Were you actually interested, or just another Trek weenie slagging off Enterprise?
Well, I was gonna link to the new Battlestar Galactica series, but I figured it's easier to karma-whore when you're not ripping on a show that people actually like.
I think much of the product placements in television are appropriate. Often, it makes the shows look more "real": those kids in Home Improvement would have been more likely to drink Coke or Pepsi, instead of the fakey looking generic "cola" with the Pepsi-like can they had in the show. It was distracting.
Don't they have to be careful with product placement in a TV show because an advertiser on the network might drop their advertising during commercial breaks if a competitor's brand appears in the show? Producers will usually go to lengths on shows where product placement/endorsement could accidentally happen. Mythbusters is a great example of this, since everything the guys buy is essentially an endorsement, so any nationally-known brands get blurred out.
Well, it's more complicated than that. The toothpaste company can tell in a general sense how valuable an advertising blitz was, based on their sales figures.
Suppose Colgate comes out with a hip, fresh new flavor. It's on the shelves for a month, they collect sales figures, and then they advertise for a month. Compare the results, and bingo, that's how much your advertising helped. Colgate never advertises their "regular flavor" toothpaste, because (a) it's boring, and (b) a lot of people who would buy regular flavor already do buy it through brand loyalty or what's on sale. Those influences have a much bigger impact than advertising, so it'd be really difficult to tell whether advertising had a significant impact on sales of the regular flavor toothpaste.
But basically, you are right - TV ratings being linked to advertising dollars is essentially one big marketing crock.
To a large degree, I think that Nerds Like Us like to let a chip's performance speak for itself. AMD have proven themselves to us, but when it comes to Old Granny Wossername buying a computer from Dell, she has no clue either way. (Heck, the only people who know about AMD are computer geeks and stock market investors.) When it comes to Dell, they've been suckered into believing that the "Intel Inside" label actually means something to the consumer, and without a corresponding marketing push from AMD, it's a tough sell trying to get Dell to build machines with AMD chips inside.
However, both systems come at a cost. Because the words are produced by a computer, the receiver of the call would hear the speaker talking with an artificial voice. But for some that may be a price worth paying for a little peace and quiet.
(Marge shows Bart and Milhouse a Sacajawea dollar coin.)
Bart: "What is that, a quarter?" Milhouse: "A Chuck E. Cheese token?"
Re:Defined a generation
on
Planet Simpson
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I wish Fox had have given Futurama the same chance, that show had a lot more potential, it seems easier to keep the Futurama world "fresh" than that of the Simpsons. It seems the pulled the plug too early, when the characters and themes were just starting to take shape.
No kidding. There was actually plot development in Futurama. Nothing ever really happens on The Simpsons, and at least a couple seasons ago, the formula was "Insert Homer doing something random, pointless, and mildly amusing here". Sadly, Fox execs were looking for the same-old formulaic crap in Futurama, and couldn't get a handle on it when Groening and Cohen didn't deliver what they wanted.
To be honest, I think the title of the book should be reworked:
"Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation and Killed Another Cartoon Masterpiece by the Same Creator Before Its Time"
"Ex post facto" doesn't really apply here, since it's usually used in the context of Congress passing a law which applies retroactively. We're instead talking about contract law.
Note that upon occasion, EULAs include a clause permitting the licensor to unilaterally change the terms of the license agreement (though my understanding is that this in particular has never been tested in court). In fact, many service agreements in general permit this, such as credit card service agreements, but the licensee/user/customer is given the option to disagree with the changes to the terms of service in exchange for discontinuing use of the service.
As for the GPL, I don't think GPL 2.0 licensors can retroactively force people to comply with GPL 3.0 terms unless they (as the original authors of the software) release a new version of the software under the GPL 3.0 license. Even then, the new license only applies if the licensee chooses to use the new version. See other posts mentioning that a user unwilling to comply with updated license terms can simply fork the code with the last version before the updated license.
Doing a debian install worked pretty well for me. Admittedly, it means that if I ever want to switch to CVS it will probably be a tremendous pain, but at least the subtle dependencies are taken care of for me. And that was several versions ago - ease of installation has improved greatly in the past two years.
Though, I'd expect in most parts of the U.S. (those with seasons), most damage to roads comes from the weather - not cars.
This is probably a fair assessment. In northeast Ohio (where I live), the copious amounts of salt used to keep the snow and ice off the roads for about six months out of the year means that the roads develop gigantic potholes and ruts. On the other hand, northwest Oregon (Portland or so) pretty much uses no salt and has very little real weather, so the major roads haven't needed any significant maintenance in years. In fact, the surfaces are so old (due to the lack of weather effects) that the wear and tear caused by cars actually shows through. There are subtle ruts in the freeway surface in which you can sort of set your car running. A friend of mine used these ruts to steer his car on the way to work, while he proceeded to peel and eat an orange.
In any case, a far more equitable method of determining road taxes would be to charge tolls on major highways or bridges/tunnels. But, of course, tolls are so tremendously inconvenient for Americans (who always have to get there five minutes ago) that the equitable solution would never fly. So, we might as well punish the people trying to do something about their auto emissions instead.
First, that's Howard Berman. Second, neither the articles you linked to nor the article linked in the OP makes the connection between him and this proposal.
If Berman were involved, then instantly I would think that there was some "greater of two evils" motive behind supporting legislation in this case, and I would have to put myself in opposition. But without that connection, based purely on the intuition I get from what I've read so far, I have to say I'd rather have mass interoperability, though I think it's probably a bit early for Congress to get involved.
For someone who tweaks Linux on an occasional basis, building a MythTV box is a weekend project at worst, unless you pick up some funky piece of hardware with poor driver support. Unless you're going high-def, that's really the only major concern (imo) when selecting hardware.
Technically, we *all* pay for gas, in at least two ways. One is the environmental cost, since lower fuel efficiency means higher emissions. And two is the increase in demand which causes all gas prices to increase, not just the gas prices for people who drive SUVs.
Maybe that's an idea in itself - only increase gas taxes on people who drive fuel-inefficient vehicles.
Slashdot Mirror
Were you actually interested, or just another Trek weenie slagging off Enterprise?
Well, I was gonna link to the new Battlestar Galactica series, but I figured it's easier to karma-whore when you're not ripping on a show that people actually like.
Hey, I'll trade you my Insightful for your Funny. ;)
Maybe not actual advertising, but pretty damn close:
a ren-xpress.html
http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/
To which Blizzard responded on 1 April:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/pand
I think much of the product placements in television are appropriate. Often, it makes the shows look more "real": those kids in Home Improvement would have been more likely to drink Coke or Pepsi, instead of the fakey looking generic "cola" with the Pepsi-like can they had in the show. It was distracting.
Don't they have to be careful with product placement in a TV show because an advertiser on the network might drop their advertising during commercial breaks if a competitor's brand appears in the show? Producers will usually go to lengths on shows where product placement/endorsement could accidentally happen. Mythbusters is a great example of this, since everything the guys buy is essentially an endorsement, so any nationally-known brands get blurred out.
The only problem will be when they have the twelfth regeneration and reach the limit
Well, it wouldn't be the first sci-fi series to shoot the canon all to hell, so to speak.
Well, it's more complicated than that. The toothpaste company can tell in a general sense how valuable an advertising blitz was, based on their sales figures.
Suppose Colgate comes out with a hip, fresh new flavor. It's on the shelves for a month, they collect sales figures, and then they advertise for a month. Compare the results, and bingo, that's how much your advertising helped. Colgate never advertises their "regular flavor" toothpaste, because (a) it's boring, and (b) a lot of people who would buy regular flavor already do buy it through brand loyalty or what's on sale. Those influences have a much bigger impact than advertising, so it'd be really difficult to tell whether advertising had a significant impact on sales of the regular flavor toothpaste.
But basically, you are right - TV ratings being linked to advertising dollars is essentially one big marketing crock.
To a large degree, I think that Nerds Like Us like to let a chip's performance speak for itself. AMD have proven themselves to us, but when it comes to Old Granny Wossername buying a computer from Dell, she has no clue either way. (Heck, the only people who know about AMD are computer geeks and stock market investors.) When it comes to Dell, they've been suckered into believing that the "Intel Inside" label actually means something to the consumer, and without a corresponding marketing push from AMD, it's a tough sell trying to get Dell to build machines with AMD chips inside.
However, both systems come at a cost. Because the words are produced by a computer, the receiver of the call would hear the speaker talking with an artificial voice. But for some that may be a price worth paying for a little peace and quiet.
Get one of these for Ashlee Simpson, pronto!
"We are still looking at AMD; they have fairly good technology," said Rollins.
AMD's technology is on par with Intel. It's their marketing that falls short.
You mean like Wal-Mart?
(Marge shows Bart and Milhouse a Sacajawea dollar coin.)
Bart: "What is that, a quarter?"
Milhouse: "A Chuck E. Cheese token?"
I wish Fox had have given Futurama the same chance, that show had a lot more potential, it seems easier to keep the Futurama world "fresh" than that of the Simpsons. It seems the pulled the plug too early, when the characters and themes were just starting to take shape.
No kidding. There was actually plot development in Futurama. Nothing ever really happens on The Simpsons, and at least a couple seasons ago, the formula was "Insert Homer doing something random, pointless, and mildly amusing here". Sadly, Fox execs were looking for the same-old formulaic crap in Futurama, and couldn't get a handle on it when Groening and Cohen didn't deliver what they wanted.
To be honest, I think the title of the book should be reworked:
"Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation and Killed Another Cartoon Masterpiece by the Same Creator Before Its Time"
"Ex post facto" doesn't really apply here, since it's usually used in the context of Congress passing a law which applies retroactively. We're instead talking about contract law.
Note that upon occasion, EULAs include a clause permitting the licensor to unilaterally change the terms of the license agreement (though my understanding is that this in particular has never been tested in court). In fact, many service agreements in general permit this, such as credit card service agreements, but the licensee/user/customer is given the option to disagree with the changes to the terms of service in exchange for discontinuing use of the service.
As for the GPL, I don't think GPL 2.0 licensors can retroactively force people to comply with GPL 3.0 terms unless they (as the original authors of the software) release a new version of the software under the GPL 3.0 license. Even then, the new license only applies if the licensee chooses to use the new version. See other posts mentioning that a user unwilling to comply with updated license terms can simply fork the code with the last version before the updated license.
Of course, I ANAL.
Doing a debian install worked pretty well for me. Admittedly, it means that if I ever want to switch to CVS it will probably be a tremendous pain, but at least the subtle dependencies are taken care of for me. And that was several versions ago - ease of installation has improved greatly in the past two years.
Though, I'd expect in most parts of the U.S. (those with seasons), most damage to roads comes from the weather - not cars.
This is probably a fair assessment. In northeast Ohio (where I live), the copious amounts of salt used to keep the snow and ice off the roads for about six months out of the year means that the roads develop gigantic potholes and ruts. On the other hand, northwest Oregon (Portland or so) pretty much uses no salt and has very little real weather, so the major roads haven't needed any significant maintenance in years. In fact, the surfaces are so old (due to the lack of weather effects) that the wear and tear caused by cars actually shows through. There are subtle ruts in the freeway surface in which you can sort of set your car running. A friend of mine used these ruts to steer his car on the way to work, while he proceeded to peel and eat an orange.
In any case, a far more equitable method of determining road taxes would be to charge tolls on major highways or bridges/tunnels. But, of course, tolls are so tremendously inconvenient for Americans (who always have to get there five minutes ago) that the equitable solution would never fly. So, we might as well punish the people trying to do something about their auto emissions instead.
First, that's Howard Berman. Second, neither the articles you linked to nor the article linked in the OP makes the connection between him and this proposal.
If Berman were involved, then instantly I would think that there was some "greater of two evils" motive behind supporting legislation in this case, and I would have to put myself in opposition. But without that connection, based purely on the intuition I get from what I've read so far, I have to say I'd rather have mass interoperability, though I think it's probably a bit early for Congress to get involved.
Rather surprising (and disappointing) that something so regressive and environment-unfriendly would come out of Oregon. :(
I dunno, I thought "OhandmaybetheInternethadsomeminorinfluence" deserved a zing.
For someone who tweaks Linux on an occasional basis, building a MythTV box is a weekend project at worst, unless you pick up some funky piece of hardware with poor driver support. Unless you're going high-def, that's really the only major concern (imo) when selecting hardware.
Technically, we *all* pay for gas, in at least two ways. One is the environmental cost, since lower fuel efficiency means higher emissions. And two is the increase in demand which causes all gas prices to increase, not just the gas prices for people who drive SUVs.
Maybe that's an idea in itself - only increase gas taxes on people who drive fuel-inefficient vehicles.
It has been speculated, and fairly so IMHO, that Y2K was what initially drove the .com bubble.
...because it couldn't possibly have been the Internet.
you've got to donate $50 to charity, per message, to be delisted
It's a miracle that criminal charges haven't been filed against them (or have they?). Sounds like extortion to me.
The poster thought the pot called the kettle "back", which makes no sense at all.
God damn it. Even if it wasn't funny before, the joke's definitely not funny when I have to explain it.
Hmmm, "returning your call"? Did you think the saying was "the pot calling the kettle back"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay
eleven diehard Star Wars fans (i.e. lifelong virgins)
Uh, hello, Kettle? This is Pot, returning your call....