Orb seems to be too good to be true for me. I just got a new phone with EVDO and installed ORB on my home PC, thinking there must be some catch.
I didn't see much use for it right away. Then, a week or so later, I was on my way home, sitting in an airport with EVDO coverage with an hour to kill. I thought to myself, hey, I left my computer running ORB, as well as uTorrent with automatic RSS downloading. I spent the next hour happily watching the latest episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert report on my phone. No hiccups, no problems, just a great, free service.
I admit, the low'ish quality small picture wouldn't work so well for movies and the like, but for largely audio-driven shows like the Colbert Report and Daily Show, it's just fine. Of course the legality of downloading tv shows could be questioned, but it's not something that keeps me awake at night.
Like you said, $15 a month for access to LoneyGirl15, or Free access to my entire move and mp3 collection as well as streaming television? It's quite the decision.
I went to a very small (~1,800 students) very conservative (we were on Jay Leno a few years ago for suspending students who went swing-dancing) Christian school, Walla Walla College. Every year, some poor student who had overcome his porn addiciton would send out mass e-mails about how the school should block porn from dormitory computers, and the rest of the school would laugh at the rediculousness of this proposition.
The point is, if a school that suspends students for swing-dancing can allow its students unfiltered internet access, how conservative would this college have to be to censor its internet access for religious reasons?
At the college where I'm an english major, we teach a class called "Writing for Engineers". No joke. Engineering majors take that instead of another class in the basic writing sequence that every other major takes. Mostly, it's taught by whichever english faculty draws the short straw.
Having a writing for engineers class separate from the normal english sequence means that other students who are more into, say, creativity than analyticcs are saved from the sort of writing instruction that might be very effective for engineering majors, but soul numbing for the rest of the world.
This spring I had the opportunity to hear Warren Buffett give a talk in Omaha. At the outset I wasn't too excited; I'm not really into business, but I learned some things that impressed me.
The most interesting thing that I learned is that while Buffett isn't a well philanthropist, when he dies, something like 1% of his wealth will go to his children as an inheritance, and the other 99% (currently about $39.6 billion) will go to a charatable foundation. He's told the administrator of that foundation that he wants him to try and "do something huge" with the money, not just spread it out to lots of smaller causes.
His justification for doing it this way instead of giving to charity right now is that the more money he has, the more money he can make, and the more money he puts into the foundation before he dies.
Now, it could be easily argued that he just likes making money, and doesn't want to give it away, but his impressively simple lifestyle argues that he certainly doesn't like spending money on himself.
I imagine that if I had billions of dollars, it would be much more fun to see that money go to work helping people while I was around to see it, but Buffett's plan makes sense from a practical standpoint.
I took a scuba diving class from a diving shop that leases an abandoned missile silo from a farmer who owns it. The silo's been flooded, and they lead http://www.northwestdiver.com/features/2003/0120-1 .php">scuba trips there. Gene, the owner, told me that they lease the silo for some rediculously low amount, like $500 a year. I'd lease a missile silo for $500 a year.
It might be worth noting that the good people at Penny Arcade have already made up for Thompson's retraction, and donated $10,000 to charity in Thompson's Name. He he. Gotta love those PA kids.
Here's the quote from the PA site: "You know what, Jack? We're going to be the men you're not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibler's choice. We've got a good guess that he'd direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We've just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars' worth. And we made it in your name.
But after reading the article, it sounds like many of the complaints would fit really well as a class action lawsuit representing everyone threatened by the RIAA. Maybe it wouldn't be as strong of a case, but if it were strong enough, I'm sure a class action could go after enough money to actually hurt the RIAA.
We got a demo of the LOTR game at PAX, (though it was using the same build they used for the E3 Demo), and all in all, I wasn't too impressed or excited. The biggest problem was that the world in the game didn't feel like middle-earth. It was too generic. I'm hoping that will be fixed by the time that it's released, but that's just a hope. I wrote a more comprehensive'ish review here.
I also was at PAX
on
PAX05 Writeup
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Everything Taco said was largely true, but there were one or two negative things about PAX as well. The most glaring, and probably unavoidable, was the stench of hundreds of tightly packed nerds. Maydenbauer's AC system simply couldn't circulate air fast enough to clear out the freeplay rooms. It was overwhelming.
The exibition hall had some nifty things, Nintendo showing off yet-to-be-released games and the micro, but I was surprised that after all of the Penny-Arcade comics about World of Warcraft that Bilzzard wasn't there, and the Microsoft booth was nothing more than a neon XBOX sign and a projector connected to an xbox, no 360, nothing.
Was PAX nifty? Yep. Was it an event that compelled me to camp out at the conference center all weekend? Nope. But from the excitement on the faces of many attendees, I was in the minority. My roomate and I wrote a bit more about it, and the exciting world of Seattle's WiFi enabled ferries, over at edgefactor.
Really, reinventing comics, is that what's going on here? Or is it just putting a comic up on the interweb? Let's ask Penny Arcade what they think about this.
Exactly! This is precisely how I think hunting should work. There's nothing manly about going out and shooting a deer, or an elk, or a bear, or a lion with a rifle. That's just target practice. Maybe bow hunting is a bit more manly, but if you really want to win a contest against the deer, run out there and strangle the little f***er. That's a challange.
Just to set the odds a bit more fair, perhaps people could be allowed to use, say, a hunting knife when they were going after large predators. If you need to go out and kill animals for fun, at least do it on fair terms. That's the way the world would work if I were in charge.
Perhaps this has something to do with why I have yet to be voted into public office.
Beaf is awesome. I'm a vegetarian, and Beaf is just about the best way to make roll your own gluten without spending a few hours in preperation. I wish McDonalds put Beaf in their burgers.
Beaf is most fun when you pronounce it "Bee-Aff", as in, "Hey, Horace, pass me the bee-aff!".
Also, from the perspective of someone who's a vegetarian because he doesn't want to kill animals, I suppose I'd prefer somewhat creepily grown meat to meat from dead animals.
I largely agree with your ideas about humanity's desire to escape reality, but I've also found from personal experience that it's possible to replace that escape from reality with reality that you truely enjoy.
During highschool and my first couple years of college, I played quite a few videogames, read books almost constantly, and went to movies frequently. But, for the past couple of years, I've replaced most of that with a girlfriend. We simply spent lots of time together, doing more "real" things, walking, talking, playing, - generally just being together.
During that time, my video game playing/book reading/movie watching was reduced by something like 3/4ths. But, now that we're seperated by an 18hour drive or $300 flight, I've noticed that I'm again reading lots of books, watching a couple movies a week, and, most disturbingly, playing WoW:)
I've found that the less enjoyable my reality is, the more I need to escape from it.
if you need something to beep to let you know you have an assignment due, you're not ready for college.>
That's hooey. I'm a senior now, and I'm focused enough in an english major that I generally just have a few large papers to turn in during the quarter that are easy to remember. But, back when I was a freshman, taking generals all over the place, I would sit down at the beginning of the quarter with my syllabi and put all of my assignments in as Calendar events in outlook, set alarm notifications 24 hours ahead of each event, and than sync with my palm, (an old Sony Clie; great B&W resolution, rediculously thin, probably going for around $20 on e-bay now). That way, every night I could look at either outlook if I was at my computer, or my palm if I was in the library, and see everything that was due the next day.
Between the distractions of a hundreds of girls I had never met, a LAN filled with plenty of shared movies and games, and everything else that took my attention, a palm was fairly essential to my keeping an acceptable GPA that first year.
Slashdot Mirror
Bit Torrent = Legal File Distribution
in the same way that
Cocaine = An Energy Drink
Orb seems to be too good to be true for me. I just got a new phone with EVDO and installed ORB on my home PC, thinking there must be some catch.
I didn't see much use for it right away. Then, a week or so later, I was on my way home, sitting in an airport with EVDO coverage with an hour to kill. I thought to myself, hey, I left my computer running ORB, as well as uTorrent with automatic RSS downloading. I spent the next hour happily watching the latest episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert report on my phone. No hiccups, no problems, just a great, free service.
I admit, the low'ish quality small picture wouldn't work so well for movies and the like, but for largely audio-driven shows like the Colbert Report and Daily Show, it's just fine. Of course the legality of downloading tv shows could be questioned, but it's not something that keeps me awake at night.
Like you said, $15 a month for access to LoneyGirl15, or Free access to my entire move and mp3 collection as well as streaming television? It's quite the decision.
Nine Minutes? I finally got through at 11:02, 2 minutes after the sale supposedly went live, and they were all sold out.
The point is, if a school that suspends students for swing-dancing can allow its students unfiltered internet access, how conservative would this college have to be to censor its internet access for religious reasons?
and the Demcratic Party is simply suggesting voters request paper voting
Those durn demcrats, always suggesting this and suggesting that.
"Was all of the hype about blogger power just that -- hype?"
Or, is an awful movie with Samuel L. Jackson still just a motherfucking awful movie?
Yeah, Karma whoring sigs are lame.
At the college where I'm an english major, we teach a class called "Writing for Engineers". No joke. Engineering majors take that instead of another class in the basic writing sequence that every other major takes. Mostly, it's taught by whichever english faculty draws the short straw.
Having a writing for engineers class separate from the normal english sequence means that other students who are more into, say, creativity than analyticcs are saved from the sort of writing instruction that might be very effective for engineering majors, but soul numbing for the rest of the world.
This can't be AJAX, there are hardly any rounded corners at all.
This spring I had the opportunity to hear Warren Buffett give a talk in Omaha. At the outset I wasn't too excited; I'm not really into business, but I learned some things that impressed me.
The most interesting thing that I learned is that while Buffett isn't a well philanthropist, when he dies, something like 1% of his wealth will go to his children as an inheritance, and the other 99% (currently about $39.6 billion) will go to a charatable foundation. He's told the administrator of that foundation that he wants him to try and "do something huge" with the money, not just spread it out to lots of smaller causes.
His justification for doing it this way instead of giving to charity right now is that the more money he has, the more money he can make, and the more money he puts into the foundation before he dies.
Now, it could be easily argued that he just likes making money, and doesn't want to give it away, but his impressively simple lifestyle argues that he certainly doesn't like spending money on himself.
I imagine that if I had billions of dollars, it would be much more fun to see that money go to work helping people while I was around to see it, but Buffett's plan makes sense from a practical standpoint.
I took a scuba diving class from a diving shop that leases an abandoned missile silo from a farmer who owns it. The silo's been flooded, and they lead http://www.northwestdiver.com/features/2003/0120-1 .php">scuba trips there. Gene, the owner, told me that they lease the silo for some rediculously low amount, like $500 a year. I'd lease a missile silo for $500 a year.
It might be worth noting that the good people at Penny Arcade have already made up for Thompson's retraction, and donated $10,000 to charity in Thompson's Name. He he. Gotta love those PA kids.
Here's the quote from the PA site: "You know what, Jack? We're going to be the men you're not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibler's choice. We've got a good guess that he'd direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We've just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars' worth. And we made it in your name.
Fuck Yes!
But after reading the article, it sounds like many of the complaints would fit really well as a class action lawsuit representing everyone threatened by the RIAA. Maybe it wouldn't be as strong of a case, but if it were strong enough, I'm sure a class action could go after enough money to actually hurt the RIAA.
Can we mod -1 melodramatic sig?
Come on, don't you guys watch MI-5? (Spooks in the UK). They're good people. I wouldn't mind Danny, Tom, or Zoe pokeing around my apartment.
Allthough now that they've left the series, I'm not so sure how I'd feel about Adam or Fiona rummaging through my things...
Right, but if I had taken your comment that way, than I wouldn't have been able to ridicule you :-)
Losing my mod points to say this but...
Really; are you in imminent danger of being modded down on Slashdot because you posted something negative about Microsoft and positive about Firefox?
Are you also worried about being flamed because you compress your music with ogg?
Do you live in fear of being outed to the slashdot community for creating documents in Open Office?
You're such a rebel.
[smile]
We got a demo of the LOTR game at PAX, (though it was using the same build they used for the E3 Demo), and all in all, I wasn't too impressed or excited. The biggest problem was that the world in the game didn't feel like middle-earth. It was too generic. I'm hoping that will be fixed by the time that it's released, but that's just a hope. I wrote a more comprehensive'ish review here.
Everything Taco said was largely true, but there were one or two negative things about PAX as well. The most glaring, and probably unavoidable, was the stench of hundreds of tightly packed nerds. Maydenbauer's AC system simply couldn't circulate air fast enough to clear out the freeplay rooms. It was overwhelming.
The exibition hall had some nifty things, Nintendo showing off yet-to-be-released games and the micro, but I was surprised that after all of the Penny-Arcade comics about World of Warcraft that Bilzzard wasn't there, and the Microsoft booth was nothing more than a neon XBOX sign and a projector connected to an xbox, no 360, nothing.
Was PAX nifty? Yep. Was it an event that compelled me to camp out at the conference center all weekend? Nope. But from the excitement on the faces of many attendees, I was in the minority.
My roomate and I wrote a bit more about it, and the exciting world of Seattle's WiFi enabled ferries, over at edgefactor.
Really, reinventing comics, is that what's going on here? Or is it just putting a comic up on the interweb?
Let's ask Penny Arcade what they think about this.
Exactly! This is precisely how I think hunting should work. There's nothing manly about going out and shooting a deer, or an elk, or a bear, or a lion with a rifle. That's just target practice. Maybe bow hunting is a bit more manly, but if you really want to win a contest against the deer, run out there and strangle the little f***er. That's a challange.
Just to set the odds a bit more fair, perhaps people could be allowed to use, say, a hunting knife when they were going after large predators. If you need to go out and kill animals for fun, at least do it on fair terms. That's the way the world would work if I were in charge.
Perhaps this has something to do with why I have yet to be voted into public office.
Beaf is awesome. I'm a vegetarian, and Beaf is just about the best way to make roll your own gluten without spending a few hours in preperation. I wish McDonalds put Beaf in their burgers.
Beaf is most fun when you pronounce it "Bee-Aff", as in, "Hey, Horace, pass me the bee-aff!".
Also, from the perspective of someone who's a vegetarian because he doesn't want to kill animals, I suppose I'd prefer somewhat creepily grown meat to meat from dead animals.
To reiterate, I love Beaf.
I largely agree with your ideas about humanity's desire to escape reality, but I've also found from personal experience that it's possible to replace that escape from reality with reality that you truely enjoy. :)
During highschool and my first couple years of college, I played quite a few videogames, read books almost constantly, and went to movies frequently. But, for the past couple of years, I've replaced most of that with a girlfriend. We simply spent lots of time together, doing more "real" things, walking, talking, playing, - generally just being together.
During that time, my video game playing/book reading/movie watching was reduced by something like 3/4ths. But, now that we're seperated by an 18hour drive or $300 flight, I've noticed that I'm again reading lots of books, watching a couple movies a week, and, most disturbingly, playing WoW
I've found that the less enjoyable my reality is, the more I need to escape from it.
Yeah, you're probably right. Censure is an overstatement. How about "choosing to not syndicate CNET seems petty"?
if you need something to beep to let you know you have an assignment due, you're not ready for college.>
That's hooey. I'm a senior now, and I'm focused enough in an english major that I generally just have a few large papers to turn in during the quarter that are easy to remember. But, back when I was a freshman, taking generals all over the place, I would sit down at the beginning of the quarter with my syllabi and put all of my assignments in as Calendar events in outlook, set alarm notifications 24 hours ahead of each event, and than sync with my palm, (an old Sony Clie; great B&W resolution, rediculously thin, probably going for around $20 on e-bay now). That way, every night I could look at either outlook if I was at my computer, or my palm if I was in the library, and see everything that was due the next day.
Between the distractions of a hundreds of girls I had never met, a LAN filled with plenty of shared movies and games, and everything else that took my attention, a palm was fairly essential to my keeping an acceptable GPA that first year.