Personally I've been a big fan of E2 for many, many years. Sure Wikipedia has some advantages (typos and small bits can easily be changed, it's easier to update and modify something when someone leaves the site and never comes back, it has links and images), but E2 manages to do away with many of the disadvantages as well. Users individually own their writeups so unless an editor changes something (and I've never seen it happen aside from very light proof-reading or wholesale, and typically justified deletion) it's not going to be changed just because someone comes along and disagrees with you. Individual pieces tend to take on much more of a personal voice rather than being the bland, monotone of multiple users slowly working away at something over time. If something is wrong it's likely corrected by someone else. Multiple views are presented on topics giving them greater depth and perspective. Finally errors and poor writing tend to be worked out through a process of survival of the fittest. As better writeups are entered into the system they tend to push out weaker, older ones creating a constant evolutionary process. While Wikipedia evolves unless significant forking is done it tends to be much more convergant while E2 tends to be parallel or divergent most of the time.
Do I still use Wikipedia? Yeah, on occasion I'll want images or more information than I find listed on E2, but I typically use Wikipedia as a sort of study guide and an aide to doing further searching. E2 tends to function much better as a primer.
Well, not exactly, but the arguments that Macs are more secure and resistant to viruses largely seems to be due to the fact that there is a smaller installed base. Part of the same reason most software, games, peripherals, etc. are often designed primarily to work on a PC. It's not that one is inherently superior (and I'm not saying that OS X isn't technically more secure), but that most people writing viruses are going after the largest target. Arguments that go this way (and one of those new Apple switch ads says exactly the same thing) ignore the underlying issue.
If overnight every PC turned into a Mac and vice-versa we'd probably be seeing arguments saying that we all ought to move to PCs because they tend to be targetted by viruses less frequently.
I don't doubt that there might be legitimate technical reasons why one platform is more secure than another, but tell us why. I realize this is hard to convey to a lay audience, but it's the only thing that's makes for a legitimate long-term choice.
Dear $DIETY! We need to make certain that high schools are aware that they might be allowing 19 year-olds and 14 year-olds to interact! There must be some sort of way to prevent them from talking to each other every single day and perhaps, eventually, having sex.
Seriously, if he was 18 would that really have made any difference at all? Wouldn't he still be a bit sleazy (even if they had a real, loving relationship at that age 4 years makes a big difference) even if he hadn't sexually assaulted her. Knowing that she was 14 that would typically make her a freshman and a freshman dating a senior would be more or less accurate to the age range here.
Myspace is no more to blame than if she was sexually assaulted by an actual 19 year-old she met at school or any other public place if she met a guy there who claimed to be a senior.
Most tellingly though is that she went out with him and then he date-raped her. She apparently had no problem dating the guy or at least it was never mentioned that she did or that upon meeting him she realized that he was apparently older than someone she'd want to date (and hence, the issue in question since MySpace isn't an age-verification service). She should simply press charges for sexual assualt and be done with it.
The opposite is also true. When I graduated from high school I was 17. I turned 18 on my first day moving into the dorms for college. My birthday is in late August and thus I was close to the cut-off to begin with (in our area it's based on the age you are when you start, not in November) and started school a year early on top of that.
It also depends a lot on the local chains you're dealing with. Pretty much every Super Wal-Mart is 24 hours as are all of the Dillon's (Kroger) that I've been to. Sure neither is particularly good, but sometimes it's all that's available.
I know of at least two friends who only have cell phones and my girlfriend occasionally tries to get me to give up our land line citing that it's not worth the expense. Considering that this all occured during the time when we were in college and now not long after graduating we're all pretty poor. When you get down to it a cell phone plan is cheaper and more versatile (e.g. no extra charge for long distance) most of the time. For just plain bare-bones service (e.g. no long distance, no call waiting, no voicemail, nothing but a dial tone) we're paying about $30 a month or so. Probably closer to $40 once you factor in all the various fees and taxes and such.
You'll also start seeing this pick up as more and more people start moving to cell phones. Right now I have a number of different friends, all of whom live in town, who have various area codes for their cell phones. This means it's not at all feasible to call them from a land line. I mean, why would I want to pay for long distance to call someone who just lives across town? If one of these people then decides to ditch their land line and just use their cell phone with a non-local area code then you're pretty much forced to rely on your cell as well. While I realize having a non-local area code is more likely in a college town once you have the same number for a while many people don't want to go through the hassle of changing their number and such.
Expel? They need to get that kid into an intensive grammar class rather than trying to expel him. It's not just the terrible spelling and complete failure to use apostrophes (well, unless he's using them in an amazingly incorrect way), but he doesn't even bother to use question marks when asking questions most of the time or capitalize the first letter in a new sentence. I'll admit that my grammar isn't always perfect, but at least I always try to use proper grammar and spelling.
The design, however, really is terrible. I couldn't even read it without highlighting the text.
Reading it more this kid really seems like your standard punk teenager who's probably going to be suspended at least once for a legitimate reason. On the other hand it also reveals a bit more about what's going on. Apparently (at least, according to the blog posts) other students have been suspended over their posts on Xanga. Now since I don't know the full story I can't say for certain, but that seems to be where his claims of being bullied come from.
At the same time since I don't know the full story the school may have had other reasons for suspending the students other than that they just mocked them online. I know at my high school anyone involved in any form of atheletics (in my case this was debate and forensics) was required to sign some sort of pledge that stated that if you were caught smoking, drinking, or doing drugs or showed up to a school event under the influence (I'm not, however, certain whether they tried to make it affect times when you were under the influence, but not in any way involved with school activities while it occured, but I believe it did) you could be temporarily barred from participating, kicked off the team, or suspended from school. This was not voluntary, of course, and you were required to sign a new one every year or else you weren't allowed to participate. As with all things enforcement was spotty: one of our best debaters wasn't allowed to compete for a few weeks after being caught smoking while another was a notorious drunk who showed up to competitions drunk was never even chided on it since she'd take first place almost every week.
Depending on the school it could have (and I'm really stretching here) been an issue where a student who signed something like this was caught at it by posting about engaging in some sort of activity that would violate the agreement. The legality of such an agreement, of course, is another issue though.
Um, hey stupid, blame TMBG then not TicketMaster. TMBG is charging you $20.
Actually I'm blaming the venue a bit more, but quite frankly everyone is doing what they can to gouge the customer. TMBG has shown time and time again that they care a great deal about their fans: they play free shows pretty often, they frequently release free music (e.g. mp3s, dial-a-song, the recent podcast), their direct-sale downloads are in pure, DRM-free mp3 with them only gently asking you not to steal their music. Also I was a bit in error. Going back over my ticket stubs (I saw them at the same venue twice within a year) each ticket was only $15 or so, but each ticket also cost an extra $5 or so in convenience fees.
And that's because they have FLAT fees. It's $10 (or whatever) to get your ticket regardless of whether that ticket is $300 or $3. The fees suck, but just say that... but don't make stupid nonsensical agrument.
Uh, no. This isn't true at all. Just to double-check I went to Ticketmaster's web site while writing this to check up on a few nearby concerts and see what the fees are:
Some Local Band: $9 ticket + $1 Building Facility Charge + $2.80 Convenience Charge = 30% of ticket price
Dave Matthews Band: $58 ticket + $10.30 Convenience Charge = 16% of ticket price
Sonic Youth: $25 ticket + $7.05 Convenience Charge = 28% of ticket price
Mindles Self Indulgence: $16 ticket + $1 Building Facility Charge + $5.45 Convenience Charge = 40% of ticket price
So no. There is definitely not a flat fee for convenience charges. Oddly though the percentage tends to be much lower when you're paying more for the ticket thus meaning that the smaller shows are the ones where you're really being screwed. This matches my own experiences quite well ($43 ticket for NIN meant a $6 convenience charge, $15 ticket to TMBG meant a $5 convenience charge). Personally it's also these smaller shows where I tend to notice the fees the most as suddenly a relatively cheap ticket balloons up in price. Also note that these were all taken from a variety of different venues (though I went back to the same venue at least once to check and see if they were partly to blame) and types of acts.
Oh... and about tickets in the past being cheaper. I'd suspect that the shows weren't as ellaborate (driving up artist prices) and you actually had to go to a box office or ticket outlet to get your tickets.
I wonder how much people were paying for Pink Floyd tickets in the late 70s. They were incredibly popular and put on a very elaborate show, but I'm willing to bet you didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for tickets.
As for going to the ticket office... well, maybe, I'll have to ask my parents to be honest. This does cause me to wonder what those of us who live in outlying areas or small college towns did. From where I live now to see pretty much any concert I have to drive about 2 hours to get there. I doubt people were driving that far just to pick up tickets when they went on sale then going home. Perhaps they were easier to get on the day of the show.
Sometimes? I often find that Ticketmaster wants to charge me at least 30-40% of the cost of a ticket. Plus a processing fee or something else on top of that. Plus the fee to print my ticket. Or if I don't want that I can just pay them a fee to mail my ticket to me.
I can't speak for it because it was before my time, but concerts seem to have been a hell of a lot cheaper in the past before Ticketmaster. I'll still see posters and hear various snippets of top acts going for $5-20. Admittedly this was before double-digit inflation, but still. When I saw NIN back in '00 it was at least $60 or so. Even going to see smaller acts is expensive: They Might Be Giants, playing at a small venue was $20 or so before fees, Matisyahu, playing at the same venue, was at least $30 or so a few months back, Split Lip Rayfield, who IIRC is still mainly a regional act, was $15 to play in the low-ceilinged, cramped, stageless local bar. Sure it was just a cover charge, but it was still pretty damned expensive considering they only travelled about 2 hours to play here.
It's times like this that I recall the Dead Kennedy's classic Pull My Strings: "You'll pay ten bucks to see me/ on a fifteen foot high stage". Hah! To only pay $10 to see the Dead Kennedys and have that be expensive enough to be mocked? And that was only released in 1987. Before someone trys to call me on this according to inflation that we be approximately $17 today, but probably closer to $30 after Ticketmaster, and quite frankly the idea of ten bucks is too universal for inflation to really matter... I don't care what year it is, teens and punks are just as poor as they've always been without any cost of living raise to offset the difference.
The grip is a bit too small and the movement would be a tad awkward. As well you'd probably need to be able to use buttons so you couldn't be switching your grip around in orientation the way you'd need to. Finally you'd have to use the nunchaku for movement (assuming the game isn't just a really lame stand still and duel type thing) which would prevent you from getting the range of movement necessary.
While I totally, totally want this it seems rather likely considering they already released that TV lightsaber toy last year. Sure it was Hasbro, not Lucasarts, but the precedent has already been established. I'm willing to bet that the sales figures on that are going to factor into the decision to make a game at least slightly.
Aside from the lack of force-feedback (which is more of an awesome pipe dream, but would add a lot to this type of title) it's probably going to be restricted to single sabers. Personally I prefer the Darth Maul style saber staff (since I've always personally prefered staff fighting) and that likely won't be at all possible. Dual-saber styles are right out.
Not just special edition, specialer updated to fit better with the crappy prequels edition. So now we have Hayden Christensen showing up as the ghost Anakin and Ian McDiarmid plays the emperor for his holo in Empire. Also, IIRC, they made Han shoot slightly faster in this one so while he still shoots after Greedo, it's a little bit more reasonable.
Just reading the statement on why they chose this as the name shows that it was massively overthought. Just look at the reasons: doesn't need to be abbreviated, double 'i' represents "people coming together to play" (yeah, now if only they release some good multiplayer games that aren't sports of Smash Bros. because my girlfriend and I would actually love to play something together other than X-Men Legends and Mario Kart), it has a lame hominym with "we" which sounds like a lame attempt to build trust and togetherness, distinctive (showing that they can't tell the difference between different-good and different-stupid), pronounced the same in Japanese and English (I'm guessing here, but it fits a bit with what they said).
Seriously, this is a terrible name. It sounds like a committee sat down with a list of high-minded bullet points about what they want to communicate and didn't leave until they had something that fit them. Of course, they completely failed to consider that matching a list of specifications doesn't matter if the damn thing sounds stupid.
What they're basically trying to say is that the XBox 360 sold out because Microsoft priced it low enough that people could actually afford it. An apt comparison would be the recent HD-DVD launch. They've priced the damn things so high that nobody will buy them unless they're simply drooling at the possibility of being able to buy a shiny new toy. Early-adopters and the obsessed will typically buy new products for prices that are far above what anyone else is willing to pay. The statement then, is that the pricing was low enough that it wasn't restricted solely to the early-adopter/gotta-have-it/price-is-no-object segement. As a result the system sold out.
There are, however, flaws with this reasoning. First is the idea that the launch of a new product should be accompanied by a phase of normal people wanting it, but feeling the damn thing is just too expensive to drop that kind of cash on. Quite frankly this is idiotic. Sure the company might make a bit more money, but it doesn't help the consumer in the slightest.
The second problem is that Microsoft only intended this hard-core segment to purchase the Xbox 360 at launch. This is patently untrue. They hyped the hell out of it and barely let up. They wanted everyone to be rushing the stores to buy one just like it actually went down. The problem is that Microsoft screwed up and didn't have the stock they needed.
Quite frankly it feels like someone who was pissed because they couldn't easily get their hands on one and would have been willing to pay more so they could have.
As others have said this will likely end up like SACD / DVD-A: a great idea and improvement that doesn't get picked up due to the lack of killer apps. Just like Laserdisc completely failed to gain mainstream acceptance even though there wasn't a competing format.
Personally I think that the PS3 might have a shot at driving acceptance of Blu-Ray (and I certainly hope it does since I prefer it over HD-DVD), but that's yet to be seen.
One of the more problematic ideas though is something that really could have helped drive the acceptance of next-gen audio formats: backwards compatibility from the discs. I own a few of various types (I prefer SACD, but DVD-A does have better multi-channel and medium-def backwards compatibility when it has a DVD-V readable DTS layer, especially if it's a DTS 96/24 layer) even though I have yet to buy a player (too poor and even if I had the cash right now I'd wait to get some HD video support on the player as well). The way to get these things adopted is to put a backwards-compatible layer on somehow (without sacrificing video or audio quality) and then market them to consumers as the only option. Otherwise the lock between software and hardware is unlikely to ever be broken... sort of what's been going on with high-def audio even with it's tentative steps towards back compatibility. Once the consumer has a library full of product the desire to maybe pick up a new player that can actually read that high-def layer will be a much easier sell.
Guh! We'll live in domed cities on the moon. I can't believer people are too short-sighted to look at domed cities as the answer to all of our problems. Finally we can be free from the horible tyranny of weather (no sarcasm intended)!
I'm a guy with waist-length hair and a scraggly beard. I usually wear Birkenstocks in the summer and shorts and t-shirts. I'm vehemently anti-war, anti-Bush, and anti-death penalty. I have a peace button on my old German army field jacket. My living room has a Pink Floyd poster over my bean bag, a lava lamp and a small shelf devoted to incense. While I'm out of work at the moment I've spent the past 6 months or so trying to find a job and move to San Francisco. At the same time I'm not an enviromentalist by any stretch (e.g. if my girlfriend didn't force me to I wouldn't recycle anything) and I'm very much pro-nuke. Hell, I'm largely a lassiez-faire capitalist. I'm 25 and I've never had a drink, a smoke, or done any sort of drug in my life. I love meat. "A Touch of Grey" and "Casey Jones" are the only Greatful Dead songs I can recognize and quite frankly I never really cared for anything else they did. I can't tolerate Phish or any other jam bands.
Admittedly I'm a libertarian (small 'l' please) not the more modern American type of liberal. The point is that appearances can be pretty damn decieving. Effectively that's what the article is saying: not all enviromentalists are natural enemies of nuclear power.
I have the opposite problem actually. While I don't support the idea of conforming to "style" or whatever the current trend is my girlfriend has a habit of wearing hats and other items of clothing that would look ugly and childish on an elementary schooler only due to the pretext of them being warm.
Having a scantily-clad girlfriend must be a terrible burden.
Actually my point was how it doesn't do everything I want. In particular it's severely wanting for storage space as most recent applications are designed for the much larger capacities of the newer devices. Adding in an SD card slot would help in many ways as this would also allow the ability to plug in the wifi card.
Personally I still have and use my Palm V. While it's great and all I really do feel the need to upgrade. For one thing most recent programs have gotten so bloated that they won't possibly fit into the tiny 4MB memory. Want to throw in a few eBooks to read on it? Better cut down heavily on any other programs you use because each one is going to take up a pretty big chunk of memory. It also lacks the ability to use memory cards for removable storage, what I feel is one of the biggest features added in the later models. You can connect it to the internet, but it's a pain in the ass and you typically have to rely on some overpriced cellular modem to really get anything decent done with it. Otherwise you can use a clipping program to get data onto it, but they aren't the greatest.
If all you want are the address book, calender, to do list and memo pad though then yeah, you can get one on eBay for around $40 tops easily. It's not quite as small as you'd like, but it's pretty much the smallest device that Palm ever made.
So yeah, it keeps me organized, but it's not a massive improvement over a paper organizer unless you have a massive amount of data to store on it. The palmtop computing aspects are really what make PDAs the superior option in my mind and in that respect it's been pretty strongly eclipsed by the later revisions to the line.
I agree, however, that video, mp3s, and a camera are pretty unnecessary though wifi (bluetooth connectivity would be nice, but I feel that wifi is enough), removable media, and much more storage space are needed.
Yes, the price has come down now, but I'm referring to the price when it was released. At the time you were paying the same price for the game either on disc or through Steam.
As far as authentication goes I recalled (I haven't played in a while admittedly) that you needed to be online in order to play HL2 even in single-player mode. Not really an improvement over getting it on physical media.
As far as updates I agree that it's a good system. Although the lack of the ability to not install an update is a bit worrisome since sometimes, even with games, there are updates that you'd prefer not to install. As long as I'm playing it single-player it shouldn't force updates on me though the ability to automatically keep it updated is quite nice. I agree that I'm quite pissed that most developers now expect users to download patches from third-party sites that have terrible lines and try to sell subscriptions for better bandwidth. In my opinion if you're releasing and supporting the software you should provide the servers to download the patches and maintain appropriate bandwidth so they remain accessible. Making a for-profit company handle it merely puts the user at a disadvantage and strikes me as relatively unethical.
Frankly I consider the company going out of business and no longer supporting the system (which in this case means you can't play it at all due to authentication, not just an inability to install it) to be far more likely than me losing the CD. I still have my CDs for Crusader:No Remorse and I have my old floppies for Alone in the Dark, X-COM and others, but the chances I'd be able to play them if they had been sold through Steam seems pretty minimal.
I also personally resent the idea that not only do I completely fail to get any media (although Steam lets you reinstall, most online distribution doesn't so if I have a hard drive problem or just need the space I've lost the game forever), but that I need to waste my time and bandwidth downloading the damn thing. I also fail to get a real, printed manual... sure that's going away with many games (Half-Life 2 in particular seemed to throw in a little card only as an afterthought, no doubt to give you just as little as the people buying online got), but like others have mentioned here I lament the old days when you got not only a manual but charts or even immersive extras... without paying $10 more for a collector's edition. Compared to driving to the store a few minutes away or waiting overnight for the damn thing to download it's not even more convenient unless I'm under house arrest.
Of course for all this added convenience and direct profit to the developer I get the chance to pay the exact same price as I would at retail. When I buy a CD directly from the band (either online or at a show) I typically pay less because all of the profits (on the sale at least) are going directly to the band, not to middle-men and labels and then eventually on up to some pittance of royalties... as a result I usually also end up paying far less because there isn't as much markup. In this case it just seems like the companies are being unnecessarily greedy and trying to make me pay the same price to get less.
Quite frankly this is pretty old news. They've been mentioning this on the commentaries for the DVDs for a while now and we've all known that they've been working on a movie off and on for years, but finally in earnest.
The same teaser, of course, also aired on Fox during the commercials for the Simpsons this past Sunday.
Oh, I agree entirely and I certainly don't support anarchy (either as a legitimate political idea or as a teenager who wants to appear rebelious). My main point is the whole "with us or against us" way things have been cast with the idea that "patriots" always support the government no matter what and that they can do no wrong. My intent was to contrast this with the fact that the people most commonly agreed upon as patriots are people who looked at their government, saw it wanting, and felt that the only way to make things right was through a radical change.
Patriots are people who care about their country... not the government or country as a legal entity, but the place where they live and feel that it should be governed justly. I would say that fairly frequently this requires being at odds with the government and demanding more from them. Someone who feels that the country is always great and never questions that their leaders are always doing the right thing is about as far away from being a patriot as possible.
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Personally I've been a big fan of E2 for many, many years. Sure Wikipedia has some advantages (typos and small bits can easily be changed, it's easier to update and modify something when someone leaves the site and never comes back, it has links and images), but E2 manages to do away with many of the disadvantages as well. Users individually own their writeups so unless an editor changes something (and I've never seen it happen aside from very light proof-reading or wholesale, and typically justified deletion) it's not going to be changed just because someone comes along and disagrees with you. Individual pieces tend to take on much more of a personal voice rather than being the bland, monotone of multiple users slowly working away at something over time. If something is wrong it's likely corrected by someone else. Multiple views are presented on topics giving them greater depth and perspective. Finally errors and poor writing tend to be worked out through a process of survival of the fittest. As better writeups are entered into the system they tend to push out weaker, older ones creating a constant evolutionary process. While Wikipedia evolves unless significant forking is done it tends to be much more convergant while E2 tends to be parallel or divergent most of the time.
Do I still use Wikipedia? Yeah, on occasion I'll want images or more information than I find listed on E2, but I typically use Wikipedia as a sort of study guide and an aide to doing further searching. E2 tends to function much better as a primer.
Well, not exactly, but the arguments that Macs are more secure and resistant to viruses largely seems to be due to the fact that there is a smaller installed base. Part of the same reason most software, games, peripherals, etc. are often designed primarily to work on a PC. It's not that one is inherently superior (and I'm not saying that OS X isn't technically more secure), but that most people writing viruses are going after the largest target. Arguments that go this way (and one of those new Apple switch ads says exactly the same thing) ignore the underlying issue.
If overnight every PC turned into a Mac and vice-versa we'd probably be seeing arguments saying that we all ought to move to PCs because they tend to be targetted by viruses less frequently.
I don't doubt that there might be legitimate technical reasons why one platform is more secure than another, but tell us why. I realize this is hard to convey to a lay audience, but it's the only thing that's makes for a legitimate long-term choice.
Dear $DIETY! We need to make certain that high schools are aware that they might be allowing 19 year-olds and 14 year-olds to interact! There must be some sort of way to prevent them from talking to each other every single day and perhaps, eventually, having sex.
Seriously, if he was 18 would that really have made any difference at all? Wouldn't he still be a bit sleazy (even if they had a real, loving relationship at that age 4 years makes a big difference) even if he hadn't sexually assaulted her. Knowing that she was 14 that would typically make her a freshman and a freshman dating a senior would be more or less accurate to the age range here.
Myspace is no more to blame than if she was sexually assaulted by an actual 19 year-old she met at school or any other public place if she met a guy there who claimed to be a senior.
Most tellingly though is that she went out with him and then he date-raped her. She apparently had no problem dating the guy or at least it was never mentioned that she did or that upon meeting him she realized that he was apparently older than someone she'd want to date (and hence, the issue in question since MySpace isn't an age-verification service). She should simply press charges for sexual assualt and be done with it.
The opposite is also true. When I graduated from high school I was 17. I turned 18 on my first day moving into the dorms for college. My birthday is in late August and thus I was close to the cut-off to begin with (in our area it's based on the age you are when you start, not in November) and started school a year early on top of that.
It also depends a lot on the local chains you're dealing with. Pretty much every Super Wal-Mart is 24 hours as are all of the Dillon's (Kroger) that I've been to. Sure neither is particularly good, but sometimes it's all that's available.
Really? In recent years just about every grocery store I've been to is 24 hours.
I know of at least two friends who only have cell phones and my girlfriend occasionally tries to get me to give up our land line citing that it's not worth the expense. Considering that this all occured during the time when we were in college and now not long after graduating we're all pretty poor. When you get down to it a cell phone plan is cheaper and more versatile (e.g. no extra charge for long distance) most of the time. For just plain bare-bones service (e.g. no long distance, no call waiting, no voicemail, nothing but a dial tone) we're paying about $30 a month or so. Probably closer to $40 once you factor in all the various fees and taxes and such.
You'll also start seeing this pick up as more and more people start moving to cell phones. Right now I have a number of different friends, all of whom live in town, who have various area codes for their cell phones. This means it's not at all feasible to call them from a land line. I mean, why would I want to pay for long distance to call someone who just lives across town? If one of these people then decides to ditch their land line and just use their cell phone with a non-local area code then you're pretty much forced to rely on your cell as well. While I realize having a non-local area code is more likely in a college town once you have the same number for a while many people don't want to go through the hassle of changing their number and such.
Expel? They need to get that kid into an intensive grammar class rather than trying to expel him. It's not just the terrible spelling and complete failure to use apostrophes (well, unless he's using them in an amazingly incorrect way), but he doesn't even bother to use question marks when asking questions most of the time or capitalize the first letter in a new sentence. I'll admit that my grammar isn't always perfect, but at least I always try to use proper grammar and spelling.
The design, however, really is terrible. I couldn't even read it without highlighting the text.
Reading it more this kid really seems like your standard punk teenager who's probably going to be suspended at least once for a legitimate reason. On the other hand it also reveals a bit more about what's going on. Apparently (at least, according to the blog posts) other students have been suspended over their posts on Xanga. Now since I don't know the full story I can't say for certain, but that seems to be where his claims of being bullied come from.
At the same time since I don't know the full story the school may have had other reasons for suspending the students other than that they just mocked them online. I know at my high school anyone involved in any form of atheletics (in my case this was debate and forensics) was required to sign some sort of pledge that stated that if you were caught smoking, drinking, or doing drugs or showed up to a school event under the influence (I'm not, however, certain whether they tried to make it affect times when you were under the influence, but not in any way involved with school activities while it occured, but I believe it did) you could be temporarily barred from participating, kicked off the team, or suspended from school. This was not voluntary, of course, and you were required to sign a new one every year or else you weren't allowed to participate. As with all things enforcement was spotty: one of our best debaters wasn't allowed to compete for a few weeks after being caught smoking while another was a notorious drunk who showed up to competitions drunk was never even chided on it since she'd take first place almost every week.
Depending on the school it could have (and I'm really stretching here) been an issue where a student who signed something like this was caught at it by posting about engaging in some sort of activity that would violate the agreement. The legality of such an agreement, of course, is another issue though.
Um, hey stupid, blame TMBG then not TicketMaster. TMBG is charging you $20.
Actually I'm blaming the venue a bit more, but quite frankly everyone is doing what they can to gouge the customer. TMBG has shown time and time again that they care a great deal about their fans: they play free shows pretty often, they frequently release free music (e.g. mp3s, dial-a-song, the recent podcast), their direct-sale downloads are in pure, DRM-free mp3 with them only gently asking you not to steal their music. Also I was a bit in error. Going back over my ticket stubs (I saw them at the same venue twice within a year) each ticket was only $15 or so, but each ticket also cost an extra $5 or so in convenience fees.
And that's because they have FLAT fees. It's $10 (or whatever) to get your ticket regardless of whether that ticket is $300 or $3. The fees suck, but just say that... but don't make stupid nonsensical agrument.
Uh, no. This isn't true at all. Just to double-check I went to Ticketmaster's web site while writing this to check up on a few nearby concerts and see what the fees are:
Some Local Band: $9 ticket + $1 Building Facility Charge + $2.80 Convenience Charge = 30% of ticket price
Dave Matthews Band: $58 ticket + $10.30 Convenience Charge = 16% of ticket price
Poison: $19.50 ticket + $4.50 Convenience Charge = ~25% of ticket price
Warped Tour: $28 ticket + $5 Convenience Charge = ~ 18% of ticket price
Sonic Youth: $25 ticket + $7.05 Convenience Charge = 28% of ticket price
Mindles Self Indulgence: $16 ticket + $1 Building Facility Charge + $5.45 Convenience Charge = 40% of ticket price
So no. There is definitely not a flat fee for convenience charges. Oddly though the percentage tends to be much lower when you're paying more for the ticket thus meaning that the smaller shows are the ones where you're really being screwed. This matches my own experiences quite well ($43 ticket for NIN meant a $6 convenience charge, $15 ticket to TMBG meant a $5 convenience charge). Personally it's also these smaller shows where I tend to notice the fees the most as suddenly a relatively cheap ticket balloons up in price. Also note that these were all taken from a variety of different venues (though I went back to the same venue at least once to check and see if they were partly to blame) and types of acts.
Oh... and about tickets in the past being cheaper. I'd suspect that the shows weren't as ellaborate (driving up artist prices) and you actually had to go to a box office or ticket outlet to get your tickets.
I wonder how much people were paying for Pink Floyd tickets in the late 70s. They were incredibly popular and put on a very elaborate show, but I'm willing to bet you didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for tickets.
As for going to the ticket office... well, maybe, I'll have to ask my parents to be honest. This does cause me to wonder what those of us who live in outlying areas or small college towns did. From where I live now to see pretty much any concert I have to drive about 2 hours to get there. I doubt people were driving that far just to pick up tickets when they went on sale then going home. Perhaps they were easier to get on the day of the show.
Sometimes? I often find that Ticketmaster wants to charge me at least 30-40% of the cost of a ticket. Plus a processing fee or something else on top of that. Plus the fee to print my ticket. Or if I don't want that I can just pay them a fee to mail my ticket to me.
I can't speak for it because it was before my time, but concerts seem to have been a hell of a lot cheaper in the past before Ticketmaster. I'll still see posters and hear various snippets of top acts going for $5-20. Admittedly this was before double-digit inflation, but still. When I saw NIN back in '00 it was at least $60 or so. Even going to see smaller acts is expensive: They Might Be Giants, playing at a small venue was $20 or so before fees, Matisyahu, playing at the same venue, was at least $30 or so a few months back, Split Lip Rayfield, who IIRC is still mainly a regional act, was $15 to play in the low-ceilinged, cramped, stageless local bar. Sure it was just a cover charge, but it was still pretty damned expensive considering they only travelled about 2 hours to play here.
It's times like this that I recall the Dead Kennedy's classic Pull My Strings: "You'll pay ten bucks to see me/ on a fifteen foot high stage". Hah! To only pay $10 to see the Dead Kennedys and have that be expensive enough to be mocked? And that was only released in 1987. Before someone trys to call me on this according to inflation that we be approximately $17 today, but probably closer to $30 after Ticketmaster, and quite frankly the idea of ten bucks is too universal for inflation to really matter... I don't care what year it is, teens and punks are just as poor as they've always been without any cost of living raise to offset the difference.
The grip is a bit too small and the movement would be a tad awkward. As well you'd probably need to be able to use buttons so you couldn't be switching your grip around in orientation the way you'd need to. Finally you'd have to use the nunchaku for movement (assuming the game isn't just a really lame stand still and duel type thing) which would prevent you from getting the range of movement necessary.
While I totally, totally want this it seems rather likely considering they already released that TV lightsaber toy last year. Sure it was Hasbro, not Lucasarts, but the precedent has already been established. I'm willing to bet that the sales figures on that are going to factor into the decision to make a game at least slightly.
Aside from the lack of force-feedback (which is more of an awesome pipe dream, but would add a lot to this type of title) it's probably going to be restricted to single sabers. Personally I prefer the Darth Maul style saber staff (since I've always personally prefered staff fighting) and that likely won't be at all possible. Dual-saber styles are right out.
Not just special edition, specialer updated to fit better with the crappy prequels edition. So now we have Hayden Christensen showing up as the ghost Anakin and Ian McDiarmid plays the emperor for his holo in Empire. Also, IIRC, they made Han shoot slightly faster in this one so while he still shoots after Greedo, it's a little bit more reasonable.
Just reading the statement on why they chose this as the name shows that it was massively overthought. Just look at the reasons: doesn't need to be abbreviated, double 'i' represents "people coming together to play" (yeah, now if only they release some good multiplayer games that aren't sports of Smash Bros. because my girlfriend and I would actually love to play something together other than X-Men Legends and Mario Kart), it has a lame hominym with "we" which sounds like a lame attempt to build trust and togetherness, distinctive (showing that they can't tell the difference between different-good and different-stupid), pronounced the same in Japanese and English (I'm guessing here, but it fits a bit with what they said).
Seriously, this is a terrible name. It sounds like a committee sat down with a list of high-minded bullet points about what they want to communicate and didn't leave until they had something that fit them. Of course, they completely failed to consider that matching a list of specifications doesn't matter if the damn thing sounds stupid.
What they're basically trying to say is that the XBox 360 sold out because Microsoft priced it low enough that people could actually afford it. An apt comparison would be the recent HD-DVD launch. They've priced the damn things so high that nobody will buy them unless they're simply drooling at the possibility of being able to buy a shiny new toy. Early-adopters and the obsessed will typically buy new products for prices that are far above what anyone else is willing to pay. The statement then, is that the pricing was low enough that it wasn't restricted solely to the early-adopter/gotta-have-it/price-is-no-object segement. As a result the system sold out.
There are, however, flaws with this reasoning. First is the idea that the launch of a new product should be accompanied by a phase of normal people wanting it, but feeling the damn thing is just too expensive to drop that kind of cash on. Quite frankly this is idiotic. Sure the company might make a bit more money, but it doesn't help the consumer in the slightest.
The second problem is that Microsoft only intended this hard-core segment to purchase the Xbox 360 at launch. This is patently untrue. They hyped the hell out of it and barely let up. They wanted everyone to be rushing the stores to buy one just like it actually went down. The problem is that Microsoft screwed up and didn't have the stock they needed.
Quite frankly it feels like someone who was pissed because they couldn't easily get their hands on one and would have been willing to pay more so they could have.
As others have said this will likely end up like SACD / DVD-A: a great idea and improvement that doesn't get picked up due to the lack of killer apps. Just like Laserdisc completely failed to gain mainstream acceptance even though there wasn't a competing format.
Personally I think that the PS3 might have a shot at driving acceptance of Blu-Ray (and I certainly hope it does since I prefer it over HD-DVD), but that's yet to be seen.
One of the more problematic ideas though is something that really could have helped drive the acceptance of next-gen audio formats: backwards compatibility from the discs. I own a few of various types (I prefer SACD, but DVD-A does have better multi-channel and medium-def backwards compatibility when it has a DVD-V readable DTS layer, especially if it's a DTS 96/24 layer) even though I have yet to buy a player (too poor and even if I had the cash right now I'd wait to get some HD video support on the player as well). The way to get these things adopted is to put a backwards-compatible layer on somehow (without sacrificing video or audio quality) and then market them to consumers as the only option. Otherwise the lock between software and hardware is unlikely to ever be broken... sort of what's been going on with high-def audio even with it's tentative steps towards back compatibility. Once the consumer has a library full of product the desire to maybe pick up a new player that can actually read that high-def layer will be a much easier sell.
Guh! We'll live in domed cities on the moon. I can't believer people are too short-sighted to look at domed cities as the answer to all of our problems. Finally we can be free from the horible tyranny of weather (no sarcasm intended)!
I'm a guy with waist-length hair and a scraggly beard. I usually wear Birkenstocks in the summer and shorts and t-shirts. I'm vehemently anti-war, anti-Bush, and anti-death penalty. I have a peace button on my old German army field jacket. My living room has a Pink Floyd poster over my bean bag, a lava lamp and a small shelf devoted to incense. While I'm out of work at the moment I've spent the past 6 months or so trying to find a job and move to San Francisco. At the same time I'm not an enviromentalist by any stretch (e.g. if my girlfriend didn't force me to I wouldn't recycle anything) and I'm very much pro-nuke. Hell, I'm largely a lassiez-faire capitalist. I'm 25 and I've never had a drink, a smoke, or done any sort of drug in my life. I love meat. "A Touch of Grey" and "Casey Jones" are the only Greatful Dead songs I can recognize and quite frankly I never really cared for anything else they did. I can't tolerate Phish or any other jam bands.
Admittedly I'm a libertarian (small 'l' please) not the more modern American type of liberal. The point is that appearances can be pretty damn decieving. Effectively that's what the article is saying: not all enviromentalists are natural enemies of nuclear power.
I have the opposite problem actually. While I don't support the idea of conforming to "style" or whatever the current trend is my girlfriend has a habit of wearing hats and other items of clothing that would look ugly and childish on an elementary schooler only due to the pretext of them being warm.
Having a scantily-clad girlfriend must be a terrible burden.
Actually my point was how it doesn't do everything I want. In particular it's severely wanting for storage space as most recent applications are designed for the much larger capacities of the newer devices. Adding in an SD card slot would help in many ways as this would also allow the ability to plug in the wifi card.
Personally I still have and use my Palm V. While it's great and all I really do feel the need to upgrade. For one thing most recent programs have gotten so bloated that they won't possibly fit into the tiny 4MB memory. Want to throw in a few eBooks to read on it? Better cut down heavily on any other programs you use because each one is going to take up a pretty big chunk of memory. It also lacks the ability to use memory cards for removable storage, what I feel is one of the biggest features added in the later models. You can connect it to the internet, but it's a pain in the ass and you typically have to rely on some overpriced cellular modem to really get anything decent done with it. Otherwise you can use a clipping program to get data onto it, but they aren't the greatest.
If all you want are the address book, calender, to do list and memo pad though then yeah, you can get one on eBay for around $40 tops easily. It's not quite as small as you'd like, but it's pretty much the smallest device that Palm ever made.
So yeah, it keeps me organized, but it's not a massive improvement over a paper organizer unless you have a massive amount of data to store on it. The palmtop computing aspects are really what make PDAs the superior option in my mind and in that respect it's been pretty strongly eclipsed by the later revisions to the line.
I agree, however, that video, mp3s, and a camera are pretty unnecessary though wifi (bluetooth connectivity would be nice, but I feel that wifi is enough), removable media, and much more storage space are needed.
Yes, the price has come down now, but I'm referring to the price when it was released. At the time you were paying the same price for the game either on disc or through Steam.
As far as authentication goes I recalled (I haven't played in a while admittedly) that you needed to be online in order to play HL2 even in single-player mode. Not really an improvement over getting it on physical media.
As far as updates I agree that it's a good system. Although the lack of the ability to not install an update is a bit worrisome since sometimes, even with games, there are updates that you'd prefer not to install. As long as I'm playing it single-player it shouldn't force updates on me though the ability to automatically keep it updated is quite nice. I agree that I'm quite pissed that most developers now expect users to download patches from third-party sites that have terrible lines and try to sell subscriptions for better bandwidth. In my opinion if you're releasing and supporting the software you should provide the servers to download the patches and maintain appropriate bandwidth so they remain accessible. Making a for-profit company handle it merely puts the user at a disadvantage and strikes me as relatively unethical.
Frankly I consider the company going out of business and no longer supporting the system (which in this case means you can't play it at all due to authentication, not just an inability to install it) to be far more likely than me losing the CD. I still have my CDs for Crusader:No Remorse and I have my old floppies for Alone in the Dark, X-COM and others, but the chances I'd be able to play them if they had been sold through Steam seems pretty minimal.
I also personally resent the idea that not only do I completely fail to get any media (although Steam lets you reinstall, most online distribution doesn't so if I have a hard drive problem or just need the space I've lost the game forever), but that I need to waste my time and bandwidth downloading the damn thing. I also fail to get a real, printed manual... sure that's going away with many games (Half-Life 2 in particular seemed to throw in a little card only as an afterthought, no doubt to give you just as little as the people buying online got), but like others have mentioned here I lament the old days when you got not only a manual but charts or even immersive extras... without paying $10 more for a collector's edition. Compared to driving to the store a few minutes away or waiting overnight for the damn thing to download it's not even more convenient unless I'm under house arrest.
Of course for all this added convenience and direct profit to the developer I get the chance to pay the exact same price as I would at retail. When I buy a CD directly from the band (either online or at a show) I typically pay less because all of the profits (on the sale at least) are going directly to the band, not to middle-men and labels and then eventually on up to some pittance of royalties... as a result I usually also end up paying far less because there isn't as much markup. In this case it just seems like the companies are being unnecessarily greedy and trying to make me pay the same price to get less.
Quite frankly this is pretty old news. They've been mentioning this on the commentaries for the DVDs for a while now and we've all known that they've been working on a movie off and on for years, but finally in earnest.
The same teaser, of course, also aired on Fox during the commercials for the Simpsons this past Sunday.
Oh, I agree entirely and I certainly don't support anarchy (either as a legitimate political idea or as a teenager who wants to appear rebelious). My main point is the whole "with us or against us" way things have been cast with the idea that "patriots" always support the government no matter what and that they can do no wrong. My intent was to contrast this with the fact that the people most commonly agreed upon as patriots are people who looked at their government, saw it wanting, and felt that the only way to make things right was through a radical change.
Patriots are people who care about their country... not the government or country as a legal entity, but the place where they live and feel that it should be governed justly. I would say that fairly frequently this requires being at odds with the government and demanding more from them. Someone who feels that the country is always great and never questions that their leaders are always doing the right thing is about as far away from being a patriot as possible.