Actually, after looking at a Playboy for the first time today, I would have to say yes. I never bought porn and none of my friends buy playboy, my friend's brother just happened to leave one in his truck. I've heard Playboy is basically a topless Maxim so I went thru the magazine. There were 5 (nude) pictures in the centerfold section and maybe 2 or 3 outside of that. The magazine is mostly articles, and some of them were actually interesting. When I want to look at porn, I'll stay with the 90+ gigs of movies on my computer, when I want to know the best way to convince a girl to have a threesome, I'll read Playboy.
Those individuals living close to Mother Earth follow the small still voice that guides them in ways they might not understand while it is occurring but later reveals the reason for the guidance. The tsunami is an example. All humans were given the message, only a few were capable of hearing and following it for only a few had minds quiet enough to comprehend.
If by "given the message" you mean "saw the water in the ocean go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out" then you're right. The tribesmen saw the waters receed and remembered what that meant, so they went to higher ground. There wasn't some voice from another higher dimension telling them to do that. Just common (to them) sense.
The credit company takes a percentage of all sales thru credit cards. I don't exactly remember the number, I found this out when I went to eat at this very fancy French restaurant. They charged us a LOT of money for a few sodas which kind of annoyed my grandmother who decided to put the whole bill on her credit card (it was like $200 and the credit card company took like $15-$30 from the restaurant, it was basically her way of getting back at them for charging $3 per soda.) When you pay cash all the money goes to the business, when you pay with credit, the credit card company takes a percentage (well at least the company providing the card reader I think.)
I can get a free cell phone almost anywhere. 3 years and $2000 later it's paid for.
Because those ads tell you there's a contract required (usually just a 1 year contract, but hey the phone IS free, the service isn't.
I can buy a car at 0% interest....but if I pay cash it's $$$thousands$$$ less than if I do credit.
I'm going to assume that's because the car dealership is taking off the amount of money they'd be charged by the bank. Or they're giving you a discount equal to what you would have paid in interest so when they give you the total price it looks like 0% interest. And car dealerships always love cash because that means all the money from the sale is going to them and not partly to a bank over a period of 5 years (or at least that's my theory, although I do know for a fact that they love cash.)
The way Blockbuster is advertising, you'd think you could keep a movie forever, and as long as you never try to rent another movie, will never be forced to pay anything or bring the movie back (I'm sure they'd call you and ask for it back though.) They could of just said "Now, rent the movie for 7 days!" with the fine print "After 7th day customer will be charged retail price for rental."
They use this for the weekdays while they're at work, not when they're at home. They actually spend time with their cats on the weekends when they're home.
(1) Gun control. Way more smart Americans believe in the right to carry a weapon than smart non-Americans. Most of the rest of the Western world thinks the US is kind of insane on this issue, actually.
Maybe because they don't understand the situation. Maybe they assume the U.S. is a country where every day someone gets shot by a 16 year old for wearing blue on a monday? I've been all across this country and I'm originally from NYC. People out west assume NY is just a big city with too much violence and it's a horrible place to live. I've been asked if I'm scared living out in NY, I try to explain to these people that NYC is actually very very small compared to the rest of NY. And even then, it all depends which borough you live in and which part of that borough. Staten Island is a very nice place that isn't even close to what people think NYC looks like, yet it's part of NYC.
I never really understood gun control, I would actually like it if guns were more common, not because we can all protect ourselves with the guns, but because kids would understand what guns were and what they can do. If guns were illegal people would still have them, but kids would see them and think "Hey I saw this in a movie once!" and maybe reenact a scene from The Matrix where Trinity shoots one of the agents in the head ("Dodge this.") I don't ever really see the point in banning all weapons, criminals will still have guns, and the people who use them for legitimate recriational reasons will be punished.
Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Because we all know people buy satellite radio not because there's at least 10+ stations of commercial free music, uncensored as well, but because it's CD quality.
Umm I can get a few days of CD quality music with my 6 CD changer that supports MP3 CDs. The reason I like satellite radio, Oppie and Anthony - FCC = Good radio. Same thing with Howards Stern (not that I listen to Howard Stern, but my sister's boyfriend does which is why he got Sirius radio in his car.)
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The DJs don't select most of the music on satellite radio, it's all what the listener's are requesting, which is why I love listening to it. When I'm in my sister's boyfriend's car, and there's a good song on, he writes down the song name and later we go looking for the MP3 along with any other songs the band might have put out. It's basically like college radio that works all across the U.S. And I really wish I had it when I was driving out to Arizona (from NY, taking a route that went thru northern CA) you probably have no idea how many dead zones there are for FM radio out west where all that comes in is some christian rock station and one country music station. And some places there is no FM radio at all. Especially in Valleys (which usually go on for miles.) I download a lot of new albums every day, but I still get tired of listening to the same songs (I have a few hundred albums and I've listened to all of them at least once.) and when I'm on a road trip it's a little hard to download new music to listen to (you'd be surprised how quickly you go thru a music collection driving 8,000+ miles across the US from the north and back around thru the south.)
I always wondered why we had a lighthouse on the middle of staten island. I thought they were always near the water, ours is just at the top of a hill in the middle of the island, didn't think it did much either since it doesn't seem to be on that much.
That's nothing, I had an AMD 2100+ keychain (still do although the core is now severely damaged.) It's such a perfect keychain, even though it cost $600 at the time I made it (the chip was fried so why just throw it out?)
As a side note I see the REAL accumulation of things as kinda pointless as well. I mean I do have cool shit [e.g. 500W 5.1 stereo, 17" LCD, amd64, etc...] but you won't find a shirt in my room worth more than 10$ nor diamond encrusted watches, etc...e.g. I buy practical stuff I can actually use and benefit from...
As a side note I see the REAL accumulation of things as kinda pointless as well. I mean I do have cool shit [e.g. Movado Faceto style watch, 19" rims, Mustang GT, etc...] but you won't find a computer in my room worth more than $500 nor a flat screen monitor, etc...e.g. I buy practical stuff I can actually use and benefit from...
Just because you see no benefit to having nice looking expensive clothes doesn't mean no one does. Maybe some guys like going out and wearing their wealth as a sign that says "I want to go out and bang a girl that only likes me for my money" they use and benefit from those items.
Personally, I'd rather have a $1,500 Movado watch than a $10 watch from K-mart, I would use it as a watch and benefit from the joy it gives me having aquired such a watch. And I'd rather have some nice looking clothes from Ecko or even Old Navy (which isn't expensive, but it's still more than some stuff from K-Mart.)
I rebooted my car while going down the highway, the CD player stopped working and kept saying Error (2002 Ford Explorer, crappy stock head unit) after we tried to load a CD that didn't go in fully (the motor went but the CD didn't go in.) We were on a road trip following someone so instead of stoping we tried to fix it other ways. We turned the radio on and off, tried switching modes, then eventually shifted the car into neutral, turned it off, and turned it back on. That did it.
Wow, obviously you're not a photographer (or at least not a very professional one.) I would never compare a $100 sigma lens to some $1,500+ Canon L glass. I'm not saying the Hubble is cheap and crappy, but why spend $2 billion upgrading the hubble when they can just build a new one for half that?
Umm that's pretty much any "big" (as in for the general public not just something nerds would enjoy) story I've ever read on Slashdot (while living in AZ and I had 12 channels, one of them being CNN which I watched all day.)
Now, on to the puzzling challenge of explaining the reasoning behind female group behavior in restroom explorations...
Puzzling? You should hang out with more females. They're just talking about someone who's still sitting at the table. They usually know what each other is thinking about a person so when one says "I'm going to the bathroom" it's like announcing "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, come with me to discuss it." When the other says "Ok I'll come with you" they're acknowledging that they're thinking alike and they will come and gossip. There really isn't much mystery to females, but I've been fortunate enough to have a sister close to my age so we hang out a lot (usually with her girl friends) so I get to pick up a lot of info.
Anyway this is way off topic...
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS
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Steam Users Steamed
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So I paid $80 for package including many excellent single-player games, but I can't play any of them without getting express consent from Valve every time. When that consent is unavailable, I can't play the games I bought. This is bogus. This is outrageous.
I cannot imagine how this possibly benefits Valve in any way. Surely the p1r@t3s who don't wanna pay (na na why don't you get a job?) are merrily playing their hacked-installer versions.
I hope you're not telling us pirates who don't want to pay that we should pay? Please look at what you've said and tell me, was the game worth giving $80 to a company that doesn't trust you enough to let your run the game without having it phone home? The only person that loses with their scheme is paying customers, the pirates are better off so I'm going to stick with being a pirate of Valve games till they start treating their customers better.
I was a long time Valve/Half-Life fan. I bought Half-Life on pre-order years ago, and every single player expansion pack that came out for it. There were times where I questioned Valve's judgement, mostly after patches but I lived thru it. I kind of lost faith around the time CS hit store shelves. After using steam (with my friends login and password because apparently I already registered for steam with my CD key) I gave up completely and decided to never buy another thing from Valve ever again.
ID software on the other hand... they released a game with amazing graphics, created a linux port and doesn't require you to go online and authenticate to play. I bought a copy of Doom 3 the day it came out and will be buying a copy of Quake 4 the day it comes out. The day Half-Life 3 comes out I'll be searching for it online just so I can play and see how the story goes. Unless Valve decides to do a complete turn around and trash the worthless pile of trash that is Steam, I don't think I'd ever give them another dime.
Why would anyone in their right mind buy a DVD player when they can play DVDs on thier computer?
Because most people don't have their computers hooked up to their TVs and stereo systems. If they did do you think any of them would buy DVD players? I know I wouldn't, there would be no point. I can stick a DVD in my computer and hey guess what, it works. It works better than on a DVD player cause I have a mouse to browse the menus. If I want I can use the remote that came with my Live Drive to control the movie but I don't.
The shortest answer is that I like being able to just dump the game into the console, hit power, and start playing.
That's always nice but I'd rather be able to do that with the console, and if I choose to, load the game onto my PC and play it (when I want better graphics, performance, sound quality, etc.) If sony sold some type of device that hooked up to your computer and let you play PS2 games on the PC like they were regular PC games, I'd buy it. I wouldn't care if the price was twice that of a PS2, I just wanna play my console games on my PC.
Do you keep your PC in the same room as your HDTV? If so, which case did you use, and how did you explain it to your SO?
No, I prefer a high resolution over a large screen (which is a major benefit of PCs, very high resolutions are supported) so I don't have the computer hooked up to the TV all the time, but if I wanted to I could use my own case (it fits nicely next to the stereo sub woofer and they're around the same height.) Explaining it wouldn't be too hard, just think of it as a console except it has my movie/music/game collection on it.
Because somebody else in the household is using your PC.
I'm sorry, but I actually have more than one computer per person in my house, most of the computers are old hardware from upgrades, except a few linux boxes that are just computers I found outside, and my box which no one else uses. I only have 2 playstation 2s and that's because I keep one in the car, there's no point to having more than one but if someone is using the PS2 no one else can use it, unless two people want to play a multiplayer game (I have no 4 player games or a multitap to use them.) Most of the 2 player games I own are racing games and it's really annoying playing a game with a split screen even on a 57" TV.
You can buy an adapter to use a mouse and keyboard with most PlayStation 2 games. And would you want to play something like Super Smash Bros. Melee on a keyboard?
And I can buy an adapter to use a PS2 controller as a joystick with ANY computer games (as long as they support a joystick.) And the majority of PS2 games I have would benefit from a mouse and keyboard.
Besides, how many mice and keyboards can you plug into a PC and have a game read them all, if you don't want to have to buy four PCs for four kids to play multiplayer games on?
That all depends on the game, I can plug a few hundred joysticks into the computer if I wanted to (USB) but unless the game supports 100+ joysticks it's not going to work. Besides, I have enough computers for people to play things over the LAN and they're all just old parts (I upgrade my computer often.)
This is always so annoying. When you steal from a brick and mortar store there is materials and money lost. The store has to cover the cost (their cost) of the CD. The store loses money and if enough of this happens they either go out of business or increase the cost of their CDs (to cover the money loss to theft.) When you download a song online there is no loss except loss in your bandwidth (till the song finishes) and loss in your hard drive space. All of that is on your end. To assume someone would have purchased an album just because they downloading a song from it is ridiculous.
Think of it this way, in Star Trek they have replicators. Now lets say you downloaded the pattern of atoms to make a Porsche online and used that to turn a pile of garbage into a Porsche 911 Turbo and drove that thing around (never EVER selling it, only turning it back into garbage when I was tired of it.) Would you call that stealing a Porsche?
I dunno, have you ever played a PS2 game on a PS2 and then on a high-end PC? I have an Athlon XP 3200+, 1 gig of ram, a 120, 160 and 200 gig hard drive (480 total not including shared network drives on my sister's computer), and a GeForce 6800 OC. Did I mention I can use my 57" HDTV for my PC (S-Video) and my SB Live Audigy hooks up to the coaxil input on my stereo receiver? Now please explain why I would want to play games on the PS3 rather than my computer (which can also be upgraded much easier than any console system.) Price isn't too much of an issue and I hate playing games on PS2 now because of the load times, terrible graphics (compared to my PC), and lack of a mouse/keyboard (which is very usefull for games like GTA or Metal Gear Solid.)
Favourite moments so far include; cycling along the canal to Hensons and designing Vogons with them late into the night, storyboarding the movie on our boat, waking up to find new pages from Karey, seeing Warwick bring Marvin to life, Martin & Zooeys' screen test, the day they finished the Heart of Gold set, testing Zaphod's 2nd head, dragging Mos Def by his ankles across the floor during the Magrathean missile sequence, seeing the 2nd unit's mice footage, listening to Joby playing the overture on his piano, watching Sam Rockwell dance on Viltvodle 6, Bill Nighy, driving a golf cart down the corridor of Elstree Studios and being chased by the Big Brother security team, the first assembly...
I'm going to assume Zaphod will have 2 heads, plus these are fans of the book, they even checked that the script wasn't a horrible bastardization of the book so it's probably pretty accurate in most respects.
We have a quite a few American tourists over here, and I haven't seen anyone freak out over our park full of nude statues. Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?
Yes. The narrow-minded prudish Americans are quite happy with the narrow-minded prudish country we are and like to stay home away from disgusting, immoral Europe and their vulgar nude statue parks. The broad-minded friendly ones are very upset that we're the prudish idiots of the world so they like to leave as often as possible and visit countries that are open-minded enough to have a park full of nude statues.
Re:Replaced by: My gun didn't know me so I got kil
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Smart Guns are Coming
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· Score: 1
I grant you that this is an unlikely scenario, but the point is the reason people buy guns like that is for their reliability. When your life depends on something, you want to know it's going to work. Let me ask you this, if someone proposed putting these 'smart sensor' devices on your brakes, would you be real comfortable with that? Would you want to depend on proper biometric identification every time you had to use the brakes in your car?
I'm sorry but I drive my car daily. My life has never been in danger to the point where having a gun would be the one and only way to save me. I love guns, but I've never needed one, I don't even own one (living in NYC, if I lived upstate I'd deffinitely own a few rifles because at least I can use them, but I don't think the neighbors would like it much if I started shooting targets out back.)
Having a smart gun wouldn't bother me, having smart brakes, that doesn't sound like too good of an idea because usually when I'm pressing the brakes, 99% of the time it's a life or death situation where I depend on them working (except when I'm in stop and go traffic.) I think when choosing what to put smart technology on, something with the primary purpose of hurting or killing someone should have it more than a device meant to stop your vehicle from smashing into something.
If I wanted my OS to look and feel like a windowless brick room with flickering flourescent lighting, I'll skin it that way myself.
That's the problem. The OS should come as a windowless brick room with flickering flourescent lighting, if you want it to look nice you can skin it that way yourself. You can add eye candy easy, taking it away is usually hard especially when Microsoft puts it there. And even if you do manage to make your desktop look like classic windows 95, it still runs like longhorn.
Do you drive an old beater for a car because it "does the job"?
No, I bought a 2004 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V cause it was the fastest car I could afford that was stick and in stock (I would have bought a Dodge Neon SRT-4 but there were none in stock and I needed the car ASAP.) It came pretty vanilla, nothing special about it, it wasn't like a Mercedes SLK or anything. It was cheap, it did it's job (took me across the country), it was more reliable than my old beater mustang (which I'd still be driving if I put a new tranny in it.) It'd didn't come with 50 TVs, a big block V8, 19" rims, and all the other useless stuff I'd never need. It was a very functional car, when I wanted to make it faster I bought the performance parts and put them on my car, when I wanted new rims and drag radials, I bought them and put them on my car, if I got the car the way I have it now from the dealer, it would have cost $25,000. The car is still pretty vanilla on the outside, which I like, I don't want a factory body kit like a Toyota Celica or a Hyundai Tiburon, those cars are quite useless. They look "pretty" (mostly to anyone who doesn't know much about cars) but they lack the performance that you'd expect of them.
Do you live in a tiny room with an integrated flip down bed and sit on the floor to eat because it's a more efficient use of space?
I would have a flip down bed but it'd probably cost a lot more money than my bed now. My room is huge but that's just cause I live in a big house. And if furniture wasn't so comfortable I would sit on the floor and eat. But I have a wood floor, plus it's uncomfortable sitting down on the floor and eating, not to mention every time someone stands up, all the food and dirt and anything that fell on their lap, is now in your food.
Do you wear burlap clothes because it seems more practical?
No, burlap would be horrible to wear, it's uncomfortable, plus it's bad at keeping out water, and I imagine it'd be bad at keeping in warmth. It wouldn't be practical at all.
Mr. Vanilla: Do you realize that every game id and Valve release sells new hardware? Oh, that's right, you wouldn't know because you're too busy with your CGA graphics board playing pong so you're not forced to "upgrade".
Do you realize how many people who will have windows longhorn will never buy Doom 3 because they will never have a computer that can play the game? They just want a $400 computer that can go online and play music. I know cause I build computers for these people, they don't wanna spend an extra $400 just for a video card that can run Doom 3 well. Same thing with Half-Life 2 and pretty much every new computer game I can think of. All these people buy PS 2 and X-Box cause they're cheaper and run all the games that come out for them (and they run them well.)
After longhorn is released every new computer will ship with it, why should people have to pay extra for hardware required to run it when all they want to do is go online and play music. I rarely ever build computers faster than 2GHz cause no one wants it or needs it, and most of the time they have intergrated video. In 5 years, going online and playing music will take up the same resources so why should the OS force people to buy more than they need?
No they can get a MAX of 40 years, there is no minimum jail sentence, however the fine will be $64,000 for those 10 gifs you don't own.
Re:Replaced by: My gun didn't know me so I got kil
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Smart Guns are Coming
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· Score: 1
You say this like a regular gun never malfunctions. I think smart guns will fail to recognize the owner as much as a real gun will jam, maybe less, plus there should be a test mode to just check that the gun still recognizes you as the owner, test as often as you'd like (like when you clean the gun or something) and you shouldn't need to test it more than you handle the gun cause what could have gone wrong while the gun was being stored?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, after looking at a Playboy for the first time today, I would have to say yes. I never bought porn and none of my friends buy playboy, my friend's brother just happened to leave one in his truck. I've heard Playboy is basically a topless Maxim so I went thru the magazine. There were 5 (nude) pictures in the centerfold section and maybe 2 or 3 outside of that. The magazine is mostly articles, and some of them were actually interesting. When I want to look at porn, I'll stay with the 90+ gigs of movies on my computer, when I want to know the best way to convince a girl to have a threesome, I'll read Playboy.
Those individuals living close to Mother Earth follow the small still voice that guides them in ways they might not understand while it is occurring but later reveals the reason for the guidance. The tsunami is an example. All humans were given the message, only a few were capable of hearing and following it for only a few had minds quiet enough to comprehend.
If by "given the message" you mean "saw the water in the ocean go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out" then you're right. The tribesmen saw the waters receed and remembered what that meant, so they went to higher ground. There wasn't some voice from another higher dimension telling them to do that. Just common (to them) sense.
The credit company takes a percentage of all sales thru credit cards. I don't exactly remember the number, I found this out when I went to eat at this very fancy French restaurant. They charged us a LOT of money for a few sodas which kind of annoyed my grandmother who decided to put the whole bill on her credit card (it was like $200 and the credit card company took like $15-$30 from the restaurant, it was basically her way of getting back at them for charging $3 per soda.) When you pay cash all the money goes to the business, when you pay with credit, the credit card company takes a percentage (well at least the company providing the card reader I think.)
I can get a free cell phone almost anywhere. 3 years and $2000 later it's paid for.
Because those ads tell you there's a contract required (usually just a 1 year contract, but hey the phone IS free, the service isn't.
I can buy a car at 0% interest....but if I pay cash it's $$$thousands$$$ less than if I do credit.
I'm going to assume that's because the car dealership is taking off the amount of money they'd be charged by the bank. Or they're giving you a discount equal to what you would have paid in interest so when they give you the total price it looks like 0% interest. And car dealerships always love cash because that means all the money from the sale is going to them and not partly to a bank over a period of 5 years (or at least that's my theory, although I do know for a fact that they love cash.)
The way Blockbuster is advertising, you'd think you could keep a movie forever, and as long as you never try to rent another movie, will never be forced to pay anything or bring the movie back (I'm sure they'd call you and ask for it back though.) They could of just said "Now, rent the movie for 7 days!" with the fine print "After 7th day customer will be charged retail price for rental."
They use this for the weekdays while they're at work, not when they're at home. They actually spend time with their cats on the weekends when they're home.
(1) Gun control. Way more smart Americans believe in the right to carry a weapon than smart non-Americans. Most of the rest of the Western world thinks the US is kind of insane on this issue, actually.
Maybe because they don't understand the situation. Maybe they assume the U.S. is a country where every day someone gets shot by a 16 year old for wearing blue on a monday? I've been all across this country and I'm originally from NYC. People out west assume NY is just a big city with too much violence and it's a horrible place to live. I've been asked if I'm scared living out in NY, I try to explain to these people that NYC is actually very very small compared to the rest of NY. And even then, it all depends which borough you live in and which part of that borough. Staten Island is a very nice place that isn't even close to what people think NYC looks like, yet it's part of NYC.
I never really understood gun control, I would actually like it if guns were more common, not because we can all protect ourselves with the guns, but because kids would understand what guns were and what they can do. If guns were illegal people would still have them, but kids would see them and think "Hey I saw this in a movie once!" and maybe reenact a scene from The Matrix where Trinity shoots one of the agents in the head ("Dodge this.") I don't ever really see the point in banning all weapons, criminals will still have guns, and the people who use them for legitimate recriational reasons will be punished.
Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Because we all know people buy satellite radio not because there's at least 10+ stations of commercial free music, uncensored as well, but because it's CD quality.
Umm I can get a few days of CD quality music with my 6 CD changer that supports MP3 CDs. The reason I like satellite radio, Oppie and Anthony - FCC = Good radio. Same thing with Howards Stern (not that I listen to Howard Stern, but my sister's boyfriend does which is why he got Sirius radio in his car.)
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The DJs don't select most of the music on satellite radio, it's all what the listener's are requesting, which is why I love listening to it. When I'm in my sister's boyfriend's car, and there's a good song on, he writes down the song name and later we go looking for the MP3 along with any other songs the band might have put out. It's basically like college radio that works all across the U.S. And I really wish I had it when I was driving out to Arizona (from NY, taking a route that went thru northern CA) you probably have no idea how many dead zones there are for FM radio out west where all that comes in is some christian rock station and one country music station. And some places there is no FM radio at all. Especially in Valleys (which usually go on for miles.) I download a lot of new albums every day, but I still get tired of listening to the same songs (I have a few hundred albums and I've listened to all of them at least once.) and when I'm on a road trip it's a little hard to download new music to listen to (you'd be surprised how quickly you go thru a music collection driving 8,000+ miles across the US from the north and back around thru the south.)
I always wondered why we had a lighthouse on the middle of staten island. I thought they were always near the water, ours is just at the top of a hill in the middle of the island, didn't think it did much either since it doesn't seem to be on that much.
That's nothing, I had an AMD 2100+ keychain (still do although the core is now severely damaged.) It's such a perfect keychain, even though it cost $600 at the time I made it (the chip was fried so why just throw it out?)
As a side note I see the REAL accumulation of things as kinda pointless as well. I mean I do have cool shit [e.g. 500W 5.1 stereo, 17" LCD, amd64, etc...] but you won't find a shirt in my room worth more than 10$ nor diamond encrusted watches, etc...e.g. I buy practical stuff I can actually use and benefit from...
As a side note I see the REAL accumulation of things as kinda pointless as well. I mean I do have cool shit [e.g. Movado Faceto style watch, 19" rims, Mustang GT, etc...] but you won't find a computer in my room worth more than $500 nor a flat screen monitor, etc...e.g. I buy practical stuff I can actually use and benefit from...
Just because you see no benefit to having nice looking expensive clothes doesn't mean no one does. Maybe some guys like going out and wearing their wealth as a sign that says "I want to go out and bang a girl that only likes me for my money" they use and benefit from those items.
Personally, I'd rather have a $1,500 Movado watch than a $10 watch from K-mart, I would use it as a watch and benefit from the joy it gives me having aquired such a watch. And I'd rather have some nice looking clothes from Ecko or even Old Navy (which isn't expensive, but it's still more than some stuff from K-Mart.)
I rebooted my car while going down the highway, the CD player stopped working and kept saying Error (2002 Ford Explorer, crappy stock head unit) after we tried to load a CD that didn't go in fully (the motor went but the CD didn't go in.) We were on a road trip following someone so instead of stoping we tried to fix it other ways. We turned the radio on and off, tried switching modes, then eventually shifted the car into neutral, turned it off, and turned it back on. That did it.
Wow, obviously you're not a photographer (or at least not a very professional one.) I would never compare a $100 sigma lens to some $1,500+ Canon L glass. I'm not saying the Hubble is cheap and crappy, but why spend $2 billion upgrading the hubble when they can just build a new one for half that?
Umm that's pretty much any "big" (as in for the general public not just something nerds would enjoy) story I've ever read on Slashdot (while living in AZ and I had 12 channels, one of them being CNN which I watched all day.)
Now, on to the puzzling challenge of explaining the reasoning behind female group behavior in restroom explorations...
Puzzling? You should hang out with more females. They're just talking about someone who's still sitting at the table. They usually know what each other is thinking about a person so when one says "I'm going to the bathroom" it's like announcing "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, come with me to discuss it." When the other says "Ok I'll come with you" they're acknowledging that they're thinking alike and they will come and gossip. There really isn't much mystery to females, but I've been fortunate enough to have a sister close to my age so we hang out a lot (usually with her girl friends) so I get to pick up a lot of info.
Anyway this is way off topic...
So I paid $80 for package including many excellent single-player games, but I can't play any of them without getting express consent from Valve every time. When that consent is unavailable, I can't play the games I bought. This is bogus. This is outrageous.
I cannot imagine how this possibly benefits Valve in any way. Surely the p1r@t3s who don't wanna pay (na na why don't you get a job?) are merrily playing their hacked-installer versions.
I hope you're not telling us pirates who don't want to pay that we should pay? Please look at what you've said and tell me, was the game worth giving $80 to a company that doesn't trust you enough to let your run the game without having it phone home? The only person that loses with their scheme is paying customers, the pirates are better off so I'm going to stick with being a pirate of Valve games till they start treating their customers better.
I was a long time Valve/Half-Life fan. I bought Half-Life on pre-order years ago, and every single player expansion pack that came out for it. There were times where I questioned Valve's judgement, mostly after patches but I lived thru it. I kind of lost faith around the time CS hit store shelves. After using steam (with my friends login and password because apparently I already registered for steam with my CD key) I gave up completely and decided to never buy another thing from Valve ever again.
ID software on the other hand... they released a game with amazing graphics, created a linux port and doesn't require you to go online and authenticate to play. I bought a copy of Doom 3 the day it came out and will be buying a copy of Quake 4 the day it comes out. The day Half-Life 3 comes out I'll be searching for it online just so I can play and see how the story goes. Unless Valve decides to do a complete turn around and trash the worthless pile of trash that is Steam, I don't think I'd ever give them another dime.
Why would anyone in their right mind buy a DVD player when they can play DVDs on thier computer?
Because most people don't have their computers hooked up to their TVs and stereo systems. If they did do you think any of them would buy DVD players? I know I wouldn't, there would be no point. I can stick a DVD in my computer and hey guess what, it works. It works better than on a DVD player cause I have a mouse to browse the menus. If I want I can use the remote that came with my Live Drive to control the movie but I don't.
The shortest answer is that I like being able to just dump the game into the console, hit power, and start playing.
That's always nice but I'd rather be able to do that with the console, and if I choose to, load the game onto my PC and play it (when I want better graphics, performance, sound quality, etc.) If sony sold some type of device that hooked up to your computer and let you play PS2 games on the PC like they were regular PC games, I'd buy it. I wouldn't care if the price was twice that of a PS2, I just wanna play my console games on my PC.
Do you keep your PC in the same room as your HDTV? If so, which case did you use, and how did you explain it to your SO?
No, I prefer a high resolution over a large screen (which is a major benefit of PCs, very high resolutions are supported) so I don't have the computer hooked up to the TV all the time, but if I wanted to I could use my own case (it fits nicely next to the stereo sub woofer and they're around the same height.) Explaining it wouldn't be too hard, just think of it as a console except it has my movie/music/game collection on it.
Because somebody else in the household is using your PC.
I'm sorry, but I actually have more than one computer per person in my house, most of the computers are old hardware from upgrades, except a few linux boxes that are just computers I found outside, and my box which no one else uses. I only have 2 playstation 2s and that's because I keep one in the car, there's no point to having more than one but if someone is using the PS2 no one else can use it, unless two people want to play a multiplayer game (I have no 4 player games or a multitap to use them.) Most of the 2 player games I own are racing games and it's really annoying playing a game with a split screen even on a 57" TV.
You can buy an adapter to use a mouse and keyboard with most PlayStation 2 games. And would you want to play something like Super Smash Bros. Melee on a keyboard?
And I can buy an adapter to use a PS2 controller as a joystick with ANY computer games (as long as they support a joystick.) And the majority of PS2 games I have would benefit from a mouse and keyboard.
Besides, how many mice and keyboards can you plug into a PC and have a game read them all, if you don't want to have to buy four PCs for four kids to play multiplayer games on?
That all depends on the game, I can plug a few hundred joysticks into the computer if I wanted to (USB) but unless the game supports 100+ joysticks it's not going to work. Besides, I have enough computers for people to play things over the LAN and they're all just old parts (I upgrade my computer often.)
This is always so annoying. When you steal from a brick and mortar store there is materials and money lost. The store has to cover the cost (their cost) of the CD. The store loses money and if enough of this happens they either go out of business or increase the cost of their CDs (to cover the money loss to theft.) When you download a song online there is no loss except loss in your bandwidth (till the song finishes) and loss in your hard drive space. All of that is on your end. To assume someone would have purchased an album just because they downloading a song from it is ridiculous.
Think of it this way, in Star Trek they have replicators. Now lets say you downloaded the pattern of atoms to make a Porsche online and used that to turn a pile of garbage into a Porsche 911 Turbo and drove that thing around (never EVER selling it, only turning it back into garbage when I was tired of it.) Would you call that stealing a Porsche?
I dunno, have you ever played a PS2 game on a PS2 and then on a high-end PC? I have an Athlon XP 3200+, 1 gig of ram, a 120, 160 and 200 gig hard drive (480 total not including shared network drives on my sister's computer), and a GeForce 6800 OC. Did I mention I can use my 57" HDTV for my PC (S-Video) and my SB Live Audigy hooks up to the coaxil input on my stereo receiver? Now please explain why I would want to play games on the PS3 rather than my computer (which can also be upgraded much easier than any console system.) Price isn't too much of an issue and I hate playing games on PS2 now because of the load times, terrible graphics (compared to my PC), and lack of a mouse/keyboard (which is very usefull for games like GTA or Metal Gear Solid.)
Favourite moments so far include; cycling along the canal to Hensons and designing Vogons with them late into the night, storyboarding the movie on our boat, waking up to find new pages from Karey, seeing Warwick bring Marvin to life, Martin & Zooeys' screen test, the day they finished the Heart of Gold set, testing Zaphod's 2nd head, dragging Mos Def by his ankles across the floor during the Magrathean missile sequence, seeing the 2nd unit's mice footage, listening to Joby playing the overture on his piano, watching Sam Rockwell dance on Viltvodle 6, Bill Nighy, driving a golf cart down the corridor of Elstree Studios and being chased by the Big Brother security team, the first assembly...
I'm going to assume Zaphod will have 2 heads, plus these are fans of the book, they even checked that the script wasn't a horrible bastardization of the book so it's probably pretty accurate in most respects.
We have a quite a few American tourists over here, and I haven't seen anyone freak out over our park full of nude statues. Do narrow-minded and prudish Americans stay at home, while the broad-minded and friendly ones visit Europe in the summer?
Yes. The narrow-minded prudish Americans are quite happy with the narrow-minded prudish country we are and like to stay home away from disgusting, immoral Europe and their vulgar nude statue parks. The broad-minded friendly ones are very upset that we're the prudish idiots of the world so they like to leave as often as possible and visit countries that are open-minded enough to have a park full of nude statues.
I grant you that this is an unlikely scenario, but the point is the reason people buy guns like that is for their reliability. When your life depends on something, you want to know it's going to work. Let me ask you this, if someone proposed putting these 'smart sensor' devices on your brakes, would you be real comfortable with that? Would you want to depend on proper biometric identification every time you had to use the brakes in your car?
I'm sorry but I drive my car daily. My life has never been in danger to the point where having a gun would be the one and only way to save me. I love guns, but I've never needed one, I don't even own one (living in NYC, if I lived upstate I'd deffinitely own a few rifles because at least I can use them, but I don't think the neighbors would like it much if I started shooting targets out back.)
Having a smart gun wouldn't bother me, having smart brakes, that doesn't sound like too good of an idea because usually when I'm pressing the brakes, 99% of the time it's a life or death situation where I depend on them working (except when I'm in stop and go traffic.) I think when choosing what to put smart technology on, something with the primary purpose of hurting or killing someone should have it more than a device meant to stop your vehicle from smashing into something.
If I wanted my OS to look and feel like a windowless brick room with flickering flourescent lighting, I'll skin it that way myself.
That's the problem. The OS should come as a windowless brick room with flickering flourescent lighting, if you want it to look nice you can skin it that way yourself. You can add eye candy easy, taking it away is usually hard especially when Microsoft puts it there. And even if you do manage to make your desktop look like classic windows 95, it still runs like longhorn.
Do you drive an old beater for a car because it "does the job"?
No, I bought a 2004 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V cause it was the fastest car I could afford that was stick and in stock (I would have bought a Dodge Neon SRT-4 but there were none in stock and I needed the car ASAP.) It came pretty vanilla, nothing special about it, it wasn't like a Mercedes SLK or anything. It was cheap, it did it's job (took me across the country), it was more reliable than my old beater mustang (which I'd still be driving if I put a new tranny in it.) It'd didn't come with 50 TVs, a big block V8, 19" rims, and all the other useless stuff I'd never need. It was a very functional car, when I wanted to make it faster I bought the performance parts and put them on my car, when I wanted new rims and drag radials, I bought them and put them on my car, if I got the car the way I have it now from the dealer, it would have cost $25,000. The car is still pretty vanilla on the outside, which I like, I don't want a factory body kit like a Toyota Celica or a Hyundai Tiburon, those cars are quite useless. They look "pretty" (mostly to anyone who doesn't know much about cars) but they lack the performance that you'd expect of them.
Do you live in a tiny room with an integrated flip down bed and sit on the floor to eat because it's a more efficient use of space?
I would have a flip down bed but it'd probably cost a lot more money than my bed now. My room is huge but that's just cause I live in a big house. And if furniture wasn't so comfortable I would sit on the floor and eat. But I have a wood floor, plus it's uncomfortable sitting down on the floor and eating, not to mention every time someone stands up, all the food and dirt and anything that fell on their lap, is now in your food.
Do you wear burlap clothes because it seems more practical?
No, burlap would be horrible to wear, it's uncomfortable, plus it's bad at keeping out water, and I imagine it'd be bad at keeping in warmth. It wouldn't be practical at all.
Mr. Vanilla: Do you realize that every game id and Valve release sells new hardware? Oh, that's right, you wouldn't know because you're too busy with your CGA graphics board playing pong so you're not forced to "upgrade".
Do you realize how many people who will have windows longhorn will never buy Doom 3 because they will never have a computer that can play the game? They just want a $400 computer that can go online and play music. I know cause I build computers for these people, they don't wanna spend an extra $400 just for a video card that can run Doom 3 well. Same thing with Half-Life 2 and pretty much every new computer game I can think of. All these people buy PS 2 and X-Box cause they're cheaper and run all the games that come out for them (and they run them well.)
After longhorn is released every new computer will ship with it, why should people have to pay extra for hardware required to run it when all they want to do is go online and play music. I rarely ever build computers faster than 2GHz cause no one wants it or needs it, and most of the time they have intergrated video. In 5 years, going online and playing music will take up the same resources so why should the OS force people to buy more than they need?
No they can get a MAX of 40 years, there is no minimum jail sentence, however the fine will be $64,000 for those 10 gifs you don't own.
You say this like a regular gun never malfunctions. I think smart guns will fail to recognize the owner as much as a real gun will jam, maybe less, plus there should be a test mode to just check that the gun still recognizes you as the owner, test as often as you'd like (like when you clean the gun or something) and you shouldn't need to test it more than you handle the gun cause what could have gone wrong while the gun was being stored?