I just wish half as much effort had been put into fighting cancer as has been put into fighting AIDS over the last three decades. But then, cancer doesn't have every actor in Hollywood raising money for it, or treating it like the ultimate cause celeb because they have some gay friends. Even now that AIDS is completely survivable with drugs, every arrogant Hollywood asshole is still supporting AIDS charities at the expense of much more deadly diseases.
Then why the fuck is half the shit in my my grocery cart colored pink, for Breast Cancer Awareness?
Knee-jerk reaction detected! Didn't RTFA to boot! No wonder slashdot's moderators love you!
That's not what he's saying at all, but the poorly worded./ summary and article set up so people, like yourself, can flame him easily without actually understanding what he's saying. He's not talking about his kid sucking at chemistry, nor is he blaming anyone for it, or even saying his kid should be good at it. What he's saying is that a distinct lack of variation in public education will only harm students in the long run. Perhaps high-school is a long time ago for you, but looking at the current American curriculum shows a very distinct lack of variability. For a personal example, the only time I actually got to choose a class I wanted to take in high-school was around senior year, every other class was part of some 2, 3, or 4, year plan that every student had to go through in order to graduate. 3 years of science, 4 years of English classes, 3 of a foreign language, 3 for history/civic involvement, etc. There was barely any time to do what I wanted to do.
First period: Science (Bio, Chem, Physics)
Second period: Math (Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, Pre-Calc)
Third period: History (Civics, Western Civ, US History 1 and 2)
Fourth period: Foreign Language
Fifth period: English
Sixth period: Lunch
Seventh period: Gym/Phys Ed
Eighth period: Elective
This was the setup at my high school. That meant every year, we were guaranteed at least one electives. Some students ditched lunch for a second. Some students wasted their elective to take a study hall.
Now keep in mind, state requirements vary. I'd finished my foreign language requirement after sophomore year, giving me an extra elective for my junior and senior years. I also took some BS introductory courses in science and math, and if I hadn't, I could have not had needed to take them senior year, or taken advanced placement classes instead.
And this doesn't include the imaginary Ninth period, which was used for detention, tutoring, extra-curricular activities (non-sports), and even a few classes (I remember our JROTC could be done 9th period). And this is before the sports programs started.
Maybe this is the exception to the rule, but if it is, looks like something was done right in NJ for a change.
a.k.a. the Republican and Democratic parties. They will never allow a third party to debate; if they happen to meet the criteria, they'll simply increase the threshold(s).
This is one of the major issues preventing any real change from happening in the US federal government, simply because new ideas are being suppressed by the incumbents.
I'm sorry, but have we forgotten Ross Perot so soon? He was up there between Bush and Clinton in 92. His VP was also in the VP debate, which many newscasts have been playing back as an example of how a really bad VP pick can submarine a candidate.
The local cable broadcaster here lost approx 10 channels after the test, including CNN, FOX, and DISCOVERY. They all switched to the NAT GEO channel without audio for upwards of an hour after the test ran.
In addition, the test video was jumpy, kept blacking out, audio kept dropping out, etc.
All in all, if it had been a real emergency, losing the 2 major news channels would have been real motivation to start loading ammo and supplies and gassing up the bug out mobile.;)
Lesson: if there is more than one thing wrong with the camera, do NOT mention anything else wrong. Gives you more leverage when they try to send it back saying that repair is not covered, and you can say, "What about this here thing wrong? Did you cause this?"
Maddening.
No, the lesson is if you're willing to make a spectacle of yourself inside their stores, most managers will replace your warrantied item with store stock, just to shut you up and get you out of the store. Works at Best Buy. Works at Apple stores. Worked in Circuit City. Squeaky wheel gets the greasing, and such.
Stage one, preparation. For this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol, mouthwash, vitamins. Mineral water, Lucozade, pornography. One mattress. One bucket for urine, one for feces and one for vomitus. One television and one bottle of Valium.
That's a big list. Can you point me to a website that can offer a one-stop shopping experience for listed items?
After Future Shop in Canada got bought up, they've dumped their non-monster cables and stuff. "Oh, you want an HDMI to go with that TV? That'll be $80. Do you want a fucking $400 god damn power bar? It cleans the power gremlins out of your filthy filthy wall socket. Without the filter the gremlins will take a hammer to the inside of your TV, and eat all your bags of chips. It also somehow makes the sound one hundred times crisper because resonance waves from your dirty power account for a huge portion of the signal noise from home amplifiers and receivers. It also has a display to show the current voltage, so you know just how dirty your power was before we made it sparkling fresh!"
Mock the $100-200 Monster surge protectors all you like, but at least educate yourself first.
All surge protectors they try to sell you as accessories when you buy TV have different numbers on the box. Some of the numbers are actual specifications, but the number most people want to see is the liability coverage. Liability. A monetary value. It's the reimbursement value the company will pay you if your equipment is damaged, and their surge protector didn't prevent it. Having quality surge protectors is basically a form of insurance.
Formers coworker at Circuit City went all out on his home theater, and that includes the cables. I'm willing to bet you've never seen what a Monster Cable surge protector looks like after lightning strikes a pole on your road. You may not be old enough, but the surge protector looked like over cooked Jiffy Pop; the non-microwavable kind. Charred, huge hole in the center, plastic curling away from the crater... It's XXXXing AWESOME. And nothing that was hooked up to those surge protectors took any damage. Worth every penny, even without employee discount.
Oh, these comics don't sell because they are ridiculous and crap. There's no denying that. What I'm saying is that because these books are so bad, the only people who might buy them are members of the "Cult of Jobs." And I just don't see those people walking into comic stores often... well, at least not at the store I work at.
All Blue Water publishes, with the lone exception of their license for the Logan's Run series, is celebrity profile/biography books. Last week, Howard Stern's comic hit the shelves. We ordered two copies. Those two copies are still on the shelf. Even most "indie" titles we'll order a dozen off, and the average big name title can be as high as 100 copies.
Simply put, we can't sell Blue Water's crap. The only way this publication will become newsworthy is if the issue actually sells. Too bad the most devout Jobs fans fear the potential damage to their hipster image to walk into a comic shop.
I went to the shop today to pick up my books, and tell my boss about reading this. Naturally, being a pro-DC, anti-Marvel guy, he didn't believe me at first. I showed him the article, and he was still skeptical.
Luckily, new issue of Previews came out today. And although DC is pushing a few titles twice in August, to complete storylines, there is only ONE issue confirmed for august 31st: Flashpoint # 5.
Interpret as you like, but that looks like confirmation to me.
Comcast has nothing to gain by blocking The Pirate Bay, and plenty to gain by helping address the filtering problem.
By addressing, and helping to fix, the problem, Comcast has gained a little positive karma in the online community. By blocking The Pirate Bay, they'd only be buying more bad PR, while not actually doing anything to address the problem of torrent bandwidth usage. After all, block one torrent site, and users will just use another site.
It's used to be the case that some companies would squirt epoxy into the USB ports on devices - Doesn't really work any more as many devices no longer have PS2 mouse and keyboard ports.
Um, dude... That stuff may have been sticky, but it sure wasn't epoxy!
I can think of one good use for rear-view cameras... dealing with tailgaters! Imagine being able to record some video of some primo dickbag in his BMW X5, angrily following five feet behind you at 50mph because you aren't willing to go significantly above the speed limit for him. The computer's technology can measure how far away the other car is and overlay it on the screen. Then, hit a button on your dashboard, it sends the video (with a capture of his license plate, if he's got one) off to the police and they mail him a ticket. If enough people catch the same person doing it, fuck'im, take his license away and force him to take the bus.
On a more cheerful note, there is another use that Jeremy Clarkson recently suggested on Top Gear -- looking at pretty girls in the car behind you while sitting at a traffic light. Lech-o-matic!
And while you're watching this record, the car in front of you hits the brakes, and you rear end them.
I'm fairly certain regulations are going to mandate these cameras should only operate while the vehicle is in reverse.
If publishers were smart enough to get in on this, they could be making an absolute killing.
But apparently they aren't. Their loss.
Now that eBook readers capable of color have hit the market, it makes more sense then ever. Colored comics rendered in B/W? Not a fun prospect. But with tablets and color eBook readers on the market, being able to carry my collection around in my backpack wherever I go? Very appealing.
Even though there's hardly digital comics you can purchase, people still take the time to manually scan each comic as it comes out.
For manga, people even take the time to TRANSLATE it before they release it.
Just like anything else, piracy is based on demand, not convienence. People don't do all that work just because its easy, they do it because people want them.
The demand for ebook piracy may increase as people get more and more used to the idea of reading digital books, but wether or not a publisher decides to sell their books digitally would have no bearing on the chances of it getting pirated.
As a comic book collector, I love the pirated comic scans you can find on the web. why?
1) Simplicity in back issues. I have a physical copy of the entire Marvel comics run of Transformers, but going through my boxes, finding the books, unbagging them, reading them, rebagging them, putting them back in the boxes, etc, can be a pain. If I can download a PDF of the entire run, and read them on my computer, that's just great. Did it hurt anyone's sales? No, I already own them, I'm just happy for a different way to access the content.
2) Missed issues. This may seem like theft of a sale, but seriously? I'm a collector. I want the damned book. If I can't get my hands on the physical book for some reason, this is a great stop gap until one of my stores, offline and online, can get me a copy. Even if I'm never able to get the copy (some books skyrocket in price) at least it means I'm current with the storyline, and will continue to buy the title monthly. If I lose part of the storyline, often enough, I'll stop buying the book because I'm losing parts of the plot.
3) Recommended titles. If someone at a shop or show tells me "dude, you gotta check this out," I'm usually fair game. If it's still only 3 or 4 issues in, it's not a problem to buy all 3 or 4 issues. But if it's up to issue 12, or 25, or 50, it becomes unrealistic. If I can download the series and give it a shot, one of two things happen: I either dislike the book, and delete it, or I like the book, add all new issues to my weekly purchases, and then make an attempt to acquire as many of those back issues as I can. Remember, I'm a collector. That means I *WANT* the books.
Basically, I turn to comic scans to keep my interest, or gain my interest. When my interest is kept, I keep buying my weekly books, and both the publishers and the retailers are happy. When I become interested in something new, both the publishers and retailers enjoy my weekly purchases, and the retailer also enjoys additional purchases from their back issue stock. In my case, both the retailers and publishers are more likely to lose my money, had I no access to some of these scans. Is everyone like me? Unlikely, but I can't be the only one.
The barrier isn't technological, it's psychological. My mom has a cable box she doesn't need. The installer told her she needed to get cable. I told her to take it back and demand a refund. She won't. During the 80's, you had to have a box to get channels above 13, because that was the highest a TV could tune. Then the FCC mandated cable-ready TV's, and you didn't need a box at all except for pay TV. There was no education or information given to the public, so a lot of people went through the 90's still believing they need a box, and the cablecos still play on that. The only was to solve the problem is to educate the public, something like forcing the cablecos to hand their customers a pamphlet clearly showing what channels do and do not require a box.
This argument is based on an assumption that is, at least in part, flawed.
My TV isn't state of the art, but it's not that badly dated. Bought it in 2004, 1080i resolution. Cable ready. Which is great, except the built in tuner is analog. Half of the basic cable channels have already gone digital only, so I lose them. Like many "cable ready" TVs, the channels stop around 120. Add the fact that some cable companies are moving channels up into the 200, 300, 400, 500, etc, channels, that means even with the basic cable packages, I'm paying for a majority of channels I can't even watch.
And before you go off on a tangent about those moves being to force people to rent the STBs, I'll point out that the companies I've dealt with (cablevision and verizon) actually used the move to organize the channels, more so than any time I can remember since 1985. It's nice knowing that if I want the "educational" channels, history, science, discovery, etc, are all lumped between 120 and 132.
It may be a stereotype but if you walk into most comic book/anime stores and look around at the people in them, the vast majority will match up to the stereotype.
Must depend on the store, or area perhaps.
My local comic shop happens to be a music store that started selling comics when digital downloads started crippling their sales. As it is, the wall where the new comic books are displayed are next to the used CD racks. You see a guy (or girl) go down that aisle, and you think you can predict what they're going to buy, by comparing them to these ingrained stereotypes. And yet, I'm surprised (and sometimes shocked) almost every week, when someone I "just know" is going to the used CDs actually starts picking up the latest offerings from Marvel, DC, Image, etc.
Do I see some of these stereotypes there? Sure. But not as often as I see someone you wouldn't assume is a "comic book nerd" if you saw them walking down the street.
Slashdot Mirror
I just wish half as much effort had been put into fighting cancer as has been put into fighting AIDS over the last three decades. But then, cancer doesn't have every actor in Hollywood raising money for it, or treating it like the ultimate cause celeb because they have some gay friends. Even now that AIDS is completely survivable with drugs, every arrogant Hollywood asshole is still supporting AIDS charities at the expense of much more deadly diseases.
Then why the fuck is half the shit in my my grocery cart colored pink, for Breast Cancer Awareness?
New in 2015! Sony presents: The SeeMan!
Could robotic, self driving trucks make more of a mess than the beta? Seems unlikely.
Knee-jerk reaction detected! Didn't RTFA to boot! No wonder slashdot's moderators love you!
That's not what he's saying at all, but the poorly worded ./ summary and article set up so people, like yourself, can flame him easily without actually understanding what he's saying. He's not talking about his kid sucking at chemistry, nor is he blaming anyone for it, or even saying his kid should be good at it. What he's saying is that a distinct lack of variation in public education will only harm students in the long run. Perhaps high-school is a long time ago for you, but looking at the current American curriculum shows a very distinct lack of variability. For a personal example, the only time I actually got to choose a class I wanted to take in high-school was around senior year, every other class was part of some 2, 3, or 4, year plan that every student had to go through in order to graduate. 3 years of science, 4 years of English classes, 3 of a foreign language, 3 for history/civic involvement, etc. There was barely any time to do what I wanted to do.
First period: Science (Bio, Chem, Physics)
Second period: Math (Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, Pre-Calc)
Third period: History (Civics, Western Civ, US History 1 and 2)
Fourth period: Foreign Language
Fifth period: English
Sixth period: Lunch
Seventh period: Gym/Phys Ed
Eighth period: Elective
This was the setup at my high school. That meant every year, we were guaranteed at least one electives. Some students ditched lunch for a second. Some students wasted their elective to take a study hall.
Now keep in mind, state requirements vary. I'd finished my foreign language requirement after sophomore year, giving me an extra elective for my junior and senior years. I also took some BS introductory courses in science and math, and if I hadn't, I could have not had needed to take them senior year, or taken advanced placement classes instead.
And this doesn't include the imaginary Ninth period, which was used for detention, tutoring, extra-curricular activities (non-sports), and even a few classes (I remember our JROTC could be done 9th period). And this is before the sports programs started.
Maybe this is the exception to the rule, but if it is, looks like something was done right in NJ for a change.
Commission on Presidential Debates
a.k.a. the Republican and Democratic parties. They will never allow a third party to debate; if they happen to meet the criteria, they'll simply increase the threshold(s).
This is one of the major issues preventing any real change from happening in the US federal government, simply because new ideas are being suppressed by the incumbents.
I'm sorry, but have we forgotten Ross Perot so soon? He was up there between Bush and Clinton in 92. His VP was also in the VP debate, which many newscasts have been playing back as an example of how a really bad VP pick can submarine a candidate.
Evil incarnate. More evil than Oracle and MS combined.
But is it more evil if Microsoft and Sony accidentally conceived a child, after obtaining an expired prophylactic from Apple?
The local cable broadcaster here lost approx 10 channels after the test, including CNN, FOX, and DISCOVERY. They all switched to the NAT GEO channel without audio for upwards of an hour after the test ran.
In addition, the test video was jumpy, kept blacking out, audio kept dropping out, etc.
All in all, if it had been a real emergency, losing the 2 major news channels would have been real motivation to start loading ammo and supplies and gassing up the bug out mobile. ;)
Wait... Discovery is a news channel now?
Earthquakes, hurricanes. It is abundantly clear god has chosen sides in the New York gay marriage debate.
I'm no scientist, but I'm fairly certain both the epicenter of said earthquake, and the projected landfall of Hurricane Irene, are both in red states.
Lesson: if there is more than one thing wrong with the camera, do NOT mention anything else wrong. Gives you more leverage when they try to send it back saying that repair is not covered, and you can say, "What about this here thing wrong? Did you cause this?"
Maddening.
No, the lesson is if you're willing to make a spectacle of yourself inside their stores, most managers will replace your warrantied item with store stock, just to shut you up and get you out of the store. Works at Best Buy. Works at Apple stores. Worked in Circuit City. Squeaky wheel gets the greasing, and such.
Mod this guy up, please
Stage one, preparation. For this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol, mouthwash, vitamins. Mineral water, Lucozade, pornography. One mattress. One bucket for urine, one for feces and one for vomitus. One television and one bottle of Valium.
That's a big list. Can you point me to a website that can offer a one-stop shopping experience for listed items?
After Future Shop in Canada got bought up, they've dumped their non-monster cables and stuff. "Oh, you want an HDMI to go with that TV? That'll be $80. Do you want a fucking $400 god damn power bar? It cleans the power gremlins out of your filthy filthy wall socket. Without the filter the gremlins will take a hammer to the inside of your TV, and eat all your bags of chips. It also somehow makes the sound one hundred times crisper because resonance waves from your dirty power account for a huge portion of the signal noise from home amplifiers and receivers. It also has a display to show the current voltage, so you know just how dirty your power was before we made it sparkling fresh!"
Mock the $100-200 Monster surge protectors all you like, but at least educate yourself first.
All surge protectors they try to sell you as accessories when you buy TV have different numbers on the box. Some of the numbers are actual specifications, but the number most people want to see is the liability coverage. Liability. A monetary value. It's the reimbursement value the company will pay you if your equipment is damaged, and their surge protector didn't prevent it. Having quality surge protectors is basically a form of insurance.
Formers coworker at Circuit City went all out on his home theater, and that includes the cables. I'm willing to bet you've never seen what a Monster Cable surge protector looks like after lightning strikes a pole on your road. You may not be old enough, but the surge protector looked like over cooked Jiffy Pop; the non-microwavable kind. Charred, huge hole in the center, plastic curling away from the crater... It's XXXXing AWESOME. And nothing that was hooked up to those surge protectors took any damage. Worth every penny, even without employee discount.
I'd like to be the first to welcome out new robot overlords.
If there's anything I can do to make this transition easier on you, you need but ask. Oh, and that neighbor I don't like is part of the resistance.
Oh, these comics don't sell because they are ridiculous and crap. There's no denying that. What I'm saying is that because these books are so bad, the only people who might buy them are members of the "Cult of Jobs." And I just don't see those people walking into comic stores often... well, at least not at the store I work at.
All Blue Water publishes, with the lone exception of their license for the Logan's Run series, is celebrity profile/biography books. Last week, Howard Stern's comic hit the shelves. We ordered two copies. Those two copies are still on the shelf. Even most "indie" titles we'll order a dozen off, and the average big name title can be as high as 100 copies.
Simply put, we can't sell Blue Water's crap. The only way this publication will become newsworthy is if the issue actually sells. Too bad the most devout Jobs fans fear the potential damage to their hipster image to walk into a comic shop.
I went to the shop today to pick up my books, and tell my boss about reading this. Naturally, being a pro-DC, anti-Marvel guy, he didn't believe me at first. I showed him the article, and he was still skeptical.
Luckily, new issue of Previews came out today. And although DC is pushing a few titles twice in August, to complete storylines, there is only ONE issue confirmed for august 31st: Flashpoint # 5.
Interpret as you like, but that looks like confirmation to me.
Comcast has nothing to gain by blocking The Pirate Bay, and plenty to gain by helping address the filtering problem. By addressing, and helping to fix, the problem, Comcast has gained a little positive karma in the online community. By blocking The Pirate Bay, they'd only be buying more bad PR, while not actually doing anything to address the problem of torrent bandwidth usage. After all, block one torrent site, and users will just use another site.
It's used to be the case that some companies would squirt epoxy into the USB ports on devices - Doesn't really work any more as many devices no longer have PS2 mouse and keyboard ports.
Um, dude... That stuff may have been sticky, but it sure wasn't epoxy!
I can think of one good use for rear-view cameras... dealing with tailgaters! Imagine being able to record some video of some primo dickbag in his BMW X5, angrily following five feet behind you at 50mph because you aren't willing to go significantly above the speed limit for him. The computer's technology can measure how far away the other car is and overlay it on the screen. Then, hit a button on your dashboard, it sends the video (with a capture of his license plate, if he's got one) off to the police and they mail him a ticket. If enough people catch the same person doing it, fuck'im, take his license away and force him to take the bus.
On a more cheerful note, there is another use that Jeremy Clarkson recently suggested on Top Gear -- looking at pretty girls in the car behind you while sitting at a traffic light. Lech-o-matic!
And while you're watching this record, the car in front of you hits the brakes, and you rear end them.
I'm fairly certain regulations are going to mandate these cameras should only operate while the vehicle is in reverse.
If publishers were smart enough to get in on this, they could be making an absolute killing.
But apparently they aren't. Their loss.
Now that eBook readers capable of color have hit the market, it makes more sense then ever. Colored comics rendered in B/W? Not a fun prospect. But with tablets and color eBook readers on the market, being able to carry my collection around in my backpack wherever I go? Very appealing.
Even though there's hardly digital comics you can purchase, people still take the time to manually scan each comic as it comes out.
For manga, people even take the time to TRANSLATE it before they release it.
Just like anything else, piracy is based on demand, not convienence. People don't do all that work just because its easy, they do it because people want them.
The demand for ebook piracy may increase as people get more and more used to the idea of reading digital books, but wether or not a publisher decides to sell their books digitally would have no bearing on the chances of it getting pirated.
As a comic book collector, I love the pirated comic scans you can find on the web. why?
1) Simplicity in back issues. I have a physical copy of the entire Marvel comics run of Transformers, but going through my boxes, finding the books, unbagging them, reading them, rebagging them, putting them back in the boxes, etc, can be a pain. If I can download a PDF of the entire run, and read them on my computer, that's just great. Did it hurt anyone's sales? No, I already own them, I'm just happy for a different way to access the content.
2) Missed issues. This may seem like theft of a sale, but seriously? I'm a collector. I want the damned book. If I can't get my hands on the physical book for some reason, this is a great stop gap until one of my stores, offline and online, can get me a copy. Even if I'm never able to get the copy (some books skyrocket in price) at least it means I'm current with the storyline, and will continue to buy the title monthly. If I lose part of the storyline, often enough, I'll stop buying the book because I'm losing parts of the plot.
3) Recommended titles. If someone at a shop or show tells me "dude, you gotta check this out," I'm usually fair game. If it's still only 3 or 4 issues in, it's not a problem to buy all 3 or 4 issues. But if it's up to issue 12, or 25, or 50, it becomes unrealistic. If I can download the series and give it a shot, one of two things happen: I either dislike the book, and delete it, or I like the book, add all new issues to my weekly purchases, and then make an attempt to acquire as many of those back issues as I can. Remember, I'm a collector. That means I *WANT* the books.
Basically, I turn to comic scans to keep my interest, or gain my interest. When my interest is kept, I keep buying my weekly books, and both the publishers and the retailers are happy. When I become interested in something new, both the publishers and retailers enjoy my weekly purchases, and the retailer also enjoys additional purchases from their back issue stock. In my case, both the retailers and publishers are more likely to lose my money, had I no access to some of these scans. Is everyone like me? Unlikely, but I can't be the only one.
The barrier isn't technological, it's psychological. My mom has a cable box she doesn't need. The installer told her she needed to get cable. I told her to take it back and demand a refund. She won't. During the 80's, you had to have a box to get channels above 13, because that was the highest a TV could tune. Then the FCC mandated cable-ready TV's, and you didn't need a box at all except for pay TV. There was no education or information given to the public, so a lot of people went through the 90's still believing they need a box, and the cablecos still play on that. The only was to solve the problem is to educate the public, something like forcing the cablecos to hand their customers a pamphlet clearly showing what channels do and do not require a box.
This argument is based on an assumption that is, at least in part, flawed.
My TV isn't state of the art, but it's not that badly dated. Bought it in 2004, 1080i resolution. Cable ready. Which is great, except the built in tuner is analog. Half of the basic cable channels have already gone digital only, so I lose them. Like many "cable ready" TVs, the channels stop around 120. Add the fact that some cable companies are moving channels up into the 200, 300, 400, 500, etc, channels, that means even with the basic cable packages, I'm paying for a majority of channels I can't even watch.
And before you go off on a tangent about those moves being to force people to rent the STBs, I'll point out that the companies I've dealt with (cablevision and verizon) actually used the move to organize the channels, more so than any time I can remember since 1985. It's nice knowing that if I want the "educational" channels, history, science, discovery, etc, are all lumped between 120 and 132.
China is just trying to protect it's citizens against the terrorist and child porn. Sheesh.
Terrorist Porn? Links or it never happened!
It may be a stereotype but if you walk into most comic book/anime stores and look around at the people in them, the vast majority will match up to the stereotype.
Must depend on the store, or area perhaps.
My local comic shop happens to be a music store that started selling comics when digital downloads started crippling their sales. As it is, the wall where the new comic books are displayed are next to the used CD racks. You see a guy (or girl) go down that aisle, and you think you can predict what they're going to buy, by comparing them to these ingrained stereotypes. And yet, I'm surprised (and sometimes shocked) almost every week, when someone I "just know" is going to the used CDs actually starts picking up the latest offerings from Marvel, DC, Image, etc.
Do I see some of these stereotypes there? Sure. But not as often as I see someone you wouldn't assume is a "comic book nerd" if you saw them walking down the street.
How often do you really have to move 100 MB or 2.5 GB of files around?
Every time I buy a newer, bigger hard drive so I can store more porn without deleting the old stuff?