I agree... go for a synth, my 2 1/2 year old loves it. I also bought him a toy laptop (Leap Frog) as well but 18 months might be a bit too young for that.
What I see happening is authors and artists will increasingly rely on donations rather than getting paid for a copy of their work. You pay what you think the artist/author deserves. Sure you could still sell physical copies of books, CDs or DVDs but in the future when environmental concerns really start dominating the collective psyche these things will be looked at more as collector's items rather than the mass-produced objects we have now.
There are already quite a few authors and artists around that release material online that accept donations for their work through Paypal.
"That all sounds like urban (emerging) legend. The NY Times reviewer was on ESPN radio a couple hours ago and was asked about the Italian-looking guy at the counter and the 2 black guys, and if they appeared in earlier episodes. The NYT guy said no. The Italian-looking guy isn't even an actor. He works at a restaurant in the area and the Sopranos people asked him to do the scene because he looked the part. And Tony was supposed to have killed one of the black guys who tried to kill him way back when."
No. The whole point of living in a democracy if having the right to get involved in politics. It's also having the right not to do anything if you don't want to.
Well that's where we disagree. A democracy by definition is "rule by the people" where all citizens have an equal say in shaping policy. By not voting you have no say.
My forefathers came up with the concept of the electoral college because they thought that the majority of the population was incapable of making an informed decision on who the President would be. The electoral college didn't always work as it does today. Heck, before the 17th amendment people didn't directly vote for Senators either.
Your forefathers _adopted_ the concept (quite an old one actually) of an electoral college which basically guarantees that by living in a smaller state your vote is worth more than someone living in a larger state. Again it can be argued that all citizens are not having an equal say.
As an Australian (where voting is compulsory) I find it hard to comprehend this type of attitude.
The whole point of living in a democracy is to get involved in politics and at the very least cast a vote. Do you think your forefathers went to war against anti-democratic regimes just so you could sit on your ass and be uninformed?
It is your duty to vote.
How informed do you need to be anyway? Who do you want to control the Senate and the House of Reps?
Guys, the whole 1080p is better than 1080i is mostly marketing crap. I've heard plenty of people waiting for 1080p sets and waiting for the PS3 because of 1080p output. I'll let you in on some facts:
First of all the picture displayed on all new plasmas is a progressive picture, it is not displayed as an interlaced picture. Only if there is something _seriously_ wrong with your 1080i set's de-interlacer will you be able to tell the difference between the two when it comes to watching a 24fps film.
The difference between the 1080i and 1080p is that 1080i displays 30fps and 1080p displayes 60fps.
How many PS3 games do you think will actually offer 60fps at full res? Not many if they are going to be rendering complex scenes. Check out the links for more info:
Really easy to get music onto the thing? Are you kidding? Really easy in my book would be something like: plug in iPod, iPod gets recoginsed as a storage device, drag mp3s into iPod directory. It took me an hour of mucking around in iTunes before I figured out that you couldn't even do that! You need to buy third party software to properly manage music on your ipod, ie. Anapod. iTunes is the most convoluted piece of useless software I have ever used.
Frankly, HD-DVD and BluRay displays at such a high resolution, I can't imagine that half the people that buy HDTV sets can even see any actual quality difference between an HDTV version of a movie and a standard DVD version without buy a television so large that few if any can afford it.
Now that is just crazy talk. The quality difference is huge, take a look at some hi-def content on a HDTV then come back and talk to me.
If you think that online play doesn't add any value then you are someone who hasn't played online before.
I _used_ to think the same until I got my Xbox 360. Online play on the Xbox 360 in Perfect Dark Zero for example gives you a chance to play about 6 games _other_ than standard one player PDZ. Deathmatch, CTF, etc...
The online features of Project Gotham 3 are really well thought out also. For example you can watch the top players race live from their perspective! So you can see how they race compared to you. Everyone that plays is also ranked online which adds another element to the game. Not only can you can have a world ranking racing against other people but you can rank yourself on a particular course using a particular car. It's much deeper than you might think. Not to mention being able to trash talk, meet people from around the world and laugh at what everybody says to each other.
It adds maybe another 100+ hours of gameplay to what is usually a 10 hour game.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree... go for a synth, my 2 1/2 year old loves it. I also bought him a toy laptop (Leap Frog) as well but 18 months might be a bit too young for that.
4-8gb Blu-ray RiP or 1-3gb DVD-RiP?
Fixed that for you.
What I see happening is authors and artists will increasingly rely on donations rather than getting paid for a copy of their work. You pay what you think the artist/author deserves. Sure you could still sell physical copies of books, CDs or DVDs but in the future when environmental concerns really start dominating the collective psyche these things will be looked at more as collector's items rather than the mass-produced objects we have now.
There are already quite a few authors and artists around that release material online that accept donations for their work through Paypal.
We need a -1 ignorant option.
You really have to question the usability of the device if a user needs to read the manual to learn how to turn the phone off.
lol
Great post.
What's your brother's band called?
Or maybe not...
"That all sounds like urban (emerging) legend. The NY Times reviewer was on ESPN radio a couple hours ago and was asked about the Italian-looking guy at the counter and the 2 black guys, and if they appeared in earlier episodes. The NYT guy said no. The Italian-looking guy isn't even an actor. He works at a restaurant in the area and the Sopranos people asked him to do the scene because he looked the part.
And Tony was supposed to have killed one of the black guys who tried to kill him way back when."
Most interesting comment on here so far. I'll have to go through the old episodes to be sure but this all sounds correct.
You forgot
4. ???
5. Profit!
Any colour as long as it's... oh wait...
Well that's where we disagree. A democracy by definition is "rule by the people" where all citizens have an equal say in shaping policy. By not voting you have no say.
Your forefathers _adopted_ the concept (quite an old one actually) of an electoral college which basically guarantees that by living in a smaller state your vote is worth more than someone living in a larger state. Again it can be argued that all citizens are not having an equal say.
As an Australian (where voting is compulsory) I find it hard to comprehend this type of attitude.
The whole point of living in a democracy is to get involved in politics and at the very least cast a vote. Do you think your forefathers went to war against anti-democratic regimes just so you could sit on your ass and be uninformed?
It is your duty to vote.
How informed do you need to be anyway? Who do you want to control the Senate and the House of Reps?
Exactly, the whole thinks stinks to me.
What era are we living in when a nation can invade another under false pretense and execute their leader for political benefit? The Dark Ages?
Well maybe one of these will suit...
or one of these
First of all the picture displayed on all new plasmas is a progressive picture, it is not displayed as an interlaced picture. Only if there is something _seriously_ wrong with your 1080i set's de-interlacer will you be able to tell the difference between the two when it comes to watching a 24fps film.
The difference between the 1080i and 1080p is that 1080i displays 30fps and 1080p displayes 60fps.
How many PS3 games do you think will actually offer 60fps at full res? Not many if they are going to be rendering complex scenes. Check out the links for more info:
http://blog.hometheatermag.com/geoffreymorrison/
http://ozymandias.com/
Really easy to get music onto the thing? Are you kidding? Really easy in my book would be something like: plug in iPod, iPod gets recoginsed as a storage device, drag mp3s into iPod directory. It took me an hour of mucking around in iTunes before I figured out that you couldn't even do that! You need to buy third party software to properly manage music on your ipod, ie. Anapod. iTunes is the most convoluted piece of useless software I have ever used.
that,
Now that is just crazy talk. The quality difference is huge, take a look at some hi-def content on a HDTV then come back and talk to me.
actually all of those monitors have a vertical res greater than 1024 (the 20" has a res of 1680 x 1050)
If you think that online play doesn't add any value then you are someone who hasn't played online before.
I _used_ to think the same until I got my Xbox 360. Online play on the Xbox 360 in Perfect Dark Zero for example gives you a chance to play about 6 games _other_ than standard one player PDZ. Deathmatch, CTF, etc...
The online features of Project Gotham 3 are really well thought out also. For example you can watch the top players race live from their perspective! So you can see how they race compared to you. Everyone that plays is also ranked online which adds another element to the game. Not only can you can have a world ranking racing against other people but you can rank yourself on a particular course using a particular car. It's much deeper than you might think. Not to mention being able to trash talk, meet people from around the world and laugh at what everybody says to each other.
It adds maybe another 100+ hours of gameplay to what is usually a 10 hour game.
How cool would it be if the movie was more Iain M Banks/Culture than computer game tie-in?
Well the only way to get HD out of the Xbox is through component.