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I'm dead serious. This isn't rumor or speculation, it actually happened. Google "social sins" if you don't believe me. Absolutely stupid if you ask me.

I never knew that they were connected to Monty Pyton! Wow... that's amazing. That being said, I'm a huge fan. Dark Side of the Moon is an epic experience that must be listened to in its full form. My fiancee keeps trying to get me to watch the movie version of The Wall, which I hear is very symbolic and atmospheric (my favorite things in movies... ). I actually get a little flustered when I see people wearing Floyd t-shirts when it's so painstakingly obvious that they've never listened to em. :S Pet peeve, I guess.

I guess I just have a hard time accepting Will Smith as a serious actor. When I see the Fresh Prince of Bel Air trying to shed a tear as he's blowing away masses of zombies, the only thing that comes to mind is the aforementioned show's theme song. :S

Abbey's Desert Solitaire. It's a bit long at parts, but definitely worth the read if you're into environmental literature at all. More exciting than Walden, at least. -_^ Not like Walden is bad or anything, because it isn't.

M.J's Moonwalker is epic. I still play it from time to time. That being said, Halo is way too overrated. It's just a typical shooter with vehicles in third person. Multiplayer online is fun for about a day, until you realize that everybody is an angry thirty year old in his mom's basement, and that the game is taken WAY too seriously. I'd rather have the person I'm shooting in the face laughing about it than saying something about my family and farm animals. But the worst game of all time? BIG RIGS. Look it up. Or don't.

As I said... homigod. This game is absolutely fantastic. I picked it up the other day after a friend said it was similar to Deus Ex in terms of a good story and open-endedness. She was right. It's the best computer RPG I've played, hands-down. It isn't an overly hyped "sandbox" RPG like Oblivion, which in my opinion was TOO open-ended... there just wasn't enough story and character connections to keep it interesting. Vampire, on the other hand, has taken many of my "should-be-working" hours away, with its captivating atmosphere and breathtakingly well-done characters. And to make matters even better, combat is NOT a huge focus! You can make a character skilled in conversation, intimidation, and seducation, and still get through the game with no issues! And you can even play as an insane character who talks to stop signs and TVs. Plus, there's a nice (semi-hidden) track from Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" during the character screen. That alone makes it amazing. Definitely give this one a playthrough. I know I'll be playing it through at least four times - the vampire "clan" you pick totally changes the approach you'll need to take through the game. If I were one of those fancy reviewer types, I'd give it an ELEVEN out of ten.

I'm not seeing it as a game anymore. I've started building things that sell well, and now I realize the business potential. While I might not make millions like Anshe Chung, I can still use my relaxation time to build some cool stuff and make a good amount of extra monthly income. Let's see WoW do that.

Have you played a Wii before? The Wii is overrated, and falsely advertised. At first I thought the idea was cool and innovating too, but was sadly disappointed to find that the movements of the mote were unsynchronized and sluggish. I was sad to find that instead of actually swinging the mote in a desired direction to get your characters to do something, you could just tap it on your leg, and the character would perfom the same action! I'm a huge Wii fanatic, even though the SNES is my favorite system by far. It really depends on the game - and to be fair, sure you can cheat at the movements on some of em. But where's the fun in that? Playing Warioware with sixteen people is an almost religious experience - you can't have fun like that with a bunch of people sitting on the couch tapping buttons and barely blinking. It gets people active, which raises endorphins, which raises the fun level.

Anybody heard about zooming operating systems? The basic principle is an unlimited use of space. Because our current GUIs are stretched over the same plane (think horizontal, 2D), there's only as much space as the resolution allows for icons, etc. A zooming OS, on the other hand, would utilize a 3D system of DEPTH - you zoom in to get to your icons. Everything is situated in a forward plane, thus providing an unlimited amount of space for nearly anything. Applications with hundreds of windows could be easily arranged on the forward plane to not be cluttered, for example. Anybody heard of / worked with this technology? I find it fascinating, personally.

A friend of mine uses Helio, and she seems pretty satisfied with it. I don't know much about it, though... just from being around her. It seems pretty reliable, though; she's always able to make calls, and when I'm talking to her, it's just as clear as (maybe clearer than) the mainstream companies. My Sprint phone has a hard time hearing people on Verizon, for some reason. Long story short, everything I've heard is supportive of Helio.

Well, I'm guessing the touch is priced less, and it obviously appeals to a different market. Amazing business strategy; make an identical (yet crappier) product, sell to a different audience, and make more money. This is why high schoolers buy the crappy versions of the XBOX360 or the PS3, with smaller hard drives and less functionality. They don't have as much money, but by offering a similar product appealing to a "poorer" audience, the companies make even more cash.

Yeah, not such a fan. I like the idea, but the extra letter of typing is too much work. You think I'm kidding. I guess I'm just so used to google... Those six little keys plus a CTRL->ENTER are hardwired into my brain whenever I need to "find" something. Which makes for some interesting real-world situations.

I'm not a religious person, but I just find this absurd. How can the church just "make up" new sins? I'm referring to this: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/03/11/7-new-...thanks-vatican/ Does anybody take this seriously? BIRTH CONTROL? As a big transhumanist, I couldn't support their objections against biological/genetic modification either. But seriously... wow. What a world, eh?

I'm not an anarchist, but I've read a lot of the literature (Thoreau, Goldman, etc), and I'm very open minded as far as discussion goes. In theory, I see it as an ideal "utopia." If we look at the aftermath of Katrina, the closest example of agovernment I can think of, even after the danger was over, there were (and still are) people killing each other and stealing simply in their own self-interest. There's the famous picture of the man knee deep in water with a shopping cart full of Heineken - it's not like the people were taking NEEDS (food, water, shelter). A cart of beer and a 42'' plasma TV aren't all that necessary to survival. My personal philosophy falls somewhere between Hobbes and Smith. I believe that humans are individualistic by nature, and that they will do whatever they can to get ahead. The restrictions set by government serve as deterrents - the only thing stopping me from going out and slaughtering a bunch of nuns is the fact that I'll probably be thrown in jail, which is against my self interest. The threat of retaliation outweighs my desire, and thus I restrain myself. Basically, it depends on your view on human nature; whether humans are social or individualistic by nature. If you assumed the former, it's safe to say that you'd expect humans in a state of anarchy to help each other for mutual interest, and to act for the good of the "society." The latter, however, would assert that anarchy would just throw the individuals in question back to Hobbes's state of nature.

Just curious to see how the opinions on here sit. Regardless of whether you're in the US or not, I'm just wondering who you would vote for if you had the chance? And yes, I put Colbert up here because he was legitimately running and quite frankly got the short end of the stick. Some democracy. Personally, I'm voting for McCain, simply because I hate the gun control policies of both Clinton and (yikes) Obama. I guess I'm in the middle of the road politically... some of my views are very left and some are very right. But guns are my friends.

Honestly, accomodating for everybody is just... blech. Not my thing. From a business perspective (and yes, simple websites are best in Flash), a GOOD Flash site attracts about 1.5x the viewers, and works with 98% of today's internet surfers. You get more impressions that way than sticking with the "let's please everybody" approach. That being said, I'd honestly go with PHP over ASP, just because ASP isn't as widely supported for hosting. I know ASP like the back of my hand, but I'm trying to focus most of my energy on PHP just becacause it's more accessible... and more versatile in a lot of applications.

I guess it depends on how much the tutorial-maker knows, but I'd like to see some understandable tutorials about automotive and motorcycle mechanics. I guess I'm just weird, haha... but there aren't many actual video tutorials online where you're actually walked through all the working parts. That being said, an easy one for me to make, personally, would be "How to load a magazine."

www.zymph.com It's not up yet, as I'm having ASP issues on the server, but it's all coded and ready to go. Basically, it's a free speech project - people can write basically whatever they want to contribute to the "community of ideas." Here's the blurb from my about page. I've had this idea for a long time, and hopefully people can contribute meaningful insight once it's up.

I guess it's not really "playing" the music, but I write / compose / arrange music... usually ambient-ish downtempo, but I have a wide range of musical interests. Something about downtempo just makes me feel good deep down inside. It's smooth, classy, modern, and totally countermainstream. I love it.

First of all, thanks for helping me with the nameserver issue, djbob. Sometimes I really think I'm a dummie. Which brings me to what my issue now... do we support ASP Classic? I've tried uploading my site to my new hosting, but it's acting like it doesn't have ASP installed on the server. What exactly do I need to do? Or should I just start porting to PHP now? Again, thanks for all the help, and I realize I'm a pretty big pain sometimes.... hah.

Oh jeez... I can't believe I didn't think of that earlier. :S Thanks so much, djbob. You = amazing.

Hello, First of all, I wanted to compliment you on this amazing service. Not only is the free hosting a great deal, but the forums themselves are very well-done. I've found many engaging conversations on here already. That being said, I think I made a booboo when I signed up for hosting. When I had the chance to choose between (mysite).heliohost.com and other options, I chose a .com I owned, because I assumed it would do DNS routing, etc. But when it gives me the chance to login, it tells me to go to (mysite).com/cpanel. Which clearly doesn't work, as there's nothing up yet. Any help would be a lifesaver. Thanks so much.

Well, I've known a few people to use disability software, where you have to tell the system to "wake up" first before it interprets any other commands. I'm guessing there's some sort of wake up command that won't come up often in normal conversations, like "SYNC, activate!" that gets the system ready. (That kind of sounds like something the power rangers would say, though...) But as far as programming your own voice, that's usually the first step with any voice recognition software. That way, your buddies won't keep changing the song from the back seat to annoy you.

I personally took the ACTs, and from what I've found, they're gradually becoming the more mainstream test. Most of the unversities I applied to had a huge preference for ACT scores over SAT (thank god I got a 31, haha). But that isn't to say the SAT's aren't important. A few schools in the western US really prefer the old test, so I guess it depends on where you want to go to college.

I realize this is a pretty old topic, but I just had to respond because nobody else had and I thought it was my responsibility as a filmmaker to do so. CGI backgrounds can be tricky, but I suggest Maya or 3d Studio Max for truly professional results. Expensive, but most things of that caliber are. :S If you want a totally free approach to CG backgrounds, you could always try anim8or, render the results to video, chroma-key out a greenscreen, and plop it in. Granted, it's not the same as Maya / 3dsmax, but it's free, and free is always good.