Entities like Patreon and Paypal before it all have a mixed history when it comes to adult material. Quite often, they get their inroads by offering a place where such media can thrive, and then when they get established, they start to become negative towards the type of material that gave them their start. Youtube is another entity that has done exactly that. I imagine that the next payment processor the sex industry uses as its standard will hit a point where it stops allowing adult material to be processed through its machinery. There's this weird desire to become "legit" that ends up being the reason why it then starts to fail (the porn producers leave and magically, so does the profit). So far, a few have still managed to survive, like Youtube, but I suspect that may just because I'm early at watching what's happening with it.
I can imagine that the people at Amazon took some time and thought through the scenarios of this. Having said that, it's not a service I desire in any way, and I'm a serious user of Amazon Prime. So far, I don't see anything about the service that makes me want to invest the time and energy in having it installed.
I've bought practically every version of the Iphone that has been released, so I'm obviously an Iphone fan, but I can see how people might get a bit upset over this. The part I believe Apple failed is in its agreement with cellular phone companies, in which it plays the "well, we didn't say it, so you have to blame them" game. Apple should have made it a part of their contract with cellular phone companies that they reveal IN THEIR contracts with customers that the Iphone is only guaranteed to work for a year, especially when these companies contract payment plans that last over a year.
The part that really bothers me is that no matter how much work I do, how much security I try to add to my own systems, I'm still subject to the stupidity of companies that I do business with, and usually they're companies that I don't really have a choice about whether or not to do business with them (unless I wish to be a Luddite, living in a cave). This has happened with banks, cable companies, Internet providers, the freaking government, practically every computer gaming company and/or computer-related entity. And usually we find out through some cryptic message of "you need to change your password cause something may or may not have happened". It's really frustrating.
The only type of crowdfunding product I will generally "invest" in is a computer game. And that usually requires a number of factors before I'll put any money into it. 1) It must be from someone with a track record of successful games, most likely in that genre, 2) Must be heading towards completion because I never give money to any project that is basically "I have this great idea for a game....", and 3) It isn't from a company that should be making this game without crowdfunding in the first place. This sounds really restrictive, but I've helped crowdfund a lot of games in my time because I believe in them. A few have failed, and a few I'm suspecting probably won't actually end up being released. But for the most part, a lot of those have been successful and worth the investment. Granted, I'm not getting money from the game released, but I'm getting a game that is certainly a lot of fun to play.
I love it when a company gives me all the information I need before I decide to buy one of their products. Knowing they're a "do things our way, or take the highway" kind of company allows me to switch to a higher gear and continue on down the highway.
Part of the problem is that criminals are learning quicker than before and where you used to have foreign entities contacting people with broken English or sending emails/letters with horrible spelling, they're getting a lot better, and companies like AT&T, Verizon and such don't consider themselves part of the problem, so they're going to be easy to grab the information and then completely screw other people over. Some of these companies don't even tell you when they've been breached, basically saying it would be a good idea to change your password, but not tell you why or when it was in question. In the past few months, I've had to change passwords to different services more times than I can count, which means they're getting the information they need to breach. It's only a matter of time before a bunch of pretty much lose everything and are tossed aside because then we won't have any resources to make the businesses interested in helping us.
Back when I was a web designer in the infancy of the Internet, I ended up dealing with this a lot. I built and maintained web sites for a bunch of different, diverse companies and one of them was an adult bookstore. The woman that owned that store was a very nice person who sold her smutty books in peace and in person was the complete opposite of the content of any of those books. But after a few years of being hosted by a net provider, a new person was promoted to a higher position at that company, and he went nuts. He was extremely religious and couldn't believe that this "scumbag" was providing "evil" to the masses. Without warning, he completely shut down that site and deleted EVERYTHING off of its servers. He then went after the shopping cart provider for the site and threatened to pull everyone of their clients off his site as well, if they didn't stop servicing the bookstore (even though he now had no connection to it any more). I ended up having to build a shopping cart for her with PHP (learning it over the weekend so I could figure out how to program it), and then I found her a more "adult-friendly" host. But I learned real quick like that people can be really cruel to you for almost no reason whatsoever, even if you've been that person's customer for years in a good, friendly relationship.
One of the problems I've been running into is that movies these days are extremely long. Now, this could be seen as a great thing (the value versus the price), but because it's in a movie theater, you can't exactly pause the movie if you need to use the restroom, and when you're seeing a movie that goes beyond 3 hours, it's sometimes a necessity, especially if foolish enough to order a soda before the movie starts. So, almost always, I miss about ten minutes of the movie that can sometimes be a really important moment of the show (which you don't know because you've never seen the movie before). It's part of why I see fewer movies in the theater and just wait until I can watch it at home. There were a couple of movies I wanted to watch this year, but I knew the length of them was going to be problematic, and couple that with people who feel the need to check their cell phones during the movie, and you start to see why people see fewer movies in the theater.
Every time I drive past there it makes me sick to think that shitbird wasn't immediately run out of town. If I had lived in the area I'd have cut that lock every night.
My understanding from another article I read about this case is that he had armed guards as well, so cutting that lock might have been difficult, if not dangerous.
If it weren't for having my longest running line of credit with them, I'd have walked into a branch, shredded my credit card and given them the two finger salute years ago.
To be honest, I watch the show for the drama and the action. The "reveals" are cool, too, but hardly the reason why every episode is causing me to watch it. After the show airs, they have literally nothing of value. Right now, they have extremely weak leverage that they can release to the world and only the people who are incapable of waiting for the episode will find out what's going to happen. Those of us who aren't interested in spoilers will wait until the episodes air, and we'll be just fine with it. If ever there was a reason to not panic, this "leak" is it.
Part of the problem with this study is the bad interpretations of the study after the study was concluded (and this was done by the click bait articles about it rather than the scientist journal that described it). If their conclusions are significant (and more studies, specifically case studies, are needed to determine just that), what they have found is that repetitive actions in a game long term is problematic, but long term playing of the game is not the causal mechanism itself. Because what they found was that doing the same thing over and over again over long periods is what causes the negative ramifications. So, a fps player would have to play the same sequences over and over again in order to achieve this mundane existence that causes the loss. Playing a game over a long period of time would allow the player to interact with continuously changing environments (not doing the same exact thing over and over again), whereas their study focuses more on doing the same activities extensively (which they term "autopilot" mode). So, a repetitive game would be bad; a fps involving exploring would probably be a lot better.
One of the predictions I made some time ago was that most of the providers and creators were going to eventually hit a point where they were going to want to control the distribution. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it's probably going to happen many times in the future, because studio executives exist in a bubble world where they believe their content is a necessity rather than a desire. As more and more people realize that content creators are holding the content hostage, more and more people will just stop watching and find other pursuits to occupy their time. This has been the fear that creators have been living with for decades, and more and more executives go into this business thinking that people "need" that content rather than "want" that content. But it's always been a cost benefit analysis that decides wants vs. needs, and as more of them suppress the ability to receive content, the fewer customers they will end up having. And the way that works is when you lose customers, you often never get them back because they find other pleasure centers that fulfill any lacks thereof. This is why CBS access is failing (and now they're trying to boost it with a promise of Star Trek), and it's probably why Disney will end up suffering as well. There's a threshold people will withstand before they just abandon ship.
It's true that their prices were pretty bad this time around, which automatically makes me think they jacked up the price and then brought them down as "on sale". I shop Amazon all of the time, so I'm constantly paying attention to prices there. Nothing seemed impressive to me on that day. What I did discover was that they kept trying to sell me LOTS of stuff that I would never buy in a million years. Mostly junk. Every time I thought I saw a large ticket item, it was already sold out, or the item was "out of sale", even though I never saw it on sale to begin with.
Years ago, I opened a PO box in San Francisco, and the previous occupant of that box was an international organization of a suicide advocacy group. At first, I would write "wrong address" or "attempted not known" on the envelopes and return them to the postal counter. Inevitably, it would go right back into my PO box again. And they got TONS and TONS of mail. Some of the mail I could see through the envelopes that there were actually checks in them. So I tried to get in touch with the actual organization (although their contact was my PO box). I found a phone number and tried to contact them, but the person I spoke to had to be the rudest person I'd ever spoken to. I tried to explain that I had TONS of mail for them, including a lot of it that was most likely checks for their books and product information. Guy was nothing but hostile.
So I dumped everything into the trash for the many months that this stuff kept coming to me. I can only imagine how much money they threw down the toilet because their customer service person was someone who just hated people.
I have been paying for HBO Now through Apple TV for about as long as it's been around. I know it's possible to get it for free by doing it the nefarious way, but I tend to support things I believe in, and $15 a month for a service I believe in is quite fine. I tried the CBS streaming service when it first came out and I quickly discovered it was not worth it, so I don't pay for that (but I don't watch any of their stuff either), so like I said: As long as I think it's worth it, I'll pay for it. If it's not worth it, I don't pay for it, and I don't watch it.
I've often wondered how these collection agencies are capable of proving that they own the debt. I know that a lot of these companies buy tons of these debts for pennies on the dollar, and my understanding is that they get this information as lists of debt on spreadsheets. How is that proof? Or are they getting the actual "original" documents that were signed those decades ago? I know that when they contact you, they act all tough and want immediate payment, but getting them to "prove it" to you usually ends up in a hang up and then a repeat of the phone calls a week or so later. To be honest, I've never understood the legal boundaries on either side of this situation, other than the borrower finally giving in and "doing the right thing". Fortunately, I'm not in such a circumstance right now, but my curiosity has never been sated on this issue.
I'm a drinker of diet sodas, but what really bothers me is that people really over-emphasize the "diet" in the name. I wish they'd change the name so people would stop focusing on the "diet" part of the name. I don't drink these things because it's a "diet" drink or because it has no calories. I drink them because I can't stand the taste of sugary drinks. Yet, I've suffered some of the stupidest comments from people who seem to be self-proclaimed "experts" on diet drinks, only to be disproved by actually speaking out loud. And people really, really want to give their opinions about the subject when none was ever asked for. I've had some people think I'm in good shape because of diet sodas, and I've had others warn me that I might suffer and end up in bad shape because I drink them. They kind of ignore the possibility that going to the gym every other day might have a lot more to do with it.
Just imagine how out of control our legal system will get when a robot designed with logic tries to deal with the "logic" of why people get divorced (or married, for that matter).
For me, what I find most interesting is the amount of attention at least two of those entities have paid to trying to convince people that they're not for gutting the rules, yet are waging huge campaigns with their own money to do exactly that.
Slashdot Mirror
Entities like Patreon and Paypal before it all have a mixed history when it comes to adult material. Quite often, they get their inroads by offering a place where such media can thrive, and then when they get established, they start to become negative towards the type of material that gave them their start. Youtube is another entity that has done exactly that. I imagine that the next payment processor the sex industry uses as its standard will hit a point where it stops allowing adult material to be processed through its machinery. There's this weird desire to become "legit" that ends up being the reason why it then starts to fail (the porn producers leave and magically, so does the profit). So far, a few have still managed to survive, like Youtube, but I suspect that may just because I'm early at watching what's happening with it.
It's always been this way. When Americans talk about "morals", they're talking about sex, but violence is perfectly okay.
I can imagine that the people at Amazon took some time and thought through the scenarios of this. Having said that, it's not a service I desire in any way, and I'm a serious user of Amazon Prime. So far, I don't see anything about the service that makes me want to invest the time and energy in having it installed.
I've bought practically every version of the Iphone that has been released, so I'm obviously an Iphone fan, but I can see how people might get a bit upset over this. The part I believe Apple failed is in its agreement with cellular phone companies, in which it plays the "well, we didn't say it, so you have to blame them" game. Apple should have made it a part of their contract with cellular phone companies that they reveal IN THEIR contracts with customers that the Iphone is only guaranteed to work for a year, especially when these companies contract payment plans that last over a year.
I heard the real reason for the change is that Siri was found having an affair with Alexa, and it may have been filmed by Cortana.
The part that really bothers me is that no matter how much work I do, how much security I try to add to my own systems, I'm still subject to the stupidity of companies that I do business with, and usually they're companies that I don't really have a choice about whether or not to do business with them (unless I wish to be a Luddite, living in a cave). This has happened with banks, cable companies, Internet providers, the freaking government, practically every computer gaming company and/or computer-related entity. And usually we find out through some cryptic message of "you need to change your password cause something may or may not have happened". It's really frustrating.
The only type of crowdfunding product I will generally "invest" in is a computer game. And that usually requires a number of factors before I'll put any money into it. 1) It must be from someone with a track record of successful games, most likely in that genre, 2) Must be heading towards completion because I never give money to any project that is basically "I have this great idea for a game....", and 3) It isn't from a company that should be making this game without crowdfunding in the first place. This sounds really restrictive, but I've helped crowdfund a lot of games in my time because I believe in them. A few have failed, and a few I'm suspecting probably won't actually end up being released. But for the most part, a lot of those have been successful and worth the investment. Granted, I'm not getting money from the game released, but I'm getting a game that is certainly a lot of fun to play.
I love it when a company gives me all the information I need before I decide to buy one of their products. Knowing they're a "do things our way, or take the highway" kind of company allows me to switch to a higher gear and continue on down the highway.
Part of the problem is that criminals are learning quicker than before and where you used to have foreign entities contacting people with broken English or sending emails/letters with horrible spelling, they're getting a lot better, and companies like AT&T, Verizon and such don't consider themselves part of the problem, so they're going to be easy to grab the information and then completely screw other people over. Some of these companies don't even tell you when they've been breached, basically saying it would be a good idea to change your password, but not tell you why or when it was in question. In the past few months, I've had to change passwords to different services more times than I can count, which means they're getting the information they need to breach. It's only a matter of time before a bunch of pretty much lose everything and are tossed aside because then we won't have any resources to make the businesses interested in helping us.
Back when I was a web designer in the infancy of the Internet, I ended up dealing with this a lot. I built and maintained web sites for a bunch of different, diverse companies and one of them was an adult bookstore. The woman that owned that store was a very nice person who sold her smutty books in peace and in person was the complete opposite of the content of any of those books. But after a few years of being hosted by a net provider, a new person was promoted to a higher position at that company, and he went nuts. He was extremely religious and couldn't believe that this "scumbag" was providing "evil" to the masses. Without warning, he completely shut down that site and deleted EVERYTHING off of its servers. He then went after the shopping cart provider for the site and threatened to pull everyone of their clients off his site as well, if they didn't stop servicing the bookstore (even though he now had no connection to it any more). I ended up having to build a shopping cart for her with PHP (learning it over the weekend so I could figure out how to program it), and then I found her a more "adult-friendly" host. But I learned real quick like that people can be really cruel to you for almost no reason whatsoever, even if you've been that person's customer for years in a good, friendly relationship.
One of the problems I've been running into is that movies these days are extremely long. Now, this could be seen as a great thing (the value versus the price), but because it's in a movie theater, you can't exactly pause the movie if you need to use the restroom, and when you're seeing a movie that goes beyond 3 hours, it's sometimes a necessity, especially if foolish enough to order a soda before the movie starts. So, almost always, I miss about ten minutes of the movie that can sometimes be a really important moment of the show (which you don't know because you've never seen the movie before). It's part of why I see fewer movies in the theater and just wait until I can watch it at home. There were a couple of movies I wanted to watch this year, but I knew the length of them was going to be problematic, and couple that with people who feel the need to check their cell phones during the movie, and you start to see why people see fewer movies in the theater.
Every time I drive past there it makes me sick to think that shitbird wasn't immediately run out of town. If I had lived in the area I'd have cut that lock every night.
My understanding from another article I read about this case is that he had armed guards as well, so cutting that lock might have been difficult, if not dangerous.
>
If it weren't for having my longest running line of credit with them, I'd have walked into a branch, shredded my credit card and given them the two finger salute years ago.
A peace sign? The Vulcan sign of prosperity?
To be honest, I watch the show for the drama and the action. The "reveals" are cool, too, but hardly the reason why every episode is causing me to watch it. After the show airs, they have literally nothing of value. Right now, they have extremely weak leverage that they can release to the world and only the people who are incapable of waiting for the episode will find out what's going to happen. Those of us who aren't interested in spoilers will wait until the episodes air, and we'll be just fine with it. If ever there was a reason to not panic, this "leak" is it.
Part of the problem with this study is the bad interpretations of the study after the study was concluded (and this was done by the click bait articles about it rather than the scientist journal that described it). If their conclusions are significant (and more studies, specifically case studies, are needed to determine just that), what they have found is that repetitive actions in a game long term is problematic, but long term playing of the game is not the causal mechanism itself. Because what they found was that doing the same thing over and over again over long periods is what causes the negative ramifications. So, a fps player would have to play the same sequences over and over again in order to achieve this mundane existence that causes the loss. Playing a game over a long period of time would allow the player to interact with continuously changing environments (not doing the same exact thing over and over again), whereas their study focuses more on doing the same activities extensively (which they term "autopilot" mode). So, a repetitive game would be bad; a fps involving exploring would probably be a lot better.
One of the predictions I made some time ago was that most of the providers and creators were going to eventually hit a point where they were going to want to control the distribution. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it's probably going to happen many times in the future, because studio executives exist in a bubble world where they believe their content is a necessity rather than a desire. As more and more people realize that content creators are holding the content hostage, more and more people will just stop watching and find other pursuits to occupy their time. This has been the fear that creators have been living with for decades, and more and more executives go into this business thinking that people "need" that content rather than "want" that content. But it's always been a cost benefit analysis that decides wants vs. needs, and as more of them suppress the ability to receive content, the fewer customers they will end up having. And the way that works is when you lose customers, you often never get them back because they find other pleasure centers that fulfill any lacks thereof. This is why CBS access is failing (and now they're trying to boost it with a promise of Star Trek), and it's probably why Disney will end up suffering as well. There's a threshold people will withstand before they just abandon ship.
It's true that their prices were pretty bad this time around, which automatically makes me think they jacked up the price and then brought them down as "on sale". I shop Amazon all of the time, so I'm constantly paying attention to prices there. Nothing seemed impressive to me on that day. What I did discover was that they kept trying to sell me LOTS of stuff that I would never buy in a million years. Mostly junk. Every time I thought I saw a large ticket item, it was already sold out, or the item was "out of sale", even though I never saw it on sale to begin with.
I think this was in the book of Revelations. Page 75, Paragraph 8b.
Years ago, I opened a PO box in San Francisco, and the previous occupant of that box was an international organization of a suicide advocacy group. At first, I would write "wrong address" or "attempted not known" on the envelopes and return them to the postal counter. Inevitably, it would go right back into my PO box again. And they got TONS and TONS of mail. Some of the mail I could see through the envelopes that there were actually checks in them. So I tried to get in touch with the actual organization (although their contact was my PO box). I found a phone number and tried to contact them, but the person I spoke to had to be the rudest person I'd ever spoken to. I tried to explain that I had TONS of mail for them, including a lot of it that was most likely checks for their books and product information. Guy was nothing but hostile. So I dumped everything into the trash for the many months that this stuff kept coming to me. I can only imagine how much money they threw down the toilet because their customer service person was someone who just hated people.
I have been paying for HBO Now through Apple TV for about as long as it's been around. I know it's possible to get it for free by doing it the nefarious way, but I tend to support things I believe in, and $15 a month for a service I believe in is quite fine. I tried the CBS streaming service when it first came out and I quickly discovered it was not worth it, so I don't pay for that (but I don't watch any of their stuff either), so like I said: As long as I think it's worth it, I'll pay for it. If it's not worth it, I don't pay for it, and I don't watch it.
I've often wondered how these collection agencies are capable of proving that they own the debt. I know that a lot of these companies buy tons of these debts for pennies on the dollar, and my understanding is that they get this information as lists of debt on spreadsheets. How is that proof? Or are they getting the actual "original" documents that were signed those decades ago? I know that when they contact you, they act all tough and want immediate payment, but getting them to "prove it" to you usually ends up in a hang up and then a repeat of the phone calls a week or so later. To be honest, I've never understood the legal boundaries on either side of this situation, other than the borrower finally giving in and "doing the right thing". Fortunately, I'm not in such a circumstance right now, but my curiosity has never been sated on this issue.
I'm a drinker of diet sodas, but what really bothers me is that people really over-emphasize the "diet" in the name. I wish they'd change the name so people would stop focusing on the "diet" part of the name. I don't drink these things because it's a "diet" drink or because it has no calories. I drink them because I can't stand the taste of sugary drinks. Yet, I've suffered some of the stupidest comments from people who seem to be self-proclaimed "experts" on diet drinks, only to be disproved by actually speaking out loud. And people really, really want to give their opinions about the subject when none was ever asked for. I've had some people think I'm in good shape because of diet sodas, and I've had others warn me that I might suffer and end up in bad shape because I drink them. They kind of ignore the possibility that going to the gym every other day might have a lot more to do with it.
Congratulations to Juno. Just think: Only yesterday they were a forgettable email program, and now they're traveling to Mars. Isn't technology great?
Just imagine how out of control our legal system will get when a robot designed with logic tries to deal with the "logic" of why people get divorced (or married, for that matter).
For me, what I find most interesting is the amount of attention at least two of those entities have paid to trying to convince people that they're not for gutting the rules, yet are waging huge campaigns with their own money to do exactly that.