When the NYT starts attaking bloggers for copy and pasting idea from other sources, I find it very important to note that the NYT gets a good chunck of their stories by copying and pasting from the AP. I'm not saying it's a good idea to have 1,000,000 reporters covering everything across the nation. I'm merely saying the NYT needs to come up with a better argument for attacking blogs than this copy and paste nonsense that they do themselves.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea for a newspaper to run AP stories in their paper but I find it a bit silly that those same newspapers are all running the exact same AP stories in their on-line news pages.
I'd argue that frisbee and pool are very much more popular on campus at my Alma Mater (and for what it's worth, I despise frisbee and am not the biggest fan of pool). I wouldn't even put beer pong as the most popular drinking game. Card-based games (Circle of Death, especially) and quarters both seem to be much more popular around here.
Personally, I think they jumped the shark when they based a game on a lame 70's gang movie. However, if done properly (big IF), I coulde certainly see a ping pong game being as intertaining as a tennis game and tennis games are pretty fun. Then again, I'd rather play Virtua Tennis than Vice City and I'm not exactly a big tennis fan. I'd also certainly NOT play the game if they added crap like "bling" and 'hoods.
Even if they're not released directly from the special interest group/politician, newspapers have a tendency to all run the exact same AP story that every other paper is running on many national issues. Often copying it verbatim or cutting it down to fit the space needed.
They may but from what I remember, it can lead to a lot of problems when using the printer heavily in a shared environment. The last printer my office used that did this "manual duplexing" didn't block other jobs so even though you knew exactly how to orient the page from the picture, you still had to make absolutely sure that you were flipping your page and not someone else's. You also had to make sure that the job about to be duplexed was yours and not somebody else's.
With the large adoption rate of LCD monitors for desktops and the use of USB/Firewire on both laptops and desktops, the difference between the two is getting smaller and smaller from a usage and space standpoint (and even from a price standpoint). I've even seen some of the low end Compaq desktops using a keyboard that is basically an external laptop keyboard, shallow buttons and all. I haven't used a desktop for regular daily work in about two years. Even though I used to loathe laptops, I don't really miss using a desktop as much as I thought I would. In fact, last year I bought my first laptop for home use. I use it to play games and browse while my old desktop is connected to the TV as a media player and my older desktop sits in the basement largely unused (might make it a MAME/emu gaming machine or a file/print server). I don't think the desktop will ever die out but with laptops being about as cheap as desktops nowadays I can certainly see laptops becoming (if they're not already, I have no idea) the primary computer that families buy for their home, especially if they have a wireless Internet setup.
The NES had practically no competition because they used illegal practices to keep players like the Sega Master System, Turbo Grafx 16, and the Atari 7800 from getting many third party titles. Nintendo had to give up those illegal practices and their marketshare has been slipping ever since. That is what I see when you show me those numbers.
Apples to oranges. A movie has a very short period of time to make a lot of money. A lot of movies don't even last six weeks in a theater and DVD sales and movie rights generally don't ever match the amount made from the box office. If your chemical plant had a 1 to 2 month period to make most of its money and then was relegated to making significantly less money of the course of its existance, even the far sighted executives would be a little worried that the plant didn't even cover its costs until the sixth week of operation.
A movie that doesn't take six weeks to recover its costs. "Disaster" may have been a bit harsh, but calling I'm pretty sure studios aren't going to be touting it as a Hollywood success story. It did eventually double its return so it can at least be viewed as marginal by Hollywood standards.
Lucas points to one large budget disaster (Kong) as proof that big budget movies are doomed. King King was a disaster becasue the studio couldn't rein in the director and force him to put out a movie that would actually sell.
Movie budgets aren't going to come down any time soon. These independent films Lucas thinks will be the wave of the future will merely be blueprints to be copied by the major studios. Small movie sells and big movie copies. It's that simple.
Besides, I though we got the doom and gloom about the plight of big production movies after the Blair With Project didn't destroy Hollywood after all.
You must be quite the youngster yourself if you don't remember girls at the arcade. I remember back when arcades were where teenagers hung out. And I don't just mean the nerds. I mean all of them. The ones who weren't into video games could try their hand at any of the redemtion-style games available like Skee Ball, Skeet Shooting, or any number of machines that measure your strength. It was like a carnival without all the rides and that's the type of audience it attracted.
Can we please stop bickering about the lack of originality like it's something new? Who remembers the arcade space shooter? Who remembers the coutless Double Dragon clones? What about the 2D platformer? Who remembers 1-on-1 fighting games flooding the market? There are several genres of gaming right now that are getting spread thin. They will die out when consumer support for them fades. Then we'll finally get to a bunch of new types of games come in and try to win the honor of being cloned to death. We are in a phase of utter lack of originality but it will pass and we will get a brief span of original games coming out. Just make sure to enjoy the next wave of originals while it lasts.
This nano technology may indeed be a trillion dollar business like the article claims, but it's going to have to get the blessing of the FCC to be usable here in the US. If not, it'll be relelgated to backrooms of spy shops like all the other cell phone blocking technology already present.
The reason is so that you can bring in the laptop to class. Being an old fogie, you may have a lunchbox computer lying around that you could use instead but I think a desktop would be a bit unwieldy. Personally, I didn't see computers being used any better than a chalkboard could be in the college classes I took. They were usually used so that the prof could be lazy and just present a slideshow instead of actually lecturing. I guess it's better than the lazy profs who just showed notes on an overhead.
The idea of a 6000 year old earth has no real literal basis. The figure was derived from trying to compile a family tree of sorts of desendants. The problem is that this list is incomplete and even if it were complete, it wouldn't give us an accurate timeline.
The description of the floodgates is a bit vauge and never is it stated that floodgates (whatever they are) were the only mechanism for rain. It was some sot of mechanism used to create a flood.
Even with a 6000 year old earth, if the rate of atomic decay was ever not as constant as it has been for the past couple of hundred years, the whole scientific method of aging is shot.
We really don't have all "the facts" on cosmology so it would be irresponsible to claim that religious stories are not among "the facts." I will very much conceed that there is no evidence we have that would support creationism or other similar religious beliefs regarding cosmology.
"I'm not so much surprised by how many people believe in literal biblical creation, I'm disgusted by it."
Literal biblical creation merely requires that you believe someone or something out there can do something that you cannot do and cannot currently explain. I see that happen all the time. I do agree that it's still not sciene and shouldn't be taught as such.
"I don't think anyone will be surprised how many people stop believing in literal biblical creation once the free ride in the name of (pseudo)science is over."
I hate to be the one to tell you this but most folks don't pick up their religious beliefs from our public school system. I for one would be astonished if there was a big drop off of folks who believe in creationism merely because the public school system stopped talking about it.
Evolution has nothing to do with who or what created the universe. Evolution specifically does not explain how life began. I think that both sides are losing sight of what evolution really is.
"most people don't believe that it is literally true." I think you'd be surprised at exactly how many people belive that creationism is literally true.
Is Lite-On really a smaller brand in the marketplace? I've read that there are many brands out there that are merely rebadged Lite-On drives. Also, one time I was adding a CD burner to my Sun Blade workstation. When I pulled the original CD-ROM drive to put in the new one, I noticed that the stock CD-ROM drive Sun was using was Lite-On. I realize that Sun only sells like 2 workstations a year nowadays but I'd think they of all people would contract for a quality component from a larger brand name (larger not in consumer awareness but in manufacturing ability).
I think they got the list backwards. If you reverse the order, you put Power Glove at #4 behind the 5200, the U-Force, and the Turbo Touch. That's about where it belongs. At least the power glove could play its pack-in game decently. The other 3 couldn't play a single game decently.
Nothing is free. My plan charges 10 cents per SMS but is significantly cheper than plans in my area that include free SMS. The point of the 10 cent per SMS is to get me to fork over $5 - $10 a month for bulk SMS messaging. I refuse to do that as it would put the cost of this phone in line with the cost of plans with free SMS messsaging. I'd get far more minutes out of $5 - $10 a month than I would out of SMS.
"once seen as a way to send a short message without running up the expense of a cellular telephone/cell phone call"
My text messages cost 10 cents per message. I'd have to talk for over 2 minutes to cost more than a text message and I can sure relay more information in that two minutes than most can in a text message and even get feedback during that time. Text messages have their uses but being cheaper isn't one of them. Besides, I thought the point of text messages was to annoy others trying to watch a movie in a movie theater.
"The firing lines of Civil War soldiers could be completely cut down by a single man with a modern machine gun."
Those guys at AWB are just yanking your chain (couldn't resist the literary reference). Something like an AK-47 would probably either run out of ammo or overheat first. Maybe a gatling gun could do that but a gatling gun isn't a machine gun. Speaking of gatling guns, they actually had those during the Civil War and they did indeed cut down entire firing lines.
You can port something and still not be able to implement certain features due to the differences in hardware platform, especially if your engine is chock full of platform-specific optimizations for each target. It might be a brand new engine but it seemed to feel the same as the other 06 engines so I assumed it was just a port. I have no doubt the 07 version for the 360 will be better (and maybe even completed before it's rushed out the door).
Did they already own a copy of Madden 06? I imagine there's not much difference between Madden 06 on the 360 and Madden 06 on the GC, PS2 or XBox. It's not like Madden 64 where they actually built a new engine for the new system. They just ported their current engine over to the 360. I had to opporunity to play Madden 2005 on the PS1 (yes, they did make a PS1 version of that game) and have to admit that it was almost as good as the PS2 version, just not as pretty.
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"And?"
When the NYT starts attaking bloggers for copy and pasting idea from other sources, I find it very important to note that the NYT gets a good chunck of their stories by copying and pasting from the AP. I'm not saying it's a good idea to have 1,000,000 reporters covering everything across the nation. I'm merely saying the NYT needs to come up with a better argument for attacking blogs than this copy and paste nonsense that they do themselves.
Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea for a newspaper to run AP stories in their paper but I find it a bit silly that those same newspapers are all running the exact same AP stories in their on-line news pages.
I'd argue that frisbee and pool are very much more popular on campus at my Alma Mater (and for what it's worth, I despise frisbee and am not the biggest fan of pool). I wouldn't even put beer pong as the most popular drinking game. Card-based games (Circle of Death, especially) and quarters both seem to be much more popular around here.
Personally, I think they jumped the shark when they based a game on a lame 70's gang movie. However, if done properly (big IF), I coulde certainly see a ping pong game being as intertaining as a tennis game and tennis games are pretty fun. Then again, I'd rather play Virtua Tennis than Vice City and I'm not exactly a big tennis fan. I'd also certainly NOT play the game if they added crap like "bling" and 'hoods.
Even if they're not released directly from the special interest group/politician, newspapers have a tendency to all run the exact same AP story that every other paper is running on many national issues. Often copying it verbatim or cutting it down to fit the space needed.
They may but from what I remember, it can lead to a lot of problems when using the printer heavily in a shared environment. The last printer my office used that did this "manual duplexing" didn't block other jobs so even though you knew exactly how to orient the page from the picture, you still had to make absolutely sure that you were flipping your page and not someone else's. You also had to make sure that the job about to be duplexed was yours and not somebody else's.
With the large adoption rate of LCD monitors for desktops and the use of USB/Firewire on both laptops and desktops, the difference between the two is getting smaller and smaller from a usage and space standpoint (and even from a price standpoint). I've even seen some of the low end Compaq desktops using a keyboard that is basically an external laptop keyboard, shallow buttons and all. I haven't used a desktop for regular daily work in about two years. Even though I used to loathe laptops, I don't really miss using a desktop as much as I thought I would. In fact, last year I bought my first laptop for home use. I use it to play games and browse while my old desktop is connected to the TV as a media player and my older desktop sits in the basement largely unused (might make it a MAME/emu gaming machine or a file/print server). I don't think the desktop will ever die out but with laptops being about as cheap as desktops nowadays I can certainly see laptops becoming (if they're not already, I have no idea) the primary computer that families buy for their home, especially if they have a wireless Internet setup.
The NES had practically no competition because they used illegal practices to keep players like the Sega Master System, Turbo Grafx 16, and the Atari 7800 from getting many third party titles. Nintendo had to give up those illegal practices and their marketshare has been slipping ever since. That is what I see when you show me those numbers.
Apples to oranges. A movie has a very short period of time to make a lot of money. A lot of movies don't even last six weeks in a theater and DVD sales and movie rights generally don't ever match the amount made from the box office. If your chemical plant had a 1 to 2 month period to make most of its money and then was relegated to making significantly less money of the course of its existance, even the far sighted executives would be a little worried that the plant didn't even cover its costs until the sixth week of operation.
"I'm not sure what qualifies as a success."
A movie that doesn't take six weeks to recover its costs. "Disaster" may have been a bit harsh, but calling I'm pretty sure studios aren't going to be touting it as a Hollywood success story. It did eventually double its return so it can at least be viewed as marginal by Hollywood standards.
Lucas points to one large budget disaster (Kong) as proof that big budget movies are doomed. King King was a disaster becasue the studio couldn't rein in the director and force him to put out a movie that would actually sell.
Movie budgets aren't going to come down any time soon. These independent films Lucas thinks will be the wave of the future will merely be blueprints to be copied by the major studios. Small movie sells and big movie copies. It's that simple.
Besides, I though we got the doom and gloom about the plight of big production movies after the Blair With Project didn't destroy Hollywood after all.
You must be quite the youngster yourself if you don't remember girls at the arcade. I remember back when arcades were where teenagers hung out. And I don't just mean the nerds. I mean all of them. The ones who weren't into video games could try their hand at any of the redemtion-style games available like Skee Ball, Skeet Shooting, or any number of machines that measure your strength. It was like a carnival without all the rides and that's the type of audience it attracted.
Can we please stop bickering about the lack of originality like it's something new? Who remembers the arcade space shooter? Who remembers the coutless Double Dragon clones? What about the 2D platformer? Who remembers 1-on-1 fighting games flooding the market? There are several genres of gaming right now that are getting spread thin. They will die out when consumer support for them fades. Then we'll finally get to a bunch of new types of games come in and try to win the honor of being cloned to death. We are in a phase of utter lack of originality but it will pass and we will get a brief span of original games coming out. Just make sure to enjoy the next wave of originals while it lasts.
This nano technology may indeed be a trillion dollar business like the article claims, but it's going to have to get the blessing of the FCC to be usable here in the US. If not, it'll be relelgated to backrooms of spy shops like all the other cell phone blocking technology already present.
The reason is so that you can bring in the laptop to class. Being an old fogie, you may have a lunchbox computer lying around that you could use instead but I think a desktop would be a bit unwieldy. Personally, I didn't see computers being used any better than a chalkboard could be in the college classes I took. They were usually used so that the prof could be lazy and just present a slideshow instead of actually lecturing. I guess it's better than the lazy profs who just showed notes on an overhead.
The idea of a 6000 year old earth has no real literal basis. The figure was derived from trying to compile a family tree of sorts of desendants. The problem is that this list is incomplete and even if it were complete, it wouldn't give us an accurate timeline.
The description of the floodgates is a bit vauge and never is it stated that floodgates (whatever they are) were the only mechanism for rain. It was some sot of mechanism used to create a flood.
Even with a 6000 year old earth, if the rate of atomic decay was ever not as constant as it has been for the past couple of hundred years, the whole scientific method of aging is shot.
"religious stories are not among the facts"
We really don't have all "the facts" on cosmology so it would be irresponsible to claim that religious stories are not among "the facts." I will very much conceed that there is no evidence we have that would support creationism or other similar religious beliefs regarding cosmology.
"I'm not so much surprised by how many people believe in literal biblical creation, I'm disgusted by it."
Literal biblical creation merely requires that you believe someone or something out there can do something that you cannot do and cannot currently explain. I see that happen all the time. I do agree that it's still not sciene and shouldn't be taught as such.
"I don't think anyone will be surprised how many people stop believing in literal biblical creation once the free ride in the name of (pseudo)science is over."
I hate to be the one to tell you this but most folks don't pick up their religious beliefs from our public school system. I for one would be astonished if there was a big drop off of folks who believe in creationism merely because the public school system stopped talking about it.
Evolution has nothing to do with who or what created the universe. Evolution specifically does not explain how life began. I think that both sides are losing sight of what evolution really is.
"most people don't believe that it is literally true."
I think you'd be surprised at exactly how many people belive that creationism is literally true.
Is Lite-On really a smaller brand in the marketplace? I've read that there are many brands out there that are merely rebadged Lite-On drives. Also, one time I was adding a CD burner to my Sun Blade workstation. When I pulled the original CD-ROM drive to put in the new one, I noticed that the stock CD-ROM drive Sun was using was Lite-On. I realize that Sun only sells like 2 workstations a year nowadays but I'd think they of all people would contract for a quality component from a larger brand name (larger not in consumer awareness but in manufacturing ability).
I could destory my high score in Storker with a controller like that. Did they consider a C64 version?
I think they got the list backwards. If you reverse the order, you put Power Glove at #4 behind the 5200, the U-Force, and the Turbo Touch. That's about where it belongs. At least the power glove could play its pack-in game decently. The other 3 couldn't play a single game decently.
Nothing is free. My plan charges 10 cents per SMS but is significantly cheper than plans in my area that include free SMS. The point of the 10 cent per SMS is to get me to fork over $5 - $10 a month for bulk SMS messaging. I refuse to do that as it would put the cost of this phone in line with the cost of plans with free SMS messsaging. I'd get far more minutes out of $5 - $10 a month than I would out of SMS.
"once seen as a way to send a short message without running up the expense of a cellular telephone/cell phone call"
My text messages cost 10 cents per message. I'd have to talk for over 2 minutes to cost more than a text message and I can sure relay more information in that two minutes than most can in a text message and even get feedback during that time. Text messages have their uses but being cheaper isn't one of them. Besides, I thought the point of text messages was to annoy others trying to watch a movie in a movie theater.
"The firing lines of Civil War soldiers could be completely cut down by a single man with a modern machine gun."
Those guys at AWB are just yanking your chain (couldn't resist the literary reference). Something like an AK-47 would probably either run out of ammo or overheat first. Maybe a gatling gun could do that but a gatling gun isn't a machine gun. Speaking of gatling guns, they actually had those during the Civil War and they did indeed cut down entire firing lines.
You can port something and still not be able to implement certain features due to the differences in hardware platform, especially if your engine is chock full of platform-specific optimizations for each target. It might be a brand new engine but it seemed to feel the same as the other 06 engines so I assumed it was just a port. I have no doubt the 07 version for the 360 will be better (and maybe even completed before it's rushed out the door).
Did they already own a copy of Madden 06? I imagine there's not much difference between Madden 06 on the 360 and Madden 06 on the GC, PS2 or XBox. It's not like Madden 64 where they actually built a new engine for the new system. They just ported their current engine over to the 360. I had to opporunity to play Madden 2005 on the PS1 (yes, they did make a PS1 version of that game) and have to admit that it was almost as good as the PS2 version, just not as pretty.