Yeah, we had one in high school, but I only went there once or twice for assemblies and occasionally at night for astronomy. In college I finally found out where the stadium was about halfway through my sophmore year and I've only seen it from the outside.
I guess part of the problem is that it's such an exact, simple, easily translatable number. 100 yards seems to make more sense. Anyone who knows about football would also know that that's the length of the field and convert it over mentally if that's their preference. Everyone else is just sort of screwed if it's not something they can picture.
I guess my point is that it's a bullshit form of measurement just like the "width of a pencil". Why not just say "100 yards" or "about a centimeter". It's far more sensible and less likely to errors of interpretation.
No, I acknowledge that football exists, I just dislike sports and never paid any attention to it. Ask the average American to measure something in football (i.e. soccer) fields and I'm willing to bet you'd get just about the same response: they know what it is and can give a reasonable estimate that it's larger than a few feet, but smaller than a mile, but they have no specific idea that makes it a useful estimate of size.
Maybe it's just me and I have an absolutely terrible ability to estimate almost anything be is mass, volume, distance, number, etc. but I still think that "100 yards" or even "120 yards" is more sensible and easier to comprehend. Chalk it up to personal experience I guess.
Football fields is a terrible unit of measure as I have no damn idea how big the stupid things are (yes, I'm an American, but I just don't give a shit about sports). I know the stadiums tend to be huge, but the field itself is a few hundred yards or so isn't it? Considering it's already a measured entity, why not just refer to the actual (or rounded) measurement.
The Game Gear actually released a rechargeable battery brick to help counteract this problem. Yes, it made it a bit more cumbersome to carry around, but quite frankly it made the system work out very well whenever I would take it on trips.
Frankly I think that just about anything out there to decrease my fertility vastly increases the quality of my life. Then again, I also hate children. So long as it doesn't affect my ability to have sex I thoroughly welcome it.
As well diabetes can generally be controlled, aging, however is a much more problematic disorder.
Copy URL. Paste URL into obvious address bar and click "add". Profit! erm... listen to the podcasts which will now download when available. Hell, it'll even automagically create iTunes playlists (although frankly it doesn't let me control how it does it and I don't care for the manner in which it does create them).
iPodder is in no way hard to use. Personally I would say that iTunes and iPodder are about the same right now although iTunes admittedly has more built-in search whereas with iPodder you'll need to merely search the web or go to Podcast Alley.
I'm sorry, but I just can't stop laughing when you called those vast, uninformed sheepish herds "politically aware". They're aware to the extent that their pre-biased lowest-common denominator media outlet tells them how to feel.
The fact that they are politically potent... now that just makes me shiver in the corner all afternoon.
In my opinion there are only two really good DS games out at the moment and one that's pretty good: Meteos, Kirby: Canvas Curse, and Mario 64 DS. Part of the reason that I bought my DS recently though was because of the massive slate of really good games on the horizon: Castlevania DS, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, New Super Mario Bros., Mario and Luigi 2, Mario Kart DS (with the new online multiplayer), Trauma Center, Sonic Rush, etc. Not to mention the many solid GBA titles coming out that also run on it and you've got a very solid platform.
Based on what I've seen the PSP has Lumines and Metal Gear Acid. Grand Theft Auto might be good, but not enough info has really come out yet.
The problem is that a fair value is what the seller is willing to take. If I'm not willing to sell for any amount of money then there will not be a fair value given to me. If the blue book value of my car is only $200 and I'm given that as a fair value it does nothing for the fact that I now have $200 that won't buy anything whereas before I had a running vehicle that I relied on heavily. What, for that matter, should be the price for a worthless item of great sentimental value?
In this case fair value is being determined by someone who has no ability to determine the true value.
Don't you yanks all swear to uphold and protect the constitution, so help you god?
Not one bit. I'm only willing to uphold and protect my own rational self-interest and there's no way you'd get me to swear to do even that. Especially not on that "under god" bit seeing as I'm an atheist. Even better is that the very statement itself is paradoxical as the Constitution would include the freedom from the imposition of a state religion... that will be protected by my religious adherence.
Don't you have the right to protect against home invasion?
Again, no. You have the right to attempt to protect yourself and then be sued by the invader for damages both physical and psychological. By the time you're done you'll have been robbed both by the robber himself as well as the courts and the lawyers.
They can certainly limit the Federal Government's eminent domain power, but that's rarely used and almost always for genunine public uses (military bases, federal buildings, etc)
I can even make a valid statement that military bases and federal buildings are not in the public's interest. I mean, do we really need more war and more mindless bureaucracy? I know I certain feel that, in most cases, both of those would be in opposition to what I consider "good". The same goes for taking private land in order to built a privately-owned sports arena. I have no interest in the sport. The owners are going to get rich off of the place, traffic will be terrible, and I'll have to put up with more sports-obsessed idiots in my local community. None of these options are "good" despite the increase in local taxes... something that may be good for the government, but is unlikely to ever be spent on programs or policies that will actually benefit me... unless I want to build a new sports arena and need a convenient way to force people to sell their land against their will at well below the price they would even be willing to consider.
One of the fundamental problems though is that regardless of the public good this is a case where there may exist a tyranny of the majority. Just because it benefits others doesn't mean that my rights ought to be invalidated.
"Adequate" compensation though rarely is. Part of the problem is that the value is determined to be the market value which in many cases is different from the actual personal value in many ways: e.g. sentimental value ("This house has been in my family for 5 generations"), inability to replace (my car is only "worth" $100, but it's actual value to me as a functional, albeit crappy, vehicle is much, much greater than that), and so on. As much as I vehemently oppose the idea of emminent domain (or social security or anything else where my property is confiscated under the guise of it being to my benefit) the only price that should be issued is the value the owner is willing to sell it for. Of course, the only way to put that into practice is to get rid of emminent domain.
Part of the problem with this is that if the owner is asking more for their land than the "market value" because they perceive that it actually has more value to them (and likely does in almost every single possible case, not to mention compensation for moving, inconvenience, etc.) a coporation can likely quite easily prove that the public good would be better served by the tax monies that they would bring in and get the land they want for less than the actual "fair market value" (i.e. what the seller is willing to accept, not what someone else tells the seller they have to accept).
This isn't just a mockery of the ideals upon which this country was founded, but in itself a mockery of the capitalist system as a whole.
Exactly. I greatly miss my local indie shop (they closed last year after a building under construction next door had a large cement post fall over in high winds and crush half the store) because they did a wonderful job of selling used games, forgotten systems, and high quality used PC games. As far as new games went they were never really that great, but they had a huge lock on selling me an old copy of Solar Jetman or fixing my '89 vintage Gameboy on the cheap.
If you're buying a game at a larger store though: 1) Want used? You better. If it's not this month's hot new title then they don't carry it new. 2)What manual? They don't give a damn about the quality of their merchandise, just high prices for used games (maybe $5 off the new price except it's missing the manual and the disc is probably scratched by some infidel). 3)Swap meet mentality. These people aren't collectors or gamers. They cater to the frat-boy market who wants to buy a game, rush through it as fast as possible and then come back next week to trade in in for next to nothing so they can sell it for almost full-price again.
Smaller shops aren't always perfect, but they tend to cater to gamers. The big chain at the mall just caters to people who buy games.
That's definitely true. The thing is most larger stores tend to take hiring as more of a rote exercise in getting warm bodies to jockey the register and tend not to care what you know. Most of them also are more likely to have policies in place designed specifically to infuriate customers (one time at EB Games while purchasing one new and one used title I was asked to: join their club, buy game insurance, buy a strategy guide and something I can't even remember anymore). I know when I worked in retail one of the training manuals listed "I'm just looking" as being some sort of negative stance the customer takes to avoid being sold to that you had to break down because all customers really, really, really want you to sell stuff to them rather than browse without annoying sales staff.
As for my local shop, it perished when a nearby bar that was destroyed by a fire was being rebuilt and a giant cement strut fell over in the wind and crushed the store. They kept saying they'd come back, but eventually just gave up.
I have to say the the coverage of the Gamestop employee was right on: PS2 and XBox fanboys almost exclusively dominate. Rarely will an employee even consider that a Gamecube is worthy of anything other than contempt. It's clearly only designed for children. I find most tend to be in the XBox camp though. The number of Halo-junkie frat-boy gamers is pretty heavy. Now, finding PC gamers, people who respect the Gamecube for having a strong library, or someone who played anything before the PSX came out are increasingly rare.
On the other hand what can you really expect of minimum-wage earning teenagers who don't give a damn? Ever go into a Blockbuster and start asking them about a movie that doesn't feature explosions or *gasp* came out more than a year or two ago? It's like hitting a baby with a pipe wrench, but not nearly as much fun. Then again I'm lucky, my last two trips to my local video shop got me involved in a conversation about the French New Wave with one clerk and another gave me double punches on my card for picking up Friday the 13th (way to pick out the old-school loving horror fangirl).
If you want knowlegable employees who actually give a damn try shopping at a smaller, local game shop... though honestly I'll admit that they're very, very rare.
Dammit. They both failed to follow policy. In each case they should have asked the cust. if they wanted to pre-order a copy of the new Sonic MMORPG or possibly a copy of Duke Nukem Forever. Taking pre-orders on products only rumoured or barely announced is the lifeblood of the industry!
While it had been announced for quite a while I still found it amusing when a clerk tried to get me to pre-order Twilight Princess. This was well before E3, I believe it was actually this past March. Sorry I'd rather wait until the game actually has a name first before I try to buy it. Then again the way they've moved for console games is to push everything into pre-sales and only carry one or two copies in the store. If you want a game that came out more than a month or two ago you're horribly backwards and will have to try and dig through used copies that showed up two days after release because some "l33t" idiot powered through it without sleep and can't be bothered to own it any longer. He also managed to lose the manual and case in the that same time. Better buy it for $5 less than the new price!
I totally agree with you. My work e-mail is for work use. In fact, at my (admittedly crappy) job we don't have access to any outside e-mail. Now, the occasional personal message is likely not going to be something that most people would consider a problem. Not unlike using your work phone to make a short, simple, and reasonable local phone call. I was instead bringing up the devil's advocate position at the other end that the further and further you go towards the idea that the company owns your time at work the closer you come to a very barely bearable situation where they literally do own your ever second at work.
While you make a very valid point it's also easy enough to slide it down the slippery slope. What if an employee isn't thinking about their work for every second of the day? What if they have a personal conversation that takes up valuable minutes when they could be working?
Should people be working while at work? Yes. But to take every single paid second and expect someone to be doing and thinking about nothing other than work for the entire time is actually quite cruel when you get down to it. I should know, I've been working phone support too long and on busy days the only time when you're not doing actual, constant, no split-second to catch your breath work is breaks and lunch (which if you're lucky they won't decide to cut in half at the last minute). Working non-stop for a full eight hours is pretty damn unpleasant.
I'm being just as much of a devil's advocate, but honestly... the idea of wasting a few minutes of company time is sounds like it came from someone who actually has an unmonitored minute during their day in which to waste.
Rentals are $4.50?!?! Where are you renting? I pay $2 (5 days), $3 for new releases (3 days). All this from a store with a huge selection, great service, and wonderful acquisitions policy.
I have to agree that $5 is a bit short. That's closer to the average matinee or possibly student rate (gotta love my town, a college town near an army base and the only place in town doesn't offer discount for students or the military). I pay $5 by getting passes through AAA. Normal rates are closer to $7 or $7.50.
Bah, "Arrested Development" is not only far more brilliant, but it also has a strong fan base, is critically acclaimed, and has won an Emmy. Fox will certainly cancel it first!
Just saw "House" the other day though and it is indeed excellent. I have little interest in the entire medical drama genre (I think TiVo actually gives it the best tags: Medical and Mystery though I'd probably want to add in Comedy. Then again TiVo also described Sealab 2021 as: Drama, Fantasy) but a season pass went on the TiVo as soon as it was over.
While I'm not a parent I really can't see the harm here. Sex offenders (of which pedophiles were never specified) are not going to leap out of the television and molest your children. It seems highly unlikely that sex offenders would even be bothered to spend the time playing online games in the hope that they might be able to eventually convince a child to meet them. If they want to molest children there are likely far simpler methods.
Quite frankly the far more logical solution is the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. Only allow people to randomly meet people from other areas. If the only people they know live 100 miles away they're not going to go out and meet up with them and it will stay online.
OK. I doubt Fox really tried to damage the show, but as many others have stated it was not managed very well. In this respect Fox does not have a very good track record. Futurama was also quite popular (and is doing wonderfully on Adult Swim) and has had good DVD sales. Family Guy, though, is probably the best case. It had a bad timeslot that constantly changed and even those fans who really enjoyed the show were largely unable to watch it through a combination of timeslot issues and constantly pre-empting the show for more sports or something else. If I can't actually watch the show it's probably not going to do very well. In this case Fox realized their mistake after cancelation and were lucky enough to be able to bring it back from the dead with massive fan support.
As for Firefly being popular, well... the DVD sales have been very good and almost everyone who has watched it on DVD has raved about it afterwards. I was one of those people who briefly saw some ads that didn't look all that great and never bothered with it on TV. Thirty minutes into the first episode on DVD and I was hooked. If there had maybe been something better done during the brief period when it was on TV I might have actually started watching it then.
The best indication of the popularity is the fact that it has a very strong online fan community and the recent preview screenings sold out in a very, very short period of time. Obviously there is not a lack of support.
No. As far as I am aware a stipulation of the contract between Fox and Universal is that there cannot be another TV show. Fox really hates it when people thwart it's best efforts to destroy something popular. More realistically is that Fox just doesn't want the competition. If Universal comes and makes the movie and it reinvigorates the concept and leads to a successful TV show they don't want to have given that up.
Yet again the interests of business prevail over the interests of the consumers.
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Yeah, we had one in high school, but I only went there once or twice for assemblies and occasionally at night for astronomy. In college I finally found out where the stadium was about halfway through my sophmore year and I've only seen it from the outside.
I guess part of the problem is that it's such an exact, simple, easily translatable number. 100 yards seems to make more sense. Anyone who knows about football would also know that that's the length of the field and convert it over mentally if that's their preference. Everyone else is just sort of screwed if it's not something they can picture.
I guess my point is that it's a bullshit form of measurement just like the "width of a pencil". Why not just say "100 yards" or "about a centimeter". It's far more sensible and less likely to errors of interpretation.
No, I acknowledge that football exists, I just dislike sports and never paid any attention to it. Ask the average American to measure something in football (i.e. soccer) fields and I'm willing to bet you'd get just about the same response: they know what it is and can give a reasonable estimate that it's larger than a few feet, but smaller than a mile, but they have no specific idea that makes it a useful estimate of size.
Maybe it's just me and I have an absolutely terrible ability to estimate almost anything be is mass, volume, distance, number, etc. but I still think that "100 yards" or even "120 yards" is more sensible and easier to comprehend. Chalk it up to personal experience I guess.
Football fields is a terrible unit of measure as I have no damn idea how big the stupid things are (yes, I'm an American, but I just don't give a shit about sports). I know the stadiums tend to be huge, but the field itself is a few hundred yards or so isn't it? Considering it's already a measured entity, why not just refer to the actual (or rounded) measurement.
The Game Gear actually released a rechargeable battery brick to help counteract this problem. Yes, it made it a bit more cumbersome to carry around, but quite frankly it made the system work out very well whenever I would take it on trips.
Frankly I think that just about anything out there to decrease my fertility vastly increases the quality of my life. Then again, I also hate children. So long as it doesn't affect my ability to have sex I thoroughly welcome it.
As well diabetes can generally be controlled, aging, however is a much more problematic disorder.
Copy URL. Paste URL into obvious address bar and click "add". Profit! erm... listen to the podcasts which will now download when available. Hell, it'll even automagically create iTunes playlists (although frankly it doesn't let me control how it does it and I don't care for the manner in which it does create them).
iPodder is in no way hard to use. Personally I would say that iTunes and iPodder are about the same right now although iTunes admittedly has more built-in search whereas with iPodder you'll need to merely search the web or go to Podcast Alley.
I'm sorry, but I just can't stop laughing when you called those vast, uninformed sheepish herds "politically aware". They're aware to the extent that their pre-biased lowest-common denominator media outlet tells them how to feel.
The fact that they are politically potent... now that just makes me shiver in the corner all afternoon.
In my opinion there are only two really good DS games out at the moment and one that's pretty good: Meteos, Kirby: Canvas Curse, and Mario 64 DS. Part of the reason that I bought my DS recently though was because of the massive slate of really good games on the horizon: Castlevania DS, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, New Super Mario Bros., Mario and Luigi 2, Mario Kart DS (with the new online multiplayer), Trauma Center, Sonic Rush, etc. Not to mention the many solid GBA titles coming out that also run on it and you've got a very solid platform.
Based on what I've seen the PSP has Lumines and Metal Gear Acid. Grand Theft Auto might be good, but not enough info has really come out yet.
The problem is that a fair value is what the seller is willing to take. If I'm not willing to sell for any amount of money then there will not be a fair value given to me. If the blue book value of my car is only $200 and I'm given that as a fair value it does nothing for the fact that I now have $200 that won't buy anything whereas before I had a running vehicle that I relied on heavily. What, for that matter, should be the price for a worthless item of great sentimental value?
In this case fair value is being determined by someone who has no ability to determine the true value.
Don't you yanks all swear to uphold and protect the constitution, so help you god?
Not one bit. I'm only willing to uphold and protect my own rational self-interest and there's no way you'd get me to swear to do even that. Especially not on that "under god" bit seeing as I'm an atheist. Even better is that the very statement itself is paradoxical as the Constitution would include the freedom from the imposition of a state religion... that will be protected by my religious adherence.
Don't you have the right to protect against home invasion?
Again, no. You have the right to attempt to protect yourself and then be sued by the invader for damages both physical and psychological. By the time you're done you'll have been robbed both by the robber himself as well as the courts and the lawyers.
They can certainly limit the Federal Government's eminent domain power, but that's rarely used and almost always for genunine public uses (military bases, federal buildings, etc)
I can even make a valid statement that military bases and federal buildings are not in the public's interest. I mean, do we really need more war and more mindless bureaucracy? I know I certain feel that, in most cases, both of those would be in opposition to what I consider "good". The same goes for taking private land in order to built a privately-owned sports arena. I have no interest in the sport. The owners are going to get rich off of the place, traffic will be terrible, and I'll have to put up with more sports-obsessed idiots in my local community. None of these options are "good" despite the increase in local taxes... something that may be good for the government, but is unlikely to ever be spent on programs or policies that will actually benefit me... unless I want to build a new sports arena and need a convenient way to force people to sell their land against their will at well below the price they would even be willing to consider.
One of the fundamental problems though is that regardless of the public good this is a case where there may exist a tyranny of the majority. Just because it benefits others doesn't mean that my rights ought to be invalidated.
"Adequate" compensation though rarely is. Part of the problem is that the value is determined to be the market value which in many cases is different from the actual personal value in many ways: e.g. sentimental value ("This house has been in my family for 5 generations"), inability to replace (my car is only "worth" $100, but it's actual value to me as a functional, albeit crappy, vehicle is much, much greater than that), and so on. As much as I vehemently oppose the idea of emminent domain (or social security or anything else where my property is confiscated under the guise of it being to my benefit) the only price that should be issued is the value the owner is willing to sell it for. Of course, the only way to put that into practice is to get rid of emminent domain.
Part of the problem with this is that if the owner is asking more for their land than the "market value" because they perceive that it actually has more value to them (and likely does in almost every single possible case, not to mention compensation for moving, inconvenience, etc.) a coporation can likely quite easily prove that the public good would be better served by the tax monies that they would bring in and get the land they want for less than the actual "fair market value" (i.e. what the seller is willing to accept, not what someone else tells the seller they have to accept).
This isn't just a mockery of the ideals upon which this country was founded, but in itself a mockery of the capitalist system as a whole.
Exactly. I greatly miss my local indie shop (they closed last year after a building under construction next door had a large cement post fall over in high winds and crush half the store) because they did a wonderful job of selling used games, forgotten systems, and high quality used PC games. As far as new games went they were never really that great, but they had a huge lock on selling me an old copy of Solar Jetman or fixing my '89 vintage Gameboy on the cheap.
If you're buying a game at a larger store though: 1) Want used? You better. If it's not this month's hot new title then they don't carry it new. 2)What manual? They don't give a damn about the quality of their merchandise, just high prices for used games (maybe $5 off the new price except it's missing the manual and the disc is probably scratched by some infidel). 3)Swap meet mentality. These people aren't collectors or gamers. They cater to the frat-boy market who wants to buy a game, rush through it as fast as possible and then come back next week to trade in in for next to nothing so they can sell it for almost full-price again.
Smaller shops aren't always perfect, but they tend to cater to gamers. The big chain at the mall just caters to people who buy games.
That's definitely true. The thing is most larger stores tend to take hiring as more of a rote exercise in getting warm bodies to jockey the register and tend not to care what you know. Most of them also are more likely to have policies in place designed specifically to infuriate customers (one time at EB Games while purchasing one new and one used title I was asked to: join their club, buy game insurance, buy a strategy guide and something I can't even remember anymore). I know when I worked in retail one of the training manuals listed "I'm just looking" as being some sort of negative stance the customer takes to avoid being sold to that you had to break down because all customers really, really, really want you to sell stuff to them rather than browse without annoying sales staff.
As for my local shop, it perished when a nearby bar that was destroyed by a fire was being rebuilt and a giant cement strut fell over in the wind and crushed the store. They kept saying they'd come back, but eventually just gave up.
I have to say the the coverage of the Gamestop employee was right on: PS2 and XBox fanboys almost exclusively dominate. Rarely will an employee even consider that a Gamecube is worthy of anything other than contempt. It's clearly only designed for children. I find most tend to be in the XBox camp though. The number of Halo-junkie frat-boy gamers is pretty heavy. Now, finding PC gamers, people who respect the Gamecube for having a strong library, or someone who played anything before the PSX came out are increasingly rare.
On the other hand what can you really expect of minimum-wage earning teenagers who don't give a damn? Ever go into a Blockbuster and start asking them about a movie that doesn't feature explosions or *gasp* came out more than a year or two ago? It's like hitting a baby with a pipe wrench, but not nearly as much fun. Then again I'm lucky, my last two trips to my local video shop got me involved in a conversation about the French New Wave with one clerk and another gave me double punches on my card for picking up Friday the 13th (way to pick out the old-school loving horror fangirl).
If you want knowlegable employees who actually give a damn try shopping at a smaller, local game shop... though honestly I'll admit that they're very, very rare.
Dammit. They both failed to follow policy. In each case they should have asked the cust. if they wanted to pre-order a copy of the new Sonic MMORPG or possibly a copy of Duke Nukem Forever. Taking pre-orders on products only rumoured or barely announced is the lifeblood of the industry!
While it had been announced for quite a while I still found it amusing when a clerk tried to get me to pre-order Twilight Princess. This was well before E3, I believe it was actually this past March. Sorry I'd rather wait until the game actually has a name first before I try to buy it. Then again the way they've moved for console games is to push everything into pre-sales and only carry one or two copies in the store. If you want a game that came out more than a month or two ago you're horribly backwards and will have to try and dig through used copies that showed up two days after release because some "l33t" idiot powered through it without sleep and can't be bothered to own it any longer. He also managed to lose the manual and case in the that same time. Better buy it for $5 less than the new price!
I totally agree with you. My work e-mail is for work use. In fact, at my (admittedly crappy) job we don't have access to any outside e-mail. Now, the occasional personal message is likely not going to be something that most people would consider a problem. Not unlike using your work phone to make a short, simple, and reasonable local phone call. I was instead bringing up the devil's advocate position at the other end that the further and further you go towards the idea that the company owns your time at work the closer you come to a very barely bearable situation where they literally do own your ever second at work.
While you make a very valid point it's also easy enough to slide it down the slippery slope. What if an employee isn't thinking about their work for every second of the day? What if they have a personal conversation that takes up valuable minutes when they could be working?
Should people be working while at work? Yes. But to take every single paid second and expect someone to be doing and thinking about nothing other than work for the entire time is actually quite cruel when you get down to it. I should know, I've been working phone support too long and on busy days the only time when you're not doing actual, constant, no split-second to catch your breath work is breaks and lunch (which if you're lucky they won't decide to cut in half at the last minute). Working non-stop for a full eight hours is pretty damn unpleasant.
I'm being just as much of a devil's advocate, but honestly... the idea of wasting a few minutes of company time is sounds like it came from someone who actually has an unmonitored minute during their day in which to waste.
Rentals are $4.50?!?! Where are you renting? I pay $2 (5 days), $3 for new releases (3 days). All this from a store with a huge selection, great service, and wonderful acquisitions policy.
I have to agree that $5 is a bit short. That's closer to the average matinee or possibly student rate (gotta love my town, a college town near an army base and the only place in town doesn't offer discount for students or the military). I pay $5 by getting passes through AAA. Normal rates are closer to $7 or $7.50.
Bah, "Arrested Development" is not only far more brilliant, but it also has a strong fan base, is critically acclaimed, and has won an Emmy. Fox will certainly cancel it first!
Just saw "House" the other day though and it is indeed excellent. I have little interest in the entire medical drama genre (I think TiVo actually gives it the best tags: Medical and Mystery though I'd probably want to add in Comedy. Then again TiVo also described Sealab 2021 as: Drama, Fantasy) but a season pass went on the TiVo as soon as it was over.
While I'm not a parent I really can't see the harm here. Sex offenders (of which pedophiles were never specified) are not going to leap out of the television and molest your children. It seems highly unlikely that sex offenders would even be bothered to spend the time playing online games in the hope that they might be able to eventually convince a child to meet them. If they want to molest children there are likely far simpler methods.
Quite frankly the far more logical solution is the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. Only allow people to randomly meet people from other areas. If the only people they know live 100 miles away they're not going to go out and meet up with them and it will stay online.
OK. I doubt Fox really tried to damage the show, but as many others have stated it was not managed very well. In this respect Fox does not have a very good track record. Futurama was also quite popular (and is doing wonderfully on Adult Swim) and has had good DVD sales. Family Guy, though, is probably the best case. It had a bad timeslot that constantly changed and even those fans who really enjoyed the show were largely unable to watch it through a combination of timeslot issues and constantly pre-empting the show for more sports or something else. If I can't actually watch the show it's probably not going to do very well. In this case Fox realized their mistake after cancelation and were lucky enough to be able to bring it back from the dead with massive fan support.
As for Firefly being popular, well... the DVD sales have been very good and almost everyone who has watched it on DVD has raved about it afterwards. I was one of those people who briefly saw some ads that didn't look all that great and never bothered with it on TV. Thirty minutes into the first episode on DVD and I was hooked. If there had maybe been something better done during the brief period when it was on TV I might have actually started watching it then.
The best indication of the popularity is the fact that it has a very strong online fan community and the recent preview screenings sold out in a very, very short period of time. Obviously there is not a lack of support.
No. As far as I am aware a stipulation of the contract between Fox and Universal is that there cannot be another TV show. Fox really hates it when people thwart it's best efforts to destroy something popular. More realistically is that Fox just doesn't want the competition. If Universal comes and makes the movie and it reinvigorates the concept and leads to a successful TV show they don't want to have given that up.
Yet again the interests of business prevail over the interests of the consumers.