Whether or not bass is the easiest to store isn't the question. It's the hardest to reproduce, with many headphone jacks just simply not able to do so.
I'm only speaking for myself, but that is true for me in some cases. E.g., I hate mowing the lawn, so it is worth it to me to pay someone to do my yardwork. But I like building my computer, so it isn't as burdensome to me.
Besides, it's not "spending the night up to my elbows in computer parts." The actual process of building a computer takes less than an hour. The most time consuming part is installing the OS and the software, which you can do while on the phone with friends, playing with your kids, etc.
Others in this thread said it, but I'll say it again, some people enjoy doing this.
Moreover, your argument is based on the theory that every hour you spend building a computer is an hour you could have spent working. That argument isn't applicable to salaried people, who don't get paid more for extra hours. Even for hourly people, in many companies, you need permission to work extra hours. Moreover, you get more options when building your own computer. Many computer manufacturers will force you to buy the 3500+ processor in order to get the GeForce 6800GT. So if you wanted to save money by buying a 2800+ processor, they will restrict you to a lesser GPU.
The Canon G series of digicams (now up to the G6) have a manual exposure mode. They also have a manual focus mode, but it is all but useless in the G2 that I have.
Of course, all modern DSLRs have the capability to both manual focus and manual meter.
I use aggregators to narrow down my choices. For example, when I wanted to buy a fighting game, I used GameRankings to toss out the bad games. Then I could read the reviews of the highly regarded games.
I do this even without regard to genre. If I were to buy an XBox (which I don't currently have), the first thing I would do is determine what the top rated games are. Then read the reviews to see what kind of genre I want to go to.
What works for you doesn't work for others. I know a lot of wrestling game fans and the type of info you criticize is *EXACTLY* the info they want. Sure, the info is in the manual, but when deciding to buy or rent a game, you don't have access to the manual.
Of course, this is specific to wrestling games because there are engines that are generally liked and engines that aren't. When reviewing, say, Tony Hawk Underground 2, you really don't need to know that square does flip tricks and circle does grabs.
I had a Palm (Clie, actually) but found that I never used it. But when my employer gave me a Blackberry, I realized that a PDA can be useful. Pushing email is rather Blackberry specific, but a lot of other features are available on other PDAs:
Syncing between computer address book and PDA. I have my full address book with me at all times. And if I add a new one, it automatically gets entered into the computer.
Writing notes to myself. I'm a bit ADD. If I wrote a reminder to myself, I'd probably forget about the note, much less what I wrote in the note. With the PDA, I can set an appointment or a task with the note. After I sync, Outlook (or whatever your PIM is) will remind me about it later.
Writing notes to myself for use outside of work. For example, I'll just type out a grocery list in Outlook, and get it synced to my Blackberry. No more wondering where my grocery list is.
I think the best part of the Blackberry is the keyboard. When I had my Clie, I hated using Graffiti. The thumb keyboard is much more handy.
I'm in a similar frustrating situation. At first, I thought it was my router. Since it was old (if you consider 2 years to be old), I got a new Linksys WAP. The first few days it worked fine. Since then, my laptop will drop a signal for no reason at all. The strength (according to Netstumbler) fluctuates from -30 to -60 with seemingly no rhyme or reason. (And no, my neighbors all WEP'd their networks.)
I'm beginning to wonder if I live in an RF black hole. My wife had to switch from a GSM cell because she got absolutely no reception in the apartment. (We barely get reception with Verizon, but it's certainly better than nothing). And my new shower radio only works in one location. If I move it slightly, no signal. I can't wait until my lease is up and I can move.
I've never understood the 6 months savings thing. If you make, say, $80k per year. It would take a long time to save up $40k. Then, when you get to $40k, it's sitting in an account making negligible interest instead of being invested?
And what is the 6 months savings for? As you said, many expenses are covered by insurance. Practically the only thing that it would really seem to cover is unemployment.
I thought most benchmarks say that the difference between 512 MB and 1 GB is not nearly as big as the difference between 2 GHz and 4 GHz. If your example was 256 MB and 512 MB, I would agree.
I hate these comments. You don't need 500GB? Don't get it. There are plenty of people who do need large hard drives. I've started encoding my CDs and am only about half done. 78 GB.
Ever hear of editing digital video? About 13 GB for a single miniDV tape. 500 GB is only 38 tapes. Anybody who edit video for a living will easily have 38 tapes. Hell, anyone with a child playing sports will easily have 38 tapes. In fact, it's not even 38 tapes, you need scratch space when you're editing the tapes.
You can capture a tape, edit it, and delete it. But why should you? If you want a clip again, you'll have to recapture it, which is a real-time process.
I'm building a computer now. I'll already have 3 drives in the case. (For performance reasons, it's best to have video capture on a separate drive. Plus a separate drive for MP3s, for both performance and backup reasons.) Since many cases have only 4 or 5 3.5 inch bays, you might as well make them as large as possible so you don't run out of empty drive bays.
There are sites that do not work on Firefox. For some reason, gmail crashes my Firefox about 1 out of every 3 times I log in. Annoying as hell, especially if I have multiple tabs open, because I lose all my tabs. It never crashes IE, so I don't know what is wrong.
Also, it seems that the Firefox pop-up blocker is too effective. Even if I allow it to do pop-ups, some sites still don't work. I just wish the web designers would stop relying on pop ups to display information. Annoying as hell. Also, flash apps don't always work well in Firefox, especially if it results in a pop-up.
I used to have problems with banking sites that wouldn't work on Firefox (MBNA, for one). Also, USAir used to only work on IE. Both of those have been fixed in recent months.
The best analysis of whether you should upgrade is a subjective one. Sit down at the computer. Does it do what you want or not?
OK, you sit down at your computer and it does not do what you want. What do you do? Buy every video card until you find one that "does what you want"? Or do you go to Tom's Hardware or Anandtech and use their benchmarks as a guide to what to get?
Benchmarks are not the end-all of buying computer products, but they are certainly useful
Please correct me if I am wrong. But MS did break compatibility to a certain extent, though. 95 was DOS based. 98 broke some 95/3.1 programs, even though 98 was also DOS based. XP is based on the NT/2000 code base and broke some 98 programs and most 95 programs.
Maybe if Real didn't suck or didn't install spyware on the computers, more people would install it. I hate Real and if someone sends me a Real link, I don't go to it.
Now that EA has the exclusive NFL rights, it can fix prices wherever it wants (since you have no other recourse of product to purchase if you want an officially licensed game).
First off, prices in the game market are already fixed. Ever see a game selling for more than $49.99? Incredible that, no matter how sophisticated the game is, it is still $49.99?
Because of that EA couldn't just decide to charge whatever it wants for Madden. If it charged $100 or even $59.99, people would just buy other games instead, even if non-football.
4 CDs per month = about $40. You don't need to be Donald Trump to afford $40 per month. On the music mailing lists I'm on, there are more than a many people with over 3000 CDs.
Just because you haven't listened to something in 6 months doesn't mean it's not worth listening to. In encoding my collection, I've come across CDs I haven't listened to in years. Guess what? I still like them.
I've encoded 891 albums, taking up 66.91 GB of space. I still have two drawers full of CDs that I have yet to encode and I still buy 4 or more CDs per month.
(1) Because people who've been using film SLRs for years are used to that form factor and it's usually wise not to piss off your base of users.
(2) Because it's easier (and cheaper) to take a film camera and retool it with a CCD or CMOS sensor, than it is to design a camera body from the ground up that is compatible with existing lenses.
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Whether or not bass is the easiest to store isn't the question. It's the hardest to reproduce, with many headphone jacks just simply not able to do so.
Besides, it's not "spending the night up to my elbows in computer parts." The actual process of building a computer takes less than an hour. The most time consuming part is installing the OS and the software, which you can do while on the phone with friends, playing with your kids, etc.
Moreover, your argument is based on the theory that every hour you spend building a computer is an hour you could have spent working. That argument isn't applicable to salaried people, who don't get paid more for extra hours. Even for hourly people, in many companies, you need permission to work extra hours. Moreover, you get more options when building your own computer. Many computer manufacturers will force you to buy the 3500+ processor in order to get the GeForce 6800GT. So if you wanted to save money by buying a 2800+ processor, they will restrict you to a lesser GPU.
Of course, all modern DSLRs have the capability to both manual focus and manual meter.
Metacritic does the same games, movies, music, and books.
I do this even without regard to genre. If I were to buy an XBox (which I don't currently have), the first thing I would do is determine what the top rated games are. Then read the reviews to see what kind of genre I want to go to.
Of course, this is specific to wrestling games because there are engines that are generally liked and engines that aren't. When reviewing, say, Tony Hawk Underground 2, you really don't need to know that square does flip tricks and circle does grabs.
- Syncing between computer address book and PDA. I have my full address book with me at all times. And if I add a new one, it automatically gets entered into the computer.
- Writing notes to myself. I'm a bit ADD. If I wrote a reminder to myself, I'd probably forget about the note, much less what I wrote in the note. With the PDA, I can set an appointment or a task with the note. After I sync, Outlook (or whatever your PIM is) will remind me about it later.
- Writing notes to myself for use outside of work. For example, I'll just type out a grocery list in Outlook, and get it synced to my Blackberry. No more wondering where my grocery list is.
I think the best part of the Blackberry is the keyboard. When I had my Clie, I hated using Graffiti. The thumb keyboard is much more handy.I'm beginning to wonder if I live in an RF black hole. My wife had to switch from a GSM cell because she got absolutely no reception in the apartment. (We barely get reception with Verizon, but it's certainly better than nothing). And my new shower radio only works in one location. If I move it slightly, no signal. I can't wait until my lease is up and I can move.
And what is the 6 months savings for? As you said, many expenses are covered by insurance. Practically the only thing that it would really seem to cover is unemployment.
I thought most benchmarks say that the difference between 512 MB and 1 GB is not nearly as big as the difference between 2 GHz and 4 GHz. If your example was 256 MB and 512 MB, I would agree.
Ever hear of editing digital video? About 13 GB for a single miniDV tape. 500 GB is only 38 tapes. Anybody who edit video for a living will easily have 38 tapes. Hell, anyone with a child playing sports will easily have 38 tapes. In fact, it's not even 38 tapes, you need scratch space when you're editing the tapes.
You can capture a tape, edit it, and delete it. But why should you? If you want a clip again, you'll have to recapture it, which is a real-time process.
I'm building a computer now. I'll already have 3 drives in the case. (For performance reasons, it's best to have video capture on a separate drive. Plus a separate drive for MP3s, for both performance and backup reasons.) Since many cases have only 4 or 5 3.5 inch bays, you might as well make them as large as possible so you don't run out of empty drive bays.
Also, it seems that the Firefox pop-up blocker is too effective. Even if I allow it to do pop-ups, some sites still don't work. I just wish the web designers would stop relying on pop ups to display information. Annoying as hell. Also, flash apps don't always work well in Firefox, especially if it results in a pop-up.
I used to have problems with banking sites that wouldn't work on Firefox (MBNA, for one). Also, USAir used to only work on IE. Both of those have been fixed in recent months.
OK, you sit down at your computer and it does not do what you want. What do you do? Buy every video card until you find one that "does what you want"? Or do you go to Tom's Hardware or Anandtech and use their benchmarks as a guide to what to get?
Benchmarks are not the end-all of buying computer products, but they are certainly useful
Please correct me if I am wrong. But MS did break compatibility to a certain extent, though. 95 was DOS based. 98 broke some 95/3.1 programs, even though 98 was also DOS based. XP is based on the NT/2000 code base and broke some 98 programs and most 95 programs.
Maybe if Real didn't suck or didn't install spyware on the computers, more people would install it. I hate Real and if someone sends me a Real link, I don't go to it.
I was talking about console games. They are all capped at the same price.
First off, prices in the game market are already fixed. Ever see a game selling for more than $49.99? Incredible that, no matter how sophisticated the game is, it is still $49.99?
Because of that EA couldn't just decide to charge whatever it wants for Madden. If it charged $100 or even $59.99, people would just buy other games instead, even if non-football.
It wasn't a DVD that was encumbered with DRM. It was a special edition, high-definition version of a movie. It's not a big deal.
Actually, his brother is the welder.
4 CDs per month = about $40. You don't need to be Donald Trump to afford $40 per month. On the music mailing lists I'm on, there are more than a many people with over 3000 CDs.
Just because you haven't listened to something in 6 months doesn't mean it's not worth listening to. In encoding my collection, I've come across CDs I haven't listened to in years. Guess what? I still like them.
I've encoded 891 albums, taking up 66.91 GB of space. I still have two drawers full of CDs that I have yet to encode and I still buy 4 or more CDs per month.
I have iTunes on my computer with 66.91 GB of music. It says I have 32.7 days of music.
(2) Because it's easier (and cheaper) to take a film camera and retool it with a CCD or CMOS sensor, than it is to design a camera body from the ground up that is compatible with existing lenses.