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http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Sure that's funny and all, but how do I find the site for "Impossibly proportioned girls that want to date your testicles!"? I've been searching for that my whole life!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

But not an entirely unjustified one. Remember this comic from a few years ago?

That said, there's another issue involved: Media is too expensive for the amount people want to consume. If you watch one movie each Saturday, and assuming a $40 price tag per movie because you like to watch relatively new releases, you're talking about $160 per month or $2080 per year. Most people watch a hell of a lot more than one movie a week.

Netflix is great for this -- you pay one flat monthly fee and you can get as much content as you can handle. Perfect! They were on their way to becoming the iTunes for video.

Except somewhere along the way, competition got in the mix. Now I'm all for competition usually, but of course this isn't real competition like you get selling apples -- this is exclusive competition.

So if you want to watch Orange is the New Black you have to have a Netflix account because nobody else offers that show, and if you want to watch Game of Thrones you need an HBO account because nobody else offers that show, and if you want to watch something else you need a third and a fourth and a 10th account, each one of which is costing you $10-20/mo and suddenly we're back to the multiple thousands of dollars per year and people can't afford it again.

So there's lots of situations where people might buy the media you're offering if you provide them with a reasonably-priced and convenient legitimate alternative, but they'll still be trying to pirate the one after that because their budget doesn't stretch nearly as far as their appetite. Unfortunately the movie industry likes to play the all-or-nothing game rather than just trying to get as much as you can afford to pay them and calling it good enough.

Oh and no, "go outside and play with your wheel and stick" isn't really a suitable alternative in this day and age. "Going out" usually ends up involving food or drinks or shopping or a theater movie or something else that costs even more -- people stay in and watch Netflix because its already the cheaper form of entertainment!

There's a relevant The Oatmeal cartoon for Game of Throne.

If you wanted to keep up with GoT for water cooler talk with your friends/coworkers, you didn't have an option to purchase a single episode. You could pay the $14.99 for streaming HBO for 3 months when it originally aired, or you pirate. They became available on Amazon August 1st, which is always exciting to talk about a new episode 3 months after everyone else has seen/pirated/forgotten about it.

That's totally ridiculous! Nobody's expecting them to work for nothing.

For your first paragraph, this link may be of interest.

For your second paragraph, this may help.

Obligatory

Complex and explosive chemisty?

That's it, no more batteries for me.

I'll stick to safe and simple combustion.

I know you joke but:

- gaz (petrol) doesn't explode (unlike what Holywood has taught you), it just burns.
To make it explode you need the perfect mix of oxygen. Hence the complicated fine mechanical components in a internal combustion engine (pistons, manifolds, etc.)
Fun fact: you could in theory make anything that burns explode by making a correct mix with oxygen:
- a big block of wood just burns. Saw dust suspended in the air burns explosively
- grain might burn if dry enough. But you can actually make bombs out of flour suspended in the air
and the one that every chemistry and fireman know:
- gaz (methane/buthane) at the gaz burner just burns. (hence the name, duh). On the other hand, a roomful of gaz (gaz + air mix) + spark....

The reason why we use gaz (petrol) inside most cars is due to energy efficiency. But you could make explosion out of anything BUT NEED TO MIX AIR FOR IT TO WORK.

- On the other hand :
Lithium is highly reactive. (Well the whole point of a rechargeable battery's chemistry is to have a lot of electrons that you can easily move around [=easily make red-ox reactions]...)
It has a nasty tendency to explode (if you over-charge, if you undercharge too much before recharging, if you draw too much current, if you charge too much current, if you overheat, if you puncture, if.... well basically if you look at it the wrong way).

Luckily that's why nearly all modern lithium batteries have built-in electronics (a.k.a.: "battery manager") to control and protect them.
(That's what the third pad in addition to "+" and "-" on smartphone batteries is: it's a data channel to communicate with the built-in protection and get some extra informations, like temperature).

Well "nearly all"... /. and Youtube kindly remembers for you a certain batch of Sony laptop batteries with faulty built-in managers that had several laptops burst into flames.
Fast forward a few years later and we see again the same faulty batteries with the cheapest and shittiest "hover board" self-balancing boards out of China.

That's one of the major fallacies in Oatmeal's strip about his new Tesla car (but yeah he's a cartoonist, not a chemist):
the gaz in the tank of a ice-powered car is *theoretically* a lot less dangerous than the lithium in an electric car's humongous battery.
(there's no explosive liquid stored anywhere near the balls of an ICE driver. The electric-car driver is the one sitting above a big mass of lithium no matter how far away is the sun that was used to charge the battery).

Luckily in practice, Tesla isn't like the shady Chinese companies making craptastic batteries mentioned above.
They do the necessary design to make the battery secure and in *practice* their car aren't explosive (despite all the bad mouthing around the 2-3 fires reported).

But to go back to the subject of the discussion and my above post :
well that's why Tesla's 100kWh battery cost so much more. battery are expensive, because of all the above.
Want more gaz ? Just make a bigger jug to store the gaz. At worst, if its catch fire, it's going just to burn a little while longer. That's it.
Want more electricity ? be ready to pay a lot, battery are complex and you need complex electronics to regulate the electricity that goes in during charging or that goes out to power to motor, because if you don't you're in for quite some fireworks (see Sony laptop batteries and Chinese self-balancing board maker for what happens when you fail to do your homework).

So modern car batteries in practice aren't dangerous, but that comes at a price.

(That's also why I'm highly doubting about the Chinese car manufacturer mentioned here on /. that wanted to make electric cars for free/paid by the ads.
To make the batteries that cheap, some very dangerous compromises might have been made).

That's a nice, happy, clean cow out in pasture too in the article. The exact opposite of what people are actually eating. It's a muddy, grassless horror show out there, and I can't imagine how it would look with a thousand sickly cows wearing festering, manure-soaked backpacks permanently attached to their bodies.

It probably looks like this. Nature is violent and gross. Ever hear of cookie cutter sharks? They're basically vicious little living hole saws, and they chew gaping holes into the flesh of pretty much anything they can get their mouth on. Oh, and then there's the mantis shrimp, which literally smashes its prey to death. I'll close with some appropriate song lyrics from The Lorax:

Well there's a principle of nature (principle of nature)
That almost every creature knows.
Called survival of the fittest (survival of the fittest)
And check it this is how it goes.
The animal that wins gotta scratch and fight and claw and bite and punch.
And the animal that doesn't, well the animal that doesn't winds up someone else's lu-lu-lu-lu-lunch (munch, munch, munch, munch, munch)

> Don't buy any machine for specs--buy it because it does what you need.

Huh?? I bought a MacBook Pro, Mid 2014, back in February (this year) because I need an nVidia GPU for CUDA work. The latest MBP have switched to AMD -- and there is no information on what GPU the new MBP's will use. (Thankfully eGPU's are a solution for _that_ contingency but I digress)

If I had waited buying the (new) MacBook Pro, guess what, I'd STILL be waiting!

> The notion that I should buy a new computer every two years is ridiculous.

Indeed.

It is not that your computer stops magically working the instant Apple releases a new model -- it just doesn't have all the latest bugs and features. /cynical But it's not *shiny* ! /Oblg. What it is like to own an Apple product

It is more of a case of buyer's remorse. Guess what, ALL electronics are eventually obsolete. It is not if, but when.

How it *should* be dome:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/m...

When will the content producers realize that "Pirates" are not lost sales. They never were sales, thus estimating losses is pointless. The only way to really combat a large number of people wanting something for free is to make it accessible for a price the population is willing to pay. It also doesn't help that everybody wants such a tight grip on their own stuff that they force consumers (not pirates) to find simpler routes to the content, that don't involve first borns or animal sacrifice.

For our visual folks, this cartoon from the Oatmeal should help.

Personally, if I had to pay $10 for each of NBC, Disney, CBS, and other channel groups, I might as well just suck it up and pay for cable TV. If instead I was able to pay $1 for a channel that I actually cared about a-la carte, then I'd be much happier. Then those lesser-watched channels would fade away and content providers would actually have to work to make good stuff, not tack-on the "old lady watering her garden" channel HD. I'd be spending $15 a month and getting what I want. If the channel doesn't pull in enough, then maybe they can subsidize with some self-promotion like HBO does.

I've been trying for 30 minutes now to watch this legally. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g... Europe does not have any money, or whatever... according to: - Amazon - google play - youtube - 30+ minutes in... I quit. I will start my bittorrent client now... Thank you, international movie-business, for saving me money!

"alot" is not a word. Obligatory The Oatmeal link

Why do people feel unable to watch a movie, and actually concentrate on what's going on, without feeling the need to eat continuously? Do not eat in the Cinema, ever. It's rude, and it's uncivilised.

I completely agree with you, but I think we're in the minority these days. I rarely go to the movies, but happened to be at one a week ago. The person next to me had a tray brought to him with, and I'm not kidding:

huge drink
a "personal" pizza
couple boxes of candy
huge popcorn
good-sized ice cream sundae

It was comically sad, and the noise was absurd. People say stuffing their faces with sugar water and buttered cardboard is "part of the experience" -- okay, fine. They should have special theaters set aside for those people. Stick them in with the noisy kids as well, since neither group seems all that interested in the movie.

Unfortunately seeing as movie theaters make 85% of their profits from concessions, this will never change (and will probably just get worse). Maybe this is the single saving grace of 3D movies -- it's slightly harder to shovel crap into your mouth while wearing the glasses.

The thing is, I don't want to have to goto Netflix for some things, Hulu for others, Amazon Prime for something else, HBO Go for the next, CBS All-access for the next thing, and so on. I especially don't want to have to keep track of what program is where or go hunting. I don't want to have to keep track of which service has the high-deff stream of a show and which one only has 480p. I just want to launch Netflix and watch my damn shows. And if I'm traveling, and want to kill some time in an airport or hotel by watching some Netflix, I want it to work. I don't think I'm alone in this outlook.

Fortunately, the VPN provider I use has been clever enough to stay ahead of the blocks on the latter point. Apple has been trying to solve the first problem with their cross-service search on the latest AppleTV. But that's thus far less than perfect, and they've not added the functionality to iOS or OS X yet, so it's of limited utility to me. Regardless, the bottom line is that anything not on Netflix is a headache. The average user doesn't care about what deals have been made in what country or region. They don't care about why geolocation is more difficult with IPv6, or even what IPv6 or IP geolocation is. They just want to watch their shows. And if the hollywood types continue to make it difficult to do so on Netflix, well... there're other services that make the experience easy.

a lot.. but good XKCD - thanks!

I don't want to subscribe to HBO. I want to subscribe the Game of Thrones.

You can do that by buying each season's DVD or BD set as it comes out.

But The Oatmeal taught me that having to wait for disc releases is an unreasonable burden and it's unfair to ask that of someone.

Seems like this is for you.

Mandatory Oatmeal link.

So using a cell phone while driving and causing an accident is clearly the driver's fault, but using a cell phone while walking and causing an accident is the city's fault?

Double standard, much?

Basically, the idea that The Oatmeal drew out awhile ago.
Can't say I disagree.

Cooking is still by far more dangerous and effects far, far more people

"affects", not "effects" - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/m...

Just one thing...and I think the Oatmeal put it well:

How I feel after reading 1000 insightful, positive comments about my work: "The whole internet loves me."
How I feel after reading 1000 insightful, positive comments about my work and one negative one: "The whole internet hates me :("

If many users are saying the same complaint about the site, please listen to it. But if there's just one or a couple people... try not to take it personally. That's going to happen. Stay informed of what people want, but know that there will of course be the random angry mean person out there, and don't let it get you down. :)

it's means it is.

This.

Some helpful links for the apostrophe-challenged:

http://its-not-its.info/
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/a...

Cats do too. Yes, that is a silly piece, not to be taken too seriously, but Google cats kill for fun and see 7M results, not all humour.

And the owners are responsible for a massive species extinction because they think their cat doesn't do that. If people have to lock dogs up - why should it be different for cats. Maybe we need a war on irresponsible pet ownership!

Cats do too. Yes, that is a silly piece, not to be taken too seriously, but Google cats kill for fun and see 7M results, not all humour.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g...

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/e...

This couple pictures exemplifies the difference between North and South :

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/n...

Go away, read this, and come back.

Preferably in that order.

I'm sure he could find half a dozen people with the gear who would be prepared to do it for the experience.

If that were true, there would have been half a dozen other people documenting the conference for "experience", but there weren't, so you're proven wrong.

Creators/artists of any skill level should not be expected to work for free for the "experience" or "exposure" as a cost cutting measure. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/e...

Between Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, etc. there is no longer a reason to pirate anything...

Except in cases like this

I have a 13 year old larger dog now, and it's hard to see her aging because she's starting to have the typical old age ailments that will eventually get us all. Lots of exercise all her life has helped stave off the aches and pains until recently. I would have paid quite a bit to delay the aging process for her and keep her health. Obligatory Oatmeal reference...

sure who wouldn't want more exposure. Such a unique platform like getting Govt Bids is sure to be rewarding down the line.

There's a comic for that. And this is old meme in certain industries, e.g. writing/photography/art, because so many people try to scam inexperienced people this way. Don't let it spread to the software industry, please.

This isn't training. Do work - get paid.

ave enough free time to cook every single meal from scratch every day

Heh. Obligatory Oatmeal link.

Actually talking to folks at the shop tablets are either sitting in a sock drawer or given to the kids to watch vids and play Angry Birds, the adults found them far too limiting compared to their laptops.

And the reason why the PC numbers are the way they are is even more simple, its the fact that hardware has been so overpowered for so many years that users just don't feel the need to upgrade, that is all. What does Joe and Jane Average do on a PC that a C2D laptop or C2Q desktop can't do? Nothing, just as most gamers are quite happy with their Phenom IIs and first gen i5s because even games simply have not kept up with speed of the hardware.

So at the end of the day I believe that tablets will be like netbooks, which are still being sold but aren't the "hip thing" and are just another niche, and until they fix the battery life I figure most of those smart watches? Gonna end up in a drawer somewhere. Of course the reason they are selling now is because there are many that will buy anything Apple as a status thing, just like the girls that go out of their way to show everybody they are using the latest iStuff. Once they come out with a new iToy? They will go into a dumpster and they will start the cycle anew.

Anyway, enough sincerity.. how 'bout them local sports teams?

piggers
are
#1 (scroll down to old men in the locker room)

Anyway, enough sincerity.. how 'bout them local sports teams?

piggers
are
#1 (scroll down to old men in the locker room)

Anyway, enough sincerity.. how 'bout them local sports teams?

piggers
are
#1 (scroll down to old men in the locker room)

"=> What is the gain in using this?"

Well, put it this way. Consider yourself lucky that you have skill in cooking and enjoy all the work that goes with it (spending time and gas driving back and forth from the grocery store, standing in line, working over the stove, cleaning up afterward, keeping an inventory of ingredients).

Personally I detest all those things, and rather spend my time playing games or musical instruments, or working out, or riding a bike. Or anything else, really. And I think that's perfectly okay, and Soylent fits my lifestyle nicely, and complements well the times when I do decide to eat for pleasure, out with friends and such.

Here is a webcomic.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/c...

Classic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/p...

Seriously though, who prints stuff outside of work anyway?

Use the semi colon Thomas.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/s...

Their explanation of why so few women study CS was that "the little ladies do not want to work hard and get their hands dirty doing actual work" (translated literal quote from one of them).

Which is odd, considering many of them become mothers. When that happens, I can't imagine any part of their person or environment stays clean very long.

For the love of grammar.

It's also full of interesting information, such as http://theoatmeal.com/comics/b...

http://theoatmeal.com/ also has more insightful writing than most of the drivel posted on "blogs".

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.
How much do cats actually kill?

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.
How much do cats actually kill?