A good phone unlike my HTC Magic that randomly decided yesterday to start vibrating at its highest setting for no reason until I removed the battery?

...we decided that saturated fats were bad for you and trans fats...

For a long time I felt that there was nothing -wrong- with GMOs, only that Monsanto is a corporate bully whose monopoly negatively impacts our system. Then I did more research.

Rewind back in time: Not too long ago the world was certain that food contained just a couple of nutrients (now thought of as being 'macro'nutrients). Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates. Food scientists believed that as long as you got enough of the proper balance of those 3 nutrients then you'd be a healthy, happy person. People still got sick. In fact, those who followed this diet religiously got sicker. Fast forward a few years. Food scientists now know that in addition to these macronutrients there were also micronutrients that were essential to human health (vitamins). Fast forward again to the current day. Food scientists now know that there are other things in play. Such as omega fatty acids (which we are only now finding out that its not really the amount of fatty acids that is important, but the ratio of one kind to the other), certain 'helpful' bacteria, etc.

My point is, we are always absolutely convinced we understand nutrition, but it always turns out that we are missing countless valuable information. White bread exists because we discovered long ago that if you remove those worthless vitamins and minerals then you could improve the shelf life*. Margarine replaced butter in many households because at one point we decided that trans fats were bad for you and trans fats were perfectly fine. Babies that are given infant formula (one of the most complex and ever changing food products that exists) still don't thrive as well as babies that are breast-fed.

GMOs are a bad idea because we're assuming we know whats good for us (and we've proven time and time again that we know shit all). We're constantly breeding out traits that we view as insignificant in favour of yield and pest resistance and studies have shown that crops grown in 2009 contain significantly fewer nutrients than they did even just 20 years ago. America, relative to the abundance of food that is grown there is one of the most undernourished countries in the world. Genetically modifying food just makes it that much easier to fuck around with things that we don't fully understand.

*one of the way shelf life is improved is because the little creatures that feed off if it fail to thrive because the nutrients are just not there. If fungal spores refuse to consume it then what the fuck are we doing choosing it as our preferred type of bread? Shouldn't this be a hint?

When Cedar Fair (owners of Cedar Point) bought up the Paramount branded theme parks a few years ago the new company simply rebranded the Paramount movie themed rides. 'Top Gun' became 'Flight Deck', 'The Italian Job' became 'Backlot Stunt Coaster', 'Tomb Raider: The Ride' became 'Time Warp', 'Cliffhanger' became 'Riptide' and 'Drop Zone' became 'Drop Tower'.

It would probably depend on the ride, but even heavily themed rides like Top Gun and Tomb Raider made quick transitions with simply removing the respective logos.

I've posted a reply about this a long time ago in a different threat, but this is pretty relevant to repost:

If that's not a group of people who have control issues, I don't know what is.

Canada is third, just behind the United States and Spain on this list, despite our universal healthcare (I believe Spain is unviersal as well)

So you're saying that American Idol will no longer be on the air?

Well, at least we can still rely on Survivor being in its 500,000,018th season.

That's because Valve hires comedy writers to its staff, such as Chet from Portal of Evil and Old Man Muray, Erik Wolpaw from Old Man Murray and Jay Pinkerton from Cracked and National Lampoons

My year old PC can out-perform a PS3 and XBox360, so does that mean that they're providing a 'watered-down' experience?

Play Grand Theft Auto IV on even this most high-end PC and you'll see that is not the case. Porting is the problem.

Sports analogy: Take a pro baseball player then stick them on a hockey rink and tell them to play right wing. You'd expect crappy results of course. The rules are different, the style of play is different and even the people out in the stands are different. You can teach the left fielder to ice skate and even some basic puck handling, but no small amount of training will let him be as good as his teammates. Why would we not expect the same crappy results from a ported game? The key is obviously to either stick with one sport/system or, like Bo Jackson, from the very beginning work with both.

I suppose I meant small cost:market ratio

The Wii was succesful not because of the technology, but because they managed to draw in a huge untapped market, the non-gamer.

A friend of mine in the game industry had always talked about the next big video game crash. With the 'gamer' market being the primary one it started to become increasingly expensive to create games and consoles. Gamers kept demanding better and better graphics and more powerful systems. Those who couldn't afford the millions to create such a game were left behind and those that could were becoming increasingly scared to try new things. With such a large cost:market ratio it was safer to release sequels or add-ons to already proven successes. Eventually the gamer crowd was destined to demand more than what was profitable. The videogame industry would have two choices, either reduce the cost of producing titles or increase the market.

Nintendo did both. (Although I would think it would be tough to do either one individually). They turned a broken business model into a smart and profitable one. The wiimote had little to do with it. It was merely just a tool to reach out to that huge untapped market.

Taking the bike on the bus with him?

The problem with biking to work is that depending on what kind of shape you're in you might end up getting there sweaty, smelly and exhausted. And who really wants to put themselves through that first thing in the morning? The advantage of just doing it on the way home is that you can take your time and can take a shower and/or crash when you get in the door.

I've recently bought a folding bicycle for the sole purpose of doing just that. I start next week.

Several months ago when the Canadian dollar was at par with the American dollar Canadians started looking at the things they were buying and realizing (that for certain items) that they were paying way too much compared to their friends to the south.

The two big things on the list were Magazines and books. Even when you took the old Canadian dollar value into account, it still didn't add up to the amount we Canadians were being charged. (I had even seen Canadian written books, published and produced in Canada being sold for 40% more than the listed American price).

So, naturally, Canadians started getting pissed off and demanding that retailers sell the item to them at the listed US price. Many retailers were happy to oblige.

Publishers, on the other hand, weren't too fond of the events that were transpiring. Within a few months they had started replacing the books and magazines on the shelves with ones with adjusted pricing.

And by adjusted pricing, I mean, books and magazines with the American pricing removed so Canadian consumers wouldn't be able to see the difference in price.

On the other hand, sales of PC games at brick-and-mortar stores are down--way down, in fact. One week after announcing a recession-bucking $21.3 billion in non-PC game industry sales, the NPD Group revealed that US PC software sales had plummeted 23 percent to $701.1 million dollars at retail. The drop to 29.1 million units was pronounced, given the trend of the previous several years: In 2007, the figure was $911 million, down $59 million from 2006's $970 million haul, which was itself a 2 percent increase from the year prior. Thanks in large part to WOW's launch, US PC game sales hit an all-time high of $1.1 billion in 2004.

Granted, because of the increase in downloadable content using services like Steam, these numbers may not tell the whole story, but they aren't something you can ignore. The industry as a whole is growing rapidly (the sales in console games reflect that). Are services like Steam picking up enough slack to compensate for poor sales in retail locations? I don't know. All I do know is that retail stores have already started jumping ship. I've been to Walmarts that are no longer selling PC games (aside from the discount/learn French/math tutor style software). And while Best Buy and Futureshop still seem to carry a decent selection, stores with smaller footprints, like EB Games have reduced their stock to miniscule levels in favour of the console game. (Many EB Games seem to have uniformly reduced their stock to a single, half-height, 4 foot shelf so cramped that mega titles like Half Life 2 and World of Warcraft have to be merchandised sideways to fit in the small space.)

Maybe it's just me, but it also seems that videogaming has been moving increasingly towards consoles. One less thing you need an increasingly powerful computer for.