I would agree that if it wasn't for the free in-store rentals, my wife and I would have Netflix, but it's something we simply can't pass up. Basically now you just bring in your finished mailed DVD and get a free rental from the store. I'm too lazy to do that on my own but my wife is more than happy to pick something up, so more power to us I guess.
I wouldn't mind having multiple queues though like Netflix has. It's really kind of annoying getting 10 chick flicks in a row.
Seriously, the best thing about Facebook is that it's closed to everyone but specific people that I want to allow. Nobody but my friends (or people in my network, Facebook offers a variety of privacy options) know what I'm up to, can see my favorites, or see my wall postings. I don't want random people to know specific things about my life. However, Facebook still allows you to do broad searches on specific fields in specific networks, but you can't access the real information until you become friends.
When I used to play WoW, I was paying $15/month to play. During that period, I maybe bought one game a year. So I was paying $220 a year on video games. Since I quit over a year ago, I've probably bought 5-7 games. That's what? $180-$300? I'm paying around the same amount on video games over the course of the year whether I'm playing WoW or not. Of course, not everyone is the same as me, but I didn't think the cost was prohibitive. $220 is what? Two days of work? Maybe a week's worth for a college student?
Anyways, that's just money talk above, I'm having much more fun now playing a variety of games instead of just one. But that's beside my original point.:)
Well, since this book is for young women, maybe the more appropriate quote would be:
If one were to bring ten of the wisest women in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as men.
Melee is less in favor to DK and more to Shiek, Marth, and Fox; three very fast characters. In my group of friends, one of them played DK 90% of the time, and though he did well, he was never within the top two or three. I would argue that Melee is fairly well balanced and that it's much more frantic than the original.
SKU is a common retail term (meaning stock keeping unit). My high school job was in retail and I have no qualms in calling products, SKU, or anyone else for that matter. It's a totally appropriate term.
Speaking of Fred Saberhagen, he actually just passed away last month of cancer. He was one of my favorite authors as I got hooked on him when I found his Sword series at my library during high school. I'm sure he won't be remembered as one of the greats, but I look back at his work very fondly.
I would totally agree with Jade, as I was just about to reply to GP with that.:) She's not overly-sexualized, her main weapon is her digital camera and a staff, and her best friend is a pig. But at the same time, she still has that latino/dark-European flair to her and can kick evil-government's butt just the same.
Just think about the wizarding world! 90% of wizards and witches work for the Ministry of Magic! The other 10% work at Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, or rustle Dragons in Romania.
I own a DS, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox, and Wii, (and many other older consoles) and the console I play the most by far is the PS2. Lately I've been playing the Guitar Heroes, Okami, and God of War 2. There are lots of great games on the system and many that I never played. And they're usually a lot cheaper too than the next-gen consoles (as seen in a previous slashdot article today).
In the Plus.net plan screenshot (http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/plus_net. png), they show the different tiers you can purchase, differing by usage allowance and gaming usability. What's really interesting is that right below the GB's allowed they say: "Looking for unlimited broadband? There's a good reason it's not listed here." That then links to here: http://www.plus.net/unlimited_broadband/
From the site: Every ISP has a finite amount of capacity - there's only so much traffic that you can get through the network at one time. If a broadband provider offers unlimited broadband, and users actually try and use it as an unlimited service, then the provider's network will grind to a halt (find out more about how you share broadband capacity). To try and combat these slow downs a provider can add more broadband capacity, but this is expensive and traffic such as peer-to-peer quickly fills up the new space on the network.
Expensive huh? Much like how you're charging $20 for one gigabyte a month? Anyways, I like my current "unlimited" plan, even if it has a hidden cap (Comcast, rumored to be at 200GB/month).
I remember paying $60 for games just 10 years ago when I bought SNES and N64 games. Many of those games were $50, $60, even $70. With inflation over 10 years, I feel we're getting a pretty good deal now. Not that I buy many games, or even own a next-gen system, but considering how much games cost to produce now, I'm surprised. Though games during the SNES/N64 era were undoubtedly more expensive to manufacture being plastic cartridges with EEPROM inside instead of just a CD/DVD.
How coincidental that I was actually trying to reach a Sun page before and couldn't get to it. I don't even remember what it was anymore, I really need to make my Firefox closed tabs list longer than 5.
The Book: I thought it was the best in the series, honestly. The book is so different than the first six though, but I think it's for the better. If Harry had just gone to Hogwarts and then realized in April that he hadn't yet destroyed all the Horcruxes, I would have been very disappointed. The way Rowling wrote the last book, it was very believable how hard their journey was. The trio fought, got bored, got cold, split up, adventured, almost gave up, and persevered. All very believable for a nine month journey if you ask me. And everything was wrapped up nearly perfectly. I loved the Battle of Hogwarts and the final battle, but the epilogue didn't really do "19 Years Later" justice. Obviously Harry and Ginny get together, obviously Ron and Hermione get together. They have kids, the circle completes, blah blah blah. I want to know what Harry did for 19 years? Become Minister of Magic? Become and Auror? Teach Defense Against the Dark Arts for a few years? No answer but we do learn that he has a son named Albus Severus so it's all good, right?
Anyways, the book was the perfect ending to a series many of us grew up with. I remember the first time my grandpa shows me the book and said "Hey, this is a story about a boy wizard, and they play games on broomsticks!" That was nearly 10 years ago and I remember it so fondly. Harry and me grew up together, and now his story is complete. I'm done with college now, am working in the real world. But how I still wish I was a wizard, going to school at Hogwarts, playing Quidditch, and hanging out with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
The Movie: Order of the Phoenix is my second favorite novel in the series, after Deathly Hallows. However, the movie kind of stinks. It's more in line with the last two, thankfully, but I thought the book was so good that maybe I had such high expectations. Umbridge was the star of that book, such evil but clearly not with Voldemort. It was a great concept and I think it worked wonderfully, in the book. In the movie, however, she's just an obstacle in the hero's path and not that interesting of a character. The final scenes at the Ministry were also a let down, and differed a lot from the book. I understand that the movie series now is pretty much on it's own, but it's hard for me not to compare.
I'd rate the book a 10/10 and the movie a 6/10.
All in all, thank you J.K. Rowling for a magnificent set of novels, you are a master storyteller.
It seems Nintendo thinks that by releasing a new Zelda game every few years, they are catering towards the "hardcore" crowd. I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer, but I have been a Nintendo fan my entire life. I bought a Wii on release date along with Zelda and quickly beat it. Then I sold the Wii to my brother-in-law as at the time there was still a huge shortage and I told myself I'd pick up a Wii as soon as I could find one. However, I am simply not interested in picking up another Wii until at least Super Smash Bros. comes out. Absolutely no games have interested me. I haven't seen a single game that I would buy if I still owned the system and still, the only thing I'm looking forward to is Super Smash Bros. And now I'm hearing rumors that SSB might not include online multiplayer, which for me, is a deal breaker. I played hundreds of hours of SSBM for the Gamecube during high school and college, but I don't live near any of my old friends anymore, there's simply no way for me to get the full experience out of SSB without online.
I'm personally feeling alienated, but I'm not really Nintendo's primary focus anymore, I don't think. I enjoy games like Okami, God of War, Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto, 2D Castlevanias, and RPGs. I still enjoy my DS, but I can't see myself picking up a Wii again until it's cheaper. I haven't considered myself a "hardcore gamer" for years, but yet I feel like Nintendo has moved on with the Wii. But I can live with that, the DS and PS2 still provide me tons of games I'm interested in.
Wow, from Sid Meier to Bioshock to Grand Theft Auto, all in one hour. Quite the lineup. Seems like this was the conference to attend to see the games in action.
I actually really like Facebook, even though I've been out of school for over a year, I still go there every day to catch up with friends. The thing is, I don't really have a lot of friends on Facebook, about 30 I think, which for me is more than enough. Everyone I'm friends with on Facebook, I'm actually friends with in real life, or know them very well through online forums. I don't indiscriminately accept friends from random people with the same last name, or kids who went to high school with me that I never talked to; I wasn't your friend then and I'm not your friend now. At one point, I had about 10 people in "friend limbo". People who wanted to be my friend but I didn't have the heart to deny them, but I denied them all one day, so that's that.
30 friends is a good number to keep up with for me. My "news feed" gets filled every day and I get to keep up with all of them easily.
I'm not sure if this is the right term, but I like how the bay the sub is in is like a fractal. The sub looks like it's on a boot peninsula, and if you zoom out, it looks like it's on a much larger boot peninsula. Kinda cool.
Rama is such a great book, but it reminds me too much of the original Star Trek movie, which was slow and plodding. The movie could be absolutely breathtaking, as I imagine if done right, it would. But at the same time, be very boring. Clarke wasn't really interested in centering his stories around characters, which movies generally are. I loved the entire 2001 series, but fell asleep during the movie.
I don't really understand this argument about "only buying the two good tracks" on a CD because the rest sucks. Maybe your choice in music or band just sucks? I buy very, very few CDs, but it's not because I don't want 80% of the tracks. Why buy an album from a band where you only enjoy 20% of it (or only enjoy the songs that the radio/MTV/billboard tells you to enjoy)? Heck, why even listen to those kind of bands? I buy albums where I enjoy 100% of the songs.
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree that if it wasn't for the free in-store rentals, my wife and I would have Netflix, but it's something we simply can't pass up. Basically now you just bring in your finished mailed DVD and get a free rental from the store. I'm too lazy to do that on my own but my wife is more than happy to pick something up, so more power to us I guess.
I wouldn't mind having multiple queues though like Netflix has. It's really kind of annoying getting 10 chick flicks in a row.
Seriously, the best thing about Facebook is that it's closed to everyone but specific people that I want to allow. Nobody but my friends (or people in my network, Facebook offers a variety of privacy options) know what I'm up to, can see my favorites, or see my wall postings. I don't want random people to know specific things about my life. However, Facebook still allows you to do broad searches on specific fields in specific networks, but you can't access the real information until you become friends.
When I used to play WoW, I was paying $15/month to play. During that period, I maybe bought one game a year. So I was paying $220 a year on video games. Since I quit over a year ago, I've probably bought 5-7 games. That's what? $180-$300? I'm paying around the same amount on video games over the course of the year whether I'm playing WoW or not. Of course, not everyone is the same as me, but I didn't think the cost was prohibitive. $220 is what? Two days of work? Maybe a week's worth for a college student?
:)
Anyways, that's just money talk above, I'm having much more fun now playing a variety of games instead of just one. But that's beside my original point.
Melee is less in favor to DK and more to Shiek, Marth, and Fox; three very fast characters. In my group of friends, one of them played DK 90% of the time, and though he did well, he was never within the top two or three. I would argue that Melee is fairly well balanced and that it's much more frantic than the original.
If I'm going to stare at the rear end of a character for 40+ hours, it might as well be a woman.
SKU is a common retail term (meaning stock keeping unit). My high school job was in retail and I have no qualms in calling products, SKU, or anyone else for that matter. It's a totally appropriate term.
Speaking of Fred Saberhagen, he actually just passed away last month of cancer. He was one of my favorite authors as I got hooked on him when I found his Sword series at my library during high school. I'm sure he won't be remembered as one of the greats, but I look back at his work very fondly.
c e-albuquerque-author-fred-saberhagen-was/
http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/jul/06/remembran
I would totally agree with Jade, as I was just about to reply to GP with that. :) She's not overly-sexualized, her main weapon is her digital camera and a staff, and her best friend is a pig. But at the same time, she still has that latino/dark-European flair to her and can kick evil-government's butt just the same.
And yes, the game needs a sequel.
Just think about the wizarding world! 90% of wizards and witches work for the Ministry of Magic! The other 10% work at Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, or rustle Dragons in Romania.
I own a DS, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox, and Wii, (and many other older consoles) and the console I play the most by far is the PS2. Lately I've been playing the Guitar Heroes, Okami, and God of War 2. There are lots of great games on the system and many that I never played. And they're usually a lot cheaper too than the next-gen consoles (as seen in a previous slashdot article today).
In the Plus.net plan screenshot (http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/plus_net. png), they show the different tiers you can purchase, differing by usage allowance and gaming usability. What's really interesting is that right below the GB's allowed they say: "Looking for unlimited broadband? There's a good reason it's not listed here." That then links to here: http://www.plus.net/unlimited_broadband/
From the site:
Every ISP has a finite amount of capacity - there's only so much traffic that you can get through the network at one time. If a broadband provider offers unlimited broadband, and users actually try and use it as an unlimited service, then the provider's network will grind to a halt (find out more about how you share broadband capacity). To try and combat these slow downs a provider can add more broadband capacity, but this is expensive and traffic such as peer-to-peer quickly fills up the new space on the network.
Expensive huh? Much like how you're charging $20 for one gigabyte a month? Anyways, I like my current "unlimited" plan, even if it has a hidden cap (Comcast, rumored to be at 200GB/month).
I remember paying $60 for games just 10 years ago when I bought SNES and N64 games. Many of those games were $50, $60, even $70. With inflation over 10 years, I feel we're getting a pretty good deal now. Not that I buy many games, or even own a next-gen system, but considering how much games cost to produce now, I'm surprised. Though games during the SNES/N64 era were undoubtedly more expensive to manufacture being plastic cartridges with EEPROM inside instead of just a CD/DVD.
How coincidental that I was actually trying to reach a Sun page before and couldn't get to it. I don't even remember what it was anymore, I really need to make my Firefox closed tabs list longer than 5.
The Book: I thought it was the best in the series, honestly. The book is so different than the first six though, but I think it's for the better. If Harry had just gone to Hogwarts and then realized in April that he hadn't yet destroyed all the Horcruxes, I would have been very disappointed. The way Rowling wrote the last book, it was very believable how hard their journey was. The trio fought, got bored, got cold, split up, adventured, almost gave up, and persevered. All very believable for a nine month journey if you ask me. And everything was wrapped up nearly perfectly. I loved the Battle of Hogwarts and the final battle, but the epilogue didn't really do "19 Years Later" justice. Obviously Harry and Ginny get together, obviously Ron and Hermione get together. They have kids, the circle completes, blah blah blah. I want to know what Harry did for 19 years? Become Minister of Magic? Become and Auror? Teach Defense Against the Dark Arts for a few years? No answer but we do learn that he has a son named Albus Severus so it's all good, right?
Anyways, the book was the perfect ending to a series many of us grew up with. I remember the first time my grandpa shows me the book and said "Hey, this is a story about a boy wizard, and they play games on broomsticks!" That was nearly 10 years ago and I remember it so fondly. Harry and me grew up together, and now his story is complete. I'm done with college now, am working in the real world. But how I still wish I was a wizard, going to school at Hogwarts, playing Quidditch, and hanging out with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
The Movie: Order of the Phoenix is my second favorite novel in the series, after Deathly Hallows. However, the movie kind of stinks. It's more in line with the last two, thankfully, but I thought the book was so good that maybe I had such high expectations. Umbridge was the star of that book, such evil but clearly not with Voldemort. It was a great concept and I think it worked wonderfully, in the book. In the movie, however, she's just an obstacle in the hero's path and not that interesting of a character. The final scenes at the Ministry were also a let down, and differed a lot from the book. I understand that the movie series now is pretty much on it's own, but it's hard for me not to compare.
I'd rate the book a 10/10 and the movie a 6/10.
All in all, thank you J.K. Rowling for a magnificent set of novels, you are a master storyteller.
They wouldn't have had this problem if they had just stayed away from the ocean and loose seals like their mother had told them in the first place.
That's a mother of a product name too.
It seems Nintendo thinks that by releasing a new Zelda game every few years, they are catering towards the "hardcore" crowd. I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer, but I have been a Nintendo fan my entire life. I bought a Wii on release date along with Zelda and quickly beat it. Then I sold the Wii to my brother-in-law as at the time there was still a huge shortage and I told myself I'd pick up a Wii as soon as I could find one. However, I am simply not interested in picking up another Wii until at least Super Smash Bros. comes out. Absolutely no games have interested me. I haven't seen a single game that I would buy if I still owned the system and still, the only thing I'm looking forward to is Super Smash Bros. And now I'm hearing rumors that SSB might not include online multiplayer, which for me, is a deal breaker. I played hundreds of hours of SSBM for the Gamecube during high school and college, but I don't live near any of my old friends anymore, there's simply no way for me to get the full experience out of SSB without online.
I'm personally feeling alienated, but I'm not really Nintendo's primary focus anymore, I don't think. I enjoy games like Okami, God of War, Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto, 2D Castlevanias, and RPGs. I still enjoy my DS, but I can't see myself picking up a Wii again until it's cheaper. I haven't considered myself a "hardcore gamer" for years, but yet I feel like Nintendo has moved on with the Wii. But I can live with that, the DS and PS2 still provide me tons of games I'm interested in.
Wow, from Sid Meier to Bioshock to Grand Theft Auto, all in one hour. Quite the lineup. Seems like this was the conference to attend to see the games in action.
Xbox Media Center of course!
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/
I actually really like Facebook, even though I've been out of school for over a year, I still go there every day to catch up with friends. The thing is, I don't really have a lot of friends on Facebook, about 30 I think, which for me is more than enough. Everyone I'm friends with on Facebook, I'm actually friends with in real life, or know them very well through online forums. I don't indiscriminately accept friends from random people with the same last name, or kids who went to high school with me that I never talked to; I wasn't your friend then and I'm not your friend now. At one point, I had about 10 people in "friend limbo". People who wanted to be my friend but I didn't have the heart to deny them, but I denied them all one day, so that's that.
30 friends is a good number to keep up with for me. My "news feed" gets filled every day and I get to keep up with all of them easily.
I'm not sure if this is the right term, but I like how the bay the sub is in is like a fractal. The sub looks like it's on a boot peninsula, and if you zoom out, it looks like it's on a much larger boot peninsula. Kinda cool.
So are you using the SB5120 then? Is it worth the 50 bucks at Amazon or Newegg? I torrent a lot with moderate internet surfing.
Rama is such a great book, but it reminds me too much of the original Star Trek movie, which was slow and plodding. The movie could be absolutely breathtaking, as I imagine if done right, it would. But at the same time, be very boring. Clarke wasn't really interested in centering his stories around characters, which movies generally are. I loved the entire 2001 series, but fell asleep during the movie.
I don't really understand this argument about "only buying the two good tracks" on a CD because the rest sucks. Maybe your choice in music or band just sucks? I buy very, very few CDs, but it's not because I don't want 80% of the tracks. Why buy an album from a band where you only enjoy 20% of it (or only enjoy the songs that the radio/MTV/billboard tells you to enjoy)? Heck, why even listen to those kind of bands? I buy albums where I enjoy 100% of the songs.