When I'm at my grandparents I get a kick out of watching VHS movies on their old CRT TV. Plus I get to watch the unadulterated version of 'A New Hope'.
After about 10 minutes I forget what I'm watching on anyway.
The unadulterated version of the original Star Wars is, kind of, available, as the "Despecialized Edition" widely floating around the universe. It's HD. So, so much better than VHS, particularly if you have a big TV on which to play it.
Just to add: there's also the Silver Screen edition [1], which is sourced from a single cleaned up 35mm film print, instead of from scenes spliced from various sources.
Why not set it up at home? It takes up one little corner and you get the added bonus of being able to play lightgun games, which my kids cant get enough of!
There are lightguns that work with LCDs. They use the same principle as a wiimote (LED bars at the top/bottom of the screen, plus some calibration). Accuracy isn't 100%, but it's no worse than the CRT lightguns I used in the past.
I love streetcars, but since there are too many cars on the road, trying to get around downtown is a joke. That said I take the King which is known for being one of the worst I think. It's faster for me to walk a lot of the time.
I Just got weirdly excited by this. I had heard of it before but never really though about what I could do with it. But then I'm never really sure if I understand it completely yet.
If i just want to set up a server that me and my friends would use. I can just make a server. they would register on it and we would be good to go? I don't have to join the federation if I don't want to? I understand the advantages of doing so though.
Also, how does the vector apps go on battery use and all that. comparable to other messaging apps?
Precisely: just setup the server and off you go, you don't have to federate, although as you say that would be missing part of the fun ;)
The Vector app on Android (using GCM) has pretty good perf battery consumption-wise. Unsure how it compares with other apps but we haven't had any particular complaints about it.
I think the last figure I saw for military spending was 650bn a year.
Of course if you cut that by half you'd lose a lot of workers many of those with families (in one respect you could look at the military as a jobs program, what was the last time the US had more than 10% of it's total military personal actually fighting a war).
The left opposition in Germany has actually recently run a bill in Parliament to establish a "Willy Brandt peace corps" next to our army. The line of thinking is that the army is well-regarded because of their development aid during foreign missions, and especially because of their help during domestic natural desasters. If that reputation went towards a peace corps instead, we would have an easier time arguing for less military spending.
