"I don't know about you, but I have cable and I pay something like $70 a month for TV (and it goes up all the time)."
I pay about $35 or so. I'm curious if you're on digital cable or not.
"Broadcast TV loses market share every year and TIVO is really going to kill it if left unregulated."
Okay, I understand your point, but I don't agree with it. The main reason I disagree is that in order for commercial skip to work, people have to have already recorded the show. There is value in watching it as it comes down. If anything, Tivo gives broadcasters more room to experiment beacuse conflicting time-slots is a real pain in the ass. For example, now they have That 70's Show on at the same time as Enterprise. This sucks for me. Fortunately, Enterprise is on again on Sundays. Not every show is so lucky.
Will the ad-skipping hurt? Actually I agree with you here, I think it could, but only if left unchanged. The main reason that people would want an ad skip feature is that advertising has been abused. I tried watching a movie on TV the other day and commercial breaks happened at critical parts, even messing up the flow of the movie. "Uh, how'd they get out of there?!"
The solution here is simple: Make the ads more interesting. You know how news stations give you little teasers that provide no info whatsoever? Why not place ads in there where they actually give brief news stories? Remember the cartoon suggestion I made earlier? Why not hire a company to do 30-second cartoon spots? The idea here is to make the commercial time more rewarding. This works. When Nemesis came out, they had commercials showing brief clips of the movie plus some hints as to how it was made. I sat in front of ALL the commercial spots to get that info. With a TiVo, I would not have skipped it.
I have one more idea, but this one is arguably weaker. Lure people to the website of the TV show and get advertisements there. I know that comment probably made you grit your teeth, but when American Idol had a marquee at the bottom saying "to see more horrible contestants, go to this url..." my ass was in front of my computer as soon as the next commercial break.
So yes you're right, assuming the industry stays the way it is. Truth be told, though, they were heading that way with or without Tivo.
"None of the viewers seem to care if the network makes money from ads..."
I agree with you. However, the fault is their own. They've done a PITIFUL job of educating their audience. And since they haven't educated their customers, then attempts to make advertising more intrusive has resulted in people making $400 purchases in technologies like TiVo. It amazes me they haven't tapped into the demand to avoid commericals by releasing more DVDs of TV series.
I owe you an apology. I made a rude assumption about what your response would be. I regret that now. I'm sorry man.
I did the P2P thing a while back, and mostly what I downloaded was remixes and club mixes. Anybody know a.) how those are made and b.) how'd I go about legitimately having them?
I'm not a big fan of the original songs in most of those cases. It's not clear to me that having the original song on CD either would put me in the clear. Can anybody enlighten me?
"Cartoons,you say? Yeah, everyone on here has his pet theory on how to make money on the Internet and they all involve giving away your greatest asset for free. I'll believe it when I see it."
Okay, go turn on your TV.
"Well, if they're too tired to go to the video store, they can watch pay per view for about the same price. No need to give away their products for free on the Internet."
You mean like TV does?
"Whatever... someone will write an ad-skipping plugin for Mozilla. Same difference."
Lol okay. Whatever. I'd respond for that if you weren't so interested arguing with me instead of listening to me.
"I have yet to meet anyone who thought that downloading a movie and not watching the ads was stealing."
So? Technically it's not. Unless you want to call me changing the channel during a commercial 'stealing'. Truth be told, I don't think you're really thinking about what I'm saying. It's one thing to say "I understand your point, but I simply don't agree." It's another to say "well, you're wrong because somebody's going to do something to thwart it and everybody in the world will suddenly go down that path." If that were really going to happen, ad skip technologies for TV would be much higher. The truth is that people don't mind breaks once in a while.
"If you had been paying any attention whatsoever for the last 3 years you would have noticed that most of the websites that were 100% advertising are now out of business."
For somebody who claims to understand economics, you sure don't seem to understand why those sites failed. The reason they failed is that they didn't reward the customer for viewing the ad. Instead, they put banners up in the corner that people learned to ignore because there was no value there. If they were smart and put cartoons or something up there, they might have had a loyal advertising audience.
" It sure ain't the $5 you currently pay to rent a movie or the $17 that a CD would cost you."
How many people aren't renting movies because they're too tired after work to do so? I think this would add to their revenue, not replace the rental system. Other than that, I think you're right.
"Plus after someone downloads your movie, edits out the commercials, and sticks it on P2P then you're right back where you started. Get a fucking clue!!!"
Who'd wanna do that? That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard today. If it's free on the website, what's the incentive for somebody to want to download it from your 256k connection? I'd rather get it off a fast server with ads than download the edited from you over the period of a day.
"hah, I didn't even see your name when I modded you troll. I usually like your posts (despite the fact that we've had an argument once:). Well, it's demodded now, but I don't suppose it will last long."
Heh thanks man, but I think it did deserve a troll moderation. Like I said, I blew the delivery.
"Cos I hate football! (thus I'm not busy watching the game)"
Well, I can see how that came off as a troll. I didn't mean it that way, I was trying to make a crack about the lack of a first post.
Sorry dudes. I guess I blew it when it wasn't funny!
Re:No, boycotting Blizzard was illogical
on
Warcraft III Expansion
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Warcraft 3 is less fighting your enemy, and more powering up on NPC monsters so you have no chance of losing when you run across your enemy."
Yeah it's definitely got a more of an RPG feel to it. That's one of the reasons I'm a Blizzard follower, they don't mind changing the formula. I was disappointed with some of the C&C sequals that came out. Westwood added some stuff to it, but it really didn't seem so different that expansion packs couldn't have covered it.
I might be over-stating WC3 a bit, I haven't played it a whole lot yet. (Figures I get it about the same time I get GTA 3...)
"Yes, that's what the market needs, another $60 video game. "
That might be a valid point if a.) WC3 costs $60 (it doesn't, it's $50 just like every other game out there) and b.) If Warcraft 3 was another run-of-the-mill game.
As for your liking it, your choice. But if games aren't successful in the market, you're going to have fewer companies like Blizzard trying to do something interesting. The fact that they released it when they felt they were ready alone is a behaviour we (as consumers) need to encourage. It's not a guaranteed winner because they take their time on it, but it beats rushing it out the door to make a trade-show deadline.
"However, I do agree with what you say, that Starcraft 2 will probably never be, just because of the horrendous finances at Vivendi and the fact that they're focusing on Warcraft more now."
I was kind of under the impression that Blizzard goes back and forth between Warcraft and StarCraft. I think they have SC2 in the works right now, but you know Blizzard, they take their bloody time with stuff. They don't just poop out games regularly like some places do *cough EA*. Lots of design work goes on there.
"Like a 16mhz chip in those suckers, wicked fast. But hey, they're still fun as hell in my opinion"
Actually, the SNES processor was a hair under 4 megahertz. The rason it had great graphics was they had a graphic co-processor that kicked ass. (Were you thinking of the Game Boy Advance maybe?)
Could the SNES have handled Starcraft? Actually that's a possibility. It's not clear how much of StarCraft's run-time was drawing the graphics on the screen. PC's didn't have help blitting stuff like that until 3D accellerators became the norm.
I do imagine, though, that the AI stuff would have to be watered down a bit to make it work. I think they could get a passible version going, though.
"Oh yeah, don't whine about the sources. If you don't like the information, either do some research yourself or continue being ignorant."
Oh grow up. I just wanted other people's reactions on it, not to write a thesis on it.
Re:But, we're boycotting WC3 this week, right?
on
Warcraft III Expansion
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"Or am I off on the weekly schedule? Because I could swear this was the week we're upset over the DMCA server stuff."
I know you're being funny, but the truth is that the market needs AAA games. Boycotting Blizzard would do more harm than good. (Besides, it's Vivendi you're after..)
The expierment went pretty well...
on
Ants... In... Space
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
"I wonder when people will realize you can make these things with a 2x4 and a piece of rope?"
Supposedly the 'authentic' crop circles exist in a location of strange energy disturbances. Those, (assuming that's true, i've only heard it on the Art Bell show...) would be hard to recreate.
I am curious if anybody else has heard about the energy disturbances near some of the crop circles. Anybody have any decent information on it? Art Bell guests strike me as a bit.. uh.. passionate about their work.
" How is this different from tweaking the registry or having to run ping in the console (what I see Windows users doing here regularly on trouble- shooting)?"
I've never had to talk anybody through mucking with the registry in Windows. Nearly all the functionality is there via GUI. Can't say the same for KDE or Gnome. I didn't get interested into the GUI until 3 years after I started using Windows.
As for 'ping' on the console: You have one example, for Linux there are quite a bit more because the functionality's only available via CLI.
"I get to hear, they want Windows because that is what everyone uses and that are the computer skills employers ask for. So it may an old argument, but at least for my company and me personally, it is not stale, but going bothering every day."
"In Mandrake, there is a menu which let's you choose the application by the task you want to accomplish, not by name. It is not perfect yet, but it's a good start."
Cool. I agree, that is a good start.
"If Redhat really has no GUI for this, it sucks more than I thought. But it sounds more probable that you are out of date."
I'm a Linux newb. I have no way of knowing. If other distros are better, that's fine, but that's still a problem in mass adoption of Linux.
"I can tell you that Microsoft Windows is a lot more confusing than you admit - for quite some people."
I support Windows for a living, I don't agree with your comment. I've had a rather easy time talking people over the phone with how to solve a problem. I do not look forward to the day where I have to talk somebody through a command-line problem. If Linux had a stronger UI (like BSD does with Apple's OSX) then all'd be good.
"And that the stuff people still complain about is mostly that it simply does not behave as they are used to. Different. Not more difficult. See?"
If I were unfamiliar with Linux, I'd agree with you and let it drop. But I'm coming fresh from trying to use it. I can make my way around a Mac. If I can do that with a Mac, but not in Linux, then there is something horribly wrong there. I hope it's just a case of Redhat sucking ass. I'm not anti-Linux. I'd love to be using it, but it's painful. I admit some of the pains I've had are from lack of familiarity, but a significant portion of them are coming from lack of access to things I need, or just confusion about getting it to do what I want it to do.
"The amount of users does not imply anything regarding usability, since usability is only one of several reasons to buy software. Microsoft being a monopoly another one amongst others."
Yeah yeah, people always pull the monopoly card. Never mind that people ran out and bought Windows. Never mind that even though the Mac was a success, it was still very pale in comparison to MS's success. No no, everybody got it because it was rammed down their throat.
Sorry, I don't buy that. I've personally watched a number of people pick up Windows and fly around it, doing the things they want to do. These are not technically inclined people, but they've been able to do what they need.
Slashdot Mirror
"I do not want to run fucking windows CE on my amp, thanks. BSOD = horrible screeching feedback noise, maybe?"
It's offical: we've finally scraped the bottom of the barrel for BSOD jokes.
"I don't know about you, but I have cable and I pay something like $70 a month for TV (and it goes up all the time)."
I pay about $35 or so. I'm curious if you're on digital cable or not.
"Broadcast TV loses market share every year and TIVO is really going to kill it if left unregulated."
Okay, I understand your point, but I don't agree with it. The main reason I disagree is that in order for commercial skip to work, people have to have already recorded the show. There is value in watching it as it comes down. If anything, Tivo gives broadcasters more room to experiment beacuse conflicting time-slots is a real pain in the ass. For example, now they have That 70's Show on at the same time as Enterprise. This sucks for me. Fortunately, Enterprise is on again on Sundays. Not every show is so lucky.
Will the ad-skipping hurt? Actually I agree with you here, I think it could, but only if left unchanged. The main reason that people would want an ad skip feature is that advertising has been abused. I tried watching a movie on TV the other day and commercial breaks happened at critical parts, even messing up the flow of the movie. "Uh, how'd they get out of there?!"
The solution here is simple: Make the ads more interesting. You know how news stations give you little teasers that provide no info whatsoever? Why not place ads in there where they actually give brief news stories? Remember the cartoon suggestion I made earlier? Why not hire a company to do 30-second cartoon spots? The idea here is to make the commercial time more rewarding. This works. When Nemesis came out, they had commercials showing brief clips of the movie plus some hints as to how it was made. I sat in front of ALL the commercial spots to get that info. With a TiVo, I would not have skipped it.
I have one more idea, but this one is arguably weaker. Lure people to the website of the TV show and get advertisements there. I know that comment probably made you grit your teeth, but when American Idol had a marquee at the bottom saying "to see more horrible contestants, go to this url..." my ass was in front of my computer as soon as the next commercial break.
So yes you're right, assuming the industry stays the way it is. Truth be told, though, they were heading that way with or without Tivo.
"None of the viewers seem to care if the network makes money from ads..."
I agree with you. However, the fault is their own. They've done a PITIFUL job of educating their audience. And since they haven't educated their customers, then attempts to make advertising more intrusive has resulted in people making $400 purchases in technologies like TiVo. It amazes me they haven't tapped into the demand to avoid commericals by releasing more DVDs of TV series.
I owe you an apology. I made a rude assumption about what your response would be. I regret that now. I'm sorry man.
Cheers.
I did the P2P thing a while back, and mostly what I downloaded was remixes and club mixes. Anybody know a.) how those are made and b.) how'd I go about legitimately having them?
I'm not a big fan of the original songs in most of those cases. It's not clear to me that having the original song on CD either would put me in the clear. Can anybody enlighten me?
"Cartoons,you say? Yeah, everyone on here has his pet theory on how to make money on the Internet and they all involve giving away your greatest asset for free. I'll believe it when I see it."
Okay, go turn on your TV.
"Well, if they're too tired to go to the video store, they can watch pay per view for about the same price. No need to give away their products for free on the Internet."
You mean like TV does?
"Whatever... someone will write an ad-skipping plugin for Mozilla. Same difference."
Lol okay. Whatever. I'd respond for that if you weren't so interested arguing with me instead of listening to me.
"I have yet to meet anyone who thought that downloading a movie and not watching the ads was stealing."
So? Technically it's not. Unless you want to call me changing the channel during a commercial 'stealing'. Truth be told, I don't think you're really thinking about what I'm saying. It's one thing to say "I understand your point, but I simply don't agree." It's another to say "well, you're wrong because somebody's going to do something to thwart it and everybody in the world will suddenly go down that path." If that were really going to happen, ad skip technologies for TV would be much higher. The truth is that people don't mind breaks once in a while.
Anyway, I await your oversimplified speculations.
"Please, don't bother reciting about the piracy issue; it isn't one and never was."
"I object!
Why?
It's devastating to my case!
Overruled!
Good Call!"
Actually I just find the sport dull. No need to turn it into a poke at my liking computers.
"If you had been paying any attention whatsoever for the last 3 years you would have noticed that most of the websites that were 100% advertising are now out of business."
For somebody who claims to understand economics, you sure don't seem to understand why those sites failed. The reason they failed is that they didn't reward the customer for viewing the ad. Instead, they put banners up in the corner that people learned to ignore because there was no value there. If they were smart and put cartoons or something up there, they might have had a loyal advertising audience.
" It sure ain't the $5 you currently pay to rent a movie or the $17 that a CD would cost you."
How many people aren't renting movies because they're too tired after work to do so? I think this would add to their revenue, not replace the rental system. Other than that, I think you're right.
"Plus after someone downloads your movie, edits out the commercials, and sticks it on P2P then you're right back where you started. Get a fucking clue!!!"
Who'd wanna do that? That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard today. If it's free on the website, what's the incentive for somebody to want to download it from your 256k connection? I'd rather get it off a fast server with ads than download the edited from you over the period of a day.
"hah, I didn't even see your name when I modded you troll. I usually like your posts (despite the fact that we've had an argument once :). Well, it's demodded now, but I don't suppose it will last long."
Heh thanks man, but I think it did deserve a troll moderation. Like I said, I blew the delivery.
So.. what'd we argue about?
"Cos I hate football! (thus I'm not busy watching the game)"
Well, I can see how that came off as a troll. I didn't mean it that way, I was trying to make a crack about the lack of a first post.
Sorry dudes. I guess I blew it when it wasn't funny!
"Warcraft 3 is less fighting your enemy, and more powering up on NPC monsters so you have no chance of losing when you run across your enemy."
Yeah it's definitely got a more of an RPG feel to it. That's one of the reasons I'm a Blizzard follower, they don't mind changing the formula. I was disappointed with some of the C&C sequals that came out. Westwood added some stuff to it, but it really didn't seem so different that expansion packs couldn't have covered it.
I might be over-stating WC3 a bit, I haven't played it a whole lot yet. (Figures I get it about the same time I get GTA 3...)
Cos I hate football! (thus I'm not busy watching the game)
"Yes, that's what the market needs, another $60 video game. "
That might be a valid point if a.) WC3 costs $60 (it doesn't, it's $50 just like every other game out there) and b.) If Warcraft 3 was another run-of-the-mill game.
As for your liking it, your choice. But if games aren't successful in the market, you're going to have fewer companies like Blizzard trying to do something interesting. The fact that they released it when they felt they were ready alone is a behaviour we (as consumers) need to encourage. It's not a guaranteed winner because they take their time on it, but it beats rushing it out the door to make a trade-show deadline.
".. until some American git opened a bag of chips."
Since when was an appropriate Simpsons reference off topic?
"Starcraft with even stupider unit behaviour. Now there's an appealing thought."
"I'm not a drama critic." -- J.T. Kirk
"However, I do agree with what you say, that Starcraft 2 will probably never be, just because of the horrendous finances at Vivendi and the fact that they're focusing on Warcraft more now."
I was kind of under the impression that Blizzard goes back and forth between Warcraft and StarCraft. I think they have SC2 in the works right now, but you know Blizzard, they take their bloody time with stuff. They don't just poop out games regularly like some places do *cough EA*. Lots of design work goes on there.
"Like a 16mhz chip in those suckers, wicked fast. But hey, they're still fun as hell in my opinion"
Actually, the SNES processor was a hair under 4 megahertz. The rason it had great graphics was they had a graphic co-processor that kicked ass. (Were you thinking of the Game Boy Advance maybe?)
Could the SNES have handled Starcraft? Actually that's a possibility. It's not clear how much of StarCraft's run-time was drawing the graphics on the screen. PC's didn't have help blitting stuff like that until 3D accellerators became the norm.
I do imagine, though, that the AI stuff would have to be watered down a bit to make it work. I think they could get a passible version going, though.
It's interesting what was possible in those days.
"Oh yeah, don't whine about the sources. If you don't like the information, either do some research yourself or continue being ignorant."
Oh grow up. I just wanted other people's reactions on it, not to write a thesis on it.
"Or am I off on the weekly schedule? Because I could swear this was the week we're upset over the DMCA server stuff."
I know you're being funny, but the truth is that the market needs AAA games. Boycotting Blizzard would do more harm than good. (Besides, it's Vivendi you're after..)
.. until some American git opened a bag of chips.
"I wonder when people will realize you can make these things with a 2x4 and a piece of rope?"
Supposedly the 'authentic' crop circles exist in a location of strange energy disturbances. Those, (assuming that's true, i've only heard it on the Art Bell show...) would be hard to recreate.
I am curious if anybody else has heard about the energy disturbances near some of the crop circles. Anybody have any decent information on it? Art Bell guests strike me as a bit.. uh.. passionate about their work.
" How is this different from tweaking the registry or having to run ping in the console (what I see Windows users doing here regularly on trouble- shooting)?"
I've never had to talk anybody through mucking with the registry in Windows. Nearly all the functionality is there via GUI. Can't say the same for KDE or Gnome. I didn't get interested into the GUI until 3 years after I started using Windows.
As for 'ping' on the console: You have one example, for Linux there are quite a bit more because the functionality's only available via CLI.
"I get to hear, they want Windows because that is what everyone uses and that are the computer skills employers ask for. So it may an old argument, but at least for my company and me personally, it is not stale, but going bothering every day."
I understand you're saying.
"OMG! Someone is actually RTFA!"
Write down this date, we can sue Microsoft in about 10 years.
... Microsoft's monopoly for this frivolous case, but I'm drawing a blank!
"In Mandrake, there is a menu which let's you choose the application by the task you want to accomplish, not by name. It is not perfect yet, but it's a good start."
Cool. I agree, that is a good start.
"If Redhat really has no GUI for this, it sucks more than I thought. But it sounds more probable that you are out of date."
I'm a Linux newb. I have no way of knowing. If other distros are better, that's fine, but that's still a problem in mass adoption of Linux.
"I can tell you that Microsoft Windows is a lot more confusing than you admit - for quite some people."
I support Windows for a living, I don't agree with your comment. I've had a rather easy time talking people over the phone with how to solve a problem. I do not look forward to the day where I have to talk somebody through a command-line problem. If Linux had a stronger UI (like BSD does with Apple's OSX) then all'd be good.
"And that the stuff people still complain about is mostly that it simply does not behave as they are used to. Different. Not more difficult. See?"
If I were unfamiliar with Linux, I'd agree with you and let it drop. But I'm coming fresh from trying to use it. I can make my way around a Mac. If I can do that with a Mac, but not in Linux, then there is something horribly wrong there. I hope it's just a case of Redhat sucking ass. I'm not anti-Linux. I'd love to be using it, but it's painful. I admit some of the pains I've had are from lack of familiarity, but a significant portion of them are coming from lack of access to things I need, or just confusion about getting it to do what I want it to do.
"The amount of users does not imply anything regarding usability, since usability is only one of several reasons to buy software. Microsoft being a monopoly another one amongst others."
Yeah yeah, people always pull the monopoly card. Never mind that people ran out and bought Windows. Never mind that even though the Mac was a success, it was still very pale in comparison to MS's success. No no, everybody got it because it was rammed down their throat.
Sorry, I don't buy that. I've personally watched a number of people pick up Windows and fly around it, doing the things they want to do. These are not technically inclined people, but they've been able to do what they need.
The monopoly agrument is very stale.
... for using Dos as a server.