Incredible! Think how much the writers will be making, seeing as their talent is the real reason for the show's success.
Not that I don't feel that writers are underpaid for the work they do, but let's not make it out like they are not getting paid at all. WGA base for a 20 of 26 week contract is around $4,700 a week going into the 2014-2015 season. And that's just the minimum. I'm sure most of the staff writers on the show are making above contract minimums by now.
It doesn't seem fair that businesspeople are vilified for being ludicrously overpaid, but actors (and sportspeople) get away with it.
It's pretty easy to see the difference. Actors don't hire/fire staff (for the most part) and they don't run companies into the ground costing hundreds or thousands of people to go unemployed.
That money a bunch of fake scientists received is fit for annual endowment of a decent university!
Well, ignoring the fact that Mayim Bialik is a real scientist the fact is most of them are really terrible actors. No one would watch it, the show would be cancelled in its first season, and they would all be unemployed having left their research positions to go do a stupid TV show.
"so this obviously (well, maybe not to you) makes great sense for all parties involved."
except the consumer. Anyone who buys a product, regardless if the watch the show, pays and gets no say.
I wanted to break this out because I find it fascinating that you feel this way.
Ignoring the fact that you can vote with your dollars and not buy said product, how exactly do you feel that you are entitled to a say in how a company that you buy a product from spends its money? The vast majority of companies are not monopolies (if they were, they wouldn't need to advertise so much) so you have a choice when you buy a product. For most essentials you can even choose generics that don't have much ad cost built into them.
I mean, do you believe your employer should be given a say in how you spend your pay? They are paying you for your labor in the same way you are paying a company for a product. Do you think they should be able to tell you how much to spend on beer? Criticize you for buying too fancy a car? Or maybe the customers of your employer should be allowed to criticize them for paying you what they consider too much.
"The advertisers won't pay more just because the stars now get paid more."
false.
No, he is correct. The advertisers pay based on ratings. The network certainly isn't going to cut them a deal, they will charge the maximum they can, regardless of the production costs. It's the ad buyers, not the networks, in the driver's seat when it comes to price. Just because the actors get a raise doesn't mean that the ad rates are going to go up. Not to mention that most of those rates are probably done deals by now, well before this was even announced. With all the cable choices these days, network TV ratings are in the shitter. A show pulling a 4.0 in demo is a hit today, where 20 years ago it would have been cancelled on the spot. Advertisers have a huge choice of where to spend there money when it comes to media buys and they won't hesitate to use that leverage to keep prices down. CBS can't go to them and say "Look, production costs went up, so you need to pay more". They will say "Ratings didn't go up, so screw off. This is what we will pay. Take it or leave it."
WB is selling the show to CBS, and they are doing so at a prices that's probably near costs. Since WB owns the show, not CBS, WB will be the ones to syndicate it off network in the US, as well as first run and syndication rights in foreign markets worldwide. That is where almost all of their profit will come from. Studios can actually afford to lose money on first run for a show because they know they will make all of their profits in syndication. Sony Entertainment is famous for practically giving shows away so that they can get over the syndication threshold (generally around 80-100 episodes). 'Til Death and Rules of Engagement being two recent examples from them.
Now for the network, the profits are pretty much front-loaded. Salaries and other costs are lowest during the first 3 years, so if a show is a hit they stand to make bank with the understanding that their costs will increase over time (and, they hope, the show's ratings so they can increase their ad prices). Either way, they won't air a show they are losing money on. With how quickly this was resolved, I think it's safe to say that there is plenty of margin for them to absorb the increased costs at the current ad rate. TV shows are bait to draw in viewers (the product) so they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers (the customers). If the bait isn't working or it's not cost effective, they get rid of it and get something new.
So WB and CBS will probably share in the cost increase. In the long run it's a drop in the bucket compared to the show's profits, and it's not some unexpected cost, it's been planned for and expected. It definitely won't fall on the ad buyers unless the new salaries somehow ties into a ratings increase.
Now, if you have problems with how companies spend on ads then don't buy.... well, anything. And don't watch live TV. Or DVR recordings for at least 5 days so you are completely out of being counted in the C3 ratings that ad prices are based on. Vote with your dollar and eyeballs.
Are you:
* A bank?
* A utility?
* A large corporation?
* A defense contractor?
* A military?
* A government?
* A "whistlebower" (in the figurative sense, not someone who just blows a literal whistle)?
* A journalist?
* A civil rights/government abuse/environmental/economic activist?
* Are you a member of an "anti-government" group or movement?
* Are you Muslim?
* Are you or have you ever been brown?
* Now or will you in the future travel through a customs inspection area of any country?
* Under active investigation by a law enforcement agency?
* A rabble-rouser?
* A person with opinions that are counter to those of your government?
* A sentient artificial lifeform?
If you answered yes to any of the above, then yes you need to be worried. If you did not, then no, you probably don't need to be worried.
I have to agree. I have the same tablet (minus the WWAN, WiFi only) and I love it. The apps (not the desktop applications, but the windows 8.1 store "apps") are lacking when compared to other tablets, but having a tablet that can also run any x86 Windows app and gets decent battery life rocks. The price was great and the baytrail atom processor keeps up with most light duty web/office work without issue. I was kind of shocked how well it works considering the price point for them.
No, if he's getting a 404, there's a connection to the server. Would be hilarious if Verizon had something to do with it, but we can't pin that one on them.
It was a joke, but if we are going to take it seriously it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for an ISP to redirect a specific URL to a different URL. Just get the 404 page from the site and redirect it there as it passes through the provider's network gear. Similar process to the one used by internet providers in countries that have mandatory blacklists for "pirate" sites.
Everything. You said you would "... rather risk death than allow the TSA, the NSA surveillance, free speech zones, DUI checkpoints, constitution-free zones, the war on drugs, etc." yet I bet you dutifully obey each and every one of those.
It looks like the Level 3 post has been pulled. It goes to their 404 page which has a link to recent posts which lists the very post linked in the article.....and the recent post link ALSO takes you to a 404.
Strange, the link works fine for me. Your ISP isn't Verizon by chance is it?
I disagree, especially in the case of diverless cars that can move about without a driver. As much as we (legitimately) criticize the growing abusive and invasive nature of law enforcement, they do have a legitimate job to do in providing for the public safety.
Screw off. Unless the constitution explicitly grants the government the power to do so, then it doesn't have that power. Furthermore, we're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Such a country would not sacrifice fundamental liberties for safety. I'd rather risk death than allow the TSA, the NSA surveillance, free speech zones, DUI checkpoints, constitution-free zones, the war on drugs, etc. All of which is similarly enabled by cowards who think that safety is more important than freedom. And that's not even getting into the inherent vulnerabilities of allowing people to stop the car remotely. Are you insane?
We need to be able to know exactly how the car's software and hardware work, and we need to be able to modify it. Otherwise, it is inevitable that governments and companies will abuse it, all the while being applauded by people like you. An otherwise good idea... ruined.
Big words for someone who I bet pulls over their car if told to do so.
There should not be a *signal* to do it. Backdoors are too easy, which will also make them easier to abuse. The bar should be high.
There are already microwave transmitters that can fry a car's control system at range (such as the one promoted by SAVELEC). This should be the preferred method. The police should be *so sure* that the driver is a criminal that they're willing to stake a lawsuit on physically destroying a car's control system. That should be the bar.
Let's stop giving the police ways to cut red tape and instead occasionally make the police do it the hard way. Then there's less capacity for easy abuse.
So your automated car is driving grandpa (who's napping in the back seat) over for dinner when a police officer notices it's dragging a limb that got blown up under it as it drove by. Your solution is that the officer, instead of turning on his red & blues and at the same time sending a signal to the car to pull over, fries your car's electronics (probably totaling it, which he would bear no financial responsibility for) and possibly cooking gramp's pacemaker.
There should not be a kill switch in automated cars for law enforcement. That should not be the solution
I disagree, especially in the case of diverless cars that can move about without a driver. As much as we (legitimately) criticize the growing abusive and invasive nature of law enforcement, they do have a legitimate job to do in providing for the public safety. To that end they will need the ability to safely stop a diverless car. There will be legitimate situations where driverless vehicles need to be stopped by police. A protocol needs to be in place that allows the police to signal the vehicle to "pull over" and come to a stop.
Now, that's not to say there shouldn't be limitations to that power. The police should not be able to just shut down every car in a city, for example. There needs to be rules like an officer needs to be in proximity to the vehicle, and the shutdown needs to be targeted to a specific vehicle for a specific reason. This would be analogous to what we have today where we see flashing lights behind us and we pull over. Remote tracking and/or shutdown should not be allowed without the consent of the owner (if the car is stolen for instance) or in response to a legit, life threatening situation such as a kidnapping or hostage situation. And never if the vehicle is under manual control.
There's a significant issue specific to Titanfall, where the mouse sensitivity is linked to your framerate. If you experience slowdown within the game, a movement of the hand that normally moves the crosshairs 15degrees, may only move it 10 degrees.
It's like trying to aim with someone else's hand on a second mouse fighting back against your crosshairs. That kind of unpredictable mouse sensitivity variation also hits at the most inopportune times since a framerate drop is often concurrent with increased activity in the game.
Most games, even if you drop from 60 fps to 30fps, a hand motion that moves the crosshairs 15 degrees, will still move the crosshairs the same 15 degrees.
Yea they have been patching the game trying to fix those timing issues ever since they unlocked the framerate. Turns out pretty much everything in the game was clocked to framerate after they did whatever it was they did to uncap it. When they unlocked it people found they could run faster, shoot faster, etc if they were running on 144hz monitors. Totally not surprised mouse is affected by it as well. I really love that game and I'm disappointed in how the game has been handled by Respawn. I get they had some outside legal issue that ate into their development time and budget, so I'm holding out hope that they learn from the mistakes of Titanfall and fix them in Titanfall 2.
I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it.
What do you mean by start... This has been happening for years.
Yea, but it really seems to be accelerating lately. I went for years on a 8800GT running most games without much issue. Granted, over the years I've had to dial back the settings as games got more resource hungry. Last year I picked up a 660Ti thinking it would last at least another few years. Already replaced it because it was already having trouble running games at high or ultra less than a year later (something that took a few years with the 8800).
Whether I need it or not isn't the point. The fact that, with the hardware that I have, the game runs so poorly (I retested last night after I posted this and my framerates dip down into the 20's in some cases like driving on a motorcycle) shows how badly optimized the game is for the PC.
For comparison I can run The Grid 2, a graphics and physics intensive game, at 50-60 FPS at 4K* , but I can't get consistently above 50fps, and get drops into the 20's in Watch_Dogs running it at 1080p.
Those modders are praising the wonderful graphics they get with the enabled settings, while admitting that they get stuttering and frame rates below 30 fps. Doesn't sound like Ubisoft "handicapped" the graphics to me, so much as fixed the performance issues.
I've run the game with and without the mods and if anything it improved stuttering and barely impacted my frame rates. Other gamers are reporting the same experience.
This game is ridiculously resource intensive on the PC. I usually do a big upgrade on my PC every 5 or 6 years. I just upgraded to a factory overclocked 780ti, z97 mobo, SSD to hold games, 24 gigs of ram (I also run a lot of VMs during the day for work), and a 4790K CPU this past week. With all that this game still struggles to stay at or above 60FPS, dipping to the 40's at times. It is a terrible port.
Titanfall, while not quite so bad, is another game that seems to demand more than it should from the PC. I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it. My last system lasted 5 years before it really needed an upgrade. I expect the same from this one but I'm starting to think I'm not going to be so lucky.
They measure "wind" speed only if the wind happens to be carrying particulates (e.g., clouds, tornadoes). On a clear day, doppler radar will not show much, even with 50mph wind.
True, but no one is really worried about the clear days...
Slashdot Mirror
With so many advancements and near miraculous treatments being discovered almost daily it's never been a better time to be a mouse!
It's french for "heirs". Gezz, pay attention to the context.
I wondered why it was suddenly completely overcast where I live! Seriously, it's like mother nature hates me seeing meteor showers. Every time....
Incredible! Think how much the writers will be making, seeing as their talent is the real reason for the show's success.
Not that I don't feel that writers are underpaid for the work they do, but let's not make it out like they are not getting paid at all. WGA base for a 20 of 26 week contract is around $4,700 a week going into the 2014-2015 season. And that's just the minimum. I'm sure most of the staff writers on the show are making above contract minimums by now.
It doesn't seem fair that businesspeople are vilified for being ludicrously overpaid, but actors (and sportspeople) get away with it.
It's pretty easy to see the difference. Actors don't hire/fire staff (for the most part) and they don't run companies into the ground costing hundreds or thousands of people to go unemployed.
That money a bunch of fake scientists received is fit for annual endowment of a decent university!
Well, ignoring the fact that Mayim Bialik is a real scientist the fact is most of them are really terrible actors. No one would watch it, the show would be cancelled in its first season, and they would all be unemployed having left their research positions to go do a stupid TV show.
"so this obviously (well, maybe not to you) makes great sense for all parties involved." except the consumer. Anyone who buys a product, regardless if the watch the show, pays and gets no say.
I wanted to break this out because I find it fascinating that you feel this way.
Ignoring the fact that you can vote with your dollars and not buy said product, how exactly do you feel that you are entitled to a say in how a company that you buy a product from spends its money? The vast majority of companies are not monopolies (if they were, they wouldn't need to advertise so much) so you have a choice when you buy a product. For most essentials you can even choose generics that don't have much ad cost built into them.
I mean, do you believe your employer should be given a say in how you spend your pay? They are paying you for your labor in the same way you are paying a company for a product. Do you think they should be able to tell you how much to spend on beer? Criticize you for buying too fancy a car? Or maybe the customers of your employer should be allowed to criticize them for paying you what they consider too much.
"The advertisers won't pay more just because the stars now get paid more." false.
No, he is correct. The advertisers pay based on ratings. The network certainly isn't going to cut them a deal, they will charge the maximum they can, regardless of the production costs. It's the ad buyers, not the networks, in the driver's seat when it comes to price. Just because the actors get a raise doesn't mean that the ad rates are going to go up. Not to mention that most of those rates are probably done deals by now, well before this was even announced. With all the cable choices these days, network TV ratings are in the shitter. A show pulling a 4.0 in demo is a hit today, where 20 years ago it would have been cancelled on the spot. Advertisers have a huge choice of where to spend there money when it comes to media buys and they won't hesitate to use that leverage to keep prices down. CBS can't go to them and say "Look, production costs went up, so you need to pay more". They will say "Ratings didn't go up, so screw off. This is what we will pay. Take it or leave it."
WB is selling the show to CBS, and they are doing so at a prices that's probably near costs. Since WB owns the show, not CBS, WB will be the ones to syndicate it off network in the US, as well as first run and syndication rights in foreign markets worldwide. That is where almost all of their profit will come from. Studios can actually afford to lose money on first run for a show because they know they will make all of their profits in syndication. Sony Entertainment is famous for practically giving shows away so that they can get over the syndication threshold (generally around 80-100 episodes). 'Til Death and Rules of Engagement being two recent examples from them.
Now for the network, the profits are pretty much front-loaded. Salaries and other costs are lowest during the first 3 years, so if a show is a hit they stand to make bank with the understanding that their costs will increase over time (and, they hope, the show's ratings so they can increase their ad prices). Either way, they won't air a show they are losing money on. With how quickly this was resolved, I think it's safe to say that there is plenty of margin for them to absorb the increased costs at the current ad rate. TV shows are bait to draw in viewers (the product) so they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers (the customers). If the bait isn't working or it's not cost effective, they get rid of it and get something new.
So WB and CBS will probably share in the cost increase. In the long run it's a drop in the bucket compared to the show's profits, and it's not some unexpected cost, it's been planned for and expected. It definitely won't fall on the ad buyers unless the new salaries somehow ties into a ratings increase.
Now, if you have problems with how companies spend on ads then don't buy.... well, anything. And don't watch live TV. Or DVR recordings for at least 5 days so you are completely out of being counted in the C3 ratings that ad prices are based on. Vote with your dollar and eyeballs.
Are you:
* A bank?
* A utility?
* A large corporation?
* A defense contractor?
* A military?
* A government?
* A "whistlebower" (in the figurative sense, not someone who just blows a literal whistle)?
* A journalist?
* A civil rights/government abuse/environmental/economic activist?
* Are you a member of an "anti-government" group or movement?
* Are you Muslim?
* Are you or have you ever been brown?
* Now or will you in the future travel through a customs inspection area of any country?
* Under active investigation by a law enforcement agency?
* A rabble-rouser?
* A person with opinions that are counter to those of your government?
* A sentient artificial lifeform?
If you answered yes to any of the above, then yes you need to be worried. If you did not, then no, you probably don't need to be worried.
And they say Russia is too secretive. This is the pinnacle of transparency!
It frightens me that this is both funny and insightful at the same time.
you either get rid of advertising and pay to watch each video....
Then people would just bitch about it being paywalled.
I have to agree. I have the same tablet (minus the WWAN, WiFi only) and I love it. The apps (not the desktop applications, but the windows 8.1 store "apps") are lacking when compared to other tablets, but having a tablet that can also run any x86 Windows app and gets decent battery life rocks. The price was great and the baytrail atom processor keeps up with most light duty web/office work without issue. I was kind of shocked how well it works considering the price point for them.
No, if he's getting a 404, there's a connection to the server. Would be hilarious if Verizon had something to do with it, but we can't pin that one on them.
It was a joke, but if we are going to take it seriously it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for an ISP to redirect a specific URL to a different URL. Just get the 404 page from the site and redirect it there as it passes through the provider's network gear. Similar process to the one used by internet providers in countries that have mandatory blacklists for "pirate" sites.
Everything. You said you would "... rather risk death than allow the TSA, the NSA surveillance, free speech zones, DUI checkpoints, constitution-free zones, the war on drugs, etc." yet I bet you dutifully obey each and every one of those.
It looks like the Level 3 post has been pulled. It goes to their 404 page which has a link to recent posts which lists the very post linked in the article.....and the recent post link ALSO takes you to a 404.
Strange, the link works fine for me. Your ISP isn't Verizon by chance is it?
I disagree, especially in the case of diverless cars that can move about without a driver. As much as we (legitimately) criticize the growing abusive and invasive nature of law enforcement, they do have a legitimate job to do in providing for the public safety.
Screw off. Unless the constitution explicitly grants the government the power to do so, then it doesn't have that power. Furthermore, we're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Such a country would not sacrifice fundamental liberties for safety. I'd rather risk death than allow the TSA, the NSA surveillance, free speech zones, DUI checkpoints, constitution-free zones, the war on drugs, etc. All of which is similarly enabled by cowards who think that safety is more important than freedom. And that's not even getting into the inherent vulnerabilities of allowing people to stop the car remotely. Are you insane?
We need to be able to know exactly how the car's software and hardware work, and we need to be able to modify it. Otherwise, it is inevitable that governments and companies will abuse it, all the while being applauded by people like you. An otherwise good idea... ruined.
Big words for someone who I bet pulls over their car if told to do so.
There should not be a *signal* to do it. Backdoors are too easy, which will also make them easier to abuse. The bar should be high.
There are already microwave transmitters that can fry a car's control system at range (such as the one promoted by SAVELEC). This should be the preferred method. The police should be *so sure* that the driver is a criminal that they're willing to stake a lawsuit on physically destroying a car's control system. That should be the bar.
Let's stop giving the police ways to cut red tape and instead occasionally make the police do it the hard way. Then there's less capacity for easy abuse.
So your automated car is driving grandpa (who's napping in the back seat) over for dinner when a police officer notices it's dragging a limb that got blown up under it as it drove by. Your solution is that the officer, instead of turning on his red & blues and at the same time sending a signal to the car to pull over, fries your car's electronics (probably totaling it, which he would bear no financial responsibility for) and possibly cooking gramp's pacemaker.
Good plan.
There should not be a kill switch in automated cars for law enforcement. That should not be the solution
I disagree, especially in the case of diverless cars that can move about without a driver. As much as we (legitimately) criticize the growing abusive and invasive nature of law enforcement, they do have a legitimate job to do in providing for the public safety. To that end they will need the ability to safely stop a diverless car. There will be legitimate situations where driverless vehicles need to be stopped by police. A protocol needs to be in place that allows the police to signal the vehicle to "pull over" and come to a stop.
Now, that's not to say there shouldn't be limitations to that power. The police should not be able to just shut down every car in a city, for example. There needs to be rules like an officer needs to be in proximity to the vehicle, and the shutdown needs to be targeted to a specific vehicle for a specific reason. This would be analogous to what we have today where we see flashing lights behind us and we pull over. Remote tracking and/or shutdown should not be allowed without the consent of the owner (if the car is stolen for instance) or in response to a legit, life threatening situation such as a kidnapping or hostage situation. And never if the vehicle is under manual control.
There's a significant issue specific to Titanfall, where the mouse sensitivity is linked to your framerate. If you experience slowdown within the game, a movement of the hand that normally moves the crosshairs 15degrees, may only move it 10 degrees.
It's like trying to aim with someone else's hand on a second mouse fighting back against your crosshairs. That kind of unpredictable mouse sensitivity variation also hits at the most inopportune times since a framerate drop is often concurrent with increased activity in the game.
Most games, even if you drop from 60 fps to 30fps, a hand motion that moves the crosshairs 15 degrees, will still move the crosshairs the same 15 degrees.
Yea they have been patching the game trying to fix those timing issues ever since they unlocked the framerate. Turns out pretty much everything in the game was clocked to framerate after they did whatever it was they did to uncap it. When they unlocked it people found they could run faster, shoot faster, etc if they were running on 144hz monitors. Totally not surprised mouse is affected by it as well. I really love that game and I'm disappointed in how the game has been handled by Respawn. I get they had some outside legal issue that ate into their development time and budget, so I'm holding out hope that they learn from the mistakes of Titanfall and fix them in Titanfall 2.
Maybe the PC version is actually the console version running within a custom virtual machine.
It's not but OK.
I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it.
What do you mean by start... This has been happening for years.
Yea, but it really seems to be accelerating lately. I went for years on a 8800GT running most games without much issue. Granted, over the years I've had to dial back the settings as games got more resource hungry. Last year I picked up a 660Ti thinking it would last at least another few years. Already replaced it because it was already having trouble running games at high or ultra less than a year later (something that took a few years with the 8800).
Whether I need it or not isn't the point. The fact that, with the hardware that I have, the game runs so poorly (I retested last night after I posted this and my framerates dip down into the 20's in some cases like driving on a motorcycle) shows how badly optimized the game is for the PC.
For comparison I can run The Grid 2, a graphics and physics intensive game, at 50-60 FPS at 4K* , but I can't get consistently above 50fps, and get drops into the 20's in Watch_Dogs running it at 1080p.
*on a Samsung U28D590D
Going by what modders are pulling out of the game it does appear that it is true.
Those modders are praising the wonderful graphics they get with the enabled settings, while admitting that they get stuttering and frame rates below 30 fps. Doesn't sound like Ubisoft "handicapped" the graphics to me, so much as fixed the performance issues.
I've run the game with and without the mods and if anything it improved stuttering and barely impacted my frame rates. Other gamers are reporting the same experience.
This game is ridiculously resource intensive on the PC. I usually do a big upgrade on my PC every 5 or 6 years. I just upgraded to a factory overclocked 780ti, z97 mobo, SSD to hold games, 24 gigs of ram (I also run a lot of VMs during the day for work), and a 4790K CPU this past week. With all that this game still struggles to stay at or above 60FPS, dipping to the 40's at times. It is a terrible port.
Titanfall, while not quite so bad, is another game that seems to demand more than it should from the PC. I really hope this isn't the start of a really bad trend of porting over crap, shoving it out the door, and telling the PC community to just throw more hardware at it. My last system lasted 5 years before it really needed an upgrade. I expect the same from this one but I'm starting to think I'm not going to be so lucky.
They measure "wind" speed only if the wind happens to be carrying particulates (e.g., clouds, tornadoes). On a clear day, doppler radar will not show much, even with 50mph wind.
True, but no one is really worried about the clear days...