Airport security has been stepped up to the point where you can't fart without getting a cavity search. The passengers nowadays will fight a hijacker, and everyone will be on high alert if a plane veers off course. I don't think that having someone crash a plane into a football stadium is going to happen because we're now expecting it. Just like with 9/11 if somebody's going to do a massive attack on civilians it's going to be in a way that nobody expects.
All the security checkpoints and super high tech crap in the world won't stop someone who really wants to do damage at a target. They'll find your greatest weakness and strike it when you last expect it to happen. All this soft wall BS is a little something extra to make Joe Sixpack feel safe so he can continue drooling all over himself. (Mod me as a troll, but it really is true.)
www.Opera.com -- Don't tell me that browser innovation is dead. Nowadays I go nuts when I'm on a computer with only IE. Mouse gestures are the second coming of Jesus, I tell ya.
When I started running I was having some serious pains. I started doing some research and decided that running barefoot might do me some good. It worked wonders and I ended up starting a blog to
(a) Document my beginnings as a runner, going from out of shape geek to slightly in shape geek over time. (b) Allow other people to look at my experiences and learn from them when they start running. (c) Allow other people to look at my experiences and learn from them when they start running *gasp* barefoot!
Will you find that info on about.com or running.com? Hell no, they have entire sections devoted to shoes and you rarely get to read a diary of someone who's just starting out. 95% of the info I find online is either a small site or something of the sort. Why? Because you can have all the professionally written pages on the net, but in the end the experiences of another person is always invaluable.
Google cache of the site, please note that the cache doesn't have the update that this story mentions. Although it does have some of the back story, for those who are interested.
Of course they're afraid of single song downloads! These are the same artists who put one good (I use the term good liberally btw) song on a CD and fill the rest of it with fluff. Thus the consumers have to buy the entire album for the one decent song and the artist gets ~$1 per CD. If a user saves money by simply buying the 1 good song on the CD and avoiding the fluff then the artist gets paid less.
Solution - put together a good album as a whole. You know, like they used to do in the good old days? Then people will have reason to buy more than one song. Then again, I'm a dreamer. Call me your stereotypical anti-everything guy, but very few actual artists covered by the mass media will do that any more. More work for the same amount of profit under the "MP3s are bad, CD sales are how music is supposed to be distributed" ideology. Eh, guess I can't complain. It's this BS that made me fall in love with the indy scene in the first place.
Step right up! Find the link to the right site in the story body and win a prize!
On an on-topic note, as a person who's a bit of a NES-aholic I'd I've always wanted to toss a modern computer into an old NES casing. It'd look a thousand times cooler than those crappy windows case modders put in their computers (literal windows, although I suppose the Redmond option would be as as crappy). Plus it'd make those long nights in front of NASM trying to get something to work in FCEU a bit more tolerable.
I'd also like to modify a beer keg so that you can house a computer in a back compartment while allowing the keg to still work. Hot damn, would I be the envy of the LAN parties!
Well then, ignore me, I should have looked at the site a bit more. Now the only question is if a really cool college is worth moving to a state with it's own Fark tag.:)
After browsing their site I have seen tons of "your life will be cool when you graduate"-isms, boasts, and other such nonsense. And yet I have yet to see the word "accredited". Fuck that. My life is far too valuable to gamble on something that sounds cool.
$150 per console loss and now they're trying to lower the price? They must be getting desperate after having their asses handed to them by Sony and Nintendo. I know that their long term goal is to stream content via the X-Box and gain their monopoly in the living room that way, and were expecting to have to slowly inch their way into the market. Them winning this battle in the long term is a significant part of their plans. But looking at their growing loss per console margins I don't believe that they expected to lose to Sony as hard as they have. As odd as it sounds I think Sony is one of their greatest hurdles to overcome before they gain domination of the living room.
Looking at the PS3 specifications I believe that there's no way in hell MS will be able to even close to Sony. Until broadband gets common enough for MS to use their streaming content plans to dominate the market, I think Sony is going to be giving a merciless beating. But once they start streaming content I have a feeling that they'll start to nudge Sony off to the side. That's when they'll be able to flex their monopolistic muscles at full power.
The PS4/X-Box 3 battle is going to be very interesting, methinks.
I don't know about the UK but I know that in the United States slot machines are required by law to pay out a certain percentage of money that goes into them. I.E. each machine must pay out at least 90% or the casino will get in legal trouble. I don't have any links about this but I think I remember reading something about that on howstuffworks.com.
Oh, and this is why I prefer blackjack.:)
(1) Think of every possible stereotype revolving around the words "videogames", "cool", and "hip" from the perspective of a 50 year old rich white male.
(2) Turn those stereotypes into an unorigional script.
(3) Sell to clueless studio execs who see another "sure hit", PROFIT!!!
Mod me as flamebait, but I think I have a point. Studio execs see a script that just screams "low risk moneymaker" and predictabally hop on it like a robot with bad AI. However, 90% of the time those low risk moneymakers are the most bland, boring, stereotyped, overhyped, and predictable wastes of 90 minutes one can come up with. Movies like this are almost always totally superficial and it's not hard for me to see it as such by just looking at the premise. Reading the/. synopsis alone I could imagine some overpaid producer saying "Wow, this is... 'cool'! The 12-25 male market will just LOVE this!"
This thing's going to flop harder than Street Fighter, and thankfully there aren't any well-respected actors on the cast for this movie to kill.
Slashdot Mirror
People like these are the true patriots. Unlike my neighbors who never flown a flag until 9/11.
Airport security has been stepped up to the point where you can't fart without getting a cavity search. The passengers nowadays will fight a hijacker, and everyone will be on high alert if a plane veers off course. I don't think that having someone crash a plane into a football stadium is going to happen because we're now expecting it. Just like with 9/11 if somebody's going to do a massive attack on civilians it's going to be in a way that nobody expects. All the security checkpoints and super high tech crap in the world won't stop someone who really wants to do damage at a target. They'll find your greatest weakness and strike it when you last expect it to happen. All this soft wall BS is a little something extra to make Joe Sixpack feel safe so he can continue drooling all over himself. (Mod me as a troll, but it really is true.)
www.Opera.com -- Don't tell me that browser innovation is dead. Nowadays I go nuts when I'm on a computer with only IE. Mouse gestures are the second coming of Jesus, I tell ya.
The very definition of irony. :)
When I started running I was having some serious pains. I started doing some research and decided that running barefoot might do me some good. It worked wonders and I ended up starting a blog to
(a) Document my beginnings as a runner, going from out of shape geek to slightly in shape geek over time.
(b) Allow other people to look at my experiences and learn from them when they start running.
(c) Allow other people to look at my experiences and learn from them when they start running *gasp* barefoot!
Will you find that info on about.com or running.com? Hell no, they have entire sections devoted to shoes and you rarely get to read a diary of someone who's just starting out. 95% of the info I find online is either a small site or something of the sort. Why? Because you can have all the professionally written pages on the net, but in the end the experiences of another person is always invaluable.
BTW, if anyone's interested here's my blog.
Google cache of the site, please note that the cache doesn't have the update that this story mentions. Although it does have some of the back story, for those who are interested.
Of course they're afraid of single song downloads! These are the same artists who put one good (I use the term good liberally btw) song on a CD and fill the rest of it with fluff. Thus the consumers have to buy the entire album for the one decent song and the artist gets ~$1 per CD. If a user saves money by simply buying the 1 good song on the CD and avoiding the fluff then the artist gets paid less.
Solution - put together a good album as a whole. You know, like they used to do in the good old days? Then people will have reason to buy more than one song. Then again, I'm a dreamer. Call me your stereotypical anti-everything guy, but very few actual artists covered by the mass media will do that any more. More work for the same amount of profit under the "MP3s are bad, CD sales are how music is supposed to be distributed" ideology. Eh, guess I can't complain. It's this BS that made me fall in love with the indy scene in the first place.
Step right up! Find the link to the right site in the story body and win a prize!
On an on-topic note, as a person who's a bit of a NES-aholic I'd I've always wanted to toss a modern computer into an old NES casing. It'd look a thousand times cooler than those crappy windows case modders put in their computers (literal windows, although I suppose the Redmond option would be as as crappy). Plus it'd make those long nights in front of NASM trying to get something to work in FCEU a bit more tolerable.
I'd also like to modify a beer keg so that you can house a computer in a back compartment while allowing the keg to still work. Hot damn, would I be the envy of the LAN parties!
Well then, ignore me, I should have looked at the site a bit more. Now the only question is if a really cool college is worth moving to a state with it's own Fark tag. :)
After browsing their site I have seen tons of "your life will be cool when you graduate"-isms, boasts, and other such nonsense. And yet I have yet to see the word "accredited". Fuck that. My life is far too valuable to gamble on something that sounds cool.
$150 per console loss and now they're trying to lower the price? They must be getting desperate after having their asses handed to them by Sony and Nintendo. I know that their long term goal is to stream content via the X-Box and gain their monopoly in the living room that way, and were expecting to have to slowly inch their way into the market. Them winning this battle in the long term is a significant part of their plans. But looking at their growing loss per console margins I don't believe that they expected to lose to Sony as hard as they have. As odd as it sounds I think Sony is one of their greatest hurdles to overcome before they gain domination of the living room.
Looking at the PS3 specifications I believe that there's no way in hell MS will be able to even close to Sony. Until broadband gets common enough for MS to use their streaming content plans to dominate the market, I think Sony is going to be giving a merciless beating. But once they start streaming content I have a feeling that they'll start to nudge Sony off to the side. That's when they'll be able to flex their monopolistic muscles at full power.
The PS4/X-Box 3 battle is going to be very interesting, methinks.
I don't know about the UK but I know that in the United States slot machines are required by law to pay out a certain percentage of money that goes into them. I.E. each machine must pay out at least 90% or the casino will get in legal trouble. I don't have any links about this but I think I remember reading something about that on howstuffworks.com. Oh, and this is why I prefer blackjack. :)
(1) Think of every possible stereotype revolving around the words "videogames", "cool", and "hip" from the perspective of a 50 year old rich white male.
(2) Turn those stereotypes into an unorigional script.
(3) Sell to clueless studio execs who see another "sure hit", PROFIT!!!
Mod me as flamebait, but I think I have a point. Studio execs see a script that just screams "low risk moneymaker" and predictabally hop on it like a robot with bad AI. However, 90% of the time those low risk moneymakers are the most bland, boring, stereotyped, overhyped, and predictable wastes of 90 minutes one can come up with. Movies like this are almost always totally superficial and it's not hard for me to see it as such by just looking at the premise. Reading the /. synopsis alone I could imagine some overpaid producer saying "Wow, this is... 'cool'! The 12-25 male market will just LOVE this!"
This thing's going to flop harder than Street Fighter, and thankfully there aren't any well-respected actors on the cast for this movie to kill.
Hope I wasn't too harsh.