Though they are generally less effective when they kill their hosts.
Yeah, that's one of those qualities that's really tricky for a disease to maintain. In order to survive, a disease must not kill its host faster than it can spread. That means that the really nasty stuff that kills you quickly is likely to burn itself out quickly. Something that shows symptoms within, say, 24 hours of infection is much easier to quarantine than something that waits around for a week (like the common cold) or years (like HIV).
I heard an interview with an epidemiologist earlier this year who pointed out that there were very specific conditions that made the 1918 flu as destructive as it was. In particular there were lots of wounded soldiers in makeshift World War I hospitals to provide an incubation ground: lots of people with weakened systems who couldn't easily get away from sick people.
Semi-OT, but this seems to be one of those phrases that's been abbreviated so much that people often forget the second half... and forget the meaning along with it. It probably doesn't help that no one uses the word "Jack" in this sense anymore.
Actually, it sounds like Opera's old revenue model. And while most site owners didn't mind (or weren't even aware of it), there were indeed a few who objected to that model on exactly those grounds (competing Google ads) and blocked access from Opera users. At least some of them had the sense to stop blocking it after they dropped the ads.
Second, the point of Netflix isn't speed, it's convenience
Actually, for me the selling point wasn't even the convenience. It was the selection. There's tons of stuff I wanted to watch but didn't want to buy, and neither Blockbuster nor the local video stores carried it. Invariably I'd check to see if Netflix had it, and it would be there.
At that point the dealer gets to sell it as a used car. (I think there's actually some other category where if a car was used as a rental and has less than X miles on it, it's the equivalent of buying an open-box item instead of buying it secondhand. I don't remember for sure -- it's been 7.5 years since I bought my car, and it's still holding up, so I haven't dealt with the sales part of the auto industry in a long time.)
Dang, you missed *the* main reason why Divx didn't succeed. It *didn't* play on "any 'old' DVD player"
But DVD was also new at the time. There were even studios (Disney, IIRC) that insisted on releasing only on DivX until they saw where the market was going with it. Consumers had to choose between two new formats, one of which meant they bought a player, bought discs, and got to play them whenever they wanted, and one of which meant they bought a more expensive player, bought discs, and had to pay every time they wanted to replay the discs.
If it came to that, I'd probably cancel my subscription (or at least drop down to the cheapest level) because half of what I rent on Netflix is old TV shows that either didn't make it to the US or that I missed the first time around. When you've got 4 episodes per disc, chances are you want to watch them in 4 separate sessions.
Back when software came on floppy disks, there actually were copy protection schemes that would limit the number of times you could install the application. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is some ancient version of The Print Shop which would refuse to install more than 3 or 4 times. Even back then, they realized that you might have to replace/repair your computer and reinstall.
I was soooo happy when software started shipping on CDs and publishers stopped worrying about copy protection and just filled up the disc instead. Of course, eventually consumer CD burners were available, and the issue came back, but still, it was a nice couple of years.
Haven't we gone through this already? How many times have businesses floated this concept over the last couple of years? What on earth makes them think consumers will want self-destructing DVDs this time?
There's also an interesting story about the captain that guy replaced. He'd been introduced during Season 2 and set up for this particular episode. The actor (Robert Foxworth) was signed to do the episode and everything...and then it turned out that he was also signed for a Deep Space Nine three-parter that was filming at the same time!
Well, say you're an actor (or his agent), and you have a scheduling mix-up. On one hand, there's one episode of show A, and on the other hand, there's three episodes of show B. Which one are you going to take?
New plan: the character is killed off-screen before the episode begins. There's actually an outtake of the "Where's so-and-so?" scene where he answers, "So and so... is doing Deep Space Nine. I'm afraid he was double-booked by his agent and there's nothing to be done. You'll have to make do with me, sir."
You're asking two questions. One is: Why do studios make mediocre movies out of good books. The other is: Why do authors let them? You've answered the second one: the money.
Of course, the first one breaks into two questions: Why do the studios make mediocre movies? That's easy, with the huge amounts of money involved, they don't want to take risks, so they dumb everything down by committee.
The hard question is: Why do the studios bother with the books in the first place if they're only going to make a mediocre movie?
The only thing I didn't like about the cinematography was that it was just too dark. But for all I know that was the projector in the theater where I saw it.
It's a big solar system, and Miranda's a remote world. It was listed in the charts, just as a dead world. (IIRC the cover story involved a terraforming incident.) Kaylee even remembered the old "Move to Miranda!" ad campaign when she thought about it.
Think of it in western terms -- say it's 1875, and a mining town in the middle of nowhere, Nevada is wiped out by an industrial accident. The company covers up the news so people don't think it's their fault, it's listed as a ghost town, and nothing more is said of it.
Aside from people had friends or relatives who lived there, who's going to have reason to remember it?
One tenth of a percent... that makes much more sense than the 10% I heard, and now I can fit the 30 million I remember with the reaver population we saw.
It was 10% of the population in question. IIRC that was 3 million or 30 million, (30M seems like a lot) which would leave 300,000 reavers to start with. (Or 3 million -- which seems like way too many, even if you assume most of them were wandering out on the fringe of the system.)
This was one of the things we were trying to figure out after the movie. I went with a bunch of friends and we were discussing: "How do they recognize each other? Why do they cooperate instead of attack?"
We do know they have at least some code/traditions they follow. In the first episode of the show, Serenity comes across a Reaver ship in deep space, and they take a chance: if they run, the Reavers "will have to follow. It's their way." If they they hold their course, the Reavers might choose to ignore them.
Unfortunately their "way" isn't "we'll leave you alone if you do X" so much as "we'll definitely torture and kill you if you do Y."
I'm okay with having some unanswered questions as long as they don't seem impossible. I can go with the reavers (as presented) getting along just well enough to be able to do more violence to others, but I can't imagine them raising children.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, that's where I'd seen the name before!
Yeah, that's one of those qualities that's really tricky for a disease to maintain. In order to survive, a disease must not kill its host faster than it can spread. That means that the really nasty stuff that kills you quickly is likely to burn itself out quickly. Something that shows symptoms within, say, 24 hours of infection is much easier to quarantine than something that waits around for a week (like the common cold) or years (like HIV).
I heard an interview with an epidemiologist earlier this year who pointed out that there were very specific conditions that made the 1918 flu as destructive as it was. In particular there were lots of wounded soldiers in makeshift World War I hospitals to provide an incubation ground: lots of people with weakened systems who couldn't easily get away from sick people.
Seems legit, though. Some other posters have found more info, including a dev's blog post collecting press/blog reactions.
Semi-OT, but this seems to be one of those phrases that's been abbreviated so much that people often forget the second half... and forget the meaning along with it. It probably doesn't help that no one uses the word "Jack" in this sense anymore.
And it still wasn't enough to save the site...
Actually, it sounds like Opera's old revenue model. And while most site owners didn't mind (or weren't even aware of it), there were indeed a few who objected to that model on exactly those grounds (competing Google ads) and blocked access from Opera users. At least some of them had the sense to stop blocking it after they dropped the ads.
Actually, for me the selling point wasn't even the convenience. It was the selection. There's tons of stuff I wanted to watch but didn't want to buy, and neither Blockbuster nor the local video stores carried it. Invariably I'd check to see if Netflix had it, and it would be there.
At that point the dealer gets to sell it as a used car. (I think there's actually some other category where if a car was used as a rental and has less than X miles on it, it's the equivalent of buying an open-box item instead of buying it secondhand. I don't remember for sure -- it's been 7.5 years since I bought my car, and it's still holding up, so I haven't dealt with the sales part of the auto industry in a long time.)
But DVD was also new at the time. There were even studios (Disney, IIRC) that insisted on releasing only on DivX until they saw where the market was going with it. Consumers had to choose between two new formats, one of which meant they bought a player, bought discs, and got to play them whenever they wanted, and one of which meant they bought a more expensive player, bought discs, and had to pay every time they wanted to replay the discs.
Either way, people had to get a new player.
If it came to that, I'd probably cancel my subscription (or at least drop down to the cheapest level) because half of what I rent on Netflix is old TV shows that either didn't make it to the US or that I missed the first time around. When you've got 4 episodes per disc, chances are you want to watch them in 4 separate sessions.
Back when software came on floppy disks, there actually were copy protection schemes that would limit the number of times you could install the application. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is some ancient version of The Print Shop which would refuse to install more than 3 or 4 times. Even back then, they realized that you might have to replace/repair your computer and reinstall.
I was soooo happy when software started shipping on CDs and publishers stopped worrying about copy protection and just filled up the disc instead. Of course, eventually consumer CD burners were available, and the issue came back, but still, it was a nice couple of years.
I'm so used to seeing voila misspelled that I misread it as "a tame journalist, a little bit of paid advertising and vodka."
DVDs do eventually wear out. Believe me, I've gotten enough duds from Blockbuster to know -- and I'm not talking about the quality of the movies!
And as others have pointed out, you can watch your disc from Netflix more than once, or over several sessions, before you send it back!
Or even the Department of Redundancy Department
Yeah, but you generally don't buy a new car every morning.
Correction, twice a day: once to get to work and once to get home.
At that point you're better off sticking with the bus -- i.e. watching broadcast/cable/satellite TV.
Haven't we gone through this already? How many times have businesses floated this concept over the last couple of years? What on earth makes them think consumers will want self-destructing DVDs this time?
Interesting... I wasn't aware of that.
There's also an interesting story about the captain that guy replaced. He'd been introduced during Season 2 and set up for this particular episode. The actor (Robert Foxworth) was signed to do the episode and everything...and then it turned out that he was also signed for a Deep Space Nine three-parter that was filming at the same time!
Well, say you're an actor (or his agent), and you have a scheduling mix-up. On one hand, there's one episode of show A, and on the other hand, there's three episodes of show B. Which one are you going to take?
New plan: the character is killed off-screen before the episode begins. There's actually an outtake of the "Where's so-and-so?" scene where he answers, "So and so... is doing Deep Space Nine. I'm afraid he was double-booked by his agent and there's nothing to be done. You'll have to make do with me, sir."
You're asking two questions. One is: Why do studios make mediocre movies out of good books. The other is: Why do authors let them? You've answered the second one: the money.
Of course, the first one breaks into two questions: Why do the studios make mediocre movies? That's easy, with the huge amounts of money involved, they don't want to take risks, so they dumb everything down by committee.
The hard question is: Why do the studios bother with the books in the first place if they're only going to make a mediocre movie?
The only thing I didn't like about the cinematography was that it was just too dark. But for all I know that was the projector in the theater where I saw it.
It's a big solar system, and Miranda's a remote world. It was listed in the charts, just as a dead world. (IIRC the cover story involved a terraforming incident.) Kaylee even remembered the old "Move to Miranda!" ad campaign when she thought about it.
Think of it in western terms -- say it's 1875, and a mining town in the middle of nowhere, Nevada is wiped out by an industrial accident. The company covers up the news so people don't think it's their fault, it's listed as a ghost town, and nothing more is said of it.
Aside from people had friends or relatives who lived there, who's going to have reason to remember it?
Got it in another thread. It seems I'm not the only one who misheard the line.
One tenth of a percent... that makes much more sense than the 10% I heard, and now I can fit the 30 million I remember with the reaver population we saw.
I'm going to have to watch this movie again...
It was 10% of the population in question. IIRC that was 3 million or 30 million, (30M seems like a lot) which would leave 300,000 reavers to start with. (Or 3 million -- which seems like way too many, even if you assume most of them were wandering out on the fringe of the system.)
This was one of the things we were trying to figure out after the movie. I went with a bunch of friends and we were discussing: "How do they recognize each other? Why do they cooperate instead of attack?"
We do know they have at least some code/traditions they follow. In the first episode of the show, Serenity comes across a Reaver ship in deep space, and they take a chance: if they run, the Reavers "will have to follow. It's their way." If they they hold their course, the Reavers might choose to ignore them.
Unfortunately their "way" isn't "we'll leave you alone if you do X" so much as "we'll definitely torture and kill you if you do Y."
I'm okay with having some unanswered questions as long as they don't seem impossible. I can go with the reavers (as presented) getting along just well enough to be able to do more violence to others, but I can't imagine them raising children.