That's enough better than having the story flow disrupted every 12 minutes that I would put up with it rather than make the effort to download.
The show is already disrupted, though; any TV show is made assuming commercial breaks in certain locations, so there's a scene transition and/or fade-to-black where the commercial can be placed. So the addition of commercials doesn't really brake the flow, it just means you have to wait a bit longer to see the whole thing.
If/when shows are produced with the intention of being shown straight through, with no commercial-oriented transitions, only then will this become an issue.
I want to watch the show on my primary flatscreen TV using my remote, durnit, not on the laptop messing about with a mouse.
If you have a PC hooked up to the flatscreen, check out Hulu Desktop. It has remote support added in. I'm quite pleased with it so far, and they're very responsive about adding/fixing features. The only large gripe is that there are apparently certain series that are not available on the Desktop; for whatever reason, companies can (and do) choose to put shows on the Hulu website but not on the Desktop. I have no idea why.
Because no one changes the channels during a TV commercial or gets up to take a leak? People ignoring commercials is nothing new; however, you are spot on when you say that since the commercial breaks are short, it's not worth it to switch over to something else or get up and leave for a minute. That's probably one of the reason that the prices are so high, because not only are they guaranteed eyeballs, but they are guaranteed un-divided eyeballs.
I know that I'm more likely to watch a commercial on Hulu than on TV, especially if it's an amusing commercial.
This is something Hulu needs to work on, actually. For shows like the Simpsons or House, which are highly popular, the commercials are always spot on. For less popular shows, such as some of the oddities like Paranormal TV, cooking, and anime, the commercials can cut in at the worst times. Sometimes you get lucky and they're only +/-second from where they should be, but I've had the occasional show where they cut in during the middle of an action scene. In many instances they seem to ignore the pre-created spots for commercials, with obviously fade-to-black and scene transitions, in favor of whatever random place they like.
That said, I enjoy Hulu greatly; I'm using their Desktop program right now, and am also developing a Firefox add-on for organizing the queue (something useful for those like me, with 300+ entries).
2) We've got 4 seasons (which is good or bad depending on your preference).
Really? I spent five years on-and-off in Michigan at Kettering University. I only ever experienced two seasons: Winter and Potholes. During potholes it wasn't uncommon for it to rain a week straight.
The weather in Michigan alone is more than enough to keep me from ever going back there permanently. A number of other factors, including it's economy, just sets that in stone.
The argument is that these files, referred to as "cribs", are intended for studying, not copying. They can give real-test examples to understand better what to expect on future tests from a certain professor or class; even more important, they can show how a professor might grade, so you know whether to focus on showing your work or getting the answer. This is doubly helpful in liberal arts classes, where you have a lot of short-essay tests and so need to know what kind of information they're looking for.
To go about it another way, do you recall your school math books? Undoubtedly, they always contain an answer list in the back, but only of the even questions. So a lazy teacher just assigns the odd questions; a naive teacher assigns even as well as odd. Both of these teachers then grade only on the answer, and not on the work. In a proper setup, there would be less questions, but work should be show, and so these answers would be useless except for checking that you've done the problem right. In the same manner, a proper college class setup wouldn't reuse the same question/problem over and over.
Do people use these to cheat on assignments (and sometimes tests and quizzes)? Certainly, and I'm guilty of it myself; my university had a professor who usually only taught one class, Statistics and Probability, that was regarded by everyone as a joke. It was always the same question (or some numbers were changed) and the professor himself didn't even understand the material. After the third week the majority of us were lost, and his general practice is that after everyone starts failing tests (and they always do) he starts making them take-home, and so we work in groups and use the cribs to complete them.
As a fraternity member, I've seen cribs used both ways. There is the more severe, odd case where someone will sneak a crib into a test/quiz for cheating, but that's rare.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts
Certainly, this does require profit in most cases on the part of the holders, but profit should not be the main motive. The quote I referenced said:
that copyright is the only way to make money on creative works
Emphasis mine. There are many other ways to make money on creative works; the congressmen in question are simply trying to twist copyright into some capitalist holy grail, when it's not and shouldn't be.
that copyright is the only way to make money on creative works
While I don't think anyone's been delusional about it, this is proof that government officials are in the pocket of corporations, or at least have some ulterior motive for acting in their interests. (While that line was said by Hatch, Wexler's part doesn't fare much better.)
The US Constitution empowers Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
No where in there does it say anything about profit.
I now view Wexler and Hatch as one of the many bought-and-paid-for politicians; it's unfortunate I have no opportunity to vote against either. On an interesting aside, Wexler is a Democrat (FL) and Hatch a Republican (UT). Why neither the summary nor the techdirt article states this is beyond me, as I consider it highly relevant.
Actually, I'd say that it's far more likely to fail for a non-technical reason: It's not standard. At least in America, there has never been a highly-successful peripheral. Some do reach high use, mainly when bundled with games that also sell well (such as the Game Boy Adapter for the N64 that came with Pokemon Stadium), but none reach a wide enough audience that games can be made without much worry about players having them. Unless Microsoft starts to pack this in as standard equipment with 360s, like Sony's update to the PS1 controller in the middle of its life cycle, not enough people will buy it to make it worthwhile to major publishers. Maybe some will include the potential for Natal functionality, but will focus the game on using the normal controller.
If the tech holds for Natal, we'll likely see something in the XBox 3 that is Natal+Wiimote. Simple wireless controllers that have an IR sensor for pointer functionality (it will be far more precise than trying to register the exact angle of the hand and fingers), and then the camera does the actual motion sensing.
I won't argue against the fact that the specs are inferior to other consoles (anyone who would is insane), nor that the developers are misunderstanding/disregarding the system, but:
When they ported Resident Evil 4 to the Wii with new controls, they managed to make it look worse than the original Gamecube version which could be run from the very same console.
Can you cite areas where it looked worse? I played many dozens of hours of the Gamecube version (it was a damn good looking game then), and I've put many dozens of hours in the Wii version; if anything, the Wii version has had slight enhancements for graphics.
While there's extremely little information outside of "It exists", a new Wii Zelda has been announced. Supposedly more "mature", though that can mean many things to many people.
All in all, this is a MUCH better showing from Nintendo than last year's "Yay let's flail around faking music!" show. I almost wish they had split what we've see this year between this and 2008 E3s, so that we might see more of each thing.
Personally, I'm more excited for Golden Sun DS than anything else, though I'm sure to pick of SMG2 and Metroid. Too bad that rumored Metroid: Dread for DS never came about.
With all this, wouldn't Washington have some sort of department that all construction plans have to be submitted to, and the lone guy with security clearance compares the construction zones with secret lines/locations? I would think this would save a lot of time and hassle and, considering how the government likes to create useless jobs, am surprised that it doesn't seem to exist (but not surprised if it does exist and they just don't do their job right).
I'm the son of a Lutheran pastor, so while I don't have first hand experience I've picked up stuff now and then. As a sibling post to your stated, no one's coffers are actually related to them unless they decide to make it so, either by paying by check or using a set of envelopes. These envelopes are all given in a box to each church member for each church year, enough for every regular service, stamped with a number for that person. If the person wishes, they can use the envelope for cash during the offering and that will be included in their "personal statement" for tax purposes. Plain cash is gladly accepted, and no one makes note of who donates what cash.
To my knowledge, my dad doesn't get direct access to offering figures for individuals; as with your church, the counting is done by elders or other appointed members. The entire congregation knows the general numbers (we list attendance and offerings in the bulletin for the previous Sunday), but the pastor doesn't deal with that stuff himself.
But then $10 for a movie ticket that sucked isn't as much a loss as $60 for a game that sucked.
Except that if the game sucks, I can either return it (in some cases), or sell it back/eBay it and make some of my money back. For a brand new game within 30 days of release, you'll probably make back 40-60% of what you paid, if you're smart when selling it.
If a movie sucks, I have no recourse. Maybe if the quality was really shitty I can complain and get my money back, but otherwise I'm S.O.L. I can't stand outside the theater shouting "Movie stub for sale! Half the movie, half the price!"
Why would you EVER pay even 25 cents an hour to play video games when you could MAKE 50 cents an hour... or even 50 dollars an hour doing something else...
Because money should be made to be used, not to be horded. What's the use in making 50 bucks an hour when I never have the time or inclination to spend 25 cents an hour entertaining myself?
Honestly, that doesn't bother me that much. The U.S. has more than 330MM people; 30,000 is less than 1% of 1% of that.
What number do you feel is fine for acting on something this minor? 10,000? 1,000? 1% of 1% of 1%? If you have a hard number, how did you decide that? When the FTC director (or a relative) gets one of these calls himself?
I'm sure a variety of groups could get 30,000 people together to do any number of things or file complains; anything from religious sects to lobby groups. I'd actually be worried if a government for this many people acted on such a small number for a case such as this.
Remember, the FCC acted based on 500K responses to the "wardrobe malfunction" Superbowl fiasco. That's still less than 1%.
Maybe I was being too ambiguous. You're absolutely right, and decently intelligent people will do exactly that.
I was speaking more towards the segment of the population that might not be considered "decently intelligent". Have you seen Idiocracy? At the beginning there's a comparison between some redneck and his X wives/girlfriends and a "proper" couple. The proper couple keep putting off having a kid for this or that reason, while Cletus produces offspring with just about everything female he can (if I recall correctly, that includes some of his own kids, and potentially himself).
The "Cletus"es of this world are the ones who need and should be using this the most, but they're also the ones who seem the least likely to use it short of being given to them for free as a patch.
Ignoring the problems pointed out in other posts, would those males who should be taking it actually do so? Even if it was a patch, I'd think that normal male thought in the populations where this contraception should really be embraced would declare that decreasing your sperm count would make you "less of a man" or "less potent". Essentially it's the same people who refuse to use condoms who need this kind of thing the most, and they'll refuse to use it as well until something drastic happens.
With a service like Youtube, maybe. There are some videos worth seeing, but the vast amount are rubbish. Without a good preview feature (num of hits and rating is not a good indicator), I'd just watch a commercial before-hand, and 99% of the time I wouldn't return to watch that video. For returning videos I would if I could see them in high-quality and the price was rather cheap (I'm thinking in terms of dime/minute). Let me load up my account with some money, and then use that credit over-time, getting an alert when I get below a set threshold. It works for google, they get to store the money and collect interest, I don't have to finagle with a CC every time I want higher quality.
So the main problem for Youtube is lack of quality content. If they were to get more "official" content, then they'd have an easier time making a sell to people, but I'm not that interested in paying for America's Funniest Home Videos writ large.
I have no problem upgrading to IE8, as I use FireFox as my primary browser, but I do use it to test web applications and design. Even as a critical update, IE8 won't take out the huge number using IE7 and IE6 for some time; and there are still a small number using IE5.5 (horror of horrors). Since IE is tied into the OS, it's my understanding that you can only have one version installed at a time.
Is there some way to use older versions of IE on the same PC? I've seen an "IE Pack" of sorts, but it got a lot of bad reviews and haven't tried.
More reliable service? I've worked in a UPS plant. I now prefer to ship FedEx.
Also, if the UPS plant was any indication, UPS (and maybe FedEx and DHL) would have to do massive upgrades and changes to handle the basic mail that flows through the USPS system.
I have no problem with the USPS being in place. Furthermore, I can't see any problem that USPS is having that UPS or FedEx couldn't have themselves. Considering the necessity that postal mail still is, I'd prefer to leave it to the government. Privatization would only increase costs and lower service. You would also wind up with the last-mile problems of broadband. While UPS does deliver packages to my town, it has no regular drop-off location, and I have to drive 45 minutes if I want to ship UPS or FedEx. Obviously they would open more branches if there was suddenly a shift, but there would still be a period where many towns would be crippled in some fashion.
I'm fine with decreasing the services offered by USPS, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks. I wondered that, but wasn't sure. I would have thought that the show's submitters would take a bit more time to plan breaks than Hulu.
I rarely, if ever, re-watch shows, so I wouldn't be able to tell if the problem is due to a technical failure or a human one.
The show is already disrupted, though; any TV show is made assuming commercial breaks in certain locations, so there's a scene transition and/or fade-to-black where the commercial can be placed. So the addition of commercials doesn't really brake the flow, it just means you have to wait a bit longer to see the whole thing.
If/when shows are produced with the intention of being shown straight through, with no commercial-oriented transitions, only then will this become an issue.
If you have a PC hooked up to the flatscreen, check out Hulu Desktop. It has remote support added in. I'm quite pleased with it so far, and they're very responsive about adding/fixing features. The only large gripe is that there are apparently certain series that are not available on the Desktop; for whatever reason, companies can (and do) choose to put shows on the Hulu website but not on the Desktop. I have no idea why.
Because no one changes the channels during a TV commercial or gets up to take a leak? People ignoring commercials is nothing new; however, you are spot on when you say that since the commercial breaks are short, it's not worth it to switch over to something else or get up and leave for a minute. That's probably one of the reason that the prices are so high, because not only are they guaranteed eyeballs, but they are guaranteed un-divided eyeballs.
I know that I'm more likely to watch a commercial on Hulu than on TV, especially if it's an amusing commercial.
This is something Hulu needs to work on, actually. For shows like the Simpsons or House, which are highly popular, the commercials are always spot on. For less popular shows, such as some of the oddities like Paranormal TV, cooking, and anime, the commercials can cut in at the worst times. Sometimes you get lucky and they're only +/-second from where they should be, but I've had the occasional show where they cut in during the middle of an action scene. In many instances they seem to ignore the pre-created spots for commercials, with obviously fade-to-black and scene transitions, in favor of whatever random place they like.
That said, I enjoy Hulu greatly; I'm using their Desktop program right now, and am also developing a Firefox add-on for organizing the queue (something useful for those like me, with 300+ entries).
Really? I spent five years on-and-off in Michigan at Kettering University. I only ever experienced two seasons: Winter and Potholes. During potholes it wasn't uncommon for it to rain a week straight.
The weather in Michigan alone is more than enough to keep me from ever going back there permanently. A number of other factors, including it's economy, just sets that in stone.
The argument is that these files, referred to as "cribs", are intended for studying, not copying. They can give real-test examples to understand better what to expect on future tests from a certain professor or class; even more important, they can show how a professor might grade, so you know whether to focus on showing your work or getting the answer. This is doubly helpful in liberal arts classes, where you have a lot of short-essay tests and so need to know what kind of information they're looking for.
To go about it another way, do you recall your school math books? Undoubtedly, they always contain an answer list in the back, but only of the even questions. So a lazy teacher just assigns the odd questions; a naive teacher assigns even as well as odd. Both of these teachers then grade only on the answer, and not on the work. In a proper setup, there would be less questions, but work should be show, and so these answers would be useless except for checking that you've done the problem right. In the same manner, a proper college class setup wouldn't reuse the same question/problem over and over.
Do people use these to cheat on assignments (and sometimes tests and quizzes)? Certainly, and I'm guilty of it myself; my university had a professor who usually only taught one class, Statistics and Probability, that was regarded by everyone as a joke. It was always the same question (or some numbers were changed) and the professor himself didn't even understand the material. After the third week the majority of us were lost, and his general practice is that after everyone starts failing tests (and they always do) he starts making them take-home, and so we work in groups and use the cribs to complete them.
As a fraternity member, I've seen cribs used both ways. There is the more severe, odd case where someone will sneak a crib into a test/quiz for cheating, but that's rare.
I'm much more inclined to always think of a politician as a crook, and force him or her to prove otherwise.
How about
Certainly, this does require profit in most cases on the part of the holders, but profit should not be the main motive. The quote I referenced said:
Emphasis mine. There are many other ways to make money on creative works; the congressmen in question are simply trying to twist copyright into some capitalist holy grail, when it's not and shouldn't be.
While I don't think anyone's been delusional about it, this is proof that government officials are in the pocket of corporations, or at least have some ulterior motive for acting in their interests. (While that line was said by Hatch, Wexler's part doesn't fare much better.)
The US Constitution empowers Congress:
No where in there does it say anything about profit.
I now view Wexler and Hatch as one of the many bought-and-paid-for politicians; it's unfortunate I have no opportunity to vote against either. On an interesting aside, Wexler is a Democrat (FL) and Hatch a Republican (UT). Why neither the summary nor the techdirt article states this is beyond me, as I consider it highly relevant.
Actually, I'd say that it's far more likely to fail for a non-technical reason: It's not standard. At least in America, there has never been a highly-successful peripheral. Some do reach high use, mainly when bundled with games that also sell well (such as the Game Boy Adapter for the N64 that came with Pokemon Stadium), but none reach a wide enough audience that games can be made without much worry about players having them. Unless Microsoft starts to pack this in as standard equipment with 360s, like Sony's update to the PS1 controller in the middle of its life cycle, not enough people will buy it to make it worthwhile to major publishers. Maybe some will include the potential for Natal functionality, but will focus the game on using the normal controller.
If the tech holds for Natal, we'll likely see something in the XBox 3 that is Natal+Wiimote. Simple wireless controllers that have an IR sensor for pointer functionality (it will be far more precise than trying to register the exact angle of the hand and fingers), and then the camera does the actual motion sensing.
What if you jump on your friend's shoulders to form Mecha-Shiva?
I won't argue against the fact that the specs are inferior to other consoles (anyone who would is insane), nor that the developers are misunderstanding/disregarding the system, but:
Can you cite areas where it looked worse? I played many dozens of hours of the Gamecube version (it was a damn good looking game then), and I've put many dozens of hours in the Wii version; if anything, the Wii version has had slight enhancements for graphics.
While there's extremely little information outside of "It exists", a new Wii Zelda has been announced. Supposedly more "mature", though that can mean many things to many people.
All in all, this is a MUCH better showing from Nintendo than last year's "Yay let's flail around faking music!" show. I almost wish they had split what we've see this year between this and 2008 E3s, so that we might see more of each thing.
Personally, I'm more excited for Golden Sun DS than anything else, though I'm sure to pick of SMG2 and Metroid. Too bad that rumored Metroid: Dread for DS never came about.
With all this, wouldn't Washington have some sort of department that all construction plans have to be submitted to, and the lone guy with security clearance compares the construction zones with secret lines/locations? I would think this would save a lot of time and hassle and, considering how the government likes to create useless jobs, am surprised that it doesn't seem to exist (but not surprised if it does exist and they just don't do their job right).
This is one of the countries that people want to let control DNS.
I'm the son of a Lutheran pastor, so while I don't have first hand experience I've picked up stuff now and then. As a sibling post to your stated, no one's coffers are actually related to them unless they decide to make it so, either by paying by check or using a set of envelopes. These envelopes are all given in a box to each church member for each church year, enough for every regular service, stamped with a number for that person. If the person wishes, they can use the envelope for cash during the offering and that will be included in their "personal statement" for tax purposes. Plain cash is gladly accepted, and no one makes note of who donates what cash.
To my knowledge, my dad doesn't get direct access to offering figures for individuals; as with your church, the counting is done by elders or other appointed members. The entire congregation knows the general numbers (we list attendance and offerings in the bulletin for the previous Sunday), but the pastor doesn't deal with that stuff himself.
Except that if the game sucks, I can either return it (in some cases), or sell it back/eBay it and make some of my money back. For a brand new game within 30 days of release, you'll probably make back 40-60% of what you paid, if you're smart when selling it.
If a movie sucks, I have no recourse. Maybe if the quality was really shitty I can complain and get my money back, but otherwise I'm S.O.L. I can't stand outside the theater shouting "Movie stub for sale! Half the movie, half the price!"
Because money should be made to be used, not to be horded. What's the use in making 50 bucks an hour when I never have the time or inclination to spend 25 cents an hour entertaining myself?
Do... do I still try to make a car analogy?
Maybe a simple "In Soviet Russia car analogy make you?"
Honestly, that doesn't bother me that much. The U.S. has more than 330MM people; 30,000 is less than 1% of 1% of that.
What number do you feel is fine for acting on something this minor? 10,000? 1,000? 1% of 1% of 1%? If you have a hard number, how did you decide that? When the FTC director (or a relative) gets one of these calls himself?
I'm sure a variety of groups could get 30,000 people together to do any number of things or file complains; anything from religious sects to lobby groups. I'd actually be worried if a government for this many people acted on such a small number for a case such as this.
Remember, the FCC acted based on 500K responses to the "wardrobe malfunction" Superbowl fiasco. That's still less than 1%.
One of these years we'll get the Phantom console!
Maybe I was being too ambiguous. You're absolutely right, and decently intelligent people will do exactly that.
I was speaking more towards the segment of the population that might not be considered "decently intelligent". Have you seen Idiocracy? At the beginning there's a comparison between some redneck and his X wives/girlfriends and a "proper" couple. The proper couple keep putting off having a kid for this or that reason, while Cletus produces offspring with just about everything female he can (if I recall correctly, that includes some of his own kids, and potentially himself).
The "Cletus"es of this world are the ones who need and should be using this the most, but they're also the ones who seem the least likely to use it short of being given to them for free as a patch.
Ignoring the problems pointed out in other posts, would those males who should be taking it actually do so? Even if it was a patch, I'd think that normal male thought in the populations where this contraception should really be embraced would declare that decreasing your sperm count would make you "less of a man" or "less potent". Essentially it's the same people who refuse to use condoms who need this kind of thing the most, and they'll refuse to use it as well until something drastic happens.
With a service like Hulu, definitely.
With a service like Youtube, maybe. There are some videos worth seeing, but the vast amount are rubbish. Without a good preview feature (num of hits and rating is not a good indicator), I'd just watch a commercial before-hand, and 99% of the time I wouldn't return to watch that video. For returning videos I would if I could see them in high-quality and the price was rather cheap (I'm thinking in terms of dime/minute). Let me load up my account with some money, and then use that credit over-time, getting an alert when I get below a set threshold. It works for google, they get to store the money and collect interest, I don't have to finagle with a CC every time I want higher quality.
So the main problem for Youtube is lack of quality content. If they were to get more "official" content, then they'd have an easier time making a sell to people, but I'm not that interested in paying for America's Funniest Home Videos writ large.
Perhaps a bit OT, but it seems apropos to me.
I have no problem upgrading to IE8, as I use FireFox as my primary browser, but I do use it to test web applications and design. Even as a critical update, IE8 won't take out the huge number using IE7 and IE6 for some time; and there are still a small number using IE5.5 (horror of horrors). Since IE is tied into the OS, it's my understanding that you can only have one version installed at a time.
Is there some way to use older versions of IE on the same PC? I've seen an "IE Pack" of sorts, but it got a lot of bad reviews and haven't tried.
More reliable service? I've worked in a UPS plant. I now prefer to ship FedEx.
Also, if the UPS plant was any indication, UPS (and maybe FedEx and DHL) would have to do massive upgrades and changes to handle the basic mail that flows through the USPS system.
I have no problem with the USPS being in place. Furthermore, I can't see any problem that USPS is having that UPS or FedEx couldn't have themselves. Considering the necessity that postal mail still is, I'd prefer to leave it to the government. Privatization would only increase costs and lower service. You would also wind up with the last-mile problems of broadband. While UPS does deliver packages to my town, it has no regular drop-off location, and I have to drive 45 minutes if I want to ship UPS or FedEx. Obviously they would open more branches if there was suddenly a shift, but there would still be a period where many towns would be crippled in some fashion.
I'm fine with decreasing the services offered by USPS, though.