Well, suppose the ESPN phone can get video of out-of-market games. Being stuck in Florida, I watch my Tigers with MLB.TV. I bet there are fans that would like a device that could get out-of-market games and hook it up to a TV (provided that an internet connection wasn't available). That said, I'd never buy ESPN Mobile, I can just call someone for a score if I really, really crave it.
If these decisions remain long, drawn-out, and in dire need of follow-up cases and mounting legal fees, then perhaps the AAs will decide that this battle isn't worth fighting.
Hum. I seem to think that the exact opposite could be true. Media Companies will sue all P2P software makers saying that the program promotes piracy the day the service is released. There's no way most of these software producers can defend themselves, and will be crushed one by one in the face of mounting lawsuits.
Wouldn't it be best for Blizzard in this case to give him the key, since he will likely become a paying subscriber and eventually be worth quite a bit to them?
It seems to me that in the case of these types of games, a company should do whatever it takes to get subscribers and to keep them. If Blizzard causes this guy to hate WoW because of what they did to them, they lose his potential subscription fee, and the possibility of him telling others to play the game as well.
If I were the CEO there, I'd make it very easy to get a new key and sign up for the service.
Meijer is fairly large (each store is a Wal-Mart combined with a sizeable grocery store, and they're all over Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio at least), so I doubt that'll happen.
Wow. I kinda feel like a whore now, I didn't even know that existed. Though, I would recommend the book anyway (although not as good as some of his others). Thanks for the bit of information, very interesting.
The best was in the NES version when they carted out a small ship for a ton of points. Suddenly the whole Russian City takes off into space... Now that was worth all the tension in staring at a TV of falling pieces for far too long.
Level 30 on Tetris DX for the Gameboy color. But only because it stops getting faster at level 30. All told I had over a thousand lines, something like 2.2 million points. At that speed you basically end up playing the game in the Next Piece window and hoping you tap the buttons fast enough to make it fall properly.
My father owns a number of video games and pinball machines located throughout the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. It's a small business, but after revenue sharing with the locations he puts the games in, we make about $200 a week on about 20 games. Not a bad deal when it costs very little to operate them except in time.
The problem with many new pinball machines is flawed design. We've got a Goldeneye pinball in our basement and there are a number of spots where balls constantly get stuck or where pieces break. We've been wires countless times just to keep the top ramp operating properly.
But for the most part, our pinball machines don't require too much attention. Not nearly as much as the Toy Crane we have (which once had wire problems almost weekly). Much of the pinball work is having a ball stuck or a wire break (coin mechanism problems are the norm in all of our machines, mostly because kids decide to jam dimes and pennies in the things to see if it works), we occasionally have a flipper coil go bad or a bumper break. Those problems aren't many. Granted, this could be because people aren't playing them frequently (everyone seems to gravitate towards the 3 Ms. Pacman machines we've got set up on Turbo speed), but maybe it's because many of our pinballs are older and more simple. We've got a Spiderman machine that sits in our basement and works fine except that the soundcard died a few years ago.
It's a shame that most arcades are dying and that it's nearly impossible to keep updated machines in an area where people will play them enough for you to pay for the machines. With pinballs costing over $3000 a piece nowadays, it's more wise to buy a number of older machines and put them in laundramats, pizza places, and convinience stores. The older games (Ms. Pacman, Police Trainer, Galaga) amazingly outperform our newer ones (Mortal Kombat 2, Tekken 3, South Park Pinball) regularly... Perhaps because many people see them as a novelty. But no machines make as much as the Toy Cranes and a prize vendor we have called "Sports Arena" that my dad sticks Zippo lighters and Laser Pens in. Those make fortunes.
Just my two cents.
Charlie
ps. Best Pinball of all time? I loved the Guns N' Roses Machine... perfect flipper balance (you weren't always using one of them like in Goldeneye and others).
You, my friend, should stay away from Grand Theft Auto 3.
"Madman driving on LA Freeway swerves in and out of lanes, ramps car off of bridge and escapes the cars subsequent explosion by mere seconds before whipping out a pistol and shooting a priest, an old woman, and a dog. He then kicked a pregnant woman in the belly and stole her car... He is considered armed and addicted to video games..."
Well, at least Tetris DX for the Gameboy Color stops at level 30 (if I recall correctly). It basically could not get any faster or you wouldn't be able to position a piece. By then you just play by looking in the "next piece" box and pray you know exactly which buttons to press to position it the way you want it.
I think I've had over 710 lines before (1.7million points)... So I guess I've been to at least level 71. I am HIGHLY addicted during the school year though, and I should be embarrased by this fact. Selah.
If I recall the game stops getting faster at level 30... They just keep falling at an insane rate. You basically cannot move a piece all the way to the side if you are more than half-way to the top of the board. Quite discouraging when you get the long skinny one and you can't even turn the piece before it's stacked in the worst possible spot...
That said, I wish I could find my best line total on Tetris DX... All I can find is the score. It's 1,721,262... It's possibly over 700 lines, but I couldn't say for sure. Every day during class in high school and before class during college... God bless the save game feature on DX, never would have been able to sit and play that long straight.
Note: My Gameboy Color has been in a backpack for a couple months now. Pulled it out, and Tetris was in it. Only game I own for it.
This is essentially the Robert Zubrin plan for travel to Mars. You send a ship in advance that is the return vehical. It sits there with cargo (Rovers, living utilities, whatever) producing rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere for the Astronauts to use to explore the planet and get home. We launch the Astronauts a couple of years later (So we know the thing has made fuel) and get them within rover range of the return vehical. His plan calls for a permanent settlement, so when we send the first team of Astronauts we also send another return vehical around the same time to a different spot of the planet (for maximum exploration) and repeat the process until we come up with habitats on the planet itself. In the event that the first return vehical does not function for some reason, the second one is driven to and used instead (the astronauts carry the fuel or wait until the next one produces more).
It's also interesting to note that this Russian plan calls for an orbiting ship of astronauts to remain in space for the duration of the time. This seems unnecessary and possibly dangerous for whoever has to sit in low gravity with poor radiation shielding for the couple of years it takes to get there, explore, and come back. Zubrin also calls for a different crew make-up, including removing the "doctor" and having the crew trained in basic field medicine. If there is something drastic that far from home it's doubtful a doctor could heal them anyway, better to save weight and not include too many people.
This whole style of mission has been on the table for a while now (using existing technology), so it's just a matter of getting people to actually want to explore what humanity can become. A tough task no doubt.
Gotta love US 666 though, I think there are two of them, but my friends... uh... borrowed a sizeable US-666 construction sign (orange and evil looking) from Gallup, New Mexico.
They live in Michigan, so perhaps the sign for Hell will be missing someday.
Earth-based systems are nice, we can make them here and everyone can go and look at how cool they are. But in reality, they aren't nearly as effective as they could be. They deal with tremors in the earth and the atmosphere we have to see through.
The moon, however, has neither of these problems. It doesn't have any seismic activity that I know of, and there is no atmosphere to hinder a telescope.
From what I gather (I don't know nearly enough about this stuff) you don't actually need to build a giant telescope on the moon for this to work. You can build an array of smaller scopes and link them together to see a giant field. Since the moon has no seismic activity all of the small scopes effectivly function as one giant one, that we can focus onto anything we'd like, including extrasolar planets.
Since these are smaller telescopes (not tiny, but smaller than some of the giant things we've got on earth), we can use traditional spacecraft to get them to the moon. Of course it'll cost a lot, but would make the Hubble look like a child's toy when it's finished. The question is, are we willing to head back to the moon, and do we really feel that the search for life is this valuable?
Robert Zubrin wrote a good book about this, "Entering Space", which is where I got most of this moon-telescope information. My copy is back at my dorm in Arizona, so I can't quote exactly, but I think I've given the basics. A site that may also be helpful is Here (A little to much math for my tastes, but maybe some of you guys can figure it out)
Slashdot Mirror
Bet that means it'll be 10 to 100 times more expensive!
Well, suppose the ESPN phone can get video of out-of-market games. Being stuck in Florida, I watch my Tigers with MLB.TV. I bet there are fans that would like a device that could get out-of-market games and hook it up to a TV (provided that an internet connection wasn't available). That said, I'd never buy ESPN Mobile, I can just call someone for a score if I really, really crave it.
If these decisions remain long, drawn-out, and in dire need of follow-up cases and mounting legal fees, then perhaps the AAs will decide that this battle isn't worth fighting.
Hum. I seem to think that the exact opposite could be true. Media Companies will sue all P2P software makers saying that the program promotes piracy the day the service is released. There's no way most of these software producers can defend themselves, and will be crushed one by one in the face of mounting lawsuits.
Hopefully I'm wrong.
Charlie
Wouldn't it be best for Blizzard in this case to give him the key, since he will likely become a paying subscriber and eventually be worth quite a bit to them?
It seems to me that in the case of these types of games, a company should do whatever it takes to get subscribers and to keep them. If Blizzard causes this guy to hate WoW because of what they did to them, they lose his potential subscription fee, and the possibility of him telling others to play the game as well.
If I were the CEO there, I'd make it very easy to get a new key and sign up for the service.
Just a thought.
CS
Meijer is fairly large (each store is a Wal-Mart combined with a sizeable grocery store, and they're all over Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio at least), so I doubt that'll happen.
Europe, Michigan... They're both full of whackjobs. Poor Kid
Wow. I kinda feel like a whore now, I didn't even know that existed. Though, I would recommend the book anyway (although not as good as some of his others). Thanks for the bit of information, very interesting.
Charlie
Read Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby (of Fight Club fame). Good story about sound-transmited disease (a poem that kills people in this case).
Charlie
Charlie
Charlie
Charlie
The problem with many new pinball machines is flawed design. We've got a Goldeneye pinball in our basement and there are a number of spots where balls constantly get stuck or where pieces break. We've been wires countless times just to keep the top ramp operating properly.
But for the most part, our pinball machines don't require too much attention. Not nearly as much as the Toy Crane we have (which once had wire problems almost weekly). Much of the pinball work is having a ball stuck or a wire break (coin mechanism problems are the norm in all of our machines, mostly because kids decide to jam dimes and pennies in the things to see if it works), we occasionally have a flipper coil go bad or a bumper break. Those problems aren't many. Granted, this could be because people aren't playing them frequently (everyone seems to gravitate towards the 3 Ms. Pacman machines we've got set up on Turbo speed), but maybe it's because many of our pinballs are older and more simple. We've got a Spiderman machine that sits in our basement and works fine except that the soundcard died a few years ago.
It's a shame that most arcades are dying and that it's nearly impossible to keep updated machines in an area where people will play them enough for you to pay for the machines. With pinballs costing over $3000 a piece nowadays, it's more wise to buy a number of older machines and put them in laundramats, pizza places, and convinience stores. The older games (Ms. Pacman, Police Trainer, Galaga) amazingly outperform our newer ones (Mortal Kombat 2, Tekken 3, South Park Pinball) regularly... Perhaps because many people see them as a novelty. But no machines make as much as the Toy Cranes and a prize vendor we have called "Sports Arena" that my dad sticks Zippo lighters and Laser Pens in. Those make fortunes.
Just my two cents.
Charlie
ps. Best Pinball of all time? I loved the Guns N' Roses Machine... perfect flipper balance (you weren't always using one of them like in Goldeneye and others).
"Madman driving on LA Freeway swerves in and out of lanes, ramps car off of bridge and escapes the cars subsequent explosion by mere seconds before whipping out a pistol and shooting a priest, an old woman, and a dog. He then kicked a pregnant woman in the belly and stole her car... He is considered armed and addicted to video games..."
hmm... but in LA would they notice??
You're right though, there should be a term.
Charlie
I think I've had over 710 lines before (1.7million points)... So I guess I've been to at least level 71. I am HIGHLY addicted during the school year though, and I should be embarrased by this fact. Selah.
Charlie
That said, I wish I could find my best line total on Tetris DX... All I can find is the score. It's 1,721,262... It's possibly over 700 lines, but I couldn't say for sure. Every day during class in high school and before class during college... God bless the save game feature on DX, never would have been able to sit and play that long straight.
Note: My Gameboy Color has been in a backpack for a couple months now. Pulled it out, and Tetris was in it. Only game I own for it.
Charlie
You can check out this plan in detail in his book The Case For Mars
It's also interesting to note that this Russian plan calls for an orbiting ship of astronauts to remain in space for the duration of the time. This seems unnecessary and possibly dangerous for whoever has to sit in low gravity with poor radiation shielding for the couple of years it takes to get there, explore, and come back. Zubrin also calls for a different crew make-up, including removing the "doctor" and having the crew trained in basic field medicine. If there is something drastic that far from home it's doubtful a doctor could heal them anyway, better to save weight and not include too many people.
This whole style of mission has been on the table for a while now (using existing technology), so it's just a matter of getting people to actually want to explore what humanity can become. A tough task no doubt.
Charlie
Gotta love US 666 though, I think there are two of them, but my friends... uh... borrowed a sizeable US-666 construction sign (orange and evil looking) from Gallup, New Mexico. They live in Michigan, so perhaps the sign for Hell will be missing someday.
The moon, however, has neither of these problems. It doesn't have any seismic activity that I know of, and there is no atmosphere to hinder a telescope.
From what I gather (I don't know nearly enough about this stuff) you don't actually need to build a giant telescope on the moon for this to work. You can build an array of smaller scopes and link them together to see a giant field. Since the moon has no seismic activity all of the small scopes effectivly function as one giant one, that we can focus onto anything we'd like, including extrasolar planets.
Since these are smaller telescopes (not tiny, but smaller than some of the giant things we've got on earth), we can use traditional spacecraft to get them to the moon. Of course it'll cost a lot, but would make the Hubble look like a child's toy when it's finished. The question is, are we willing to head back to the moon, and do we really feel that the search for life is this valuable?
Robert Zubrin wrote a good book about this, "Entering Space", which is where I got most of this moon-telescope information. My copy is back at my dorm in Arizona, so I can't quote exactly, but I think I've given the basics. A site that may also be helpful is Here (A little to much math for my tastes, but maybe some of you guys can figure it out)
Charlie