How many times have you seen blatant product placements in a program. For example, a computer monitor with a highlighted logo on the back, one that is color-keyed for visibility when the real product doesn't have that? Or on Survivor last week, the challenge winners using a Visa (tm) to pay for something they won on the show. Or a game show with it's embedded ads. Or a sporting event, with the athletes platered with logos and the arena with a coporate moniker?
And Mr. TBS dude, every time th Braves play on your station (what, about 13,232 times a year?) every time you see the batter, there is a banner ad behind him. Meanwhile, the announcers hype up the 32nd run movie that is on after the game and then tell me what the Delta Airlines Scorebaord has on it, with the other teams playing in their corporate named stadiums, and so forth and so on.
We won't even talk about NASCAR.
And is MTV and other music anything BUT a commercial for record companies and their artists? Think they do videos to make art? Nope. They do them to sell plastic waffles. Don;t kid yourself. And that's "content."
So don't tell me I should pay you to make something more convenient for me. You are already bombarding me WHILE I am watching your programs, so don't try and bullshit old men like Ernest Hollings into legislatively giving y'all a revenue stream.
...with no experience and a MCSE. They say that there are over 45 million unfilled IT jobs in my town of 250,000 alone, and for the measly price of $45,000, I can get an A+ and an MCSE and be the CIO of a Fortune 500 company tommorow. Golly gee willikers!
That's a real problem -- too many unskilled entry-level folks are flooding the job pool. And most certifications are as useless as used Kleenex.
Brilliant is planning to make money off of your computer, software (since most people use Windows, it's fair to assume that they paid for OS, right???) and energy (hey, that fan costs money to power up and make noise...) and compensating you by essentially giving you a piece of software and a system that enables you to commit a crime, that is, violate copyrights by transferring music, movies and whatever else. Seems to be an interesting yet clear violation of the RICO act, if you think of it. Perhaps John Ashcroft might send THEM a piece of legalese to read.
Anyway you expect a corporation that wants to make money using your capital, connectivity and energy to be straightforward about it? Get real.
If Robert Novak had listened to Resler's criticism, responded positively and made some effort to make amends to the APD community at large, then this whole never happens and it is never heard of outside of the APD community.
But the fact is that Robert Novak had thin skin, sued for amounts of incredible proportions and basically paper-bullied people into settling...and now the WHOLE online community knows about it. And that can only hurt his business.
Novak needs to learn one golden rule of customer service: The Customer Is Always Right.
As it stands now, it is incredibly easy to copy and install any Microsoft application on the desktop, with or without licensing. Products Keys are traded and generated without compunction, and are bandied about in web-sites, on the Usenet, between friends, stolen from work and so forth and so on. Further, the BSA estimates that 1 on 4 OS installations on new machines are pirated. So it is easy to copy and install any Microsoft application for free, up to and including Windows XP. Quite many home users have no software other than the included OS and apps installed by the vendor that are legal. Think: how many folks go and buy full-blown Office licenses for their homes? I'll wager my Linux server that it is far less than 50%.
That's what is competing against Linux on the desktop: freely available no cost Microsoft OS's and applications.
That makes the killer app for Linux desktop success as simple as pie: real licensing from Microsoft that requires real product activation. When it happens, Linux is suddenly very viable as a competitor -- people will be REQUIRED for their versions of Windows XP-Pro-Gold-2004 and Microsoft Word 2004, etc. et al.
Re:I STILL don't see the point of HDTV (yet)
on
I STILL Want My HDTV
·
· Score: 1
The entry price for HDTVis not THOUSANDS, but rather $400 or so for a PC based HDTV tuner. Sure, looking at high definition on a 19" monitor is not as impressive as a $4,000 60-inch plasma screen, but the fact is that a 20" SVGA / HDTV rig is easier to see than a 27-inch NTSC television.
I get two HDTV stations off of the air in my market. I've watched lots of sports, episodic programming and the Olympics all in high-definition. If I were to go and spend the extra money for a new DirecTV HD receiver, I could get even more stations. Eventually, I will, but only after management (the wife) clears the purchase.:)
"Problems in search of solutions" have existed for years. This was a term, after all, that was once applied to personal computers. Same thing for the GUI once the nascent PC industry got rolling. We all know the results of those arguments -- Xerox was marginalized by making them, giving away untold trillions of dollars in the process. HDTV will be much the same.
I truly believe people have seen the price of computing technology, DVD players, CD players etc. drop precipitously a few years after their introdction and that HDTV will become far more widespread once the prices drop into the sub-$1,000 range.
Distributed compression of MPEG would certainly get Jack Valenti and the Hollywood Lawyers very interested very quickly. Ripping a typical DVD into DiVX takes many hours on a typical computer, and if it were distributed, then the process could be done in minutes, depending on the number of nodes.
They *HAD* to create the Holodeck because TOS had already done enough time travel and twisted-Earth analogs to make it impossible to do anything time or Terran based without it as a plot device. It does suck, mind you, but the 'Deck is really just an extension of old Trek plot-lines. BTW, let'sb real -- SOMEone on would get Jenna Jameson addicted on the Holodeck, if you know what I mean.
As for Troi, well, they had to have someone on TNG to wear the "special uniform" -- kind of like the blonde with the clipboard on TOS. Talk about sexist...
Slashdot Mirror
How many times have you seen blatant product placements in a program. For example, a computer monitor with a highlighted logo on the back, one that is color-keyed for visibility when the real product doesn't have that? Or on Survivor last week, the challenge winners using a Visa (tm) to pay for something they won on the show. Or a game show with it's embedded ads. Or a sporting event, with the athletes platered with logos and the arena with a coporate moniker?
And Mr. TBS dude, every time th Braves play on your station (what, about 13,232 times a year?) every time you see the batter, there is a banner ad behind him. Meanwhile, the announcers hype up the 32nd run movie that is on after the game and then tell me what the Delta Airlines Scorebaord has on it, with the other teams playing in their corporate named stadiums, and so forth and so on.
We won't even talk about NASCAR.
And is MTV and other music anything BUT a commercial for record companies and their artists? Think they do videos to make art? Nope. They do them to sell plastic waffles. Don;t kid yourself. And that's "content."
So don't tell me I should pay you to make something more convenient for me. You are already bombarding me WHILE I am watching your programs, so don't try and bullshit old men like Ernest Hollings into legislatively giving y'all a revenue stream.
...with no experience and a MCSE. They say that there are over 45 million unfilled IT jobs in my town of 250,000 alone, and for the measly price of $45,000, I can get an A+ and an MCSE and be the CIO of a Fortune 500 company tommorow. Golly gee willikers!
That's a real problem -- too many unskilled entry-level folks are flooding the job pool. And most certifications are as useless as used Kleenex.
Brilliant is planning to make money off of your computer, software (since most people use Windows, it's fair to assume that they paid for OS, right???) and energy (hey, that fan costs money to power up and make noise...) and compensating you by essentially giving you a piece of software and a system that enables you to commit a crime, that is, violate copyrights by transferring music, movies and whatever else. Seems to be an interesting yet clear violation of the RICO act, if you think of it. Perhaps John Ashcroft might send THEM a piece of legalese to read.
Anyway you expect a corporation that wants to make money using your capital, connectivity and energy to be straightforward about it? Get real.
If Robert Novak had listened to Resler's criticism, responded positively and made some effort to make amends to the APD community at large, then this whole never happens and it is never heard of outside of the APD community.
But the fact is that Robert Novak had thin skin, sued for amounts of incredible proportions and basically paper-bullied people into settling...and now the WHOLE online community knows about it. And that can only hurt his business.
Novak needs to learn one golden rule of customer service: The Customer Is Always Right.
As it stands now, it is incredibly easy to copy and install any Microsoft application on the desktop, with or without licensing. Products Keys are traded and generated without compunction, and are bandied about in web-sites, on the Usenet, between friends, stolen from work and so forth and so on. Further, the BSA estimates that 1 on 4 OS installations on new machines are pirated. So it is easy to copy and install any Microsoft application for free, up to and including Windows XP. Quite many home users have no software other than the included OS and apps installed by the vendor that are legal. Think: how many folks go and buy full-blown Office licenses for their homes? I'll wager my Linux server that it is far less than 50%.
That's what is competing against Linux on the desktop: freely available no cost Microsoft OS's and applications.
That makes the killer app for Linux desktop success as simple as pie: real licensing from Microsoft that requires real product activation. When it happens, Linux is suddenly very viable as a competitor -- people will be REQUIRED for their versions of Windows XP-Pro-Gold-2004 and Microsoft Word 2004, etc. et al.
The entry price for HDTVis not THOUSANDS, but rather $400 or so for a PC based HDTV tuner. Sure, looking at high definition on a 19" monitor is not as impressive as a $4,000 60-inch plasma screen, but the fact is that a 20" SVGA / HDTV rig is easier to see than a 27-inch NTSC television.
:)
I get two HDTV stations off of the air in my market. I've watched lots of sports, episodic programming and the Olympics all in high-definition. If I were to go and spend the extra money for a new DirecTV HD receiver, I could get even more stations. Eventually, I will, but only after management (the wife) clears the purchase.
"Problems in search of solutions" have existed for years. This was a term, after all, that was once applied to personal computers. Same thing for the GUI once the nascent PC industry got rolling. We all know the results of those arguments -- Xerox was marginalized by making them, giving away untold trillions of dollars in the process. HDTV will be much the same.
I truly believe people have seen the price of computing technology, DVD players, CD players etc. drop precipitously a few years after their introdction and that HDTV will become far more widespread once the prices drop into the sub-$1,000 range.
Distributed compression of MPEG would certainly get Jack Valenti and the Hollywood Lawyers very interested very quickly. Ripping a typical DVD into DiVX takes many hours on a typical computer, and if it were distributed, then the process could be done in minutes, depending on the number of nodes.
They *HAD* to create the Holodeck because TOS had already done enough time travel and twisted-Earth analogs to make it impossible to do anything time or Terran based without it as a plot device. It does suck, mind you, but the 'Deck is really just an extension of old Trek plot-lines. BTW, let'sb real -- SOMEone on would get Jenna Jameson addicted on the Holodeck, if you know what I mean. As for Troi, well, they had to have someone on TNG to wear the "special uniform" -- kind of like the blonde with the clipboard on TOS. Talk about sexist...
Will they be the wimp-Klingons that were on TOS or the Worf-ish ones from the other Trek series...