The vast majority of people don't care about commercials or ads.
I don't think that's true. Just for instance, since Hulu announced the "ad-free" option for Hulu Plus, about 62% of new subscribers have opted for the ad-free version, even though it costs more. 38% is the opposite of "vast majority".
Yup, welcome to the wonderful world of price-elastic demand, Netflix.
I laughed at "We think some members perceived the news as an impending new price increase rather than the completion of two years of grandfathering." If you end up paying more than you did before, it's a price increase, even if the company artificially held that cost down for a while. Trying to dress it up any other way just looks a bit...silly
HA! Calling it "grandfathering" was just spin. How about a "customer loyalty discount"? Except they wouldn't be able to spin it the same way then, would they?
We canceled cable and now we're paying $35 for Internet plus $10 a month for Hulu.
It's good you live in a place with more than one option for Internet service. Many places it's cable Internet or nothing. And when you ask about pricing, you can get cable + Internet bundles for $99, but if you want just Internet, that's $100...
Honestly I could cancel the dvd plan and wouldn't notice, but certain members of my family insist on having it (even if they barely use it, go figure).
That's the way it's always been for most people, which is how Netflix was so successful for its first stretch in the early 2000s. Only a minority of customers would receive and send back multiple DVDs each week -- most people would get some movie they were told was "awesome" and it would sit on a shelf for a month. I remember some comedian even doing a shtick about people who'd get all these "classic movies" from Netflix on DVD that they never would have been able to find at a local Blockbuster, but then they'd end up sending them back unwatched a couple months later.
Blockbuster had the same service, and it was actually cheaper than the Netflix plan. We subscribed to the 3-at-a-time one, so we pretty much always had a movie to watch (yes, we actually watched them - at least 2 a week). It kind of sucked when that went away. Eventually we moved somewhere that we could get enough bandwidth to actually stream videos, and now we have Netflix and Amazon Prime (the latter just because the wife orders so much stuff from there).
I agree with most folks here that the free (included with Prime) stuff is pretty much a vast wasteland. Netflix is better, but it's getting worse (and now it's more expensive). I'm actually thinking of cancelling, but not before I finish watching the rest of the legacy X-Files series. I'm only up to Season 4.
That's the problem with a free society. It expects and requires a certain level of personal responsibility from competent adults. In your example, making sure you're not leaving behind debt or dependents and keeping your affairs in order. And the problem with empowering a government to treat everyone like they can't be trusted to responsible, and you end up with some group of bureaucrats or other deciding where you should go to school, what you're allowed to eat (or not), where you will live, what you can have, who you can marry, etc., etc.
At some point you're adding so many restrictions (in the name of protecting the irresponsible) that you find yourself no longer free. And there are places where we have gone too for in the US - such as the "war on drugs" policies that started this discussion. The harm caused by the policy is actually worse at this point than the harm caused by the use of the drugs, and that's beyond simply the limitations of liberty it has caused. We are about to embark on the same course with tobacco, based on the FDA's recent "deeming rule" that will essentially end the nascent e-cigarette / vaping industry and turn the premium cigar market into a sterile wasteland. And they've started pushing the envelope with soda.
And this is because we've lost track of a basic principle of a free society - that each person has absolute authority over their own person or body, and no other person or entity is entitled to interfere with those choices. As far as dealing with those persons incapacitated mentally or physically - it just requires a little common sense and I actually think we do a pretty good job today of handling that.
It is far better to leave people, who are not harming others, alone.
The problem with this approach is we are, in general, too compassionate to walk by as someone writhes in agony from a cheetos-and-lard induced heart attack. We expect society to help them. So total disregard for one's health DOES have a cost to others. But it's tough to know where to draw the line
You just did. As a society, we show compassion. But interfering with property rights is not okay. Just as someone that owns a book has every right to burn it, each person owns their own body and has every right to destroy that, too, without interference. In fact, owning YOURSELF is the first step is recognizing any human rights at all. Sure, we go out of our way to warn people about what they are doing "Hey if you keep eating cheetos and sitting all the time you will die sooner" - but they still have the final say in the matter. So there's the line.
Also, be sure that you distinguish between "society" and "government", because they are not the same. There's a quote from, I think, Thomas Paine that spells it out pretty well... ah - here it is:
"SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.... Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
- Thomas Paine
Yea, yea, it's not his fault, he's blocked, he can't do anything about it (but look at how great the economy is! - wait - which is it?) bla bla.
And if you bring up "employment participation rates" to me, I'll be glad to give you the tutorial on why that is a completely bogus number that has zero bearing on the health of an economy. I'll have time later for that, if you want.
We were talking about how the people are doing, and that's bad, no matter what statistics you have on how great it is all the money moving around. It's all in the hands of the very few (the very fewer under Obama).
Claiming that Obama's policies had nothing to do with the accelerated income inequality is simply denial. More power and control concentrated in Washington (the direction we've been going) means less money and more suffering outside of Washington and the connected elites. I realize you're a rabid supporter of centralized, strong government control, but it's not working, and your president is responsible for some of that.
Not sure how you get beyond 100% unqualified.
Hillary is corrupt, and a criminal, and a terrible choice. Trump has proposed arming middle eastern despots with nuclear weapons, and is pro-nuclear proliferation. That is how you go beyond 100%.
What he actually said (and is oft-misquoted the way you did, here), is that Japan, South Korea, etc., should pony up for their own defense, which the US is now taking care of. He often makes the mistake of answering hypothetical questions (something career politicians know you NEVER do), about what to do if they didn't want to pay, should they have their own military? Their own nuclear arsenal too? Sure. Every country has the right to defend themselves.
Hypothetically. But he's right. If you're going to reduce military spending, you either get the countries you're providing defense for to help pay the bill, or you leave and let them take care of themselves.
Only if you're at least in the top 5%. For everyone else, living paycheck-to-paycheck, the bills are getting higher and the paycheck isn't getting any bigger.
Now you're talking about a trend that's been going on for 30 years, since Ronald Reagan.
Trickle down is gonna trickle down, and we're all trickling down.
But the economy is still growing and still not in a recession.
Two things have happened since Obama took office: He did nothing to reverse that trend, in fact it has accelerated (and that according to the New York Times). The other thing that happened is further tweaks to the "official" economic numbers - they are hiding a lot of inflation. If you calculate it the same way they did in the past, the GDP would have grown even slower or shrank in some quarters.
See, that's the thing. He hasn't made "horribly, horrible policy". He didn't start any unnecessary wars. He didn't significantly take away the rights of regular people. He didn't increase taxes on poor people. He didn't embarrass the US. So, for somebody to say that he has made "horrible, horrible" policy, says that that person is either a racist, or a moron.
Glad you like everything he's done. I don't, and it doesn't matter what his heritage is. He's been the most divisive president in a generation. First president to kill US citizens by executive fiat, without trial. Guantanamo still open, despite promises. "You can take that to the bank!" he said, about leaving Iraq, which is a worse mess than ever. NEW, yes, UNNECESSARY wars in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. The EPA shutting down farmers because of dirt. Massive new land grabs in the western states. The FDA now completely beholden to the pharmaceutical companies (what a MESS Obamacare has created - single payer would have been better, but you gotta pay back all those political supporters in the health care industry). Illegal immigrants released from jail back to the streets to commit more crimes because ICE refuses to take custody of them. Running guns for Mexican gangs and drug cartels.
He actually took away the land rights of a LOT of regular people (oh, I guess that's not "significant' enough), and, yes, he did increase taxes on poor people - tobacco taxes for one, anyone that can't afford health care gets taxed (yes, they are poor), and there are lots of tax increases for the elderly (such as cuts to Part D coverage), and lower (some years NO) COLA increases in SS benefits. I guess now that the rich are doing so much better under Obama than anyone else, it's okay to squeeze more taxes out of the middle class instead, because he's certainly done plenty of that. Much of it has been increased regulation - which has increased costs of compliance by 13%. All that gets covered by higher costs to the poor and the middle class.
If you don't think Obama has embarrassed the US, you might want to ask some folks in the Middle East or Asia. It's not embarrassing to you that a ragtag band of religious fanatics has taken over so much territory using weapons the US left there???
You can call me names all you want, but my opinion of Obama is not informed by race, but it is informed by actions.
Horrible policy? He's the first president since WWII that hasn't taken the nation into a recession. Instead, he took the nation out of one and there has been steady, if slow, growth every quarter since.
Only if you're at least in the top 5%. For everyone else, living paycheck-to-paycheck, the bills are getting higher and the paycheck isn't getting any bigger. And there are less people working, and more underemployed than since the Carter recession. They keep faking the unemployment numbers, too. Somehow it goes down even though there are less new jobs than there are people entering the workforce. They don't count all the people that have exhausted their unemployment benefits and/or have given up and gone to work for Uber.
The only way the democrats can lose is to alienate the Latino vote, Bush won enough of that vote to win, Trump has no chance at all. In fact he'll get the lowest Latino votes a Republican president has ever received.
No, sorry, they still don't allow undocumented immigrants to vote.
That's a new one. Considering that he doesn't drink, or do drugs, and none of his children do, either. Are you throwing that in because he has a young wife? It's hedonistic to have a young wife, now? What would you call Bill?
Nice troll. I've seen those guys in action. It takes 2 or 3 to replace a competent tech worker, and even then their artifacts are crap and require rework. But companies don't care - it's a race to the bottom.
I don't understand how companies survive trying to do it. Surely the people being replaced have little motivation to properly train their replacements, and some to actively sabotage them with misinformation and careful omission. Have any of these companies had catastrophic problems after downgrading their staff?
Unlike the sociopathic executives doing this, the people being replaced are professionals, and they don't have a golden parachute to hang on while they plan their next business venture.
This is why everyone in productive employment should put away enough every month for a nice "fuck you fund".
You can't fight immigration policy (such as H1-B) at the state level - it's an entirely Federal program. States have even tried to enforce federal immigration rules within their state using state law enforcement and was slapped down for it. The Feds are currently importing refugees and asylum seekers in places all over the country, and will not even respond to state governor's requests for names, places, and/or the number of people the Feds are planning to place in their states.
So far I've been fairly pleased with reading things on Medium, although some of the weird sliding underlay pics I can do without. So when will the nice experience give way to a horrible one? When they force ads on those who run ad blockers? When they decide they aren't making enough money from the site as is? Micro transactions? So far it's been almost too good to be true.... which makes me deeply suspicious.
It's a different model. They make money using native advertising.
Slashdot Mirror
Alibaba is a scam.
The vast majority of people don't care about commercials or ads.
I don't think that's true. Just for instance, since Hulu announced the "ad-free" option for Hulu Plus, about 62% of new subscribers have opted for the ad-free version, even though it costs more. 38% is the opposite of "vast majority".
Yup, welcome to the wonderful world of price-elastic demand, Netflix. I laughed at "We think some members perceived the news as an impending new price increase rather than the completion of two years of grandfathering." If you end up paying more than you did before, it's a price increase, even if the company artificially held that cost down for a while. Trying to dress it up any other way just looks a bit...silly
HA! Calling it "grandfathering" was just spin. How about a "customer loyalty discount"? Except they wouldn't be able to spin it the same way then, would they?
We canceled cable and now we're paying $35 for Internet plus $10 a month for Hulu.
It's good you live in a place with more than one option for Internet service. Many places it's cable Internet or nothing. And when you ask about pricing, you can get cable + Internet bundles for $99, but if you want just Internet, that's $100...
Honestly I could cancel the dvd plan and wouldn't notice, but certain members of my family insist on having it (even if they barely use it, go figure).
That's the way it's always been for most people, which is how Netflix was so successful for its first stretch in the early 2000s. Only a minority of customers would receive and send back multiple DVDs each week -- most people would get some movie they were told was "awesome" and it would sit on a shelf for a month. I remember some comedian even doing a shtick about people who'd get all these "classic movies" from Netflix on DVD that they never would have been able to find at a local Blockbuster, but then they'd end up sending them back unwatched a couple months later.
Blockbuster had the same service, and it was actually cheaper than the Netflix plan. We subscribed to the 3-at-a-time one, so we pretty much always had a movie to watch (yes, we actually watched them - at least 2 a week). It kind of sucked when that went away. Eventually we moved somewhere that we could get enough bandwidth to actually stream videos, and now we have Netflix and Amazon Prime (the latter just because the wife orders so much stuff from there).
I agree with most folks here that the free (included with Prime) stuff is pretty much a vast wasteland. Netflix is better, but it's getting worse (and now it's more expensive). I'm actually thinking of cancelling, but not before I finish watching the rest of the legacy X-Files series. I'm only up to Season 4.
Would a 4k TV (say, 40 - 50 inch) be preferable to 3 or 4 1K monitors?
No.
That's the problem with a free society. It expects and requires a certain level of personal responsibility from competent adults. In your example, making sure you're not leaving behind debt or dependents and keeping your affairs in order. And the problem with empowering a government to treat everyone like they can't be trusted to responsible, and you end up with some group of bureaucrats or other deciding where you should go to school, what you're allowed to eat (or not), where you will live, what you can have, who you can marry, etc., etc.
At some point you're adding so many restrictions (in the name of protecting the irresponsible) that you find yourself no longer free. And there are places where we have gone too for in the US - such as the "war on drugs" policies that started this discussion. The harm caused by the policy is actually worse at this point than the harm caused by the use of the drugs, and that's beyond simply the limitations of liberty it has caused. We are about to embark on the same course with tobacco, based on the FDA's recent "deeming rule" that will essentially end the nascent e-cigarette / vaping industry and turn the premium cigar market into a sterile wasteland. And they've started pushing the envelope with soda.
And this is because we've lost track of a basic principle of a free society - that each person has absolute authority over their own person or body, and no other person or entity is entitled to interfere with those choices. As far as dealing with those persons incapacitated mentally or physically - it just requires a little common sense and I actually think we do a pretty good job today of handling that.
It is far better to leave people, who are not harming others, alone.
The problem with this approach is we are, in general, too compassionate to walk by as someone writhes in agony from a cheetos-and-lard induced heart attack. We expect society to help them. So total disregard for one's health DOES have a cost to others. But it's tough to know where to draw the line
You just did. As a society, we show compassion. But interfering with property rights is not okay. Just as someone that owns a book has every right to burn it, each person owns their own body and has every right to destroy that, too, without interference. In fact, owning YOURSELF is the first step is recognizing any human rights at all. Sure, we go out of our way to warn people about what they are doing "Hey if you keep eating cheetos and sitting all the time you will die sooner" - but they still have the final say in the matter. So there's the line.
Also, be sure that you distinguish between "society" and "government", because they are not the same. There's a quote from, I think, Thomas Paine that spells it out pretty well... ah - here it is:
North Korea does have nukes. They haven't used them on anyone else.
Yea, yea, it's not his fault, he's blocked, he can't do anything about it (but look at how great the economy is! - wait - which is it?) bla bla.
And if you bring up "employment participation rates" to me, I'll be glad to give you the tutorial on why that is a completely bogus number that has zero bearing on the health of an economy. I'll have time later for that, if you want.
We were talking about how the people are doing, and that's bad, no matter what statistics you have on how great it is all the money moving around. It's all in the hands of the very few (the very fewer under Obama).
Claiming that Obama's policies had nothing to do with the accelerated income inequality is simply denial. More power and control concentrated in Washington (the direction we've been going) means less money and more suffering outside of Washington and the connected elites. I realize you're a rabid supporter of centralized, strong government control, but it's not working, and your president is responsible for some of that.
He has already forgiven that loan.
Not sure how you get beyond 100% unqualified. Hillary is corrupt, and a criminal, and a terrible choice. Trump has proposed arming middle eastern despots with nuclear weapons, and is pro-nuclear proliferation. That is how you go beyond 100%.
What he actually said (and is oft-misquoted the way you did, here), is that Japan, South Korea, etc., should pony up for their own defense, which the US is now taking care of. He often makes the mistake of answering hypothetical questions (something career politicians know you NEVER do), about what to do if they didn't want to pay, should they have their own military? Their own nuclear arsenal too? Sure. Every country has the right to defend themselves.
Hypothetically. But he's right. If you're going to reduce military spending, you either get the countries you're providing defense for to help pay the bill, or you leave and let them take care of themselves.
Now you're talking about a trend that's been going on for 30 years, since Ronald Reagan.
Trickle down is gonna trickle down, and we're all trickling down.
But the economy is still growing and still not in a recession.
Two things have happened since Obama took office: He did nothing to reverse that trend, in fact it has accelerated (and that according to the New York Times). The other thing that happened is further tweaks to the "official" economic numbers - they are hiding a lot of inflation. If you calculate it the same way they did in the past, the GDP would have grown even slower or shrank in some quarters.
See, that's the thing. He hasn't made "horribly, horrible policy". He didn't start any unnecessary wars. He didn't significantly take away the rights of regular people. He didn't increase taxes on poor people. He didn't embarrass the US. So, for somebody to say that he has made "horrible, horrible" policy, says that that person is either a racist, or a moron.
Glad you like everything he's done. I don't, and it doesn't matter what his heritage is. He's been the most divisive president in a generation. First president to kill US citizens by executive fiat, without trial. Guantanamo still open, despite promises. "You can take that to the bank!" he said, about leaving Iraq, which is a worse mess than ever. NEW, yes, UNNECESSARY wars in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. The EPA shutting down farmers because of dirt. Massive new land grabs in the western states. The FDA now completely beholden to the pharmaceutical companies (what a MESS Obamacare has created - single payer would have been better, but you gotta pay back all those political supporters in the health care industry). Illegal immigrants released from jail back to the streets to commit more crimes because ICE refuses to take custody of them. Running guns for Mexican gangs and drug cartels.
He actually took away the land rights of a LOT of regular people (oh, I guess that's not "significant' enough), and, yes, he did increase taxes on poor people - tobacco taxes for one, anyone that can't afford health care gets taxed (yes, they are poor), and there are lots of tax increases for the elderly (such as cuts to Part D coverage), and lower (some years NO) COLA increases in SS benefits. I guess now that the rich are doing so much better under Obama than anyone else, it's okay to squeeze more taxes out of the middle class instead, because he's certainly done plenty of that. Much of it has been increased regulation - which has increased costs of compliance by 13%. All that gets covered by higher costs to the poor and the middle class.
If you don't think Obama has embarrassed the US, you might want to ask some folks in the Middle East or Asia. It's not embarrassing to you that a ragtag band of religious fanatics has taken over so much territory using weapons the US left there???
You can call me names all you want, but my opinion of Obama is not informed by race, but it is informed by actions.
Horrible policy? He's the first president since WWII that hasn't taken the nation into a recession. Instead, he took the nation out of one and there has been steady, if slow, growth every quarter since.
Only if you're at least in the top 5%. For everyone else, living paycheck-to-paycheck, the bills are getting higher and the paycheck isn't getting any bigger. And there are less people working, and more underemployed than since the Carter recession. They keep faking the unemployment numbers, too. Somehow it goes down even though there are less new jobs than there are people entering the workforce. They don't count all the people that have exhausted their unemployment benefits and/or have given up and gone to work for Uber.
The only way the democrats can lose is to alienate the Latino vote, Bush won enough of that vote to win, Trump has no chance at all. In fact he'll get the lowest Latino votes a Republican president has ever received.
No, sorry, they still don't allow undocumented immigrants to vote.
Amazing to me people still think Nate Silver is any good. Hell, even a parody account is more accurate.
Yea, they don't call him "Slick Willie" for nothing. Clinton Body Count.
hedonistic
That's a new one. Considering that he doesn't drink, or do drugs, and none of his children do, either. Are you throwing that in because he has a young wife? It's hedonistic to have a young wife, now? What would you call Bill?
Nice troll. I've seen those guys in action. It takes 2 or 3 to replace a competent tech worker, and even then their artifacts are crap and require rework. But companies don't care - it's a race to the bottom.
I don't understand how companies survive trying to do it. Surely the people being replaced have little motivation to properly train their replacements, and some to actively sabotage them with misinformation and careful omission. Have any of these companies had catastrophic problems after downgrading their staff?
Unlike the sociopathic executives doing this, the people being replaced are professionals, and they don't have a golden parachute to hang on while they plan their next business venture.
This is why everyone in productive employment should put away enough every month for a nice "fuck you fund".
You have to fight for it at the state level.
You can't fight immigration policy (such as H1-B) at the state level - it's an entirely Federal program. States have even tried to enforce federal immigration rules within their state using state law enforcement and was slapped down for it. The Feds are currently importing refugees and asylum seekers in places all over the country, and will not even respond to state governor's requests for names, places, and/or the number of people the Feds are planning to place in their states.
So far I've been fairly pleased with reading things on Medium, although some of the weird sliding underlay pics I can do without. So when will the nice experience give way to a horrible one? When they force ads on those who run ad blockers? When they decide they aren't making enough money from the site as is? Micro transactions? So far it's been almost too good to be true.... which makes me deeply suspicious.
It's a different model. They make money using native advertising.
Well there are certainly hints that something like that may be in the offing...
Good news, Thanks!
I recently got the Marshmallow update on my Alcatel phone, so I should be all good.