Porn is often the first adaptor of tech innovation. They're the first to adopt new cameras and editing technology (ask Apple how many Final Cut/ DVD Studio Pro suites they sold to the porn industry.) That's nothing new... Porn is as old as the printing press itself.
But what's more important is that porn subsidizes many otherwise legitimate industries & technologies that may be teetering on the edge of oblivion, both bleeding edge (like video compression, digital photography, editing, etc.) and fading (notably printing presses, VHS tapes, and the "mom and pop" video store.) Porn's readiness to adopt new tech funds innovators while they wait for other industries to make up their minds.
I don't deny that porn has an adverse effect on a fragile mind, but we can ban and regulate porn all we want but it will never go away. Live sex shows, prostitutes etc. have been with us as long as we've had civilization.
Oh, and I'm not saying this as a huge porn fan. I'm married, so I'm not allowed to look at porn.
I would think they aren't using the site logs, but rather checking the IPs as a file is being shared (Azareus. for example, lists IPs of all your peers.)
I can't imagine Apple would go in that direction-- frankly MP3 CDs are last decade's technology.
Portable CD players are as fragile, if not more so than hard drive players. I've burned through three of them, all name brands treated with normal care and none last more than a year. The mechanism is simply too fragile for a portable device, which is why they never caught on like the far more reliable cassette players and flash/hard drive devices. (Cassette "walkmen" were still outselling portable CD players in that device's heyday, and that's long after the labels gave up on the tape format.)
Portable CD players are also a pain to listen to unless you're standing perfectly still-- a speed bump or sharp turn in the car, or even walking at a regular pace can skip the tracks. Really, if you don't hold them level you're asking for failure, forget about carrying it by your side, in a bag, etc. Or in your pocket, where they probably wouldn't fit anyway.
The only benefit MP3 CD players have is price. But CDs are a pain to burn, are ruined by a minor scratch and are prone to degrade (especially the ones you burn yourself.) Hard drive players aren't indestructable (and aren't cheap!) but they hold up better. Flash is best-- my Shuffle is a fifth the size of my last portable CD player and has been subject to much more abuse than I would dream of putting a CD player through, and hasn't missed a beat.
I think I figured it out. The Mayan calender ends in 2012, right? And everyone thinks that means that's when the world is going to end. You're with me, right? And 2012, that's when the Olympics are going to start trademarking our system of measuring time... Meaning, of course, that calender publishers are going to have to get permission to print the years, dates and months... Still with me? This means the Mayans weren't predicting armaggeddon after all. They were just avoiding any possible lawsuits from trademark violation.
Tune in to Art Bell tonight, they're interviewing me from 1 am to 7 am.
Adwords cost money... A lot of money for frequently searched terms. And this cost spirals upwards with the demand. In this system, the only protection a company like Geico has from a customer using their name to draw hits is to pay Google more to keep their site at the top of the list. It's not quite extortion, but it's kind of close...
Of course Geico would be under no obligation to opt in to this form of advertising, and a generic term like "car insurace" is fair game to give the best results to the highest bidder. But IMO a competitor using Geico's trademark to grab hits-- especially if they use it in a negative way-- is putting the gun to Geico's head and saying, "pay up."
All those wacky Asian countries are the same?
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A World of Warcraft World
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· Score: 5, Informative
... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG.
CHINA, not Korea. It happened in SHANGHAI. Geez, do a little research, tens of thousands of people are going to read your submission...
So? A movie deal isn't every cartoonist's goal. Many great comics (especially comic strips) would make terrible movies. There are other ways to profit-- like merchandise and publishing, even selling original art.
BTW there are quite a few cartoonists who work in print-- typically "alternative weeklies" like the New York Press, or with indie comics publishers like Fantagraphics-- but also make their strips and archives available on the web. I wouldn't call them "webcomics" in the Penny Arcade mold but these guys have seen that distributing their work over the intraweb as well as whatever publishing opportunities come along, is a good way of reaching fans... Some of my favorites (catering to my weird tastes, of course:)
Punkbuster... Yeah. I guess it works some times. But I've also been booted for being a Mac user (and thus a version behind), booted for using a CD key that was compromised (on a game I paid for, at that... good luck working that situation out), booted because some griefer accused me of cheating because I got off a lucky sniper shot or something. And when you're marked a cheater in one server, you can be marked a cheater in ALL servers-- making the multiplayer mode of a game I paid full price for worthless. I'm looking directly at you, Soldier of Fortune 2 (not my only punkbuster game, but the one where I had the worst problems.)
Of course, that could just be my experience... Maybe some of you love punkbuster. But IMO nothing works better than alert administrators monitoring their servers. A pain, I know, but sharing this task is something that makes a room a community. I keep coming back the the game Red Faction... It's not the newest, or even the most fun, but it doesn't use punkbuster and the admins of the servers I frequent are diligent and fair when it comes to booting modders and abusers.
IMO one chance Zeta might have is if it invents itself as an alternative to OSX for running music or video apps (Be was already heading in that direction when it was killed.) There's usually no need for remote applications or multiple users on dedicated studio systems, so Zeta could focus on Be's strengths and not reinvent the wheel if they went in this direction.
Sound engineers are a great market for a hobby OS like this, BTW-- they have different needs than most computer users (many high end studios still use Mac OS9!) and really have no fear of using exotic tools (from the guys I've known, the more obscure the equiptment the better.)
I never really use them anymore, but I remember that if you're looking for something on the P2P networks that isn't a top 40 hit you're at mercy of the seeders/uploaders/whatever you call them. If the parties ripping the music files decide to use Ogg over mp3 and the downloaders want the song, they're going to find a way to play them. This goes double for binaries groups... I remember quite a few times having to find new players for the various formats people would use, because I really wanted to hear more obscure (and otherwise unavailable) recordings.
I also wonder, though this is pure speculation, if non-mp3 (and non-wma?) formats are gaining popularity because of the floods of garbage mp3s. The RIAA and whoever else is responsible probably aren't bothering with the marginal formats, at least not yet.
Manned space exploration I am of the opinion that sending humans into space is the most effective use of our "space dollars". It is fine to send up robots to collect data samples, but we also need to know the safest and cheapest way to package up live astronauts, drive them around the solar system, and bring them home safely. With the current shuttle tech, we are looking at neither the safest, nor the cheapest way of sending up live astronauts and bringing them home extra crispy. There are a lot of barriers to getting rid of the shuttle program, but discarding it for a more future-looking program (even the Apollo and Mercury missions were more forward-looking than the shuttles) would rejuvenate interest in science and physics in particular.
Yes... We have to keep going, and as callous as it sounds we have to understand that some lives will be lost, but we have to keep going. Space is a frontier-- and pioneers often have short lives, but understand it's work the risk. U.S. Astronauts know they may not be coming when they're launched into space and the American public needs to understand this too... Because losing a few Taikonauts won't slow China down for a second.
Kozmo.com Never heard of it.
That's the problem, and it's too bad. A web-based convenience store with a decent deli that delivers to your door.
Of course if you didn't live in a major city when they were in operation you wouldn't know about them, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a great service.
Napster I don't see the attraction. A centralized database where your connections can be tracked and you are at the bandwidth mercy of a single uploading server. No thanks. I'll stick with BitTorrent.
Well, you can be tracked through Bittorrent too... Your IP is available to all other users.
Either way, they're waxing nostalgic. The Napster model is dead, but when it was around it was amazing. I think it was also a great leveller-- no longer would you have to rely on friend's opinions, music rags or taking chances on $15 CD's to find new bands, you could download it and see for yourself. I never took chances with CD's before 1998-ish, and only bought a few a year from bands I knew I liked... Now I buy hundreds, many of them from the 60's-80's from bands I never would have heard of if I didn't download.
The Concorde I am going to agree. Actually, any type of supersonic aircraft would be great for longhaul flights.
I never understood this, why did they ground it after a single crash? There must be more to the story.
GM's EV1 That is possibly the ugliest car I've seen since the Pontiac Aztec. It is only out-uglied by the Honda hybrid.
Kind of ugly, but no one was leasing them for the looks. The author is bemoaning the fact that there are no electric vehicles in production any more, which is a crying shame-- and I suspect Big Oil may have something to do with it.
Wires No. Make wireless faster.
Keep wires available AND make wireless faster. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, and wired devices make sense in many cases. Wireless phone and internet connections are somewhat less reliable and much less secure. Cordless phones are at the mercy of their battery, and nothing sucks more than having it run out during an important call. And if you have ample desk space and don't share a network there's no reason besides looks that every device needs to be wireless-- a usb cable to my printer works just fine.
LPs This will continue to be a niche format. CDs provide the same quality sound playback for the human-audible range of sound. I imagine that it might be useful if you were a dog and had to listen to ultrasonic music, otherwise... not useful.
You may not hear a difference. Others do. The sound isn't "better" by any technical definition, but it is different (some say more "warm", even more "human".)
Just like photographers and filmmakers will use film as long as it still exists,
Oh yeah...back to the question. So for those of us that actually used these things, are we early adoptors or dumbasses? I will admit that Webvan had some damn good prices on some things if you did your shopping.
It means you used them, nothing more. Why would you be a dumbass for using a service that worked for you? If you invested $5 million, then perhaps you could be considered a dumbass (even then, I assume a lot of investors knew and could afford the risk.)
Am I the only one who misses the days when only the GOOD movies managed to get such honors? Nowadays, for every flavor of the month movie, there's also a video game version, cereals, comic books, action figures et al. released simultaneously even before the movie is "proven".
Makes sense, except that Reality TV was already "taking over" in 1999-2000... Big Brother and Survivor, for example, aren't post 9-11 shows. Reality shows aren't a reaction to a terrorist event, they're the result of 100+ channels increasingly making the big three networks obsolete.
(BTW, what everyone bitching about reality TV seems to forget that almost every popular American reality show is based on a prior British reality show. But their TV is better, right?)
Look-- mass market entertainment has always sucked, we just remember the few classics and forget the crap. You think every movie made in the 30's was a masterpiece? There's great TV out there right now if you know where to look (starting with HBO), great movies being made (documentaries, for example, have never been better), great books and songs being written.
Re:Employees are the biggest source of retail thef
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Retail Fraud on the Rise
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· Score: 2, Insightful
According to the Nov 2002 National Retail Security Survey, almost 50% of all theft was committed by employees, not consumers.
I haven't done it, but I understand it... Back in the day I worked at quite a few stores, and I can tell you that when you are a one-dollar-over-minimum-wage employee living at or under the poverty line, it gets pretty tough to be surrounded by all sorts of products you want (and occasionally need) but couldn't possibly afford.
Not justifying it, I stayed honest... But I do understand. And I saw plenty of co-workers let go for theft. I do believe the problem would be much less severe (and customer service would dramatically improve) if companies paid their employees a little more, gave them real discounts (many places only give employees 10% off, if that... It barely negates sales tax), and perhaps even a gift card or something at Christmas you'd see employee theft decline dramatically.
Bush has never endorsed the teaching of Intelligent Design as a science rather than religion. That's simply a fabrication intended to karma bait the Bush haters. Congratulations on your success -- but you are still a troll.
Actually...
"Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories."
'Stores typically only make $1 or $2 when you pick up a new console from them,
I call b.s. on these figures, that seems ridiculously low. Can anyone who works in retail verify them?
...but when they give you $70 for your used PlayStation 2 and sell it for $95, they just made themselves an easy $25.'
Again, I think the figures are off-- I don't think there are many stores that will pay $70 for a used PS2 or X-Box, maybe a few years ago but not now.
Either way, a markup of roughly 1/4 is a litle high, but hardly a ripoff. That "easy 25%" is keeping them in business.
... The author recommends using eBay...
eBay is no picnic. You have to pay to list, take pictures of the console, and wait roughly a week for the bids to roll in. Then, assuming the buyer didn't jack you around, you have to box and ship the item (or charge the buyer more to have it done for you.) Not to mention, if you don't have a decent history (like 20+ transactions) your auction will be passed over for the dozens of others also selling consoles that day.
So unless you're already an ebay seller, I'd take the easy $70 right now over a potential $95 two weeks (and a few hassles) later. Then again, I'm not a starving college student any more, maybe that $25 is worth it to some people.
... or donating your used consoles to hospitals if you need to get rid of a system."
Giving to charity is of course a great thing; in addition to hospitals there are hundreds of causes-- from church youth groups to foster homes to after shool programs for underprivileged kids-- that would love your old system. But isn't this is supposedly an article about getting the most bang for your buck? Way to throw the guilt card in there..
True... But a bogus torrent usually doesn't survive too long and certainly doesn't see too many seeders. If it's been up for a day or two you can be reasonably sure it's valid.
Also, even the "pirate" torrent sites are centralized and often even have administrators, sometimes even comment boards. If a torrent is bogus, someone will take it down. (Not that I've been to those sites, of course...)
Of course this could all be manipulated, but AFAIK it hasn't been yet by the powers-that-be... And I don't see why they'd bother, when a threatening letter is all it usually takes to take a torrent site down, and it would take considerably more effort than turning a bunch of scratchy mp3's loose on kazaa.
I guess I can laugh at my brother for buying a $300 DDR dance mat that won't work with a PS3
Let me get this straight... Your brother is dancing like an idiot in front of the TV set, and the reason you're laughing at him is because his dance mat won't work with the next generation consoles?
It's funny how when developers wait to get something right and people complain about it taking forever and then when they release it early people complain about patches and things not being finished.
People like to complain, and their complaints about how long a game is taking to develop only means that they really, really want to play it. All of these complaints are also fleeting, and will be conveniently forgotten if the game is good when it finally ends up in their hands. Is there still a public outcry about Half Life 2 taking forever to hit the market?
On the other hand, it takes a lot to get over the bad will generated when fans feel cheated by getting a substandard and/or unfinished product. Some fans will walk away and never come back.
The best answer I got was completely unofficial, from a Fujitsu engineer attached to my work - he said, just borrow a copy of Windows and install it with the valid license key. By that time I'd already made my own arrangements that, coindicentally, corresponded fairly closely to that recommendation...
So, dear daughter is now running an illicit copy, but with the original license key.
No, your daughter is running a perfectly legal copy. There's no difference between a borrowed CD or a backup you burn from the hard drive... Your Windows installation isn't tied to a physical CD, it's tied to the license key.
Now if it was the other way around-- you kept the disk but lost the license key and had to "borrow" that-- that WOULD be an illicit copy.
Sure we understand what divorce is. Our parents' divorces were direct catalysts for the hours we spent as latch-key kids playing Atari and Dungeons and Dragons.
Huh? This is the first time I have ever heard of the PB being less durable than the iBook. Did something change recently?
iBooks have always been sturdier*. For one thing, they're much solid- plastic is stronger and more shock aborbant than metal. Titaniums were notoriously fragile, in fact-- the hinges break, the paint chips. The Aluminums are a little better, but they also acquire dents and dings pretty quickly. You're not paying more for durability when you choose a Powerbook, you're paying for the "extras" like dual monitor support, ram capacity, processor and bus speed.
That may sound unfair, but think of the market-- iBooks are supposedly for students, and thus have to be made to take abuse, while Powerbooks are for "pros" who should have the sense to treat their notebook with care. In fact, I guarantee one of the reasons many people choose the Powerbook is the perception that it's a "serious" notebook and the iBook is a "toy." That's not really the case-- the iBook is a great computer-- but image does matter in business, so there you go.
* Of course, there was the logic board debacle-- but that's not an issue of wear and tear.
I don't know anything about what the goal is, but beautiful backgrounds and models don't mean much if they're static and if you can't interact with them as in life. I'd rather see processing cycles dedicated to creating a sprawling city where no buildings are repeated... Or, as his is a racing game, making crashes as realistic as possible, so you feel like you're hitting a real physical object (and damaging that part of your car.)
No more games where the edge of the road is a giant wall, and where your car is a uniform block that runs until it hits something and explodes.
Slashdot Mirror
Porn is often the first adaptor of tech innovation. They're the first to adopt new cameras and editing technology (ask Apple how many Final Cut/ DVD Studio Pro suites they sold to the porn industry.) That's nothing new... Porn is as old as the printing press itself.
But what's more important is that porn subsidizes many otherwise legitimate industries & technologies that may be teetering on the edge of oblivion, both bleeding edge (like video compression, digital photography, editing, etc.) and fading (notably printing presses, VHS tapes, and the "mom and pop" video store.) Porn's readiness to adopt new tech funds innovators while they wait for other industries to make up their minds.
I don't deny that porn has an adverse effect on a fragile mind, but we can ban and regulate porn all we want but it will never go away. Live sex shows, prostitutes etc. have been with us as long as we've had civilization.
Oh, and I'm not saying this as a huge porn fan. I'm married, so I'm not allowed to look at porn.
I would think they aren't using the site logs, but rather checking the IPs as a file is being shared (Azareus. for example, lists IPs of all your peers.)
Could be wrong of course.
I can't imagine Apple would go in that direction-- frankly MP3 CDs are last decade's technology.
Portable CD players are as fragile, if not more so than hard drive players. I've burned through three of them, all name brands treated with normal care and none last more than a year. The mechanism is simply too fragile for a portable device, which is why they never caught on like the far more reliable cassette players and flash/hard drive devices. (Cassette "walkmen" were still outselling portable CD players in that device's heyday, and that's long after the labels gave up on the tape format.)
Portable CD players are also a pain to listen to unless you're standing perfectly still-- a speed bump or sharp turn in the car, or even walking at a regular pace can skip the tracks. Really, if you don't hold them level you're asking for failure, forget about carrying it by your side, in a bag, etc. Or in your pocket, where they probably wouldn't fit anyway.
The only benefit MP3 CD players have is price. But CDs are a pain to burn, are ruined by a minor scratch and are prone to degrade (especially the ones you burn yourself.) Hard drive players aren't indestructable (and aren't cheap!) but they hold up better. Flash is best-- my Shuffle is a fifth the size of my last portable CD player and has been subject to much more abuse than I would dream of putting a CD player through, and hasn't missed a beat.
I think I figured it out. The Mayan calender ends in 2012, right? And everyone thinks that means that's when the world is going to end. You're with me, right? And 2012, that's when the Olympics are going to start trademarking our system of measuring time... Meaning, of course, that calender publishers are going to have to get permission to print the years, dates and months... Still with me? This means the Mayans weren't predicting armaggeddon after all. They were just avoiding any possible lawsuits from trademark violation.
Tune in to Art Bell tonight, they're interviewing me from 1 am to 7 am.
Adwords cost money... A lot of money for frequently searched terms. And this cost spirals upwards with the demand. In this system, the only protection a company like Geico has from a customer using their name to draw hits is to pay Google more to keep their site at the top of the list. It's not quite extortion, but it's kind of close...
Of course Geico would be under no obligation to opt in to this form of advertising, and a generic term like "car insurace" is fair game to give the best results to the highest bidder. But IMO a competitor using Geico's trademark to grab hits-- especially if they use it in a negative way-- is putting the gun to Geico's head and saying, "pay up."
... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG.
CHINA, not Korea. It happened in SHANGHAI. Geez, do a little research, tens of thousands of people are going to read your submission...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8143073/
So? A movie deal isn't every cartoonist's goal. Many great comics (especially comic strips) would make terrible movies. There are other ways to profit-- like merchandise and publishing, even selling original art.
BTW there are quite a few cartoonists who work in print-- typically "alternative weeklies" like the New York Press, or with indie comics publishers like Fantagraphics-- but also make their strips and archives available on the web. I wouldn't call them "webcomics" in the Penny Arcade mold but these guys have seen that distributing their work over the intraweb as well as whatever publishing opportunities come along, is a good way of reaching fans... Some of my favorites (catering to my weird tastes, of course:)
Perry Bible Fellowship
http://cheston.com/pbf/archive.html
Maakies
http://www.maakies.com/
Underworld
http://www.kazunderworld.com/
Migraine Boy
http://www.gregfiering.com/migraineboy/index.html
Red Meat
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/
Punkbuster... Yeah. I guess it works some times. But I've also been booted for being a Mac user (and thus a version behind), booted for using a CD key that was compromised (on a game I paid for, at that... good luck working that situation out), booted because some griefer accused me of cheating because I got off a lucky sniper shot or something. And when you're marked a cheater in one server, you can be marked a cheater in ALL servers-- making the multiplayer mode of a game I paid full price for worthless. I'm looking directly at you, Soldier of Fortune 2 (not my only punkbuster game, but the one where I had the worst problems.)
Of course, that could just be my experience... Maybe some of you love punkbuster. But IMO nothing works better than alert administrators monitoring their servers. A pain, I know, but sharing this task is something that makes a room a community. I keep coming back the the game Red Faction... It's not the newest, or even the most fun, but it doesn't use punkbuster and the admins of the servers I frequent are diligent and fair when it comes to booting modders and abusers.
...hell no. according to your logic, If I buy a sony TV, the movies sony sells should be the only movies I can watch on it
Right, because Sony would never pull something like that. Now excuse me as I watch the new Spider Man 2 UMD disk I bought for my Sony PSP.
IMO one chance Zeta might have is if it invents itself as an alternative to OSX for running music or video apps (Be was already heading in that direction when it was killed.) There's usually no need for remote applications or multiple users on dedicated studio systems, so Zeta could focus on Be's strengths and not reinvent the wheel if they went in this direction. Sound engineers are a great market for a hobby OS like this, BTW-- they have different needs than most computer users (many high end studios still use Mac OS9!) and really have no fear of using exotic tools (from the guys I've known, the more obscure the equiptment the better.)
I never really use them anymore, but I remember that if you're looking for something on the P2P networks that isn't a top 40 hit you're at mercy
of the seeders/uploaders/whatever you call them. If the parties ripping the music files decide to use Ogg over mp3 and the downloaders want the song, they're going to find a way to play them. This goes double for binaries groups... I remember quite a few times having to find new players for the various formats people would use, because I really wanted to hear more obscure (and otherwise unavailable) recordings.
I also wonder, though this is pure speculation, if non-mp3 (and non-wma?) formats are gaining popularity because of the floods of garbage mp3s. The RIAA and whoever else is responsible probably aren't bothering with the marginal formats, at least not yet.
Manned space exploration
I am of the opinion that sending humans into space is the most effective use of our "space dollars". It is fine to send up robots to collect data samples, but we also need to know the safest and cheapest way to package up live astronauts, drive them around the solar system, and bring them home safely. With the current shuttle tech, we are looking at neither the safest, nor the cheapest way of sending up live astronauts and bringing them home extra crispy. There are a lot of barriers to getting rid of the shuttle program, but discarding it for a more future-looking program (even the Apollo and Mercury missions were more forward-looking than the shuttles) would rejuvenate interest in science and physics in particular.
Yes... We have to keep going, and as callous as it sounds we have to understand that some lives will be lost, but we have to keep going. Space is a frontier-- and pioneers often have short lives, but understand it's work the risk. U.S. Astronauts know they may not be coming when they're launched into space and the American public needs to understand this too... Because losing a few Taikonauts won't slow China down for a second.
Kozmo.com
Never heard of it.
That's the problem, and it's too bad. A web-based convenience store with a decent deli that delivers to your door.
Of course if you didn't live in a major city when they were in operation you wouldn't know about them, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a great service.
Napster
I don't see the attraction. A centralized database where your connections can be tracked and you are at the bandwidth mercy of a single uploading server. No thanks. I'll stick with BitTorrent.
Well, you can be tracked through Bittorrent too... Your IP is available to all other users.
Either way, they're waxing nostalgic. The Napster model is dead, but when it was around it was amazing. I think it was also a great leveller-- no longer would you have to rely on friend's opinions, music rags or taking chances on $15 CD's to find new bands, you could download it and see for yourself. I never took chances with CD's before 1998-ish, and only bought a few a year from bands I knew I liked... Now I buy hundreds, many of them from the 60's-80's from bands I never would have heard of if I didn't download.
The Concorde
I am going to agree. Actually, any type of supersonic aircraft would be great for longhaul flights.
I never understood this, why did they ground it after a single crash? There must be more to the story.
GM's EV1
That is possibly the ugliest car I've seen since the Pontiac Aztec. It is only out-uglied by the Honda hybrid.
Kind of ugly, but no one was leasing them for the looks. The author is bemoaning the fact that there are no electric vehicles in production any more, which is a crying shame-- and I suspect Big Oil may have something to do with it.
Wires
No. Make wireless faster.
Keep wires available AND make wireless faster. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, and wired devices make sense in many cases. Wireless phone and internet connections are somewhat less reliable and much less secure. Cordless phones are at the mercy of their battery, and nothing sucks more than having it run out during an important call. And if you have ample desk space and don't share a network there's no reason besides looks that every device needs to be wireless-- a usb cable to my printer works just fine.
LPs
This will continue to be a niche format. CDs provide the same quality sound playback for the human-audible range of sound. I imagine that it might be useful if you were a dog and had to listen to ultrasonic music, otherwise... not useful.
You may not hear a difference. Others do. The sound isn't "better" by any technical definition, but it is different (some say more "warm", even more "human".)
Just like photographers and filmmakers will use film as long as it still exists,
Oh yeah...back to the question. So for those of us that actually used these things, are we early adoptors or dumbasses? I will admit that Webvan had some damn good prices on some things if you did your shopping.
It means you used them, nothing more. Why would you be a dumbass for using a service that worked for you? If you invested $5 million, then perhaps you could be considered a dumbass (even then, I assume a lot of investors knew and could afford the risk.)
Am I the only one who misses the days when only the GOOD movies managed to get such honors? Nowadays, for every flavor of the month movie, there's also a video game version, cereals, comic books, action figures et al. released simultaneously even before the movie is "proven".
"Nowadays?" I think you need to peruse the archives at http://x-entertainment.com./
Makes sense, except that Reality TV was already "taking over" in 1999-2000... Big Brother and Survivor, for example, aren't post 9-11 shows. Reality shows aren't a reaction to a terrorist event, they're the result of 100+ channels increasingly making the big three networks obsolete.
(BTW, what everyone bitching about reality TV seems to forget that almost every popular American reality show is based on a prior British reality show. But their TV is better, right?)
Look-- mass market entertainment has always sucked, we just remember the few classics and forget the crap. You think every movie made in the 30's was a masterpiece? There's great TV out there right now if you know where to look (starting with HBO), great movies being made (documentaries, for example, have never been better), great books and songs being written.
According to the Nov 2002 National Retail Security Survey, almost 50% of all theft was committed by employees, not consumers.
I haven't done it, but I understand it... Back in the day I worked at quite a few stores, and I can tell you that when you are a one-dollar-over-minimum-wage employee living at or under the poverty line, it gets pretty tough to be surrounded by all sorts of products you want (and occasionally need) but couldn't possibly afford.
Not justifying it, I stayed honest... But I do understand. And I saw plenty of co-workers let go for theft. I do believe the problem would be much less severe (and customer service would dramatically improve) if companies paid their employees a little more, gave them real discounts (many places only give employees 10% off, if that... It barely negates sales tax), and perhaps even a gift card or something at Christmas you'd see employee theft decline dramatically.
Bush has never endorsed the teaching of Intelligent Design as a science rather than religion. That's simply a fabrication intended to karma bait the Bush haters. Congratulations on your success -- but you are still a troll.
c le/2005/08/02/AR2005080201686.html
Actually...
"Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
I call b.s. on these figures, that seems ridiculously low. Can anyone who works in retail verify them?
Again, I think the figures are off-- I don't think there are many stores that will pay $70 for a used PS2 or X-Box, maybe a few years ago but not now.
Either way, a markup of roughly 1/4 is a litle high, but hardly a ripoff. That "easy 25%" is keeping them in business.
eBay is no picnic. You have to pay to list, take pictures of the console, and wait roughly a week for the bids to roll in. Then, assuming the buyer didn't jack you around, you have to box and ship the item (or charge the buyer more to have it done for you.) Not to mention, if you don't have a decent history (like 20+ transactions) your auction will be passed over for the dozens of others also selling consoles that day.
So unless you're already an ebay seller, I'd take the easy $70 right now over a potential $95 two weeks (and a few hassles) later. Then again, I'm not a starving college student any more, maybe that $25 is worth it to some people.
Giving to charity is of course a great thing; in addition to hospitals there are hundreds of causes-- from church youth groups to foster homes to after shool programs for underprivileged kids-- that would love your old system. But isn't this is supposedly an article about getting the most bang for your buck? Way to throw the guilt card in there..
True... But a bogus torrent usually doesn't survive too long and certainly doesn't see too many seeders. If it's been up for a day or two you can be reasonably sure it's valid.
Also, even the "pirate" torrent sites are centralized and often even have administrators, sometimes even comment boards. If a torrent is bogus, someone will take it down. (Not that I've been to those sites, of course...)
Of course this could all be manipulated, but AFAIK it hasn't been yet by the powers-that-be... And I don't see why they'd bother, when a threatening letter is all it usually takes to take a torrent site down, and it would take considerably more effort than turning a bunch of scratchy mp3's loose on kazaa.
I guess I can laugh at my brother for buying a $300 DDR dance mat that won't work with a PS3
Let me get this straight... Your brother is dancing like an idiot in front of the TV set, and the reason you're laughing at him is because his dance mat won't work with the next generation consoles?
It's funny how when developers wait to get something right and people complain about it taking forever and then when they release it early people complain about patches and things not being finished.
People like to complain, and their complaints about how long a game is taking to develop only means that they really, really want to play it. All of these complaints are also fleeting, and will be conveniently forgotten if the game is good when it finally ends up in their hands. Is there still a public outcry about Half Life 2 taking forever to hit the market?
On the other hand, it takes a lot to get over the bad will generated when fans feel cheated by getting a substandard and/or unfinished product. Some fans will walk away and never come back.
The best answer I got was completely unofficial, from a Fujitsu engineer attached to my work - he said, just borrow a copy of Windows and install it with the valid license key. By that time I'd already made my own arrangements that, coindicentally, corresponded fairly closely to that recommendation...
So, dear daughter is now running an illicit copy, but with the original license key.
No, your daughter is running a perfectly legal copy. There's no difference between a borrowed CD or a backup you burn from the hard drive... Your Windows installation isn't tied to a physical CD, it's tied to the license key.
Now if it was the other way around-- you kept the disk but lost the license key and had to "borrow" that-- that WOULD be an illicit copy.
Sure we understand what divorce is. Our parents' divorces were direct catalysts for the hours we spent as latch-key kids playing Atari and Dungeons and Dragons.
Huh? This is the first time I have ever heard of the PB being less durable than the iBook. Did something change recently?
iBooks have always been sturdier*. For one thing, they're much solid- plastic is stronger and more shock aborbant than metal. Titaniums were notoriously fragile, in fact-- the hinges break, the paint chips. The Aluminums are a little better, but they also acquire dents and dings pretty quickly. You're not paying more for durability when you choose a Powerbook, you're paying for the "extras" like dual monitor support, ram capacity, processor and bus speed.
That may sound unfair, but think of the market-- iBooks are supposedly for students, and thus have to be made to take abuse, while Powerbooks are for "pros" who should have the sense to treat their notebook with care. In fact, I guarantee one of the reasons many people choose the Powerbook is the perception that it's a "serious" notebook and the iBook is a "toy." That's not really the case-- the iBook is a great computer-- but image does matter in business, so there you go.
* Of course, there was the logic board debacle-- but that's not an issue of wear and tear.
I don't know anything about what the goal is, but beautiful backgrounds and models don't mean much if they're static and if you can't interact with them as in life. I'd rather see processing cycles dedicated to creating a sprawling city where no buildings are repeated... Or, as his is a racing game, making crashes as realistic as possible, so you feel like you're hitting a real physical object (and damaging that part of your car.)
No more games where the edge of the road is a giant wall, and where your car is a uniform block that runs until it hits something and explodes.