Noise cancelling headphones (and I have a pretty good pair) actually making flying WORSE, IMHO. They cancel out the engine noise and allow you to hear every inane conversation, screaming kid, and tubercular passenger coughing up a lung with crystal clarity. That's the OPPOSITE of what I need on a flight.
I'm a fairly frequent flier, and I think everybody's life would be improved by a bit more enforced "shut up and read a book" time and a bit less Facebook time. Also, whose brilliant idea was it to allow cell phone use during taxi to the gate after landing, so every flight ends with a dozen iterations of the "NO, WE JUST LANDED! WE'RE NOT EVEN TO THE GATE YET!" conversation?
I have a giant comic collection going back over 30 years, and I've missed about 5 football games total (home and away) for my alma mater in the last 14 years or so. What does that make me?
I find as I get older that I don't have as much time to play games at a sitting, and I often go weeks or months between sessions with a game.
I find that I spend a LOT more time and money on something like Rock Band, where I can play for as long as I want, quit, and come back later and resume with no problem. But I do still enjoy games like Oblivion, it's just that I only really play it for a week or two a year when I know I don't have much going on and have time to refamiliarize myself with the story and the controls and such.
I've found in the last few years that some of the games I enjoyed the most were ruined by overcomplication. Take Burnout, the racing game, as an example - Takedown and Revenge were great games. Closed course racing, lots of fast, furious fun. Then came Paradise, and they made it into an "open world" game where instead of just driving the course and racing, you had to start trying to read a map and find your way around during the race. More freedom, less fun. The same thing happened after the first couple SSX (snowboarding) games - the third one tried to be a sandbox game, and it lost its focus on the stuff that was fun - the racing.
JRjr
The trade paperback (which collects the 12 issues of the original 1986 miniseries) has sold someting like 1,000,000 copies just since the trailer came out, and has been the best selling trade paperback every month since it was released. It won a Hugo Award and has been named to several "best novels of the 20th century" (not just comics, actual novels) kinds of lists. And it's written by a European (Alan Moore, from the UK).
If you've never heard of it, your part of Europe might be under a rock.:-)
Yeah, Stunts was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this article. When I was in college in the early 90s, we had a few Stunts competitions on my dorm hall. First we built the fastest track possible, and took turns shaving hundredths of seconds off of each other's times. Then we optimized that track for causing massive wrecks, and took turns seeing who could cause the longest crash animation (often several minutes long, with the car flying thousands of feet in the air). Good times.
Guitar Hero 3 on the PS3 is a disaster. The only official guitar you can use is the wireless one that came with the game, and the USB wireless dongle seems to introduce some random lag and note drops (should've used the built-in Bluetooth). But you can't use the wireless GH3 guitar to play GH1, GH2, or GH80s on the PS3. And you can't use the wired or wireless old GH guitars on the PS3 without a third party adapter that doesn't completely work.
(I just bought what appears to be the best of the third party adapters, and it allows me to use my GH1 guitar on GH3, but it doesn't work with the "special edition" cherry SG wired guitar. And the adapter apparently only allows you to use the old guitars to play GH1, not GH2 or GH80s.)
It's a complete disaster - I can't fathom how Activision got things so completely wrong on the PS3. I was so disgusted by my GH3 on the PS3 experience that I bought an XBox just to play Rock Band on.
This seems to be the response that's closest to what came to my mind when I read the summary. There are times in relationships (parents, friends, girlfriend) when you are in some way "obligated" to call but don't actually want to have a conversation. It seems a little underhanded, but when you combine this service with the still-existent vagaries of cell phone coverage and behavior ("no, really, I tried to call but it went straight to voice mail!"), it allows you to take the easy way out of fulfilling an obligation. It can also allow you to gain the upper hand in a game of "phone tag" (say, when you're having a fight with your girlfriend) by putting the ball back in the other person's court.
Like I said, it's a little underhanded and probably not the healthiest way to communicate in a relationship, but I can imagine a few applications for this kind of thing.
You kind of have to take the whole thing with a grain of salt - she says the review is about the "Wii Fit game console" and then talks about how it has an "optional balance board" and a "hand control" [a Wiimote]. So the whole description is kind of a mess.
I don't read CR a lot, but I'll occasionally thumb through it when I'm shopping for something. The impression that I get is that you don't get very deep, technical information in their reviews - they seem to focus on price, build quality, and feature set. That's probably a better approach for washing machines than for digital cameras. They provide good general information for novices, and following their advice won't steer you wrong, but they probably aren't all that useful for power users.
I assumed that she meant that the balance board was an optional Wii accessory (that is, not something that comes with the Wii system), not that it was optional for Wii Fit.
I recently upgraded my MacBook to 10.5, and have been regretting it. I only use some of the new features (don't really care about Time Machine, one of the biggies), and a lot of stuff that used to Just Work (wireless networking) has become problematic.
The biggest problem I had, oddly, was with downloading software updates - the downloads would mysteriously stop after a few seconds or minutes (and not due to loss of network connectivity - a Windows box on the same network was able to download stuff rock solid, at the same time), and would never resume. Had to do some kind of Mac voodoo (Restore Permissions, or something like that) to fix it. So I'm a little concerned about even being ABLE to download a 500 MB software update, due to bugs in the software...
Technically, the sequels to Zork were Zork II and Zork III (and others later). The Enchanter games (Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker) were a different series.
JRjr
I'm a dedicated turn signal user (also in Atlanta), but there's also a problem with using turn signals. Quite often, if you use your turn signal, the car behind you will accelerate to close the gap and cut you off, even if you're just trying to pass through the lane to get to an off ramp. About the only way you can balance the need to use turn signals with the need to actually change lanes is to give one or two blinks to appease your conscience, and then forcibly take the gap before you can get cut off.
People don't seem to realize that driving is a collective effort, and if they'd cut out that kind of me-first assholery, everybody's drive would be better.
A couple of years ago, the security lines at Atlanta had separate "shoe scanners" that you could use before going through the magnetic scanner to see if your shoes had metal in them and would set off the scanner. As I recall, the story was that they were invented by an Eagle Scout, and really just consisted of a scanning wand mounted in a box. Somebody eventually made them remove the devices because they weren't "approved." Shortly thereafter, everybody had to remove their shoes anyway.
I suppose they can potentially see more anomolies than just metal in your shoes when they go through the X-ray machine, but I always thought the little shoe scanner thing was a pretty good idea.
2 Fry's in Georgia, actually - one in Duluth, one in Alpharetta.
It's basically a Wal-Mart-sized electronics store. They have a big section of "Radio Shack" stuff - resistors, soldering irons, heat shrink tubing - electronics hobbyist stuff. They also sell everything from TVs to vacuum cleaners, a la Best Buy, but with a lot more stock.
They don't carry the absolute highest-end stuff, but they have a good selection of a WIDE variety of stuff, and usually about the best brick-and-mortar prices you'll find anywhere.
Actually, they had one other pretty decent single that cracked the top 40, "One In A Million" in 1983.
Looking at Wikipedia, "Talking In Your Sleep" was actually their biggest song peaking at #3, followed by "One In A Million" at #37, and "What I Like About You" at #49.
I honestly can't say that I knew that the version of the song in Guitar Hero was a cover, so it must be a pretty accurate rendition. But it's been a while since I played it, and it was one of the songs that gave me the most trouble, so I was generally concentrating more on playing the song than on listening to it.
Best Buy is pretty useless for computer hardware. Fry's is somewhat better (wider selection, but still not the highest quality stuff). MicroCenter is probably the best, for a brick & mortar store. Newegg and CDW beat them all, if you can wait a couple of days for the stuff to arrive.
The thing is, Best Buy's CD selection has also suffered (and their prices have risen) over the last few years. They used to have decent stock, but now their stock is pretty narrow (not all that many artists) and shallow (only a title or two per artist, usually). I really miss Tower Records, another recent casualty, when I shop for music.
They might as well bulldoze that "Around Lenox" shopping center now - the former Tower Records location in that center has been sitting vacant for years, and now their other anchor, CompUSA, is going vacant, too.
The only CompUSA left in Georgia is in Augusta. Kind of surprising, kind of not - I haven't shopped there regularly since the mid-90s, and have barely set foot in the store at all in the last 5 or 7 years.
Gwinnett and Alpharetta are certainly the most obvious locations for Fry's in the Atlanta area. I'd think one up the I-75 corridor (Smyrna/Marietta/Kennesaw) would also be a no-brainer.
East and west of town (I-20 corridor), neither the demographics nor the population density is really there right now. Same for south of town (I-75 and I-85).
I live in Fayetteville, and I think the Fayetteville/Peachtree City area probably has the right demographics, but not the population density or the interstate access.
So, I'd predict that Fry's will build a store in Cobb County, and that'll pretty much be it for the Atlanta area, unfortunately. (I sure would like to have one on the south side, though...)
>>No, it's still just an accessory and a couple of games more expensive.
I'm just going from my personal experience here. I've got enough money in the bank to go buy whatever I want to buy. Being able to afford the console isn't an issue. (I have no interest in the 360, so that's not in the equation for me.) Wii is $250, so I bought one. If I were to buy a PS3, I'd want the 60 GB version, which is $600. $350 is more than "an accessory and a couple of games more expensive." More like 5 games (hypothetically - all I've got's Zelda so far), a Wiimote, a nunchuck, a classic controller, and a couple of Virtual Store downloads more expensive.
But it's not "not being able to afford it" that keeps me from buying a PS3, it's "not willing to spend $600 for a toy." In other words, price is a factor in ways beyond "I don't have that much money."
>>The PS3 costs as much as another console with an accessory and a couple of games.
Yeah, but then you buy an accessory and a couple of games for the PS3, and suddenly it's way more expensive than that other console again.
Games and accessories are essentially a push across all the consoles - you'll need an extra controller, a fancier video cable, and a couple of games no matter which console you get, and the costs for those items are similar across all the consoles. Comparing the base prices of the consoles is perfectly valid, and there's no getting around the fact that the PS3 is significantly more expensive than the competition.
As a fan of the PS2 who WANTS the PS3 to succeed (I'll buy one when the price comes down...), I find this interview rather insulting. It's just so transparent that EVERYTHING he's saying is just a repeat of the company line, trying to turn negatives into positives.
Lots of PS3s languishing on shelves? "We do a good job managing our supply chain." Target in Newnan, GA, 4 PM on 2/25: 11 PS3s, 0 Wiis. Congrats on your expert supply chain management, Sony, but maybe you'd better focus on SELLING THE PRODUCT.
No rumble in the controllers? "That's a previous-gen feature." Yeah, and why would you carry over a minor feature that most users are neutral or positive about into the next generation...
Motion sensitivity? "Far more opportunity for future innovation..." Ah, so that's why Sony didn't even HAVE motion sensitivity in place until the last minute, then?
Ahhhh! Bringing back painful memories with that "want some rye?" quote. I loved the old text Zorks, but after a LOT of effort trying to get "Return to Zork" to even run on my old 486 (how I DON'T miss the days of manually shuffling TSRs into various memory blocks to get games to run), I couldn't muster the motivation to actually play it.
But my roommate did, while I was in bed trying to sleep. I think I heard "Want some rye? Course you do!" about 10,000 times, and to this day I still don't really know what the context of the quote is.
I've had a PSP for a while, but I've come to the realization that I'm just not a "portable gamer." My lifestyle isn't such that I have a lot of opportunity to play games while I travel. Plus, I'd rather play games on a nice big screen with a full sized controller.
I tried to play GTA: Liberty City Stories on the PSP, but it was nearly impossible to do. My hands ached after holding the thing for a few minutes, and there weren't enough buttons to support all the gameplay (shooting out of car windows was very difficult on the PSP, for instance). Plus, I kept accidentally turning the thing off when I was really struggling with an intense mission. It was a pretty frustrating experience all around.
I wish they'd come out with GTA: Vice City Stories for the PS2. I'd like to play it, but I've learned my lesson about trying to play it on the PSP.
Slashdot Mirror
Noise cancelling headphones (and I have a pretty good pair) actually making flying WORSE, IMHO. They cancel out the engine noise and allow you to hear every inane conversation, screaming kid, and tubercular passenger coughing up a lung with crystal clarity. That's the OPPOSITE of what I need on a flight.
I'm a fairly frequent flier, and I think everybody's life would be improved by a bit more enforced "shut up and read a book" time and a bit less Facebook time. Also, whose brilliant idea was it to allow cell phone use during taxi to the gate after landing, so every flight ends with a dozen iterations of the "NO, WE JUST LANDED! WE'RE NOT EVEN TO THE GATE YET!" conversation?
I have a giant comic collection going back over 30 years, and I've missed about 5 football games total (home and away) for my alma mater in the last 14 years or so. What does that make me?
JRjr
I find as I get older that I don't have as much time to play games at a sitting, and I often go weeks or months between sessions with a game. I find that I spend a LOT more time and money on something like Rock Band, where I can play for as long as I want, quit, and come back later and resume with no problem. But I do still enjoy games like Oblivion, it's just that I only really play it for a week or two a year when I know I don't have much going on and have time to refamiliarize myself with the story and the controls and such. I've found in the last few years that some of the games I enjoyed the most were ruined by overcomplication. Take Burnout, the racing game, as an example - Takedown and Revenge were great games. Closed course racing, lots of fast, furious fun. Then came Paradise, and they made it into an "open world" game where instead of just driving the course and racing, you had to start trying to read a map and find your way around during the race. More freedom, less fun. The same thing happened after the first couple SSX (snowboarding) games - the third one tried to be a sandbox game, and it lost its focus on the stuff that was fun - the racing. JRjr
The trade paperback (which collects the 12 issues of the original 1986 miniseries) has sold someting like 1,000,000 copies just since the trailer came out, and has been the best selling trade paperback every month since it was released. It won a Hugo Award and has been named to several "best novels of the 20th century" (not just comics, actual novels) kinds of lists. And it's written by a European (Alan Moore, from the UK).
If you've never heard of it, your part of Europe might be under a rock. :-)
JRjr
Yeah, Stunts was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this article. When I was in college in the early 90s, we had a few Stunts competitions on my dorm hall. First we built the fastest track possible, and took turns shaving hundredths of seconds off of each other's times. Then we optimized that track for causing massive wrecks, and took turns seeing who could cause the longest crash animation (often several minutes long, with the car flying thousands of feet in the air). Good times.
JRjr
Guitar Hero 3 on the PS3 is a disaster. The only official guitar you can use is the wireless one that came with the game, and the USB wireless dongle seems to introduce some random lag and note drops (should've used the built-in Bluetooth). But you can't use the wireless GH3 guitar to play GH1, GH2, or GH80s on the PS3. And you can't use the wired or wireless old GH guitars on the PS3 without a third party adapter that doesn't completely work.
(I just bought what appears to be the best of the third party adapters, and it allows me to use my GH1 guitar on GH3, but it doesn't work with the "special edition" cherry SG wired guitar. And the adapter apparently only allows you to use the old guitars to play GH1, not GH2 or GH80s.)
It's a complete disaster - I can't fathom how Activision got things so completely wrong on the PS3. I was so disgusted by my GH3 on the PS3 experience that I bought an XBox just to play Rock Band on.
JRjr
This seems to be the response that's closest to what came to my mind when I read the summary. There are times in relationships (parents, friends, girlfriend) when you are in some way "obligated" to call but don't actually want to have a conversation. It seems a little underhanded, but when you combine this service with the still-existent vagaries of cell phone coverage and behavior ("no, really, I tried to call but it went straight to voice mail!"), it allows you to take the easy way out of fulfilling an obligation. It can also allow you to gain the upper hand in a game of "phone tag" (say, when you're having a fight with your girlfriend) by putting the ball back in the other person's court.
Like I said, it's a little underhanded and probably not the healthiest way to communicate in a relationship, but I can imagine a few applications for this kind of thing.
JRjr
You kind of have to take the whole thing with a grain of salt - she says the review is about the "Wii Fit game console" and then talks about how it has an "optional balance board" and a "hand control" [a Wiimote]. So the whole description is kind of a mess.
JRjr
I don't read CR a lot, but I'll occasionally thumb through it when I'm shopping for something. The impression that I get is that you don't get very deep, technical information in their reviews - they seem to focus on price, build quality, and feature set. That's probably a better approach for washing machines than for digital cameras. They provide good general information for novices, and following their advice won't steer you wrong, but they probably aren't all that useful for power users.
JRjr
I assumed that she meant that the balance board was an optional Wii accessory (that is, not something that comes with the Wii system), not that it was optional for Wii Fit.
JRjr
I recently upgraded my MacBook to 10.5, and have been regretting it. I only use some of the new features (don't really care about Time Machine, one of the biggies), and a lot of stuff that used to Just Work (wireless networking) has become problematic.
The biggest problem I had, oddly, was with downloading software updates - the downloads would mysteriously stop after a few seconds or minutes (and not due to loss of network connectivity - a Windows box on the same network was able to download stuff rock solid, at the same time), and would never resume. Had to do some kind of Mac voodoo (Restore Permissions, or something like that) to fix it. So I'm a little concerned about even being ABLE to download a 500 MB software update, due to bugs in the software...
JRjr
Technically, the sequels to Zork were Zork II and Zork III (and others later). The Enchanter games (Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker) were a different series. JRjr
I just WISH my GH3 guitar worked perfectly well, but unfortunately I bought the game for the PS3 and the wireless guitar sucks.
JRjr
I'm a dedicated turn signal user (also in Atlanta), but there's also a problem with using turn signals. Quite often, if you use your turn signal, the car behind you will accelerate to close the gap and cut you off, even if you're just trying to pass through the lane to get to an off ramp. About the only way you can balance the need to use turn signals with the need to actually change lanes is to give one or two blinks to appease your conscience, and then forcibly take the gap before you can get cut off.
People don't seem to realize that driving is a collective effort, and if they'd cut out that kind of me-first assholery, everybody's drive would be better.
JRjr
A couple of years ago, the security lines at Atlanta had separate "shoe scanners" that you could use before going through the magnetic scanner to see if your shoes had metal in them and would set off the scanner. As I recall, the story was that they were invented by an Eagle Scout, and really just consisted of a scanning wand mounted in a box. Somebody eventually made them remove the devices because they weren't "approved." Shortly thereafter, everybody had to remove their shoes anyway.
I suppose they can potentially see more anomolies than just metal in your shoes when they go through the X-ray machine, but I always thought the little shoe scanner thing was a pretty good idea.
JRjr
2 Fry's in Georgia, actually - one in Duluth, one in Alpharetta.
It's basically a Wal-Mart-sized electronics store. They have a big section of "Radio Shack" stuff - resistors, soldering irons, heat shrink tubing - electronics hobbyist stuff. They also sell everything from TVs to vacuum cleaners, a la Best Buy, but with a lot more stock.
They don't carry the absolute highest-end stuff, but they have a good selection of a WIDE variety of stuff, and usually about the best brick-and-mortar prices you'll find anywhere.
JRjr
Actually, they had one other pretty decent single that cracked the top 40, "One In A Million" in 1983.
Looking at Wikipedia, "Talking In Your Sleep" was actually their biggest song peaking at #3, followed by "One In A Million" at #37, and "What I Like About You" at #49.
I honestly can't say that I knew that the version of the song in Guitar Hero was a cover, so it must be a pretty accurate rendition. But it's been a while since I played it, and it was one of the songs that gave me the most trouble, so I was generally concentrating more on playing the song than on listening to it.
JRjr
Best Buy is pretty useless for computer hardware. Fry's is somewhat better (wider selection, but still not the highest quality stuff). MicroCenter is probably the best, for a brick & mortar store. Newegg and CDW beat them all, if you can wait a couple of days for the stuff to arrive.
The thing is, Best Buy's CD selection has also suffered (and their prices have risen) over the last few years. They used to have decent stock, but now their stock is pretty narrow (not all that many artists) and shallow (only a title or two per artist, usually). I really miss Tower Records, another recent casualty, when I shop for music.
JRjr
They might as well bulldoze that "Around Lenox" shopping center now - the former Tower Records location in that center has been sitting vacant for years, and now their other anchor, CompUSA, is going vacant, too.
The only CompUSA left in Georgia is in Augusta. Kind of surprising, kind of not - I haven't shopped there regularly since the mid-90s, and have barely set foot in the store at all in the last 5 or 7 years.
JRjr
Gwinnett and Alpharetta are certainly the most obvious locations for Fry's in the Atlanta area. I'd think one up the I-75 corridor (Smyrna/Marietta/Kennesaw) would also be a no-brainer.
East and west of town (I-20 corridor), neither the demographics nor the population density is really there right now. Same for south of town (I-75 and I-85).
I live in Fayetteville, and I think the Fayetteville/Peachtree City area probably has the right demographics, but not the population density or the interstate access.
So, I'd predict that Fry's will build a store in Cobb County, and that'll pretty much be it for the Atlanta area, unfortunately. (I sure would like to have one on the south side, though...)
JRjr
>>No, it's still just an accessory and a couple of games more expensive.
I'm just going from my personal experience here. I've got enough money in the bank to go buy whatever I want to buy. Being able to afford the console isn't an issue. (I have no interest in the 360, so that's not in the equation for me.) Wii is $250, so I bought one. If I were to buy a PS3, I'd want the 60 GB version, which is $600. $350 is more than "an accessory and a couple of games more expensive." More like 5 games (hypothetically - all I've got's Zelda so far), a Wiimote, a nunchuck, a classic controller, and a couple of Virtual Store downloads more expensive.
But it's not "not being able to afford it" that keeps me from buying a PS3, it's "not willing to spend $600 for a toy." In other words, price is a factor in ways beyond "I don't have that much money."
JRjr
>>The PS3 costs as much as another console with an accessory and a couple of games.
Yeah, but then you buy an accessory and a couple of games for the PS3, and suddenly it's way more expensive than that other console again.
Games and accessories are essentially a push across all the consoles - you'll need an extra controller, a fancier video cable, and a couple of games no matter which console you get, and the costs for those items are similar across all the consoles. Comparing the base prices of the consoles is perfectly valid, and there's no getting around the fact that the PS3 is significantly more expensive than the competition.
JRjr
As a fan of the PS2 who WANTS the PS3 to succeed (I'll buy one when the price comes down...), I find this interview rather insulting. It's just so transparent that EVERYTHING he's saying is just a repeat of the company line, trying to turn negatives into positives.
Lots of PS3s languishing on shelves? "We do a good job managing our supply chain." Target in Newnan, GA, 4 PM on 2/25: 11 PS3s, 0 Wiis. Congrats on your expert supply chain management, Sony, but maybe you'd better focus on SELLING THE PRODUCT.
No rumble in the controllers? "That's a previous-gen feature." Yeah, and why would you carry over a minor feature that most users are neutral or positive about into the next generation...
Motion sensitivity? "Far more opportunity for future innovation..." Ah, so that's why Sony didn't even HAVE motion sensitivity in place until the last minute, then?
Arrgh. Just infuriating.
JRjr
Ahhhh! Bringing back painful memories with that "want some rye?" quote. I loved the old text Zorks, but after a LOT of effort trying to get "Return to Zork" to even run on my old 486 (how I DON'T miss the days of manually shuffling TSRs into various memory blocks to get games to run), I couldn't muster the motivation to actually play it.
But my roommate did, while I was in bed trying to sleep. I think I heard "Want some rye? Course you do!" about 10,000 times, and to this day I still don't really know what the context of the quote is.
JRjr
I've had a PSP for a while, but I've come to the realization that I'm just not a "portable gamer." My lifestyle isn't such that I have a lot of opportunity to play games while I travel. Plus, I'd rather play games on a nice big screen with a full sized controller.
I tried to play GTA: Liberty City Stories on the PSP, but it was nearly impossible to do. My hands ached after holding the thing for a few minutes, and there weren't enough buttons to support all the gameplay (shooting out of car windows was very difficult on the PSP, for instance). Plus, I kept accidentally turning the thing off when I was really struggling with an intense mission. It was a pretty frustrating experience all around.
I wish they'd come out with GTA: Vice City Stories for the PS2. I'd like to play it, but I've learned my lesson about trying to play it on the PSP.
JRjr