But that's my point. Getting the right demographic wouldn't have fixed the problem because that group was too small. They were pushing it on their biggest audience available at the time and it wasn't helping.
That show was and is not commercially viable and I don't think Fox is completely to blame.
I've got to agree with you. I remember fox pushing it hard during the baseball playoffs. They had ads every time they turned around. I don't think they killed it, I just don't think the whole space cowboy thing went over too well. Which is unfortunate as I really liked it. I also really liked Galaxy Rangers when I was a kid.
I think maybe it catered to the sci-fi crowd a little too much. We understood the lingo and what was going on very quickly, but to others I think it may have been overly cryptic.
When you finish with the Old Man's War stuff I highly recommend Android's Dream. I really liked all the Old Man's War books but Android's Dream is my favorite Scalzi book so far.
And one of his earlier books - Agent to the Stars is available to read on-line. You can get to it from his blog at Whatever. It's very good and at times very moving.
I'm a big, big fan so I guess you should take all that with a grain of salt -- but I think the bottom line is that the guy can really write well.
Makes sense - thanks for the info. I didn't watch BSG - may do so now that it is done. I did catch the first episode and thought, "Hey that all looks really familiar."
Firefly was awesome. The first televised episode when Mal kicked a guy through the intake of the ships engine I knew that it was going to be substantially different than any sci-fi I'd seen on t.v. in some time. They also did some cool things to help suspend disbelief, which were picked up by BSG. Fortunately BSG for BSG fans, the show got more viewers and lasted longer than Firefly - though I think it owed Firefly a huge debt for the look, tone, etc.
What the A-Team taught me was that all it takes to build an impregnable armored vehicle is a few empty 50 gallon drums. We'd have this Afghanistan thing wrapped up tomorrow if they could just ship a bunch of vans, empty 50 gal. drums and a welding torch or two over there.
Yes, anti-plot. Very dangerous stuff. It's red and even though it only takes a few drops of anti-plot to take out an entire world, Spock flew around in a ship with enough of it to take out just about every populated planet of significance. 'Cause you just never know when you'll need more anti-plot.
I think Scalzi was spot on in addressing this. I thought his second point was the best containing a couple great quotes - "At this point in my life (and, really, for the last quarter century at least), I simply make the assumption that film and television science fiction is going to hump the bunk on the 'plausible extrapolation' aspect of their science, and factor that in before I start watching." and "But, yes, when you admit that Star Trek has as much to do with plausibly extrapolated science as The A-Team has to do with a realistic look at the lives of military veterans, life gets easier. "
I'd say so. A great example would be how Amazon handles this. They get all kinds of free stuff for reviews, which they pass on to customers that are in the Amazon Vine program. Any review written for something they were given to review, gets the Vine Voice tag on it, so that it does not look the same as other customer reviews.
So that would deal with the second part.
I wouldn't see a rebate as compensation unless the rebate was for an amount larger than the purchase price. Combo deals and gifts from a purchase are rarely truly giving anything away - they are just giving a discount. What a retailer can 'give away' with something else, is a clue as to what the margin is on the purchased item.
I'm curious to see what change this brings about and if there are any true surprises. Penny Arcade for example. Those guys are pretty up front about the stuff they get for free. Most of it they end up selling for charity. I doubt they always explicitly differentiate between what they buy and what is sent to them for review. I'll guess they'll need to be more careful now.
I have a book review sites. I don't buy most of the books I review. I also don't do anything on the site to make money so that there isn't an appearance of conflict. But I'm not gonna lie, or compromise myself for a free book. So I don't go out of my way to say, in every review, here's a book that so-and-so publishing sent me. I don't try to hide it either, making it clear on one part of the site how publishers or authors can get in touch with me if they want me to review something.
I do a lot of book reviews, I don't see that slowing down. I can't imagine anyone thinks book reviewers buy all those books, especially the ones they review before the book is publicly available. I also never imagined that movie reviewers paid to see the films they review, even though they didn't say it explicitly. Adding in some boilerplate about being given a ticket of the film or a review copy of the book isn't a big deal, so I don't care, but I don't think it is really necessary.
What else get's reviewed here? Some games sometimes. I think usually everything else is a link to a review done by someone else for the most part. So I don't really imagine it's going to have a huge impact on the reviews that are posted here. Maybe I'm forgetting something though.
What I don't see this stopping is the people who get paid to comment in the discussions of those reviews. Or anything talking about various companies products. Who's going to take the time to try and figure out who all those people are and then prove the link between them and their employer?
I've only been able to find transcripts on one interview - I've got it linked in a reply now. The rest all I can find is audio and it's tough to track down the part I heard as I listen to the show every day, but in pieces as I drive. I don't drive much or long. I can't search the audio so I'm missing the spot.
Sure, little bits will come back, but most of it is gone. Anyone who thinks this is acceptable, I'd like to borrow a few thousand dollars. I'll pay back 10 and we'll call it even.
I shouldn't have used the word none because now people will latch on to any money that comes back as proof that I'm completely wrong and ignore the actual fact that these loans were and are gifts - not loans.
Here is one interview with Professor Tony Sanders from George Mason University. There were more like this throughout the week. The assertion that everyone agreed this money wasn't coming back was made by Kai Ryssdal at the end of the week. Here's a couple snippets from the above interview.
SANDERS: Car companies did get a significant chunk, and the answer is no. I would not look for any money to be coming back from the car companies to repay taxpayers.
This is in the middle of asking about AIG and when/if they will every pay back. If the market lies flat or keep on its downward trend, we could see this being almost like a perpetuity. It just won't be repaid.
I wish I could track down the last interview I listened to where they guy being interviewed basically said we are hurting ourselves by pretending we'll get this money back. Unfortunately I'm not finding all the marketplace interviews in transcript form and listening through the archived broadcasts is very slow and not searchable. You can quibble over some sliver of it being paid back meaning that 'none' isn't true but it doesn't change the basic facts of the situation.
That isn't correct. We probably have the same amount of say in both cases - and one could say that in many way the board members of the largest corporations run our government to a high degree.
the more the government becomes responsible for taking care of us, the more motivated they are to regulate our behavior to keep the costs of said care down.
Marketplace, on NPR did a series this whole week on the 'unwinding the bailout'. Every economist and expert they interviewed said the same thing-- none of these loans the government has made to boost the economy will be repaid. They said we need to write off billions and stop fooling ourselves about getting it back. Loan is the new word for gift because the public has become touch about money.
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There are lots of ways to get a degree without taking bad loans - or loans at all for that matter.
But that's my point. Getting the right demographic wouldn't have fixed the problem because that group was too small. They were pushing it on their biggest audience available at the time and it wasn't helping.
That show was and is not commercially viable and I don't think Fox is completely to blame.
I've got to agree with you. I remember fox pushing it hard during the baseball playoffs. They had ads every time they turned around. I don't think they killed it, I just don't think the whole space cowboy thing went over too well. Which is unfortunate as I really liked it. I also really liked Galaxy Rangers when I was a kid.
I think maybe it catered to the sci-fi crowd a little too much. We understood the lingo and what was going on very quickly, but to others I think it may have been overly cryptic.
When you finish with the Old Man's War stuff I highly recommend Android's Dream. I really liked all the Old Man's War books but Android's Dream is my favorite Scalzi book so far.
And one of his earlier books - Agent to the Stars is available to read on-line. You can get to it from his blog at Whatever. It's very good and at times very moving.
I'm a big, big fan so I guess you should take all that with a grain of salt -- but I think the bottom line is that the guy can really write well.
Makes sense - thanks for the info. I didn't watch BSG - may do so now that it is done. I did catch the first episode and thought, "Hey that all looks really familiar."
Firefly was awesome. The first televised episode when Mal kicked a guy through the intake of the ships engine I knew that it was going to be substantially different than any sci-fi I'd seen on t.v. in some time. They also did some cool things to help suspend disbelief, which were picked up by BSG. Fortunately BSG for BSG fans, the show got more viewers and lasted longer than Firefly - though I think it owed Firefly a huge debt for the look, tone, etc.
What the A-Team taught me was that all it takes to build an impregnable armored vehicle is a few empty 50 gallon drums. We'd have this Afghanistan thing wrapped up tomorrow if they could just ship a bunch of vans, empty 50 gal. drums and a welding torch or two over there.
Yes, anti-plot. Very dangerous stuff. It's red and even though it only takes a few drops of anti-plot to take out an entire world, Spock flew around in a ship with enough of it to take out just about every populated planet of significance. 'Cause you just never know when you'll need more anti-plot.
I think Scalzi was spot on in addressing this. I thought his second point was the best containing a couple great quotes - "At this point in my life (and, really, for the last quarter century at least), I simply make the assumption that film and television science fiction is going to hump the bunk on the 'plausible extrapolation' aspect of their science, and factor that in before I start watching." and "But, yes, when you admit that Star Trek has as much to do with plausibly extrapolated science as The A-Team has to do with a realistic look at the lives of military veterans, life gets easier. "
I doubt it. In fact, the people working on it probably submitted this story and are reading all the comments right now, taking notes as they go.
I'd say so. A great example would be how Amazon handles this. They get all kinds of free stuff for reviews, which they pass on to customers that are in the Amazon Vine program. Any review written for something they were given to review, gets the Vine Voice tag on it, so that it does not look the same as other customer reviews.
So that would deal with the second part.
I wouldn't see a rebate as compensation unless the rebate was for an amount larger than the purchase price. Combo deals and gifts from a purchase are rarely truly giving anything away - they are just giving a discount. What a retailer can 'give away' with something else, is a clue as to what the margin is on the purchased item.
I'm curious to see what change this brings about and if there are any true surprises. Penny Arcade for example. Those guys are pretty up front about the stuff they get for free. Most of it they end up selling for charity. I doubt they always explicitly differentiate between what they buy and what is sent to them for review. I'll guess they'll need to be more careful now.
I have a book review sites. I don't buy most of the books I review. I also don't do anything on the site to make money so that there isn't an appearance of conflict. But I'm not gonna lie, or compromise myself for a free book. So I don't go out of my way to say, in every review, here's a book that so-and-so publishing sent me. I don't try to hide it either, making it clear on one part of the site how publishers or authors can get in touch with me if they want me to review something.
Look at the summary again - FTC
Someone who posts stuff online.
Receiving anything for free.
It is a micro-blog.
Yes.
It's still a blog.
I do a lot of book reviews, I don't see that slowing down. I can't imagine anyone thinks book reviewers buy all those books, especially the ones they review before the book is publicly available. I also never imagined that movie reviewers paid to see the films they review, even though they didn't say it explicitly. Adding in some boilerplate about being given a ticket of the film or a review copy of the book isn't a big deal, so I don't care, but I don't think it is really necessary.
What else get's reviewed here? Some games sometimes. I think usually everything else is a link to a review done by someone else for the most part. So I don't really imagine it's going to have a huge impact on the reviews that are posted here. Maybe I'm forgetting something though.
What I don't see this stopping is the people who get paid to comment in the discussions of those reviews. Or anything talking about various companies products. Who's going to take the time to try and figure out who all those people are and then prove the link between them and their employer?
They are discussing both extending the length of the day and the number of days.
And the other way around quite often.
thanks
I've only been able to find transcripts on one interview - I've got it linked in a reply now. The rest all I can find is audio and it's tough to track down the part I heard as I listen to the show every day, but in pieces as I drive. I don't drive much or long. I can't search the audio so I'm missing the spot.
Sure, little bits will come back, but most of it is gone. Anyone who thinks this is acceptable, I'd like to borrow a few thousand dollars. I'll pay back 10 and we'll call it even.
I shouldn't have used the word none because now people will latch on to any money that comes back as proof that I'm completely wrong and ignore the actual fact that these loans were and are gifts - not loans.
Here is one interview with Professor Tony Sanders from George Mason University. There were more like this throughout the week. The assertion that everyone agreed this money wasn't coming back was made by Kai Ryssdal at the end of the week. Here's a couple snippets from the above interview.
SANDERS: Car companies did get a significant chunk, and the answer is no. I would not look for any money to be coming back from the car companies to repay taxpayers.
This is in the middle of asking about AIG and when/if they will every pay back. If the market lies flat or keep on its downward trend, we could see this being almost like a perpetuity. It just won't be repaid.
I wish I could track down the last interview I listened to where they guy being interviewed basically said we are hurting ourselves by pretending we'll get this money back. Unfortunately I'm not finding all the marketplace interviews in transcript form and listening through the archived broadcasts is very slow and not searchable. You can quibble over some sliver of it being paid back meaning that 'none' isn't true but it doesn't change the basic facts of the situation.
This sounds like those cigarette commercials from the '50s. Please introduce facts into this discussion not strange theories based on 'reasoning'.
They are talking about diet soda which does not contain high fructose corn syrup.
That isn't correct. We probably have the same amount of say in both cases - and one could say that in many way the board members of the largest corporations run our government to a high degree.
Do you have a source for the bankruptcy number?
the more the government becomes responsible for taking care of us, the more motivated they are to regulate our behavior to keep the costs of said care down.
Marketplace, on NPR did a series this whole week on the 'unwinding the bailout'. Every economist and expert they interviewed said the same thing-- none of these loans the government has made to boost the economy will be repaid. They said we need to write off billions and stop fooling ourselves about getting it back. Loan is the new word for gift because the public has become touch about money.