My family has been using NetFlix since 2003. We're heavy users. The download option works quite well, IMO. It is fast and the quality, image size is good. Currently the selection is lacking and at this time there is a 30 hour per month limit on the downloads and I can find no option to increase this. My guess is that Netflix is slowing ramping up their DL busines, I think one reason new releases are not available is because of bandwidth issues. I would say so far so good, but they've got a ways to to go still.
My major complaint with Netflix is the way the website is designed, it needs a major overhaul. In particular browsing is a pain in the arse. Categories need to be grouped better, they need to stop having a unique listing for each season when browsing, especially for TV. Star Trek needs a listing for TOS, New Gen, Deep Space Nine, etc, then within each of these list out each season. Searching function needs work as well.
Seriously, what are the odds of being in an aircraft and being hit by space debris?!!? 10 Million : 1, 100 Million : 1, 1 Billion : 1. This is NOT a problem. An oddity, curiosity, decent headline... yes. A problem, no.
I've played the drums on and off for years with groups/bands. This guy is a better drummer than many I've seen/heard... lol. I'm not sure if I ever have/would considered myself a 'Musician' but this man is. And to boot he's got a great sense of humor!!
One other thing... ALL GREAT musicians have one commonality.... creativity. In my most humble opinion.
'Cause it shouldn't be. Measure results not face or ass-in-seat time. Because reasonably intelligent people know that ass-in-seat != productivity. Maybe this is more a commentary on the mentality of the average manager, especially the control-freak manager. Good management is about freeing your employees to work, not burdening them. I like the concept of NO meetings but this is impratical, however as few meetings as possible is possible and doable. (Oh and managers push the pace of your meetings, short, consise, quick, and if you're capable... fun.) If I were a manager at Best Buy I assume I would have one weekly or bi-weekly meeting. The team would decide when to have the meeting, well assuming it's no earlier than 9:00 AM!! (managers perogative!!;) Other than than that get your work done and have fun. Oh one other thing, I expect movie reviews by the next day!!:)
If you like/need structure than get a job at a company that does it, if you need some freedom then find a job that provides it. Life is too short/precious to be unhappy at your job.
(I do contract IT work for a large IT company in the US (they Spy alot but I've gotten use to the black suits and dark sedeans), part of my job is managing 4 people. I'm in CST, 3 of my team are in PST, and the bulk of my company contacts in EST. So I have to be flexible! And I work from home and I LOVE IT! To each his own, but you can't tell me you enjoy your 45 minute commute in traffic each way!! I know my brother doesn't who just left another large IT firm and worked from home, he loves his new job, but loathes the 45 minute commute in Charlotte, NC traffic.)
I got stuck flying standby in Houston (can't remember which airport) and so was trying to sleep in furniture designed not to be slept in. I hear a whirring high pitch noise, too which I think, wth is that? Then around the corner comes two Airport managers on Segways... they're moving at a good clip to. I thought to myself now that makes sense, cause this Airport is huge!
Now we segue... (yes Pun most definitely intended) to me at Loew's the other day. I come around the corner and there are 2 folks on their Segway's... my first thought is they look silly and the second is they're lazy bums... go figure.
So in a nutshell makes sense where large distances are covered as part of your job, silly for daily use when most folks aren't getting enough exercise as it is!!
I can tell you one factor in this move is that AOL is losing IM users in chunks. I do contract work for HP and a few weeks back they shifted their entire IM traffic from AIM to an internal, and much more secure, Jabber system. I suspect AOL has been and will continue to see this type of mass migration. HP has over 100,000 employees.
Battlefront.com has shown not only can you survive as an indie but with an online sales model as well. They were later approached by a publisher and initially sold retail boxed copies in Europe and eventually retail boxes in the US as well. I'm sure the majority of their sales are online though.
They just announced 2 news games to be released early next year.
Combat Mission:Shock Force - a modern combat simulator
Combat Mission Campaigns - a meta campaign manager that uses their Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin game to resolve specific battles.
I think there will always be a nitch for indie developers, especially for smaller audiences like war games, race simulations, and now adventure games.
How many of you have never been to a XXX store?!!?
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You want to figure out the influence of Internet Porn let's get that question answered.
I for one never went into a Porn store, never bought a dirty Mag or video, but I looked at online Porn.. among others things online. It almost destroyed my marriage. I'm not blaming Internet porn, but it sure as heck was a major contributing factor. The scary thing to me is that I was not 'addicted' to it, I can only imagine what it is like for someone who gets addicted.
I am convinced there is a HUGE number of folks who would have NEVER been exposed to Porn but for the Internet, and now many of them are addicts. Remember looking at Porn online in the safety and PRIVACY of your home/office is very different than going to a Porn shop.
Yes straight porn does lead to more perverse forms and you're a fool if you think the Internet has had no affect on the number of pedophiles. The other grave problem I have with Internet porn is the affect on children. I don't know if you children, I have three, and I sure as heck don't want my kids seeing the 'normal' stuff, let alone the perverted garbage. I shudder to think how many 10yo or younger kids today regularly look at Internet Porn...
it demonstrated to the world the horrific destructive power of nuclear weapons. And in modern weapons terms these 2 were tiny 12 - 20 Kt versus anywhere from 250 - 550 Kt for today's bombs. I believe without a doubt dropping them saved countless lives, especially American and other Asian countries in 1945. I believe they probably saved more lives in the future since ALL leaders and top military officials of nuclear capable nations understood what nukes would do BECAUSE of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Get some perspective folks. The estimates of total dead for WWII range from 40-60 million!!! With the majority of those dead being civilians! Maybe if there was video of the Rape of Nanking, extermination of the Jews, Russia's ethnic cleansing which killed millions of civilians (did I mention that Russia was our Ally in WWII?!?!) and the other countless atrocities during JUST WWII people would feel differently about Hiroshima/Nagasaki... just maybe.
Seriously... how much proof do you need that Microsoft and Intel are a duopoly. I am very thankful for the likes of AMD, Linux, Mozilla... and yes Apple is purposefully left off, some of you forget how much of a megalomaniac Jobs is!!!
How could Apple possibly be the new Microsoft today?!?! That is like comparing apples to software.. (pun intended). Apple has no real power EXCEPT over Apple customers. And imho they wield it quite cruelly over them, and always have. They do this in part because they know the Apple devotees will never leave Apple, it has as much to do with the devotees being anti-Wintel as it has to do with loving Apple.
But make no mistake that if Apple had not bungled the marketing of the original Macintosh way back when, and Apple became the monopoly whey would have made the Microsoft we know and love/hate look like a freakin Saint!!
Gates & Co. are motivated by one force... money, anything that threatens them from making it, they attack. Jobs is motivated by power and ego, and is most certainly a megalomaniac.
I'll take a greedy bastard over a megalomaniac any day!!!
Ditto here. I have not used an AV program in at least 6 years, not 1 virus. Have Broadband use a hardware router and I also run ZoneAlarm Pro. I use Opera as my browser and have done so since 2000. I also have used Eudora or Opera's M2 for my email.
My wife has had a few (2-3) in this same time period but she is not as careful as me and uses IE exclusively.
IMO 99% of viruses and spyware can be avoided by user behavior and NOT using IE and Outlook.
NOTE: I use Trend Micro's Housecall to check my PC for viruses, it's a free online scan.
I can only assume that the people who read/view and write/talk about every scrap of info for an upcoming SW release are the same ones who complain about how SW no longer has the magic!!
Of course not you nimrods!!! A big part of the magic of the first 3 was that we knew very little or nothing about the films before we saw them!!! All I knew going to see Ep. 4 in '77 was that it was sci-fi and really cool.
My best movie experiences have always been prefaced by knowing little to nothing about the movie before I saw it. I hate all the commercials for movies, it ruins many of them. I go out of my way to avoid them for movies I want to see (eyes closed, fingers in ears, and saying blah, blah, blah)
NOTE: All I saw before Ep. 4 was the movie poster, I am pretty sure much the same for Ep. 5 because the "Luke, I'm your father" caught me totally by surprise and I was in 100% denial about it!! If it helps I was born in 1968.
Been a member since July '04. The great advantage to Netflix imo is not first run movies but the huge library of TV offerings and hard to find titles. For instance I have used Netflix to check out Babylon 5, I would have never bought an entire season, even used, but with Netflix I can trial it and see if I like it. Same with Horatio Hornblower, which was excellent.
Hard to find items like The World at War series, or the short lived Firefly, or the films of Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress) These are not hard to find online but impossible to find at a brick and mortar store and the 5 listed above would cost me between $160-250 at Amazon depending on new or used condition.
Netflix is the preferred way to watch TV, nothing better than no commercials and being able to knock out a season quickly, if you want to.
BB and Netflix are both doomed eventually, how soon will be most dependent on broadband penetration.
If a product is in Beta then every problem that exists can be blamed on Beta status, so less accountability. Frankly I think its a great way to test your product, work out the bugs, and create buzz.
Now if a company is charging money for a 'beta' product then imo it is not beta, or at the least Caveat Emptor.
The only draw back to a long beta is you give your competition plenty of time to catch up.
But Firefox's new found popularity is NOT because of how good Firefox is, but because of how insecure and dangerous IE is.
But since Firefox is good and actually has some great features (you can thank the real browser innovator for many of these... Opera) people will stick with it.
I do believe that many, many more websites are designing to correct web standards instead of exclusively for IE.
As long as IE continues to be a security problem then alternate browsers will flourish. As to what % is significant I am undecided, my gut says 20% of the market and there will no longer be any IE only websites, at least any that plan on staying around!
Agree. The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel need to change their names. Occasionally these channels have something interesting on but Monster (Fill in the Blank) and yet another Motorcycle show dominate Discovery, and silly designer shows totally dominate TLC. In fact I don't even bother checking whats on TLC anymore.
It's a shame, both channels use to be high quality, interesting, and informative.
Agree 100% I have been an Opera user for about 4 years. Opera is the innovator. Period. As time progresses I am finding fewer a fewer sites that require IE, the only regular use of IE is for Windows Updates... lol, the irony.
I don't understand the anti-Opera sentiment here. I wonder if the fact that Opera is Norwegian (non-USA) has anything to do with it?
It is free, with a small unobtrusive ad. I bought a copy because I wanted to support an excellent product that I use everyday.
Let's see, I am willing to bet that Sony has a pretty decent stock of current Plasma TVs that they would love to sell. It will be much harder to sell said TVs if the marketplace knows you are abandoning Plasma for LCD. Therefore Sony wants to keep this little bit of news underwraps as long as possible!
I think so. If you look at the records he has broke and his seeming unwillingness to break the 1 day record for Jeopardy winnings, the following paragraph is from the Wikepedia page on Jennings:
"Prior to his 38th game, Jennings did not want to beat the $52,000 single-day record of former five-day champion Brian Weikle just "for the sake of beating it" (from the Jeopardy! forums). He intentionally tied his record three times. However, in his 38th game, Jennings entered Final Jeopardy! with a total only $600 shy of the record (and, in fact, had exceeded the record in the Double Jeopardy! round before missing a question at the end), and beat it with a final total of $75,000."
There was only 1 record Ken had not beat, total # of consecutive wins, which just happens to be 75 from a guy on a show called 100% in 1998 (don't ask me never heard of it), and this guy was forced to retire after the 75th win.
You think it was purely coincidental he lost on his 75th show...
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My major complaint with Netflix is the way the website is designed, it needs a major overhaul. In particular browsing is a pain in the arse. Categories need to be grouped better, they need to stop having a unique listing for each season when browsing, especially for TV. Star Trek needs a listing for TOS, New Gen, Deep Space Nine, etc, then within each of these list out each season. Searching function needs work as well.
Seriously, what are the odds of being in an aircraft and being hit by space debris?!!? 10 Million : 1, 100 Million : 1, 1 Billion : 1. This is NOT a problem. An oddity, curiosity, decent headline... yes. A problem, no.
One other thing... ALL GREAT musicians have one commonality.... creativity. In my most humble opinion.
If you like/need structure than get a job at a company that does it, if you need some freedom then find a job that provides it. Life is too short/precious to be unhappy at your job.
(I do contract IT work for a large IT company in the US (they Spy alot but I've gotten use to the black suits and dark sedeans), part of my job is managing 4 people. I'm in CST, 3 of my team are in PST, and the bulk of my company contacts in EST. So I have to be flexible! And I work from home and I LOVE IT! To each his own, but you can't tell me you enjoy your 45 minute commute in traffic each way!! I know my brother doesn't who just left another large IT firm and worked from home, he loves his new job, but loathes the 45 minute commute in Charlotte, NC traffic.)
Now we segue... (yes Pun most definitely intended) to me at Loew's the other day. I come around the corner and there are 2 folks on their Segway's... my first thought is they look silly and the second is they're lazy bums... go figure.
So in a nutshell makes sense where large distances are covered as part of your job, silly for daily use when most folks aren't getting enough exercise as it is!!
*Signature under repair*
why not build a huge super tall space elevator... naaa, nevermind...
Asynchronous
I can tell you one factor in this move is that AOL is losing IM users in chunks. I do contract work for HP and a few weeks back they shifted their entire IM traffic from AIM to an internal, and much more secure, Jabber system. I suspect AOL has been and will continue to see this type of mass migration. HP has over 100,000 employees.
Battlefront.com has shown not only can you survive as an indie but with an online sales model as well. They were later approached by a publisher and initially sold retail boxed copies in Europe and eventually retail boxes in the US as well. I'm sure the majority of their sales are online though.
They just announced 2 news games to be released early next year.
I think there will always be a nitch for indie developers, especially for smaller audiences like war games, race simulations, and now adventure games.
I for one never went into a Porn store, never bought a dirty Mag or video, but I looked at online Porn.. among others things online. It almost destroyed my marriage. I'm not blaming Internet porn, but it sure as heck was a major contributing factor. The scary thing to me is that I was not 'addicted' to it, I can only imagine what it is like for someone who gets addicted.
I am convinced there is a HUGE number of folks who would have NEVER been exposed to Porn but for the Internet, and now many of them are addicts. Remember looking at Porn online in the safety and PRIVACY of your home/office is very different than going to a Porn shop.
Yes straight porn does lead to more perverse forms and you're a fool if you think the Internet has had no affect on the number of pedophiles. The other grave problem I have with Internet porn is the affect on children. I don't know if you children, I have three, and I sure as heck don't want my kids seeing the 'normal' stuff, let alone the perverted garbage. I shudder to think how many 10yo or younger kids today regularly look at Internet Porn...
Porn is poison. Period.
Thanks for the laugh!
Get some perspective folks. The estimates of total dead for WWII range from 40-60 million!!! With the majority of those dead being civilians! Maybe if there was video of the Rape of Nanking, extermination of the Jews, Russia's ethnic cleansing which killed millions of civilians (did I mention that Russia was our Ally in WWII?!?!) and the other countless atrocities during JUST WWII people would feel differently about Hiroshima/Nagasaki... just maybe.
Seriously... how much proof do you need that Microsoft and Intel are a duopoly. I am very thankful for the likes of AMD, Linux, Mozilla... and yes Apple is purposefully left off, some of you forget how much of a megalomaniac Jobs is!!!
But make no mistake that if Apple had not bungled the marketing of the original Macintosh way back when, and Apple became the monopoly whey would have made the Microsoft we know and love/hate look like a freakin Saint!!
Gates & Co. are motivated by one force... money, anything that threatens them from making it, they attack. Jobs is motivated by power and ego, and is most certainly a megalomaniac.
I'll take a greedy bastard over a megalomaniac any day!!!
My wife has had a few (2-3) in this same time period but she is not as careful as me and uses IE exclusively.
IMO 99% of viruses and spyware can be avoided by user behavior and NOT using IE and Outlook.
NOTE: I use Trend Micro's Housecall to check my PC for viruses, it's a free online scan.
Of course not you nimrods!!! A big part of the magic of the first 3 was that we knew very little or nothing about the films before we saw them!!! All I knew going to see Ep. 4 in '77 was that it was sci-fi and really cool.
My best movie experiences have always been prefaced by knowing little to nothing about the movie before I saw it. I hate all the commercials for movies, it ruins many of them. I go out of my way to avoid them for movies I want to see (eyes closed, fingers in ears, and saying blah, blah, blah)
NOTE: All I saw before Ep. 4 was the movie poster, I am pretty sure much the same for Ep. 5 because the "Luke, I'm your father" caught me totally by surprise and I was in 100% denial about it!! If it helps I was born in 1968.
Hard to find items like The World at War series, or the short lived Firefly, or the films of Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress) These are not hard to find online but impossible to find at a brick and mortar store and the 5 listed above would cost me between $160-250 at Amazon depending on new or used condition.
Netflix is the preferred way to watch TV, nothing better than no commercials and being able to knock out a season quickly, if you want to.
BB and Netflix are both doomed eventually, how soon will be most dependent on broadband penetration.
Now if a company is charging money for a 'beta' product then imo it is not beta, or at the least Caveat Emptor.
The only draw back to a long beta is you give your competition plenty of time to catch up.
NOTE: To ALL future Star Trek work, avoid TIME TRAVEL material at all costs!!!
Thankfully BG has restored my faith in quality Sci-Fi on TV.
But since Firefox is good and actually has some great features (you can thank the real browser innovator for many of these... Opera) people will stick with it.
I do believe that many, many more websites are designing to correct web standards instead of exclusively for IE.
As long as IE continues to be a security problem then alternate browsers will flourish. As to what % is significant I am undecided, my gut says 20% of the market and there will no longer be any IE only websites, at least any that plan on staying around!
to win the title of KING of GEEKs!! Now he just needs about 2 more years without concentual sex with a female and he's got it!!!!
It's a shame, both channels use to be high quality, interesting, and informative.
I don't understand the anti-Opera sentiment here. I wonder if the fact that Opera is Norwegian (non-USA) has anything to do with it?
It is free, with a small unobtrusive ad. I bought a copy because I wanted to support an excellent product that I use everyday.
Let's see, I am willing to bet that Sony has a pretty decent stock of current Plasma TVs that they would love to sell. It will be much harder to sell said TVs if the marketplace knows you are abandoning Plasma for LCD. Therefore Sony wants to keep this little bit of news underwraps as long as possible!
"Prior to his 38th game, Jennings did not want to beat the $52,000 single-day record of former five-day champion Brian Weikle just "for the sake of beating it" (from the Jeopardy! forums). He intentionally tied his record three times. However, in his 38th game, Jennings entered Final Jeopardy! with a total only $600 shy of the record (and, in fact, had exceeded the record in the Double Jeopardy! round before missing a question at the end), and beat it with a final total of $75,000."
There was only 1 record Ken had not beat, total # of consecutive wins, which just happens to be 75 from a guy on a show called 100% in 1998 (don't ask me never heard of it), and this guy was forced to retire after the 75th win.
You think it was purely coincidental he lost on his 75th show...