laprincessa wrote: 
My wife remarked something similar the other evening. Something to the effect that Tony and Chris Isaak can get all the....

 jagdriver wrote: 
Hmmm, well I might have to consider that.

Can someone just club him over the head and bring him and a preacher to me, please? I think I can handle the rest.

 laprincessa wrote: 
Netflix has the Anthony Bourdain No Reservations episodes available in streaming format; we've been enjoying them.

 cookinlover wrote: 
Well, I'm glad to be getting sympathy, but honestly - it's not that big of a deal for me. I WISH, WISH, WISH I could get full Anthony Bourdain episodes online and I already have SOME Deadliest Catch on DVD. Those along with Heroes are the ONLY tv shows I watch. If I had to choose one, Tony would win leaps and bounds over all all. He's my hero.

 HoneyBearKelly wrote: 
Again, BitTorrent is not a so-called "p2p" scheme like Napster etc.  It is a technology that is a generation ahead of old peer-to-peer file sharing that is associated with illegal distribution of copyrighted material.  In fact, BitTorrent technology is used by quite a few legitimate software and multimedia distributors.

No excuses are necessary for using BitTorrent.  It's 100% legal.

Concerning torrents:

I have a couple of demonoid access codes available (paying it forward from Bokey last year )  - PM me if you're interested.

 HoneyBearKelly wrote: 
Hell, I'm exhausted just from holding up the magnifying lens to read this.

 Servo wrote: 
I know.
That's why I included my little disclaimer.

Anyway there was a study done recently saying that the people that use p2p sites buy more content legally than people that don't use those sites.

I'd hunt up a link, but like I said, I'm old.

 laprincessa wrote: 
Hey, those will go great with the free t.v. I'm giving you... poor thing.

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
Well, it DOES work, I just don't own a converter. And it wasn't ever really all that important to me to purchase one... I'm a movie watcher - I do that on my computer with my cinema quality speakers. They're my partner's editing speakers and are like being in a movie theater - bad ass.

 hippiechick wrote: 

 greyfin10 wrote: 
Although I hesitate to call video games "tools", as they have no practical use, I am the last person to blame the inanimate object.  Obviously it is up to the person who uses it.  By the same token, I do hold people responsible for the consequences of their own choices.

As for allegations of superiority of video games over other forms of entertainment, I remain skeptical as long as any evidence is absent.

 hippiechick wrote: 

Ain't that the truth !!!

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
Just because you got a cool new 250 watt wireless speaker doesn't mean it's okay to make fun of those less fortunate. LaPrincessa, I have a working 13 inch black and white you can have for free... just swing by and pick it up anytime!

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
You can always yank the innurds and create a diorama. It would probably be far more interesting than the majority to what's on the tube.

 laprincessa wrote: 
What do you have a broken TV? You stand on it to reach the cereal shelf in the kitchen? Ottoman? 

I own a tv but it doesn't work. Haven't had one (a working one) since January. And I HAVEN'T watched the news in about 5 years - what a weight off my shoulders! ~whew~

Means of escape are as individual as the people who use them, and they don't require any "minimum of technology".  Books can be used as escape... or daydreams... you as the "escaper" just provide the missing pieces.  Everyone escapes in one shape or another.  Its how much of your life the escape displaces that determines how appropriate it is.  This is very much off the topic of this discussion, so I won't dive further into the dynamics of MMO-abuse, but like all things in that messy thing we call reality, it's not black and white.  But, in the sense that a perfectly good tool can be abused, I stand by my analogies.

 Servo wrote: 

 Servo wrote: 
Reality is for those who can't take drugs.

NOTE:

Television was never intended to be a replacement for reality.  Technologically it lacks the ability to.

Immersive multi-player video games might not have been intended to replace reality.  But in practice, they are used to do just that.

I have no beef with video game players who remain confined, but I do have a BIG problem with those who go on to play life as if it was a video game!

Virtual reality will always be the lesser of actual reality.