I agree that RS vs RA is a good way to predict the success of a team. It's not always so helpful looking back. The Indians scored 870 runs last season and only allowed 782. How did they do? Not so well: a 78-84 record, good enough to finish fourth in their division. How can one explain that disparity? Blowouts. Those 22-0 games that happen every once in a while. I like Runs Scored vs Runs Allowed models. Just not the ones that get updated during the season.
If you had done this this millennium you'd have struck out a lot. Like all the time. Let's face it. The time of total dominance by one team is over. Wild card and luxury tax seem to be doing what they're supposed to. The last six world series were won by six different teams. Of course that won't get my team any closer to a championship, but all Cubs fans agree: If we don't manage this year MLB just has to give the trophy to us. After 100 years that is the least we deserve.
Also, they play-offs are a total crap-shoot. 8 teams make it every season. The Yankees are pretty much always one of the 8. That doesn't guarantee a championship. Hell, a crappy team with 83 wins can win it all. Why spend 183 million dollars on your roster?
There are no overwhelming reasons not to get an American PS3 in Europe, but there are enough hassles not to make it worthwhile for anyone but the most dedicated. Even though the machine itself might be cheaper the games won't be. After all you're going to have to import them for as long as you want to keep playing. If you import region 1 DVDs you can still watch the ones you buy locally on the same player, and even if you couldn't DVD players aren't exactly a big investment.
Then there is the problem of different voltages. European mains run somewhere around 240 compared to the American 110(ish). I don't know if the PS3 has an international power-supply, but if it doesn't you're going to need another accessory. Depending on how the online functionality of the PS3 pans out you might be restricted to playing on American servers against American opponents, which might put you at a disadvantage.
Importing is worthwhile if you are into the kind of games that are not getting released in your market. I always thought that that meant the kind of wacky Japanese game that lacks mass-appeal in the west. American games that don't see releases in Europe? The only thing that immediately comes to mind is Baseball. And even then the Mario Baseball for the GameCube is available over here.
But you're right--the TVs aren't a problem anymore these days. Seems to me that all sets made relatively recently speak PAL and NTSC. It's easier to sell one model around the world, after all.
I don't know which version of the PS3 you're looking for, but if it's the 60GB one then you should run over to Amazon right Now! Apparently they have 37 new and used available from $599.99. I reloaded, they still have 37. So this is your opportunity to buy it before "they sell out immediately."
I'm always happy to help. I don't know if the Amazon link is dynamic and will stop working. But I'm sure you can still find it if you poke around their site for a bit.
GameBoy has taught Nintendo alot. The original was the single worst hand-held of its time as far as graphics and hardware go. It did so well because of the games.
The batteries lasted forever, but yeah, whatever...
It's not like this thing is the most expensive laser they offer. Sure, the whole Blu-ray laser pointer thing is mostly a marketing gag, although I have no idea how it measures up to other blue laser pointers available. But this is a legitimate company selling legitimate* products and judging from the image they created of themselves I'd say that this is exactly the kind of thing they would do.
My guess (note the second s) is probably not much better than yours, but I am confident that they bought a Blu-ray player for the express purpose of playing with the diode and decided to make a product out of it. Now I agree that they might hold off on buying more players until the orders start coming in, but I doubt that this is vapour. I mean it's not like it is all that complicated a concept.
* I assume that this is true, because I a reputable sourcereviewed a Wicked Lasers laser.
If memory serves Microsoft settled and Sony lost. For some reason the Nintendo implementation of rumble did not violate the patents held by Immersion. It might have had something to do with the number of motors used, but I'm sure that somebody else knows more about that.
Voting with my wallet is exactly what I did. Not that this vote is going to matter much in the grand scheme of things, but I haven't bought a CD since Asian Dub Foundation's "Enemy of the Enemy" was released and I found out that I couldn't just rip it and add it to my growing MP3 collection. I went out and got a thoroughly mediocre turntable to connect to my really old and shitty amplifier and started to buy records again. That of course means that I pretty much have to go out and steal the MP3s somewhere if I want to listen to them while I'm out and about but I will be able to live with that until they start to kick in my door.
As far as I am concerned CDs started to become obsolete when Jukebox programs became ubiquitous. As a mode of getting the music from the store into your digital library they worked brilliantly until the record companies started to muck about with copy protection. Of course I am not an audiophile. I spent too much time listening to music at high volume to even be able to experience the 20 kHz cut-off or whatever anymore. The physical act of putting a CD in the CD player is not at all more convenient than putting a record onto a turntable. Both of them have nothing on just browsing through thousands of songs in your library. CDs are intentionally broken, records have physical limitations. I just know that it's generally more fun to look through a record shelf than it is to squint in front of a CD rack.
For all practical purposes a CD is just a physical vector for the digital information stored on it. There is nothing that distinguishes the information on it from the exact same information stored on a harddisk. Sure, you might have a fancy ass CD-player that does the digital to analogue conversion in a much nicer way than your sound-card ever could, but that doesn't make a CD anymore than it is. The same is not true for a record. It just does what it does and as long as people require that functionality records will exist. I just don't believe the same is true about CDs. The whole "what sounds better" better argument is beside the point.
Sorry for going off on a tangent here. I thought the copy-protected CDs were an outrage and reacted accordingly. I do think that the CD will become obsolete as it is simply a carrier of information. Vinyl records are simply a carrier of information, but they will keep on existing for purely sentimental reasons. People just like them. I just don't see what people can like in a CD as opposed to say a DVD with the exact same information on it.
I, for one, don't want vinyl. How the hell am I supposed to rip that to put on my computer and iPods?! Sampling? With all the resulting noise? No thanks!
You know what I do? I buy the record and then steal the MP3s. Sometimes I even do it the other way around. I steal the MP3s and then buy the record. It's not like there's much music you can't buy on vinyl.
Of course it would be really cool if more artists did what Shellac did with their 1000 Hurts album: Throw in a CD version of the record with the vinyl. Or friends of mine: They released their album on vinyl only but packed in a nice looking poster with the record that contains instructions on how to download everything on plain old MP3. Sure, that's all very indy without much concern for making money. It still is nice.
As far as I can tell, Apple bought Logic for the express purpose of gutting it and repackaging it as Garage Band.
They still sell Logic Pro for a cool grand. So even though Garage Band might have been a direct result of acquiring Logic they didn't kill the premium product. Just the Windows version, if I remember correctly.
In all fairness I have to admit that pretty much everyone I know keeps saying 'Is this George Clooney?' when that Budweiser spot comes on. And the general consensus always was that it had to be him. Nobody necessarily thought it was 'cool' as the article you linked to suggests, but it was noted and it does make the spot stand out.
I'm not taking any responsibility for what happens, but you might want to go and check out this here site. They offer a little program that uncaps the maximum volume restriction on European ipods.
Oh, I'm not actually using the format since it is so bad. Doesn't mean that I don't want to. Unfortunately Windows Media is the only format MLB offers their archives in. Fortunately Real is a working alternative for live broadcasts (and it works surprisingly well) but in the off-season I am pretty much hosed with my mac. The first time I heard of this third-party plugin I was quite enthusiastic, but it didn't work. I just tried again and it still doesn't work for the one thing I need it.
It's a shame, really, since it's such a nice service in theory, but what can you do? Now that WMP on mac is dead I can hope that baseball gets its act together and starts offering the archived games in an alternative format. Real would be enough, but of course I'd be happy with quicktime too.
The hackers are from Austria and the surveillance cameras were indeed in Vienna. They just presented their work at the Chaos Computer Club somethingorother in Berlin.
There also is going to be an air race during the fleet week in San Francisco this weekend. That's as far away from rockets as you can get, though, since they use aerobatic planes there. And they race in turns against the clock. Still, I guess you can go and watch it for free.
A lot of people bought it without reading any reviews because there were no advance copies sent out. Reviews didn't start to appear until after the game was on shelves so a lot of people got suckered in. I know, because I was one of them. The game was hyped up to an incredible level. Integral part of the story. Who could have know that the story would turn out to suck that badly in the end.
[...]In accordance with the portion of the Court's January 10, 2005 order awarding Immersion pre-judgment interest at the prime rate, Immersion shall recover of Defendants pre-judgment
interest in the amount of $8,703,608.00.1 Immersion shall recover its costs from Sony.
Well, if you can have a world series without inviting any other country to play in it, rest assured that you can declare anything you want.
Not sure the Blue Jays would agree with you there. The Toronto Blue Jays, to be precise. I really wish I had more to contribute to that discussion than nitpicking about baseball, especially since I am Austrian, but I never heard about that project before now. I also still hold a grudge against Telekom Austria from the time when they were a state owned monopoly .
Page up. The arrow keys work as well. If you find that you go up on a web-page as often as you scroll down then I can see this system not working for you. For my reading habits this is the most convenient way of doing things.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I suggest you start as soon as possible. Or at least as soon as this tax is levied on you.
I agree that RS vs RA is a good way to predict the success of a team. It's not always so helpful looking back. The Indians scored 870 runs last season and only allowed 782. How did they do? Not so well: a 78-84 record, good enough to finish fourth in their division. How can one explain that disparity? Blowouts. Those 22-0 games that happen every once in a while. I like Runs Scored vs Runs Allowed models. Just not the ones that get updated during the season.
If you had done this this millennium you'd have struck out a lot. Like all the time. Let's face it. The time of total dominance by one team is over. Wild card and luxury tax seem to be doing what they're supposed to. The last six world series were won by six different teams. Of course that won't get my team any closer to a championship, but all Cubs fans agree: If we don't manage this year MLB just has to give the trophy to us. After 100 years that is the least we deserve.
Also, they play-offs are a total crap-shoot. 8 teams make it every season. The Yankees are pretty much always one of the 8. That doesn't guarantee a championship. Hell, a crappy team with 83 wins can win it all. Why spend 183 million dollars on your roster?
There are no overwhelming reasons not to get an American PS3 in Europe, but there are enough hassles not to make it worthwhile for anyone but the most dedicated. Even though the machine itself might be cheaper the games won't be. After all you're going to have to import them for as long as you want to keep playing. If you import region 1 DVDs you can still watch the ones you buy locally on the same player, and even if you couldn't DVD players aren't exactly a big investment.
Then there is the problem of different voltages. European mains run somewhere around 240 compared to the American 110(ish). I don't know if the PS3 has an international power-supply, but if it doesn't you're going to need another accessory. Depending on how the online functionality of the PS3 pans out you might be restricted to playing on American servers against American opponents, which might put you at a disadvantage.
Importing is worthwhile if you are into the kind of games that are not getting released in your market. I always thought that that meant the kind of wacky Japanese game that lacks mass-appeal in the west. American games that don't see releases in Europe? The only thing that immediately comes to mind is Baseball. And even then the Mario Baseball for the GameCube is available over here.
But you're right--the TVs aren't a problem anymore these days. Seems to me that all sets made relatively recently speak PAL and NTSC. It's easier to sell one model around the world, after all.
I don't know which version of the PS3 you're looking for, but if it's the 60GB one then you should run over to Amazon right Now! Apparently they have 37 new and used available from $599.99. I reloaded, they still have 37. So this is your opportunity to buy it before "they sell out immediately."
I'm always happy to help. I don't know if the Amazon link is dynamic and will stop working. But I'm sure you can still find it if you poke around their site for a bit.
The batteries lasted forever, but yeah, whatever ...
It's not like this thing is the most expensive laser they offer. Sure, the whole Blu-ray laser pointer thing is mostly a marketing gag, although I have no idea how it measures up to other blue laser pointers available. But this is a legitimate company selling legitimate* products and judging from the image they created of themselves I'd say that this is exactly the kind of thing they would do.
My guess (note the second s) is probably not much better than yours, but I am confident that they bought a Blu-ray player for the express purpose of playing with the diode and decided to make a product out of it. Now I agree that they might hold off on buying more players until the orders start coming in, but I doubt that this is vapour. I mean it's not like it is all that complicated a concept.
* I assume that this is true, because I a reputable source reviewed a Wicked Lasers laser.
If memory serves Microsoft settled and Sony lost. For some reason the Nintendo implementation of rumble did not violate the patents held by Immersion. It might have had something to do with the number of motors used, but I'm sure that somebody else knows more about that.
Voting with my wallet is exactly what I did. Not that this vote is going to matter much in the grand scheme of things, but I haven't bought a CD since Asian Dub Foundation's "Enemy of the Enemy" was released and I found out that I couldn't just rip it and add it to my growing MP3 collection. I went out and got a thoroughly mediocre turntable to connect to my really old and shitty amplifier and started to buy records again. That of course means that I pretty much have to go out and steal the MP3s somewhere if I want to listen to them while I'm out and about but I will be able to live with that until they start to kick in my door.
As far as I am concerned CDs started to become obsolete when Jukebox programs became ubiquitous. As a mode of getting the music from the store into your digital library they worked brilliantly until the record companies started to muck about with copy protection. Of course I am not an audiophile. I spent too much time listening to music at high volume to even be able to experience the 20 kHz cut-off or whatever anymore. The physical act of putting a CD in the CD player is not at all more convenient than putting a record onto a turntable. Both of them have nothing on just browsing through thousands of songs in your library. CDs are intentionally broken, records have physical limitations. I just know that it's generally more fun to look through a record shelf than it is to squint in front of a CD rack.
For all practical purposes a CD is just a physical vector for the digital information stored on it. There is nothing that distinguishes the information on it from the exact same information stored on a harddisk. Sure, you might have a fancy ass CD-player that does the digital to analogue conversion in a much nicer way than your sound-card ever could, but that doesn't make a CD anymore than it is. The same is not true for a record. It just does what it does and as long as people require that functionality records will exist. I just don't believe the same is true about CDs. The whole "what sounds better" better argument is beside the point.
Sorry for going off on a tangent here. I thought the copy-protected CDs were an outrage and reacted accordingly. I do think that the CD will become obsolete as it is simply a carrier of information. Vinyl records are simply a carrier of information, but they will keep on existing for purely sentimental reasons. People just like them. I just don't see what people can like in a CD as opposed to say a DVD with the exact same information on it.
You know what I do? I buy the record and then steal the MP3s. Sometimes I even do it the other way around. I steal the MP3s and then buy the record. It's not like there's much music you can't buy on vinyl.
Of course it would be really cool if more artists did what Shellac did with their 1000 Hurts album: Throw in a CD version of the record with the vinyl. Or friends of mine: They released their album on vinyl only but packed in a nice looking poster with the record that contains instructions on how to download everything on plain old MP3. Sure, that's all very indy without much concern for making money. It still is nice.
Well, yeah, but I'm sure that your sister drove like a girl.
They still sell Logic Pro for a cool grand. So even though Garage Band might have been a direct result of acquiring Logic they didn't kill the premium product. Just the Windows version, if I remember correctly.
[...] are any of you watching Cheney?
Of course we aren't. Don't want to get shot in the face after all.
In all fairness I have to admit that pretty much everyone I know keeps saying 'Is this George Clooney?' when that Budweiser spot comes on. And the general consensus always was that it had to be him. Nobody necessarily thought it was 'cool' as the article you linked to suggests, but it was noted and it does make the spot stand out.
Because the frontpage is not pink anymore.
I'm not taking any responsibility for what happens, but you might want to go and check out this here site. They offer a little program that uncaps the maximum volume restriction on European ipods.
Oh, I'm not actually using the format since it is so bad. Doesn't mean that I don't want to. Unfortunately Windows Media is the only format MLB offers their archives in. Fortunately Real is a working alternative for live broadcasts (and it works surprisingly well) but in the off-season I am pretty much hosed with my mac. The first time I heard of this third-party plugin I was quite enthusiastic, but it didn't work. I just tried again and it still doesn't work for the one thing I need it.
It's a shame, really, since it's such a nice service in theory, but what can you do? Now that WMP on mac is dead I can hope that baseball gets its act together and starts offering the archived games in an alternative format. Real would be enough, but of course I'd be happy with quicktime too.
The hackers are from Austria and the surveillance cameras were indeed in Vienna. They just presented their work at the Chaos Computer Club somethingorother in Berlin.
There also is going to be an air race during the fleet week in San Francisco this weekend. That's as far away from rockets as you can get, though, since they use aerobatic planes there. And they race in turns against the clock. Still, I guess you can go and watch it for free.
And how the fuck would you know that? Have you seen every single broadcast? From every single European Broadcast Union member? Well done.
A lot of people bought it without reading any reviews because there were no advance copies sent out. Reviews didn't start to appear until after the game was on shelves so a lot of people got suckered in. I know, because I was one of them. The game was hyped up to an incredible level. Integral part of the story. Who could have know that the story would turn out to suck that badly in the end.
Interest.
(found that here.)
Not sure the Blue Jays would agree with you there. The Toronto Blue Jays, to be precise. I really wish I had more to contribute to that discussion than nitpicking about baseball, especially since I am Austrian, but I never heard about that project before now. I also still hold a grudge against Telekom Austria from the time when they were a state owned monopoly .
Page up. The arrow keys work as well. If you find that you go up on a web-page as often as you scroll down then I can see this system not working for you. For my reading habits this is the most convenient way of doing things.
You hit the spacebar to scroll down a page. Doesn't work for documents you actually edit, but is ideal for browsing.