I haven't been interested in the games since about 1984. I can't imagine a reason for wanting to attend in person. Overpriced tickets, hotels, food, everything. It would take two or three years of normal "vacation" budget to go to just part of an olymic games. They have become the "Jurassic Park" of enntertainment - they can charge anything they want, and do. And they don't even have a coupon day.
I'd like to see everyone just ignore them. Unless I hear that the Swedish platform diver loses her bathing suit top and its caught on the underwater film camera, I doubt I'll even be interested much in the results, much less the actual telecast. (btw - that happened in 1984, and the vcr happened to be running. For a lad at the tender age of 15, it was a good reason to watch the olympics.)
TiVo on steriods would be gobs of hours, enhanced sorting and archiving functions, multiple tuners, and lots of stuff the end users want.
Thisis more like TiVo after an experiment went wrong and it was mutated by gamma radiation before it killed all the scientists and escaped from the lab. I mean, look at the focus - straight from the source,
our real customers, in most cases are network operators, in the context of deals between network operators and programmers or advertisers we can certainly provide services, but we're clear who the primary customer is.
They admit they don't really give a rats ass about the people with the remote, except how they can serve their eyeballs up as a product for their "real customers". That said, in a perfect world, the multiple audio options would be nice for certain programming like football. Being able to choose your commentators would be a welcome change. Anyone who has suffered through a national College FB feed where the commentators are clearly against your team (Brent Mussberger calling any Virginia Tech game, for example) or any game where the commentator just annoys the hell out of you (John Madden for football, Dick Vitale for basketball) would realize the value in this feature. Multiple camera angles would be minimally useful, unless I could get multiple feeds of the same game, and had enough screen to watch them all.
We Americans have been led to believe that Aussies are a headstong, athletic, practical, and overall independantly thinking culture which we can only strive to emulate though various products marketed using people pretending to have an Australian accent and the name "outback" somewhere in the name. Please don't tell me that all the marketing has been a lie!
Bringing in illegal immigrants is like giving low wage workers with no recourse to worker safety and fair labor laws to corporations who want to reduce labor costs to near zero.
It's just like an entitlement, but instead of votes, the politician gets money. This money funds advertising, which gets votes. (Those that think money/advertising does not lead to votes has never been involved with politics.)
They don't want to catch these folks. It takes too much effort. What they want is blanket coverage in the form of laws which give them ultimate and unassailable rights under terms which they may dictate and change to suit their profitability. Like any great politcal group, they are using the media to trumpet their cause in every way possible. By claiming multiple "worst" areas of loss, they creat buzz which seems to paint them as an industry under seige, fighting for their very existance, in need of help from the government just to keep the industry from crashing and putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. They don't really give a rat's ass about the actual numbers or the way they're collected, as long as it proves their point.
Fuck You! Thank you for buying our product. Fuck You! We appreciate your honesty and support for our artists. Fuck You! We would like you to enjoy your music any way you like, and Fuck You! only ask that you pay a reasonable sum for each form you use. Fuck You! As each different way to listen to music offers you a Fuck You! different experience, we believe a minor fee Fuck You! is justified. Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You! We apologise for any inconvenience which our content enablers have caused Fuck You! you, and hope you continue to support Fuck You! the artists which you have come to love Fuck You! by buying their albums through us. Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You! Sincerely, Record Executive Fuck You!
Hmmm, interesting abbreviation by the Register. Usually Association is abbreviated Assn., but this seems more appropriate.
Anyway, what nobody has mentioned (and since I rarely buy pop music I don't know about) is that iTunes (on Macs only...the article was unclear) regularly bypasses Macrovision's copy protection schemes. Does EAC have problems with these "protected" discs, or is it just WMP that MV is out to jinx.
Oh, please don't ask for "more like this". It just gives the editors a reason to think that there is a hardcore contigent of/. readers who crave dupes. I mean, how can they get more "like this" than to simply repost it in a couple of hours.
That, and start saving XPI files (extension installers) locally. This can be done through right click->Save Link As, or by saving through another browser or a file retrieval utility
Yeah, I tried that (saving xpi files) to an "install" directory on my server - where I keep all my non-retail-box software (shareware/freeware/drivers/updates). They didn't work on a clean install. Or perhaps I should say that thay didn't work the way I expented them to, and the install would not start properly based on my limited experimentation. That is what prompted me to believe the content was not actually local, and the xpi was simply a pointer.
And, more imporantly for the non-tech enduser, the base FF install isn't all that great. To make FF a great browser you need extensions. Have you ever imagined what the extensions pages at mozilla must look like to a non-techy user? Good Lord, there's no way to make heads or tails of it.
I'd like to see a "Firefox for Dummies edition" (apologies given) as well as the base version. Something that has the best and brightest extensions already installed and preconfigured. Adblock, gestures, tab tools, etc..., plus a nice demo on getting the most out of FF with the tools.
Maybe there is one, but I just haven't seen it. If it weren't for comments on/. extoling the virtues of FF and posts claiming that it could do most everything Opera did, but with better.asp compatibility, I'd probably still be using Opera today.
Me too, but its annoying as hell to install. The extensions are wonderful, but the last time I had to do a clean install, I lost all the extensions, and there doesn't seem to be any way to store the extensions locally - it's all "active" content. Pisses me off, 'cause I don't have mouse gestures, and don't want to go wading through mozzilla.org to find the one I'm already using.
The extensions are one of the biggest advantages for folks with no life or no job, and one of the biggest frustrations for busy people. Firefox is like building a car from scratch everytime you intall it - You have to re-find all the extensions you liked by navagating through mounds and mounds of extensions. It's one of the things I miss about Opera...everything installs at once. Yes, I know you're stuck with the single tab-model they offer, but since I dont' really have time to "try out" a dozen different styles, I'm happier to learn to use a good one than search for hours for a really great one.
(I have a sligtly unusual setup - two logins on a single xp install - one for work, one for play. I've set up firefox to use the same profile in the past, but it just takes to freakin long to look up the instructions and re-do all the installs. Sue me, I'm impatient. I want a "use this profile" button.)
Buried this deep, you won't get an insightful mod, but you deserve it. Ten to one she told her friends who have kids about the experience, and how helpful the salesperson was. He loast a sale, and probably set up four our five extras for later in the season.
I say eliminating the human overpopulation problem would be the first step to re-balancing, but nobody seems ready to reduce the population by a couple orders of magnitude.
(Okay, maybe dubya and osama, but they're both pretty selective, and I'm not too sure either would be very good at selecting the survival population, all things considered)
Well, you're still pumping energy from one place (solar incidence) to another (power usage). There may be a small amount of increased retained flux due to a reduced emissivity (collectors retain more solar energy than the ground the shade).
Both effects are probably smaller than using fossil fuels exclusively, though, but I'm only guessing.
So that when OpenOffice adds the functionality to "keep pace" with MS Office, Microsoft can sue to have the program removed from availability for patent infringement. Pretty obvious, really.
Look, I call 'em as I see 'em. Though it may be wrong, the facts are that a big internet rollout via satellite (supposedly to replace the Directway service) was cancelled well into the schedule (and looks like cancelled was too string - postposed looks more like it from your link). Then, I hear the DirecTV will use these satellites to push more TV content. Then there's a big ad campain touting the new system.
Did Hughes plan a rollout? Did it get cancelled or postponed? Did the satellites,or orbital slots, get usurped by DirecTV?
I think the answer to all those is yes. You seem touchy about the sale to Murdoch. Would you have felt better if I had said "DirecTV, formerly owned by Hughes?" The fact that Hughes and DirecTV and NewsCorp is all owned by one entity doesn't change the timeline, it indicates a new dicision maker valuing TV over broadband. Regardless, the decision was made the satellite internet was not valuable enough to pursue. That doesn't mean it's not valuable. It does appear the spaceway has not been entirely shelved.
Actually, it has been determined by one of the largest consumer data providers that satellite broadband is not economically viable. Hughes, the owner of DirecTV, had planned a massive rollout of this technology, due this year. After they had designed and (mostly) built the satellites, the numbers didn't look too rosy. Instead, they re-tasked the satellites for the new HD/MPEG4 DirecTV market. It is the classic case of a company spinning a failed product into a "fantasic innovation" (if you believe the new ads).
So, no, the US hasn't been left behind. The market forces have decided that there aren't enough dollars to support a venture and make lots of cash. This sucks for those in rural america, as the landline folks have also decided that you won't make them money. Our democracy and capitalism fails us in insideous ways. This is one example.
There's one difference (okay, two) this time around.
The minor difference is that the public is more in tune with DRM (thanks, Apple) and is more accepting of it. Remember how pop-ups/on screen advertising killed Prodigy, but are a mainstay of AOL other online services now?
The major difference is that, when Divx was tried, there was a competing, non-invasive DRM included on DVDs. I say non-invasive primarily because copying and swapping of content, either physical or over the internet, was not practical. This time the competing formats are both DRM-hamstrung. Both are lousy - there's no "good" version to crush them into oblivion.
That said, HD-DVD just might win out. Given the possibility of hardware failure on BR, regardless of the software lockout on HD-DVD, the hardware failure "stick" may be the deciding factor in a typical household purchase.
Yes, it no different than the DirecTV access cards (which, you will find, belong to DTV, or so they have marked on the card). Its just that the access will be internal to the player. There will still be license agreements on (in) the package which you must "agree to" before purchase. Naturally, you'll be offered the option to return the merhandise to the place of purchase, should you choose not to agree.
Silly boy;-) In theory, you're correct. In practice, insurance exists to to make money. They run a relatively thin margin, and bank on hitting the average, or a bit less.
The "problem" is that we (the insurance consumers) have always been used on insurers having to take a gross average, because they have little information about us as individuals. Technology is changing the picture. They have realized that, by compiling more information about us individually, they can reduce their liabilities.
Does this mean we get lower rates? Sort of. It means that those companies who are "choosier" about their coverage of risks and exclude known high risks can provide lower premiums, all things being equal. That generally doesn't line your pocket, however, because your employer picks up most of those costs. They pass it on as price, giving them a competitive advantage and thus are more likely to succeed, and - all things being equal - you're more likely to keep your job. Not a very direct return for you.
Of course, the insurance companies have a little secret that affects premiums as much or more than claims - the performance of market bonds. You see, they invest a large portion of you premiums in stable, liquid bonds in order to make a return on the reserve which they must keep to pay premiums. When the market is poor, such as it has been for the last 4-6 years, insurance rates rise significatnly. Why? They count on that return to add to their bottom line. If they anticipate making 8% on their portfolio each year, and the market gives them 3%, the "consumer" must make up the difference - hence higher premiums.
We got used to high returns on investments in the 80s and 90s, and so did the Insurance industry. They could effectively sell their product "below cost" knowing that the investment revenue would keep them in the black. Without competition, the insurance companies would have just been filty rich, never dropping premiums to account for their investment returns. Now, though, we're seeing the flip side - when investments are poor, we have to pay full fare for our insurance, and that can be a pretty big premium hike.
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I haven't been interested in the games since about 1984. I can't imagine a reason for wanting to attend in person. Overpriced tickets, hotels, food, everything. It would take two or three years of normal "vacation" budget to go to just part of an olymic games. They have become the "Jurassic Park" of enntertainment - they can charge anything they want, and do. And they don't even have a coupon day.
I'd like to see everyone just ignore them. Unless I hear that the Swedish platform diver loses her bathing suit top and its caught on the underwater film camera, I doubt I'll even be interested much in the results, much less the actual telecast. (btw - that happened in 1984, and the vcr happened to be running. For a lad at the tender age of 15, it was a good reason to watch the olympics.)
Thats already the case. They want sponsorship to be airtight, and they have the money to buy the government into submission.
TiVo on steriods would be gobs of hours, enhanced sorting and archiving functions, multiple tuners, and lots of stuff the end users want.
Thisis more like TiVo after an experiment went wrong and it was mutated by gamma radiation before it killed all the scientists and escaped from the lab. I mean, look at the focus - straight from the source,
our real customers, in most cases are network operators, in the context of deals between network operators and programmers or advertisers we can certainly provide services, but we're clear who the primary customer is.
They admit they don't really give a rats ass about the people with the remote, except how they can serve their eyeballs up as a product for their "real customers". That said, in a perfect world, the multiple audio options would be nice for certain programming like football. Being able to choose your commentators would be a welcome change. Anyone who has suffered through a national College FB feed where the commentators are clearly against your team (Brent Mussberger calling any Virginia Tech game, for example) or any game where the commentator just annoys the hell out of you (John Madden for football, Dick Vitale for basketball) would realize the value in this feature. Multiple camera angles would be minimally useful, unless I could get multiple feeds of the same game, and had enough screen to watch them all.
We Americans have been led to believe that Aussies are a headstong, athletic, practical, and overall independantly thinking culture which we can only strive to emulate though various products marketed using people pretending to have an Australian accent and the name "outback" somewhere in the name. Please don't tell me that all the marketing has been a lie!
No, unfortunately, they stopped letting John Riggins call color on the Redskins preseason games several years ago.
Human pee, clydesdale pee...I suspect - as you do - that it will work just fine with either.
Bringing in illegal immigrants is like giving low wage workers with no recourse to worker safety and fair labor laws to corporations who want to reduce labor costs to near zero.
It's just like an entitlement, but instead of votes, the politician gets money. This money funds advertising, which gets votes. (Those that think money/advertising does not lead to votes has never been involved with politics.)
They don't want to catch these folks. It takes too much effort. What they want is blanket coverage in the form of laws which give them ultimate and unassailable rights under terms which they may dictate and change to suit their profitability. Like any great politcal group, they are using the media to trumpet their cause in every way possible. By claiming multiple "worst" areas of loss, they creat buzz which seems to paint them as an industry under seige, fighting for their very existance, in need of help from the government just to keep the industry from crashing and putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. They don't really give a rat's ass about the actual numbers or the way they're collected, as long as it proves their point.
Fuck You!
Thank you for buying our product.
Fuck You!
We appreciate your honesty and support for our artists.
Fuck You!
We would like you to enjoy your music any way you like, and
Fuck You!
only ask that you pay a reasonable sum for each form you use.
Fuck You!
As each different way to listen to music offers you a
Fuck You!
different experience, we believe a minor fee
Fuck You!
is justified.
Fuck You!
Fuck You!
Fuck You!
We apologise for any inconvenience which our content enablers have caused
Fuck You!
you, and hope you continue to support
Fuck You!
the artists which you have come to love
Fuck You!
by buying their albums through us.
Fuck You!
Fuck You!
Fuck You!
Sincerely,
Record Executive
Fuck You!
Yes, we should all bend over backwards to the wishes, whines, and desires of a small group...
Actually, I believe the RIAA standard line is that you just bend over.
Hmmm, interesting abbreviation by the Register. Usually Association is abbreviated Assn., but this seems more appropriate.
Anyway, what nobody has mentioned (and since I rarely buy pop music I don't know about) is that iTunes (on Macs only...the article was unclear) regularly bypasses Macrovision's copy protection schemes. Does EAC have problems with these "protected" discs, or is it just WMP that MV is out to jinx.
Oh, please don't ask for "more like this". It just gives the editors a reason to think that there is a hardcore contigent of /. readers who crave dupes. I mean, how can they get more "like this" than to simply repost it in a couple of hours.
That, and start saving XPI files (extension installers) locally. This can be done through right click->Save Link As, or by saving through another browser or a file retrieval utility
Yeah, I tried that (saving xpi files) to an "install" directory on my server - where I keep all my non-retail-box software (shareware/freeware/drivers/updates). They didn't work on a clean install. Or perhaps I should say that thay didn't work the way I expented them to, and the install would not start properly based on my limited experimentation. That is what prompted me to believe the content was not actually local, and the xpi was simply a pointer.
And, more imporantly for the non-tech enduser, the base FF install isn't all that great. To make FF a great browser you need extensions. Have you ever imagined what the extensions pages at mozilla must look like to a non-techy user? Good Lord, there's no way to make heads or tails of it.
/. extoling the virtues of FF and posts claiming that it could do most everything Opera did, but with better .asp compatibility, I'd probably still be using Opera today.
I'd like to see a "Firefox for Dummies edition" (apologies given) as well as the base version. Something that has the best and brightest extensions already installed and preconfigured. Adblock, gestures, tab tools, etc..., plus a nice demo on getting the most out of FF with the tools.
Maybe there is one, but I just haven't seen it. If it weren't for comments on
Me too, but its annoying as hell to install. The extensions are wonderful, but the last time I had to do a clean install, I lost all the extensions, and there doesn't seem to be any way to store the extensions locally - it's all "active" content. Pisses me off, 'cause I don't have mouse gestures, and don't want to go wading through mozzilla.org to find the one I'm already using.
The extensions are one of the biggest advantages for folks with no life or no job, and one of the biggest frustrations for busy people. Firefox is like building a car from scratch everytime you intall it - You have to re-find all the extensions you liked by navagating through mounds and mounds of extensions. It's one of the things I miss about Opera...everything installs at once. Yes, I know you're stuck with the single tab-model they offer, but since I dont' really have time to "try out" a dozen different styles, I'm happier to learn to use a good one than search for hours for a really great one.
(I have a sligtly unusual setup - two logins on a single xp install - one for work, one for play. I've set up firefox to use the same profile in the past, but it just takes to freakin long to look up the instructions and re-do all the installs. Sue me, I'm impatient. I want a "use this profile" button.)
Buried this deep, you won't get an insightful mod, but you deserve it. Ten to one she told her friends who have kids about the experience, and how helpful the salesperson was. He loast a sale, and probably set up four our five extras for later in the season.
The desire to corner a market and the legal cash to backup the desire. Laws are always up for interpretation when there's enough money involved.
I say eliminating the human overpopulation problem would be the first step to re-balancing, but nobody seems ready to reduce the population by a couple orders of magnitude.
(Okay, maybe dubya and osama, but they're both pretty selective, and I'm not too sure either would be very good at selecting the survival population, all things considered)
Well, you're still pumping energy from one place (solar incidence) to another (power usage). There may be a small amount of increased retained flux due to a reduced emissivity (collectors retain more solar energy than the ground the shade).
Both effects are probably smaller than using fossil fuels exclusively, though, but I'm only guessing.
So that when OpenOffice adds the functionality to "keep pace" with MS Office, Microsoft can sue to have the program removed from availability for patent infringement. Pretty obvious, really.
Look, I call 'em as I see 'em. Though it may be wrong, the facts are that a big internet rollout via satellite (supposedly to replace the Directway service) was cancelled well into the schedule (and looks like cancelled was too string - postposed looks more like it from your link). Then, I hear the DirecTV will use these satellites to push more TV content. Then there's a big ad campain touting the new system.
Did Hughes plan a rollout?
Did it get cancelled or postponed?
Did the satellites,or orbital slots, get usurped by DirecTV?
I think the answer to all those is yes. You seem touchy about the sale to Murdoch. Would you have felt better if I had said "DirecTV, formerly owned by Hughes?" The fact that Hughes and DirecTV and NewsCorp is all owned by one entity doesn't change the timeline, it indicates a new dicision maker valuing TV over broadband. Regardless, the decision was made the satellite internet was not valuable enough to pursue. That doesn't mean it's not valuable. It does appear the spaceway has not been entirely shelved.
Actually, it has been determined by one of the largest consumer data providers that satellite broadband is not economically viable. Hughes, the owner of DirecTV, had planned a massive rollout of this technology, due this year. After they had designed and (mostly) built the satellites, the numbers didn't look too rosy. Instead, they re-tasked the satellites for the new HD/MPEG4 DirecTV market. It is the classic case of a company spinning a failed product into a "fantasic innovation" (if you believe the new ads).
So, no, the US hasn't been left behind. The market forces have decided that there aren't enough dollars to support a venture and make lots of cash. This sucks for those in rural america, as the landline folks have also decided that you won't make them money. Our democracy and capitalism fails us in insideous ways. This is one example.
There's one difference (okay, two) this time around.
The minor difference is that the public is more in tune with DRM (thanks, Apple) and is more accepting of it. Remember how pop-ups/on screen advertising killed Prodigy, but are a mainstay of AOL other online services now?
The major difference is that, when Divx was tried, there was a competing, non-invasive DRM included on DVDs. I say non-invasive primarily because copying and swapping of content, either physical or over the internet, was not practical. This time the competing formats are both DRM-hamstrung. Both are lousy - there's no "good" version to crush them into oblivion.
That said, HD-DVD just might win out. Given the possibility of hardware failure on BR, regardless of the software lockout on HD-DVD, the hardware failure "stick" may be the deciding factor in a typical household purchase.
Yes, it no different than the DirecTV access cards (which, you will find, belong to DTV, or so they have marked on the card). Its just that the access will be internal to the player. There will still be license agreements on (in) the package which you must "agree to" before purchase. Naturally, you'll be offered the option to return the merhandise to the place of purchase, should you choose not to agree.
Silly boy ;-) In theory, you're correct. In practice, insurance exists to to make money. They run a relatively thin margin, and bank on hitting the average, or a bit less.
The "problem" is that we (the insurance consumers) have always been used on insurers having to take a gross average, because they have little information about us as individuals. Technology is changing the picture. They have realized that, by compiling more information about us individually, they can reduce their liabilities.
Does this mean we get lower rates? Sort of. It means that those companies who are "choosier" about their coverage of risks and exclude known high risks can provide lower premiums, all things being equal. That generally doesn't line your pocket, however, because your employer picks up most of those costs. They pass it on as price, giving them a competitive advantage and thus are more likely to succeed, and - all things being equal - you're more likely to keep your job. Not a very direct return for you.
Of course, the insurance companies have a little secret that affects premiums as much or more than claims - the performance of market bonds. You see, they invest a large portion of you premiums in stable, liquid bonds in order to make a return on the reserve which they must keep to pay premiums. When the market is poor, such as it has been for the last 4-6 years, insurance rates rise significatnly. Why? They count on that return to add to their bottom line. If they anticipate making 8% on their portfolio each year, and the market gives them 3%, the "consumer" must make up the difference - hence higher premiums.
We got used to high returns on investments in the 80s and 90s, and so did the Insurance industry. They could effectively sell their product "below cost" knowing that the investment revenue would keep them in the black. Without competition, the insurance companies would have just been filty rich, never dropping premiums to account for their investment returns. Now, though, we're seeing the flip side - when investments are poor, we have to pay full fare for our insurance, and that can be a pretty big premium hike.