Netflix doesn't need to. An open platform for competiting services already exist. Netflix doesn't have to stand alone. It can stand beside competitors and benefit from their presence.
THAT was the genius of AVOIDING exactly what Amazon is trying to do here. Netflix benefits from an open platform that is not seen as an Amazon or Apple or Netflix exclusive.
Like someone else said: Microsoft hasn't really changed. If you found Microsoft annoying in 1993, then you probably find Microsoft annoying for similar reasons in 2013. This isn't about "ancient history" and old grudges. This is about no liking a particular brand of consumer product.
Some people just don't like your favorite pet brand. Get over it.
The point should be moot anyways. No one should be forced to use anything they don't want in a free market.
The difference between a market leader and a monopoly is that you can't ignore a monopoly. That tends to annoy people. Although there's plenty to opportunity for that anyways.
If you thought of Microsoft as the home of incompetence before, you probably still do now.
That's not really the point. Apple was not instrumental in any way to to the development of email or any of the associated support technologies. It doesn't matter how good or bad the MacOS bundleware email client is. Apple simply isn't that relevant to the development of the Internet, email, or the web.
You can only judge something by the actual results. It doesn't matter what kind of excuses you want to make up. Stuff has to make it in the real world rather than some fantasy that only exists in your own head. If all attempts lead to disaster because there is some aspect of human nature you choose to ignore, then perhaps you should acknowledge it's a bad idea.
Yes. It's a fascinating idea really. Seems it could really speed things up. Instead of taking 20 hours to finish that course from The Learning Company, I could finish it in only 15 minutes.
HELL. Those morons at Canonical just decided they will refuse to support video decode support in libre drivers because of 8M of "bloat". Unf*ckingbelievable.
Way to kick multi-media users in the balls there Mark.
Linux users like what they want. That might not conform to whatever your personal preferences are or what's trendy. That doesn't make Linux users "luddites". It makes them something other than mindless drones.
Beyond that, going out of your way to try and copy that other marginal player in the industry us just retarded. You will pretty much ensure that less saavy users are alienated by something that seeks to be annoyingly different for it's own sake.
You think Linux users are luddites? We're not even close to that compared to the bulk of the potential users out there.
If your ISP sticks you with inherenently insecure hardware then that's on the ISP. This is not a situation where they are powerless. This is yet another example of how you don't necessarily have to be an idiot. Better choices are possible. Saner engineering choices are possible.
You don't have to (and you should not) tolerate crap.
> I disagree. The burden of proof is on those who want to interfere with the right of the rightful owners of these companies to dispose of their property as they damn well please.
We already have experience in these areas. We even wrote a body of laws to address this particular problem. There is nothing new or interesting here.
We just have libertardians trying to pretend that history doesn't exist and these kinds of problems haven't happened before.
Your notion of capitalism is about 150 years out of date.
Yet cities decide to take matters into the own hands only to be subjected to corruption of their own state government at the hands of the Robber Baron in question.
The funny thing is that we have already heard the same arguments from them. In fact, the pro-monopoly mouthpieces are using the fact that we tolerated this crap last time to justify it again. They're like 4 year olds point and say "but but you allowed it this other time".
This is what we get for tolerating this bullshit.
This "but we will play nice" and "but you can add conditions" is the same argument they made for the last merger that should never have gone through.
If you need to create "special conditions", then by definition the merger is bad. The fact that you create a new set of rules that the relevant corporation can break in the future really doesn't change anything.
> As I already said, in a vain attempt at preventing this, I was talking about the frequency space that used to be called "channel 5", etc, NOT THE ARBITRARY CHANNEL DESIGNATION EMBEDDED IN THE DIGITAL STREAM.
NOBODY cares about that. Packets can be treated just like electrons from a power company. It doesn't really matter who the source or the destination is or if is even a broadcast.
Even the notion of "channel 5" being dedicated to anything is an obsolete idea as anything that isn't a packet switched network is moving in that direction.
> The market panicked, and groupthink took over, causing an emotion-based drop in the value of mortgage-backed assets that was far out of proportion to the actual losses
No. What happened is that people realized that the ratings were a total fiction. That realization was applied not only to the mortgage equivalent of junk bonds but to EVERYTHING.
It took more than just home foreclosures to melt the economy.
Once people realized that the ratings agencies were a big fat fraud, trust in general was destroyed.
THIS is why we have an SEC to begin with. We have experienced much of this nonsense before and chose to make laws intended to avoid the negative consequences of financial corruption. However, people forget about the relevant history and just start to whine about how they are being impeded from making a buck today.
No. The "better alternative" is to not bother at all.
If they can't be bothered to serve a warrant after 5 years have passed then they shouldn't bother at all. This is just yet another element of legal bullshit that the authorities can use as a pretense to mess with an average citizen.
> Why buy the physical disk if you can get the same quality, and access it anywhere you want
1) It is NOT the same quality 2) You can NOT access it anywhere you want
Chances are, you won't even be able to access it on any device you want. The only way to really ensure what you are describing is to buy physical media, rip it, and have a copy stored on your mobile device.
We have to deal with the world the way it is, rather than pretending that we live in some fantasy version of that world.
Neither the land line nor the mobile network operators are interested in accomodating your fantasy. Your fantasy is never going to come into being so long as the status quo remains with the current telecom incumbents.
> Why buy a blueray disk when you can buy the streaming version for cheaper, with the same quality, if we had the broadband the rest of the world has?
The streaming version is almost never cheaper than the physical media version. Even if it is, it's probably not cheaper enough to offset the total lack of any real ownership you have in a streaming copy.
Plus physical media is subject to all of the other aspects of physical property. Supply cannot suddenly be completely eliminated and the media obeys the laws of supply and demand.
For the price of cable, you can quickly get to the point where you can distract yourself without paying for cable or streaming or even more media ever again.
The whole thesis is a remarkably stupid idea. Time Warner and Comcast are NOT direct competitors. They are MONOPOLIES in differet markets. They already have the ability to screw with you if you are trying to cut the cord. You probably have no where to go.
PERHAPS you can flee from your local cable monopoly to your local phone monopoly. MAYBE.
All this does is increase the number of cities where Comcast has a monopoly. Ultimately, the real impact of this will likely be with negotating with content providers. Comcast might be able to go all Walmart on Disney.
The obvious solution to that is regulation that alows for CLECs in cable and Internet just they way they were allowed for in phone service. This whole stupid mess is just the result of a bunch of Ayn Rand cultists thinking that the market would magically sort itself out if we let all of the jack*ss corporations run amok.
Los Angeles had multiple competitive DSL providers 15 years ago and it's WAY more spread out than New York City.
> Actually, college is supposed to be a breadth oriented experience. It is not supposed to be job training. If you want job training, that's what technical school is for.
Actually, this is exactly how the original Universities started out. It was all about the Benjamins. It was only later that academic pretense developed.
"Fluff" courses can be dangerous in the wrong hands...
> Yeah, yeah, yeah, the poor have refrigerators and cell phones. Medical care, education, and decent food is a problem. "Obamacare" and Medicare are half- assed solutions.
The poor have more than ample resources in the food department. Their girth is ample proof of this. What they lack is wisdom and impulse control. Unlimited resources won't help the situation.
> Why are you so sadistic that you want to force people to work as garbage men?
It's not sadism. It's pragmatism. Someone has to do the shit jobs and chances are that there aren't enough people naturally inclined to do them. The real challenge of Earth in the Federation universe is what you do with a bunch of people that are economically pointless.
You also have the problem of what people are going to do with themselves all day. Some people handle this well and others handle it very poorly.
No. It still requires bullshitting and sitting in endless meetings. That's just crap that someone who is cut out for management can actually deal with (and do so effectively).
The whole point of society is so that people can specialize and do what they do best rather than being some deluded jack-of-all-trades that could just be his own boss anyways.
The problem with that is that you miss key parts of the curriculum because it never occured to you to study those things. This anti-intellectual attitude that drives you to ingore the "irrelevant academic crap" will cause the "self educated" to miss key parts of the discipline.
Your self-help vocational program is probably not nearly broad or deep enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Netflix doesn't need to. An open platform for competiting services already exist. Netflix doesn't have to stand alone. It can stand beside competitors and benefit from their presence.
THAT was the genius of AVOIDING exactly what Amazon is trying to do here. Netflix benefits from an open platform that is not seen as an Amazon or Apple or Netflix exclusive.
Like someone else said: Microsoft hasn't really changed. If you found Microsoft annoying in 1993, then you probably find Microsoft annoying for similar reasons in 2013. This isn't about "ancient history" and old grudges. This is about no liking a particular brand of consumer product.
Some people just don't like your favorite pet brand. Get over it.
The point should be moot anyways. No one should be forced to use anything they don't want in a free market.
The difference between a market leader and a monopoly is that you can't ignore a monopoly. That tends to annoy people. Although there's plenty to opportunity for that anyways.
If you thought of Microsoft as the home of incompetence before, you probably still do now.
That's not really the point. Apple was not instrumental in any way to to the development of email or any of the associated support technologies. It doesn't matter how good or bad the MacOS bundleware email client is. Apple simply isn't that relevant to the development of the Internet, email, or the web.
Even the connection with NexT is tenuous at best.
You can only judge something by the actual results. It doesn't matter what kind of excuses you want to make up. Stuff has to make it in the real world rather than some fantasy that only exists in your own head. If all attempts lead to disaster because there is some aspect of human nature you choose to ignore, then perhaps you should acknowledge it's a bad idea.
Yes. It's a fascinating idea really. Seems it could really speed things up. Instead of taking 20 hours to finish that course from The Learning Company, I could finish it in only 15 minutes.
Mint. Debian. Fedora.
HELL. Those morons at Canonical just decided they will refuse to support video decode support in libre drivers because of 8M of "bloat". Unf*ckingbelievable.
Way to kick multi-media users in the balls there Mark.
Linux users like what they want. That might not conform to whatever your personal preferences are or what's trendy. That doesn't make Linux users "luddites". It makes them something other than mindless drones.
Beyond that, going out of your way to try and copy that other marginal player in the industry us just retarded. You will pretty much ensure that less saavy users are alienated by something that seeks to be annoyingly different for it's own sake.
You think Linux users are luddites? We're not even close to that compared to the bulk of the potential users out there.
If your ISP sticks you with inherenently insecure hardware then that's on the ISP. This is not a situation where they are powerless. This is yet another example of how you don't necessarily have to be an idiot. Better choices are possible. Saner engineering choices are possible.
You don't have to (and you should not) tolerate crap.
> I disagree. The burden of proof is on those who want to interfere with the right of the rightful owners of these companies to dispose of their property as they damn well please.
We already have experience in these areas. We even wrote a body of laws to address this particular problem. There is nothing new or interesting here.
We just have libertardians trying to pretend that history doesn't exist and these kinds of problems haven't happened before.
Your notion of capitalism is about 150 years out of date.
> Because the market isn't there.
Yet cities decide to take matters into the own hands only to be subjected to corruption of their own state government at the hands of the Robber Baron in question.
The funny thing is that we have already heard the same arguments from them. In fact, the pro-monopoly mouthpieces are using the fact that we tolerated this crap last time to justify it again. They're like 4 year olds point and say "but but you allowed it this other time".
This is what we get for tolerating this bullshit.
This "but we will play nice" and "but you can add conditions" is the same argument they made for the last merger that should never have gone through.
If you need to create "special conditions", then by definition the merger is bad. The fact that you create a new set of rules that the relevant corporation can break in the future really doesn't change anything.
> As I already said, in a vain attempt at preventing this, I was talking about the frequency space that used to be called "channel 5", etc, NOT THE ARBITRARY CHANNEL DESIGNATION EMBEDDED IN THE DIGITAL STREAM.
NOBODY cares about that. Packets can be treated just like electrons from a power company. It doesn't really matter who the source or the destination is or if is even a broadcast.
Even the notion of "channel 5" being dedicated to anything is an obsolete idea as anything that isn't a packet switched network is moving in that direction.
> The market panicked, and groupthink took over, causing an emotion-based drop in the value of mortgage-backed assets that was far out of proportion to the actual losses
No. What happened is that people realized that the ratings were a total fiction. That realization was applied not only to the mortgage equivalent of junk bonds but to EVERYTHING.
It took more than just home foreclosures to melt the economy.
Once people realized that the ratings agencies were a big fat fraud, trust in general was destroyed.
THIS is why we have an SEC to begin with. We have experienced much of this nonsense before and chose to make laws intended to avoid the negative consequences of financial corruption. However, people forget about the relevant history and just start to whine about how they are being impeded from making a buck today.
No. The "better alternative" is to not bother at all.
If they can't be bothered to serve a warrant after 5 years have passed then they shouldn't bother at all. This is just yet another element of legal bullshit that the authorities can use as a pretense to mess with an average citizen.
> Why buy the physical disk if you can get the same quality, and access it anywhere you want
1) It is NOT the same quality
2) You can NOT access it anywhere you want
Chances are, you won't even be able to access it on any device you want. The only way to really ensure what you are describing is to buy physical media, rip it, and have a copy stored on your mobile device.
We have to deal with the world the way it is, rather than pretending that we live in some fantasy version of that world.
Neither the land line nor the mobile network operators are interested in accomodating your fantasy. Your fantasy is never going to come into being so long as the status quo remains with the current telecom incumbents.
> Why buy a blueray disk when you can buy the streaming version for cheaper, with the same quality, if we had the broadband the rest of the world has?
The streaming version is almost never cheaper than the physical media version. Even if it is, it's probably not cheaper enough to offset the total lack of any real ownership you have in a streaming copy.
Plus physical media is subject to all of the other aspects of physical property. Supply cannot suddenly be completely eliminated and the media obeys the laws of supply and demand.
For the price of cable, you can quickly get to the point where you can distract yourself without paying for cable or streaming or even more media ever again.
The whole thesis is a remarkably stupid idea. Time Warner and Comcast are NOT direct competitors. They are MONOPOLIES in differet markets. They already have the ability to screw with you if you are trying to cut the cord. You probably have no where to go.
PERHAPS you can flee from your local cable monopoly to your local phone monopoly. MAYBE.
All this does is increase the number of cities where Comcast has a monopoly. Ultimately, the real impact of this will likely be with negotating with content providers. Comcast might be able to go all Walmart on Disney.
The obvious solution to that is regulation that alows for CLECs in cable and Internet just they way they were allowed for in phone service. This whole stupid mess is just the result of a bunch of Ayn Rand cultists thinking that the market would magically sort itself out if we let all of the jack*ss corporations run amok.
Los Angeles had multiple competitive DSL providers 15 years ago and it's WAY more spread out than New York City.
The channels with the best original content already offer their shows on streaming on a PPV basis.
Some of these have been "ala carte" channels since the 70s.
> Actually, college is supposed to be a breadth oriented experience. It is not supposed to be job training. If you want job training, that's what technical school is for.
Actually, this is exactly how the original Universities started out. It was all about the Benjamins. It was only later that academic pretense developed.
"Fluff" courses can be dangerous in the wrong hands...
> Yeah, yeah, yeah, the poor have refrigerators and cell phones. Medical care, education, and decent food is a problem. "Obamacare" and Medicare are half- assed solutions.
The poor have more than ample resources in the food department. Their girth is ample proof of this. What they lack is wisdom and impulse control. Unlimited resources won't help the situation.
> Why are you so sadistic that you want to force people to work as garbage men?
It's not sadism. It's pragmatism. Someone has to do the shit jobs and chances are that there aren't enough people naturally inclined to do them. The real challenge of Earth in the Federation universe is what you do with a bunch of people that are economically pointless.
You also have the problem of what people are going to do with themselves all day. Some people handle this well and others handle it very poorly.
No. It still requires bullshitting and sitting in endless meetings. That's just crap that someone who is cut out for management can actually deal with (and do so effectively).
The whole point of society is so that people can specialize and do what they do best rather than being some deluded jack-of-all-trades that could just be his own boss anyways.
The problem with that is that you miss key parts of the curriculum because it never occured to you to study those things. This anti-intellectual attitude that drives you to ingore the "irrelevant academic crap" will cause the "self educated" to miss key parts of the discipline.
Your self-help vocational program is probably not nearly broad or deep enough.
Teachers worthy of any respect are the exception rather than the norm. They are far more rare than competent technical managers.