I love The Office (US version, never seen the UK version). I've been watching it since day 1 and telling everyone I know about it. But here's the thing. Have you ever listened to someone describe a funny TV show? It's awful. Not only is it impossible to reproduce the timing and context of the show that made it funny, but now the person forced to listen to you imitating Homer Simpson must guess as to whether you just can't do a good Homer, or if the writing for the Simpsons really isn't funny.
PMPs finally make it possible for me to come in the next day and say, "hey, you've got to watch this clip from last night's Office." I would certainly get more people to start watching the show by actually showing them part of the show than by possibly injuring someone with my horrible Dwight impersonation.
My wife loves reading sci-fi/fantasy, but is totally uninterested in the learning curve to get into D&D. We don't have any friends who play tabletop RPGs. I'd like to get the feel of a tabletop RPG without needing to memorize books and books of rules. I was hoping from the headline that this might be for n00bs, but it statesclearly isn't.
What would you suggest as a starting point? Is there anything that I could get together with 3 or 4 other people who are curious about tabletop RPGs to play? What can I try without having to pay an arm & leg to start?
iTunes sales have only gone DOWN. They should have gone up at the same rate as iPod sales.
Here's an interesting statistic. 100% of the people I know that have bought the new 5G iPod already own at least one earlier generation iPod. Apple is starting to get into the business of selling upgrades to existing fanboys. If someone hasn't taken the bait yet on an apple PMP, it's getting less likely that they ever will.
If Apple convinces all the 3G iPod owners in the world to upgrade to a 5G iPod, iPod sales will skyrocket, but it will still have 0 impact on the rate at which they buy music from ITMS.
There's a lot of music from my youth that I didn't relate to as a high school kid, but I remember the lyrics and relate to now as a father of two. In many cases I can't even remember the artist or exact melody when the song first comes to mind, but I can track it down because I remember the lyrics and they strike me as meaningful.
It may not matter to the record labels whether I buy an album they stopped pushing 8 years ago, but I'm sure it matters to the artist.
Actually, the Fridrich method (which is what most people with times under 30 seconds use), requires 4 looks, and only the first step requires on-the-spot thinking to plan out:
Get the edge pieces of the top layer in place (7-10 moves, different every time)
Put the corner pieces of the top layer and edge pieces of the middle layer in place (1 of 22 algorithms, all memorized)
Get all of the bottom layer to be one color (1 of 41 memorized algorithms)
Get all of the pieces of the bottom layer into the right position (1 of 13 memorized algorithms)
The real speed is in planning out the 7-10 moves for the first step in your head before starting (you get 15 seconds to do this), and starting the next step's algorithm as soon as possible once you finish each step. You don't have to plan out the whole solve from the start.
I created an additional step to get the edge pieces showing a cross on the bottom layer before getting the colors on the corners oriented, reducing the number of algorithms to memorize for step 3 from 41 to 6, but it hurts my time (my current best is 54 seconds).
Now, to solve blindfolded, on the other hand, you do need to memorize the cube first. But this could take 90 minutes to commit to memory and plan out, vs. the 15 seconds to only plan the first move. It's really an entirely different approach. I've heard that it's easier to memorize faces as numbers (1-6) instead of colors, but either way I find the whole thing baffling.
I don't have cable and the quality of the networks over bunny ears is crap. I'm pretty sure 320x320 on-demand video is still better quality than what my VCR gets over the airwaves.
You forget the most important thing about increased resolution. It's now easier than ever to send ridiculously huge email attachments of your ugly grandchildren to everybody in your freaking contact list.
This may sound odd, but I buy music from ITMS and I don't even own an iPod, or any mp3 player at all. But thinking ahead, if I ever do by an mp3 player... chances are it will be an iPod. So I know as soon as I take it out of the hypothetical box, my entire music collection will be ready to go.
I also refuse to buy music from Sony Connect, or anything else that doesn't let me play the music on iTunes, because I don't want the headache of figuring out how to get it on my hypothetical iPod.
Anyway, I might be speaking only for myself here, but I value iTunes simply for its potential, since I know I fall into the 90% that would pick an Apple mp3 player over the competitor.
A lot of the tweaks and configs for Mozilla can be manually patched into Netscape, even if not in the Netscape 'options' menu.
This isn't really a "same difference" justification. If it's easier for me to go download Firefox than to make Netscape act like Firefox, then there's no comparison.
For the entire world, there could be only 6 billion records - a single nation would need to have less than a billion - maybe a few million for most countries.
They tried to do this a few years back, but nobody could agree on whether to use bigint or guid for the primary key.
hmm... I'm still not sold. If I could watch homestar emails and possibly play flash games on it, it would fall into the fun part of the web that I think fits in with the other features of the PSP.
I know, this is Slashdot... I should get modded as a troll for not calling Flash the devil and posting a link to Adblock. All I'm saying is flash would be a big plus and maybe a selling point for me.
I own the first two seasons of 24 on DVD. I've never actually watched a broadcast of the show. Why not? Because I want to watch it on my time, I don't want to watch it out of order, and I want to be able to go back and watch previous episodes on demand.
Of course, buying DVD sets of even 24 episodes at $50 is not cost-effective by any means. I'm partially paying a premium because I like owning DVD sets - it's a novelty factor.
RedTacton works through shoes and clothing as well.
Not only is access to any RedTacton device (in the pictures, a palm pilot) now accessable just by touching me, you don't even have to touch my skin. Imagine a RedTacton receiver on the floor spanning the doorway of a main entrance to a building (like the automatic door pressure plates in drug stores). Oh, the privacy issues.
Even if I do nothing to block/hide the ads, I have already resolved that there is no way I would ever actually click on an ad. If I saw something in the ad that I would actually consider buying, I would shop for it and buy it from the most reasonable source, which may or may not be the seller that showed me the ad for the product. Ads have become to me nothing more than product awareness announcements.
Regardless of technology to display or block ads, I think the underlying issue here is that the technique of selling to a certain population of Internet users by showing them ads is over. There is no new way to show me ads that's going to change my mind about responding to ads. How can we expect to use an ad-funded service, intentionally ignoring ads (technilogically or mentally), and expect businesses to continue throwing money at it?
Agreed. Another good example is Mega Man. Storyline sucked. Not a lot of strategy. But lots of tactics. While Mega Man won't be resurrected for the rest of time, they did make like 10 of them, and continue porting it to new systems.
People who want to pat themselves on the back for coming up with a good strategy will play chess. People who want to impress themselves/each other with mastery of immediate problem solving will play video games.
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No, you misunderstood... they're actually robotic travelling salesmen. You program them with a turing machine.
PMPs finally make it possible for me to come in the next day and say, "hey, you've got to watch this clip from last night's Office." I would certainly get more people to start watching the show by actually showing them part of the show than by possibly injuring someone with my horrible Dwight impersonation.
What would you suggest as a starting point? Is there anything that I could get together with 3 or 4 other people who are curious about tabletop RPGs to play? What can I try without having to pay an arm & leg to start?
- Skinnable themes: +1
- Replication: +1
- Forms: +1
- F5 = refresh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H LOG OUT: -1,000,000
----------------Total: -999,997
Nope, sorry, still sucks.
There's a lot of music from my youth that I didn't relate to as a high school kid, but I remember the lyrics and relate to now as a father of two. In many cases I can't even remember the artist or exact melody when the song first comes to mind, but I can track it down because I remember the lyrics and they strike me as meaningful. It may not matter to the record labels whether I buy an album they stopped pushing 8 years ago, but I'm sure it matters to the artist.
You could also save yourself some time and get the Wikipedia search extension for Firefox.
The real speed is in planning out the 7-10 moves for the first step in your head before starting (you get 15 seconds to do this), and starting the next step's algorithm as soon as possible once you finish each step. You don't have to plan out the whole solve from the start.
I created an additional step to get the edge pieces showing a cross on the bottom layer before getting the colors on the corners oriented, reducing the number of algorithms to memorize for step 3 from 41 to 6, but it hurts my time (my current best is 54 seconds).
Now, to solve blindfolded, on the other hand, you do need to memorize the cube first. But this could take 90 minutes to commit to memory and plan out, vs. the 15 seconds to only plan the first move. It's really an entirely different approach. I've heard that it's easier to memorize faces as numbers (1-6) instead of colors, but either way I find the whole thing baffling.
I don't have cable and the quality of the networks over bunny ears is crap. I'm pretty sure 320x320 on-demand video is still better quality than what my VCR gets over the airwaves.
You forget the most important thing about increased resolution. It's now easier than ever to send ridiculously huge email attachments of your ugly grandchildren to everybody in your freaking contact list.
This may sound odd, but I buy music from ITMS and I don't even own an iPod, or any mp3 player at all. But thinking ahead, if I ever do by an mp3 player... chances are it will be an iPod. So I know as soon as I take it out of the hypothetical box, my entire music collection will be ready to go.
I also refuse to buy music from Sony Connect, or anything else that doesn't let me play the music on iTunes, because I don't want the headache of figuring out how to get it on my hypothetical iPod.
Anyway, I might be speaking only for myself here, but I value iTunes simply for its potential, since I know I fall into the 90% that would pick an Apple mp3 player over the competitor.
This isn't really a "same difference" justification. If it's easier for me to go download Firefox than to make Netscape act like Firefox, then there's no comparison.
Is this anything like the frightening shortage of Cobol programmers?
I'm pretty sure if I changed your post to all caps, I could run it through a Cobol compiler and get an answer for you.
hmm... I'm still not sold. If I could watch homestar emails and possibly play flash games on it, it would fall into the fun part of the web that I think fits in with the other features of the PSP.
I know, this is Slashdot... I should get modded as a troll for not calling Flash the devil and posting a link to Adblock. All I'm saying is flash would be a big plus and maybe a selling point for me.
Hey, it's potentially not spam if you actually are in the market for an Italian Rolex.
"And then thus spake the Lord, 'Verily I say unto you, HOAX!'"
Reminds me of this (de)motivational poster from despair.com.
...another pseudo-intellectual blathering on about the 'illusion' of free will. Hey, don't blame him for saying stupid things... he can't help it.
I own the first two seasons of 24 on DVD. I've never actually watched a broadcast of the show. Why not? Because I want to watch it on my time, I don't want to watch it out of order, and I want to be able to go back and watch previous episodes on demand.
Of course, buying DVD sets of even 24 episodes at $50 is not cost-effective by any means. I'm partially paying a premium because I like owning DVD sets - it's a novelty factor.
Not only is access to any RedTacton device (in the pictures, a palm pilot) now accessable just by touching me, you don't even have to touch my skin. Imagine a RedTacton receiver on the floor spanning the doorway of a main entrance to a building (like the automatic door pressure plates in drug stores). Oh, the privacy issues.
Maybe my tin-foil hat will protect me...
Regardless of technology to display or block ads, I think the underlying issue here is that the technique of selling to a certain population of Internet users by showing them ads is over. There is no new way to show me ads that's going to change my mind about responding to ads. How can we expect to use an ad-funded service, intentionally ignoring ads (technilogically or mentally), and expect businesses to continue throwing money at it?
People who want to pat themselves on the back for coming up with a good strategy will play chess. People who want to impress themselves/each other with mastery of immediate problem solving will play video games.