The fact that the RIAA and MPAA are now going after the people breaking copyright law instead of writing legislation aimed at crippling technology and suing service providers is a good thing.
No, a good thing would be lawmakers suing congress for allowing copyright law to be extended to 120 years.
The hype around the shortage of qualified legacy technologists grows each day. Pundits would have us believe that 1.5 million COBOL programmers will suddenly disappear one day, leaving any company with legacy technology in dire straights. The truth is that there are far more programmers with legacy skills looking for work than there are jobs for them
Did you think outsourcing would stop with application programmers? There are lots of weasels making huge money selling the merits of outsourcing to decision makers. FUD like 'shortage of legacy programmers' is just one of a thousand punchlines being used by these guys to sell another contract to thier counterparts in india.
The trend is catching up to the dyed-in-wool technocrats? Ask me if I care, I don't. You guys should have been more vocal and more supportive of the rest of us while our jobs were being shipped oversees. Your turn fellas.
Sandvine claims that this will put added pressure on ISPs to improve the quality of their broadband offerings, as users will demand reliability and low latency.
'threatens' broadband, I guess it also threatens everyone's desire to retire in the stone-age.
My petition post: Please understand that it's been the technical user base that's supported your product from the start. We have told our friends and family to use google over yahoo or other popular search mediums because it was _spare_ and it did its job well.
Trying to pave a commercialized highway through usenet postings is a fantastic way to alienate your 'grass roots' fanbase. There are _many_ of us who are very displeased with the recent 'dumbing down' of google groups.
As soon as you let marketing types make feature decisions rather than computer experts, it will mark the beginning of the end for google. Maybe you're all selling out and planning for retirement, but I'm hoping you'll realize that _not selling out_ was what made google truly special.
Please restore 'google groups' to it's _original_ configuration, and if you _insist_ on changing it consult users rather than marketers.
I knew this would happen when they went IPO. *sigh* one more reason to hope P2P and HTTP merge soon.
I see, so you think 'fair' entails 120 year copyright terms for all information produced at expense?
And 'fair' also describes information having only one legitimate(i.e. the highest corporate bidder) 'owner' at any one time?
What happens in your 'moral' future when the media conglomerates own every piece of cultural information you've ever been exposed to, and forces you to pay a tithe(decided soley by them) in order to re-gain access to that information?
So, sadly, you really can't trust any reviewer these days, and this will probably only get worse as the industry continues to grow.
Yes, but it's not as grim a picture as you paint. If anything it will increase the popularity of forums and blogs as the de-facto source of 'from the horses mouth' information and reviews. This is definitely a change for the better imo. The death of promotional advertising is long overdue.
Just look at newegg.com, or shopper.com. You can easily sort products or stores by customer satisfaction levels. It's very difficult to fake 150 independant customer reviews. Or if you think newegg is pruning the negative reviews, just double-check at google forums. It's relatively painless now that all of these wonderful internet technologies and communities are maturing.
I think most MMORPGs lose subscriber interest eventually because they aren't capable of being dynamic enough or produce enough content to stay ahead of their subscriber's pace of exploration. This is why I think models like SL will endure; becuase they give the residents the tools and incentive to keep it interesting and dynamic.
Again I think we all applaud these 'experimental' types of computer generated worlds and games. But the tried and true stuff, the stuff that makes money, is very few and far between. Right now the only commercially viable PC computer genres are FPS, MMORPG(loot+xp+items), RTS(noone has really improved on these lately, or found a way to make a good scalable on-line multiplayer version). That's about it.
Something new and better may come along, but it hasn't happened yet, and it's not like people aren't trying. It's a very difficult problem, and almost noone can predict what the next 'big thing' will be.
When online FPS games like counter-strike caught on there was a huge sea-change in the gaming community. Same with the MMORPGs like Everquest. But these kinds of gaming 'revolutions' or 'killer apps' are very rare, happening only once every few years or so. That's pretty remarkable considering the number of games that are being released.
Under the Canadian Copywrite Law, "personal copying" is permitted. This means I can download all the music I could ever want.
Yep, well said.
That story is trying to invoke fear that the influence of copy control in America is bleeding across the US border, and tries to legitimate corrupt American lawmakers by claiming a 'better' alternative to sharing music online. Any country that willingingly makes information a permanent form of property has no concept of the word freedom.
Thankfully there are nations outside of the US that check-in with common sense before unleashing corporate leg-breakers on their citizens.
Maybe every successful computer RPG fits this description, but it sure doesn't apply to tabletop or live-action roleplaying.
I played D&D and Shadowrun in high-school for about 3 years. Between conventions and various gaming groups I've probably played under 8 DMs or so, and DMed several campaigns myself. Only one time did I see an entertaining game that didn't involve rewarding players with XP and magic items, and that was during a 'Paranoia' game mixed with plenty of alchohol.
Role-playing is a great way to add atmosphere and chemistry to a gaming night, but I've never once seen a PnP player shrug off XP or loot. More often than not the players end up arguing over who gets a drop, or bitching about how slow they are leveling etc. It's a mentality that permeates and dominates the roleplaying universe today. It wasn't that big a deal in the early 80s, but the "Diabloiziation" of fantasy role-playing has spoiled everyone into expecting a concrete pay-off for thier gaming time.
This takes away from the original appeal of the virtual world, with degrees of freedom allowing the player to seek his own goals and write his own story. Some of the things I've heard about Vanguard [vanguardsoh.com] have raised my hopes that this game on the horizon, designed by the original creators of Everquest, will both push the envelope in gameplay, and return some of the virtual adventure to the genre.
Many people have tried to expand the frontiers of gaming with titles like The Sims Online, 2nd Life, Black & White etc...but all of these 'alternative' games have flopped. That's not to say that things won't change in the future, but it's a very difficult proposition.
Every successful role-playing game since Dungeons & Dragons has revolved around combat+experience+loot. If you're growing tired of this kind of gameplay, then you're probably due for a break from roleplaying in general.
The quality of the WoW player base seems to be slightly below that of EQ -- one of the worst I've found in an MMO yet. As with any MMO, having good people to play with is what makes the game fun, not the game itself.
Yes, but you can always find a guild that suits your preferences by going through the forums. I prefer mature guilds w/ players 25yr old or older, there are plenty such guilds advertised on the forums, just take a few hours and apply to a couple and more than likely you'll find a play community that you're happy with. On the flip side, if a bunch of 12yr olds want to make thier own guild that excludes 'grown ups', they can.
There's no reason anyone should be too lazy to slip a mouse into its cradle once every few days.
It's not laziness, it's forgetfullness. The last thing I'd want to do is wake up and go over to my computer only to learn that I need to wait two hours for my mouse to charge because I forgot to dock my mouse recently.
I prefer 4 AAA rechargable NmHi batteries sitting in a battery charger. That way you have the mouse as normal, and only need to change your behavior every few months to switch out the batteries.
Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement.
That's probably why James Cameron is choosing this project. So far noone has been able to create a convincing CG human character. The last sincere effort at trying this was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) which was a flop at the box office. Many critics attribute the film's failure to the 'wooden' acting and 'doll-like' eyes of the CG characters.
Films like Shrek and Toy Story II have more appeal because it feels like a cartoon, so belief is already suspended and the viewer has less hard-set expectations of the character's appearance and behavior. Creating believeable human CG actors is more difficult however because the viewer is very familiar and experienced with human behavior. Facial expressions, eye movement, and body language are supposed to be especially difficult to mimic.
James Cameron is a very competent technical director, so it will be interesting to see if he can be the first to bring CG human characters to "life".
Aliens? You mean the lame blood-n-guts sequel to Ridley Scott's outstanding suspense/horror flick? Well, I suppose it was better than Titanic, but that sure as hell ain't saying much.
Bwahahaha, nice troll. You're talking about one of the greatest action film directors of all time. I would give my left nut to see more film-makers like him around today. Terminator, Terminator II, and Aliens are the giants of modern sci-fi/action films. He's also probably one of the best 'hard' sci-fi directors ever, and one of the very few directors who actually understand technology. He's a master, and he deserves respect.
Oh and yes, Ridley Scott is great also, no argument here.
A truly worthwhile "quest system" should come close to what people expect from a pen-and-paper RPG.
You're right of course, and most players would agree with you. Except that what you're asking for is presently impossible. Game makers are doing everything they can with the tools at thier disposal, which include the limitations of your PC. As far as PnP gaming. The kind of spontaneity, flexibility, and wonder that you're looking for can only be conjured in the imagination...or the matrix.
Even my most-hard-up D&D character would never stoop to being someone's barmaid.
There's also the problem of when you played PnP you and your friends where the 'heroes' and everyone else(the GM driven NPCs) were there to service your fantasy. That all comes crashing down when you're playing with other people who are used to being treated the same way.
I can't bring myself to essentially the same quest system and monster-slaughter treadmill
Again I think most people would understand your perspective. Waiting for the next 'killer app' in the MMORPG scene is reasonable...like a lot of people are doing in the FPS and RTS game genres. But then again a lot of people are still playing these games, even if they are just rehashes of Wolfenstein, Dune II, or Civilization.
MMORPG design is immensely difficult. The budgets are beginning to cost in the tens of millions. 20 years ago a handful of guys sat down and wrote The Bard's Tale or Wasteland for next to nothing. It's obvious that in order to keep improving PC games the bottleneck in manpower(artists, sound, storyboard etc) has to be addressed. But then again, raw PC power has come to the rescue of many applications before, maybe MMOGs will be next?
...a humbling experience. It truly bring's the feeling that this world is truly alive and has a great history to it.
Yes I agree completely. I always thought the guy who did the music/sounds in Diablo(1996) was a genius. I can only assume they rehired him to do WoW. Here's a quote I dug up from a review of Diablo:
"The music is clear and crisp, adding to the gaming experience without becoming a nuisance. There are a variety of music tracks, all redbook audio, and all intuitively designed. With each new area or setting, the music automatically adjusts itself to support the ambiance."
Which is exactly what the music and sound does in WoW, except even better. I can only assume that they rehired this guy because I thought the music/sound in D2 and WC3 sucked. I tried digging up the credits on google but had no luck.
I'm really hoping WoW sets a new standard for sound in games. The music is so modest and ambient that it never gets old or annoying. It's probably the first game I've ever played where I wanted to leave the music on after two weeks of play.
Class balance is very difficult to maintain, but it's not impossible. EQ1 is a decent example of this.
Who cares if the game comes easier to some people because the munchkin out on the "best" classes?
A lot of people care. Actually this is probably the single most devastating thing that can happen to an MMORPG player(short of account deletion). Spending 3 years with a character, grinding away and getting to know its play-factors in every detail, only to have a developer nerf your class is a very cold shower. I've seen many long-time players quit simply because their class was nerfed.
just never worry about it, and play the character type which you enjoy most
Good advice, but difficult to do when MMORPGs still put a premium on your ability to grind xp/time.
Oi, we didn't ALL vote for him, you know. 49% of us voted for Kerry. That's nearly half!
Yes, and if the grandparent poster had looked at the vote distribution, he'd also realize that 90% of those votes came from born-again sheep-fucking redneck wackos(sadly 50% of the US population).
I think I'll spend the 300 hundreds and mod my PC case to dispense ice cold Bawls.
This is not a bell/whistle.
I've been waiting years for LCD display prices to come down to earth but they aren't. LCD technology isn't limited to the traditional 'boxy' dimensions that CRTs are, but manufacturers just insist on making them that way! There are many of us who'd love to see a 30" wide X 19" high display, but these screens are still selling at close to $1000. I even know a guy who bought two 19" LCD monitors and put them side-by-side so he can watch letterbox DVDs on his computer. I asked him about the small(sarcasm) problem of the 1"-thick black bar running down the center of the screen(from the edges of the two LCD monitors making contact in the center). He said that he actually enjoys the letterbox+full-size screen so much that he just forced himself to get used to the missing 1" center line.
If that's not someone who's bending over backwards to get a widescreen LCD I don't know who is. Unfortunately since LCD/Plasma displays are still prohibitively expensive to those of us who want to watch movies and play wide-screen supported games on our PCs, there's only one realistic option, and that's projectors.
I spent the last week checking ebay and other wholesale projector outlets only to be further frustrated by learning that these are also selling at the $1000 pricepoint. These guys are pricing out a huge demographic of people who want widescreen displays for home use. It's a shame, and it's frustrating for those of us who are living on planet earth and can't afford to drop $1000!
When I saw this headline for a $300 solution my pulse rate doubled! I haven't been this excited to read a slashdot article in weeks. Well umm, time to read the article *cough*.
No voter fraud cases are being in any way instructed by anyone up-top. Most likely, those in positions even close to power don't even consider that the fraud could be happening.
Don't bet on it:
"Hi All, A friend sent this to me... wanted to pass this information on... double check your votes before you leave the polling location....
From my friend Maryellen.
No joking around. Here's an important heads up...
Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling location in Austin. She voted straight Democratic. When she did the final check, lo and behold every vote was for the Democratic candidates except that it showed she had voted for Bush/Cheney for president/vice pres.
She immediately got a poll official. On her vote, it was corrected. She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters. They took all her information, and told her that she wasn't the first to report a similar incident and that they are looking into it.
So check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is wrong, get it corrected immediately. Report any irregularities to your local Democratic headquarters.
Make sure you pass this along to your friends... hopefully this is all over the airwaves by tomorrow...
Slashdot Mirror
We should applaud this...
The fact that the RIAA and MPAA are now going after the people breaking copyright law instead of writing legislation aimed at crippling technology and suing service providers is a good thing.
No, a good thing would be lawmakers suing congress for allowing copyright law to be extended to 120 years.
The hype around the shortage of qualified legacy technologists grows each day. Pundits would have us believe that 1.5 million COBOL programmers will suddenly disappear one day, leaving any company with legacy technology in dire straights. The truth is that there are far more programmers with legacy skills looking for work than there are jobs for them
Did you think outsourcing would stop with application programmers? There are lots of weasels making huge money selling the merits of outsourcing to decision makers. FUD like 'shortage of legacy programmers' is just one of a thousand punchlines being used by these guys to sell another contract to thier counterparts in india.
The trend is catching up to the dyed-in-wool technocrats? Ask me if I care, I don't. You guys should have been more vocal and more supportive of the rest of us while our jobs were being shipped oversees. Your turn fellas.
For real, I still don't understand how
Sandvine claims that this will put added pressure on ISPs to improve the quality of their broadband offerings, as users will demand reliability and low latency.
'threatens' broadband, I guess it also threatens everyone's desire to retire in the stone-age.
My petition post:
Please understand that it's been the technical user base that's supported your product from the start. We have told our friends and family to use google over yahoo or other popular search mediums because it was _spare_ and it did its job well.
Trying to pave a commercialized highway through usenet postings is a fantastic way to alienate your 'grass roots' fanbase. There are _many_ of us who are very displeased with the recent 'dumbing down' of google groups.
As soon as you let marketing types make feature decisions rather than computer experts, it will mark the beginning of the end for google. Maybe you're all selling out and planning for retirement, but I'm hoping you'll realize that _not selling out_ was what made google truly special.
Please restore 'google groups' to it's _original_ configuration, and if you _insist_ on changing it consult users rather than marketers.
I knew this would happen when they went IPO. *sigh* one more reason to hope P2P and HTTP merge soon.
Did you notice the word "fair" in that phrase?
I see, so you think 'fair' entails 120 year copyright terms for all information produced at expense?
And 'fair' also describes information having only one legitimate(i.e. the highest corporate bidder) 'owner' at any one time?
What happens in your 'moral' future when the media conglomerates own every piece of cultural information you've ever been exposed to, and forces you to pay a tithe(decided soley by them) in order to re-gain access to that information?
So, sadly, you really can't trust any reviewer these days, and this will probably only get worse as the industry continues to grow.
Yes, but it's not as grim a picture as you paint. If anything it will increase the popularity of forums and blogs as the de-facto source of 'from the horses mouth' information and reviews. This is definitely a change for the better imo. The death of promotional advertising is long overdue.
Just look at newegg.com, or shopper.com. You can easily sort products or stores by customer satisfaction levels. It's very difficult to fake 150 independant customer reviews. Or if you think newegg is pruning the negative reviews, just double-check at google forums. It's relatively painless now that all of these wonderful internet technologies and communities are maturing.
I think most MMORPGs lose subscriber interest eventually because they aren't capable of being dynamic enough or produce enough content to stay ahead of their subscriber's pace of exploration. This is why I think models like SL will endure; becuase they give the residents the tools and incentive to keep it interesting and dynamic.
Again I think we all applaud these 'experimental' types of computer generated worlds and games. But the tried and true stuff, the stuff that makes money, is very few and far between. Right now the only commercially viable PC computer genres are FPS, MMORPG(loot+xp+items), RTS(noone has really improved on these lately, or found a way to make a good scalable on-line multiplayer version). That's about it.
Something new and better may come along, but it hasn't happened yet, and it's not like people aren't trying. It's a very difficult problem, and almost noone can predict what the next 'big thing' will be.
When online FPS games like counter-strike caught on there was a huge sea-change in the gaming community. Same with the MMORPGs like Everquest. But these kinds of gaming 'revolutions' or 'killer apps' are very rare, happening only once every few years or so. That's pretty remarkable considering the number of games that are being released.
Under the Canadian Copywrite Law, "personal copying" is permitted. This means I can download all the music I could ever want.
Yep, well said.
That story is trying to invoke fear that the influence of copy control in America is bleeding across the US border, and tries to legitimate corrupt American lawmakers by claiming a 'better' alternative to sharing music online. Any country that willingingly makes information a permanent form of property has no concept of the word freedom.
Thankfully there are nations outside of the US that check-in with common sense before unleashing corporate leg-breakers on their citizens.
Maybe every successful computer RPG fits this description, but it sure doesn't apply to tabletop or live-action roleplaying.
I played D&D and Shadowrun in high-school for about 3 years. Between conventions and various gaming groups I've probably played under 8 DMs or so, and DMed several campaigns myself. Only one time did I see an entertaining game that didn't involve rewarding players with XP and magic items, and that was during a 'Paranoia' game mixed with plenty of alchohol.
Role-playing is a great way to add atmosphere and chemistry to a gaming night, but I've never once seen a PnP player shrug off XP or loot. More often than not the players end up arguing over who gets a drop, or bitching about how slow they are leveling etc. It's a mentality that permeates and dominates the roleplaying universe today. It wasn't that big a deal in the early 80s, but the "Diabloiziation" of fantasy role-playing has spoiled everyone into expecting a concrete pay-off for thier gaming time.
This takes away from the original appeal of the virtual world, with degrees of freedom allowing the player to seek his own goals and write his own story. Some of the things I've heard about Vanguard [vanguardsoh.com] have raised my hopes that this game on the horizon, designed by the original creators of Everquest, will both push the envelope in gameplay, and return some of the virtual adventure to the genre.
Many people have tried to expand the frontiers of gaming with titles like The Sims Online, 2nd Life, Black & White etc...but all of these 'alternative' games have flopped. That's not to say that things won't change in the future, but it's a very difficult proposition.
Every successful role-playing game since Dungeons & Dragons has revolved around combat+experience+loot. If you're growing tired of this kind of gameplay, then you're probably due for a break from roleplaying in general.
The quality of the WoW player base seems to be slightly below that of EQ -- one of the worst I've found in an MMO yet. As with any MMO, having good people to play with is what makes the game fun, not the game itself.
Yes, but you can always find a guild that suits your preferences by going through the forums. I prefer mature guilds w/ players 25yr old or older, there are plenty such guilds advertised on the forums, just take a few hours and apply to a couple and more than likely you'll find a play community that you're happy with. On the flip side, if a bunch of 12yr olds want to make thier own guild that excludes 'grown ups', they can.
I signed up to have fun. Now I realize that this is work. em/ crying
Umm, raise your asking price? Use the auction system and set your own prices? What a spineless dweeb.
There's no reason anyone should be too lazy to slip a mouse into its cradle once every few days.
It's not laziness, it's forgetfullness. The last thing I'd want to do is wake up and go over to my computer only to learn that I need to wait two hours for my mouse to charge because I forgot to dock my mouse recently.
I prefer 4 AAA rechargable NmHi batteries sitting in a battery charger. That way you have the mouse as normal, and only need to change your behavior every few months to switch out the batteries.
Also, speaking of CG -- I have nothing against CG in general, but the idea of a CG main character fills me with a vague boredom and distaste rather than excitement.
That's probably why James Cameron is choosing this project. So far noone has been able to create a convincing CG human character. The last sincere effort at trying this was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) which was a flop at the box office. Many critics attribute the film's failure to the 'wooden' acting and 'doll-like' eyes of the CG characters.
Films like Shrek and Toy Story II have more appeal because it feels like a cartoon, so belief is already suspended and the viewer has less hard-set expectations of the character's appearance and behavior. Creating believeable human CG actors is more difficult however because the viewer is very familiar and experienced with human behavior. Facial expressions, eye movement, and body language are supposed to be especially difficult to mimic.
James Cameron is a very competent technical director, so it will be interesting to see if he can be the first to bring CG human characters to "life".
Since nvidia dropped Soundstorm I no longer have any reason to care.
Aliens? You mean the lame blood-n-guts sequel to Ridley Scott's outstanding suspense/horror flick? Well, I suppose it was better than Titanic, but that sure as hell ain't saying much.
Bwahahaha, nice troll. You're talking about one of the greatest action film directors of all time. I would give my left nut to see more film-makers like him around today. Terminator, Terminator II, and Aliens are the giants of modern sci-fi/action films. He's also probably one of the best 'hard' sci-fi directors ever, and one of the very few directors who actually understand technology. He's a master, and he deserves respect.
Oh and yes, Ridley Scott is great also, no argument here.
A truly worthwhile "quest system" should come close to what people expect from a pen-and-paper RPG.
You're right of course, and most players would agree with you. Except that what you're asking for is presently impossible. Game makers are doing everything they can with the tools at thier disposal, which include the limitations of your PC. As far as PnP gaming. The kind of spontaneity, flexibility, and wonder that you're looking for can only be conjured in the imagination...or the matrix.
Even my most-hard-up D&D character would never stoop to being someone's barmaid.
There's also the problem of when you played PnP you and your friends where the 'heroes' and everyone else(the GM driven NPCs) were there to service your fantasy. That all comes crashing down when you're playing with other people who are used to being treated the same way.
I can't bring myself to essentially the same quest system and monster-slaughter treadmill
Again I think most people would understand your perspective. Waiting for the next 'killer app' in the MMORPG scene is reasonable...like a lot of people are doing in the FPS and RTS game genres. But then again a lot of people are still playing these games, even if they are just rehashes of Wolfenstein, Dune II, or Civilization.
MMORPG design is immensely difficult. The budgets are beginning to cost in the tens of millions. 20 years ago a handful of guys sat down and wrote The Bard's Tale or Wasteland for next to nothing. It's obvious that in order to keep improving PC games the bottleneck in manpower(artists, sound, storyboard etc) has to be addressed. But then again, raw PC power has come to the rescue of many applications before, maybe MMOGs will be next?
There are so many different way to get around this game, but it still fells large.
Yeah I agree. They did a very good job of "scaling" transportation with territory.
...a humbling experience. It truly bring's the feeling that this world is truly alive and has a great history to it.
Yes I agree completely. I always thought the guy who did the music/sounds in Diablo(1996) was a genius. I can only assume they rehired him to do WoW. Here's a quote I dug up from a review of Diablo:
"The music is clear and crisp, adding to the gaming experience without becoming a nuisance. There are a variety of music tracks, all redbook audio, and all intuitively designed. With each new area or setting, the music automatically adjusts itself to support the ambiance."
Which is exactly what the music and sound does in WoW, except even better. I can only assume that they rehired this guy because I thought the music/sound in D2 and WC3 sucked. I tried digging up the credits on google but had no luck.
I'm really hoping WoW sets a new standard for sound in games. The music is so modest and ambient that it never gets old or annoying. It's probably the first game I've ever played where I wanted to leave the music on after two weeks of play.
Game balance is so close to impossible
Class balance is very difficult to maintain, but it's not impossible. EQ1 is a decent example of this.
Who cares if the game comes easier to some people because the munchkin out on the "best" classes?
A lot of people care. Actually this is probably the single most devastating thing that can happen to an MMORPG player(short of account deletion). Spending 3 years with a character, grinding away and getting to know its play-factors in every detail, only to have a developer nerf your class is a very cold shower. I've seen many long-time players quit simply because their class was nerfed.
just never worry about it, and play the character type which you enjoy most
Good advice, but difficult to do when MMORPGs still put a premium on your ability to grind xp/time.
Oi, we didn't ALL vote for him, you know. 49% of us voted for Kerry. That's nearly half!
Yes, and if the grandparent poster had looked at the vote distribution, he'd also realize that 90% of those votes came from born-again sheep-fucking redneck wackos(sadly 50% of the US population).
Why not just buy a HD-TV widescreen, and connect that to the computer?
Hadn't thought of that. Do they offer 27" models for less than $350?
Most of the stuff I'm seeing is pretty expensive
I think I'll spend the 300 hundreds and mod my PC case to dispense ice cold Bawls.
This is not a bell/whistle.
I've been waiting years for LCD display prices to come down to earth but they aren't. LCD technology isn't limited to the traditional 'boxy' dimensions that CRTs are, but manufacturers just insist on making them that way! There are many of us who'd love to see a 30" wide X 19" high display, but these screens are still selling at close to $1000. I even know a guy who bought two 19" LCD monitors and put them side-by-side so he can watch letterbox DVDs on his computer. I asked him about the small(sarcasm) problem of the 1"-thick black bar running down the center of the screen(from the edges of the two LCD monitors making contact in the center). He said that he actually enjoys the letterbox+full-size screen so much that he just forced himself to get used to the missing 1" center line.
If that's not someone who's bending over backwards to get a widescreen LCD I don't know who is. Unfortunately since LCD/Plasma displays are still prohibitively expensive to those of us who want to watch movies and play wide-screen supported games on our PCs, there's only one realistic option, and that's projectors.
I spent the last week checking ebay and other wholesale projector outlets only to be further frustrated by learning that these are also selling at the $1000 pricepoint. These guys are pricing out a huge demographic of people who want widescreen displays for home use. It's a shame, and it's frustrating for those of us who are living on planet earth and can't afford to drop $1000!
When I saw this headline for a $300 solution my pulse rate doubled! I haven't been this excited to read a slashdot article in weeks. Well umm, time to read the article *cough*.
No voter fraud cases are being in any way instructed by anyone up-top. Most likely, those in positions even close to power don't even consider that the fraud could be happening.
...
... hopefully this is all over ...
Don't bet on it:
"Hi All,
A friend sent this to me... wanted to pass this information on... double check your votes before you leave the polling location....
From my friend Maryellen.
No joking around. Here's an important heads up
Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling location in Austin. She voted
straight Democratic. When she did the final check, lo and behold every vote
was for the Democratic candidates except that it showed she had voted for
Bush/Cheney for president/vice pres.
She immediately got a poll official. On her vote, it was corrected.
She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters. They took all her
information, and told her that she wasn't the first to report a similar
incident and that they are looking into it.
So check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is wrong, get
it corrected immediately. Report any irregularities to your local Democratic
headquarters.
Make sure you pass this along to your friends
the airwaves by tomorrow
DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!!"
Very well written, not redundant at all, should be +5 insightful, whoever modded this redundant, is in fact, redundant.