I think what you've hit on is key here.
You grew up in a place that had an availability of silence.
Your MIND developed with the ability to function in the presence of it, and when you need to concentrate, you return to it.

City mouse/Country mouse. Ask one of your friends who needs music to function where they grew up.

I find that the music (or silence) I need is very closely dependent on the language I'm working in.
I've also found that the music tends to be similar to what I was listening to when I learned the language.

My typical mix is video game music, jazz, rock, etc... but across the board, no English lyrics.
And nothing that sounds like grinding metal (too many remixes love that sound >_).

still applies, you can resell a PC game, provided you remove it from your machines and give up the license. Read some of the licenses. They're trying to set a precedent that this is illegal, when it REALLY is not. If enough people think there's something wrong to it, they've made it fact. Nice trick, right.

So anyone that doesn't buy the game in the original shrink wrapped packaging is now a pirate? Man, EB Games and Game Stop make half their profits off used games. How about Play and Trade?

Am I missing something here? Is it no longer legal to sell the original copy of something you purchased?

In the same breath, the DLC model still works in this situation as well and, provided the original game is worth playing, can potentially keep a game fresh for a while.

Excellent find,
I'm sure the author is relishing in the Streisand Effect right now.
How far down the page was Go! two days ago if you googled the name?

It's a sad world we live in, that in the presence of scientific breakthroughs and ingenuity, one of the first thoughts that arises is of the fighting that surrounds that part of the world. I suppose Yom Kippur is a surprisingly appropriate time for reflection on that though.

Actually, I find that the mashing buttons to kill the baddies falls squarely on the Wii, while beer drinking FPS tournaments are 360's big thing, and heavily priced bizarre gameplay falls in the ps3 arena.

Regardless, the biggest issue seems to me to be basic economics. What is the cost of your entertainment. I've been interested in picking up a next gen console since the wii came out. I've played all three extensively, and at the moment, their price point is nearly identical. But for me to get one game out of a system, I need to drop about $300 for the base system WITHOUT any games, and $50 for a relatively old game (Mario Galaxy is still $50, 3 years in). With high quality games like Braid coming out on steam for $5-$20 the comparable initial drop of $20 to start playing and $350 to start playing is an obvious choice. Needless to say, despite the fact I've typically enjoyed console gaming for years, the higher price point for individual games combined with the cost of the systems (which haven't dropped to levels that I feel the purchase is justified), makes people who share this opinion swing away from them.

I still haven't swung toward cellphone games, because generally, across the board, I haven't found many of them that are on par with games from the super nintendo. Tetris maybe, but I haven't found a good solid push for thought provoking games for a cell. The biggest challenge for me is that the cost of old classics is finally pushing up into the current 'new game' price point that I have no interest in.

I'm mostly hoping this commentary will shed some light on the mindset of a, possibly atypical, non-hard-core gamer.

Never has the concept of the facepalm applied so well...

Why would you even go there ffx.

I would say it's fair if you are charged less for the game, or if in some way the in game advertisement improves the game play.

For example, what would a modern day racing game be without any advertisement at all. It wouldn't feel authentic, now would it. I'm not talking about games like F-Zero with futuristic cars, etc, but the ones that are supposed to feel like the Indy 500.

99% of games couldn't make the argument that the in game advertisement adds to the game.

On the other hand, if the company is covering a service, and you're paying for the software, it's also potentially legit. For instance, how much bandwidth does battlenet consume annually? Who pays for that? When was the last time you personally bought a copy of starcraft? I could see in game ads supporting game communities as perfectly legitimate.

Power Paper has been producing printable battery tech for YEARS

http://www.powerpaper.com/home.php

Surprisingly, they've taken it into the cosmetics business.

Who wants to find another wheel we can reinvent.

I don't buy it.

I think it's important to note the WoW effect. In 3rd person games, you will often see a large number of players taking on female characters regardless of their gender. There's a combination of "who would you want to be" in the game and "who do you want to look at." Also, weighting by sales invalidates the results. Are they figuring in the buying population as well? If 70% of games are sold to white males who are 18-24, I would not be surprised to see a correlation. They need to introduce a counter weighting to reduce the effect of the buying population consuming games where they can play as someone they relate to.

How about Brian Greene?
http://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Brian-Greene/dp/B001IDLCNM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247549920&sr=8-2

I found his writing to be pretty clear, light reading for quantum and relativistic introductions.

His examples are well thought out and simple enough for an intelligent twelve year old to understand (Kudos if you catch the reference).

Until Jaunty with KDE, the Vista of Ubuntu.

Not happy with the amount of work it's going to take to revert THAT.

Microwave radio

If you don't include microwave, the cap is around 400MHz. If you include it the cap is 40GHz.

I don't count IR as radio, but your 400THz limit does.

Nice trolling.

For the sake of the grandparent post, 400THz is approximately the frequency of red/IR light (It's close, but lower frequency than the Xnm=XTHz green light band). The number is a little off (2-4 orders of magnitude), putting the upper limit of the frequency band known as radio around 400MHz (FM), unless you include Microwave radiation as a radio wave subset (I've seen some that do), which ups it to closer to 40GHz.

Here's a site for quick ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation/

And a pretty picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EM_spectrum.svg/

Never hurts to correct an error, but it can to stomp on someone who made it.
I recommend providing links to sources and avoiding grammer nazisms.
Also, we don't need additional proof that John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is true.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/