Netflix does not show those ads while watching shows. It basically promotes itself and shows by showing them higher up on the list and auto-playing previews when you're idle. It experimented in a small subset of the market by showing some ads before the movies start but it was not making people happy so they stopped that. But if it ends up like the crappy CBS streaming service showing ads in the middle of shows then the customers will unsubscribe in droves. People who don't mind ads are already over on Hulu.
They'll lose so many customers when this happens it will be scary. Streaming providers probably understand to some degree that people who cut the cable cord still remember where they put the scissors. Watching TV is not a requirement and people are perfectly capable of deciding to shut it off permanently.
Turn OFF the smart features and get an external box for the TV stuff. That is, treat the TV as a dumb monitor. et a Roku for less than $100 that gives you more choices than most smart TVs will. Or get a Firestick, an AppleTV, a ChomeCast, etc. This stuff is highly affordable now, they're very tiny and can easily be hidden out of sight and are not at all like last generation's large "set top boxes".
The only worry is if the TV refuses to do anything until you configure it to be on your wifi. I doubt it will be there soon, there's still a big market for people to use TVs are dumb monitors (ie, for game consoles). If it does happen, then feed it a dummy wifi AP until it's configured then disable that (or set up a permanent trap on your router, stick in adblock, etc). If that fails to work, then move to a country that still values privacy as a civil right.
And a free market requires that both parties in a transaction have the necessary information to make a decision. If that doesn't exist then the market really isn't that free.
Then pretty soon the market will cluster around the few devices that do not do this? Sure, some people will stick with say Firestick forever, but many will say "screw this" and swap to Roku. Then if Roku does the targeted ads they'll switch to Apple, etc. The only way the targeted ads work is if the consumers don't give a shit anymore. We may be getting closer to that point but we're not at the 100% sheep level.
But an XBox is a very expensive way of doing this. There's got to be an easier solution than using a full console. You just want the video casting to the TV plus a way to get your inputs to your computer (and a laptop desk of course, for your keyboard and mouse:-).
Even if not PvP, a mouse is a huge help, and a keyboard is usually more flexible. Most people use computers if they're not kids, so they already know how to type (even touch type) and use a mouse. Ie, the mouse is easy to aim quickly, it can be fast or slow, it work from minesweeper to Fallout 4. That joystick thing on a controller is junk. Many early FPS games on consoles had an auto-aim feature for this reason. I've tried an old Tomb Raider game (3 or 4) on a PS3? and it was incredibly clunky even though I was great at it with keyboard only on a PC. Other FPS games on consoles I find myself constantly running in zigzags or S's until I finally get myself lined up in the direction I want to go. Now I want to name my character - that controller is crap for having to type in any text.
You can tell which games were designed for a console first because they tend to have a simpler control mechanism, fewer choices, more QTEs, etc. Ie, they won't use 1 through 0 to select weapons or spells or other options, maybe they have a circular menu, etc.
Trying to think of a computer game that is not better with keyboard and/or mouse, and I can't think of any.
On the TV is nice, but I need the keyboard and mouse. A console controller is a terrible interface, not ergonomic, inaccurate, and designed for children's hands.
It's just for one single game, and it's not a full DX12 just an emulation layer and there are no performance or graphics improvements. Thus, Blizzard could decide to make World of Warcraft only use DX12 and drop DX11 support, possibly it makes life easier for those game developers. But still no actual benefit to World of Warcraft players in any way. That might be a dumb move though as a game that size is making a lot of money from long term customers probably still using DX9 on lower end computers. Sure, Microsoft loves screwing the customers and doing things that cause great controversy with its customers; but most normal businesses realize that they have to treat their customers nicely if they want to retain them.
There's no real reason to upgrade from windows 8.1 to 10, support is still ongoing for quite some time and I don't know of any games I would ever play that have DX12 support and no plans to get a new graphics card for a several years.
I don't know what Microsoft is thinking here. The intentionally did not backport DX12 despite it being relatively simple to do, for the purpose of encouraging people to upgrade (which didn't work really since DX12 was not seen as an important upgrade). But then doing this just for WoW is strange, Microsoft doesn't own Blizzard so they get no direct benefit here as opposed to making this work for their own few (uninspiring) games. Maybe it's must more evidence that different departments within Microsoft are unable to talk to each other.
What about Windows 8, that's what I have. It's still got plenty of time left for support. This is maybe Microsoft's way of saying "maybe we could support you, but we won't because we hate you."
The reason that this was good for farmers was mostly a myth and a way to sell it to politicians. The real reason it got enacted wide scale was to keep businesses open later in the evening to hopefully help out the economy.
No one would care that much if the time zones were more uniform and no one was ever more than 30 minutes off of natural time. But some people might be 45 minutes to an hour off, and that hour difference might help them out (while simultaneously inconveniencing someone on the opposite side of the time zone).
They should just ditch time zones altogether and have one time world round. Then the local work place might say "work hours are roughly 16:00 to 00:00" (or 9 to 5 PST). But we'll never get here because it's confusing, too many politics, too many people not understanding time very well, etc. Remember the US couldn't even manage to get to metric because so many people complained about it, imagine trying to fix something like time.
No, he wants the artificial Daylight Savings Time on, rather than sticking with Standard Time. The problem here is that people start to assume that if it's dark for them in the morning that it must be dark for everyone in the morning. Time zones are the fundamental problem here and the weird ways that the borders were drawn. Natural time is when the sun is at its highest point at 12:00PM, going to DST permanently means that the sun would be approximately overhead at 11:00AM instead. So it focuses on the mornings and not the evenings. And if you are so enamored at having more daylight in the morning at the expense of darker afternoons, then switch the time by two or three hours!
So if we're getting rid of time change it should be to be Standard Time year round, and if that's not good enough then just dump time zones altogether and have a single world time. But doing to Daylight Savings Time year round is just stupid and ignorant.
Well, in general most voters, not just in America, simplify everything to a simplistic left-vs-right because it's too complicated otherwise. They want to know if the candidate is "the guy I like" or "the guy I hate", and then are the others similar to my guy or not. It's sooo much easier to just believe in US versus THEM, it saves wear and tear on the limp brain cells. Those slightly more advanced will just keep around a list of talking points, used as ammunition against anyone seen who might not be in the proper mindest, sort of like bible verses, but are not prepared to back up those talking points or give a cogent argument or debate. In fact, at least in America, it's no longer necessary to even have a political debate because people are voluntarily staying within a bubble and the talking points are about preaching to the converted. Anyone with a decent political argument tends to be shunned for not being ideologically pure enough.
Hardly. Major reinterpretations include telling people who are arrested that they have the right to remain silent and to get an attorney. Loss of freedom?
I definitely needed new prescriptions over the years, starting in 5th grade I think. Usually my old frames are wearing out and I need a new set anyway so going with a new prescription isn't an extra cost. It changes enough that it's not just an illusion, I could tell that I wasn't seeing as well as I used to. Now I've got progressive lenses (means they're made out of hemp) and I really cannot read as well as I used to even with old glasses. Some people are lucky at this, some aren't.
It still comes down to my being very used to glasses and not having much problems there, versus a knife/laser pointed at my eyes. Easy decision:-) Also, probably not a the best chance of working for me anyway.
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Netflix does not show those ads while watching shows. It basically promotes itself and shows by showing them higher up on the list and auto-playing previews when you're idle. It experimented in a small subset of the market by showing some ads before the movies start but it was not making people happy so they stopped that. But if it ends up like the crappy CBS streaming service showing ads in the middle of shows then the customers will unsubscribe in droves. People who don't mind ads are already over on Hulu.
They'll lose so many customers when this happens it will be scary. Streaming providers probably understand to some degree that people who cut the cable cord still remember where they put the scissors. Watching TV is not a requirement and people are perfectly capable of deciding to shut it off permanently.
Turn OFF the smart features and get an external box for the TV stuff. That is, treat the TV as a dumb monitor. et a Roku for less than $100 that gives you more choices than most smart TVs will. Or get a Firestick, an AppleTV, a ChomeCast, etc. This stuff is highly affordable now, they're very tiny and can easily be hidden out of sight and are not at all like last generation's large "set top boxes".
The only worry is if the TV refuses to do anything until you configure it to be on your wifi. I doubt it will be there soon, there's still a big market for people to use TVs are dumb monitors (ie, for game consoles). If it does happen, then feed it a dummy wifi AP until it's configured then disable that (or set up a permanent trap on your router, stick in adblock, etc). If that fails to work, then move to a country that still values privacy as a civil right.
The hand of capitalism may be invisible, but you can still feel it when it slaps you.
And a free market requires that both parties in a transaction have the necessary information to make a decision. If that doesn't exist then the market really isn't that free.
Then pretty soon the market will cluster around the few devices that do not do this? Sure, some people will stick with say Firestick forever, but many will say "screw this" and swap to Roku. Then if Roku does the targeted ads they'll switch to Apple, etc. The only way the targeted ads work is if the consumers don't give a shit anymore. We may be getting closer to that point but we're not at the 100% sheep level.
The advantage is anonymity and disabling of tracking.
But an XBox is a very expensive way of doing this. There's got to be an easier solution than using a full console. You just want the video casting to the TV plus a way to get your inputs to your computer (and a laptop desk of course, for your keyboard and mouse :-).
Even if not PvP, a mouse is a huge help, and a keyboard is usually more flexible. Most people use computers if they're not kids, so they already know how to type (even touch type) and use a mouse. Ie, the mouse is easy to aim quickly, it can be fast or slow, it work from minesweeper to Fallout 4. That joystick thing on a controller is junk. Many early FPS games on consoles had an auto-aim feature for this reason. I've tried an old Tomb Raider game (3 or 4) on a PS3? and it was incredibly clunky even though I was great at it with keyboard only on a PC. Other FPS games on consoles I find myself constantly running in zigzags or S's until I finally get myself lined up in the direction I want to go. Now I want to name my character - that controller is crap for having to type in any text.
You can tell which games were designed for a console first because they tend to have a simpler control mechanism, fewer choices, more QTEs, etc. Ie, they won't use 1 through 0 to select weapons or spells or other options, maybe they have a circular menu, etc.
Trying to think of a computer game that is not better with keyboard and/or mouse, and I can't think of any.
On the TV is nice, but I need the keyboard and mouse. A console controller is a terrible interface, not ergonomic, inaccurate, and designed for children's hands.
It's just for one single game, and it's not a full DX12 just an emulation layer and there are no performance or graphics improvements. Thus, Blizzard could decide to make World of Warcraft only use DX12 and drop DX11 support, possibly it makes life easier for those game developers. But still no actual benefit to World of Warcraft players in any way. That might be a dumb move though as a game that size is making a lot of money from long term customers probably still using DX9 on lower end computers. Sure, Microsoft loves screwing the customers and doing things that cause great controversy with its customers; but most normal businesses realize that they have to treat their customers nicely if they want to retain them.
There's no real reason to upgrade from windows 8.1 to 10, support is still ongoing for quite some time and I don't know of any games I would ever play that have DX12 support and no plans to get a new graphics card for a several years.
I don't know what Microsoft is thinking here. The intentionally did not backport DX12 despite it being relatively simple to do, for the purpose of encouraging people to upgrade (which didn't work really since DX12 was not seen as an important upgrade). But then doing this just for WoW is strange, Microsoft doesn't own Blizzard so they get no direct benefit here as opposed to making this work for their own few (uninspiring) games. Maybe it's must more evidence that different departments within Microsoft are unable to talk to each other.
What about Windows 8, that's what I have. It's still got plenty of time left for support. This is maybe Microsoft's way of saying "maybe we could support you, but we won't because we hate you."
The reason that this was good for farmers was mostly a myth and a way to sell it to politicians. The real reason it got enacted wide scale was to keep businesses open later in the evening to hopefully help out the economy.
No one would care that much if the time zones were more uniform and no one was ever more than 30 minutes off of natural time. But some people might be 45 minutes to an hour off, and that hour difference might help them out (while simultaneously inconveniencing someone on the opposite side of the time zone).
They should just ditch time zones altogether and have one time world round. Then the local work place might say "work hours are roughly 16:00 to 00:00" (or 9 to 5 PST). But we'll never get here because it's confusing, too many politics, too many people not understanding time very well, etc. Remember the US couldn't even manage to get to metric because so many people complained about it, imagine trying to fix something like time.
Everyone leaves for home around 3pm here. I'm not ever trying to leave early anywhere between 3 to 6 because those are peak commute hours.
No, he wants the artificial Daylight Savings Time on, rather than sticking with Standard Time. The problem here is that people start to assume that if it's dark for them in the morning that it must be dark for everyone in the morning. Time zones are the fundamental problem here and the weird ways that the borders were drawn. Natural time is when the sun is at its highest point at 12:00PM, going to DST permanently means that the sun would be approximately overhead at 11:00AM instead. So it focuses on the mornings and not the evenings. And if you are so enamored at having more daylight in the morning at the expense of darker afternoons, then switch the time by two or three hours!
So if we're getting rid of time change it should be to be Standard Time year round, and if that's not good enough then just dump time zones altogether and have a single world time. But doing to Daylight Savings Time year round is just stupid and ignorant.
Either these are typos, or it's just too damn insightful the masses to understand.
And I'm not swiping to switch apps! I'd rather swipe my finger on the green stuff growing in my fridge before I swipe on something from Microsoft.
Useful when you have a full screen application, like a game where you can't just click on another window.
ARGH! I so wish there was a way to punch someone over the telephone, since these guys deserve it and they keep scamming my mother.
Or.. phone spiders... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And when they do get the call they wonder why it's always someone cursing.
Well, in general most voters, not just in America, simplify everything to a simplistic left-vs-right because it's too complicated otherwise. They want to know if the candidate is "the guy I like" or "the guy I hate", and then are the others similar to my guy or not. It's sooo much easier to just believe in US versus THEM, it saves wear and tear on the limp brain cells. Those slightly more advanced will just keep around a list of talking points, used as ammunition against anyone seen who might not be in the proper mindest, sort of like bible verses, but are not prepared to back up those talking points or give a cogent argument or debate. In fact, at least in America, it's no longer necessary to even have a political debate because people are voluntarily staying within a bubble and the talking points are about preaching to the converted. Anyone with a decent political argument tends to be shunned for not being ideologically pure enough.
Hardly. Major reinterpretations include telling people who are arrested that they have the right to remain silent and to get an attorney. Loss of freedom?
I definitely needed new prescriptions over the years, starting in 5th grade I think. Usually my old frames are wearing out and I need a new set anyway so going with a new prescription isn't an extra cost. It changes enough that it's not just an illusion, I could tell that I wasn't seeing as well as I used to. Now I've got progressive lenses (means they're made out of hemp) and I really cannot read as well as I used to even with old glasses. Some people are lucky at this, some aren't.
It still comes down to my being very used to glasses and not having much problems there, versus a knife/laser pointed at my eyes. Easy decision :-) Also, probably not a the best chance of working for me anyway.
Because it can make the shithole that you do live in better?