This is neat. This is apparently a 90% energy efficient air conditioner. This sort of thing won't much affect people further north where AC is apparently an unneeded extravagance, but down here it should really significantly lower energy consumption during the summer... spring... fall... the occasional unseasonably hot winter day... pretty much year-round. Good for the environment, good for bank accounts, it'll be a VERY slow uptake due to how expensive replacing them will likely be. Most people have the same air conditioner originally installed in their house during construction. It may be a good choice for a government incentive to upgrade (with some recycling program so they can recoup some of the losses, though local power companies will see the greatest benefits).
I was willing to cut some slack to OnLive as a great option for people who love things like the Netflix service and would prefer not to pay for expensive computer upgrades.
Unfortunatly, as a small aside after talking about the connection, this guy outlines that the service is NOT Netflix. It's a ripoff.
First you pay $50 a year. This gets you... nothing. You have to "buy" or rent the games you want to play even AFTER the yearly fee. That is ridiculous. The service should simply be the fee. Yeah the fee would end up being higher, but if you're paying a fee at all, you should actually GET something out of it. All these users are initially paying for is the right to pay for more things. It would be like if Blockbuster had a yearly fee JUST to keep being a member of their store but you got nothing out of it, still needing to pay for each rental.
Secondly, the "buy" option isn't really "buy" at all. It's more like renting for the duration of your signup for the service. They don't send you a permanent copy, and if you ever leave, your "buy" is gone, needing to be bought again. The rentals are also ridiculously short periods of time. They're using outdated "rental store" models where you pay $5 to play a game for 3 days, or $7 for 5.
Whatever interest I had in this system I've lost. This is worse than Gametap's model. Yes you had to pay for each game there, but you didn't have to pay a yearly fee in addition to that. The account setup was at least free.
This service was originally promised as an alternative that might actually threaten the current model of everyone buying their own copy of the game's code and then buying their own hardware to run it on. This implementation will kill them before they even get off the ground. I think it'll end up going the way of the Gametap service.
If this sort of thing is going to have any chance whatsoever, they need to follow the Netflix model. Figure out a monthly fee that's both reasonable and covers whatever you need covered, and give permanent access to everything you have liscenses to for play for the duration of that user's account, until they cancel.
Wow this system's graphics are amazing, even just in 2D. Those demos are awesome. Too bad all the pics of "Nintendogs + Cats" (I've been waiting for cats to be added) are simply of the dogs. Another thought occurs...
The UMD format that Sony is using in it's PSP can store, at max, 1.8 GB of data (and then only in duel layer). Nintendo has announced that the minimum data size of the 3DS carts is 2 GB. Wow, the UMD is looking stupider and stupider as a design choice. Sony's tried to get rid of it, but of course if it's just in a new model of PSP the problem is alienating everyone with UMDs, and they've been all too slow converting all their games into digital download form anyway. It's an albatross, but it's their own fault. It gave them an edge, but it's clearly only a fleeting one. Looking to the N64/Playstation era fails us completely here, as cartridge tech has drastically improved way more than could have been anticipated. About the only thing we can say is the carts are still more expensive to produce, but so far Nintendo's kept the games competitively priced so it's not as though we've been getting hurt by it. As of now, the 3DS is, in every possible way, able to completely outclass the PSP. Further, Sony's got nothing to counter it with. Unless they're saving something up for the Tokyo Game Show, it seems they're completely unprepared for the 3DS.
All I can add now is it'll be nice when someone hacks the system. By that, I don't mean special carts. By now with it's alterable firmware and ability to read from SD cards, someone should have come up with a purely software hack for the DSi. They haven't yet, but it's a matter of time. I don't think doing it via buying special adapters is going to be sustainable. People like something that they don't have to keep paying to update every few months.
More and more good news about how awesome Kinect is, huh? :)
These things could change by the time it comes out, perhaps, sure, but it's pretty bad press at the moment... and pretty bad, if they end up being real.
I think these companies need a rude awakening that their internal policies have zero authority over anyone not working for them, none, notta, nothing. Company policies are not laws.
If you remember the story about the woman in NYC who left her kid alone on the subway so that he could find his way home, she's back, and she explains herself extremely well.
I remember being among those who thought she was insane, but the more I think about it now, the more I believe she did the right thing, and that her parenting logic is amazing.
That as of June 17th, Anno Goroni 2010, I, Darunia S. Goron, King of Hyrule, Britain, Canada and France, Lord of the Emerald Isles, &tc., *tc., hereby forthwith renounce and withdraw any and all affiliations to the Republican Party, and declare a state of POLITICAL NEUTRALITY, in the absence of there being any one objective and reasonable political party.
The chief irreconciliable catalyst being the professed Christian and pro-religious nature of the Republican party.
BE IT KNOWN ALSO that for the foreseeable future I shall continue to vote Republican, until I find a more suitable party, more in line with my beliefs as an individual.
I still identify as a fiscal conservative, and anti-abortion, while also being anti-religion.
Did anyone see that article, I think it was on CNN.COM, that referenced Turkey? I believe it had "Young Turks," in the header, and it described how western Turkey, "Kemalian" Turkey, the Turkey of Kemal Ataturk, was the pro-Western, pro-Democracy, pro-Secularism... whereas rural Eastern Turkey was the pro-Islamism, bumpkin half.
At any rate, as I know that you all follow world events, you'll know as I do that Turkey is moving further to the right. It is finding more in common with its fellow Islamic countries than it is with its fellow NATO countries.
What I want to say, is that the article called into question a very realistic trend that I have recognized before but never been able to scientifically verify.
The article said that Turkey was moving further to the Islamic right because, the Anatolian Turks (i.e., the rural, backwards, Islamic ones) are out-breeding and out-populating the city-dwelling, secular, western Kemalian Turks. This obviously means that Turkey is sliding backwards in time to it's Ottoman-era state, simply because the majority of the population that is growing the fastest is this naive pro-Islamic population base---the same base that elected this new leader who is suddenly so adamantly anti-Israel.
My point in this article isn't to bring to light this political topic, it's to bring to light the population trend.
Why is it that more-developed, intellectual, intelligent, refined and civilized peoples stop breeding? Whereas, to be frank, dumber, more rural, primitive ones seem to out-breed them?
We know that the native populations in Europe are stagnant and that they are being out-bred at home by immigrants... chiefly Islamic immigrants. And here in the US, while our situation is not so dire as France's or Italy's, we are being outbred and replaced by a nation of Hispanics.
Turkey provides a perfect microcosm for this, because in this case we have both halves of the puzzle in one country.
Why is it that more advanced and intellectual peoples are not prolific breeders? Why are the Kenyans and the Ethiopians and the Anatolian Turks outbreeding the English and the Italians and the Kemalist Turks?
You may cite this as all paranoia and coincidence but I see this as a very realistic trend in human biology. And at the risk of sounding a racist, I find it frightening as a caucasian.
