Here is an interesting video that will appeal to video game and symphony fans alike:

http://www.break.com/index/video-game-m ... estra.html

And it should bring back a few childhood memories for those that grew up in the 80's.  

talking about the NFL. i cant get my head around the "pass interference" thing. just doesnt make sense to me.

maybe its just because i am a brit...i dunno..whatever...stupid game anyway

Al

lucyjoyce wrote:It's just that you're used to rugby, killjoy, where the players are allowed to eat their dead!  Basically a player can't mess with the receiver's body as the ball approaches the receiver. The defender can catch or bat the ball away before it reaches the receiver, and once the receiver touches, the ball, he can tackle the receiver.

well i guess that makes sense. in rugby, they have a similar rule. if you catch a kicked ball midair, you are not allowed to be tackled until both feet are on the ground (dangerous tackle).



another thing and i guess this IS the rugby concept. the second a player goes to ground, say if he gets tapped on the ankle and falls over. thats the end of the play? he cant get up and carry on? that seems really dumb, cos THATS not a tackle!

Al

First the Skype purchase, now this.

They're really adrift without a rudder, aren't they?

Also:

Later this year eBay will roll out "One Click Bid," which should boost a buyer's chances of winning during the final 15 minutes. EBay also plans to streamline its "My eBay" service and speed its cumbersome checkout process.

Translation: they've seen other people making money on this idea, and they want a chunk of the pie. (And am I the only one who doesn't find the checkout process that bad?  You choose your shipping method, you choose your payment method, and then fill in any details you need.)

And it is beta testing features called "Snapshot View," the e-commerce equivalent of window shopping; "Best Match," an automatic sorting option; and "Countdown," which features improvements in real-time auction monitoring.

I've taken a look at their beta features.  Best Match?  Blargh.  No thank you.

Deadlord39 wrote:Here's what cracks me up: they say eBay experienced slow growth, so they feel the need to revamp and redo. At what point will they realize that they cannot "grow" year after year? If that were so, within 15 years there would be no other commerce but eBay. It always cracks me up when a business experiences "slow or no" growth and acts like they LOST money. eBay made a shitload, a SHITLOAD of money between last year and now, but it isn't a 7,000% increase, so they must be doing something wrong.
It'll be SOOOOOOOOO nice when they collapse.

This is one of the reasons Warner overpaid for AOL, and both companies tooka  bath financially.  Back when 50% of Americans used AOL, I actually saw projections that AOL thought someday almost 100% of people would have AOL, due to the fact that "the sky was the limit" growthwise.  Idiocy.  Companies, not wanting to upset nervous nellie stockholders, toss our unreasonable expectations and sheer fantasy when it comes to growth potential.  It's built into the system; who wants to DOWNPLAY expectations and cause shareholders to pull out of an investment?  This is why, because growth is flat at Ebay and will continue to be flat, that fees will continue to rise year after year, since profit will hae to come from somewhere.  Unfortunately for us all, this is going to inevitably kill the goose that laid the golden egg....more third party sites will sprint up, and more people will continue to drift away from Ebay or use professional services like Isoldit because the bang to buck ratio will continue to decline.  

And DL is right, except he's more right than he thinks;  in this sort of atmosphere, a company that experiences no or little growth DOES lose money, based on the stock price that either stays flat or drops slightly, and the investors that move on to some other "hot" investment. This is why the rich have to keep getting richer, and in the end it's a zero sum game, because at a certain point either someone will reinvent the wheel (a online auction site, say, that doesn't charge to list) or will swamp the market (a dozen other Ebay type sites going up in the next ten years or so) and companies not providing essentials (AOL, Ebay, etc) will slowly disintigrate.

Mike B.

It was in Dungeon #94/Polyhedron #153.

Anybody else's eBay favourite search emails acting wonky lately?

I keep getting emailed the same items every night for the past couple of days.  They're not newly listed items, but rather it's every item matching the criteria currently on eBay.

JohnGaunt wrote:All three 4e core rulebooks will be released in June:

So they've moved away from their "one a month" plan that was announced at GenCon.

Wonder what prompted that...

whats this? no american football talk?

is this because dallas got hammered?

fwiw i thought there was about 5 minutes there, where i thought dallas were going to turn the game into something pretty damn exciting.

i watched most of the game and for me, dallas' game looked very 1-dimensional. once NE took jason witten out of the game, Romo looked pretty short of options, til that guy got the running game going (i thought HE was very impressive, but cant remember his name).

on a lighter note though, my acaeum team finally won a game, so it wasnt all bad

Al