More appropriately, the actual total cost of upgrading your desktop is rapidly converging with the cost of buying a new laptop.
Why spend $500 to have the absolute most top of the line monitor, when you can sell your "old" laptop and buy a new one for the same cost as upgrading your desktop monitor?
That being said, the desktop will never die. There are going to be plenty of situations where someone WANTS a computer that can't be easily stolen, and the desktop is much more of a hindrance to a common thief than a laptop is.
I own a desktop computer and a relatively new, itty bitty laptop with the most wonderful feature - the bios is protected by a fingerprint scanner. and if someone turns on the computer and sits there staring at the screen, it beeps regularly, and LOUDLY, and will undoubtedly foil the plans of any thief. If my laptop gets stolen, I just lose it, nobody gets a brand new computer.
And even I'll tell you that there will always be a place for a desktop machine.
Take, for example, the idea of starting a story in the middle. It worked for Star Wars.
Or maybe you could rip a page out of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. "They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, nor spake nor moved their eyes. It had been strange, even in a dream, to have seen those dead men rise." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (my apologies to whomever may be offended if I recited that poorly from memory.)
It certainly doesn't become LESS emotional or imaginative by taking IT out of context.
It's perfectly possible for a song to be good, even if you take it out of its album. In fact, I prefer songs like that, because when I like a song, and I go to check out the album, I'd LIKE to see something that makes that song even better.
Kinda like hearing "One" on the radio and deciding to check out the whole album of "...And Justice For All." I certainly wasn't let down.
Having seen the HBO special on TV, I thought it was interesting that rather than do everything in CG, they actually did most of the special effects with real cars, explosives, and lots of stunt crews.
It may look just as good as CG in the theater, and you might never be able to tell the difference, but seeing the cars explode and fly everywhere really put me in the mood to want to see the movie, and I think the director really has the right idea in mind: mindless carnage.
Like I said, there were games before it that were moddable, but Half-Life really caused the biggest explosion in fan-driven community efforts.
When the #1 most-played online multiplayer game in America is a MOD for half-life, you know something is up.
And that doesn't even begin to tap into the vast collection of mods and user-created content for the game. Like I said, Quake and Duke Nukem had lots of user-created content, but when you compare the communities for the games, you'll see a huge difference. Why? I don't know and I don't care. But it's there.
I was here when DOOM was released, and made my own episode for Duke Nukem, since the editor was fun and easy to make stuff with. But Half-Life was HUGE. Much much bigger than DOOM or Quake or DN3D. As much respect as I have for the classics that came before it, I'm not about to say that they, and not half-life, are responsible for half-life's huge commercial success.
To do so would be illogical. As illogical, as, say, spelling DOOM without proper capitalization.
without question half-life. It was the first game to have mod tools for the fans that were freely available as well as an actual effort behind them to ENCOURAGE mod-making, it was the first to make such a business model succeed on a massive scale, and encouraged the proliferation of community involvement in games, eventually resulting in what some would call "Web 2.0".
Nothing in the history of gaming has impacted the WORLD in the way that it did, and for that reason I'll say that it was the best game ever.
You may claim that other games did it better, I might even yield to the idea that the BUILD engine with Duke 3D should have the title, or maybe even quake or quake 2, but those games didn't succeed in luring in the mod community and fostering its growth as well as Valve did with Half-Life. The mod community for Quake 2 seemed to be just a thing that popped up around the game, but Half-Life actually welcomed it in and put effort into it.
This truly was the beginning of the real internet we know today, and marked the point in history where the community surrounding a game became just as important as the game itself.
I cast my vote for Half-Life, not any Zelda game. While Ocarina of Time was exceptionally well made, and possibly flawless, it IS possible to do more. And many games have.
"Talk to some real protesters sometime." Cute. I can see now that you're a heavily opinionated person who thinks that his or her cause is superior to others'.
I don't care. I don't believe that it is about "free music". I don't have any desire to go throw rocks at police to show my distaste for something illegal and wrong. It is perfectly acceptable to be calm, logical, and to ignore the bullying of the big guy in order to convince the world of who is right.
And lastly but not leastly, this is not "piracy," in the same sense as, you know, taking something from others at gunpoint and raping, pillaging, and murdering. Downloading music from the internet is creating a local copy of something that someone else owns, sort of like using a magic spell to create a life-size statue of the Statue of liberty in my backyard. Only these mp3's aren't direct copies of the source material bit-for-bit, so I suppose the copy statue in question would be made out of macaroni noodles.
When you wrap your head around that concept, feel free to go ahead and protest your wars while I protest my own cause.
The school is responsible for its students and can be charged with criminal misconduct if they turn over students' information to a group which unlawfully harms them, as the RIAA has done in the past.
There is an expectation of privacy in schools, and violation of that privacy has landed multiple schools in trouble before.
Are you saying that those people who participated in the Boston Tea Party weren't as patriotic?
This isn't some sort of easy judgment call where you can just arbitrarily say that one form of freedom of speech and expression is okay, but another is not.
Downloading music is a form of protest, and the school has given in to the enemy of the students' freedoms because it will save them some money on bandwidth, or so someone has convinced them.
The University benefits financially if it scares the students into not downloading anything in the future. Don't for one moment think that this isn't the exact and only reason why they've surrendered.
The fact remains that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution openly declare that GOD and God alone gave you your freedoms, they are only protecting them. This is a violation of those God-given freedoms, for the sake of profit.
You hit the nail on the head when you said BANDWIDTH but everything else is irrelevant.
Likely, the school is pissed abotu how much of their bandwidth is being used for piracy and is stringing up a few students in order to curb the activity. I don't think they care the slightest for the students, it's just a matter of cutting costs.
"Not anonymous speech. IF you say something, be prepared to stand up and back it up. Just because you *can* say something does not mean you can say something and will never be found. Just as you have a right to say whatever you want about me, I have the right to find out who you are and confront you about it."
Slashdot Mirror
Then don't go to blogspot.com.
If the website allows that kind of malicious behavior, then they need to change.
Accio incredibly venomous lethal teeth!
Sweet, so it's like a cheat code or bug, but in real life?
More appropriately, the actual total cost of upgrading your desktop is rapidly converging with the cost of buying a new laptop.
Why spend $500 to have the absolute most top of the line monitor, when you can sell your "old" laptop and buy a new one for the same cost as upgrading your desktop monitor?
That being said, the desktop will never die. There are going to be plenty of situations where someone WANTS a computer that can't be easily stolen, and the desktop is much more of a hindrance to a common thief than a laptop is.
I own a desktop computer and a relatively new, itty bitty laptop with the most wonderful feature - the bios is protected by a fingerprint scanner. and if someone turns on the computer and sits there staring at the screen, it beeps regularly, and LOUDLY, and will undoubtedly foil the plans of any thief. If my laptop gets stolen, I just lose it, nobody gets a brand new computer.
And even I'll tell you that there will always be a place for a desktop machine.
Freakin' awesome! Now I know I have what it takes to be the CEO of a major company. :)
Actually most of the time it does.
Take, for example, the idea of starting a story in the middle. It worked for Star Wars.
Or maybe you could rip a page out of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. "They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, nor spake nor moved their eyes. It had been strange, even in a dream, to have seen those dead men rise." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (my apologies to whomever may be offended if I recited that poorly from memory.)
It certainly doesn't become LESS emotional or imaginative by taking IT out of context.
It's perfectly possible for a song to be good, even if you take it out of its album. In fact, I prefer songs like that, because when I like a song, and I go to check out the album, I'd LIKE to see something that makes that song even better.
Kinda like hearing "One" on the radio and deciding to check out the whole album of "...And Justice For All." I certainly wasn't let down.
It left with the terminator.
It wanted to live.
Having seen the HBO special on TV, I thought it was interesting that rather than do everything in CG, they actually did most of the special effects with real cars, explosives, and lots of stunt crews.
It may look just as good as CG in the theater, and you might never be able to tell the difference, but seeing the cars explode and fly everywhere really put me in the mood to want to see the movie, and I think the director really has the right idea in mind: mindless carnage.
Like I said, there were games before it that were moddable, but Half-Life really caused the biggest explosion in fan-driven community efforts.
When the #1 most-played online multiplayer game in America is a MOD for half-life, you know something is up.
And that doesn't even begin to tap into the vast collection of mods and user-created content for the game.
Like I said, Quake and Duke Nukem had lots of user-created content, but when you compare the communities for the games, you'll see a huge difference. Why? I don't know and I don't care. But it's there.
I was here when DOOM was released, and made my own episode for Duke Nukem, since the editor was fun and easy to make stuff with. But Half-Life was HUGE. Much much bigger than DOOM or Quake or DN3D. As much respect as I have for the classics that came before it, I'm not about to say that they, and not half-life, are responsible for half-life's huge commercial success.
To do so would be illogical. As illogical, as, say, spelling DOOM without proper capitalization.
No, probably Tetris, but you wouldn't be able to get accurate stats on that because of all the knockoffs of it.
without question half-life. It was the first game to have mod tools for the fans that were freely available as well as an actual effort behind them to ENCOURAGE mod-making, it was the first to make such a business model succeed on a massive scale, and encouraged the proliferation of community involvement in games, eventually resulting in what some would call "Web 2.0".
Nothing in the history of gaming has impacted the WORLD in the way that it did, and for that reason I'll say that it was the best game ever.
You may claim that other games did it better, I might even yield to the idea that the BUILD engine with Duke 3D should have the title, or maybe even quake or quake 2, but those games didn't succeed in luring in the mod community and fostering its growth as well as Valve did with Half-Life. The mod community for Quake 2 seemed to be just a thing that popped up around the game, but Half-Life actually welcomed it in and put effort into it.
This truly was the beginning of the real internet we know today, and marked the point in history where the community surrounding a game became just as important as the game itself.
I cast my vote for Half-Life, not any Zelda game. While Ocarina of Time was exceptionally well made, and possibly flawless, it IS possible to do more. And many games have.
"...they should shut down the pirate music website that is robbing US recording companies of sales."
So then, they shut down the wrong website.
Exposure leads to increased sales, period.
will it check out that featureless black spot we found recently? I sure as heck would like to know what's in there.
"Hence the reason to disable remote 3rd party images in your browser of choice (e.g. Firefox) "
Is that automatic, or do you have to enable that?
"Talk to some real protesters sometime."
Cute. I can see now that you're a heavily opinionated person who thinks that his or her cause is superior to others'.
I don't care. I don't believe that it is about "free music". I don't have any desire to go throw rocks at police to show my distaste for something illegal and wrong. It is perfectly acceptable to be calm, logical, and to ignore the bullying of the big guy in order to convince the world of who is right.
And lastly but not leastly, this is not "piracy," in the same sense as, you know, taking something from others at gunpoint and raping, pillaging, and murdering. Downloading music from the internet is creating a local copy of something that someone else owns, sort of like using a magic spell to create a life-size statue of the Statue of liberty in my backyard. Only these mp3's aren't direct copies of the source material bit-for-bit, so I suppose the copy statue in question would be made out of macaroni noodles.
When you wrap your head around that concept, feel free to go ahead and protest your wars while I protest my own cause.
Where's the +5, good troll button?
"* A system operating in a Microsoft Windows environment may generate a blue screen."
So this is a "sky is blue" type of error then?
The school is responsible for its students and can be charged with criminal misconduct if they turn over students' information to a group which unlawfully harms them, as the RIAA has done in the past.
There is an expectation of privacy in schools, and violation of that privacy has landed multiple schools in trouble before.
Are you saying that those people who participated in the Boston Tea Party weren't as patriotic?
This isn't some sort of easy judgment call where you can just arbitrarily say that one form of freedom of speech and expression is okay, but another is not.
Downloading music is a form of protest, and the school has given in to the enemy of the students' freedoms because it will save them some money on bandwidth, or so someone has convinced them.
The University benefits financially if it scares the students into not downloading anything in the future. Don't for one moment think that this isn't the exact and only reason why they've surrendered.
The fact remains that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution openly declare that GOD and God alone gave you your freedoms, they are only protecting them. This is a violation of those God-given freedoms, for the sake of profit.
It's not that they're not affected. It's that apple fanboys won't admit to it.
You hit the nail on the head when you said BANDWIDTH but everything else is irrelevant.
Likely, the school is pissed abotu how much of their bandwidth is being used for piracy and is stringing up a few students in order to curb the activity. I don't think they care the slightest for the students, it's just a matter of cutting costs.
"Not anonymous speech. IF you say something, be prepared to stand up and back it up. Just because you *can* say something does not mean you can say something and will never be found. Just as you have a right to say whatever you want about me, I have the right to find out who you are and confront you about it."
Care for a sip of some Boston Tea, red-shirt?
I'm surprised it took this long.
We were invited!
Tea was served!
You may feel a slight disturbance in the force.