in the primary you have to pick a side if you want to vote. Democrat or Republican. Once you choose, you must vote within that party. At least in a closed primary that is how it works. So, if you're a registered Green, you don't get to vote in the primary. In the general election of course, everybody gets to vote.
I didn't say it wasn't the point, I merely said that sometimes people don't like it. I like the show because it touches nerves. I don't think that is true of everybody.
I think the unsettling part of BSG's dealings with religion lie in the context of the show. Religion on B5 never seemed as nefarious as is does on BSG. It was more of quirky thing, to give each race character. In BSG you have a full blown clash of the civilizations: monotheists versus heathens. That can get pretty touchy and hit a little too close to home. In many ways that makes the show more effective, because the religion aspect is a lot more touchy. In B5 you never got the feeling that the Vorlons and Shadows were fighting for their God's, or because of any real differences other than this ancient conflict between "good" and "evil", "chaos" and "order". With BSG I can't help but be a little creeped out when the cylons ramble on about God's will. B5 was a great show, but I think it dealt with religion and prophesy in a fundamentally different, and safer, way.
Huh, that is weird. They force you to choose here, to the point that Greens and Libertarians can't vote in the primary. I've moved around a lot in the past few years and I'm fascinated by the differences in how each state votes. New York has these huge mechanical voting machines with levers. California just had computers. Pennsylvania had this big board with soft plastic covered flat buttons, like the buttons on some coffee vending machines. It was electronic I guess, but the board was gigantic; a sort of primitive touch screen maybe. You also had the option during a general election to just hit one button for a party-line vote. How convenient; you don't have to consider each candidate individually. Maybe that is a more honest assessment of how much thought people put into their votes though.
The one-offs could have been okay if they hadn't been so horrible. I think the problem with the one-offs is that the writers don't know how to write a one-off. They start on the episode like any other episode that will have consequences, then they get to the end and realize they aren't allowed to change anything, so they just end it and return everything to normal, despite the massive internal changes that occurred. Either that, or they farmed out the writing to a bunch of hacks, because some of those episodes were just poorly written.
I live in New York in a place that doesn't have computer voting, but we do have a closed primary. At my polling place, there are two machines, one Democrat and one Republican. The administrators have a list of each voter and their party affiliation. I would guess that a similar system is in place in NJ.
I agree that it was one of the best plot points. I think many people were a little put off by it though. This is especially true of people who saw Battlestar as an allegory for 9/11. This ruthless other (that turns out to be a bunch of religious fanatics) comes to wipe out "civilization" and now the humans are on the run. Then it turns out that when the going gets tough, some of the humans turn to terrorist acts. I can see that being a little upsetting to some people. In fact, I witnessed this in the reactions of some friends who were shocked at twist in the story. This is what makes the show so great: it doesn't pull any punches. The writers don't seem to care about destroying people's conceptions of who is good and who is bad.
I think you're partly right about that. I also think that having the humans become terrorists during the occupation made many people uncomfortable. I also think that the series of craptacular single-shot episodes in the middle of the third season made many fans leave the show. Some of those episodes (the factory ship episode comes to mind) were so inane as to be almost unwatchable. You're right that the huge gap between seasons is bad for business. People who aren't devout followers of the show are simply going to forget about it.
I'm ok with the new office interface for the most part, though I do think they need to come up with some new icons for less commonly used items. Inserting objects into a presentation (if you want a video player that can handle mov files for instance) requires you to turn on the developer tab, then hover over the cryptic icons to find the "other controls" button. A menu would have made it easier because I could've just read the damn text instead of trying to figure out which 8x8 icon is the "other controls" button. Icons are great when they actually represent something. Icons make it really hard to find functionality that you don't know about. Text is descriptive, small icons are not. I had to go online to figure out how to insert an external control so that I could put my damn video in a presentation.
The new interface in Vista though is horrible. Explorer, which used to be a relatively useful app is now maddeningly difficult to use. I almost prefer the anemic command line to that POS. Instead of the big round menu button in the left corner to get at the now hidden functionality, we instead get the magic, "press the alt key" for the menu. I love mysterious functionality that is completely inconsistent. I like that they are trying new things, but sometimes new things suck.
The ribbon looks cool, so I'll give it that. The problem is that it is unique and does not appear to be optional. It resists people who can intuit things. The icons are great for people who are going to be taught things and can use the visual cues to remember. If you try to learn it yourself though, it actually resists your efforts. Most of those icons mean nothing and require hovering or trial and error; or you have to go find a tutorial. I guess interface design requires some give and take. I take issue with the general consensus that Microsoft did this wonderful thing with the ribbon. I think it is going to be great for teaching new users, but it will frustrate people who already knew how to use office, and also those who try to learn on their own, as they go.
I hope they ditch Hulu in favor of P2P. I have a Hulu account but I'm often tempted to go through illicit channels to get shows that are on hulu because hulu sucks so badly. It has the jerkiest video I've ever seen. I think it's their lame attempt to inject ads into the video stream that causes the problems. You get different ads each time you try to watch something so I assume it pulls ads off of another server and injects them in. This seems to cause major problems with the video stream, often causing it to simply stop for 5 or 10 minutes. It's gotten to the point where I hope for certain advertisers because some seem to work better than others. I don't know if they pull the ads off of the advertiser's server or what, but for some reason, some days when Chevy is sponsoring the show I'm watching, I can't get through the episode, but if I reload it might be sponsored by Toyota now, and it will work fine.
I don't have Tivo but I do try to watch shows when they're on the air. Sometimes I miss an episode and I refuse to continue watching until I'm caught up. Networks need to realize that people who want to watch their shows should be encouraged to do so. Don't fight them, don't frustrate them. If P2P is easier than going through hulu, people will do it. TV, especially network TV is free. People are never going to consider it to be anything else. You might be able to convince the majority that downloading movies without paying is piracy, but not TV. Lost is broadcast over the airwaves every thursday night, why the hell shouldn't I be able to download it off the internet as well? Put it on the P2P networks with the ads intact, I bet most people will happily download that instead of seeking out an ad-free version. I know I'd be happy with the ads if it meant I could actually watch the damn show.
They also dropped support for OS X 10.3.9 and below. The pool of software my aging TiBook can run is getting shallow. I think they advertise this better now, but when the first betas came out it was buried in some release notes. It would be really nice if Apple would include some way for you system to tell you when you're trying to run software that is too new for it. Some sort of API version data embedded in the executable would be nice, instead of just having it mysteriously crash.
Linux tends to be better about this; it usually prints to the console that you have the wrong version of a library. A nice little popup would be cool though.
I don't think it is just dialog fatigue; the problem is also that the user clearly wants what the dialog is promising to give them. When those dialogs come up because you clicked on a link, it's essentially saying, "Do you want this information you requested?" Of course the user is going to say yes. They wouldn't have clicked on the link otherwise. The problem is two fold: too many dialogs because too many reputable sources use these facilities; and users who just want the info they requested. Users have been trained to expect these dialogs because every lazy or thoughtless developer uses activeX objects to display stuff that either doesn't need to be displayed, or could be displayed in a more standardized way. Microsoft needs to make it even more difficult for the developers to give ActiveX objects to end users. They've done a decent job so far, but they need to go further. If it's easy, everybody will do it, and users will get used to it.
Or we could get rid of this easy to work with RAM that computers have now and go back to the olden days when you had to curse and scream and rip your hands to shreds on sharp metal corners to get at the RAM, which, once you got at was a pain in the ass to remove. Ah, the good old days.
I guess you could look at it like this: how sad is the gaming industry when people consider it revolutionary if somebody does something well? There are so many games out there that just tack the same plot (a [blank] force is attacking [homeworld], you are the only thing standing in their way. The twist is, you're a badass!) onto a new engine that it's no wonder that we consider a competently thought out game like Bioshock to be revolutionary. Isn't it revolutionary to use video games to tell a compelling story or create a compelling world instead of just letting young adult males act out their aggressive fantasies? I liked Doom and Quake as much as everybody else but are any of the thousands of games that came out and rehashed the same concept revolutionary? Can they be said to be "shaping" the industry? I mean, the industry was already in that "shape", which just happens to be the shape of a gib. Granted, Bioshock follows along the path set forth by System Shock, but Bioshock was a success, so it is now shaping the industry.
I guess I would compare it to the shift in film making that occured once they got the technique down enough to stop making films of trains moving along a track or a woman doing a flip of some kind, and started to make films that told stories and made audiences feel things. We've figured out how to simulate hair now and make bodies fly against a wall in a very convincing manner, so now we should start to make games that are more than just simulations. Simluations paved the way though, so we should still respect that. The model advanced by id with the game engines they sold to other companies helped to get the ball rolling. No longer do developers have to write everything from scratch, so they can concentrate on content. Content doesn't have to be that thing you add on to the engine you just created so that people will buy your pretty algorithms. Frankly, the same goes for other styles of gaming as well, not just first person shooters.
How many RPGs are the same damn plot on a new graphics engine or with a new combat/skills system? Oh my God! I can be a ninja in this installment of Final Fantasy? For reals? My angsty ninja is gonna look so cool when he discovers that the bad guy is really his father/best friend/former ally. I also have this problem with cute "innovative" games that are genuinely revolutionary in their game mechanics, but their content gets old. Mario Galaxy is fun, but I don't exactly feel compelled to finish it. The racing thing was cool as was the gravity changing world, but I'm getting tired of experimentation. I feel the same way when I'm reading a book and the author has clearly decided that he or she cares more about sentence structure than the story or characters.
As far as cameras go I believe the Nikon F3 is probably the toughest one ever made. Hell, it might be the toughest product ever made. Hold one in your hands someday and prepare to be impressed with both the weight and the solidness of those things. I think you could shoot one at close range and the film advance would still be butter smooth. The shutter would also still sound like a car door slamming, but the damn thing would also still work. The shutter is tested up to 150,000 shots. If I were a warzone photojournalist I would want an F3 around my neck, to make sure I got the shots and to deflect bullet.
As far as game systems go, my Sega Genesis and Sega CD still work fine while the drive on my Dreamcast is sorta flaking out. I just checked, my gameboy still works too.
Say what you will about Google and privacy concerns, but this is one case of Google doing something good. If they hadn't used Jabber/XMPP for Google Chat, I doubt that we would be seeing this level of interest from others. Just about everybody that I chat with uses Google Chat now, and so, for the first time they all use Jabber capable clients. This is a very good thing. If Google goes out of business, or just becomes unpopular, the infrastructure will now be there to somewhat effortlessly transition to a new dominant IM system that is based on open standards, instead of going back to the days of MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and ICQ, all fighting each other and their users.
I find the standalone Tivo to be superior to DirecTV Tivo, which sucks. I had always used my DirecTV Tivo and found the interface for a lot of tasks (mostly browsing channels) to be slow and painful, then I went over to a friend's house and was amazed at how fast their Tivo was. It had a different interface for a few things that I really hated on my DirecTV Tivo. I think DirecTV makes a few changes (or they use a crappy version of Tivo). It's all better than Comcast though.
I hope evolution switches quickly. Sometimes it's fine, but sometimes it takes so freaking long to render html email. I can go get a cup of coffee while it loads a single message. It doesn't always do it though.
I recently played Phantasy Star 1 in emulation and I was amazed at how good it was, and how good it looked. It stands the test of time much better than any NES RPG I've ever played. Pity Sega didn't keep it up with RPGs. The past few systems they've made have had one or two really good RPGs, a few crap titles, and not much else. When I finished Skies of Arcade for the Dreamcast I looked around for another good RPG, but all I found was Grandia 2 which is fun but is also the most linear game I've ever played. They don't even disguise it. You literally travel from one place to the next, forced along by the game, never to return to previous locations.
Sega has for me alwasy been a company that had some really great ideas but either bad luck or bad management. The Genesis was pretty popular, but beyond that they've really been a bit player for most of their existence, except in the arcades.
I do. The reason I like Epiphany over firefox is the bookmark system. I've never liked bookmarks very much and usually find that they become a horrible mess after a year or so of using a browser. The tag based bookmarks in Epiphany make it very easy to manage the bookmarks. There are some things I don't like (no fine grained javascript control) but the bookmarks keep me coming back. I'm hoping firefox 3 will allow for epiphany like bookmarks (I've heard you can make bookmark plugins for FF3). Until then, I'm sticking with epiphany.
Does anybody else think the internet has become one big arts and crafts fair? I mean, everybody sets up their booth for free and we all wander around looking at their works and then buy a slightly irrregular looking vase that has a few lumps to make ourselves feel good about supporting the arts. I hate the lawsuits against downloaders as much as everybody else, but I would be sad to find all the record companies go away. I guess I don't see the value of getting rid of the old model. I think there is plenty of diversity in recorded music right now. Yeah, there is a lot of top 40 crap out there, but there are plenty of labels releasing really good, exciting new music. People who claim otherwise just aren't looking very hard. Take a look at labels like Drag City or if you're set on the Internet, look at Catbird Seat. Which is an interesting label because it emerged from the blogosphere.
The internet is great for getting noticed, and if anything I think it will replace the local club where bands get noticed. I don't think the industry is going anywhere, people need a filter. I know I don't have time to sort through all the crap that gets posted online right now. To be honest, I'm not even that busy. I'm a bit lazy and procrastinate a lot, and still I find that I don't have the time to listen to it all. I have over 4000 songs on my iPod, much of it downloaded from mp3blogs, and I haven't listened to most of it. The problem with letting everybody make music and post it online is that everybody will. Even with tools like Songbird there is still too much, so most people will skip it and wait for the recording industry to filter it for them.
My other problem with ideas about getting around the recording industry is that I'm afraid that artists will never mature. With label deals and the like you get an artist who is given a chance, but not just to sell a few records and get their current vision out there, but also to grow and develop their style. I don't think the RIAA and the record companies are obsolete, nor do I think they ever will be, or at least I hope they won't. I think if traditional record companies did collapse, they would be replaced by a new industry. The arts are always going to need a filter, even more so now that everybody is more connected. Direct distribution will work for some edge cases and will be essential for some artists to get noticed, but I doubt it will become the dominant model.
What online music stores need is a digital equivalent of the sarcastic music store owner. When I was in college there was a record store at the far north end of university avenue in Seattle. The owner had some strong opinions and shared them with people (sometimes informing them that he "did not carry that kind of music"). I learned about more bands that I love to this day from that guy than from all the radio shows and blogs I've ever listened to. He introduced me to the White Stripes way before they made it big, to William Oldham and David Pajo. I wish that iTunes had some AI that would speak to me and say, "You're not gonna buy that are you? Okay, fine, whatever tool." I mean, blogs are good, but they aren't there to judge you when you're actually purchasing something. MySpace is just too horrible to even look at, so that's right out.
Before this line of reasoning goes too far, won't somebody please think of the shareholders? All they wanted to do was to fund an organization without doing do-diligence to make certain that their money wasn't being used to harm others. What's wrong with that?
Seriously though, I've always been a fan of the "too fucking bad" legal principle. I forget though, did we get that one from English Common law?
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in the primary you have to pick a side if you want to vote. Democrat or Republican. Once you choose, you must vote within that party. At least in a closed primary that is how it works. So, if you're a registered Green, you don't get to vote in the primary. In the general election of course, everybody gets to vote.
I didn't say it wasn't the point, I merely said that sometimes people don't like it. I like the show because it touches nerves. I don't think that is true of everybody.
I think the unsettling part of BSG's dealings with religion lie in the context of the show. Religion on B5 never seemed as nefarious as is does on BSG. It was more of quirky thing, to give each race character. In BSG you have a full blown clash of the civilizations: monotheists versus heathens. That can get pretty touchy and hit a little too close to home. In many ways that makes the show more effective, because the religion aspect is a lot more touchy. In B5 you never got the feeling that the Vorlons and Shadows were fighting for their God's, or because of any real differences other than this ancient conflict between "good" and "evil", "chaos" and "order". With BSG I can't help but be a little creeped out when the cylons ramble on about God's will. B5 was a great show, but I think it dealt with religion and prophesy in a fundamentally different, and safer, way.
Huh, that is weird. They force you to choose here, to the point that Greens and Libertarians can't vote in the primary.
I've moved around a lot in the past few years and I'm fascinated by the differences in how each state votes. New York has these huge mechanical voting machines with levers. California just had computers. Pennsylvania had this big board with soft plastic covered flat buttons, like the buttons on some coffee vending machines. It was electronic I guess, but the board was gigantic; a sort of primitive touch screen maybe.
You also had the option during a general election to just hit one button for a party-line vote. How convenient; you don't have to consider each candidate individually. Maybe that is a more honest assessment of how much thought people put into their votes though.
The one-offs could have been okay if they hadn't been so horrible. I think the problem with the one-offs is that the writers don't know how to write a one-off. They start on the episode like any other episode that will have consequences, then they get to the end and realize they aren't allowed to change anything, so they just end it and return everything to normal, despite the massive internal changes that occurred. Either that, or they farmed out the writing to a bunch of hacks, because some of those episodes were just poorly written.
hmm, that hadn't occurred to me. Good point, I'll have to go think about that for a while now. Seriously, Battlestar needs to come back NOW!
I live in New York in a place that doesn't have computer voting, but we do have a closed primary. At my polling place, there are two machines, one Democrat and one Republican. The administrators have a list of each voter and their party affiliation. I would guess that a similar system is in place in NJ.
I agree that it was one of the best plot points. I think many people were a little put off by it though. This is especially true of people who saw Battlestar as an allegory for 9/11. This ruthless other (that turns out to be a bunch of religious fanatics) comes to wipe out "civilization" and now the humans are on the run. Then it turns out that when the going gets tough, some of the humans turn to terrorist acts. I can see that being a little upsetting to some people. In fact, I witnessed this in the reactions of some friends who were shocked at twist in the story.
This is what makes the show so great: it doesn't pull any punches. The writers don't seem to care about destroying people's conceptions of who is good and who is bad.
I think you're partly right about that. I also think that having the humans become terrorists during the occupation made many people uncomfortable. I also think that the series of craptacular single-shot episodes in the middle of the third season made many fans leave the show. Some of those episodes (the factory ship episode comes to mind) were so inane as to be almost unwatchable.
You're right that the huge gap between seasons is bad for business. People who aren't devout followers of the show are simply going to forget about it.
Yeah, my Mac does that too when I plug in my iPod, except my Mac doesn't have any USB2 ports, so they're just rubbing salt in the wound.
I'm ok with the new office interface for the most part, though I do think they need to come up with some new icons for less commonly used items. Inserting objects into a presentation (if you want a video player that can handle mov files for instance) requires you to turn on the developer tab, then hover over the cryptic icons to find the "other controls" button. A menu would have made it easier because I could've just read the damn text instead of trying to figure out which 8x8 icon is the "other controls" button. Icons are great when they actually represent something. Icons make it really hard to find functionality that you don't know about. Text is descriptive, small icons are not. I had to go online to figure out how to insert an external control so that I could put my damn video in a presentation.
The new interface in Vista though is horrible. Explorer, which used to be a relatively useful app is now maddeningly difficult to use. I almost prefer the anemic command line to that POS. Instead of the big round menu button in the left corner to get at the now hidden functionality, we instead get the magic, "press the alt key" for the menu. I love mysterious functionality that is completely inconsistent. I like that they are trying new things, but sometimes new things suck.
The ribbon looks cool, so I'll give it that. The problem is that it is unique and does not appear to be optional. It resists people who can intuit things. The icons are great for people who are going to be taught things and can use the visual cues to remember. If you try to learn it yourself though, it actually resists your efforts. Most of those icons mean nothing and require hovering or trial and error; or you have to go find a tutorial. I guess interface design requires some give and take. I take issue with the general consensus that Microsoft did this wonderful thing with the ribbon. I think it is going to be great for teaching new users, but it will frustrate people who already knew how to use office, and also those who try to learn on their own, as they go.
I hope they ditch Hulu in favor of P2P. I have a Hulu account but I'm often tempted to go through illicit channels to get shows that are on hulu because hulu sucks so badly. It has the jerkiest video I've ever seen. I think it's their lame attempt to inject ads into the video stream that causes the problems. You get different ads each time you try to watch something so I assume it pulls ads off of another server and injects them in. This seems to cause major problems with the video stream, often causing it to simply stop for 5 or 10 minutes. It's gotten to the point where I hope for certain advertisers because some seem to work better than others. I don't know if they pull the ads off of the advertiser's server or what, but for some reason, some days when Chevy is sponsoring the show I'm watching, I can't get through the episode, but if I reload it might be sponsored by Toyota now, and it will work fine.
I don't have Tivo but I do try to watch shows when they're on the air. Sometimes I miss an episode and I refuse to continue watching until I'm caught up. Networks need to realize that people who want to watch their shows should be encouraged to do so. Don't fight them, don't frustrate them. If P2P is easier than going through hulu, people will do it. TV, especially network TV is free. People are never going to consider it to be anything else. You might be able to convince the majority that downloading movies without paying is piracy, but not TV. Lost is broadcast over the airwaves every thursday night, why the hell shouldn't I be able to download it off the internet as well? Put it on the P2P networks with the ads intact, I bet most people will happily download that instead of seeking out an ad-free version. I know I'd be happy with the ads if it meant I could actually watch the damn show.
They also dropped support for OS X 10.3.9 and below. The pool of software my aging TiBook can run is getting shallow. I think they advertise this better now, but when the first betas came out it was buried in some release notes. It would be really nice if Apple would include some way for you system to tell you when you're trying to run software that is too new for it. Some sort of API version data embedded in the executable would be nice, instead of just having it mysteriously crash.
Linux tends to be better about this; it usually prints to the console that you have the wrong version of a library. A nice little popup would be cool though.
I don't think it is just dialog fatigue; the problem is also that the user clearly wants what the dialog is promising to give them. When those dialogs come up because you clicked on a link, it's essentially saying, "Do you want this information you requested?" Of course the user is going to say yes. They wouldn't have clicked on the link otherwise. The problem is two fold: too many dialogs because too many reputable sources use these facilities; and users who just want the info they requested. Users have been trained to expect these dialogs because every lazy or thoughtless developer uses activeX objects to display stuff that either doesn't need to be displayed, or could be displayed in a more standardized way.
Microsoft needs to make it even more difficult for the developers to give ActiveX objects to end users. They've done a decent job so far, but they need to go further. If it's easy, everybody will do it, and users will get used to it.
Or we could get rid of this easy to work with RAM that computers have now and go back to the olden days when you had to curse and scream and rip your hands to shreds on sharp metal corners to get at the RAM, which, once you got at was a pain in the ass to remove. Ah, the good old days.
I guess you could look at it like this: how sad is the gaming industry when people consider it revolutionary if somebody does something well? There are so many games out there that just tack the same plot (a [blank] force is attacking [homeworld], you are the only thing standing in their way. The twist is, you're a badass!) onto a new engine that it's no wonder that we consider a competently thought out game like Bioshock to be revolutionary. Isn't it revolutionary to use video games to tell a compelling story or create a compelling world instead of just letting young adult males act out their aggressive fantasies? I liked Doom and Quake as much as everybody else but are any of the thousands of games that came out and rehashed the same concept revolutionary? Can they be said to be "shaping" the industry? I mean, the industry was already in that "shape", which just happens to be the shape of a gib. Granted, Bioshock follows along the path set forth by System Shock, but Bioshock was a success, so it is now shaping the industry.
:)
I guess I would compare it to the shift in film making that occured once they got the technique down enough to stop making films of trains moving along a track or a woman doing a flip of some kind, and started to make films that told stories and made audiences feel things. We've figured out how to simulate hair now and make bodies fly against a wall in a very convincing manner, so now we should start to make games that are more than just simulations. Simluations paved the way though, so we should still respect that. The model advanced by id with the game engines they sold to other companies helped to get the ball rolling. No longer do developers have to write everything from scratch, so they can concentrate on content. Content doesn't have to be that thing you add on to the engine you just created so that people will buy your pretty algorithms. Frankly, the same goes for other styles of gaming as well, not just first person shooters.
How many RPGs are the same damn plot on a new graphics engine or with a new combat/skills system? Oh my God! I can be a ninja in this installment of Final Fantasy? For reals? My angsty ninja is gonna look so cool when he discovers that the bad guy is really his father/best friend/former ally. I also have this problem with cute "innovative" games that are genuinely revolutionary in their game mechanics, but their content gets old. Mario Galaxy is fun, but I don't exactly feel compelled to finish it. The racing thing was cool as was the gravity changing world, but I'm getting tired of experimentation. I feel the same way when I'm reading a book and the author has clearly decided that he or she cares more about sentence structure than the story or characters.
I guess I'm feeling grumpy and old today.
As far as cameras go I believe the Nikon F3 is probably the toughest one ever made. Hell, it might be the toughest product ever made. Hold one in your hands someday and prepare to be impressed with both the weight and the solidness of those things. I think you could shoot one at close range and the film advance would still be butter smooth. The shutter would also still sound like a car door slamming, but the damn thing would also still work. The shutter is tested up to 150,000 shots. If I were a warzone photojournalist I would want an F3 around my neck, to make sure I got the shots and to deflect bullet.
As far as game systems go, my Sega Genesis and Sega CD still work fine while the drive on my Dreamcast is sorta flaking out. I just checked, my gameboy still works too.
Say what you will about Google and privacy concerns, but this is one case of Google doing something good. If they hadn't used Jabber/XMPP for Google Chat, I doubt that we would be seeing this level of interest from others. Just about everybody that I chat with uses Google Chat now, and so, for the first time they all use Jabber capable clients. This is a very good thing. If Google goes out of business, or just becomes unpopular, the infrastructure will now be there to somewhat effortlessly transition to a new dominant IM system that is based on open standards, instead of going back to the days of MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and ICQ, all fighting each other and their users.
I find the standalone Tivo to be superior to DirecTV Tivo, which sucks. I had always used my DirecTV Tivo and found the interface for a lot of tasks (mostly browsing channels) to be slow and painful, then I went over to a friend's house and was amazed at how fast their Tivo was. It had a different interface for a few things that I really hated on my DirecTV Tivo. I think DirecTV makes a few changes (or they use a crappy version of Tivo). It's all better than Comcast though.
I hope evolution switches quickly. Sometimes it's fine, but sometimes it takes so freaking long to render html email. I can go get a cup of coffee while it loads a single message. It doesn't always do it though.
I recently played Phantasy Star 1 in emulation and I was amazed at how good it was, and how good it looked. It stands the test of time much better than any NES RPG I've ever played. Pity Sega didn't keep it up with RPGs. The past few systems they've made have had one or two really good RPGs, a few crap titles, and not much else. When I finished Skies of Arcade for the Dreamcast I looked around for another good RPG, but all I found was Grandia 2 which is fun but is also the most linear game I've ever played. They don't even disguise it. You literally travel from one place to the next, forced along by the game, never to return to previous locations.
Sega has for me alwasy been a company that had some really great ideas but either bad luck or bad management. The Genesis was pretty popular, but beyond that they've really been a bit player for most of their existence, except in the arcades.
I do. The reason I like Epiphany over firefox is the bookmark system. I've never liked bookmarks very much and usually find that they become a horrible mess after a year or so of using a browser. The tag based bookmarks in Epiphany make it very easy to manage the bookmarks. There are some things I don't like (no fine grained javascript control) but the bookmarks keep me coming back. I'm hoping firefox 3 will allow for epiphany like bookmarks (I've heard you can make bookmark plugins for FF3). Until then, I'm sticking with epiphany.
Does anybody else think the internet has become one big arts and crafts fair? I mean, everybody sets up their booth for free and we all wander around looking at their works and then buy a slightly irrregular looking vase that has a few lumps to make ourselves feel good about supporting the arts. I hate the lawsuits against downloaders as much as everybody else, but I would be sad to find all the record companies go away. I guess I don't see the value of getting rid of the old model. I think there is plenty of diversity in recorded music right now. Yeah, there is a lot of top 40 crap out there, but there are plenty of labels releasing really good, exciting new music. People who claim otherwise just aren't looking very hard. Take a look at labels like Drag City or if you're set on the Internet, look at Catbird Seat. Which is an interesting label because it emerged from the blogosphere.
The internet is great for getting noticed, and if anything I think it will replace the local club where bands get noticed. I don't think the industry is going anywhere, people need a filter. I know I don't have time to sort through all the crap that gets posted online right now. To be honest, I'm not even that busy. I'm a bit lazy and procrastinate a lot, and still I find that I don't have the time to listen to it all. I have over 4000 songs on my iPod, much of it downloaded from mp3blogs, and I haven't listened to most of it. The problem with letting everybody make music and post it online is that everybody will. Even with tools like Songbird there is still too much, so most people will skip it and wait for the recording industry to filter it for them.
My other problem with ideas about getting around the recording industry is that I'm afraid that artists will never mature. With label deals and the like you get an artist who is given a chance, but not just to sell a few records and get their current vision out there, but also to grow and develop their style. I don't think the RIAA and the record companies are obsolete, nor do I think they ever will be, or at least I hope they won't. I think if traditional record companies did collapse, they would be replaced by a new industry. The arts are always going to need a filter, even more so now that everybody is more connected. Direct distribution will work for some edge cases and will be essential for some artists to get noticed, but I doubt it will become the dominant model.
What online music stores need is a digital equivalent of the sarcastic music store owner. When I was in college there was a record store at the far north end of university avenue in Seattle. The owner had some strong opinions and shared them with people (sometimes informing them that he "did not carry that kind of music"). I learned about more bands that I love to this day from that guy than from all the radio shows and blogs I've ever listened to. He introduced me to the White Stripes way before they made it big, to William Oldham and David Pajo. I wish that iTunes had some AI that would speak to me and say, "You're not gonna buy that are you? Okay, fine, whatever tool." I mean, blogs are good, but they aren't there to judge you when you're actually purchasing something. MySpace is just too horrible to even look at, so that's right out.
Before this line of reasoning goes too far, won't somebody please think of the shareholders? All they wanted to do was to fund an organization without doing do-diligence to make certain that their money wasn't being used to harm others. What's wrong with that?
Seriously though, I've always been a fan of the "too fucking bad" legal principle. I forget though, did we get that one from English Common law?