Back when I was in high school, I used to look at the Encylopedia Britannica for doing papers. However, I frequently found it at odds with books specializing in the particular subjects I was reading. Who was right, the EB or the author of the book who is considered an expert on the subject? I don't know. The beauty of history is that nobody can prove it one way or the other. Whoever gets the most press, wins. Even recent histroy (like a month ago) is rife with different opinions on who did what or what was done. I am certain the EB is packed with incorrect information; however, since history is written by the people with power we'll never know.
For me, the older the topic, the less likely I am to believe anyone. Perception defines reality and I have no desire to adopt someone else's reality just because they say they are the ones with the one true answer.
At the end of the day, I still don't know when Hamilton was born. Thanks for clearing that up for me Mr. Britannica.
"Once it does become viable for individual consumer bottles there will be yet another excuse why the prices need to continue to go up. Everything needs to cost more especially in the pharmaceutical industry. I swear everyone is in on it. I am told I need three low dose drugs when I have a feeling that a higher dose of another would handle it just fine. I am told that I am being prescribed these particular drugs because my coverage is good enough to afford it It all leads to more money for everyone. True. It is a corrupt system. But, on the other hand, millions of surgeries are avoided and lives preserved by the drugs every year."
So, the means justifies the ends? Well done, Chairman Mao. I guess this also makes it ok to block "re-importation" of drugs from Canada?
"Then WTF are we doing this? 20 cases of counterfeit drugs yet we have to spend thousands and thousands and pass that on to the consumer. Ugh. Yeah, they are going to say that we need to protect against a possible outbreak of this. Personally, I dont see how a label can help when the medicine inside is what is important. Anyone can swap out the real meds inside for their counterfeit ones. The drugs that are reiceved are not usually in ready-to-distribute packages. The pharmacist takes from the big bottle and puts into your bottle. This is more dealing with the bottles that the pharmacist recieves. These are generally heavily tamper-resistant, especially for more dangerous drugs."
The ONLY reason they are doing this is to avoid lawsuits. This won't do anything to stop counterfeit drugs.
LOL...I've used Opera for several years and I can assure you that virtually nobody out there gives a flying shit whether their website works with Opera. And you can bitch about XSLT support all day long, but from a user's perspective Opera is the best of the lot. Period, end of story.
Oh, and none of these website designers give a flying fuck about bandwidth. The fact that 95% of all websites are built with either Dreamweaver or Frontpage proves that.
Seriously, if you're gonna rip off Opera's tabbed browsing, at least do it right. This means there should be a simple switch in the config (which defaults to ON) which makes it so that any window I open or pop-up that occurs, goes into a new TAB -- NOT A NEW FUCKING WINDOW. It should only go into a new window if I explicitly tell it to. It is this issue alone that keeps me from using Firefox as my standard browser. It simply won't happen with a horrible implementation of tabbed browsing.
Yes, I'm aware of the addons that supposedly give you this feature but they don't fucking work right. Opera's works ALL THE TIME -- no exceptions.
Quick quiz for any Firefox devs who may be reading this: what is the point of tabbed browsing?
I'm guessing you have no clue what the answer is.
I honestly don't think people put any thought into software design.
Whoa there cowboy! You better check what state you live in because in most states they require you to be "in fear for your life" before you blow the guy's head off. A person merely being in your house doesn't count because otherwise you could just shoot anybody in your house whether they are threatening or not. They have to be armed and dangerous, and your assumption of armed and dangerous won't help you when they throw your ass in jail for murder.
Sorry but if you don't find it EXTREMELY disturbing that the USAPATRIOT act bitch slaps 4 out of 10 of the Bill of Rights, then you are either ignorant, severely misinformed, or stupid. The mere fact that they CAN imprison you for an indefinite period with no legal representation is just as bad as any similar law in China. Just because they have been doing it longer doesn't make us any better. Land of the free my ass. All it takes, my friend, is for the government to wake up one day and decide you're a terrorism risk and bye bye. Enjoy your express trip to Guantanimo Bay. Did I mention that they don't give a shit about the Geneva Conventions there? Oh, that only applies to arabs, right? lol
Oh, but I'm so free because I can speak out about this! Are you really that stupid? You do realize that the patriot act allows them to strip any of us of that right at any moment they choose, right? Just because they haven't yet doesn't mean they won't.
This country and any other country with such laws is NO BETTER than China. If it makes you sleep better at night to think otherwise, enjoy. But you're living in a fantasy world. Start praying that Bush doesn't decide to become Hitler or Stalin someday. You might just disappear.
*wonders when all the morons in this country will wake the fuck up and figure out that their rights have been analy raped with no lube*
lol...the only companies that bother with Mac ports are the ones that expect very high volume. CoH is not a high volume product. They sell a few hundred thousand copies but they really make their money on subscription fees. The 1000 or so mac dorks that would subscribe just don't justify the cost. Supporting an MMO on two platforms is a whole different ballgame than supporting the typical single person or multiplayer game.
Oh, and most of the companies that do have Mac ports use porting companies to do one-time ports of the game. In an MMO where you have constant updates, how are you supposed to manage that?
Seriously, if you're a gamer you'll just buy a PC. I have a friend that's a Mac guy and that's what he had to do. Most of the Mac ports that are out there don't even allow multiplay between different platforms so the ports suck total ass. So, if he wants to play with his PC buddies, he's stuck anyway.
Sorry but the Mac is simply not a gaming platform. Nobody wants to do these ports, video cards for the Mac are much more expensive than for the PC, and you can't even put in your own damn sound card.
'There is evidence that infants analyse the statistical distributions of sounds that they hear in ambient language, and use this information to form phonemic categories. They also learn phonotactic rules language-specific rules that govern the sequences of phonemes that can be used to compose words.'"
I'm an adult and I don't understand what the fuck they are talking about. I sure as hell wouldn't know how to "analyse statistical distributions of sound" that I hear in ambient language. Whatever the hell that even means.
I doubt this is the case. Granted, it is lacking in endgame content at the moment but almost all new MMOs do. EQ started with almost no endgame and now it has far more endgame than anything else. I can only assume they didn't expect people to level as quickly as they have?
However, I would like to know what their plan is for enhancing the endgame. I know they are adding another Archetype for people who reach 50 but that just means I get to start grinding over again from level 1. As a hardcore gamer, I would like to see a lot more endgame content sooner rather than later. Starting new characters simply gets old after a while and I would really like to stick with CoH since it has amazing potential and one of the smoothest starts for an MMO ever. I also like the fact there are no damn elves in it.
Great start guys...just keep it up. You can bet Sony and Blizzard will be pushing very hard to make their games stand out from the crowd.
So I guess we should ignore the companies like Microsoft who build entire programming campus' in India? The reality is that it's not just Bank X shipping jobs oversees, it's the software companies too. Do some research and you will find that Microsoft is far from alone in India.
Trying to get people to stop pirating based on the goodness of their hearts ain't gonna work. Instead, let them know how it impacts them in the future. For example, if a game is heavily pirated then the developer of said game won't make enough money to fund their next game. The end result is fewer games for the consumer. It also means that publishers will only fund games that they believe will generate very high sales because they have to account for the pirating factor. This leads to less creativity in the game industry because the developers will have to take the safe option. Of course, that's already happened.
Also, to the folks that complain about buying $50 xbox or ps2 games that suck...here's a suggestion: rent it first and if it's good, buy it. The fact that more often than not the games suck isn't really a valid excuse. With the exception of Halo 2, I won't buy ANY xbox game that I haven't tried first.
Finally, any jerkoff who would play this French version of Halo 2 is really denying them the full experience of the game (unless you are fluent in french). If someone handed me a French Halo 2 disk tomorrow (with UK subtitles) I would chuck it in the trash. Half the fun of halo was the dialogue and the funny shit the grunts would say. If I couldn't understand what they were saying, it would lose A LOT of its appeal. I have no intention of ruining my Halo 2 experience. I want to experience Halo 2 in all its glory. You should too.
I was very excited about WoW until I found out two things:
1) They are implementing a rest system which rewards people for not working at the game. In otherwords, the people who are casual gamers should be able to keep up with the hardcore gamers. Sorry but there should be some reward for working your ass off. Instead, they reward you for slacking.
2) At launch, the servers are going to be localized to regions, so guilds that span the country or nations (as my old EQ guild did) will not be able to play together. This is utterly fucking rediculous...absolutely inconceivable. Once they announced that, I immediately lost all faith in Blizzard. I'm not even sure they'll be able to do D3 right at this point considering how big of a clusterfuck WoW is shaping up to be.
This pains me greatly as I'm a long time Blizzard fan but I guess their loss of some key personnel has really hurt them afterall. Either that or their mega-giant corporate owners are putting the screws to them. Either way, it's a very bad sign.
I've had my Karma for about a year now and I've had one lockup. That was about 9 months ago. I've updated the firmware since then and haven't had so much as a hiccup. The Karma has been the most reliable player I've ever bought. I've owned a couple of Creative Labs Jukeboxes and found them to be no where near as realiable as the karma. In addition, the Karma sounds better. I can't compare reliability to an iPod since I don't own one, but I have compared the sound quality. IMHO, the karma sounds better. However, this may be due to the fact I'm using OGG for most of my music files instead of Apple's AAC format.
I've heard about these harddrive issues with the Karma before but from what I can tell it's a very small percentage of the population that experiences it. The problem seems to be overblown. Also, the guy reviewing the karma should be sure to upgrade the firmware on the device since it's been updated several times since the device was first produced.
One more thing, all my recordings are in OGG or WMA (and about 3 Flac albums). It's possible that some of the problems people experience are from using different formats that the karma may not handle as well. In any event, update the firmware. I'm very pleased with my karma. The UI isn't as sexy as the iPod but it's far more efficient. I'll take efficient over sexy any day.
Nope, they are specifically referring to the size of the sensor. Almost all digital cameras besides this one and the previous 1Ds have smaller CMOS sensors. This means there's a multiplier that must be applied when computing f-stops. To compensate, Canon and Nikon have introduced new lenses that take this into account and are easier to work with. Ideally though, it would be nice if they all just had 35mm sensors.
You must be kidding. Either you are either stupid or you just didn't pay attention to what this guy said so you would have an excuse to expouse your political views for no real reason (thinking that anybody really cares).
Honestly, do you think people with money can't get things they want in India? lol
Oh, and I do bitch about the costs of movies and sporting events.
Personally, I don't use any of the existing services for the following reasons:
1) They don't support ogg. I HATE mp3. It's a horrible format and provides crappy quality anyway you slice it. AAC is good but I'll be damned if I buy an iPod or any of it's relatives. WMA is acceptable.
2) When I purchase tunes, I want them upgradable. What this means is that if in the future they come up with a new compression algorithm that can say compress stuff down to very small sizes but still sounds great, that's what I will change to and I don't want to have to buy the damn song over again. The current services don't provide this upgradability. Now, if it's a radical change like a new format that plays in 4 channels instead of stereo, I'm ok with paying an upgrade fee to get it.
3) I want to be able to re-download stuff I already paid for. This is somewhat inline with issue #2, but really what I'm looking for is the ability to restock if my machine explodes. (Yes, I know I should make backups but I'm a stupid user.) I realise some services already provide this, but I just want to make sure it not lost.
4) I want some flexibility in the bitrates. Most of the existing service provide jack shit for bit rate options and in all cases they are lower than the bitrates I find acceptable.
5) I want to be able to hear the songs IN FULL before I make a purchase. Thirty second samples are fucking worthless.
6) DRM needs to be fairly lax. I don't want to have issues copying the music to my two different players and I want to be able to hear the music on my PC and laptop.
Since none of the services provide what I want and since I won't buy a CD unless I know I will like at least 4 songs on it, I use Real Rhapsody to listen to albums and then I buy the CDs if I like what I hear. Then I rip them into OGG. I'd like to skip these extra steps. I really have no desire to buy CDs ever again.
Ultimately, the easier they make all this and the more flexible the more people will buy into it. A service that provided all of this would blow iTunes and their proprietary bullshit away.
I remember this distinctly. CDs STARTED at $15 - 16. This was twice the price of what I paid for records and tapes. I have no idea where you were getting ripped off so badly and paying $25 for CDs. Anyway, the music industry insisted that the prices would drop down to around $8 after volume increased. This drop never happened. This is why I don't feel sorry for the record companies that whine on and on about p2p file sharing. Fuck 'em.
If you really were a videophile, you would know that DLP sucks. Rainbows aside, they oversaturate the colors. I've never seen one that doesn't have major color saturation problems. I know there are some new designs coming out and hopefully they have fixed it, but for now there's no way I'd touch DLP. You need to research more LCD projection t.v's. LCD projection is the way to go for projection sets. You have to look around though because there's a big difference between the good ones and the mediocre ones. I'm guessing that you haven't actually viewed one that is made well.
You also don't recommend plasma because it's not big enough for movies. They make 60" plasma screens, how fucking big does it need to be??
Response time has improved but is still slower for LCDs, however; brightness is now comparable to CRTs (with exception to t.v. models that overburn their tubes), and contrast is now as good or better than CRTs. Your viewing angle argument is also lacking. LCDs typically have a 170 degree viewing angle. This is more than sufficient for most people. It's also a much better viewing angle than you typically get with projection screen t.v. and some how those things sell like hotcakes.
When it comes to television, CRTs still give the best picture over all other technologies. However, you would be hard pressed to argue that LCDs aren't competivive quality wise with the various projection screen sets. Apparently, people are willing to sacrifice quality for size. Since they don't make giant size LCD sets, LCD takes it on the chin from the CRTs.
Personally, I'm quite happy with my 250 lb. tube t.v.:)
Gee, that's funny. My friend is a PS2 coder and he does it in C. Apparently you aren't too up to date on how things are done for the PS2. But hey, nice try at being an asshole.
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lol...so I guess they never activated Windows either?
Back when I was in high school, I used to look at the Encylopedia Britannica for doing papers. However, I frequently found it at odds with books specializing in the particular subjects I was reading. Who was right, the EB or the author of the book who is considered an expert on the subject? I don't know. The beauty of history is that nobody can prove it one way or the other. Whoever gets the most press, wins. Even recent histroy (like a month ago) is rife with different opinions on who did what or what was done. I am certain the EB is packed with incorrect information; however, since history is written by the people with power we'll never know.
For me, the older the topic, the less likely I am to believe anyone. Perception defines reality and I have no desire to adopt someone else's reality just because they say they are the ones with the one true answer.
At the end of the day, I still don't know when Hamilton was born. Thanks for clearing that up for me Mr. Britannica.
"Once it does become viable for individual consumer bottles there will be yet another excuse why the prices need to continue to go up. Everything needs to cost more especially in the pharmaceutical industry. I swear everyone is in on it. I am told I need three low dose drugs when I have a feeling that a higher dose of another would handle it just fine. I am told that I am being prescribed these particular drugs because my coverage is good enough to afford it It all leads to more money for everyone.
True. It is a corrupt system. But, on the other hand, millions of surgeries are avoided and lives preserved by the drugs every year."
So, the means justifies the ends? Well done, Chairman Mao. I guess this also makes it ok to block "re-importation" of drugs from Canada?
"Then WTF are we doing this? 20 cases of counterfeit drugs yet we have to spend thousands and thousands and pass that on to the consumer. Ugh. Yeah, they are going to say that we need to protect against a possible outbreak of this. Personally, I dont see how a label can help when the medicine inside is what is important. Anyone can swap out the real meds inside for their counterfeit ones.
The drugs that are reiceved are not usually in ready-to-distribute packages. The pharmacist takes from the big bottle and puts into your bottle. This is more dealing with the bottles that the pharmacist recieves. These are generally heavily tamper-resistant, especially for more dangerous drugs."
The ONLY reason they are doing this is to avoid lawsuits. This won't do anything to stop counterfeit drugs.
LOL...I've used Opera for several years and I can assure you that virtually nobody out there gives a flying shit whether their website works with Opera. And you can bitch about XSLT support all day long, but from a user's perspective Opera is the best of the lot. Period, end of story.
Oh, and none of these website designers give a flying fuck about bandwidth. The fact that 95% of all websites are built with either Dreamweaver or Frontpage proves that.
Seriously, if you're gonna rip off Opera's tabbed browsing, at least do it right. This means there should be a simple switch in the config (which defaults to ON) which makes it so that any window I open or pop-up that occurs, goes into a new TAB -- NOT A NEW FUCKING WINDOW. It should only go into a new window if I explicitly tell it to. It is this issue alone that keeps me from using Firefox as my standard browser. It simply won't happen with a horrible implementation of tabbed browsing.
Yes, I'm aware of the addons that supposedly give you this feature but they don't fucking work right. Opera's works ALL THE TIME -- no exceptions.
Quick quiz for any Firefox devs who may be reading this: what is the point of tabbed browsing?
I'm guessing you have no clue what the answer is.
I honestly don't think people put any thought into software design.
Whoa there cowboy! You better check what state you live in because in most states they require you to be "in fear for your life" before you blow the guy's head off. A person merely being in your house doesn't count because otherwise you could just shoot anybody in your house whether they are threatening or not. They have to be armed and dangerous, and your assumption of armed and dangerous won't help you when they throw your ass in jail for murder.
Sorry but if you don't find it EXTREMELY disturbing that the USAPATRIOT act bitch slaps 4 out of 10 of the Bill of Rights, then you are either ignorant, severely misinformed, or stupid. The mere fact that they CAN imprison you for an indefinite period with no legal representation is just as bad as any similar law in China. Just because they have been doing it longer doesn't make us any better. Land of the free my ass. All it takes, my friend, is for the government to wake up one day and decide you're a terrorism risk and bye bye. Enjoy your express trip to Guantanimo Bay. Did I mention that they don't give a shit about the Geneva Conventions there? Oh, that only applies to arabs, right? lol
Oh, but I'm so free because I can speak out about this! Are you really that stupid? You do realize that the patriot act allows them to strip any of us of that right at any moment they choose, right? Just because they haven't yet doesn't mean they won't.
This country and any other country with such laws is NO BETTER than China. If it makes you sleep better at night to think otherwise, enjoy. But you're living in a fantasy world. Start praying that Bush doesn't decide to become Hitler or Stalin someday. You might just disappear.
*wonders when all the morons in this country will wake the fuck up and figure out that their rights have been analy raped with no lube*
lol...the only companies that bother with Mac ports are the ones that expect very high volume. CoH is not a high volume product. They sell a few hundred thousand copies but they really make their money on subscription fees. The 1000 or so mac dorks that would subscribe just don't justify the cost. Supporting an MMO on two platforms is a whole different ballgame than supporting the typical single person or multiplayer game.
Oh, and most of the companies that do have Mac ports use porting companies to do one-time ports of the game. In an MMO where you have constant updates, how are you supposed to manage that?
Seriously, if you're a gamer you'll just buy a PC. I have a friend that's a Mac guy and that's what he had to do. Most of the Mac ports that are out there don't even allow multiplay between different platforms so the ports suck total ass. So, if he wants to play with his PC buddies, he's stuck anyway.
Sorry but the Mac is simply not a gaming platform. Nobody wants to do these ports, video cards for the Mac are much more expensive than for the PC, and you can't even put in your own damn sound card.
ROFL...we can't even handle Iraq and you're worried about world domination?? Holy shit that's funny.
'There is evidence that infants analyse the statistical distributions of sounds that they hear in ambient language, and use this information to form phonemic categories. They also learn phonotactic rules language-specific rules that govern the sequences of phonemes that can be used to compose words.'"
I'm an adult and I don't understand what the fuck they are talking about. I sure as hell wouldn't know how to "analyse statistical distributions of sound" that I hear in ambient language. Whatever the hell that even means.
I doubt this is the case. Granted, it is lacking in endgame content at the moment but almost all new MMOs do. EQ started with almost no endgame and now it has far more endgame than anything else. I can only assume they didn't expect people to level as quickly as they have?
However, I would like to know what their plan is for enhancing the endgame. I know they are adding another Archetype for people who reach 50 but that just means I get to start grinding over again from level 1. As a hardcore gamer, I would like to see a lot more endgame content sooner rather than later. Starting new characters simply gets old after a while and I would really like to stick with CoH since it has amazing potential and one of the smoothest starts for an MMO ever. I also like the fact there are no damn elves in it.
Great start guys...just keep it up. You can bet Sony and Blizzard will be pushing very hard to make their games stand out from the crowd.
Yeah, I've been playing this game almost since launch and I'm not familiar with this "in-game mechanics" you refer to.
I will say that the game is friendlier to the causal gamer than most but that's a different issue altogether.
So I guess we should ignore the companies like Microsoft who build entire programming campus' in India? The reality is that it's not just Bank X shipping jobs oversees, it's the software companies too. Do some research and you will find that Microsoft is far from alone in India.
Trying to get people to stop pirating based on the goodness of their hearts ain't gonna work. Instead, let them know how it impacts them in the future. For example, if a game is heavily pirated then the developer of said game won't make enough money to fund their next game. The end result is fewer games for the consumer. It also means that publishers will only fund games that they believe will generate very high sales because they have to account for the pirating factor. This leads to less creativity in the game industry because the developers will have to take the safe option. Of course, that's already happened.
Also, to the folks that complain about buying $50 xbox or ps2 games that suck...here's a suggestion: rent it first and if it's good, buy it. The fact that more often than not the games suck isn't really a valid excuse. With the exception of Halo 2, I won't buy ANY xbox game that I haven't tried first.
Finally, any jerkoff who would play this French version of Halo 2 is really denying them the full experience of the game (unless you are fluent in french). If someone handed me a French Halo 2 disk tomorrow (with UK subtitles) I would chuck it in the trash. Half the fun of halo was the dialogue and the funny shit the grunts would say. If I couldn't understand what they were saying, it would lose A LOT of its appeal. I have no intention of ruining my Halo 2 experience. I want to experience Halo 2 in all its glory. You should too.
I was very excited about WoW until I found out two things:
1) They are implementing a rest system which rewards people for not working at the game. In otherwords, the people who are casual gamers should be able to keep up with the hardcore gamers. Sorry but there should be some reward for working your ass off. Instead, they reward you for slacking.
2) At launch, the servers are going to be localized to regions, so guilds that span the country or nations (as my old EQ guild did) will not be able to play together. This is utterly fucking rediculous...absolutely inconceivable. Once they announced that, I immediately lost all faith in Blizzard. I'm not even sure they'll be able to do D3 right at this point considering how big of a clusterfuck WoW is shaping up to be.
This pains me greatly as I'm a long time Blizzard fan but I guess their loss of some key personnel has really hurt them afterall. Either that or their mega-giant corporate owners are putting the screws to them. Either way, it's a very bad sign.
I've had my Karma for about a year now and I've had one lockup. That was about 9 months ago. I've updated the firmware since then and haven't had so much as a hiccup. The Karma has been the most reliable player I've ever bought. I've owned a couple of Creative Labs Jukeboxes and found them to be no where near as realiable as the karma. In addition, the Karma sounds better. I can't compare reliability to an iPod since I don't own one, but I have compared the sound quality. IMHO, the karma sounds better. However, this may be due to the fact I'm using OGG for most of my music files instead of Apple's AAC format.
I've heard about these harddrive issues with the Karma before but from what I can tell it's a very small percentage of the population that experiences it. The problem seems to be overblown. Also, the guy reviewing the karma should be sure to upgrade the firmware on the device since it's been updated several times since the device was first produced.
One more thing, all my recordings are in OGG or WMA (and about 3 Flac albums). It's possible that some of the problems people experience are from using different formats that the karma may not handle as well. In any event, update the firmware. I'm very pleased with my karma. The UI isn't as sexy as the iPod but it's far more efficient. I'll take efficient over sexy any day.
Nope, they are specifically referring to the size of the sensor. Almost all digital cameras besides this one and the previous 1Ds have smaller CMOS sensors. This means there's a multiplier that must be applied when computing f-stops. To compensate, Canon and Nikon have introduced new lenses that take this into account and are easier to work with. Ideally though, it would be nice if they all just had 35mm sensors.
You must be kidding. Either you are either stupid or you just didn't pay attention to what this guy said so you would have an excuse to expouse your political views for no real reason (thinking that anybody really cares).
Honestly, do you think people with money can't get things they want in India? lol
Oh, and I do bitch about the costs of movies and sporting events.
Personally, I don't use any of the existing services for the following reasons:
1) They don't support ogg. I HATE mp3. It's a horrible format and provides crappy quality anyway you slice it. AAC is good but I'll be damned if I buy an iPod or any of it's relatives. WMA is acceptable.
2) When I purchase tunes, I want them upgradable. What this means is that if in the future they come up with a new compression algorithm that can say compress stuff down to very small sizes but still sounds great, that's what I will change to and I don't want to have to buy the damn song over again. The current services don't provide this upgradability. Now, if it's a radical change like a new format that plays in 4 channels instead of stereo, I'm ok with paying an upgrade fee to get it.
3) I want to be able to re-download stuff I already paid for. This is somewhat inline with issue #2, but really what I'm looking for is the ability to restock if my machine explodes. (Yes, I know I should make backups but I'm a stupid user.) I realise some services already provide this, but I just want to make sure it not lost.
4) I want some flexibility in the bitrates. Most of the existing service provide jack shit for bit rate options and in all cases they are lower than the bitrates I find acceptable.
5) I want to be able to hear the songs IN FULL before I make a purchase. Thirty second samples are fucking worthless.
6) DRM needs to be fairly lax. I don't want to have issues copying the music to my two different players and I want to be able to hear the music on my PC and laptop.
Since none of the services provide what I want and since I won't buy a CD unless I know I will like at least 4 songs on it, I use Real Rhapsody to listen to albums and then I buy the CDs if I like what I hear. Then I rip them into OGG. I'd like to skip these extra steps. I really have no desire to buy CDs ever again.
Ultimately, the easier they make all this and the more flexible the more people will buy into it. A service that provided all of this would blow iTunes and their proprietary bullshit away.
I remember this distinctly. CDs STARTED at $15 - 16. This was twice the price of what I paid for records and tapes. I have no idea where you were getting ripped off so badly and paying $25 for CDs. Anyway, the music industry insisted that the prices would drop down to around $8 after volume increased. This drop never happened. This is why I don't feel sorry for the record companies that whine on and on about p2p file sharing. Fuck 'em.
If you really were a videophile, you would know that DLP sucks. Rainbows aside, they oversaturate the colors. I've never seen one that doesn't have major color saturation problems. I know there are some new designs coming out and hopefully they have fixed it, but for now there's no way I'd touch DLP. You need to research more LCD projection t.v's. LCD projection is the way to go for projection sets. You have to look around though because there's a big difference between the good ones and the mediocre ones. I'm guessing that you haven't actually viewed one that is made well.
You also don't recommend plasma because it's not big enough for movies. They make 60" plasma screens, how fucking big does it need to be??
Response time has improved but is still slower for LCDs, however; brightness is now comparable to CRTs (with exception to t.v. models that overburn their tubes), and contrast is now as good or better than CRTs. Your viewing angle argument is also lacking. LCDs typically have a 170 degree viewing angle. This is more than sufficient for most people. It's also a much better viewing angle than you typically get with projection screen t.v. and some how those things sell like hotcakes.
:)
When it comes to television, CRTs still give the best picture over all other technologies. However, you would be hard pressed to argue that LCDs aren't competivive quality wise with the various projection screen sets. Apparently, people are willing to sacrifice quality for size. Since they don't make giant size LCD sets, LCD takes it on the chin from the CRTs.
Personally, I'm quite happy with my 250 lb. tube t.v.
LCDs also last siginifcantly longer than CRTs.
Gee, that's funny. My friend is a PS2 coder and he does it in C. Apparently you aren't too up to date on how things are done for the PS2. But hey, nice try at being an asshole.
Uh...maybe because diesel is made from petroleum? Please explain how that reduces our dependency on foreign oil.
And for your second question...there's no trains in my city.
How your post got promoted to insightful is beyond me.