Nah, I am in my mid-twenties and the show just plain sucks. Just give me my Stargate Atlantis movie already. If their going to rip off the general premise of a Star Trek series, at least pick a good series. Plus it has more personal drama than the "pretty white kids with problems" shows that were popular on the WB a few years ago.
You have to dedicate time to watching TV because it needs 100% of your attention to be watched. But you can listen to the radio while driving a car, while writing code, while fiddling with the engine of a motorcycle in the workshop, while working on a building etc.
In the last 10 years, prime-time TV has went through a bit of a resurgence. TV shows have payed more attention to writing, acting, and production value. Now that shows can be watched on demand via the web, DVDs, and DVRs, episodic shows are becoming less relevant and serialized shows are taking the spotlight. It is starting to become assumed that most of the audience has seen previous episodes (maybe not all or even the last episode, but are at least familiar with the overall plot and characters). Prime-time TV now has a luxury that other times don't have, People actually "watch" it.
There was a commentary from the DVD release of "Police Squad" by the Zucker and Abrahams team who made the show. They said that one of the biggest secrets in TV is that nobody actually "watches" TV shows. People turn on the TV and they do other things. The purpose of a laugh track wasn't so much to tell stupid people that something was a joke but to alert people to look at the screen because something funny is happening. Within the last few years as I went through college, discovered podcasts, and acquired a disposable income for DVDs and music, I haven't turned on the TV except for Video Games and the occasional local news and weather. Before that I had the TV on all the time. It served as background noise and quick distractions while I was doing other stuff. My less tech-savy family members still have the TV on constantly as background for cooking, internet, whatever. As for the radio, I only choose to listen to it in the car. It also background at work, but that isn't so much a choice as what happens to be pumped through the overhead speakers.
While I agree that radio is the most accepted option in cars and and the workplace, It is also necessary to separate the content from the medium. Once internet connectivity is ubiquitous, radio and TV as a medium will both die (which one will live longer will become moot). Radio and TV content will just be broadcast via the internet both as live and on demand. People will still listen to audio in the car and work and watch or just listen to video in their free time. In this case neither will die so much as just evolve.
Actually, He is a fairly good actor (I wouldn't say great, but a solid actor). The problem is the roles that you listed. The roles he was typecast in after Star Wars was that of stuffy heroes like Luke, and Blair from Wing Commander. The roles where he truly shines are those that are the polar opposite of that -- Batshit crazy supervillains. His best roles were the Joker, The trickster from The Flash, and he was one of the few good parts in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as Cocknocker. Plus he is better as a voice actor than anything.
Also, I like Harrison Ford, but you can't really say that he expanded that much. The last twenty years have mostly featured him in the role of bad-ass guy trying to get back his kidnapped family members.
Except technically the sequence was VHS/Betamax -> Laserdisc -> DVD.
Except for a few rich movie nerds, no one bought Laserdisc. It was huge, expensive, and you had to flip the disc to keep watching the movie. That is why VHS hung around. Hell, didn't Walmart officially stop selling tapes and VCRs only within the past couple years? Unless the studios grow a sack and decide to stop selling DVDs, there is no reason the the format won't go on for at least another 5 to 10 years. Bluray will probably die before DVD does, in which case you would probably be correct in that Bluray is the new laserdisc.
TellTale Games also gives the option when you buy from their store. Just pay shipping when you buy the whole season. I also believe that Blizzard offers it on some of their games. Buy the boxed copy, register on battle.net and you can download it anytime you want.
In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead. Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one! When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.
You are right, even though I don't give a rat's ass about Flash games, I guess the iPod Touch I just bought is completely useless. Apple just stole my money and gave me a brick that looks nice and does a great deal of cool stuff. Oh, No! I just realized OS X won't play my Windows Games. Damn you apple! What? My Wii won't play my XBox games? Boycott Nintendo! My Playstation won't play Advance Wars!!? Call the SEC! Call the Better Business Borough! Let us rise up against these evil companies for screwing us over! Attica! Attica! Attica! </sarcasm>
Guess what, not everyone cares about what you care about. I don't care about flash, I hated it 10 years ago, I hate it now. If flash is important to you, there are plenty of competitors out there. Don't want an iPad, don't buy one, or get one of the 20+ competitors that will be out by the end of the year or a Tablet PC. There is no law stating that Apple must support flash. If they don't want to, they don't have to.
I am not lying about the Catholic part. I will say that I am not religious and have never taken part in the service so I can not truely attest to the exact details. However, My Dad and Stepmom are Catholic. My Dad is even a knight of Columbus. Half the time in summer, he has me come down to help him set up the fundraiser carnival games or help making subs for the sub sales in the church activities room. So I have spent quite a bit of time at the church to know that there is usually a long line of cars at the drive-thru window. I also heard them bragging that they once went to the drive-thru at another parish and got it done in about five minutes so they could go eat.
They do. You would be surprised in the number of churches that have drive thrus. Where I am it is mostly catholic churches that offer a quick prayer and communion to those who can't be bothered sitting through the entire sermon. I wouldn't be surprised if other denominations had them as well.
It isn't a sporting event. There are no tickets. You just go to a pier and watch. The visitor's complex at Kennedy also has a good view. It is best to watch it from near the water, because you can see the waves of fish jump up from the shock waves of the launch.
I believe that Briel Computers, the guys who designed the Apple 1 replica, The Replica-1 computer and other cool kits are working on something similar. The first version was a standard ATX case that was shaped like a Altair and the front panels were a controlled by a reprogrammable Microcontroller acting as an 8800 emulator. I am not quite sure of the specifics. http://www.brielcomputers.com/altairpc.html
So then don't buy AAA Ports-R-US titles from the Big Boys. There are plenty of good PC publishers that have good games and don't treat their customers like criminals. Introversion is a great independent developer that makes wonderful games including Darwinia, Defcon, and Uplink. Stardock has some good games like Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations. If it is your thing, The X-Series is a good but complex space flight / trader simulation (think EVE Online but only not an MMO). Lastly, if you don't mind Steam, anything by Valve and many of the older and indie titles in their catalog are pretty good. Just because Ubisoft and EA want to screw over PC gamers doesn't mean that they are the only game (no pun intended) in town.
No, 3D is sort of like Stereo or surround sound. First, when everything was mono, everything was easy. Plug the mic in and record. Then stereo sound came. At first it was just a gimmick, "Now in Stereo (where available)". What did people do with this extra sound channel? First it was stupid little tricks where things arbitrarily went from left channel to right. Maybe adding binaural beats. You have two sound channels, use them! Later, as it became standard, content creators became more comfortable with stereo and started to use it in non-gimmicky ways. Then surround sound came. Again, at first it was used as a gimmick with things going from front to back and round in circles. Now it is, more or less, a standard in theaters and home theaters and the creators are used to having multiple channels to work with. Back in the day, people have said that multiple sound channels was just a fad.
Who cares about sound? All you need is one speaker and everything else is overkill. Who cares about 3D? All there is to 3D is just "stupid 3D explosions". 3D has some problems, such as being so many ways to do 3D, the fact that most of the ways need special glasses, and that it requires you to be sitting in a certain spot for the best effect. It is becoming popular again because it is no longer super expensive to do 3D. It is at the point that anyone with two cameras and a computer can do 3D now. Hell you can even buy a pre-built 3D webcam for under $100 (http://www.minoru3d.com/). Once it becomes more popular, creators will get more comfortable with the medium and stop doing cheap gimmicks and start using it for legitimate reasons. This was the same with CGI, Color, Surround Sound, and HD.
While I am at it, does anyone remember back to when the CD-ROM first came out and games could start adding cutscenes and video? The first titles were pretty much a gimmick. They were mostly interactive movies that had the acting and direction of a homemade porno. Hell, many of the actors hired were porn stars. Most were mediocre at best and some were just downright horrible (e.g. 'Plumbers Don't Wear Ties'). But as the medium of video games matured, video and animation started being used to further the stories rather than to justify the use of a CD drive. It was driven by marketing at first, but once it became a standard in consoles and the wow factor died down, people started making good use of the technology because it is there. You may think 3D is a fad now, but let's wait to see what film and game creators do with it.
Maybe if they hadn't been letting a 3 year old play a game which involves a fake firearm it would have been a no-brainer when she saw the kid holding a weapon. Who the hell lets a toddler play a gun game?
I got an NES in 1989 at the age of four. It came with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. I played them both. I turned out fine (though I do have an irrational hatred of that damn dog).
The problem is not with the game, it is putting a loaded gun within reach of a toddler.
Define animal abuse. Sure, things like beating, torturing, not feeding or otherwise causing physical harm to an animal are obvious. The problem is that there are people, (I know a few) that believe that all animals not only deserve every human right given within the constitution but in many cases should be given priority over other people (e.g. "how dare you try to get rid of the mice living in your kitchen! It is their home as well!"). I recall a story from my friend that he got bitched out by his then-girlfriend because he fed his dog table scraps and dog food and let it sleep on the floor. Apparently, he was "supposed" feed it a medium-rare sirloin steak every day and buy it a twin-sized bed and a love seat to sleep on. There are plenty of emotionally disturbed people that hate-hate-HATE people but god forbid anything should happen to a "poor defenseless animal".
Another anecdote: every town, no matter how small, seems to always have that one crazy cat lady. That one lady that is forty-some years old and seems to have at least 30-some cats and assorted animals that just overrun the house, yard, and neighborhood block. A few years back there was a raccoon at the town park and playground. It started acting strange and someone called animal control. A few of the parents started rushing all the kids off the playground to safety. The raccoon started to freak out and attacked one of the parents. Animal control came and captured it and it was euthanized so it could be tested for rabies (turned out it was). The next day the guy who was attacked had a rock smash the window of his house and his tires slashed. A few days later there was a letter from the neighborhood cat lady in the shout-out section of the weekly town paper basically confessing to the vandalism because he had "cruelly slaughtered the raccoon for his perverse medical tests and should have sent it to an animal hospital to receive the care and attention it deserved (on his dime)" along with a few choice words comparing the poor guy to Hitler.
Simply put, there are plenty of lunatics who love animals and hate people who also have no sense of scale when it comes to how to treat animals vs how to treat people. There are probably a few misguided people in power that have their own definition of what constitutes abuse. These are the kind of people that believe that having a dog "beg" or fetch is humiliation and therefore abuse. There are other more militant crazies that will use this information to perform their own vigilante justice. I would never approve of real abuse towards animals, but there are plenty of people in this world who take it way too far.
I hate to tell you, but much has changed since Windows 3.1! Configuration is not the biggest problem facing PC gaming nowadays. Unless you have some Über hardware (super specialized 7.1 sound card, 30 key gaming pad, 3D glasses, full Flight Sim cockpit) that you need to configure to take maximum advantage of, the only thing most people ever need to touch in the options menu is screen resolution and difficulty level, maybe remap a default key or two. PC gaming is pretty much install and play these days. I have not had a problem with a game that wasn't either a really old (7+ Year Old) game on a newer system or a new game on older or really crappy hardware (e.g. don't expect a new game to play on a five year old system or a bargain-bin computer with integrated graphics). Contrary to the FUD on the internet, but you do NOT need an expensive system these days. A decent graphics card runs about $100-$150 and maybe 2-4 Gigs of RAM (it's 2010, get 4 Gigs already) especially if you are running Vista/Win 7.
So, because Gamestop et al. are greedy corporations, I should be punished for getting a used game from an entity that is not a greedy corporation. This would not only kill game rental services but also buying games from flea markets, trading games with family and friends, et cetera. Not everyone likes getting screwed over at Gamestop. I would rather give a game I don't want to a family member or friend rather than getting only $2 back from Gamestop.
As someone who taught myself very early (~8 y/o) how to program on BASIC, first on a kiddie V-Tech laptop (back when they had a BASIC interpreter) and later QBASIC, a retro-computer is a great thing to occasionally pull out and play with, sort of like how my parents pulled out some of their old toys to share how they spent their childhood. However, that is probably not the best way to teach kids about computers.
I would say a refurbished hand-me-down computer running Linux with IDLE and a beginners book on python. They get a modern computer, have the opportunity to explore the power of the command line and an open computer operating system and can cut their teeth in an easy to learn modern interpreted language in an environment not all that different from what QBASIC was in the days of old.
PS: I know you don't have kids so I am not really replying to you so much as I am replying to your post.
I wish I had that when I was in school. Even if community college isn't the close-knit university I attended, I would have loved to have went. As one of those high-ranking young learners that you mention, nothing kills desire and creates apathy like having to attend eight hours of continuous classes over the course of nine long months. The same shit day in and day out. In college you get a single semester for classes where classes are scheduled two to three times per week (more if a lab is involved) and you usually get a half-hour to whole hours between classes. If you get lucky, there is even a chance you don't even need to take morning classes.
I remember in High school I took off ten to twenty days a year mostly as mental health days. I just couldn't take the drudgery. In college, I lived off campus. In the entire four years, I only missed maybe three classes, not whole days, classes. One was for an interview, the others were because the roads were too icy to travel.
I was in several other high school "honors" classes, which consisted primarily of more homework. We could do the work so much faster, they simply gave us more of it. And since the brightest students could learn the concepts so much faster, they put us all on the fast track to boredom and despair.
Wow, I had the exact opposite experience. In my school, the Honors / AP programs were much closer to a university approach. My first year of High school, I made the mistake of taking all College Prep classes (the level just below Honors) because Honors was trumped up by the teachers and guidance counselors as much harder, lots of work, only for the real smart kids. The sheer amount of easy paperwork and the slow pace of classes drove me to tears with boredom. Simply worksheet after worksheet of the same crap. After that year, I decided to take only honors / AP classes. Here, it was lecture all class period and here is an assignment. The material was a little harder and the class was at a way faster pace, but aside from outside reading, there was actually less work. Math and science went from do five worksheets with the same ten problems to reading ten pages and doing ten distinctly different problems. Social sciences and literature went from read twenty pages and answer these fifteen questions on the worksheet to read forty pages and we will discuss in class.
Then going from that to college was more of the same only with more reading and less homework.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, I am in my mid-twenties and the show just plain sucks. Just give me my Stargate Atlantis movie already. If their going to rip off the general premise of a Star Trek series, at least pick a good series. Plus it has more personal drama than the "pretty white kids with problems" shows that were popular on the WB a few years ago.
Stargate Universe = Stargate Voyager 90210
Probably be better than the crappy cartoon...though the cartoon did have Bill Nye.
You have to dedicate time to watching TV because it needs 100% of your attention to be watched. But you can listen to the radio while driving a car, while writing code, while fiddling with the engine of a motorcycle in the workshop, while working on a building etc.
In the last 10 years, prime-time TV has went through a bit of a resurgence. TV shows have payed more attention to writing, acting, and production value. Now that shows can be watched on demand via the web, DVDs, and DVRs, episodic shows are becoming less relevant and serialized shows are taking the spotlight. It is starting to become assumed that most of the audience has seen previous episodes (maybe not all or even the last episode, but are at least familiar with the overall plot and characters). Prime-time TV now has a luxury that other times don't have, People actually "watch" it.
There was a commentary from the DVD release of "Police Squad" by the Zucker and Abrahams team who made the show. They said that one of the biggest secrets in TV is that nobody actually "watches" TV shows. People turn on the TV and they do other things. The purpose of a laugh track wasn't so much to tell stupid people that something was a joke but to alert people to look at the screen because something funny is happening. Within the last few years as I went through college, discovered podcasts, and acquired a disposable income for DVDs and music, I haven't turned on the TV except for Video Games and the occasional local news and weather. Before that I had the TV on all the time. It served as background noise and quick distractions while I was doing other stuff. My less tech-savy family members still have the TV on constantly as background for cooking, internet, whatever. As for the radio, I only choose to listen to it in the car. It also background at work, but that isn't so much a choice as what happens to be pumped through the overhead speakers.
While I agree that radio is the most accepted option in cars and and the workplace, It is also necessary to separate the content from the medium. Once internet connectivity is ubiquitous, radio and TV as a medium will both die (which one will live longer will become moot). Radio and TV content will just be broadcast via the internet both as live and on demand. People will still listen to audio in the car and work and watch or just listen to video in their free time. In this case neither will die so much as just evolve.
Actually, He is a fairly good actor (I wouldn't say great, but a solid actor). The problem is the roles that you listed. The roles he was typecast in after Star Wars was that of stuffy heroes like Luke, and Blair from Wing Commander. The roles where he truly shines are those that are the polar opposite of that -- Batshit crazy supervillains. His best roles were the Joker, The trickster from The Flash, and he was one of the few good parts in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as Cocknocker. Plus he is better as a voice actor than anything.
Also, I like Harrison Ford, but you can't really say that he expanded that much. The last twenty years have mostly featured him in the role of bad-ass guy trying to get back his kidnapped family members.
Except technically the sequence was VHS/Betamax -> Laserdisc -> DVD.
Except for a few rich movie nerds, no one bought Laserdisc. It was huge, expensive, and you had to flip the disc to keep watching the movie. That is why VHS hung around. Hell, didn't Walmart officially stop selling tapes and VCRs only within the past couple years? Unless the studios grow a sack and decide to stop selling DVDs, there is no reason the the format won't go on for at least another 5 to 10 years. Bluray will probably die before DVD does, in which case you would probably be correct in that Bluray is the new laserdisc.
Can't be, he said amazing story.
TellTale Games also gives the option when you buy from their store. Just pay shipping when you buy the whole season. I also believe that Blizzard offers it on some of their games. Buy the boxed copy, register on battle.net and you can download it anytime you want.
If ever there were a finer or more well known movie critic, name them.
Jay Sherman, Film Critic!
You can't. You also can't play Super Mario World on a PS2 or Halo 3 on a Wii.
In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead.
Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one!
When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.
You are right, even though I don't give a rat's ass about Flash games, I guess the iPod Touch I just bought is completely useless. Apple just stole my money and gave me a brick that looks nice and does a great deal of cool stuff. Oh, No! I just realized OS X won't play my Windows Games. Damn you apple! What? My Wii won't play my XBox games? Boycott Nintendo! My Playstation won't play Advance Wars!!? Call the SEC! Call the Better Business Borough! Let us rise up against these evil companies for screwing us over! Attica! Attica! Attica!
</sarcasm>
Guess what, not everyone cares about what you care about. I don't care about flash, I hated it 10 years ago, I hate it now. If flash is important to you, there are plenty of competitors out there. Don't want an iPad, don't buy one, or get one of the 20+ competitors that will be out by the end of the year or a Tablet PC. There is no law stating that Apple must support flash. If they don't want to, they don't have to.
I am not lying about the Catholic part. I will say that I am not religious and have never taken part in the service so I can not truely attest to the exact details. However, My Dad and Stepmom are Catholic. My Dad is even a knight of Columbus. Half the time in summer, he has me come down to help him set up the fundraiser carnival games or help making subs for the sub sales in the church activities room. So I have spent quite a bit of time at the church to know that there is usually a long line of cars at the drive-thru window. I also heard them bragging that they once went to the drive-thru at another parish and got it done in about five minutes so they could go eat.
They do. You would be surprised in the number of churches that have drive thrus. Where I am it is mostly catholic churches that offer a quick prayer and communion to those who can't be bothered sitting through the entire sermon. I wouldn't be surprised if other denominations had them as well.
It isn't a sporting event. There are no tickets. You just go to a pier and watch. The visitor's complex at Kennedy also has a good view. It is best to watch it from near the water, because you can see the waves of fish jump up from the shock waves of the launch.
I believe that Briel Computers, the guys who designed the Apple 1 replica, The Replica-1 computer and other cool kits are working on something similar. The first version was a standard ATX case that was shaped like a Altair and the front panels were a controlled by a reprogrammable Microcontroller acting as an 8800 emulator. I am not quite sure of the specifics. http://www.brielcomputers.com/altairpc.html
After looking on his site, it seems they are now working on something similar to a handheld Altair called the Altair 8800 Micro. http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?p=246
So then don't buy AAA Ports-R-US titles from the Big Boys. There are plenty of good PC publishers that have good games and don't treat their customers like criminals. Introversion is a great independent developer that makes wonderful games including Darwinia, Defcon, and Uplink. Stardock has some good games like Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations. If it is your thing, The X-Series is a good but complex space flight / trader simulation (think EVE Online but only not an MMO). Lastly, if you don't mind Steam, anything by Valve and many of the older and indie titles in their catalog are pretty good. Just because Ubisoft and EA want to screw over PC gamers doesn't mean that they are the only game (no pun intended) in town.
"Then get the lawyers. Everyone is obviously pirating my content!"
No, 3D is sort of like Stereo or surround sound. First, when everything was mono, everything was easy. Plug the mic in and record. Then stereo sound came. At first it was just a gimmick, "Now in Stereo (where available)". What did people do with this extra sound channel? First it was stupid little tricks where things arbitrarily went from left channel to right. Maybe adding binaural beats. You have two sound channels, use them! Later, as it became standard, content creators became more comfortable with stereo and started to use it in non-gimmicky ways. Then surround sound came. Again, at first it was used as a gimmick with things going from front to back and round in circles. Now it is, more or less, a standard in theaters and home theaters and the creators are used to having multiple channels to work with. Back in the day, people have said that multiple sound channels was just a fad.
Who cares about sound? All you need is one speaker and everything else is overkill. Who cares about 3D? All there is to 3D is just "stupid 3D explosions". 3D has some problems, such as being so many ways to do 3D, the fact that most of the ways need special glasses, and that it requires you to be sitting in a certain spot for the best effect. It is becoming popular again because it is no longer super expensive to do 3D. It is at the point that anyone with two cameras and a computer can do 3D now. Hell you can even buy a pre-built 3D webcam for under $100 (http://www.minoru3d.com/). Once it becomes more popular, creators will get more comfortable with the medium and stop doing cheap gimmicks and start using it for legitimate reasons. This was the same with CGI, Color, Surround Sound, and HD.
While I am at it, does anyone remember back to when the CD-ROM first came out and games could start adding cutscenes and video? The first titles were pretty much a gimmick. They were mostly interactive movies that had the acting and direction of a homemade porno. Hell, many of the actors hired were porn stars. Most were mediocre at best and some were just downright horrible (e.g. 'Plumbers Don't Wear Ties'). But as the medium of video games matured, video and animation started being used to further the stories rather than to justify the use of a CD drive. It was driven by marketing at first, but once it became a standard in consoles and the wow factor died down, people started making good use of the technology because it is there. You may think 3D is a fad now, but let's wait to see what film and game creators do with it.
Maybe if they hadn't been letting a 3 year old play a game which involves a fake firearm it would have been a no-brainer when she saw the kid holding a weapon. Who the hell lets a toddler play a gun game?
I got an NES in 1989 at the age of four. It came with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. I played them both. I turned out fine (though I do have an irrational hatred of that damn dog).
The problem is not with the game, it is putting a loaded gun within reach of a toddler.
Define animal abuse. Sure, things like beating, torturing, not feeding or otherwise causing physical harm to an animal are obvious. The problem is that there are people, (I know a few) that believe that all animals not only deserve every human right given within the constitution but in many cases should be given priority over other people (e.g. "how dare you try to get rid of the mice living in your kitchen! It is their home as well!"). I recall a story from my friend that he got bitched out by his then-girlfriend because he fed his dog table scraps and dog food and let it sleep on the floor. Apparently, he was "supposed" feed it a medium-rare sirloin steak every day and buy it a twin-sized bed and a love seat to sleep on. There are plenty of emotionally disturbed people that hate-hate-HATE people but god forbid anything should happen to a "poor defenseless animal".
Another anecdote: every town, no matter how small, seems to always have that one crazy cat lady. That one lady that is forty-some years old and seems to have at least 30-some cats and assorted animals that just overrun the house, yard, and neighborhood block. A few years back there was a raccoon at the town park and playground. It started acting strange and someone called animal control. A few of the parents started rushing all the kids off the playground to safety. The raccoon started to freak out and attacked one of the parents. Animal control came and captured it and it was euthanized so it could be tested for rabies (turned out it was). The next day the guy who was attacked had a rock smash the window of his house and his tires slashed. A few days later there was a letter from the neighborhood cat lady in the shout-out section of the weekly town paper basically confessing to the vandalism because he had "cruelly slaughtered the raccoon for his perverse medical tests and should have sent it to an animal hospital to receive the care and attention it deserved (on his dime)" along with a few choice words comparing the poor guy to Hitler.
Simply put, there are plenty of lunatics who love animals and hate people who also have no sense of scale when it comes to how to treat animals vs how to treat people. There are probably a few misguided people in power that have their own definition of what constitutes abuse. These are the kind of people that believe that having a dog "beg" or fetch is humiliation and therefore abuse. There are other more militant crazies that will use this information to perform their own vigilante justice. I would never approve of real abuse towards animals, but there are plenty of people in this world who take it way too far.
I hate to tell you, but much has changed since Windows 3.1! Configuration is not the biggest problem facing PC gaming nowadays. Unless you have some Über hardware (super specialized 7.1 sound card, 30 key gaming pad, 3D glasses, full Flight Sim cockpit) that you need to configure to take maximum advantage of, the only thing most people ever need to touch in the options menu is screen resolution and difficulty level, maybe remap a default key or two. PC gaming is pretty much install and play these days. I have not had a problem with a game that wasn't either a really old (7+ Year Old) game on a newer system or a new game on older or really crappy hardware (e.g. don't expect a new game to play on a five year old system or a bargain-bin computer with integrated graphics). Contrary to the FUD on the internet, but you do NOT need an expensive system these days. A decent graphics card runs about $100-$150 and maybe 2-4 Gigs of RAM (it's 2010, get 4 Gigs already) especially if you are running Vista/Win 7.
Have you ever used a system with 3 20" LCD monitors? Don't knock it until you try it. It is hard to go back to just one!
So, because Gamestop et al. are greedy corporations, I should be punished for getting a used game from an entity that is not a greedy corporation. This would not only kill game rental services but also buying games from flea markets, trading games with family and friends, et cetera. Not everyone likes getting screwed over at Gamestop. I would rather give a game I don't want to a family member or friend rather than getting only $2 back from Gamestop.
As someone who taught myself very early (~8 y/o) how to program on BASIC, first on a kiddie V-Tech laptop (back when they had a BASIC interpreter) and later QBASIC, a retro-computer is a great thing to occasionally pull out and play with, sort of like how my parents pulled out some of their old toys to share how they spent their childhood. However, that is probably not the best way to teach kids about computers.
I would say a refurbished hand-me-down computer running Linux with IDLE and a beginners book on python. They get a modern computer, have the opportunity to explore the power of the command line and an open computer operating system and can cut their teeth in an easy to learn modern interpreted language in an environment not all that different from what QBASIC was in the days of old.
PS: I know you don't have kids so I am not really replying to you so much as I am replying to your post.
I wish I had that when I was in school. Even if community college isn't the close-knit university I attended, I would have loved to have went. As one of those high-ranking young learners that you mention, nothing kills desire and creates apathy like having to attend eight hours of continuous classes over the course of nine long months. The same shit day in and day out. In college you get a single semester for classes where classes are scheduled two to three times per week (more if a lab is involved) and you usually get a half-hour to whole hours between classes. If you get lucky, there is even a chance you don't even need to take morning classes.
I remember in High school I took off ten to twenty days a year mostly as mental health days. I just couldn't take the drudgery. In college, I lived off campus. In the entire four years, I only missed maybe three classes, not whole days, classes. One was for an interview, the others were because the roads were too icy to travel.
I was in several other high school "honors" classes, which consisted primarily of more homework. We could do the work so much faster, they simply gave us more of it. And since the brightest students could learn the concepts so much faster, they put us all on the fast track to boredom and despair.
Wow, I had the exact opposite experience. In my school, the Honors / AP programs were much closer to a university approach. My first year of High school, I made the mistake of taking all College Prep classes (the level just below Honors) because Honors was trumped up by the teachers and guidance counselors as much harder, lots of work, only for the real smart kids. The sheer amount of easy paperwork and the slow pace of classes drove me to tears with boredom. Simply worksheet after worksheet of the same crap. After that year, I decided to take only honors / AP classes. Here, it was lecture all class period and here is an assignment. The material was a little harder and the class was at a way faster pace, but aside from outside reading, there was actually less work. Math and science went from do five worksheets with the same ten problems to reading ten pages and doing ten distinctly different problems. Social sciences and literature went from read twenty pages and answer these fifteen questions on the worksheet to read forty pages and we will discuss in class.
Then going from that to college was more of the same only with more reading and less homework.