewing diaries. The diary system being done during the sweeps weeks, common for networks trying stunts in order to grab more viewers.
I could be wrong on this, but I believe that the Nielsen system is not currently compatible with TiVo or any other DVR. As a result they're likely ignoring the audiece of people who care about TV, the tech-savvy, and those with specifc viewing habits rather than people like my mother who just turns the TV on to one channel for pretty much the entire night and watches whatever they show because there are one or two shows she wants to watch.
The ratings also increaasingly fail to report the growing number of people who discover shows late and catch up by renting DVDs (yes, some buy, but I suspect that's much, much smaller than the number who merely rent) or who choose to exclusively watch shows only when they've been released on DVD. The latter argument almost exactly mirroring the same argument in the comic book community about whether to read single issues or wait until they're collected.
As you stated though it wouldn't just be retirees with nothing else to do, there would be an overrepresentation for cult shows and those with strong fanbases. While there might be more numbers behind mass-market pablum a much larger portion of the fanbase for Arrested Development, Firefly, or Futurama would be certain to record their favorite shows just to keep them on the air. I know I would personally be tempted to under-report shows that I only sorta like, but get high ratings already as compared to struggling shows that I really love. Then again I'm always willing to spend extra time just to see that my opinions are counted. I always enjoy it when called for telephone opinion surveys since we live in a society where increasingly surveys and ratings are the only way to make yourself heard. Nobody cares how you feel most of the time, if you don't show up on the limited means they use to view the world then your feelings simply don't register.
I have the exact same problem with TiVo. Oh sure there are plenty of shows that I watch as soon as they show up on the list. And there are those other shows (like Futurama for example) that come on just about every night and I watch regularly, but I've seen them all and if I miss an episode it's no big deal. There are the shows that I enjoy, but that take time to watch. Either it's because my girlfriend and I wait to watch them together or they just rank in the middle as far as priority goes. Then there are the things that just sit around forever. I've got movies that have sat on "Save Until I Delete" for years (right now the oldest will turn 2 in August) because I know that I have them around to watch whenever I feel like it. Or shows that I'm into, but I fail to watch and eventually they just build up and build up and build (thus explaining why I have 14 episodes of Alias on my machine). It's not that I don't want to watch them or that I never intend to it's just that I'm very picky about exactly what I'm in the mood for and that coupled with the perceived time investment in watching something that's an hour or two long lets me shift the priority down a bit and keep it there.
If I'd rent any of these movies from the shop instead of just recording it for future viewing I'd have seen them because they were due five days later. Instead my TiVo is massively crowded with tons of things that I eventually intend to watch.
Likewise the problem exists compared to recorded shows (either on TiVO or DVD) and live shows. If, for whatever reason, I have to watch something live and don't have the choice to record it I'm much more likely to watch it since, well, I don't have any choice it's either watch it now or miss it. When I get the option of whether or not to watch it though I'm more likely not to watch it, knowing that it'll be around and I'll watch it when I'm good and ready.