Discovering the limits is important. I have no problem with the research. Have we even discovered the limits of a simple two-wire twisted pair? Probably, at least to practicality, not improbably perfectly. It's just basic research. Which is good. Probably a whole lot more useful than finding the Higgs. And a lot cheaper.:?
Nielson has numbers as good as their error bars. Really. And that is a commodity. The bigger the bars the lesser the commodity, sure, but still a commodity. As to Netflix, since Netflix doesn't show commercials, why would they matter? It might be interesting to know who is watching Netflix most, or instead, or whatever, but that is not the market Nielson is in.
No doubt. But data with a large margin of error is still better than no data at all. What matters is if they can sell that data, margins be damned, at more that what it cost to gather it.
Reading the article I think it is a worthy thing to do. I'm surprised they did not do it sooner. They're in the business of knowing who watches what and Facebook is a decent source of that. As another poster here [probably properly] indicated in another thread [paraphrasing] 'the networks are interested in who watches the commercials, not much else.'. Facebook might be a better measure of that than most anything else.
I like your post. this over-fishing issue is a result of over-fucking. The solution is not to fish less, but to fuck less. But damn! that girl is hot. So there we are.
I had no idea they have been that good for that long. In the wild however, they suck. I hope I'm not coming off as super-critical. But it is the fault of humans for trying to make the machine pretend to be human.
I want to start this by saying that the following is decidedly NOT satire.
It is most probably the manner in which they are used that sucks the most. But maybe it is my own personal bias that is really to blame. Which is to say: I am prejudice against AI programmers.
When a robot answers the phone, I get miffed. I can't help it. When they ask [i]whatever[/i] I answer [i]curtly[/i] because I think that it is beneath me to answer politely. And to be honest, I'm right! I'm not trying to start a class war here (okay, I said no satire but there it is).
My belabored point is that I DO.NOT.WANT a machine to simulate politeness; it takes a human to pretend correctly. A machine has no conception of remorse or any other emotion so to simulate a human is... well, it is insulting. I don't want to be a hater. And the machine doesn't care that I'm a hater. And I don't hate the machine, I hate the humans behind it that make it pretend to be human.
Best:
Say the name of your product [beep]
Say the issue with your product [beep]
And the voice that says that should not try to be passin'.
Where am I going with this? Let those that respond decide.
I just don't give a shit as a potential customer, and read it as "they don't want my money".
I bet you're miffed they want to charge you in the first place.
Except the lack of a content list on the netflix sites. That's their own idiocy.
Yea, I never understood that either. Here in the U.S. I go to Instantwatcher http://instantwatcher.com/
It has full sort capability and I can even add shows to my queue from there. It is one of the few third-party sources available.
Used to be that Netflix had a public API that lots of sites pulled from to provide just what you're looking for. About a year ago they restricted that API for all but a few players, Instantwatcher being one of them. I have no idea why. I actually had and cancelled Netflex years ago because I couldn't navigate content. Instantwatcher made it easy and so I resubscribed.
Having read the article, I'm entirely convinced this is not scalable; we're not going to power cities with this. I'm not convinced it is not useful in some places at some times; small remote towns that don't have anything else would find it cheap and useful. It is clever. Assuming the wind blows [way up yonder] with great consistency, this has a lot of promise. My gut tells me you'll need to fly at least three to make it close to distributable; Like juggling. Obviously the more that are flying, the more consistent the result will be (as long as the wind keeps blowing). My gut is often wrong. Can any of you smart guys model this?
What good do regions do to any business strategy?
Users pay to watch content and the content provider gets payed.
The content providers are not getting paid. When content is produced, different regions buy rights to distribute that content; to sell it. As an ironic example, Hulu bought the Japanese rights to House of Cards, a Netflix Original production. Why did Netflix sell it? Because at the time they didn't do business in Japan. Now they do. So if you subscribe to Netflix Japan, you won't find House of Cards.
So Hulu is understandably miffed if a Japanese consumer VPNs into the U.S. Netflix to watch House of Cards. Netflix is getting payed for content owned by Hulu.
But regardless, you can't blame Netflix for that. Maybe they don't have exactly what you want but I'm pretty happy with them. I also have HBO Now. I used to subscribe to Hulu but I cancelled because between Netflix and HBO, I had more excellent content than I or my wife could possibly watch.
I cut our cable about a year ago with the price reached $100 a month. We watched about 4 or 5 of the 100 or so channels. Never looked back. Haven't seen a commercial since.
As others have pointed out, this initiative to end the penny isn't new. One of the first debates I ever watched on C-SPAN, at least 35 years ago, was a debate about ending the penny. The rhetoric was thick. And stupid.
It no longer matters to me one way or the other. I almost never use cash. The ashtray in my car used to be filled with [sticky] pennies. Now its filled with something less identifiable. End it. Keep it. It makes no difference to a debit card.
Yea, pretty much that. In a perfect world we'd have a dedicated, contiguous band from ~900MHz all the way to 5GHz (or beyond) with your router and client negotiating for the best channel given what it is trying to do. But perfect worlds elude us perfectly. But even were that so some folks would bitch. Probably here. Certainly here. And that's okay.
Slashdot Mirror
They'll get jobs as programmers.
Discovering the limits is important. I have no problem with the research. Have we even discovered the limits of a simple two-wire twisted pair? Probably, at least to practicality, not improbably perfectly. It's just basic research. Which is good. Probably a whole lot more useful than finding the Higgs. And a lot cheaper. :?
But can they sell that data for more than they paid to gather it? That is what matters.
Nielson has numbers as good as their error bars. Really. And that is a commodity. The bigger the bars the lesser the commodity, sure, but still a commodity. As to Netflix, since Netflix doesn't show commercials, why would they matter? It might be interesting to know who is watching Netflix most, or instead, or whatever, but that is not the market Nielson is in.
No doubt. But data with a large margin of error is still better than no data at all. What matters is if they can sell that data, margins be damned, at more that what it cost to gather it.
I do not get why so many articles here are sourced at Forbes when almost everyone here can't see them.
Reading the article I think it is a worthy thing to do. I'm surprised they did not do it sooner. They're in the business of knowing who watches what and Facebook is a decent source of that. As another poster here [probably properly] indicated in another thread [paraphrasing] 'the networks are interested in who watches the commercials, not much else.'. Facebook might be a better measure of that than most anything else.
Honk, dammit.
That was a good summation, DrYak. Thanks for that.
I like your post. this over-fishing issue is a result of over-fucking. The solution is not to fish less, but to fuck less. But damn! that girl is hot. So there we are.
I had no idea they have been that good for that long. In the wild however, they suck. I hope I'm not coming off as super-critical. But it is the fault of humans for trying to make the machine pretend to be human.
... well, it is insulting. I don't want to be a hater. And the machine doesn't care that I'm a hater. And I don't hate the machine, I hate the humans behind it that make it pretend to be human.
Best:
I want to start this by saying that the following is decidedly NOT satire.
It is most probably the manner in which they are used that sucks the most. But maybe it is my own personal bias that is really to blame. Which is to say: I am prejudice against AI programmers.
When a robot answers the phone, I get miffed. I can't help it. When they ask [i]whatever[/i] I answer [i]curtly[/i] because I think that it is beneath me to answer politely. And to be honest, I'm right! I'm not trying to start a class war here (okay, I said no satire but there it is).
My belabored point is that I DO.NOT.WANT a machine to simulate politeness; it takes a human to pretend correctly. A machine has no conception of remorse or any other emotion so to simulate a human is
Say the name of your product [beep] Say the issue with your product [beep]
And the voice that says that should not try to be passin'.
Where am I going with this? Let those that respond decide.
If they then end up subscribing to both, then nobody loses.
If by both you mean Netflix U.S. and Netflix Japan, sure. Netflix wins twice. But Hulu loses. They paid for the rights to sell it via their service.
Stop helping, I knew all of that.
Then why did you say you didn't?
I just don't give a shit as a potential customer, and read it as "they don't want my money".
I bet you're miffed they want to charge you in the first place.
Except the lack of a content list on the netflix sites. That's their own idiocy.
Yea, I never understood that either. Here in the U.S. I go to Instantwatcher
http://instantwatcher.com/
It has full sort capability and I can even add shows to my queue from there. It is one of the few third-party sources available.
Used to be that Netflix had a public API that lots of sites pulled from to provide just what you're looking for. About a year ago they restricted that API for all but a few players, Instantwatcher being one of them. I have no idea why. I actually had and cancelled Netflex years ago because I couldn't navigate content. Instantwatcher made it easy and so I resubscribed.
Having read the article, I'm entirely convinced this is not scalable; we're not going to power cities with this. I'm not convinced it is not useful in some places at some times; small remote towns that don't have anything else would find it cheap and useful. It is clever. Assuming the wind blows [way up yonder] with great consistency, this has a lot of promise. My gut tells me you'll need to fly at least three to make it close to distributable; Like juggling. Obviously the more that are flying, the more consistent the result will be (as long as the wind keeps blowing). My gut is often wrong. Can any of you smart guys model this?
I've also discovered that it's impossible to get a full list of the available content
Let me help http://www.finder.com.au/inter...
and that they take out content regularly. WTF? Why do they take the content out?
They buy the distribution rights for Show Y in Region X for Time Z. When Z is up, they pull it.
Needless to say, they won't get any billing cycles from me, VPN or no VPN.
They're be best [legal] game in town, but I'm sure they're sorry to see you go.
Thanks for that jonwil. The distribution model is seriously outdated. I'm not sure who to blame for that but it certainly isn't Netflix.
What good do regions do to any business strategy? Users pay to watch content and the content provider gets payed.
The content providers are not getting paid. When content is produced, different regions buy rights to distribute that content; to sell it. As an ironic example, Hulu bought the Japanese rights to House of Cards, a Netflix Original production. Why did Netflix sell it? Because at the time they didn't do business in Japan. Now they do. So if you subscribe to Netflix Japan, you won't find House of Cards.
So Hulu is understandably miffed if a Japanese consumer VPNs into the U.S. Netflix to watch House of Cards. Netflix is getting payed for content owned by Hulu.
Actually, I would argue the exact opposite.
Utopia is a real bitch. :)
But regardless, you can't blame Netflix for that. Maybe they don't have exactly what you want but I'm pretty happy with them. I also have HBO Now. I used to subscribe to Hulu but I cancelled because between Netflix and HBO, I had more excellent content than I or my wife could possibly watch.
I cut our cable about a year ago with the price reached $100 a month. We watched about 4 or 5 of the 100 or so channels. Never looked back. Haven't seen a commercial since.
Eliminate error handling.
I can always find something worthy on Netflix. And the price is right. It's hard to complain.
Evidence? If they put in oxygen, it would be burned the first time the bulb was turned on.
As others have pointed out, this initiative to end the penny isn't new. One of the first debates I ever watched on C-SPAN, at least 35 years ago, was a debate about ending the penny. The rhetoric was thick. And stupid.
It no longer matters to me one way or the other. I almost never use cash. The ashtray in my car used to be filled with [sticky] pennies. Now its filled with something less identifiable. End it. Keep it. It makes no difference to a debit card.
I hate to be off topic but why would anyone volunteer at a coffee house?
Yea, pretty much that. In a perfect world we'd have a dedicated, contiguous band from ~900MHz all the way to 5GHz (or beyond) with your router and client negotiating for the best channel given what it is trying to do. But perfect worlds elude us perfectly. But even were that so some folks would bitch. Probably here. Certainly here. And that's okay.
Traffic expands to fill the roads built for it. Quelle surprise.