Try Target. Just this week they started getting the preorder cards, though in very limited quantities.
Other than that, though I hate to suggest it (because I won't shop there), Walmart is apparently still taking preorders in store, chain wide. Or course, there is some speculation on whether or not they will actually get as many consoles as they are taking preorders for.
It's not unfair, it's an expected part of the intentional business decision. If the casual market has moved on to tablets and smartphones though that very successful short and medium term decision mightn't have been so great in the long term.
Let's be honest here. Nintendo was getting this same sort of crap in the GameCube days, too. To say that people's reactions are based on the design/marketing of the Wii is just not true.
More than just "there's no story", there's not going to be a product. Hardly anyone is interested in funding a kickstarter with 25 bucks for essentially nothing in return but your name on a vanity list. Next step up from there is 1500 bucks. So if I'm interested in supporting the project with anything between 50 and 1400 bucks, they're basically telling me to go take a hike. Instant fail.
Yep, instant fail....on your part
Enter your pledge amount It's up to you. Any amount of $1 or more.
So once again, please remind me which number "between 50 and 1400 bucks" is not "$1 or more". Now, it's true the don't have any reward levels between there, but I'm not sure what you want. $1500 is how much it costs to have the parts. Anything less, and all they can offer you to give you crediit for your pledge (which they do...$200 gets you the same reward as $25), or else they can offer you some useless symbolic stuff (like a t-shirt or coffee mug) that really has little to do with the project. So I guess the big fail on their part is not giving away some useless Cafe Press stuff or something. If you really want that, then instead of donating $200, donate $175 and go buy yourself a shirt.
For the money you were going to spend on that HTPC, you could easily rent the cable company's latest greatest DVR's for literally years before you got back to even. If you want to roll your own to satisfy your inner geekiness that's one thing, but if the cable company can rent you a box that does the same thing for cheaper, you will receive no sympathy from me.
Sorry, but the cable company's DVR isn't all that powerful. Aside from the stuff they just outright don't do, like: ability to skip commercials archive shows indefinitely export the files to disc to be played anywhere stream to a phone/tablet/laptop, including live transcoding to a reduced resolution to fit device capability and bandwidth limitations ability to combine multiple cable/satellite/OTA systems into one interface web interface for scheduling new recordings remotely.
the things that they do handle they don't handle all that well:
Typically only 1 or 2 tuners They're inferior at handling programs moving around in timeslots and conflict resolution Recording rules aren't very flexible.
The recording rule flexibility is a biggie to me. Some shows change their name each season and thus need to be continually tweeked to keep recording. Some shows have no non-generic guide data at all, and thus they either don't get recorded. Some shows have guide data that is just....wrong. Curiosity is an example that comes to mind. Discovery channel refuses to actually title the show "Curiosity" in the guide, so each episode ends up looking to be it's own standalone show with it's own title. Most DVRs would have to have that handled manually, but with mythtv I can say create a rule that looks for a combination of day of week, time of day, and program genre that gets the episodes with minimal effort.
Wait, you have people that actually accept the Windows Updates? Everyone I know just closes the pop-up, and when I show up (virus / malware, or running really slowly) I see "926923798257 updates to install" (yes, I'm exaggerating).
Actually, you probably don't have to exaggerate too much on that. On a number of occasions, when rebooting after installing updates I've been greeted by a screen saying something like "Installing update 1 of 12000". First time I saw that I was in shock, but then it only took 30 seconds or so to zip through it all. Not sure what was going on, but I suspect it was checking thousands of registry keys and counted each one as an update for some reason. Thankfully they don't each get their own entry in the update history.
No. Federal law limits my liability to $50 by law, but every single one of my credit cards actually goes further and limits my liability to $0. No risk to me.
devalues through inflation.
Not only does credit devalue through the same inflation ($1000 credit devalues at the same rate as $1000 cash) it also costs you interest, so $1000 borrowed is $1000+interest to be repaid.
Not sure how my "credit devalues through inflation". My "credit" has no actual cash value to me. The only effect inflation has is on my spending ability for a given credit line, but given the size of my credit line, I'll never reach that point...especially since lenders tend to increase that credit line over time.
My credit accounts are other peoples money
The problem with spending other peoples money is that other people are going to want their money back... with interest.
Funny. I haven't paid a cent in interest to a credit card in way more than a decade. On the other hand, I've made thousands from my credit cards, in the form of cash back and (more importantly) sign up bonuses.
A question that no credit addled fool has been able to answer is "why would a bank, a profit oriented business, offer you a service they dont make money on".
They lend me money because most people DO pay interest. They take a gamble on me that I'll be just as profitable. They lose that gamble every time.
The fact is you force merchants to pay a percentage of your transaction in a "merchant service fee" or bank interchange fee in some countries. This comes straight back to you in the form of higher prices.
If you could get everyone (or at least a very significant number of people) in the country to switch to cash, then maybe prices would go down. Otherwise, me switching to cash isn't going to reduce my costs one bit. All it's going to do is stop earning me cash back and sign up bonuses.
I wont even bother telling you about the amount I've saved in the last four years by paying with my own money. Even just in avoiding CC surcharges I've made $500. Credit cards have their place, just not for everyday transactions. For that I use cash or debit.
LOL. I've MADE almost $2500 just this year from credit card sign up bonuses, and that doesn't count what my wife has earned from the same.
The part I was impressed with was how they did it... "[...] which Intel has acheived by making use of a number of tactics." +5 Informative!
Welcome to the internet. We have these thing called hyperlinks. Anytime you see underlined text of a different color, you should consider clicking on it. I you had clicked on the phrase "number of tactics", you would have been taken to view another article which would have explained many of these tactics.
Many DVDs have 2 types of captions. If you use handbrake, the image based captions are referred to as VOBSUB while the text based ones are referred to as CC.
I could be sorely mistaken but I do believe that each and every business you're using your card at has to pay for the privilege of being able to accept your card. Which, in turn, means that business is passing that overhead to you, the customer, cash, debit and credit.
First, as others pointed out, there are business costs/risks to dealing with cash and checks. But that said, even assuming they were zero:
In theory, if everyone paid cash and merchants had to pay no fees, then yes, it would be cheaper to pay in cash. However, in reality this is like a HUGE case of the prisoners dilemma. If every customer (prisoner) were to act collectively in the group interest and pay in cash (keep quiet), then the result would be that everyone would get away with the best outcome pay less (get less prison time). However, in reality there are far too many customers (prisoners) to expect that a large portion of them won't choose the worst collective option. So in reality, if I choose to pay cash, my personal effect on the price is going to be negligible. Effectively, my choice is down to paying cash and getting nothing back, or paying with credit and getting 1) cash back, 2) extended warranties and purchase protection, 3) reduced exposure to being robbed. Since I can't control what everyone else does, it's in my own best interest to pay with credit and get what I can out of it.
You would be surprised at the number of people who use a credit card or debit card at McDonalds, other fast food places, 7-11s, or Wawas. They could have just hit the ATM for $20 and saved a few dollars by paying cash.
Excuse me? I don't pay anything to use my card at any of those places. In fact, I get cash back every time I use my card. Paying cash would actually cost me more.
Plenty of people have already learned how difficult it can be to run your own business. You put your heart, soul, and accumulated wealth into a business only to get crushed by a mega-corp. They can buy in quantities you could only dream of, enabling them to make a profit by selling at a price that would be below your cost. If you manage to overcome this, they can outspend you, selling at a loss to steal your customers away from you and crush you. In the end you lose your money and go bankrupt.
A few generations ago, you couldn't walk a block without hitting a bunch of mom & pop retailers. Now everthing is mega-corp franchises. I'd estimate maybe 1% of retailers around here are independents that have been in business more than a couple years. The rest are either mega corps, or small businesses that open up and then go under in a year or two. It's no wonder few want to take the chance to start their own business these days.
I think you misread it, because that statement doesn't imply the Tea Party is not right wing. It says some people see him as true right wing (thus "a Tea Party favorite"), while other see him as only pretending to be right wing.
Assuming you are talking about the link that MLease posted to the examiner:
The first thing I see is that a big chunk of that minimum wage person's "income" is $16.5k for Medicaid and CHIP. That's not disposable income, as it never gets to the individual in the form of cash. It's merely the amount the government pays on behalf of the individual for that individual's health care. If you want to count this, then you also need to account for the employer paid portion of the $60k family's health care. His employer may be paying $10k or more for this.
And while we are including employer paid benefits, then let's also count any 401k matching paid by the employer for the $60k individual (whereas the minimum wage person probably doesn't have a 401k, and couldn't afford it if he did).
Next, I'm fairly certain that when we see "Payroll and Federal Income Taxes", that is going to include social security tax payments. Well, the $60k person is going to be paying a lot more than the min. wage person. Larger SS contributions while working is going to end up giving you larger SS payouts at retirement, so that's another advantage the $60k person has (though it is a deferred advantage).
So it's not nearly an equal situation after all, and those are just a few of the things I could think of after looking at the chart for 30 seconds. I'm sure there's a lot more wrong with it than this.
You know, I hear this crap all the time. I spent a week in Paris and never met a single person who was anything less than polite. We even went to one small restaraunt where they didn't have any English menus, and the owner sat down at our table and went over the menu with us, translating about 30 different items into English the best he could. Time and again, we were helped by person after person who were nothing but polite. I suspect that if there is a problem, it is instigated by cocky foreigners who make no attempt to show respect and fit in. When I went, I don't speak french, but I learned 15-20 common words and phrases so that I could communicate basic needs with people who only speak french. It turned out that was almost entirely unnecessary, but I used them when I could anyway. I suspect it went a long way towards showing them some respect and that I wasn't just some cocky American there to be catered to while making jokes about the french.
I remember when I first saw a Blueray Disc movie, it was that godawful G.I. Joe movie, I dunno what the frame rate was on that but the image looked absurdly crisp and sharp. It was the clearest cleanest image I had seen on a movie, and it looked disgustingly fake.
For a moment I thought it was because the lack of camera artifacts made it look unauthentic, kinda like how lens flare is now added to movies because people expect it. However after a while I realized that I only had problems when there was CGI on the screen. So in fact it wasn't the sharp image what was bothering me, is the that, the sharper the image, the more obvious CGI imperfections are.
Image quality reveals fake scenes for what they are.
For a movie with a shitload of fake imagery like the Hobbit, I can already see why people would complain. I'm pretty sure those 60fps instructional videos you shot didn't have any CGI in them did they?
I don't think that makes sense. The reason that CGI looks fake at higher res is because there is a limitation to the amount of accurate fine detail that can be added without drastically increasing the artists effort, and when you see a higher resolution, those limits become a lot more visible. For faster frame rates, however, I can't think of any particular way that the extra frame rates increase the requirements of the CGI other than the 2.5 times increase in rendering time to go from 24 to 60 fps.
If anything I'd guess the issue would be the opposite, and the real stuff would "suffer" more than the CGI, and the reason I'm thinking is to do with motion blur. When you are only capturing 24 frames, you capture a certain amount of blur in each frame. When you then play it back, your eye sees that amount of blur over a constant 1/24 second. However, when you record at 48 fps, each frame only has half as much blur, and your eye only sees half the blur for 1/48 second and then the other half of the blur for the next 1/48 second. So effectively your eye sees half as much blur. It's this difference in blur that your brain has become accustomed to and leads some people to perceive 48fps as being poorer quality. With CGI, they can render whatever amount of blur they want into it each frame, so it's entirely up to them whether to go with more blur or less.
What the fuck are you talking about? Who gives a shit about MTV2 Celebrity or Wipeout or whatever else? You've completely missed the point. The point is, for 27 seasons (13 years) the producers of Sasuke have made the show open to everyone from every country. Anyone that wanted a shot could show up and get an opportunity to be on the show. And that's exactly what you got. Over those 27 seasons, I've seen competitors from at least a dozen different countries take a shot at it. Now we get a chance to host the show and we add the rule that you have to be American to compete? Sorry, but that's bullshit.
Geesh, you don't need to be an American.
Really? You must not understand what "You must be an American citizen or resident over the age of 21 to try out" means. And again, the Japanese never made you become a Japanese citizen or resident to get on the show.. You show up, you run the qualifying course, and if you rank high enough you are on the show.
whereas come Sasuke obstacles are there just to put the challenger in silly compromising poses for a laugh....while for Sasuke contestants the entire obstacle course is part challenge/part elaborate practical joke...Sasuke = animal circus using people
Are you sure you watched Sasuke and not Tashiki's Castle? There's almost nothing silly or circus-like in Sasuke. About the closest you'll maybe get is the rolling escargo, but even that would be a bit of a stretch.
Whats worse, I think he missed out on the most shameful part of what is wrong with the show. And that is, in making the show AMERICAN Ninja Warrior, they've excluded everyone who is not an American.
You are projecting. "American" mean held in the US in this context. Anything else is your own projection. It wouldn't bother me if every transplanted show prefixed their country name (or informal name as concerns "American") before the title. This leads to disambiguity which is a good thing. "Ninja Warrior" is the poorly translated version of a Japanese show/contest/challenge. "American Ninja Warrior" is that poorly translated show transplanted and reworked - however poorly.
If you read the review, the name is the least of his concerns. Why is it your greatest?
Here, now, the rules: You must be an American citizen or resident over the age of 21 to try out
Oh hey, look at that. I didn't even have to make it past the first rule in the list. But I suppose that's good news for all of the Americans in Japan who are neither American citizens nor residents.
Whats worse, I think he missed out on the most shameful part of what is wrong with the show. And that is, in making the show AMERICAN Ninja Warrior, they've excluded everyone who is not an American.
It was very gracious of the Japanese to let anyone compete. They even gave the Americans the privilege of skipping out on the initial qualifying course (which is never televised but takes place behind the scenes) to guarantee them 10 spots on the show. But now that we're apparently taking over the show (the production company for Sasuke went bankrupt, and at least for now it appears there will be no more seasons of the show), we've kicked all of them out and they no longer get a chance to compete. That's just crap. Former Susuke champion Makoto Nagano even flew in to witness the ANW finals, but of course he doesn't get to compete.
Remember how Lucas shit on the prequels by making it into "Palpatine is George Bush". I can only speak for myself, but I kind of wanted to watch a Star Wars movie, not watch Rachel Maddow interview Sean Penn.
Sorry, but I don't remember it that way at all. What Bush did was actually minor to what Palpatine did. It seemed pretty clear to me that if anything, the prequels were modelling Hitler and Nazi Germany (though maybe there's an even better historical comparison I'm not aware of). Palpatine tries to overthrow the government but fails. He then becomes a politician, used a false flag attack to sieze control, strip away rights, wage ware, and attempt to wipe out an entire class of people. The story's not a perfect match, but it fits Hitler a lot better than it does Bush.
If you're going to use the dock all the time, you'd be better off buying a netbook. But it's very useful when you do want a proper keyboard and more battery life.
Possibly, but not necessarily true. Are there any netbooks with a touchscreen? I personally find keyboard + touchscreen (with occasional touchpad use mixed in) to be much better than keyboard + touchpad. Thats one thing I love about my Transformer Prime.
This video assumes that you are familiar with his previous video where he talks about this issue. Basically, I think it is that if you've got a flat object and it lays up against your side, it's basically invisible to the scanners when oriented approximately 90 degrees from the scanner view. So this video is supposedly demonstrating that it can actually be done.
No, that's not 70% false. I said all the channel are copy once or copy never rather than copy free. If every channel copy once, then what I said is true. I personally don't give a shit about the distinction between once and never, because for using mythtv (which was the subject of the post) the two are indistinguishable....neither can be used at all.
2nd, I guarantee you there are copy never channels. I've heard from a number of users about copy never channels. For instance, here's a thread about Comedy Central being marked copy never: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=481464
On the other hand, it's Time Warner...possibly the absolute WORST cable company for a mythtv user since they have a corporate wide policy of marking every channel copy one or copy never instead of copy free. That means they system is absolutely useless with a cablecard, so your only option in myth is to get mutliple HDPVRs and multiple cable boxes. Expensive, inelegant, and a PITA. No thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Try Target. Just this week they started getting the preorder cards, though in very limited quantities.
Other than that, though I hate to suggest it (because I won't shop there), Walmart is apparently still taking preorders in store, chain wide. Or course, there is some speculation on whether or not they will actually get as many consoles as they are taking preorders for.
It's not unfair, it's an expected part of the intentional business decision. If the casual market has moved on to tablets and smartphones though that very successful short and medium term decision mightn't have been so great in the long term.
Let's be honest here. Nintendo was getting this same sort of crap in the GameCube days, too. To say that people's reactions are based on the design/marketing of the Wii is just not true.
More than just "there's no story", there's not going to be a product. Hardly anyone is interested in funding a kickstarter with 25 bucks for essentially nothing in return but your name on a vanity list. Next step up from there is 1500 bucks. So if I'm interested in supporting the project with anything between 50 and 1400 bucks, they're basically telling me to go take a hike. Instant fail.
Yep, instant fail....on your part
So once again, please remind me which number "between 50 and 1400 bucks" is not "$1 or more". Now, it's true the don't have any reward levels between there, but I'm not sure what you want. $1500 is how much it costs to have the parts. Anything less, and all they can offer you to give you crediit for your pledge (which they do...$200 gets you the same reward as $25), or else they can offer you some useless symbolic stuff (like a t-shirt or coffee mug) that really has little to do with the project. So I guess the big fail on their part is not giving away some useless Cafe Press stuff or something. If you really want that, then instead of donating $200, donate $175 and go buy yourself a shirt.
For the money you were going to spend on that HTPC, you could easily rent the cable company's latest greatest DVR's for literally years before you got back to even. If you want to roll your own to satisfy your inner geekiness that's one thing, but if the cable company can rent you a box that does the same thing for cheaper, you will receive no sympathy from me.
Sorry, but the cable company's DVR isn't all that powerful. Aside from the stuff they just outright don't do, like:
ability to skip commercials
archive shows indefinitely
export the files to disc to be played anywhere
stream to a phone/tablet/laptop, including live transcoding to a reduced resolution to fit device capability and bandwidth limitations
ability to combine multiple cable/satellite/OTA systems into one interface
web interface for scheduling new recordings remotely.
the things that they do handle they don't handle all that well:
Typically only 1 or 2 tuners
They're inferior at handling programs moving around in timeslots and conflict resolution
Recording rules aren't very flexible.
The recording rule flexibility is a biggie to me. Some shows change their name each season and thus need to be continually tweeked to keep recording. Some shows have no non-generic guide data at all, and thus they either don't get recorded. Some shows have guide data that is just....wrong. Curiosity is an example that comes to mind. Discovery channel refuses to actually title the show "Curiosity" in the guide, so each episode ends up looking to be it's own standalone show with it's own title. Most DVRs would have to have that handled manually, but with mythtv I can say create a rule that looks for a combination of day of week, time of day, and program genre that gets the episodes with minimal effort.
Wait, you have people that actually accept the Windows Updates? Everyone I know just closes the pop-up, and when I show up (virus / malware, or running really slowly) I see "926923798257 updates to install" (yes, I'm exaggerating).
Actually, you probably don't have to exaggerate too much on that. On a number of occasions, when rebooting after installing updates I've been greeted by a screen saying something like "Installing update 1 of 12000". First time I saw that I was in shock, but then it only took 30 seconds or so to zip through it all. Not sure what was going on, but I suspect it was checking thousands of registry keys and counted each one as an update for some reason. Thankfully they don't each get their own entry in the update history.
You are clueless.
Cash can be lost, stolen
And credit cant.
No. Federal law limits my liability to $50 by law, but every single one of my credit cards actually goes further and limits my liability to $0. No risk to me.
devalues through inflation.
Not only does credit devalue through the same inflation ($1000 credit devalues at the same rate as $1000 cash) it also costs you interest, so $1000 borrowed is $1000+interest to be repaid.
Not sure how my "credit devalues through inflation". My "credit" has no actual cash value to me. The only effect inflation has is on my spending ability for a given credit line, but given the size of my credit line, I'll never reach that point...especially since lenders tend to increase that credit line over time.
My credit accounts are other peoples money
The problem with spending other peoples money is that other people are going to want their money back... with interest.
Funny. I haven't paid a cent in interest to a credit card in way more than a decade. On the other hand, I've made thousands from my credit cards, in the form of cash back and (more importantly) sign up bonuses.
A question that no credit addled fool has been able to answer is "why would a bank, a profit oriented business, offer you a service they dont make money on".
They lend me money because most people DO pay interest. They take a gamble on me that I'll be just as profitable. They lose that gamble every time.
The fact is you force merchants to pay a percentage of your transaction in a "merchant service fee" or bank interchange fee in some countries. This comes straight back to you in the form of higher prices.
If you could get everyone (or at least a very significant number of people) in the country to switch to cash, then maybe prices would go down. Otherwise, me switching to cash isn't going to reduce my costs one bit. All it's going to do is stop earning me cash back and sign up bonuses.
I wont even bother telling you about the amount I've saved in the last four years by paying with my own money. Even just in avoiding CC surcharges I've made $500. Credit cards have their place, just not for everyday transactions. For that I use cash or debit.
LOL. I've MADE almost $2500 just this year from credit card sign up bonuses, and that doesn't count what my wife has earned from the same.
The part I was impressed with was how they did it...
"[...] which Intel has acheived by making use of a number of tactics."
+5 Informative!
Welcome to the internet. We have these thing called hyperlinks. Anytime you see underlined text of a different color, you should consider clicking on it. I you had clicked on the phrase "number of tactics", you would have been taken to view another article which would have explained many of these tactics.
Aren't DVD captions images, not text?
Many DVDs have 2 types of captions. If you use handbrake, the image based captions are referred to as VOBSUB while the text based ones are referred to as CC.
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Subtitles
I could be sorely mistaken but I do believe that each and every business you're using your card at has to pay for the privilege of being able to accept your card. Which, in turn, means that business is passing that overhead to you, the customer, cash, debit and credit.
First, as others pointed out, there are business costs/risks to dealing with cash and checks. But that said, even assuming they were zero:
In theory, if everyone paid cash and merchants had to pay no fees, then yes, it would be cheaper to pay in cash. However, in reality this is like a HUGE case of the prisoners dilemma. If every customer (prisoner) were to act collectively in the group interest and pay in cash (keep quiet), then the result would be that everyone would get away with the best outcome pay less (get less prison time). However, in reality there are far too many customers (prisoners) to expect that a large portion of them won't choose the worst collective option. So in reality, if I choose to pay cash, my personal effect on the price is going to be negligible. Effectively, my choice is down to paying cash and getting nothing back, or paying with credit and getting 1) cash back, 2) extended warranties and purchase protection, 3) reduced exposure to being robbed. Since I can't control what everyone else does, it's in my own best interest to pay with credit and get what I can out of it.
You would be surprised at the number of people who use a credit card or debit card at McDonalds, other fast food places, 7-11s, or Wawas. They could have just hit the ATM for $20 and saved a few dollars by paying cash.
Excuse me? I don't pay anything to use my card at any of those places. In fact, I get cash back every time I use my card. Paying cash would actually cost me more.
Plenty of people have already learned how difficult it can be to run your own business. You put your heart, soul, and accumulated wealth into a business only to get crushed by a mega-corp. They can buy in quantities you could only dream of, enabling them to make a profit by selling at a price that would be below your cost. If you manage to overcome this, they can outspend you, selling at a loss to steal your customers away from you and crush you. In the end you lose your money and go bankrupt.
A few generations ago, you couldn't walk a block without hitting a bunch of mom & pop retailers. Now everthing is mega-corp franchises. I'd estimate maybe 1% of retailers around here are independents that have been in business more than a couple years. The rest are either mega corps, or small businesses that open up and then go under in a year or two. It's no wonder few want to take the chance to start their own business these days.
Sorry, it was I who misunderstood. I thought you were talking about the construction of that sentence, not the article that was linked to.
As for that article: Sorry. I couldn't be bothered to read it...it being TWENTY PARAGRAPHS OF UNDERLINED TEXT! Who the hell does that?
I think you misread it, because that statement doesn't imply the Tea Party is not right wing. It says some people see him as true right wing (thus "a Tea Party favorite"), while other see him as only pretending to be right wing.
Assuming you are talking about the link that MLease posted to the examiner:
The first thing I see is that a big chunk of that minimum wage person's "income" is $16.5k for Medicaid and CHIP. That's not disposable income, as it never gets to the individual in the form of cash. It's merely the amount the government pays on behalf of the individual for that individual's health care. If you want to count this, then you also need to account for the employer paid portion of the $60k family's health care. His employer may be paying $10k or more for this.
And while we are including employer paid benefits, then let's also count any 401k matching paid by the employer for the $60k individual (whereas the minimum wage person probably doesn't have a 401k, and couldn't afford it if he did).
Next, I'm fairly certain that when we see "Payroll and Federal Income Taxes", that is going to include social security tax payments. Well, the $60k person is going to be paying a lot more than the min. wage person. Larger SS contributions while working is going to end up giving you larger SS payouts at retirement, so that's another advantage the $60k person has (though it is a deferred advantage).
So it's not nearly an equal situation after all, and those are just a few of the things I could think of after looking at the chart for 30 seconds. I'm sure there's a lot more wrong with it than this.
You know, I hear this crap all the time. I spent a week in Paris and never met a single person who was anything less than polite. We even went to one small restaraunt where they didn't have any English menus, and the owner sat down at our table and went over the menu with us, translating about 30 different items into English the best he could. Time and again, we were helped by person after person who were nothing but polite. I suspect that if there is a problem, it is instigated by cocky foreigners who make no attempt to show respect and fit in. When I went, I don't speak french, but I learned 15-20 common words and phrases so that I could communicate basic needs with people who only speak french. It turned out that was almost entirely unnecessary, but I used them when I could anyway. I suspect it went a long way towards showing them some respect and that I wasn't just some cocky American there to be catered to while making jokes about the french.
I remember when I first saw a Blueray Disc movie, it was that godawful G.I. Joe movie, I dunno what the frame rate was on that but the image looked absurdly crisp and sharp. It was the clearest cleanest image I had seen on a movie, and it looked disgustingly fake.
For a moment I thought it was because the lack of camera artifacts made it look unauthentic, kinda like how lens flare is now added to movies because people expect it. However after a while I realized that I only had problems when there was CGI on the screen. So in fact it wasn't the sharp image what was bothering me, is the that, the sharper the image, the more obvious CGI imperfections are.
Image quality reveals fake scenes for what they are.
For a movie with a shitload of fake imagery like the Hobbit, I can already see why people would complain. I'm pretty sure those 60fps instructional videos you shot didn't have any CGI in them did they?
I don't think that makes sense. The reason that CGI looks fake at higher res is because there is a limitation to the amount of accurate fine detail that can be added without drastically increasing the artists effort, and when you see a higher resolution, those limits become a lot more visible. For faster frame rates, however, I can't think of any particular way that the extra frame rates increase the requirements of the CGI other than the 2.5 times increase in rendering time to go from 24 to 60 fps.
If anything I'd guess the issue would be the opposite, and the real stuff would "suffer" more than the CGI, and the reason I'm thinking is to do with motion blur. When you are only capturing 24 frames, you capture a certain amount of blur in each frame. When you then play it back, your eye sees that amount of blur over a constant 1/24 second. However, when you record at 48 fps, each frame only has half as much blur, and your eye only sees half the blur for 1/48 second and then the other half of the blur for the next 1/48 second. So effectively your eye sees half as much blur. It's this difference in blur that your brain has become accustomed to and leads some people to perceive 48fps as being poorer quality. With CGI, they can render whatever amount of blur they want into it each frame, so it's entirely up to them whether to go with more blur or less.
What the fuck are you talking about? Who gives a shit about MTV2 Celebrity or Wipeout or whatever else? You've completely missed the point. The point is, for 27 seasons (13 years) the producers of Sasuke have made the show open to everyone from every country. Anyone that wanted a shot could show up and get an opportunity to be on the show. And that's exactly what you got. Over those 27 seasons, I've seen competitors from at least a dozen different countries take a shot at it. Now we get a chance to host the show and we add the rule that you have to be American to compete? Sorry, but that's bullshit.
Geesh, you don't need to be an American.
Really? You must not understand what "You must be an American citizen or resident over the age of 21 to try out" means. And again, the Japanese never made you become a Japanese citizen or resident to get on the show.. You show up, you run the qualifying course, and if you rank high enough you are on the show.
whereas come Sasuke obstacles are there just to put the challenger in silly compromising poses for a laugh....while for Sasuke contestants the entire obstacle course is part challenge/part elaborate practical joke...Sasuke = animal circus using people
Are you sure you watched Sasuke and not Tashiki's Castle? There's almost nothing silly or circus-like in Sasuke. About the closest you'll maybe get is the rolling escargo, but even that would be a bit of a stretch.
Whats worse, I think he missed out on the most shameful part of what is wrong with the show. And that is, in making the show AMERICAN Ninja Warrior, they've excluded everyone who is not an American.
You are projecting. "American" mean held in the US in this context. Anything else is your own projection. It wouldn't bother me if every transplanted show prefixed their country name (or informal name as concerns "American") before the title. This leads to disambiguity which is a good thing. "Ninja Warrior" is the poorly translated version of a Japanese show/contest/challenge. "American Ninja Warrior" is that poorly translated show transplanted and reworked - however poorly.
If you read the review, the name is the least of his concerns. Why is it your greatest?
I'm projecting, huh? You don't think there is a restriction that you have to be american? OK, well then please explain the terms that were listed for the tryouts:
http://freecastingcall.com/casting-calls-and-auditions-in-hollywood-ca/g4-network-is-seeking-contestants-for-american-ninja-warrior.html
Here, now, the rules:
You must be an American citizen or resident over the age of 21 to try out
Oh hey, look at that. I didn't even have to make it past the first rule in the list. But I suppose that's good news for all of the Americans in Japan who are neither American citizens nor residents.
Whats worse, I think he missed out on the most shameful part of what is wrong with the show. And that is, in making the show AMERICAN Ninja Warrior, they've excluded everyone who is not an American.
It was very gracious of the Japanese to let anyone compete. They even gave the Americans the privilege of skipping out on the initial qualifying course (which is never televised but takes place behind the scenes) to guarantee them 10 spots on the show. But now that we're apparently taking over the show (the production company for Sasuke went bankrupt, and at least for now it appears there will be no more seasons of the show), we've kicked all of them out and they no longer get a chance to compete. That's just crap. Former Susuke champion Makoto Nagano even flew in to witness the ANW finals, but of course he doesn't get to compete.
Remember how Lucas shit on the prequels by making it into "Palpatine is George Bush". I can only speak for myself, but I kind of wanted to watch a Star Wars movie, not watch Rachel Maddow interview Sean Penn.
Sorry, but I don't remember it that way at all. What Bush did was actually minor to what Palpatine did. It seemed pretty clear to me that if anything, the prequels were modelling Hitler and Nazi Germany (though maybe there's an even better historical comparison I'm not aware of). Palpatine tries to overthrow the government but fails. He then becomes a politician, used a false flag attack to sieze control, strip away rights, wage ware, and attempt to wipe out an entire class of people. The story's not a perfect match, but it fits Hitler a lot better than it does Bush.
If you're going to use the dock all the time, you'd be better off buying a netbook. But it's very useful when you do want a proper keyboard and more battery life.
Possibly, but not necessarily true. Are there any netbooks with a touchscreen? I personally find keyboard + touchscreen (with occasional touchpad use mixed in) to be much better than keyboard + touchpad. Thats one thing I love about my Transformer Prime.
This video assumes that you are familiar with his previous video where he talks about this issue. Basically, I think it is that if you've got a flat object and it lays up against your side, it's basically invisible to the scanners when oriented approximately 90 degrees from the scanner view. So this video is supposedly demonstrating that it can actually be done.
No, that's not 70% false. I said all the channel are copy once or copy never rather than copy free. If every channel copy once, then what I said is true. I personally don't give a shit about the distinction between once and never, because for using mythtv (which was the subject of the post) the two are indistinguishable....neither can be used at all.
2nd, I guarantee you there are copy never channels. I've heard from a number of users about copy never channels. For instance, here's a thread about Comedy Central being marked copy never:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=481464
On the other hand, it's Time Warner...possibly the absolute WORST cable company for a mythtv user since they have a corporate wide policy of marking every channel copy one or copy never instead of copy free. That means they system is absolutely useless with a cablecard, so your only option in myth is to get mutliple HDPVRs and multiple cable boxes. Expensive, inelegant, and a PITA. No thanks.