warning: i guess some of this could be considered a spoiler.
I caught this flick last night, and while it was OK, I had a few problems with it.
3l33t camera tricks made it hard to watch. The director appeared to think he was making a music video, and not a movie, at times. The quick pans, camera jiggles, and slo-mos were sort of hard to take seriously after a while, and didn't really need to be there IMO.
You'll need to seriously check your brain at the door to believe that Wilson can be shot at by literally hundreds of infantry and dozens of armored vehicles throughout the movie and make it out alive. Yeah, yeah, lots of movies are like this, but Behind Enemy Lines was really egregious. The finale was--well, it really made it appear that this battle was being fought in Fantasyland, not Europe.
Owen Wilson gets love from the press and from moviegoers, and I don't get it. He seems like a smart and funny enough guy, but he plays the same damn character in every movie he's ever in. He's always something of a smart-ass but otherwise a good person. Seriously, if you can differentiate his performance in this movie from, say, his work in The Haunting, you're paying more attention than me. Sure, this movie didn't suck nearly as bad as The Haunting did, but differentiating slightly sardonic hick-sounding unabashed white guys is tough for me.
I recommend you do not use Dotster. I like their web-based tools fine, but on more than one occasion this year I have gone through the entire registration process with Dotster, including giving them my credit card information, and the transaction has apparently been lost in the ether.
If they can't get this process right, I have serious misgivings about their overall reliability and competence.
Another problem with Dotster: their WHOIS lookup will incorrectly return domains being available, when they are actually registered. Or at least it did last time I used them.
Good question, and one that I had before I tried them out earlier this month. The GF wouldn't stop pushing them.
Here is my slightly off-topic Harry Potter series review.
First of all, what is the difference between a kid's book an an adult book? Generally, theme and realism--most "adult books" aren't about stuff like magic. And, to be sure, most of them aren't about kids, either. Bad things happen to people in adult books to a much greater degree than bad things happen in children's books.
Sure, HP is about magic, which is kind of goofy, but it's really brought off well. A lot of thought has gone into the whole backstory about how magic can exist in the modern world, and the relationship between the magical and non-magical realms.
HP isn't really sugar-coated. It's not hard-boiled by any stretch of the imagination, but good people get hurt and even die.
Now, let's talk about what is good in the series. Lots of series such as this one keep introducing new things in each book, to the point where you say "hmm, why didn't I read about that last book?" In other words, the authors are cheating by changing the world they created in the first book. I don't get much of a sense of that with this series. Rowling has gone out of her way to create this world, and she only has to tweak it slightly each book, rather than the wholesale changes other authors bust out.
The books are really well-written. They are easy to read and flow smoothly. I get the impression from some literary snobs that a book needs to be dense and hard to read to be good. I don't agree. It took me about a month to make it through McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy before I started Potter. It took two weeks to get through all four books in the HP series. They were both good reads, but I didn't mind the simpler vocabulary that Rowling uses one bit. It's no "See Dick Run".
Negatives: Some of the phrases Rowling comes up with are a bit precious for me (and all the "Muggle Clubs" sprouting up like weeds aren't helping. I'm not a Harry Potter cultist, and I'd rather not be associated with people who look at these books as a life changing experience). The series started kind of slowly. Books 5-7 haven't been written yet.:)
Overall, these books are an escape. If everything you read has to have deeper meaning, by all means avoid this series. But if you're just looking for a fun, well-written read, it's honestly going to be tough to do much better.
If you really want a strategy game, give one of those old Avalon Hill military simulation board games a try. I think you'll quickly come to the realization that even if that's what you like, the market is much larger for a game without a learning curve quite as daunting.
As you've said, most "strategy" games are pretty streamlined, but I firmly believe that's because that is what most gamers want. I find most of the games were you have to keep an eye on what each of your cities is doing (i.e. the Civilization series) to be pretty tedious, and I know a lot more people that agree with me than disagree.
I think there is a small market for the level or realism you are looking for, but such games will never sell as well or be as widely loved as the Warcraft series, regardless of how much more realistic they are.
I'm not sure what eBay is legally--or even morally--obligated to do in this instance. You knew the risks, and eBay spells them out in their user agreement. Look at it from their point of view: they spell out the risks that you take, and their liability, in black and white. It'd be nice if they'd hire a private dick to track this scumbag down and sell him off to some slaver for the money he owed all of you, but that's not a reasonable way for a company to respond, NYSE listing or not.
The scope we're talking about here is such that you can't expect local and federal authorities to burn lots of man-hours bringing you justice. You've done the right thing by reporting the incident, and perhaps something will come of it.
As others have said, the number one best idea for buying big-ticket items over eBay is to use credit, because of those great limited liability clauses. If someone doesn't take credit (or PayPal), you've got to ask yourself how much you'll be hurting if your money wings off through the mail and the item never comes.
Well, I've got mine in a corner behind my couch and the cabinet with my stereo on top of it, so it's fairly invisible, and the noise is also effectively baffled. I understand not everyone has a convenient place to put a computer, but it's kind of a knee-jerk response to say "hey, it'll be ugly" when a mini tower takes up so little space.
I've got an old P133 tower sitting in my living room that seems to do everything this gadget does and then some. It's got a local disk so it holds about 7 GB of music locally, and it's connected to my network so it can grab more music anytime I want it to. It's got an irman installed so it uses my stereo's remote control.
There are two nice things about this setup IMO.
You don't need any special dedicated software. Anything you can do with a real PC, you can do with the PC without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor you have sitting next to your stereo. Just use winvnc or a similar program to log in from your real computer. No waiting for patches for the special-purpose software that the company provides.
It's really, really cheap. You can get an old computer for way less than $300... doubt mine's worth half that. It's slow as hell, but the processor almost never pins on playback and it's reliable--weeks of uptime, even with Win98. Tack on an irman and you're ready to roll.
Anyway, as far as I can tell this looks like a problem that didn't need solving in the first place. Maybe if the appliance were cheaper than a computer that would really work just as well, they'd have something.
can someone elaborate on how the rebate for this thing is supposed to work? i.e. if I waltz down to my local CavernousComputerWarehouse and pick one of these things up, what kind of cash can I expect back from Sony? (assuming they're even sold retail...)
The mp3/ogg situation seems very similar to the gif/png question in graphics formats. The problem is there's a @#$&load of "prior art" out there in mp3 format, and unless the patent holders do something more than make veiled threats, it's going to be more trouble for people to convert their existing libraries than they care to go through.
Since we've got so much stuff out there already, I don't know why most of the players wouldn't continue to use mp3 as their default format, either.
Slashdot Mirror
I caught this flick last night, and while it was OK, I had a few problems with it.
Hey, have a hell of a day.
If they can't get this process right, I have serious misgivings about their overall reliability and competence.
Another problem with Dotster: their WHOIS lookup will incorrectly return domains being available, when they are actually registered. Or at least it did last time I used them.
YMMV.
Here is my slightly off-topic Harry Potter series review.
First of all, what is the difference between a kid's book an an adult book? Generally, theme and realism--most "adult books" aren't about stuff like magic. And, to be sure, most of them aren't about kids, either. Bad things happen to people in adult books to a much greater degree than bad things happen in children's books.
Sure, HP is about magic, which is kind of goofy, but it's really brought off well. A lot of thought has gone into the whole backstory about how magic can exist in the modern world, and the relationship between the magical and non-magical realms.
HP isn't really sugar-coated. It's not hard-boiled by any stretch of the imagination, but good people get hurt and even die.
Now, let's talk about what is good in the series. Lots of series such as this one keep introducing new things in each book, to the point where you say "hmm, why didn't I read about that last book?" In other words, the authors are cheating by changing the world they created in the first book. I don't get much of a sense of that with this series. Rowling has gone out of her way to create this world, and she only has to tweak it slightly each book, rather than the wholesale changes other authors bust out.
The books are really well-written. They are easy to read and flow smoothly. I get the impression from some literary snobs that a book needs to be dense and hard to read to be good. I don't agree. It took me about a month to make it through McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy before I started Potter. It took two weeks to get through all four books in the HP series. They were both good reads, but I didn't mind the simpler vocabulary that Rowling uses one bit. It's no "See Dick Run".
Negatives: Some of the phrases Rowling comes up with are a bit precious for me (and all the "Muggle Clubs" sprouting up like weeds aren't helping. I'm not a Harry Potter cultist, and I'd rather not be associated with people who look at these books as a life changing experience). The series started kind of slowly. Books 5-7 haven't been written yet.
Overall, these books are an escape. If everything you read has to have deeper meaning, by all means avoid this series. But if you're just looking for a fun, well-written read, it's honestly going to be tough to do much better.
Good luck.
As you've said, most "strategy" games are pretty streamlined, but I firmly believe that's because that is what most gamers want. I find most of the games were you have to keep an eye on what each of your cities is doing (i.e. the Civilization series) to be pretty tedious, and I know a lot more people that agree with me than disagree.
I think there is a small market for the level or realism you are looking for, but such games will never sell as well or be as widely loved as the Warcraft series, regardless of how much more realistic they are.
The scope we're talking about here is such that you can't expect local and federal authorities to burn lots of man-hours bringing you justice. You've done the right thing by reporting the incident, and perhaps something will come of it.
As others have said, the number one best idea for buying big-ticket items over eBay is to use credit, because of those great limited liability clauses. If someone doesn't take credit (or PayPal), you've got to ask yourself how much you'll be hurting if your money wings off through the mail and the item never comes.
Good luck.
Well, I've got mine in a corner behind my couch and the cabinet with my stereo on top of it, so it's fairly invisible, and the noise is also effectively baffled. I understand not everyone has a convenient place to put a computer, but it's kind of a knee-jerk response to say "hey, it'll be ugly" when a mini tower takes up so little space.
There are two nice things about this setup IMO.
Anyway, as far as I can tell this looks like a problem that didn't need solving in the first place. Maybe if the appliance were cheaper than a computer that would really work just as well, they'd have something.
can someone elaborate on how the rebate for this thing is supposed to work? i.e. if I waltz down to my local CavernousComputerWarehouse and pick one of these things up, what kind of cash can I expect back from Sony? (assuming they're even sold retail...)
Since we've got so much stuff out there already, I don't know why most of the players wouldn't continue to use mp3 as their default format, either.
Look here, and remember: search engines kick ass.
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