Actually, in times of economic hardship entertainment spending goes up (for example, the highest years of numbers of tickets sold for films being shown in theaters is still from the Great Depression, even today - film going by tickets sold has been on a steady decline since the 1930's), and video games have been no exception. Going to the movies, buying DVDs and games is still cheaper than going on vacation or weekends away.
The reason there are no new consoles on the horizon (though it's pretty certain in the next year or so Nintendo will announce a newer version of the Wii with higher specs and some type of HD-upconverting) is because they just aren't necessary. For instance, according to the many studios the game designers still haven't fully utilized the existing "high end" possibilities of XBOX360 and PS3. And the Wii being the best selling console of the generation thus far is really telling in that more people want easier to play, fun games over "photorealism" and super-fancy graphics.
For a long time, the gaming world was all about how pretty the pictures were over all else. The next big thing was always sharper, more realistic, more detailed, etc. There is a threshold of how long that can carry the market. When it gets to be "good enough" for most people. Just like Blu-ray has been off to a slow start because many people are satisfied with DVDs, I don't think you'd have seen nearly the adoption that the next-gen systems have had (save the Wii of course, which was a new market onto itself) if it wasn't for the fact that all the big/new/continuing series are only being released on the new systems. PS2, crappy as it seems now, was "enough" for most people.
This is great for gamers, because now instead of focusing on pixel count, they can again focus on the game experience itself. Yes, we want it to look pretty, but we want new types of games. New ways to play. More unique experiences. Each genre of game (RTS, Shooter, Platformer, etc.) has been so stagnant for so long - same same same. Same goals, same mechanics, very few innovations. It's time for the manufacturers to start paying more people to design and innovate than to spend the majority of the game budget on making sure the glint of metal on the tip of a sword is feature-film quality.
Thank God most of the vendors I used have stopped using DHL. I hate to complain to companies and only do so when absolutely necessary, but I've complained to several over DHL and eventually they stopped using them. Thankfully, I get at least 3-5 packages a week and haven't seen DHL in quite some time.
The worst experience was a TiVo I was waiting for "overnight" shipment from around 2005. Well, back then "overnight" meant 2-day to them. Okay, fine. Day two comes, no package. Day three, four...website shows it's sitting 90 miles away from my house. No update. I finally call on day five, they tell me they aren't sure where it is, and that "overnight is not guaranteed". Eventually, it showed up the beginning of the next week (about eight days late). Kicker was, it worked for about two weeks then went defective - though I can't blame it on the "week in limbo" cripes knows what it went through and I've always wondered if it had anything to do with it.
Then again, while USPS is often great (Priority Mail is awesome, I love the ease and knowing what the price will be ahead of time), it depends on your office. I live near two post offices, one is much closer and never has a line, but that one is also run by complete idiots and I've had numerous problems there. I just had plain bad luck with them for awhile, but I stopped going over a customer service issue when my 2-3 day Priority Package was bounced back and forth around the country for 12 days before it arrived (and kept coming back to that location, something was funny), and the "Postmaster" of that location refused to refund me. "I don't have the authority." Me: "Uh, you are the postmaster of this location, this location took my money..." wouldn't help at all. I go to the other one (not much further away, but more traffic to get there and always busy) and I never have a problem.
I don't get a lot of big freight/packages (I would never buy something like a TV online, I want to pick it up in a store) so maybe that's why I'm so happy that most of my stuff comes UPS. Always comes on time, or sooner, and never had an issue due to their handling. Though I also think that has to do with the fact the majority of my shipments come from Amazon, who packs most things pretty darn well.
Now this is what's funny, that no one ever looks at the other factors. Profits down? Must be downloading!
Look at the music industry. They practically stopped selling singles in the 90's, which had been a mainstay of popular music for many decades. Since CD singles went from $4-6 bucks a pop they really took a risk there - and for a bit, it paid off. They had the brilliant idea of, "Why spend our time making sure there are enough good songs on an album to release enough singles to support it. Let's just have one or two catchy songs, make the album the only way to listen to them, and people will just buy the album for $18 instead since they have no choice if they want that song!" For a bit, it worked. (Let's also note the lies told by the industry at the advent of CD - that CD's would go below the $9-10 new cassette price once we all started adopting - in fact, the average MSRP has done nothing but go up while their costs have gone down down down).
Then came Napster. People didn't like being shook down for a whole album when they only wanted one song. So, just download that one song - easy enough. And thus the "download" culture began. The record companies made a gamble that we'd keep ponying up $18 for discs to listen to a song or two, and they lost that one big time to technology.
That's why, even now, I support the artists I like by seeing them in concert. New music comes out, I often download it - and since I spend $100-250 on a ticket to go see them, and they actually get a large portion of that money (instead of the ridiculous few cents most artists make on a major label album sale) I'm OK with that. Just my thing. I rarely listen to new music anyway, I'm pretty boring and mostly listen to the same 5 or 6 artists. I have this lack of caring when it comes to the labels - they screw the artists, screw the buyers, then sit and count the $. Sorry, not gonna play that game, homie.;) Disable all downloading, and I'll record 'em off the radio.:) No way for them to win.
It's a lovely thought but "share your creations in public or over the internet" is what we have on YouTube, and quite frankly I've seen enough "America's Funniest/Stupidest/Most Ridiculous/Embarassing" home videos.;-)
The truth is, even though the Internet supposedly brought the "power to the people" in terms of distribution, it really hasn't. It's turned into a way for the big companies to market even more. For every Justin Bieber who makes it from YouTube to known artist, there are 100,000's of thousands who just put their (sometimes good) crap up there to ever keep track of.
I know a lot of people use "YouTube" a lot - I don't, and when I do, it's for seeing a clip of something I missed on TV or similar. No, I don't need to see cute/funny cat stuff, or your 2-year old singing "Single Ladies".
The problem with just about everything is to produce something up to professional quality costs a lot of money in most cases. And even if you do manage to do so, you have to align yourself with some type of conglomerate for any type of real distribution (YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, etc). Driving traffic to a stand-alone website where people buy your stuff is the equivalent of a flea market booth these days.
The ideal solution is more in the hands of those artists/creative folk who are successful now. If they would stand up and do the work and release stuff without the middle-man, they would make more money, we'd be more happy to give them their money, and the useless studio/label/etc. would become irrelevant. It's sort of what we should be doing to insurance companies, but just like in that case a wholesale change like that is nearly impossible at this point in time. The majority are too scared, and if only the minority do it they will fail and just prove the fear the majority have.
There is no easy, practical answer. Listening to people's bad poetry, or watching their home-made videos isn't going to cut it for most of us. There are a reason "open mic" nights have gone out of style, and that the average YouTube clip is a minute long...
WTH are they doing messing with copyright issues? This has nothing to do with "Immigration and Customs" either.
Homeland Security should be protecting us from all these supposed "DANGER DANGER DANGER!" things that are out there that we are so scared of we are supposed to be letting the pervs at the TSA play with our junk and feel up our kids for.
Homeless and starving families right here on our own soil, health care is a mess, bridges are falling apart, all of our "national defense" is half-way across the world, we are borrowing all our operating money from Asia...but hey, who cares, someone is downloading last week's episode of "Bones" they missed - send out Homeland Security!
I haven't found a better one yet.
It took about 30 seconds to move myself over (if you already have a google account). I'll keep looking for another alternative, but at the moment GoogleReader is where I am.
Exactly. That was the most ridiculous PR post I have ever read.
Twitter and Facebook and other "instant" crap isn't replacing RSS haha. And, YES, RSS is a "consumer experience" for intelligent consumers who can figure it out. RSS Aggregators are genius - one webpage you can go to that tracks and reprints stories from all the webpages you keep up with. Bloglines had virtually eliminated my use of bookmarks for anything but archival purposes. Everything I wanted to read was either at, or linked from, my Bloglines page.
Of course, like everyone, I've just moved over to Google Reader. But Ask.com should have been happy to have someone regularly using their servers, since no one else I know has used that site since it was AskJeeves. It's a change, a change I prefer didn't happen, but I'll roll with it. I will just make sure in the future I don't unintentionally use an Ask.com product again.
I have been using Bloglines for the better half of a decade, and to see it end in such a crappy way just turned me anti-Ask.com so quick I couldn't believe it.
First, I had no idea Ask.com had anything to do with it - I just use the site to read my articles every day. I would have gladly paid a fee to use Bloglines (small fee, say $20/year) because I found it so helpful. Not only was it one single webpage I could go to and get all the news/articles I want, it was portable (I could continue/save reading at work or on my phone), and I loved that the interface just stayed the same. Bloglines I logged into in 2005 pretty much looks like it in 2010 - and that was A-OK with me.
What's irritating is how they dealt with this. They gave about 3-weeks notice, which granted, is adequate. They link on the main bloglines page to a "blog post" telling you about the closure - and that's where the asshat starts. Basically, they state that because "everyone" gets their news from Twitter and Facebook and "instant" services now, people don't need an aggregator. Uh, say what? I don't get my news from Facebook or Twitter - and anyone that does is really, really dumb.
Sure, I can get a few pithy links or quotes from them, but I have 100ish sites that I track on Bloglines that the content certainly isn't replicated there. Then they go on about what a wonderful thing Ask.com was and how asking questions is the future - but they fail because they don't realize that SURE I type questions into search engines all the time - GOOGLE. Why would I ever, ever go to Ask.com directly when I can ask the same question of Goggle, and get the Ask.com results, PLUS the results for the entire rest of the Internet? Back when it was "Askjeeves.com" I think I went there a few times, but I haven't even though of ask.com in probably the same half-decade I have been using Bloglines.
The kicker...they aren't approving ANY comments on the announcement. I submitted one three days ago and it never got moderated, and I find it impossible to believe that no one else has commented. They just want to brush it under the carpet and forget about it. Much like the rest of the world has forgotten about Ask.com.
So I moved everything over to Google Reader. It's OK, I actually like the "scrolling through marks it read" feature, but what I am not excited about is the relative instability of Google products - they are always tweaking, updating, etc. and I really just want something that works and stays that way, like Bloglines did.
Life will go on. But Ask.com just sent me over to their competitor - I'll be spending even more time at Google now. And now I've gone from neutral on ask.com, to negative on them. I'll think twice before clicking a link to them, and try to find the info elsewhere.
Here's the problem with software patents : they are given for stupid things.
You can get the most ridiculous patent - like "one click buy". Someone clicks a button on your website next to an item, and it's automatically charged and shipped to you. Somehow, something so simple as that idea can be patented? That's the most ludicris thing I have ever heard. Didn't I read not that long ago that some guy was suing everyone from eBay to Amazon because he thought he had a patent to the "online shopping cart"?
You are right - a lot of us are not patent experts. I know I'm not. But I do know enough about them to know how absolutely assanine many software patents are. An awful lot of software patents are the same as it would be if patenting "a movie in which a down-and-out female meets a man, they fall in love, a tragedy and/or misfortune befalls one of them, keeping them apart, and in the end one of their best friends does something which brings them back together". Katherine Heigel, Kate Hudson, and Jennifer Lopez would never work in Hollywood again, and they'd have to file a multi-billion dollar infringement suit against Julia Roberts.
They don't allow you to patent movies like that, because we have something called copyright. People should be able to copyright their software, and their specific ways of doing things in their code. That's adequate. Abstract concepts and universal ideas should not. Assuming it's not a parody, should I be able to go out make a serious movie called "Space Wars", about characters named Duke Skyhound, Princess Bea, and Man Bolo who are fighting the Evil Imperials while trying to find the surviving Zedi who were wiped from the Galaxy during a war who have powers like mind-control, super-agility, and the ability to wield a glowing sword called a "Lightpole"? No, but it's perfectly fine for me to make a movie about a war in outerspace - someone might want to warn the folks over at Battlestar if Lucas gets a patent on that, and likewise Lucas should be waiting any day after for the estate of Gene Roddenberry's infringement suit, and the estate of Roddenberry should expecting...well, you get the picture.
Copyright is sufficent for software. If your process is revolutionary enough, your code shouldn't be that easy to duplicate without violating a copyright. As consumers, and citizens, we'd all save a whole hell of a lot of money without software patents and all that goes with them. Any supposed good in them is rhetoric and scare tactics - the software industry wouldn't fall on it's knees overnight. It may change - just like the music industry is being forced to (although they are still kicking and screaming trying to apply their old ideals to this brand new world) - but the software industry, and it's advances/development, would end up just fine.
You know, that was the part that stuck out for me as well - "We will have one platform, and that's going to be the Mac," like the guy was saying, "We have one position, and that is that we don't tolerate drug use."
I too find it rather suspicious that they chose Mac, because as others have pointed out in different ways, few of us are huge PC fans either but the truth is in most business environments that these kids are actually supposed to be preparing for, Mac's are few and far between. Unless they are going into graphic design of some sort, professionally virtually everything runs on Windoze. Heck, most companies are still using IE6 because that's what their internal systems were designed around.
I just don't like the sound of this whole thing...requiring students to buy anything (and, in spite of fine print, it is requiring it - unless kids start doing their "home" work at school) is just wrong IMO. That's why we have town and city budgets. If the item cannot fit into that budget, then it shouldn't be required and an alternative should be found. You don't *need* a computer for anything, and if their goal is to "train" kids for adult life, then the plain facts are a Mac isn't going to really do that for them.
"How do you know your phone service has never been out in 60 years? Do you monitor it? How many calls a day do you make? Are you home 24/7 and do you use the phone all the time, as in more than 10,000 minutes per month?"
Nice attempt at deflection of the topic, but the answer is very simple. No one who has lived in my house in 60 years has ever picked up the phone and it not worked.
That is a different experience than those who use this service have.
Gee, I hope no one tried to call 911 during the outage. That "enhanced" (insert guffaw, it's like calling a hamburger without the meat and just a bun "enhanced") 911 didn't do a tinkers damn worth of good for anyone who's service was out.
This is why I won't even consider VoIP. Why in the world would I want to take risks like this? I live in a house my family has lived in for over 60 years, with the same old phone line and it's NEVER GONE DOWN IN SIXTY YEARS! A couple of times a month my Internet craps out, though, though usually for less than an hour. And sometimes the router needs to be reset, like many people find they have to do periodically. What happens if I need 911 during one of those times, and I can't get around it?
"Internet phone", "digital phone" whatever they want to call it, anything but a REAL land-line from the local phone company is a substandard service by definition. They can throw whatever words out there to make it sound super-dooper, but it's a substandard service just like anyone who experienced this outage can tell you.
Yes, it was an excellent special. Very informative - and if many of the posters here saw it (I wish I could remember the name so people could TiVo it, I believe it was part of the "Modern Marvels" series) a lot of the snide comments would be proven moot.
Many of the ones they sell are heavily souped up from the original model. They are made to order. So you can get a "cheap" one (for like 50K iirc) or spend a few hundred grand on a "super" model.
After watching the special, I put buying one of them on my fantasy wish list. There is even an "official" replica Flux Capacitor out there on the collector market - as a geek I'd almost have to put one in. However, I'd have a custom cover made for it and I'd only show it off special geek moments.;)
"Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?"
You aren't thinking of the *BIG* picture, would be the argument. While I can't speak to this guy's research, that's the reasoning behind the questions you asked that would come from someone who may believe it to be a natural cycle.
Species have come and gone since the beginning of time. The earth has been covered in ice before, long predating any humans; the argument is what makes us believe that the opposite isn't only possible but natural besides our own limited experience as a species. Remember in elementary school when they tell you about how old the Earth is, and if you compared it to a human life-span the entirety of time humanity has been here about the length of a one eye blink.
Now, personally, I think some on both sides is right. I'm sure that as humans we have sped up what we believe to be the "normal" state of the Earth's climate change. What I disagree with, and what "skeptics" are right about (again, in my opinion) is that there is no "normal" state of the Earth, it is not meant to be static, and in the broader scheme of things as humans we are extremely naive to believe that the Earth and climate were meant to be frozen in the state they have been since modern science has been invented. Perhaps humanity isn't meant to live forever on Earth; that's too much of a concept for most people to grasp, however. It's only logical, though - what makes us think we are so damn special as a species on this planet, besides the fact that we construct big mechanical weapons to shoot at each other with? I'd be willing to be the average human is much more fragile than the average dinosaur, technology aside, and we all know what happened to them.
I do believe that the environmental extremists go too far in their panic-panic-panic messages, but they do have some valid points. It's just too bad that they try to oversell it with propoganda and scare tactics. It's just like AIDS activisim in the 80's when groups like ACT UP were boarding middle school busses and handing out condoms, or when animal-rights groups kill and bury "unwanted" animals in mass graves. All it does is make the average person shake their heads in disgust, or the even worse "well, if it's so damn bad then there is nothing I can do about it then," which just defeats the whole purpose entirely.
Like anything in life, extremists on both sides look silly. The Earth is getting warmer at the moment, no doubt about it. That's what scientists agree about because we have hard statistical data; what is up for debate is to what degree we have contributed to it. The problem is that so many people have the wrong assumption that the Earth somehow magically remains frozen in time but for human interference; that's just wrong, and if that basic concept isn't understood you simply cannot have a rational discussion about it.
That's why what's happening in parts of the scientific community is so disturbing. Anyone who acknowledges the Earth has had, has, and will have many many climate changes in cycles completely independent of humans and even attempts to say, "hey, slow down with the scare-tactic computer simulations trying to scare people into thinking we are weeks from Kansas being covered in water" is a "skeptic" and basically a heretic. It's like someone speaking out against the Patriot Act when it was entacted - if you do not believe you must be *evil*!
Humans may live on Earth for millions of years, we could be wiped out by an asteroid tomorrow. Global warming is something we need to pay attention to, but I also think that a certain aspect of the scientific community would like you to believe that their methods are perfect, and that modern science is so advanced that w
No, DST is narrow minded. It assumes everyone lives on some static schedule.
DST is as antiquated a system as can be. It's a headache with little reason, and if you look at many of the justifications for it in the first place (it began as a guy in England wanting more time to ride horses), and it's reasons for continuing (war-time rationing, and the lobbying by fast food and convenience store corporations of all people) and in the present day it's really just assuming that everyone sticks to some standard government-sanctioned schedule. These days, I know very few people that go out on weekday afternoons to participate in "outdoor leisure activities" (the original justification in the proposal for DST in England) yet I know many people that dread the headaches that come from switching over twice a year for no palatable benefit in their lives.
Because of the change this year, I'm glad that several bodies are looking at the actual data this time, instead of just statistical guesses made without comparative data. At least now, with the three week period additional this year they can compare it to similar periods in other years when DST started later, as opposed to the blind guesses made before. Hopefully they will show what many of us have known for a long time : DST is a product of a time that has passed, and the pain in the frigging ass it is simply is out of place in the 21st century.
Well, I guess we don't fundamentally disagree, then - we just live in different worlds.
I'm all for protecting privacy. I just happened to say that personally, if my TV watching data were out there, I wouldn't mind. Again, I am not advocating everyone's should be released, or it should be allowed, etc., but just that, well, I'm not scared of that data in particular.
I don't watch porn on cable, so I just can't comment about the fear of being "uncovered" if you somehow work for a company that disdains such things. I'm out on two factors there - one, the fact I don't even have digital cable with access to such content, and two, I do not work in a place where I had to justify myself like that. I'm self-employed, so I guess that helps LOL.
So yes, I'll grant you that if you work for some Neo-Con company and they find out you have been watching porn on your TiVo (which, I believe, isn't actually possible since even Series 3 TiVo's only have CableCard 1.0 and can't do PPV), it could be damaging. I never even said that I think it's a good idea to open up the data; just that personally, I am unconcerned about that data in particular, or what assumptions could be made about me based upon it.
That's an interesting point as well - assumptions based on the data. Because, with the exception of Porn, there are a plethora of reasons one could be watching any program. It's something I've thought about since this discussion began. For instance, someone in an earlier post said something about "what if the FBI saw me watching a show about illegal drugs?" Well, you could be a history buff, or you could be a recovered addict who wanted to reaffirm their anti-drug stance, you could be a parent who wants to be educated about what's out there...in fact, with that topic in particular, since there is no "bootleg" TV out there under the radar (that's all on the web now, LOL), 99.9% of television programs about drugs are going to be negative anyway. The point is - it would be very hard to find a pattern or some way of profiling people for criminal activity via TV habits. There are no "watch me if you are going to kill your wife" shows; like the drug shows, there are "how THIS guy killed his wife..." shows, but again, there are dozens of reasons one might be watching them that have nothing to do with intent to do anything.
Finally, you brought up a great topic at the end - one that I believe to be beyond this thread, but nonetheless extremely important for people to learn : the "Google" factor, and I put the word in " on purpose. You are right, many people have posted stuff without thinking before; I've actually got a pretty common name, but when you string my first, middle, and last name together and google it, I thank goodness every day nothing comes up LOL. That just stops the casual snooping, though (we all leave our marks all over the internet), but it's nice to know that an employer can't just bring up my personal history.
That's why sites like MySpace scare the shit out of me. I'm pretty young (on the cusp of 30, though a bit to go), and man, I tell you - when I see what some people put up on those types of sites, the intensely personal things they are sharing in the name of "connecting" with other people online, it just sends shivers down my spine. These people can't see past their need to be recognized and documented to understand the ramifications that could, can, and will come because they willingly entered their data into the largest personality, initimate info, and stalker-friendly website on the Internet.
So I definitely see the issues here, and I'd never advocate for TiVo to just publish everyone's viewing info - just that personally, I wouldn't mind sharing. However, as you can see, I am also very aware of many of the other dangers out there, and think guarding privacy (online especially) is extremely important; TV watching data, though, just isn't something that I'd fight for even if it weren't as innocuous as it obviously is in current, aggregated use.
I've read all of the replies, but I choose you to respond to as I thought yours was the most well-thought out. Not a single reply told me anything I didn't already know, however - I am aware of all of the issues brought up. I just think that there is a time to stand on principle, and this isn't one of them.
I never said "let them go through everything of mine...etc." I did say that when data comes in or leaves my house via a cable, I understand that that data is not secure from anyone. We are talking about what one watches on TV. I will repeat again : I do not care if someone knows what I watch on TV. I guess from the replies that some people are porn watchers - I don't do PPV, so I can't comment on that. Now, maybe you email "secret" things that could get you in trouble, but I don't. I'm not a criminal, and I doubt many people are interested in my bitching to my friend about The View. Here is the important part : if I *WAS* trying to hide information, I would damn well know better enough than to put it in an email and send it out from my IP.
This does not meant I *want* everyone reading my email, or think it's even right; but it is a fact of the technological world we live in. I learned this long ago. You simply don't say anything in email that you don't wish someone else to see. Now, I'm not talking petty BS, but anyone that trusts email with vital information is a fool. It is simply not secure in the first place, so if a hacker can find your "deleted" email out there, don't tell me anyone in the gov't couldn't as well. It's just common sense to me, really.
I actually understand and defend privacy rights quite often. However, in this case, I truly believe television data is wholly innocuous. Some paranoid person below said, "Yeah, but what if the FBI sees me watching a show on illegal drugs! OMG!" I'm sorry, but if the FBI is running around checking who watches "The History of Drugs" on the History Channel and then getting warants for peoples houses to search for drugs...I'll eat my left nut. This isn't to say somehow, somewhere this data could not be used against you if you commit a crime or whatnot - but in this case, that risk is worth the benefits of owning this OPTIONAL PRODUCT.
So I know many people thought my initial post was ignorant, but it actually was very well thought out in the sense that I know what people "think I should think" about this, but the realist in me just doesn't buy it. I simply don't believe that television watching data is important, and I'm actually glad the companies know what I watch since I'm not a Nielsen family. I know that people sit on "principle" that every thing is sacred, but I just don't care. Television is so innocuous that you really can't make assumptions based on what is watched - I'll grant that I didn't think about Porn in my first post (though I think it's funny people would be ashamed of it - if you like it, the vanilla kind you can get over cable can't be that damaging LOL), but other than that : are their Satan Worship shows? Are there "Join the KKK" shows? What is this awful TV that people are watching that they are afraid of? I don't believe anything that damaging is actually broadcast, which I think is my main reason for not giving a crap.
I understand the point; it's contextual. Since there is no such thing as an illegally broadcast TV station or program that your TiVo could record, there is no single show that is somehow "wrong" to watch - that was my point in bringing up Raven, it's what people are ashamed to say they enjoy, not a show that is "wrong" to watch. The problem is if someone had this data and began making assumptions about you based on it; the individal parts of the data are irrelevant on their own.
You see, I know people label me as one of those "if you aren't doing anything wrong, then why hide" people, and I admit it probably sounds that way. I'm truly not in most cases. But I also know when to pick my battles, and TiVo simply isn't one of them f
I thought it was part of their business strategy from the very beginning.
I don't see a problem, as long as they don't release any individually identifiable data.
I've been a TiVo user for years, and I agree - we've always known about this, and I could give a crap.
To be honest, as long as it doesn't have my credit card number and address, I could care less even if it wasn't aggregated and did contain my name, for instance.
Oh, the horror...my big secret would be revealed : I have a season pass for "That's So Raven". I may get denied jobs, housing, or a life mate if anyone ever found out.;)
I know some people get all uppity over "principle" and "slippery slopes", but really - what in hell is anyone watching on TV, especially in the U.S., that anyone would seriously object to knowing about. No, I don't want my viewing habits published on the web, but on the other hand - what the hell do I really care if they were. The world be damned - yes, I used the instant replay button several times on "Dirt" last week when Grant Shaud from Melrose Place was getting blown by that guy so I could get a good look at his rockin' ass. I have no shame!
If someone doesn't like me because I watch those zany adventures of Raven and her wacky friends, or that I used the instant replay button to get a look at a middle-aged guys ass on basic cable, then they aren't cool enough for me to care about anyway.;)
In all seriousness, though - I just assume that every bit of data that enters or exits my house is public knowledge. That's why I don't say things on the Internet I wouldn't take out an ad and say in a Newspaper for the world to see - I'm not paranoid and actually think anyone is actively looking, but I just find it good policy. It lets me live my life rather worry-free that something will ever "come back to haunt me".
Aw fuck, that's what I get for posting in the middle of the night and not hitting preview, LOL. What I meant was:
So, in summary, just because you can see it, doesn't mean you can use it.
Oh, you can't do ANYTHING you want, but again, if you go to theconsumerist.com and read what is actually going on, you'll see that's not the claim. The Consumerist, a news website, posted a story and since Mike Jandreau put his image up on his website for publicity purposes, they used the image under "fair use".
Mike Jandreau then sends them an email this morning (which yet again, you can read at the site) which demanded they take it down as it was a "violation of (his) privacy" and "Under federal law you must comply," like he was the Borg Queen, as I said above. It was the silliest thing I ever read. He *may* have had 1/2 a point if he had mentioned copyright, but again, fair use is pretty obvious in this case and all he could come up with is "violation of privacy" and "you must comply".
Then, to make it even worse, the supposed lawyer emails The Consumerist (yet again, posted at the site) with other erratic, psudo-legal claims that were just as silly. Every reaction out of Mike Jandreau and Lycos lawyers has been a pissing contest like I've never seen. I guess these guys didn't realize that the Consumerist, Gawker, etc. was not the site to be making bullshit legal claims to, and now they are the laughing stock of the Internet even more.
Again, it's not what happened with the damned email, it's how Lycos "all your bases belong to us", the "highest guy in customer service" said. A business can send you a "fuck you, we aren't helping you" email with nice words like "Unfortunately", "policy dictates", "We value you as a customer, but we regret...", instead the person got just a "pay us or your email is gone" and a cocky little bastard getting his wood off on being a douche to someone.
So, in summary, just because you can see it, doesn't mean you can use it.
Oh, you can't do ANYTHING you want, but again, if you go to theconsumerist.com and read what is actually going on, you'll see that's not the claim. The Consumerist, a news website, posted a story and since Mike Jandreau put his image up on his website for publicity purposes, they used the image under "fair use".
Mike Jandreau then sends them an email this morning (which yet again, you can read at the site) which demanded they take it down as it was a "violation of (his) privacy" and "Under federal law you must comply," like he was the Borg Queen, as I said above. It was the silliest thing I ever read. He *may* have had 1/2 a point if he had mentioned copyright, but again, fair use is pretty obvious in this case.
Then, to make it even worse, the supposed lawyer emails The Consumerist (yet again, posted at the site) with other erratic, psudo-legal claims that were just silly. Every reaction out of Mike Jandreau and Lycos lawyers has been a pissing contest like I've never seen. I guess these guys didn't realize that the Consumerist, Gawker, etc. was not the site to be making bullshit legal claims to, and now they are the laughing stock of the Internet even more.
Again, it's not what happened with the damned email, it's how Lycos "all your bases belong to us", the "highest guy in customer service" said. A business can send you a "fuck you, we aren't helping you" email with nice words like "Unfortunately", "policy dictates", "We value you as a customer, but we regret...", just a "pay us or your email is gone" and a cocky little bastard getting his wood off on being a douche to someone.
Odd... I've never had a problem with nvidia drivers in five years.
So much for using bleeding edge cards on bleeding edge hardware on windows 2000.
I've been using Nvidia for about the same time, maybe 6 years, and not had a real problem like I did last time I installed XP. Apparently it's a common issue with some cards and some codecs that Nvidia just seemed to ignore (and deletes threads in their forum about, etc.) just like in the case in the article today. What people are saying about it really echoes what I came to understand about the XP driver issue. As of now, I'm using like version 83.17, which is fine, but apparently whatever is broke has been broke from after that version to 93.X whatever they are on now.
As to the other compatibility issues, when playing games (specificly MMO's) I've always had to do funny things to the Nvidia settings to work (usually instructed to by whatever game's website) or simply had things that just didn't work well/were slow with Nvidia cards. In spite of this (as the problems were usually fixable or not game-breaking, i.e. mists or certain textures not working right), I've always stood by their products and continued to upgrade within their brand.
From my personal issues with them now, though, and seeing reports like this that only reenforce my own experience, I'll be shopping for a new brand. Thing is, I've never been much a fan of ATI either. Guess I won't be upgrading to a 512MB card anytime soon.:)
Absolutely, positively, INCORRECT. Sony did not SELL 1.8m PS3's...they SHIPPED 1.8 million PS3's. Many of them are sitting in stores, right next to the ones that were returned by many eBayers unopened because they eBay sales tanked. THEY ARE NOT SELLING. Period. End of story. Sitting there collecting dust. They are not coming in and going right out and then being restocked - they are just sitting there. You honestly are the first person I've seen with the balls to argue otherwise, because arguing anything but is like saying New Coke wasn't so bad.
Bollocks. Clearly they were sold and clearly Sony have manufactured and sold many thousands more since. Besides, MS claimed 10 million sold too, but guess what - they meant shipped as well and went through all kinds of verbal gymnastics to explain why sold meant shipped. Either way that's the only metric these companies have the ability to actually say with certainty. Just accept it and move on.
Dude, I'm sorry, but I guess we just can't finish the conversation, because you are simply talkin' crazy and now you are bringing up whole other topics when your basic knowledge seems to be extremely adverse to reality. You obviously do not follow the industry, because the facts at the base of your reasoning are simply WRONG. There is no other word for it. I mean, you must not even read/. regularly. That's fine and all - not everyone needs to stay on top of such things, but if you are going to tell someone they are "completely incorrect" or that their simple facts are "bollucks", you really should know what the hell you are talking about.
Sony announced after Christmas that it had SHIPPED 1.8 million units. Go to their website - look at the press release. The wording was very exact. They did not SELL 1.8 million units. This is fact reported by every gaming site and many mainstream publications.
There have been dozens of articles about how poorly all this has been going for the PS3. Either you are blind or you do not read.
Here is an article (with nifty graphs and everything!) that explains how the PS3 on eBay market CRASHED...before CHRISTMAS! It was so bad that scalpers were returning them to the stores because they weren't worth the bother to ship because they were all over retail stores and, again, no one was buying them (nor are they now).
Here is an article that confirms that Sony shipped 1m units to the US, and less than 2/3 of them sold. You will also note that this article is also about analysts cutting predictions for the PS3 based on it's bad sales - there are again dozens on the topic if you search.
Finally, here's yet another article detailing just how slow demand is. Stores are stocked - people don't want 'em.
I didn't mean for this to turn into a PS3 sucks debate, but man, you are just so ill informed about this topic one can't communicate with you on the others. My only point, from the beginning, is that PS3 sales are not going to win this format war. You have gone on and on like a friggin' press release about all this peripheral bullshit regarding the PS3, and how I don't understand "what Sony intends the PS3 to be" - we can't have that discussion while you are so ill informed about how the PS3 is really faring in the marketplace.
You'll also notice that those articles are from a selection of times - one before XMAS, one right after, one in early Jan, one last week. Before you start saying that "X-site is wrong, blah blah" I encourage you to seek out the other news stories out there abou
Their XP drivers for the last few versions have shitted out on a lot of people as well. I just reinstalled XP clean on a machine, and of course I updated to the newest Nvidia drivers at the same time.
Cut to me spending a whole afternoon trying to figure out what the hell the problem with my PC is, since I can't get any video to play properly. I have the newest drivers, so I assume (and in that case the "ass" part was a good description of myself, I'll admit) that the issue is with codecs. So I install and uninstall every codec known to man, and the frigging thing still didn't work.
Finally, I did a bit of searching and found several message boards for codecs that this is a widespread problem with Nvidia's newer drivers. It wasn't the codecs. I uninstall the new ones, and reinstall an older version they recommended. Worked like a charm.
I used to really like Nvidia, but in the last few years their hardware has had tons of compatibility issues and this last driver bullshit has changed my mind.
On a positive note, this story further solidified (though it was already pretty iron-clad) my decision that Vista is not for me, for this express reason. I just finally got everything working the way I want - software, peripherals, etc., so why in hell would I "upgrade" just to say I did. Vista just offers no feature compelling enough for me to want to go through that hell of trying to get everything to work all over again. I'm just too old to be reinstalling or upgrading OS's just for the fun of it.
It had nothing to do with/., if you are referring to Mike Jandreau's personal websites. They went down early today.
If you'd like more real info about this situation (as opposed to people reading one short paragraph and then commenting to all hell like they know what they are talking about) check out www.theconsumerist.com
What makes this situation amusing is the continued responses of Jandreau and Lycos (which is back from the dead for many of us - haven't thought of that name in many years). Jandreau put his own picture up on a website (www.moviesnobs.com) and when The Consumerist put it up, he wrote this asinine silly letter talking about Federal rights and at the end said, "Under federal law you must comply," like he's the friggin' Borg Queen or something. Then the lawyer makes the same silly requests - um, Mike Jandreau's photo is available from Google Images and other sites - it's fair use, baby.
I would have felt bad for Jandreau, or at least wished this would have all gone away, if he had dealt with it properly. I'm sure it was tough for him to wake up and see that 1/2 the internet is cussing his name. However, instead of dealing with it in a decent way, he just got even more ridiculous and obviously shows by his lack of tact in writing that he does not belong in customer service. I hope Lycos doesn't get sued for anything anytime soon, as the lawyer that sent the letter to The Consumerist doesn't seem to have anything more than a grade-school level of knowledge about the law.
Yes, the customer was not right either, but telling people "I am the head of all of customer service and there is no one higher you will speak with" is just a jerk on a power trip. Although I believe his statement was inaccurate - if he was high he probably wouldn't have been such a dink.;)
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Actually, in times of economic hardship entertainment spending goes up (for example, the highest years of numbers of tickets sold for films being shown in theaters is still from the Great Depression, even today - film going by tickets sold has been on a steady decline since the 1930's), and video games have been no exception. Going to the movies, buying DVDs and games is still cheaper than going on vacation or weekends away.
The reason there are no new consoles on the horizon (though it's pretty certain in the next year or so Nintendo will announce a newer version of the Wii with higher specs and some type of HD-upconverting) is because they just aren't necessary. For instance, according to the many studios the game designers still haven't fully utilized the existing "high end" possibilities of XBOX360 and PS3. And the Wii being the best selling console of the generation thus far is really telling in that more people want easier to play, fun games over "photorealism" and super-fancy graphics.
For a long time, the gaming world was all about how pretty the pictures were over all else. The next big thing was always sharper, more realistic, more detailed, etc. There is a threshold of how long that can carry the market. When it gets to be "good enough" for most people. Just like Blu-ray has been off to a slow start because many people are satisfied with DVDs, I don't think you'd have seen nearly the adoption that the next-gen systems have had (save the Wii of course, which was a new market onto itself) if it wasn't for the fact that all the big/new/continuing series are only being released on the new systems. PS2, crappy as it seems now, was "enough" for most people.
This is great for gamers, because now instead of focusing on pixel count, they can again focus on the game experience itself. Yes, we want it to look pretty, but we want new types of games. New ways to play. More unique experiences. Each genre of game (RTS, Shooter, Platformer, etc.) has been so stagnant for so long - same same same. Same goals, same mechanics, very few innovations. It's time for the manufacturers to start paying more people to design and innovate than to spend the majority of the game budget on making sure the glint of metal on the tip of a sword is feature-film quality.
Thank God most of the vendors I used have stopped using DHL. I hate to complain to companies and only do so when absolutely necessary, but I've complained to several over DHL and eventually they stopped using them. Thankfully, I get at least 3-5 packages a week and haven't seen DHL in quite some time.
The worst experience was a TiVo I was waiting for "overnight" shipment from around 2005. Well, back then "overnight" meant 2-day to them. Okay, fine. Day two comes, no package. Day three, four...website shows it's sitting 90 miles away from my house. No update. I finally call on day five, they tell me they aren't sure where it is, and that "overnight is not guaranteed". Eventually, it showed up the beginning of the next week (about eight days late). Kicker was, it worked for about two weeks then went defective - though I can't blame it on the "week in limbo" cripes knows what it went through and I've always wondered if it had anything to do with it.
Then again, while USPS is often great (Priority Mail is awesome, I love the ease and knowing what the price will be ahead of time), it depends on your office. I live near two post offices, one is much closer and never has a line, but that one is also run by complete idiots and I've had numerous problems there. I just had plain bad luck with them for awhile, but I stopped going over a customer service issue when my 2-3 day Priority Package was bounced back and forth around the country for 12 days before it arrived (and kept coming back to that location, something was funny), and the "Postmaster" of that location refused to refund me. "I don't have the authority." Me: "Uh, you are the postmaster of this location, this location took my money..." wouldn't help at all. I go to the other one (not much further away, but more traffic to get there and always busy) and I never have a problem.
I don't get a lot of big freight/packages (I would never buy something like a TV online, I want to pick it up in a store) so maybe that's why I'm so happy that most of my stuff comes UPS. Always comes on time, or sooner, and never had an issue due to their handling. Though I also think that has to do with the fact the majority of my shipments come from Amazon, who packs most things pretty darn well.
Now this is what's funny, that no one ever looks at the other factors. Profits down? Must be downloading!
Look at the music industry. They practically stopped selling singles in the 90's, which had been a mainstay of popular music for many decades. Since CD singles went from $4-6 bucks a pop they really took a risk there - and for a bit, it paid off. They had the brilliant idea of, "Why spend our time making sure there are enough good songs on an album to release enough singles to support it. Let's just have one or two catchy songs, make the album the only way to listen to them, and people will just buy the album for $18 instead since they have no choice if they want that song!" For a bit, it worked. (Let's also note the lies told by the industry at the advent of CD - that CD's would go below the $9-10 new cassette price once we all started adopting - in fact, the average MSRP has done nothing but go up while their costs have gone down down down).
Then came Napster. People didn't like being shook down for a whole album when they only wanted one song. So, just download that one song - easy enough. And thus the "download" culture began. The record companies made a gamble that we'd keep ponying up $18 for discs to listen to a song or two, and they lost that one big time to technology.
That's why, even now, I support the artists I like by seeing them in concert. New music comes out, I often download it - and since I spend $100-250 on a ticket to go see them, and they actually get a large portion of that money (instead of the ridiculous few cents most artists make on a major label album sale) I'm OK with that. Just my thing. I rarely listen to new music anyway, I'm pretty boring and mostly listen to the same 5 or 6 artists. I have this lack of caring when it comes to the labels - they screw the artists, screw the buyers, then sit and count the $. Sorry, not gonna play that game, homie. ;) Disable all downloading, and I'll record 'em off the radio. :) No way for them to win.
It's a lovely thought but "share your creations in public or over the internet" is what we have on YouTube, and quite frankly I've seen enough "America's Funniest/Stupidest/Most Ridiculous/Embarassing" home videos. ;-)
The truth is, even though the Internet supposedly brought the "power to the people" in terms of distribution, it really hasn't. It's turned into a way for the big companies to market even more. For every Justin Bieber who makes it from YouTube to known artist, there are 100,000's of thousands who just put their (sometimes good) crap up there to ever keep track of.
I know a lot of people use "YouTube" a lot - I don't, and when I do, it's for seeing a clip of something I missed on TV or similar. No, I don't need to see cute/funny cat stuff, or your 2-year old singing "Single Ladies".
The problem with just about everything is to produce something up to professional quality costs a lot of money in most cases. And even if you do manage to do so, you have to align yourself with some type of conglomerate for any type of real distribution (YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, etc). Driving traffic to a stand-alone website where people buy your stuff is the equivalent of a flea market booth these days.
The ideal solution is more in the hands of those artists/creative folk who are successful now. If they would stand up and do the work and release stuff without the middle-man, they would make more money, we'd be more happy to give them their money, and the useless studio/label/etc. would become irrelevant. It's sort of what we should be doing to insurance companies, but just like in that case a wholesale change like that is nearly impossible at this point in time. The majority are too scared, and if only the minority do it they will fail and just prove the fear the majority have.
There is no easy, practical answer. Listening to people's bad poetry, or watching their home-made videos isn't going to cut it for most of us. There are a reason "open mic" nights have gone out of style, and that the average YouTube clip is a minute long...
The part I don't get is "Homeland Security".
WTH are they doing messing with copyright issues? This has nothing to do with "Immigration and Customs" either.
Homeland Security should be protecting us from all these supposed "DANGER DANGER DANGER!" things that are out there that we are so scared of we are supposed to be letting the pervs at the TSA play with our junk and feel up our kids for.
Homeless and starving families right here on our own soil, health care is a mess, bridges are falling apart, all of our "national defense" is half-way across the world, we are borrowing all our operating money from Asia...but hey, who cares, someone is downloading last week's episode of "Bones" they missed - send out Homeland Security!
What a joke.
I haven't found a better one yet. It took about 30 seconds to move myself over (if you already have a google account). I'll keep looking for another alternative, but at the moment GoogleReader is where I am.
Twitter and Facebook and other "instant" crap isn't replacing RSS haha. And, YES, RSS is a "consumer experience" for intelligent consumers who can figure it out. RSS Aggregators are genius - one webpage you can go to that tracks and reprints stories from all the webpages you keep up with. Bloglines had virtually eliminated my use of bookmarks for anything but archival purposes. Everything I wanted to read was either at, or linked from, my Bloglines page.
Of course, like everyone, I've just moved over to Google Reader. But Ask.com should have been happy to have someone regularly using their servers, since no one else I know has used that site since it was AskJeeves. It's a change, a change I prefer didn't happen, but I'll roll with it. I will just make sure in the future I don't unintentionally use an Ask.com product again.
First, I had no idea Ask.com had anything to do with it - I just use the site to read my articles every day. I would have gladly paid a fee to use Bloglines (small fee, say $20/year) because I found it so helpful. Not only was it one single webpage I could go to and get all the news/articles I want, it was portable (I could continue/save reading at work or on my phone), and I loved that the interface just stayed the same. Bloglines I logged into in 2005 pretty much looks like it in 2010 - and that was A-OK with me.
What's irritating is how they dealt with this. They gave about 3-weeks notice, which granted, is adequate. They link on the main bloglines page to a "blog post" telling you about the closure - and that's where the asshat starts. Basically, they state that because "everyone" gets their news from Twitter and Facebook and "instant" services now, people don't need an aggregator. Uh, say what? I don't get my news from Facebook or Twitter - and anyone that does is really, really dumb.
Sure, I can get a few pithy links or quotes from them, but I have 100ish sites that I track on Bloglines that the content certainly isn't replicated there. Then they go on about what a wonderful thing Ask.com was and how asking questions is the future - but they fail because they don't realize that SURE I type questions into search engines all the time - GOOGLE. Why would I ever, ever go to Ask.com directly when I can ask the same question of Goggle, and get the Ask.com results, PLUS the results for the entire rest of the Internet? Back when it was "Askjeeves.com" I think I went there a few times, but I haven't even though of ask.com in probably the same half-decade I have been using Bloglines.
The kicker...they aren't approving ANY comments on the announcement. I submitted one three days ago and it never got moderated, and I find it impossible to believe that no one else has commented. They just want to brush it under the carpet and forget about it. Much like the rest of the world has forgotten about Ask.com.
So I moved everything over to Google Reader. It's OK, I actually like the "scrolling through marks it read" feature, but what I am not excited about is the relative instability of Google products - they are always tweaking, updating, etc. and I really just want something that works and stays that way, like Bloglines did.
Life will go on. But Ask.com just sent me over to their competitor - I'll be spending even more time at Google now. And now I've gone from neutral on ask.com, to negative on them. I'll think twice before clicking a link to them, and try to find the info elsewhere.
You can get the most ridiculous patent - like "one click buy". Someone clicks a button on your website next to an item, and it's automatically charged and shipped to you. Somehow, something so simple as that idea can be patented? That's the most ludicris thing I have ever heard. Didn't I read not that long ago that some guy was suing everyone from eBay to Amazon because he thought he had a patent to the "online shopping cart"?
You are right - a lot of us are not patent experts. I know I'm not. But I do know enough about them to know how absolutely assanine many software patents are. An awful lot of software patents are the same as it would be if patenting "a movie in which a down-and-out female meets a man, they fall in love, a tragedy and/or misfortune befalls one of them, keeping them apart, and in the end one of their best friends does something which brings them back together". Katherine Heigel, Kate Hudson, and Jennifer Lopez would never work in Hollywood again, and they'd have to file a multi-billion dollar infringement suit against Julia Roberts.
They don't allow you to patent movies like that, because we have something called copyright. People should be able to copyright their software, and their specific ways of doing things in their code. That's adequate. Abstract concepts and universal ideas should not. Assuming it's not a parody, should I be able to go out make a serious movie called "Space Wars", about characters named Duke Skyhound, Princess Bea, and Man Bolo who are fighting the Evil Imperials while trying to find the surviving Zedi who were wiped from the Galaxy during a war who have powers like mind-control, super-agility, and the ability to wield a glowing sword called a "Lightpole"? No, but it's perfectly fine for me to make a movie about a war in outerspace - someone might want to warn the folks over at Battlestar if Lucas gets a patent on that, and likewise Lucas should be waiting any day after for the estate of Gene Roddenberry's infringement suit, and the estate of Roddenberry should expecting...well, you get the picture.
Copyright is sufficent for software. If your process is revolutionary enough, your code shouldn't be that easy to duplicate without violating a copyright. As consumers, and citizens, we'd all save a whole hell of a lot of money without software patents and all that goes with them. Any supposed good in them is rhetoric and scare tactics - the software industry wouldn't fall on it's knees overnight. It may change - just like the music industry is being forced to (although they are still kicking and screaming trying to apply their old ideals to this brand new world) - but the software industry, and it's advances/development, would end up just fine.
Uh, not everyone is a closet case, so it wouldn't have ended "all honest" discussions.
I too find it rather suspicious that they chose Mac, because as others have pointed out in different ways, few of us are huge PC fans either but the truth is in most business environments that these kids are actually supposed to be preparing for, Mac's are few and far between. Unless they are going into graphic design of some sort, professionally virtually everything runs on Windoze. Heck, most companies are still using IE6 because that's what their internal systems were designed around.
I just don't like the sound of this whole thing...requiring students to buy anything (and, in spite of fine print, it is requiring it - unless kids start doing their "home" work at school) is just wrong IMO. That's why we have town and city budgets. If the item cannot fit into that budget, then it shouldn't be required and an alternative should be found. You don't *need* a computer for anything, and if their goal is to "train" kids for adult life, then the plain facts are a Mac isn't going to really do that for them.
"How do you know your phone service has never been out in 60 years? Do you monitor it? How many calls a day do you make? Are you home 24/7 and do you use the phone all the time, as in more than 10,000 minutes per month?"
Nice attempt at deflection of the topic, but the answer is very simple. No one who has lived in my house in 60 years has ever picked up the phone and it not worked.
That is a different experience than those who use this service have.
AE
Gee, I hope no one tried to call 911 during the outage. That "enhanced" (insert guffaw, it's like calling a hamburger without the meat and just a bun "enhanced") 911 didn't do a tinkers damn worth of good for anyone who's service was out.
This is why I won't even consider VoIP. Why in the world would I want to take risks like this? I live in a house my family has lived in for over 60 years, with the same old phone line and it's NEVER GONE DOWN IN SIXTY YEARS! A couple of times a month my Internet craps out, though, though usually for less than an hour. And sometimes the router needs to be reset, like many people find they have to do periodically. What happens if I need 911 during one of those times, and I can't get around it?
"Internet phone", "digital phone" whatever they want to call it, anything but a REAL land-line from the local phone company is a substandard service by definition. They can throw whatever words out there to make it sound super-dooper, but it's a substandard service just like anyone who experienced this outage can tell you.
AE
Yes, it was an excellent special. Very informative - and if many of the posters here saw it (I wish I could remember the name so people could TiVo it, I believe it was part of the "Modern Marvels" series) a lot of the snide comments would be proven moot.
;)
Many of the ones they sell are heavily souped up from the original model. They are made to order. So you can get a "cheap" one (for like 50K iirc) or spend a few hundred grand on a "super" model.
After watching the special, I put buying one of them on my fantasy wish list. There is even an "official" replica Flux Capacitor out there on the collector market - as a geek I'd almost have to put one in. However, I'd have a custom cover made for it and I'd only show it off special geek moments.
AE
You aren't thinking of the *BIG* picture, would be the argument. While I can't speak to this guy's research, that's the reasoning behind the questions you asked that would come from someone who may believe it to be a natural cycle.
Species have come and gone since the beginning of time. The earth has been covered in ice before, long predating any humans; the argument is what makes us believe that the opposite isn't only possible but natural besides our own limited experience as a species. Remember in elementary school when they tell you about how old the Earth is, and if you compared it to a human life-span the entirety of time humanity has been here about the length of a one eye blink.
Now, personally, I think some on both sides is right. I'm sure that as humans we have sped up what we believe to be the "normal" state of the Earth's climate change. What I disagree with, and what "skeptics" are right about (again, in my opinion) is that there is no "normal" state of the Earth, it is not meant to be static, and in the broader scheme of things as humans we are extremely naive to believe that the Earth and climate were meant to be frozen in the state they have been since modern science has been invented. Perhaps humanity isn't meant to live forever on Earth; that's too much of a concept for most people to grasp, however. It's only logical, though - what makes us think we are so damn special as a species on this planet, besides the fact that we construct big mechanical weapons to shoot at each other with? I'd be willing to be the average human is much more fragile than the average dinosaur, technology aside, and we all know what happened to them.
I do believe that the environmental extremists go too far in their panic-panic-panic messages, but they do have some valid points. It's just too bad that they try to oversell it with propoganda and scare tactics. It's just like AIDS activisim in the 80's when groups like ACT UP were boarding middle school busses and handing out condoms, or when animal-rights groups kill and bury "unwanted" animals in mass graves. All it does is make the average person shake their heads in disgust, or the even worse "well, if it's so damn bad then there is nothing I can do about it then," which just defeats the whole purpose entirely.
Like anything in life, extremists on both sides look silly. The Earth is getting warmer at the moment, no doubt about it. That's what scientists agree about because we have hard statistical data; what is up for debate is to what degree we have contributed to it. The problem is that so many people have the wrong assumption that the Earth somehow magically remains frozen in time but for human interference; that's just wrong, and if that basic concept isn't understood you simply cannot have a rational discussion about it.
That's why what's happening in parts of the scientific community is so disturbing. Anyone who acknowledges the Earth has had, has, and will have many many climate changes in cycles completely independent of humans and even attempts to say, "hey, slow down with the scare-tactic computer simulations trying to scare people into thinking we are weeks from Kansas being covered in water" is a "skeptic" and basically a heretic. It's like someone speaking out against the Patriot Act when it was entacted - if you do not believe you must be *evil*!
Humans may live on Earth for millions of years, we could be wiped out by an asteroid tomorrow. Global warming is something we need to pay attention to, but I also think that a certain aspect of the scientific community would like you to believe that their methods are perfect, and that modern science is so advanced that w
No, DST is narrow minded. It assumes everyone lives on some static schedule.
DST is as antiquated a system as can be. It's a headache with little reason, and if you look at many of the justifications for it in the first place (it began as a guy in England wanting more time to ride horses), and it's reasons for continuing (war-time rationing, and the lobbying by fast food and convenience store corporations of all people) and in the present day it's really just assuming that everyone sticks to some standard government-sanctioned schedule. These days, I know very few people that go out on weekday afternoons to participate in "outdoor leisure activities" (the original justification in the proposal for DST in England) yet I know many people that dread the headaches that come from switching over twice a year for no palatable benefit in their lives.
Because of the change this year, I'm glad that several bodies are looking at the actual data this time, instead of just statistical guesses made without comparative data. At least now, with the three week period additional this year they can compare it to similar periods in other years when DST started later, as opposed to the blind guesses made before. Hopefully they will show what many of us have known for a long time : DST is a product of a time that has passed, and the pain in the frigging ass it is simply is out of place in the 21st century.
AE
I'm all for protecting privacy. I just happened to say that personally, if my TV watching data were out there, I wouldn't mind. Again, I am not advocating everyone's should be released, or it should be allowed, etc., but just that, well, I'm not scared of that data in particular.
I don't watch porn on cable, so I just can't comment about the fear of being "uncovered" if you somehow work for a company that disdains such things. I'm out on two factors there - one, the fact I don't even have digital cable with access to such content, and two, I do not work in a place where I had to justify myself like that. I'm self-employed, so I guess that helps LOL.
So yes, I'll grant you that if you work for some Neo-Con company and they find out you have been watching porn on your TiVo (which, I believe, isn't actually possible since even Series 3 TiVo's only have CableCard 1.0 and can't do PPV), it could be damaging. I never even said that I think it's a good idea to open up the data; just that personally, I am unconcerned about that data in particular, or what assumptions could be made about me based upon it.
That's an interesting point as well - assumptions based on the data. Because, with the exception of Porn, there are a plethora of reasons one could be watching any program. It's something I've thought about since this discussion began. For instance, someone in an earlier post said something about "what if the FBI saw me watching a show about illegal drugs?" Well, you could be a history buff, or you could be a recovered addict who wanted to reaffirm their anti-drug stance, you could be a parent who wants to be educated about what's out there...in fact, with that topic in particular, since there is no "bootleg" TV out there under the radar (that's all on the web now, LOL), 99.9% of television programs about drugs are going to be negative anyway. The point is - it would be very hard to find a pattern or some way of profiling people for criminal activity via TV habits. There are no "watch me if you are going to kill your wife" shows; like the drug shows, there are "how THIS guy killed his wife..." shows, but again, there are dozens of reasons one might be watching them that have nothing to do with intent to do anything.
Finally, you brought up a great topic at the end - one that I believe to be beyond this thread, but nonetheless extremely important for people to learn : the "Google" factor, and I put the word in " on purpose. You are right, many people have posted stuff without thinking before; I've actually got a pretty common name, but when you string my first, middle, and last name together and google it, I thank goodness every day nothing comes up LOL. That just stops the casual snooping, though (we all leave our marks all over the internet), but it's nice to know that an employer can't just bring up my personal history.
That's why sites like MySpace scare the shit out of me. I'm pretty young (on the cusp of 30, though a bit to go), and man, I tell you - when I see what some people put up on those types of sites, the intensely personal things they are sharing in the name of "connecting" with other people online, it just sends shivers down my spine. These people can't see past their need to be recognized and documented to understand the ramifications that could, can, and will come because they willingly entered their data into the largest personality, initimate info, and stalker-friendly website on the Internet.
So I definitely see the issues here, and I'd never advocate for TiVo to just publish everyone's viewing info - just that personally, I wouldn't mind sharing. However, as you can see, I am also very aware of many of the other dangers out there, and think guarding privacy (online especially) is extremely important; TV watching data, though, just isn't something that I'd fight for even if it weren't as innocuous as it obviously is in current, aggregated use.
Nice discussion, though. :)
AE
I've read all of the replies, but I choose you to respond to as I thought yours was the most well-thought out. Not a single reply told me anything I didn't already know, however - I am aware of all of the issues brought up. I just think that there is a time to stand on principle, and this isn't one of them.
I never said "let them go through everything of mine...etc." I did say that when data comes in or leaves my house via a cable, I understand that that data is not secure from anyone. We are talking about what one watches on TV. I will repeat again : I do not care if someone knows what I watch on TV. I guess from the replies that some people are porn watchers - I don't do PPV, so I can't comment on that. Now, maybe you email "secret" things that could get you in trouble, but I don't. I'm not a criminal, and I doubt many people are interested in my bitching to my friend about The View. Here is the important part : if I *WAS* trying to hide information, I would damn well know better enough than to put it in an email and send it out from my IP.
This does not meant I *want* everyone reading my email, or think it's even right; but it is a fact of the technological world we live in. I learned this long ago. You simply don't say anything in email that you don't wish someone else to see. Now, I'm not talking petty BS, but anyone that trusts email with vital information is a fool. It is simply not secure in the first place, so if a hacker can find your "deleted" email out there, don't tell me anyone in the gov't couldn't as well. It's just common sense to me, really.
I actually understand and defend privacy rights quite often. However, in this case, I truly believe television data is wholly innocuous. Some paranoid person below said, "Yeah, but what if the FBI sees me watching a show on illegal drugs! OMG!" I'm sorry, but if the FBI is running around checking who watches "The History of Drugs" on the History Channel and then getting warants for peoples houses to search for drugs...I'll eat my left nut. This isn't to say somehow, somewhere this data could not be used against you if you commit a crime or whatnot - but in this case, that risk is worth the benefits of owning this OPTIONAL PRODUCT.
So I know many people thought my initial post was ignorant, but it actually was very well thought out in the sense that I know what people "think I should think" about this, but the realist in me just doesn't buy it. I simply don't believe that television watching data is important, and I'm actually glad the companies know what I watch since I'm not a Nielsen family. I know that people sit on "principle" that every thing is sacred, but I just don't care. Television is so innocuous that you really can't make assumptions based on what is watched - I'll grant that I didn't think about Porn in my first post (though I think it's funny people would be ashamed of it - if you like it, the vanilla kind you can get over cable can't be that damaging LOL), but other than that : are their Satan Worship shows? Are there "Join the KKK" shows? What is this awful TV that people are watching that they are afraid of? I don't believe anything that damaging is actually broadcast, which I think is my main reason for not giving a crap.
I understand the point; it's contextual. Since there is no such thing as an illegally broadcast TV station or program that your TiVo could record, there is no single show that is somehow "wrong" to watch - that was my point in bringing up Raven, it's what people are ashamed to say they enjoy, not a show that is "wrong" to watch. The problem is if someone had this data and began making assumptions about you based on it; the individal parts of the data are irrelevant on their own.
You see, I know people label me as one of those "if you aren't doing anything wrong, then why hide" people, and I admit it probably sounds that way. I'm truly not in most cases. But I also know when to pick my battles, and TiVo simply isn't one of them f
I've been a TiVo user for years, and I agree - we've always known about this, and I could give a crap.
To be honest, as long as it doesn't have my credit card number and address, I could care less even if it wasn't aggregated and did contain my name, for instance.
Oh, the horror...my big secret would be revealed : I have a season pass for "That's So Raven". I may get denied jobs, housing, or a life mate if anyone ever found out. ;)
I know some people get all uppity over "principle" and "slippery slopes", but really - what in hell is anyone watching on TV, especially in the U.S., that anyone would seriously object to knowing about. No, I don't want my viewing habits published on the web, but on the other hand - what the hell do I really care if they were. The world be damned - yes, I used the instant replay button several times on "Dirt" last week when Grant Shaud from Melrose Place was getting blown by that guy so I could get a good look at his rockin' ass. I have no shame!
If someone doesn't like me because I watch those zany adventures of Raven and her wacky friends, or that I used the instant replay button to get a look at a middle-aged guys ass on basic cable, then they aren't cool enough for me to care about anyway. ;)
In all seriousness, though - I just assume that every bit of data that enters or exits my house is public knowledge. That's why I don't say things on the Internet I wouldn't take out an ad and say in a Newspaper for the world to see - I'm not paranoid and actually think anyone is actively looking, but I just find it good policy. It lets me live my life rather worry-free that something will ever "come back to haunt me".
AE
Oh, you can't do ANYTHING you want, but again, if you go to theconsumerist.com and read what is actually going on, you'll see that's not the claim. The Consumerist, a news website, posted a story and since Mike Jandreau put his image up on his website for publicity purposes, they used the image under "fair use".
Mike Jandreau then sends them an email this morning (which yet again, you can read at the site) which demanded they take it down as it was a "violation of (his) privacy" and "Under federal law you must comply," like he was the Borg Queen, as I said above. It was the silliest thing I ever read. He *may* have had 1/2 a point if he had mentioned copyright, but again, fair use is pretty obvious in this case and all he could come up with is "violation of privacy" and "you must comply".
Then, to make it even worse, the supposed lawyer emails The Consumerist (yet again, posted at the site) with other erratic, psudo-legal claims that were just as silly. Every reaction out of Mike Jandreau and Lycos lawyers has been a pissing contest like I've never seen. I guess these guys didn't realize that the Consumerist, Gawker, etc. was not the site to be making bullshit legal claims to, and now they are the laughing stock of the Internet even more.
Again, it's not what happened with the damned email, it's how Lycos "all your bases belong to us", the "highest guy in customer service" said. A business can send you a "fuck you, we aren't helping you" email with nice words like "Unfortunately", "policy dictates", "We value you as a customer, but we regret...", instead the person got just a "pay us or your email is gone" and a cocky little bastard getting his wood off on being a douche to someone.
AE
I've been using Nvidia for about the same time, maybe 6 years, and not had a real problem like I did last time I installed XP. Apparently it's a common issue with some cards and some codecs that Nvidia just seemed to ignore (and deletes threads in their forum about, etc.) just like in the case in the article today. What people are saying about it really echoes what I came to understand about the XP driver issue. As of now, I'm using like version 83.17, which is fine, but apparently whatever is broke has been broke from after that version to 93.X whatever they are on now.
As to the other compatibility issues, when playing games (specificly MMO's) I've always had to do funny things to the Nvidia settings to work (usually instructed to by whatever game's website) or simply had things that just didn't work well/were slow with Nvidia cards. In spite of this (as the problems were usually fixable or not game-breaking, i.e. mists or certain textures not working right), I've always stood by their products and continued to upgrade within their brand.
From my personal issues with them now, though, and seeing reports like this that only reenforce my own experience, I'll be shopping for a new brand. Thing is, I've never been much a fan of ATI either. Guess I won't be upgrading to a 512MB card anytime soon. :)
AE
Dude, I'm sorry, but I guess we just can't finish the conversation, because you are simply talkin' crazy and now you are bringing up whole other topics when your basic knowledge seems to be extremely adverse to reality. You obviously do not follow the industry, because the facts at the base of your reasoning are simply WRONG. There is no other word for it. I mean, you must not even read /. regularly. That's fine and all - not everyone needs to stay on top of such things, but if you are going to tell someone they are "completely incorrect" or that their simple facts are "bollucks", you really should know what the hell you are talking about.
Sony announced after Christmas that it had SHIPPED 1.8 million units. Go to their website - look at the press release. The wording was very exact. They did not SELL 1.8 million units. This is fact reported by every gaming site and many mainstream publications.
There have been dozens of articles about how poorly all this has been going for the PS3. Either you are blind or you do not read.
Here is an article about retailers having PS3's sitting on their shelves for a week or more (70% in this case!).
Here is an article (with nifty graphs and everything!) that explains how the PS3 on eBay market CRASHED...before CHRISTMAS! It was so bad that scalpers were returning them to the stores because they weren't worth the bother to ship because they were all over retail stores and, again, no one was buying them (nor are they now).
Here is an article that confirms that Sony shipped 1m units to the US, and less than 2/3 of them sold. You will also note that this article is also about analysts cutting predictions for the PS3 based on it's bad sales - there are again dozens on the topic if you search.
Finally, here's yet another article detailing just how slow demand is. Stores are stocked - people don't want 'em.
I didn't mean for this to turn into a PS3 sucks debate, but man, you are just so ill informed about this topic one can't communicate with you on the others. My only point, from the beginning, is that PS3 sales are not going to win this format war. You have gone on and on like a friggin' press release about all this peripheral bullshit regarding the PS3, and how I don't understand "what Sony intends the PS3 to be" - we can't have that discussion while you are so ill informed about how the PS3 is really faring in the marketplace.
You'll also notice that those articles are from a selection of times - one before XMAS, one right after, one in early Jan, one last week. Before you start saying that "X-site is wrong, blah blah" I encourage you to seek out the other news stories out there abou
Their XP drivers for the last few versions have shitted out on a lot of people as well. I just reinstalled XP clean on a machine, and of course I updated to the newest Nvidia drivers at the same time.
Cut to me spending a whole afternoon trying to figure out what the hell the problem with my PC is, since I can't get any video to play properly. I have the newest drivers, so I assume (and in that case the "ass" part was a good description of myself, I'll admit) that the issue is with codecs. So I install and uninstall every codec known to man, and the frigging thing still didn't work.
Finally, I did a bit of searching and found several message boards for codecs that this is a widespread problem with Nvidia's newer drivers. It wasn't the codecs. I uninstall the new ones, and reinstall an older version they recommended. Worked like a charm.
I used to really like Nvidia, but in the last few years their hardware has had tons of compatibility issues and this last driver bullshit has changed my mind.
On a positive note, this story further solidified (though it was already pretty iron-clad) my decision that Vista is not for me, for this express reason. I just finally got everything working the way I want - software, peripherals, etc., so why in hell would I "upgrade" just to say I did. Vista just offers no feature compelling enough for me to want to go through that hell of trying to get everything to work all over again. I'm just too old to be reinstalling or upgrading OS's just for the fun of it.
AE
If you'd like more real info about this situation (as opposed to people reading one short paragraph and then commenting to all hell like they know what they are talking about) check out www.theconsumerist.com
What makes this situation amusing is the continued responses of Jandreau and Lycos (which is back from the dead for many of us - haven't thought of that name in many years). Jandreau put his own picture up on a website (www.moviesnobs.com) and when The Consumerist put it up, he wrote this asinine silly letter talking about Federal rights and at the end said, "Under federal law you must comply," like he's the friggin' Borg Queen or something. Then the lawyer makes the same silly requests - um, Mike Jandreau's photo is available from Google Images and other sites - it's fair use, baby.
I would have felt bad for Jandreau, or at least wished this would have all gone away, if he had dealt with it properly. I'm sure it was tough for him to wake up and see that 1/2 the internet is cussing his name. However, instead of dealing with it in a decent way, he just got even more ridiculous and obviously shows by his lack of tact in writing that he does not belong in customer service. I hope Lycos doesn't get sued for anything anytime soon, as the lawyer that sent the letter to The Consumerist doesn't seem to have anything more than a grade-school level of knowledge about the law.
Yes, the customer was not right either, but telling people "I am the head of all of customer service and there is no one higher you will speak with" is just a jerk on a power trip. Although I believe his statement was inaccurate - if he was high he probably wouldn't have been such a dink. ;)
AE