Besides, why are these people letting small children play videogames by themselves?
Obviously you don't have children. What makes you think they're playing the games? Hmm... bright shiny disc, fun for throwing... I can't imagine how or why a child might end up damaging something like that.
What Portal has: unique, groundbreaking gameplay (well, aside from Narbuncular Drop, which pioneered the idea), great voice acting, good plot/writing (not incredibly involved, but surprising for what I expected was a simple puzzler).
What Portal doesn't have: flashy new graphics.
Are you suggesting the latter is somehow more important than the former? Really? That's pretty sad, if that's the case.
I don't feel like going through the annoyance of having my toiletries inspected at the security line
Wha? I've flown a fair bit, and I *never* check a bag (lost over $1000 worth of clothes thanks to a fucking airline... never again). I put all my toiletries (usually travel sized shampoo, shaving cream, etc) inside a ziplock, and prior to security, take it out. I've never had a problem. They pick up the bag, glance at it, and that's about it.
Now, that's not to say the security theatre isn't a pain in the ass. At minimum, it's jacked up processing time significantly, which means long lineups at the best of times, and don't even both traveling during times like American Thanksgiving. But the actual process of going through security has, for me, been consistently smooth and straight forward.
'course, not being a member of a visible minority probably helps...:/
in 10 years, the 'web' won't be around, I would guess. something else might, but it seems that the current model is not going to 'scale' very much more than it is now.
Yes, I'm allowed to stand in the book store and read a couple of pages, I'm allowed to try the shoes for size, I'm shown movie trailers.
How, exactly, is that equivalent to downloading an album and then paying for it only after you've listened through it? Or do you make a habit of reading entire books and watching whole movies before paying the purchase price?
Even in the restaurant I'm legally allowed to not pay the marked prices if it's rubbish.
Umm, no, you're not. If a restaurant wanted to press it, they could charge you with theft. Most probably wouldn't, but the fact is, it's very much illegal.
I never buy a book without reading a piece of it first... I never buy a game unless I can try at least a demo first... I never pay to see a movie until I've seen a trailer.
Yeah... because those are all exactly the same thing as downloading an entire album, listening to it, and then deciding to pay.
What you want is equivalent to taking a book from a store, reading the whole thing, and then deciding if you want to pay. Or pirating a game and playing through it. Or sitting down in a movie theatre, and only paying the ticket price afterward.
Should Radiohead have put up low quality samples of the songs for people to preview? Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea. But the idea that you should be allowed to "try-before-you-buy" the entire album is simply ridiculous.
Whenever possible I try to size up unknown restaurants by asking for recommendations, looking over the menu, and peeking at what other people are eating.
So go read reviews of the album.
Only total idiots buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first.
So stores let you leave and walk around in a new pair of shoes for a couple days before deciding to buy them? Really? Because trying them on in the store is *hardly* the same thing as actually wearing them for a while. Or have you never tried on a pair of shoes, thought they fit well, only to discover days later that they gave you blisters?
Fundamentally, it seems you're confusing sampling a product versus getting something for free to see if you like it or not, and then deciding to pay after the fact.
Sampling? Sure, that makes sense. Hell, that's the entire reason radio exists. But the idea that Radiohead should have allowed people to download the complete album and pay afterward is, frankly, stupid. Or, perhaps I should say, "very strange"...
You missed the point of that quote that involves not paying someone else for the service.
That would be because you never made that point.
But what happens when your Tivo's hard drive fails?
I can't say. I would assume Tivo has some sort of warranty on their products, but I've never owned one. Meanwhile, if one of the drives in my system fails, I just replace it. And because I'm using RAID-based storage, I never have to worry about losing a recording. Can you say the same for your "superior" PVR product?
You can get that for free from your cable company, or pay Tivo an extra $12 a month.
Or you get it for about $1.50 per month from here, and use whichever third party PVR product you prefer (well, aside from TiVo, obviously).
And I will *guarantee* you, my Myth system will do far more than your HD PVR ever will, and is far more expandable and customizable. The only problem is, because cable companies like yours have locked down their systems to third party gear (while offering unbelievably crappy PVR products of their own), I can't get direct access to HD feeds, among other things. Now, that doesn't really bother me much, since I won't be going HD any time soon, and I have a very nice setup for doing capture of SD, but for many it's a deal breaker, and all because cable companies like your own are nothing more than greedy bastards. It's basically the cell phone market all over again.
Now, I will be the first to admit that a setup like mine isn't for many (or even most). But I would be willing to bet you would see a proliferation of new PVR products, and users, if cable operators opened their networks. Further, it might encourage the cable cos to release higher quality PVRs of their own. But, unfortunately, that ain't gonna happen.
Just because it was aired one way for you, doesn't mean it was the same for he or me.
If that's the case, whoever is airing the programming in your area is actually *cutting out* some of the programming. Lost, just like other shows, is aired expected breaks in specific positions. Heck, major plot points, etc, are often revealed just before a break. So if they're changing the break structure, they're actively screwing around with the program content.
Frankly, I'm not even sure networks would *allow* a cable company, etc, to cut down their programming in order to show more ads, as that qualifies as creating a derivative work, as they're modifying the copyrighted content they're receiving from the network.
Downloading an episode does not help if it commercial free.
Of course it helps. It specifically tells you how many non-commercial minutes are present in a particular airing.
DVDs always have more content that is cut out to make room for the commercials.
Huh? I never said download a DVD rip. Download a recent airing of any program you like. These shows, which aren't available on DVD yet, will have been ripped from regular ol' network broadcasts (these days, probably the HD equivalent). Such a recording will tell you precisely how much program content was available when the show was aired.
They choose to let it run long the first time they aired it, but subsequent times, it was cut back.
Running long and then being cut back to normal broadcast length is one thing. Cutting out ten minutes or more from a 40 minute show, though, is entirely another, and would be a) extremely noticeable, and b) probably illegal unless it's done with the consent of the broadcast network.
Where do you live? Maybe it is different or different part of the world.
That seems pretty unlikely, given that the programs are shot expecting a certain commercial break structure. Anyway, I watch Lost on whichever US network carries it (NBC? I don't remember...), so if it's got a 5x5 commercial break structure, I'd notice. Meanwhile, go download yourself an episode of Lost, it'll be 40 minutes long, meaning a 2:1 ratio of programming to commercials. And if they are breaking to commercial every 5 minutes where you are, it's only because they're also reducing down the commercial breaks to ~2 minutes in length.
I already mentioned movies being a special case (all networks, especially toward the end, will pack in the commercials during movie airings), which is why I never watch movies on TV unless they're being aired on a specialty channel such as Movie Central. OTOH, I don't watch Spike, save for their syndicated programming, so while they're no worse than any others, in those cases, I have no idea what they're like when airing original material.
Fine, he's wrong for the vast majority of channels and programs. And I, personally, have *never* seen this, except for, as I say, toward the end of movies or during sports programs.
I know that they did that when Lost aired.
I don't know what episodes you were watching, but I've been watching Lost since it started, and I've never noticed this behaviour.
Compare that to contemporary shows in which you get only 44 minutes.
Thank you for proving my point for me. If he were right, programs would be 30 minutes or less after commercials are removed. But that isn't the case, as you yourself pointed out.
That's not to say it's not worse today than it once was (as you say, older programs, such as ST:TOS, have much shorter commercial breaks, on the order of 2.5-3 minutes a pop, spread further apart), but it's hardly 50% content and 50% ads.
Besides, when you use our set top, you get more features.
That seems *exceedingly* unlikely. But, as someone in marketing, I'm sure you've come to believe it.
We give away an on-screen programing guide that wouldn't be available with third-party hardware.
I hate to break it to you, but if your guide data isn't available via TMS, I'd be very surprised (unless your company is also in the business of authoring it's own guide data). And if it's in TMS, it's available to third-party hardware.
Trust me, 200+ channels is a pain to flip through trying to find something to watch.
I'll have to trust you. As the owner of a PVR, I don't remember the last time I had to search through an EPG to find something to watch. I just instruct it to record the shows I like, and they show up. If someone tells me about a show I might like, I hit the Program Finder, set up a recording schedule, and watch it when the episodes appear.
I noticed that they always only played 5 minutes of program material, followed by 5 to 8 minutes of commercials, followed by 5 minutes of program, followed by 5 to 8 minutes of commercials
Too bad that's just flat out wrong. I would know, I have a Myth system that automatically skips the commercials, and it tells me how long the skip period is. On the worst networks, I'm seeing 4-4.5 minute breaks, and that's every 10-12 minutes, I'd guess. The only time it gets as bad as you describe is during sports, or toward the end of movies (of course, I'd never watch a network-broadcast movie in the first place).
lewl, I've been administrating Linux boxes for over ten years now, I know where to look for logs.:) But there's nothing in the gdm logs to indicate what's going wrong. I've also straced gdm, and there wasn't an obvious hint as to what the problem could be. It's got me a bit mystified, TBH. *sigh*
It was for me, too... up until about a week ago, when gdm started crashing repeatedly on boot. I now have it disabled, and must startx manually. 'course, I can't find any mention of anyone else encountering this, and I haven't noticed any updates to gdm or X lately, so I have no idea if it's fixed, yet.
And for the record, the MP3s sound surprisingly good, despite the bitrate. I have pretty sensitive ears to the high-frequency artifacts introduced by MP3 compression, and they aren't at all present on "In Rainbows", and I've been listening to it with my Shure canalphones, which would probably highlight any major defects in the sound.
Of course, without a properly mastered CD to compare to, I can't judge if there was any major quality degradation during the encoding process, but there's certainly no audible artifacting or anything like that. Heck, it's entirely possible they adjusted the raw mix before encoding in order to compensate for the compression step.
Jesus Christ, why? Are you allowed to read a book before you buy it? Are you allowed to see a movie before paying for the ticket? Are you allowed to sample a meal in a restaurant before choosing to pay? Are you allowed to wander around in a pair of shoes before deciding to purchase them? No! Why the hell should an album be any different?
Why should I pay for something, if I have no idea whatsoever if it's worth the money?
I take it you've never once bought an album, then? Or a book? Or a game? Or paid to see a movie? Or bought a meal at a restaurant? Hell, bought a pair of shoes?
In fact, when I hear someone swearing, the first thing that comes to mind is that they're some uneducated, undisciplined ignoramus who can't be bothered to think for themselves or respect the rights of others.
Then you're a self-important, haughty jackass who prejudges people, and I think I speak for many others when I say I'm glad I don't work with/for people such as yourself.
I've never heard a highly performing engineer or programmer swear.
Then you haven't worked in very many workplaces. I work with a number of very talented individuals, and we all swear freely when it seems appropriate.
For some reason, they get a lot more respect than the guy who goes off into a litany of profanity.
Ah, I see, you just don't understand the point of the article. Here, let me explain, since your vast sense of self-importance seems to have clouded your ability to comprehend: we're talking about occasional use of profanity to express frustration, etc. However, that does not, despite your apparent confusion, immediately translate to using "fuck" every other word. Nor does it translate to using profanity as a mechanism for dealing with interpersonal issues.
Increased water vapour causes increased cloud formation, resulting in increased atmospheric albedo, which results in less solar energy deposited in the atmosphere.
IOW, the water vapour picture isn't at all clear, and to assume it's responsible for global warming is, at best, naive, at worst, ignorant and misleading.
The lesser greenhouse gas (both in amount and effectiveness)
Please, tell me what other greenhouse gases, which exceed CO2 in amount and effectiveness, are increasing in atmospheric concentration. I'm honestly quite curious.
But saying bad keyboards don't cause CTS/RSI is like saying smoking only causes cancer in people who are predisposed to it.
Yeah, but there's a difference. You see, in the latter case, studies have proven a causative relationship. In the former, the exact opposite is apparently true, despite what you, personally, want to believe.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, why are these people letting small children play videogames by themselves?
Obviously you don't have children. What makes you think they're playing the games? Hmm... bright shiny disc, fun for throwing... I can't imagine how or why a child might end up damaging something like that.
Reads a bit different when you supply your snip, don't it?
No... it really doesn't.
How is that Kool-aid, anyway?
Hmm:
What Portal has: unique, groundbreaking gameplay (well, aside from Narbuncular Drop, which pioneered the idea), great voice acting, good plot/writing (not incredibly involved, but surprising for what I expected was a simple puzzler).
What Portal doesn't have: flashy new graphics.
Are you suggesting the latter is somehow more important than the former? Really? That's pretty sad, if that's the case.
I don't feel like going through the annoyance of having my toiletries inspected at the security line
:/
Wha? I've flown a fair bit, and I *never* check a bag (lost over $1000 worth of clothes thanks to a fucking airline... never again). I put all my toiletries (usually travel sized shampoo, shaving cream, etc) inside a ziplock, and prior to security, take it out. I've never had a problem. They pick up the bag, glance at it, and that's about it.
Now, that's not to say the security theatre isn't a pain in the ass. At minimum, it's jacked up processing time significantly, which means long lineups at the best of times, and don't even both traveling during times like American Thanksgiving. But the actual process of going through security has, for me, been consistently smooth and straight forward.
'course, not being a member of a visible minority probably helps...
in 10 years, the 'web' won't be around, I would guess. something else might, but it seems that the current model is not going to 'scale' very much more than it is now.
Why?
Yes, I'm allowed to stand in the book store and read a couple of pages, I'm allowed to try the shoes for size, I'm shown movie trailers.
How, exactly, is that equivalent to downloading an album and then paying for it only after you've listened through it? Or do you make a habit of reading entire books and watching whole movies before paying the purchase price?
Even in the restaurant I'm legally allowed to not pay the marked prices if it's rubbish.
Umm, no, you're not. If a restaurant wanted to press it, they could charge you with theft. Most probably wouldn't, but the fact is, it's very much illegal.
I never buy a book without reading a piece of it first...
I never buy a game unless I can try at least a demo first...
I never pay to see a movie until I've seen a trailer.
Yeah... because those are all exactly the same thing as downloading an entire album, listening to it, and then deciding to pay.
What you want is equivalent to taking a book from a store, reading the whole thing, and then deciding if you want to pay. Or pirating a game and playing through it. Or sitting down in a movie theatre, and only paying the ticket price afterward.
Should Radiohead have put up low quality samples of the songs for people to preview? Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea. But the idea that you should be allowed to "try-before-you-buy" the entire album is simply ridiculous.
Whenever possible I try to size up unknown restaurants by asking for recommendations, looking over the menu, and peeking at what other people are eating.
So go read reviews of the album.
Only total idiots buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first.
So stores let you leave and walk around in a new pair of shoes for a couple days before deciding to buy them? Really? Because trying them on in the store is *hardly* the same thing as actually wearing them for a while. Or have you never tried on a pair of shoes, thought they fit well, only to discover days later that they gave you blisters?
Fundamentally, it seems you're confusing sampling a product versus getting something for free to see if you like it or not, and then deciding to pay after the fact.
Sampling? Sure, that makes sense. Hell, that's the entire reason radio exists. But the idea that Radiohead should have allowed people to download the complete album and pay afterward is, frankly, stupid. Or, perhaps I should say, "very strange"...
You missed the point of that quote that involves not paying someone else for the service.
That would be because you never made that point.
But what happens when your Tivo's hard drive fails?
I can't say. I would assume Tivo has some sort of warranty on their products, but I've never owned one. Meanwhile, if one of the drives in my system fails, I just replace it. And because I'm using RAID-based storage, I never have to worry about losing a recording. Can you say the same for your "superior" PVR product?
You can get that for free from your cable company, or pay Tivo an extra $12 a month.
Or you get it for about $1.50 per month from here, and use whichever third party PVR product you prefer (well, aside from TiVo, obviously).
And I will *guarantee* you, my Myth system will do far more than your HD PVR ever will, and is far more expandable and customizable. The only problem is, because cable companies like yours have locked down their systems to third party gear (while offering unbelievably crappy PVR products of their own), I can't get direct access to HD feeds, among other things. Now, that doesn't really bother me much, since I won't be going HD any time soon, and I have a very nice setup for doing capture of SD, but for many it's a deal breaker, and all because cable companies like your own are nothing more than greedy bastards. It's basically the cell phone market all over again.
Now, I will be the first to admit that a setup like mine isn't for many (or even most). But I would be willing to bet you would see a proliferation of new PVR products, and users, if cable operators opened their networks. Further, it might encourage the cable cos to release higher quality PVRs of their own. But, unfortunately, that ain't gonna happen.
Just because it was aired one way for you, doesn't mean it was the same for he or me.
If that's the case, whoever is airing the programming in your area is actually *cutting out* some of the programming. Lost, just like other shows, is aired expected breaks in specific positions. Heck, major plot points, etc, are often revealed just before a break. So if they're changing the break structure, they're actively screwing around with the program content.
Frankly, I'm not even sure networks would *allow* a cable company, etc, to cut down their programming in order to show more ads, as that qualifies as creating a derivative work, as they're modifying the copyrighted content they're receiving from the network.
Downloading an episode does not help if it commercial free.
Of course it helps. It specifically tells you how many non-commercial minutes are present in a particular airing.
DVDs always have more content that is cut out to make room for the commercials.
Huh? I never said download a DVD rip. Download a recent airing of any program you like. These shows, which aren't available on DVD yet, will have been ripped from regular ol' network broadcasts (these days, probably the HD equivalent). Such a recording will tell you precisely how much program content was available when the show was aired.
They choose to let it run long the first time they aired it, but subsequent times, it was cut back.
Running long and then being cut back to normal broadcast length is one thing. Cutting out ten minutes or more from a 40 minute show, though, is entirely another, and would be a) extremely noticeable, and b) probably illegal unless it's done with the consent of the broadcast network.
Where do you live? Maybe it is different or different part of the world.
That seems pretty unlikely, given that the programs are shot expecting a certain commercial break structure. Anyway, I watch Lost on whichever US network carries it (NBC? I don't remember...), so if it's got a 5x5 commercial break structure, I'd notice. Meanwhile, go download yourself an episode of Lost, it'll be 40 minutes long, meaning a 2:1 ratio of programming to commercials. And if they are breaking to commercial every 5 minutes where you are, it's only because they're also reducing down the commercial breaks to ~2 minutes in length.
I already mentioned movies being a special case (all networks, especially toward the end, will pack in the commercials during movie airings), which is why I never watch movies on TV unless they're being aired on a specialty channel such as Movie Central. OTOH, I don't watch Spike, save for their syndicated programming, so while they're no worse than any others, in those cases, I have no idea what they're like when airing original material.
It may not be every program and every channel.
Fine, he's wrong for the vast majority of channels and programs. And I, personally, have *never* seen this, except for, as I say, toward the end of movies or during sports programs.
I know that they did that when Lost aired.
I don't know what episodes you were watching, but I've been watching Lost since it started, and I've never noticed this behaviour.
Compare that to contemporary shows in which you get only 44 minutes.
Thank you for proving my point for me. If he were right, programs would be 30 minutes or less after commercials are removed. But that isn't the case, as you yourself pointed out.
That's not to say it's not worse today than it once was (as you say, older programs, such as ST:TOS, have much shorter commercial breaks, on the order of 2.5-3 minutes a pop, spread further apart), but it's hardly 50% content and 50% ads.
Besides, when you use our set top, you get more features.
That seems *exceedingly* unlikely. But, as someone in marketing, I'm sure you've come to believe it.
We give away an on-screen programing guide that wouldn't be available with third-party hardware.
I hate to break it to you, but if your guide data isn't available via TMS, I'd be very surprised (unless your company is also in the business of authoring it's own guide data). And if it's in TMS, it's available to third-party hardware.
Trust me, 200+ channels is a pain to flip through trying to find something to watch.
I'll have to trust you. As the owner of a PVR, I don't remember the last time I had to search through an EPG to find something to watch. I just instruct it to record the shows I like, and they show up. If someone tells me about a show I might like, I hit the Program Finder, set up a recording schedule, and watch it when the episodes appear.
I noticed that they always only played 5 minutes of program material, followed by 5 to 8 minutes of commercials, followed by 5 minutes of program, followed by 5 to 8 minutes of commercials
Too bad that's just flat out wrong. I would know, I have a Myth system that automatically skips the commercials, and it tells me how long the skip period is. On the worst networks, I'm seeing 4-4.5 minute breaks, and that's every 10-12 minutes, I'd guess. The only time it gets as bad as you describe is during sports, or toward the end of movies (of course, I'd never watch a network-broadcast movie in the first place).
lewl, I've been administrating Linux boxes for over ten years now, I know where to look for logs. :) But there's nothing in the gdm logs to indicate what's going wrong. I've also straced gdm, and there wasn't an obvious hint as to what the problem could be. It's got me a bit mystified, TBH. *sigh*
It's been reasonably stable[1] for me recently.
It was for me, too... up until about a week ago, when gdm started crashing repeatedly on boot. I now have it disabled, and must startx manually. 'course, I can't find any mention of anyone else encountering this, and I haven't noticed any updates to gdm or X lately, so I have no idea if it's fixed, yet.
And for the record, the MP3s sound surprisingly good, despite the bitrate. I have pretty sensitive ears to the high-frequency artifacts introduced by MP3 compression, and they aren't at all present on "In Rainbows", and I've been listening to it with my Shure canalphones, which would probably highlight any major defects in the sound.
Of course, without a properly mastered CD to compare to, I can't judge if there was any major quality degradation during the encoding process, but there's certainly no audible artifacting or anything like that. Heck, it's entirely possible they adjusted the raw mix before encoding in order to compensate for the compression step.
I was genuinely surprised to pay before hearing,
Jesus Christ, why? Are you allowed to read a book before you buy it? Are you allowed to see a movie before paying for the ticket? Are you allowed to sample a meal in a restaurant before choosing to pay? Are you allowed to wander around in a pair of shoes before deciding to purchase them? No! Why the hell should an album be any different?
Why should I pay for something, if I have no idea whatsoever if it's worth the money?
I take it you've never once bought an album, then? Or a book? Or a game? Or paid to see a movie? Or bought a meal at a restaurant? Hell, bought a pair of shoes?
In fact, when I hear someone swearing, the first thing that comes to mind is that they're some uneducated, undisciplined ignoramus who can't be bothered to think for themselves or respect the rights of others.
Then you're a self-important, haughty jackass who prejudges people, and I think I speak for many others when I say I'm glad I don't work with/for people such as yourself.
I've never heard a highly performing engineer or programmer swear.
Then you haven't worked in very many workplaces. I work with a number of very talented individuals, and we all swear freely when it seems appropriate.
For some reason, they get a lot more respect than the guy who goes off into a litany of profanity.
Ah, I see, you just don't understand the point of the article. Here, let me explain, since your vast sense of self-importance seems to have clouded your ability to comprehend: we're talking about occasional use of profanity to express frustration, etc. However, that does not, despite your apparent confusion, immediately translate to using "fuck" every other word. Nor does it translate to using profanity as a mechanism for dealing with interpersonal issues.
He has a wife and two young daughters, I doubt he is going to go Seung-Hui Cho on us any time soon
:)
ROFL, actually, I suspect that makes it all the more likely.
Meanwhile, if he ain't hurting you, why scared? Or are you just a pussy?
Increased water vapour causes increased cloud formation, resulting in increased atmospheric albedo, which results in less solar energy deposited in the atmosphere.
IOW, the water vapour picture isn't at all clear, and to assume it's responsible for global warming is, at best, naive, at worst, ignorant and misleading.
The lesser greenhouse gas (both in amount and effectiveness)
Please, tell me what other greenhouse gases, which exceed CO2 in amount and effectiveness, are increasing in atmospheric concentration. I'm honestly quite curious.
Happy Thanksgiving.
:)
I'll use the bile as dressing.
Dude... that's... pretty disgusting...
But saying bad keyboards don't cause CTS/RSI is like saying smoking only causes cancer in people who are predisposed to it.
Yeah, but there's a difference. You see, in the latter case, studies have proven a causative relationship. In the former, the exact opposite is apparently true, despite what you, personally, want to believe.