Here's one from left field, but let me recommend one of the variations on Dance Dance Revolution.
My wife and I have always been pretty active, but recently a series of injuries and illnesses have interrupted our normal activities. As a result, we gained some weight, and are now having trouble getting motivated to lose the weight and get back into shape.
I'm a PC gamer, and my tastes in games run mainly to FPS's and RPG's. I've been trying for years to get my wife interested in games without much success. She played WoW for a few months, but soon got bored with it. More recently she saw one of those stories about people losing weight by playing DDR, and knowing that I love to buy toys, she suggested that we try it. We picked up a PS2, DDR Extreme-2, and a couple of dance pads for less than $250.
I have to admit, that it's pretty fun. We're starting on a level playing field, since neither of us has played it before. The music is mostly kind of techno / rave stuff, but it works well for the game. (FYI, I'm more of a classic rock kind of guy.) We have a lot of fun learning the game together, and of course we burn off some calories in the process. Also, if one of you learns faster, the game allows you to adjust difficulty seperately.
Now, this may not lead your girl friend into other games (which may be part of your goal); but, you can still have a lot of fun and burn some calories as a bonus. Give it a try.
While I agree with you that the Media (and the Apple faithful) are primarily to blame for the over-hype, it's clear that Apple share some of the blame as well. While the event was perhaps smaller than usual, they still invited the press to show up to a live event rather than just sending out announcements and putting up some new info on their web pages. Perhaps I'm wrong, but this seems a bit unusual given the products being announced. What other company would have a live event with the CEO of the company to announce a couple of ho-hum computers, a crappy set of speakers, and an overpriced leather case?
Remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Even if some people were dissappointed after all the hype, Apple got a lot of publicity out of this. Given the announcement invitations, it was pretty predictable that the tech media, and the Apple faithful would hype this. I think Apple knowly took advantage of that to get a lot of publicity milage out of some minor product announcements.
Well, you knew that after the recent article that unfavorably compared Jobs to Gates that the Apple faithful would have to come up with something in rebuttal. I imagine that the submitter spent hours scouring the web for something suitable. I guess that this was the best that he could come up with.:-)
While that seems reasonable, that's not really what the gov wants. After all if they make a clear request for a particular statistic, the answer may not actually support the position they're taking.
Remember, this isn't just a fact finding mission for the gov. They want "evidence" to support a restrictive law. They want the raw data so that *they* (not Google) can rake through it and find any statistic that might support their position. If such data doesn't exist, then they just won't use any of the info, and the fact that the data doesn't support their argument can be easily swept under the carpet. If Google does the analysis, the results will become known to the public whether the gov likes it or not.
P2P is well suited for distributing free material, but I don't really see it as suitable for distributing paid content. It seems like the whole business model is broken.
With free material everyone understands that by contributing disk space, bandwidth, and electrical power (to run their computer when they're not using it) they are helping share the burden of distributing the material. Why would I want to do this if I have to pay for the material anyway? Some might argue that I'm helping to keep the price down, but in reality I'd just be padding NBC's profit margin.
Additionally, I normally turn my computer off when I'm not using it (save's power, less vulnerable etc). Now if I was participating in a free P2P community I might leave it on as my contribution to the community but I'm not going to burn extra power to support someone else's paid download. I'm sure others would act in a similar fashion, so the number of available nodes to help with your download are likely to be very limited. Seems like this would result in very slow downloads.
Also, I can only watch the movie for 24 hours, but will it stay on my harddrive taking up disk space? Seems like it has to in order for this to be a P2P service. If everyone just deletes their expired movies, than anyone purchasing the movie would have to download it from central NBC servers. It doesn't sound like a very workable P2P setup.
Finally there's the issue of the 24 viewing window. As others have stated, that's just not enough. I don't want to own the movie forever, but I'm not going to spend hours downloading a movie I paid for and then feel pressured to watch it before it expires. With current on demand services I get the movie immeadiately so it's easier to plan for my time. If I download a movie tonight to watch tomorrow, who knows what might come up. I'd be pretty pissed if I paid for and spent hours downloading a movie and then couldn't watch because it expired. They would need to make the limit at least a couple days, if not a week.
I agree that this would make perfect sense. Unfortunately, what would happen is that all the businesses operating on the internet would move their sales operation to the states with the lowest sales taxes. This would give them a clear price advantage over a business operating out or state with high sales tax.
This would piss off the greedy bastards in the states with high sales taxes because they would feel cheated out of their "fair" share. Thus they would oppose this system.
Their choices for stress tests were less than ideal. I'm never going to drop my ipod out of a moving car.
What would have been good was some tests that would tend to bend the ipod rather than just impact tests. Instead of just sitting on it, put it in the back pocket of some tight jeans and sit down. For that matter, putting it in the coin pocket of some tight jeans and sitting down seems like it would put some stress on it.
I think that the poster's humor detector is probably fine. There just wasn't any humor to detect. While I'm sure you're correct that Tierney was trying to be funny, I think that he failed miserably.
I'm sure that the original poster will not be the only one to take this article seriously. Worse yet, many of those people will come away believing that there's a justifiable rationale for executing hackers.
Slashdot Mirror
Could someone please explain to me how this is physics? (I'm guessing it was a slow day in the physics lab.)
Here's one from left field, but let me recommend one of the variations on Dance Dance Revolution.
My wife and I have always been pretty active, but recently a series of injuries and illnesses have interrupted our normal activities. As a result, we gained some weight, and are now having trouble getting motivated to lose the weight and get back into shape.
I'm a PC gamer, and my tastes in games run mainly to FPS's and RPG's. I've been trying for years to get my wife interested in games without much success. She played WoW for a few months, but soon got bored with it. More recently she saw one of those stories about people losing weight by playing DDR, and knowing that I love to buy toys, she suggested that we try it. We picked up a PS2, DDR Extreme-2, and a couple of dance pads for less than $250.
I have to admit, that it's pretty fun. We're starting on a level playing field, since neither of us has played it before. The music is mostly kind of techno / rave stuff, but it works well for the game. (FYI, I'm more of a classic rock kind of guy.) We have a lot of fun learning the game together, and of course we burn off some calories in the process. Also, if one of you learns faster, the game allows you to adjust difficulty seperately.
Now, this may not lead your girl friend into other games (which may be part of your goal); but, you can still have a lot of fun and burn some calories as a bonus. Give it a try.
While I agree with you that the Media (and the Apple faithful) are primarily to blame for the over-hype, it's clear that Apple share some of the blame as well. While the event was perhaps smaller than usual, they still invited the press to show up to a live event rather than just sending out announcements and putting up some new info on their web pages. Perhaps I'm wrong, but this seems a bit unusual given the products being announced. What other company would have a live event with the CEO of the company to announce a couple of ho-hum computers, a crappy set of speakers, and an overpriced leather case?
Remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Even if some people were dissappointed after all the hype, Apple got a lot of publicity out of this. Given the announcement invitations, it was pretty predictable that the tech media, and the Apple faithful would hype this. I think Apple knowly took advantage of that to get a lot of publicity milage out of some minor product announcements.
Well, you knew that after the recent article that unfavorably compared Jobs to Gates that the Apple faithful would have to come up with something in rebuttal. I imagine that the submitter spent hours scouring the web for something suitable. I guess that this was the best that he could come up with. :-)
No, actually we won't miss Aibo at all.
While that seems reasonable, that's not really what the gov wants. After all if they make a clear request for a particular statistic, the answer may not actually support the position they're taking.
Remember, this isn't just a fact finding mission for the gov. They want "evidence" to support a restrictive law. They want the raw data so that *they* (not Google) can rake through it and find any statistic that might support their position. If such data doesn't exist, then they just won't use any of the info, and the fact that the data doesn't support their argument can be easily swept under the carpet. If Google does the analysis, the results will become known to the public whether the gov likes it or not.
With free material everyone understands that by contributing disk space, bandwidth, and electrical power (to run their computer when they're not using it) they are helping share the burden of distributing the material. Why would I want to do this if I have to pay for the material anyway? Some might argue that I'm helping to keep the price down, but in reality I'd just be padding NBC's profit margin.
Additionally, I normally turn my computer off when I'm not using it (save's power, less vulnerable etc). Now if I was participating in a free P2P community I might leave it on as my contribution to the community but I'm not going to burn extra power to support someone else's paid download. I'm sure others would act in a similar fashion, so the number of available nodes to help with your download are likely to be very limited. Seems like this would result in very slow downloads.
Also, I can only watch the movie for 24 hours, but will it stay on my harddrive taking up disk space? Seems like it has to in order for this to be a P2P service. If everyone just deletes their expired movies, than anyone purchasing the movie would have to download it from central NBC servers. It doesn't sound like a very workable P2P setup.
Finally there's the issue of the 24 viewing window. As others have stated, that's just not enough. I don't want to own the movie forever, but I'm not going to spend hours downloading a movie I paid for and then feel pressured to watch it before it expires. With current on demand services I get the movie immeadiately so it's easier to plan for my time. If I download a movie tonight to watch tomorrow, who knows what might come up. I'd be pretty pissed if I paid for and spent hours downloading a movie and then couldn't watch because it expired. They would need to make the limit at least a couple days, if not a week.
The problem on the Soviet pipeline wasn't a bug. It was deliberate sabotage. I think that there's a slight difference.
I agree that this would make perfect sense. Unfortunately, what would happen is that all the businesses operating on the internet would move their sales operation to the states with the lowest sales taxes. This would give them a clear price advantage over a business operating out or state with high sales tax. This would piss off the greedy bastards in the states with high sales taxes because they would feel cheated out of their "fair" share. Thus they would oppose this system.
A Bush supporter calling for "some REAL science"? Boy, there's some irony for you!
Their choices for stress tests were less than ideal. I'm never going to drop my ipod out of a moving car. What would have been good was some tests that would tend to bend the ipod rather than just impact tests. Instead of just sitting on it, put it in the back pocket of some tight jeans and sit down. For that matter, putting it in the coin pocket of some tight jeans and sitting down seems like it would put some stress on it.
I think that the poster's humor detector is probably fine. There just wasn't any humor to detect. While I'm sure you're correct that Tierney was trying to be funny, I think that he failed miserably. I'm sure that the original poster will not be the only one to take this article seriously. Worse yet, many of those people will come away believing that there's a justifiable rationale for executing hackers.
Are you perhaps referring to this: http://www.afn.org/~afn30091/songs/b/blondie-raptu re.htm?