One day, your precious (almost) commercial-free satellite radio content will go the way of commercial-free cable TV content. Prices will go up, and amount of content will go down owinf to commercials creep in "to pay the bills".
I wish I had mod points. When I buy a newspaper or magazine, I get ads. When I pay for cable, I get ads. When my brother in law pays for AOL, he gets ads. Go to the Movies recently? Yep, you pay at the door and then still get ads. Ok, ok, at least public radio and TV don't have ads, right? It's complicated, but boils down to you pledging, plus you get some amount of advertising.
Ads will show up. Some how, some way. We can (and should) beg and plead to minimize them (public radio is still far better than commercial top 40), but you can bet XM and Serious will eventually be bitten by a gready company exec who sees dollar signs in his captive audience.
Nice lists and links, but what does it all mean? What do the media licenses look like? How much per disk? Are they tied up in one company that can raise and lower them at will? How about that player? Is the technology shared equaly for participants or horded by one company. Is there flexibility for extentions or are you pretty much forced to go with the reference? How much do you pay toward the licensee?
Now I don't know ANY of these answers. Nope, none. But I'll bet these answers will go much farther toward explaining whether a format is really open than publishing a list of companies that will use the technology.
Just because Sandisk makes and sells MemoryStick media doesn't mean that MS isn't proprietary for all intents and purposes.
If I'm going to spend $200 on a system, but there's another one that's maybe a little bit fancier for 50 bucks more, I might say what the heck, and spend a little extra. But if the price difference is between $200 and $500-600, there's not even a comparison. That's not even the same market.
Your right, it's not even the same market, but for more reasons than price. Sony and Microsoft are selling dramatic updates to their current systems. Graphics, ability to push HD resolutions, network play and even Media are seeing major improvments, but game play style and types of games are about the same.
On the other hand, Nintendo is offering very different gameplay, but with only slightly improved graphics (I don't recall if there will be a media upgrade).
What do you end up with. As you put it, a completely different market. I'll even go as far as to say, the number of people that will buy Wii instead of a PS3 will be miniscule. Those people aren't in the market for a Wii to begin with. They'll get an Xbox 360 instead. Wii might be purchased as a fun game machinge in it's own right, but no one who wants the best eye-candy and traditional gameplay is going to see it as a viable substitute for the heavy hitters, regardless of price difference.
I never realized until this article, but this is the exact reason I tend to avoid games with a highly developed story lines. If you're "playing" a story, then you have to be restricted and, usually, you'll end up being restricted in some arbitrary way.
In Unreal Tournatment, Battlefield2, etc, the restrictions are static and well understood by the players. Even though they have a "story" behind every map in BF2, I couldn't tell you what it is because it's wholly irrelevant to gameplay and I never bothered to read it.
On the other hand, playing Black, even with as weak as the story is, I have to follow the course of action dictated by the specific place I am in the plot. Sure, I have the "freedom" to blow apart tombstones, but only because that's necessary to the plot. Similarly, I can blow apart walls, floors and ceilings, but not arbitrarily. Only where it's important to the plot.
I don't want to be guessing what the storyteller thinks it's important for me to do in any specific "scene". I'd rather have an internally consistant world and simply use my own brain to mold that world to my advantage in the game. That's relatively easy to do in competitive FPSs and a lot of other games with weak stories. The bettery your story is, though, and the more that designer is going to have to reign me in... and the more I'm going to have to avoid giving them my money.
Even the mother of at least on of these people had to supress a chuckle when hearing "15 foot wave of molassas." I don't know what passed for "Punked" in those days, but you know a few of them had to have thought it was some kind of joke.
Myspace is to today as AOL Chatrooms were to the 90's. All the hip pedophiles use MySpace.
You are absolutely correct. Pedophiles definately use MySpace. They also use the carpool lane, the grocery store, a knife every time they want to chop lettuce and even a voting booth from time to time. The sooner we ban all these things the safer our precious children will be.
I've seen the movie. I've seen it a lot. I've seen the origional US release with the voice overs, I've seen the directors cut with the unicorn. I own the director's cut on DVD.
I'm having a hard time understanding what I should get all excited about here. Yes, this may be the best sci-fi flick of all time, but I'm not sure what seeing a slightly different version is going to do for me.
Will it invalidate all my other viewings by being so far-and-above superior? Will it help me feel smug in the fact that I've actualy been watching the "best" version all these years? Will it make me want to re-watch a flick for the 15th time even though I know in my heart of hearts I still have at least a year more to go before I'll actually be interested in seeing it again?
Maybe I'm not really the kind of geek I thought I was. Maybe I _should_ be interested in 6 hours of viewing (not counting comentary) that amounts to about 2 hours 20 minutes worth of unique footage. I know I'm starting to belabor the point, but if I really want to see the movie again, I don't think I'll be disapointed with the DVD I already own. After all, it _is_, IMHO, the best sci-fi flick ever.
I was in a position to get a cell phone for my ex-girlfriend's dad and this is exactly what he got:
Cell phone: free with the plan. The plan: attached to mine for $10 a month. Most of his calls were to his daughter who was also on the plan and those callse were free. The rest of his calls mostly happened on nights and weekends so they didn't cost anything.
I pay for every text and about $30 a month for unlimited data. I call heavily during the day as part of my work so my voice plan is expensive too.
Who's subsidizing who? Really, you simple phone and voice-only people with your free calls, free long distance and no need for internet or texting need to get a grip. Yes, the service could be better, but it's not because of my fancy phone. They make way more than enough off of my services to build out infrastructure. Far more than they're making off of you.
Sorry bud, but if you think you're paying for my gadgets then you might as well pony up with some numbers. From where I'm sitting it looks like you're on easy street and complaining that it could be even easier if all us people paying your way would pay even more.
Here's a hint: When they give you a phone and let you have a fixed-rate plan with rollover, free nights and weekends, free calls with others on the same carrier and free long distance and your bill comes out to less than $50 a month, then you're not the subsidizer. You never were and you never will be. They guy paying phone bills over $100 a month, and especially the one paying more than $200, they're doing the subsidizing. That's the way these things work.
Just sit back and thank goodness that all you need is the loss leader services. I hate to be rude, but it does bother me that I'm paying your way, and you're the one complaining about it.
I love phones packed with as many features as can be packed. I've gotten a series of ever more complex cell phones and I've enjoyed each one more and more.
But guess what, you're right.
I'm not like everyone else. I've realized for a long time that the compromizes I'm willing to make for the features I want are not compromizes very many of my friends or family would be willing to make. I've gottent to the point that I won't even recommend a phone that I personally love if I think that the phone will be too frustrating to the person asking for the recommendation.
So here's the deal. Why can't you have your simple phone AND I have my complex phone? Is there any reason why one of these should be "better" as opposed to "better for you" or "better for me"? I applaud people making their oppinions known to cell phone providers and manufacturers so more simple phones will be offered. All I ask it that you don't tell them to stop offering phones with the great features I want. Really, we can coexist in peace.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your college paper doesn't pre-date Cecil Adams, who published the same answer in 1984: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Cecil Adams' response was only correct for one interpretation of the question. That interpretation is a question of whether eggs of any sort existed before chickens of any sort. His interpretation is only useful if you intend to be a smart-ass by answering the letter of the question rather than the common interpretation. The more common interpretation of this question is whether chicken eggs existed before chickens themselves. That is the question that TFA seeks to answer.
BTW, I also answered this question years ago (though not before '84). All it got me was dumb stares from the people I told it to. Now that my answer has been "officially confirmed" I expect nothing but head scratching and comments like, "I don't remember you saying anything like that at all."
The answer is actaully quite obvious from an evolutionary perspective. If evolution happens between generations, then what came before the first chicken egg had to be a non-chicken. Thus the egg came first.
I like the kind of games where people put time rather than money into it to get more out of it.
In my opinion, both are real problems. I enjoy friendly competition and social interaction. Money certainly won't get me either of those. Time usually helps relationships, if you're spending it working on the relationehip, but time spent "leveling up" does not.
My picks for getting more out of gaming are for games to emphasize pitting players against other players of ballpark similar skill levels ( Bots and NPCs are too boring) and for games to make it easy to talk to the guy your competing against. Basically, make video games more like sandlot baseball or coworker basketball. Emphasizing time or money to level up takes unfair advantage of everybodies desire to be a big shot, and de-emphasizes what traditional gaming (not just video gaming) is all about; competing with folks you want to have fun with.
This is politics 101. You don't bash the people who have no chance of winning. You compliment them for their pluck, their uniqueness and their creativity. If later on it looks like they have a chance, you can bash them then.
The reason: You look like a magnanimous good guy. Some of the good underdog vibes actually rub off on you. You're humanized.
You risk little, because you know this guy is no competition anyway.
Hell, people are talking about an Xbox _and_ a Wii or maybe a PS3 and a Wii. Nobody sees the Wii as their primary box. They don't take it seriously like they do the big boys. They like it, but they like as the quirky underdog sidekick and definitely not like the action hero. Microsoft and Sony are only complimenting Nintendo because they see Nintendo as zero threat.
TW
(real world example: Check some old tapes (or memory cells) for the first Perot/Clinton/H.W.Bush debate. Bush and Clinton both not only played softball with, but actually complemented Perot. Only later in the campaign as Perot's numbers started to climb did they start to challenge him. If this strategy is good enough for two presidents, then it's definitely good enough for Sony and Microsoft.)
This legislation is aimed to help average workers. There's little benefit for big business or legislators. It will never pass.
You have to wonder. The GOP was all hot and bothered about eliminating the capital gains tax which they referred to as "double taxation." Will they fight for relief of this tax which really is double taxation?
The main difference between the two: Rich guys get capital gains while average folks telecommute.
I think the GOP has a chance to show what kind of a party they really are. I hope they surprise me and support this.
As a matter of law - a police detective, in the course of a criminal investigation, can pull the LUDS for anyone without a warrant.
I had to look up LUDS (Local [phone] Usage Detail for those still curious) and I think you may be only partially right. The references I saw (most were talking about Law & Order episodes) seem to indicate that the police can pull the details of calls made to or from the victim of a crime. Though I'm not disputing your details, mostly because I have so few myself, this would be quite a bit different than pulling all the records of a suspect without a warrant.
The first scenerio I have little difficulty with because it's actually a search of the victims phone record which the victim presumeably would agree to. The second scenerio would seem to be a blatant search of a suspect without a warrant.
While I find both cases objectionable invasions, they are not illegal or unconstitutional.
This is the problem. So many people think that because something has been declared "legal" that that's the end of the story. More people need to realize that if you find a legal act objectionable, you're well within your rights to call for a change of the law. In fact, many would argue that it's even a responsibility.
I think you're misunderstanding. The proposed program would look at phone call records only, not actual phone calls.
So what? Sorry, I don't mean to be flipant, but gathering my confidential call data and looking for criminal activity in my mind is as much a search as a pat down. The fact that they're not actually listening to me talk sexy with my girlfriend is nice, but it doesn't correct the problem that a the state would be analysing the time and phone number of every call I participate in then they'd be making a determination of whether or not I was probably a criminal. When the government conducts routine searches of our routine daily activities then that, in my mind, is both unreasonable, and, as a result, unconstitutional.
I have one of these. It's fun in some games and a pain in the butt in others. I really enjoyed Motocross Madness, but car driving games, well, drove me crazy.
The Wiimote is a very different technology, but it suffers from the same fatal flaws as every other motion sensing controller (you can count the EyeToy in here too)... a)the body likes to push against something and b) the body likes small control movments.
Don't get me wrong, I do like motion sensing stuff once in a while, but this is something you'll want to avoid if playing for long periods of time. Long as in more than about half an hour.
Sony should have realized this and let Nintendo hang themselves with their own nunchuck rope. Nintendo does realize this to some degree which is why it's pushing the family friendliness of the box... families don't videogame for hours on end.
Would you buy a nice 32" LCD HDTV set for about $300? It's about the same size and price as the one in your living room, but it looks a lot better and it'll take up a heck of a lot less space. Plus, your current TV is a few years old and the color isn't quite what you had hoped. Certainly nothing like these 900:1 contrast ratio marvels they have at the Wal-Mart. You saw them playing Gladiator on Blu-Ray from a PS3 and it looked phenominal. It totaly blew away the experience you have with the same DVD at home.
$300 is not that much. Heck, it's about the same price as the PS3 that was driving it. Xmas for the LCD and the PS3 for your kids birthday in Feb? You could swing that, couldn't you?
Welcome to November 2008. How much would your 19" LCD have cost you in January 2004? What was the contrast ratio? What was the refresh rate?
How much would you have payed for a PS2 at launch? Isn't even $400 for an Xbox 360 ridiculous? I din't buy one. Me, and most of the guys at the Wal-Mart, won't be buying one until it hits far closer to $200. Same with the PS3. And When I do, cheap and plentiful HDTV will not be a problem.
It can play blu-ray? Great...except I can't afford a TV that the movies will look good on, and I'm not too keen on replacing my (perfectly fine) DVD collection this
This is a perfectly valid argument for 2006, but what about 2008? When HDTV hits critical mass, the choices of pre-recorded medial are either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Period. If Blu-Ray becomes VHS and HD-DVD becomes Beta (we'll see) then the PS3 is going to have a very nice selling point over the competition, especially if the price of stand-alone Blu-Ray players hovers around $200 or more.
If you look at things past today, as console makers are always forced to do with brand new boxes, then the PS3 will have more value through the lifespan of the product. That's not always engough to guarantee success, but it certainly helps.
How to install and uninstall (most) software? Drag and drop. Need to restart after an install or uninstall? No, in fact restarts are a monthly occurance at worst.
When I installed Firefox on my ex girlfriends Mac, it created a virtual drive which proceeded to uppack everything before finally running the app. It did this every time you ran the app. Sure, the "install" was simple, only it wasn't an install at all, but something inbetween that traded a shorter initial setup time for longer load times.
Furthermore, it was not clear how I could hide this from the desktop and put a shortcut in the main menu structure. Or better yet, how could I decompress it permanently to get better load times?
Now I'm sure vetran Mac users are chuckling and saying something like "(giggle, giggle) he doesn't know about the three shells?!?! (giggle, giggle) What a moron!" But you just can't have it both ways. You can't say with one side of your mouth, "Macs just work" and "Macs are easy to use" and then with the other side give some poor PC user a hard time because making apps work better in the long run is so non-obvious.
Linux is no better. I like Linux because I'm a tinkerer. Linux is the ultimate tweeker OS. But the first few times I went to install apps, it was as non-obvious as could be. I learned what I needed to learn eventually, and I even came across some nicely packaged apps that made instals much easier, but it took me a while to get where I was going.
So what about "joe average"? Joe will need to install apps. Joe will need to install drivers. He'll need to easily find all the shortcuts and settigs panels he'll need after doing so. He should not have to rely upon the family geek to do these things. Windows is not top-notch in these areas, but it beats Linux. This is an opportunity for improvement.
If his conclusions are based on poorly chosen assumptions then the conclusions will be bad. One of the easiest ways to make bad assumptions is to have an agenda that drives your choices of assumptions.
Scientists ask questions and then find the answers to those questions via experimentation. People with an agenda draw conclusions and then try to find facts to match their conclusions. It's possible that the two can end up with the same answer at the end of the day, but the evidence is that people with agendas tend to be inaccurate in their agenda's favor more often.
If Microft tells you they had their techs run a scientific study and that that study proved that Windows server 2003 was better than Linux, Unix and Mac servers for a particular task, would your gut reaction be to take them at face value? How about if Linus proved that Linux was better. Jobs proved that Macs kick ass? They all might be right for their particular application, but my gut reaction would be to not take them at face value. Because they each have an agenda.
It's nice to have some numbers, but this doesn't appear to be very scientific. This is from the abstract:
Finally, I estimate that (per year and unit area) the inefficient solar cells produce ~100 times more electricity than corn ethanol. We need to rely more on sunlight, the only source of renewable energy on the Earth.
Scientists gather data. This guy appears to be pushing an agenda. It's kind of like Intelligent Design. Just because you say it's science doesn't make it so.
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It's our right to make poop. Some of it can even be used as fertilizer.
TW
One day, your precious (almost) commercial-free satellite radio content will go the way of commercial-free cable TV content. Prices will go up, and amount of content will go down owinf to commercials creep in "to pay the bills".
I wish I had mod points. When I buy a newspaper or magazine, I get ads. When I pay for cable, I get ads. When my brother in law pays for AOL, he gets ads. Go to the Movies recently? Yep, you pay at the door and then still get ads. Ok, ok, at least public radio and TV don't have ads, right? It's complicated, but boils down to you pledging, plus you get some amount of advertising.
Ads will show up. Some how, some way. We can (and should) beg and plead to minimize them (public radio is still far better than commercial top 40), but you can bet XM and Serious will eventually be bitten by a gready company exec who sees dollar signs in his captive audience.
TW
Nice lists and links, but what does it all mean? What do the media licenses look like? How much per disk? Are they tied up in one company that can raise and lower them at will? How about that player? Is the technology shared equaly for participants or horded by one company. Is there flexibility for extentions or are you pretty much forced to go with the reference? How much do you pay toward the licensee?
Now I don't know ANY of these answers. Nope, none. But I'll bet these answers will go much farther toward explaining whether a format is really open than publishing a list of companies that will use the technology.
Just because Sandisk makes and sells MemoryStick media doesn't mean that MS isn't proprietary for all intents and purposes.
TW
unless they're outright lying and they photoshopped something, why should we take this story with a grain of salt?
For the same reason Pons and Fleishman shouldn't have popped champagne corks over cold fusion. A single source is often wrong.
I'll wait for the equivalent of scientific concensus.
TW
If I'm going to spend $200 on a system, but there's another one that's maybe a little bit fancier for 50 bucks more, I might say what the heck, and spend a little extra. But if the price difference is between $200 and $500-600, there's not even a comparison. That's not even the same market.
Your right, it's not even the same market, but for more reasons than price. Sony and Microsoft are selling dramatic updates to their current systems. Graphics, ability to push HD resolutions, network play and even Media are seeing major improvments, but game play style and types of games are about the same.
On the other hand, Nintendo is offering very different gameplay, but with only slightly improved graphics (I don't recall if there will be a media upgrade).
What do you end up with. As you put it, a completely different market. I'll even go as far as to say, the number of people that will buy Wii instead of a PS3 will be miniscule. Those people aren't in the market for a Wii to begin with. They'll get an Xbox 360 instead. Wii might be purchased as a fun game machinge in it's own right, but no one who wants the best eye-candy and traditional gameplay is going to see it as a viable substitute for the heavy hitters, regardless of price difference.
TW
I never realized until this article, but this is the exact reason I tend to avoid games with a highly developed story lines. If you're "playing" a story, then you have to be restricted and, usually, you'll end up being restricted in some arbitrary way.
In Unreal Tournatment, Battlefield2, etc, the restrictions are static and well understood by the players. Even though they have a "story" behind every map in BF2, I couldn't tell you what it is because it's wholly irrelevant to gameplay and I never bothered to read it.
On the other hand, playing Black, even with as weak as the story is, I have to follow the course of action dictated by the specific place I am in the plot. Sure, I have the "freedom" to blow apart tombstones, but only because that's necessary to the plot. Similarly, I can blow apart walls, floors and ceilings, but not arbitrarily. Only where it's important to the plot.
I don't want to be guessing what the storyteller thinks it's important for me to do in any specific "scene". I'd rather have an internally consistant world and simply use my own brain to mold that world to my advantage in the game. That's relatively easy to do in competitive FPSs and a lot of other games with weak stories. The bettery your story is, though, and the more that designer is going to have to reign me in... and the more I'm going to have to avoid giving them my money.
TW
Even the mother of at least on of these people had to supress a chuckle when hearing "15 foot wave of molassas." I don't know what passed for "Punked" in those days, but you know a few of them had to have thought it was some kind of joke.
TW
Myspace is to today as AOL Chatrooms were to the 90's. All the hip pedophiles use MySpace.
You are absolutely correct. Pedophiles definately use MySpace. They also use the carpool lane, the grocery store, a knife every time they want to chop lettuce and even a voting booth from time to time. The sooner we ban all these things the safer our precious children will be.
TW
I've seen the movie. I've seen it a lot. I've seen the origional US release with the voice overs, I've seen the directors cut with the unicorn. I own the director's cut on DVD.
I'm having a hard time understanding what I should get all excited about here. Yes, this may be the best sci-fi flick of all time, but I'm not sure what seeing a slightly different version is going to do for me.
Will it invalidate all my other viewings by being so far-and-above superior? Will it help me feel smug in the fact that I've actualy been watching the "best" version all these years? Will it make me want to re-watch a flick for the 15th time even though I know in my heart of hearts I still have at least a year more to go before I'll actually be interested in seeing it again?
Maybe I'm not really the kind of geek I thought I was. Maybe I _should_ be interested in 6 hours of viewing (not counting comentary) that amounts to about 2 hours 20 minutes worth of unique footage. I know I'm starting to belabor the point, but if I really want to see the movie again, I don't think I'll be disapointed with the DVD I already own. After all, it _is_, IMHO, the best sci-fi flick ever.
TW
I was in a position to get a cell phone for my ex-girlfriend's dad and this is exactly what he got:
Cell phone: free with the plan.
The plan: attached to mine for $10 a month.
Most of his calls were to his daughter who was also on the plan and those callse were free. The rest of his calls mostly happened on nights and weekends so they didn't cost anything.
I pay for every text and about $30 a month for unlimited data. I call heavily during the day as part of my work so my voice plan is expensive too.
Who's subsidizing who? Really, you simple phone and voice-only people with your free calls, free long distance and no need for internet or texting need to get a grip. Yes, the service could be better, but it's not because of my fancy phone. They make way more than enough off of my services to build out infrastructure. Far more than they're making off of you.
Sorry bud, but if you think you're paying for my gadgets then you might as well pony up with some numbers. From where I'm sitting it looks like you're on easy street and complaining that it could be even easier if all us people paying your way would pay even more.
Here's a hint: When they give you a phone and let you have a fixed-rate plan with rollover, free nights and weekends, free calls with others on the same carrier and free long distance and your bill comes out to less than $50 a month, then you're not the subsidizer. You never were and you never will be. They guy paying phone bills over $100 a month, and especially the one paying more than $200, they're doing the subsidizing. That's the way these things work.
Just sit back and thank goodness that all you need is the loss leader services. I hate to be rude, but it does bother me that I'm paying your way, and you're the one complaining about it.
TW
I love phones packed with as many features as can be packed. I've gotten a series of ever more complex cell phones and I've enjoyed each one more and more.
But guess what, you're right.
I'm not like everyone else. I've realized for a long time that the compromizes I'm willing to make for the features I want are not compromizes very many of my friends or family would be willing to make. I've gottent to the point that I won't even recommend a phone that I personally love if I think that the phone will be too frustrating to the person asking for the recommendation.
So here's the deal. Why can't you have your simple phone AND I have my complex phone? Is there any reason why one of these should be "better" as opposed to "better for you" or "better for me"? I applaud people making their oppinions known to cell phone providers and manufacturers so more simple phones will be offered. All I ask it that you don't tell them to stop offering phones with the great features I want. Really, we can coexist in peace.
TW
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your college paper doesn't pre-date Cecil Adams, who published the same answer in 1984: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Cecil Adams' response was only correct for one interpretation of the question. That interpretation is a question of whether eggs of any sort existed before chickens of any sort. His interpretation is only useful if you intend to be a smart-ass by answering the letter of the question rather than the common interpretation. The more common interpretation of this question is whether chicken eggs existed before chickens themselves. That is the question that TFA seeks to answer.
BTW, I also answered this question years ago (though not before '84). All it got me was dumb stares from the people I told it to. Now that my answer has been "officially confirmed" I expect nothing but head scratching and comments like, "I don't remember you saying anything like that at all."
The answer is actaully quite obvious from an evolutionary perspective. If evolution happens between generations, then what came before the first chicken egg had to be a non-chicken. Thus the egg came first.
TW
You can't leave me hanging like that. Where's te Ghandi quote?
TW
I like the kind of games where people put time rather than money into it to get more out of it.
In my opinion, both are real problems. I enjoy friendly competition and social interaction. Money certainly won't get me either of those. Time usually helps relationships, if you're spending it working on the relationehip, but time spent "leveling up" does not.
My picks for getting more out of gaming are for games to emphasize pitting players against other players of ballpark similar skill levels ( Bots and NPCs are too boring) and for games to make it easy to talk to the guy your competing against. Basically, make video games more like sandlot baseball or coworker basketball. Emphasizing time or money to level up takes unfair advantage of everybodies desire to be a big shot, and de-emphasizes what traditional gaming (not just video gaming) is all about; competing with folks you want to have fun with.
TW
With enemies like these, who needs friends?
This is politics 101. You don't bash the people who have no chance of winning. You compliment them for their pluck, their uniqueness and their creativity. If later on it looks like they have a chance, you can bash them then.
The reason: You look like a magnanimous good guy. Some of the good underdog vibes actually rub off on you. You're humanized.
You risk little, because you know this guy is no competition anyway.
Hell, people are talking about an Xbox _and_ a Wii or maybe a PS3 and a Wii. Nobody sees the Wii as their primary box. They don't take it seriously like they do the big boys. They like it, but they like as the quirky underdog sidekick and definitely not like the action hero. Microsoft and Sony are only complimenting Nintendo because they see Nintendo as zero threat.
TW
(real world example: Check some old tapes (or memory cells) for the first Perot/Clinton/H.W.Bush debate. Bush and Clinton both not only played softball with, but actually complemented Perot. Only later in the campaign as Perot's numbers started to climb did they start to challenge him. If this strategy is good enough for two presidents, then it's definitely good enough for Sony and Microsoft.)
This legislation is aimed to help average workers. There's little benefit for big business or legislators. It will never pass.
You have to wonder. The GOP was all hot and bothered about eliminating the capital gains tax which they referred to as "double taxation." Will they fight for relief of this tax which really is double taxation?
The main difference between the two: Rich guys get capital gains while average folks telecommute.
I think the GOP has a chance to show what kind of a party they really are. I hope they surprise me and support this.
TW
As a matter of law - a police detective, in the course of a criminal investigation, can pull the LUDS for anyone without a warrant.
I had to look up LUDS (Local [phone] Usage Detail for those still curious) and I think you may be only partially right. The references I saw (most were talking about Law & Order episodes) seem to indicate that the police can pull the details of calls made to or from the victim of a crime. Though I'm not disputing your details, mostly because I have so few myself, this would be quite a bit different than pulling all the records of a suspect without a warrant.
The first scenerio I have little difficulty with because it's actually a search of the victims phone record which the victim presumeably would agree to. The second scenerio would seem to be a blatant search of a suspect without a warrant.
While I find both cases objectionable invasions, they are not illegal or unconstitutional.
This is the problem. So many people think that because something has been declared "legal" that that's the end of the story. More people need to realize that if you find a legal act objectionable, you're well within your rights to call for a change of the law. In fact, many would argue that it's even a responsibility.
TW
I think you're misunderstanding. The proposed program would look at phone call records only, not actual phone calls.
So what? Sorry, I don't mean to be flipant, but gathering my confidential call data and looking for criminal activity in my mind is as much a search as a pat down. The fact that they're not actually listening to me talk sexy with my girlfriend is nice, but it doesn't correct the problem that a the state would be analysing the time and phone number of every call I participate in then they'd be making a determination of whether or not I was probably a criminal. When the government conducts routine searches of our routine daily activities then that, in my mind, is both unreasonable, and, as a result, unconstitutional.
TW
Accelerometers are nothing new, and have been used before in game controllers.
Specifically, this one.
I have one of these. It's fun in some games and a pain in the butt in others. I really enjoyed Motocross Madness, but car driving games, well, drove me crazy.
The Wiimote is a very different technology, but it suffers from the same fatal flaws as every other motion sensing controller (you can count the EyeToy in here too)... a)the body likes to push against something and b) the body likes small control movments.
Don't get me wrong, I do like motion sensing stuff once in a while, but this is something you'll want to avoid if playing for long periods of time. Long as in more than about half an hour.
Sony should have realized this and let Nintendo hang themselves with their own nunchuck rope. Nintendo does realize this to some degree which is why it's pushing the family friendliness of the box... families don't videogame for hours on end.
TW
This is one of the best written replies I've seen. Numbers are a good thing. Too bad you posted as AC.
Would you buy a nice 32" LCD HDTV set for about $300? It's about the same size and price as the one in your living room, but it looks a lot better and it'll take up a heck of a lot less space. Plus, your current TV is a few years old and the color isn't quite what you had hoped. Certainly nothing like these 900:1 contrast ratio marvels they have at the Wal-Mart. You saw them playing Gladiator on Blu-Ray from a PS3 and it looked phenominal. It totaly blew away the experience you have with the same DVD at home.
$300 is not that much. Heck, it's about the same price as the PS3 that was driving it. Xmas for the LCD and the PS3 for your kids birthday in Feb? You could swing that, couldn't you?
Welcome to November 2008. How much would your 19" LCD have cost you in January 2004? What was the contrast ratio? What was the refresh rate?
How much would you have payed for a PS2 at launch? Isn't even $400 for an Xbox 360 ridiculous? I din't buy one. Me, and most of the guys at the Wal-Mart, won't be buying one until it hits far closer to $200. Same with the PS3. And When I do, cheap and plentiful HDTV will not be a problem.
TW
It can play blu-ray? Great...except I can't afford a TV that the movies will look good on, and I'm not too keen on replacing my (perfectly fine) DVD collection this
This is a perfectly valid argument for 2006, but what about 2008? When HDTV hits critical mass, the choices of pre-recorded medial are either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Period. If Blu-Ray becomes VHS and HD-DVD becomes Beta (we'll see) then the PS3 is going to have a very nice selling point over the competition, especially if the price of stand-alone Blu-Ray players hovers around $200 or more.
If you look at things past today, as console makers are always forced to do with brand new boxes, then the PS3 will have more value through the lifespan of the product. That's not always engough to guarantee success, but it certainly helps.
TW
How to install and uninstall (most) software? Drag and drop. Need to restart after an install or uninstall? No, in fact restarts are a monthly occurance at worst.
When I installed Firefox on my ex girlfriends Mac, it created a virtual drive which proceeded to uppack everything before finally running the app. It did this every time you ran the app. Sure, the "install" was simple, only it wasn't an install at all, but something inbetween that traded a shorter initial setup time for longer load times.
Furthermore, it was not clear how I could hide this from the desktop and put a shortcut in the main menu structure. Or better yet, how could I decompress it permanently to get better load times?
Now I'm sure vetran Mac users are chuckling and saying something like "(giggle, giggle) he doesn't know about the three shells?!?! (giggle, giggle) What a moron!" But you just can't have it both ways. You can't say with one side of your mouth, "Macs just work" and "Macs are easy to use" and then with the other side give some poor PC user a hard time because making apps work better in the long run is so non-obvious.
Linux is no better. I like Linux because I'm a tinkerer. Linux is the ultimate tweeker OS. But the first few times I went to install apps, it was as non-obvious as could be. I learned what I needed to learn eventually, and I even came across some nicely packaged apps that made instals much easier, but it took me a while to get where I was going.
So what about "joe average"? Joe will need to install apps. Joe will need to install drivers. He'll need to easily find all the shortcuts and settigs panels he'll need after doing so. He should not have to rely upon the family geek to do these things. Windows is not top-notch in these areas, but it beats Linux. This is an opportunity for improvement.
TW
If his conclusions are based on poorly chosen assumptions then the conclusions will be bad. One of the easiest ways to make bad assumptions is to have an agenda that drives your choices of assumptions.
Scientists ask questions and then find the answers to those questions via experimentation. People with an agenda draw conclusions and then try to find facts to match their conclusions. It's possible that the two can end up with the same answer at the end of the day, but the evidence is that people with agendas tend to be inaccurate in their agenda's favor more often.
If Microft tells you they had their techs run a scientific study and that that study proved that Windows server 2003 was better than Linux, Unix and Mac servers for a particular task, would your gut reaction be to take them at face value? How about if Linus proved that Linux was better. Jobs proved that Macs kick ass? They all might be right for their particular application, but my gut reaction would be to not take them at face value. Because they each have an agenda.
TW
It's nice to have some numbers, but this doesn't appear to be very scientific. This is from the abstract:Scientists gather data. This guy appears to be pushing an agenda. It's kind of like Intelligent Design. Just because you say it's science doesn't make it so.
TW