I'm not sure you are in a position to judge whether or not the CEO of TiVo really deserves a salary that high.
I am. Let's assume for the worst case that he works 8,760 hours/yr. That means he is making ~$68/hr, whether he's working, sleeping, eating, fucking, or taking a shit. That's ridiculous.
Simply put, I am not a believer in large executive salaries. If TiVO wants to pay him that money, that's fine with me, but it's still absurd from my point of view, and I'll judge it from whatever position I'm in. Note that I said salary, not compensation. I'm a believer in performance-based compensation. I'm not a believer in paying a CEO millions in salary when the company they run is bleeding money and the real workers are getting laid off.
it's a small price to pay for someone whose job it is to keep a big company running smoothly.
He's obviously not doing that good a job if they have to completely shift their revenue model to advertisment-based.
$600,000 is drop in the bucket compared to their yearly revenue
True. Based on 2 million subscribers at $12.95/month, its only 0.2% of their yearly revenue. That's a conservative figure, since there are many lifetime subscribers. I would also hazard a guess that TiVO, like Microsoft and the XBox, sell the hardware at a loss.
However, my original point is that they probably haven't looked everywhere to cut costs. You don't need a big cut in one area to save money. You can make many smaller cuts and still save a lot of money. So, cutting executive salaries, along with other smaller cost cuts, such as increases in productivity and restructuring internal procedures could make up for the revenue they're looking to get from advertisments. Whether this is actually possible, I am certainly not in the position to say.
Diskwriter doesn't work for NSF.. I've tried several plugins. Maybe they updated it, but I know I've tried several times in the past and diskwriter doesn't cut it.
I swear people in California have the easiest DMV test in the whole US.
Doubt it. Based on what I've seen in movies, California's test is on the road. Now, I understand that movies are not real, but that's all the info I have for this one.
New Jersey's test is essentially a go-kart track with a spot where you can parallel park.
And that right there is the problem. People continue to move to places such as West Jersey/East Pennsylvania where densities are lower, and then they complain about the amount of traffic on the roads, lack of other options, etc.
If everyone went as fast as I wanted to, I wouldn't have to change lanes or tailgate. However, some people seem to think that they own the lane and that "Keep right except to pass" is only some sort of helpful tip. The question I usually ask these drivers is, "Don't you want to get home?"
From my experience, slow drivers are the cause of weavers (sometimes this is me), which are the main cause of what I call 'phantom traffic'.
P.S. By 'fast' I'm not talking about 200 mph. I'm talking about 10-15 mph over the limit in the left lane, pretty standard fare in most areas. In New Jersey, you generally have to be going 15+ before the police will even bother to stop you, let alone write you a ticket.
But cussing out or threatening the life of Bill Gates, though, is wiser than cussing out/threatening the life of a guy who endorsed the Patriot Act and doesn't believe in privacy or that POWs have a right to an attorney, instead inventing some made-up term "enemy combatant" to get around the Geneva Convention.
Bush just signed off on that. You think he came up with that himself? No, the architect of 'enemy combatant' is Alberto Gonzales, who has been nominated as our next Attorney General.
I'm familiar with NSFs only, so I don't know about other formats. NSFs are basically just the music code ripped from the game and run through an emulator. This code can specify that a tune play once, run several times, or loop forever.
I've had little success converting NSF to wav. The only way I know is to record your sound card's output (most cards and onboards can do this internally now). For an NSF with 15 tracks (about average, when you ignore sound effects), this would be a lot of manual effort, and obviously would have to be done in real-time. Plus, on many of the tracks, you would have to decide how long to make it, since it will loop forever. I guess you could emulate this by repeating the mp3, but most players have a prebuffering delay, which would ruin the effect.
That's funny. I pointed out only one item where they could cut cost, and you went on about how hard it is to cut cost. How hard would it be for the CEO to give up $400,000 of his pay? Quite simple, I would hope.
I understand that cutting operating costs is quite difficult. Cutting ridiculous executive compensation seems like it should be a walk in the park, by comparison, no?
I understand that since you pay 12.95 a month you should get it ad-free. But why not make the same request to cable television? I'm paying $33/month for cable TV, should I have the same expectation that Comedy Central is ad-free?
No, you don't understand. It's completely different.
If you were a new customer to cable, you would expect commercials on most channels. It would have been no surprise if you had done just a cursory amount of research on the service you were signing up for.
If you saw TiVO at a friend's house and signed up for it, you would not have the expectation of any banner ads whatsoever, no matter how much research you did on the service (rumors aside). All of the sudden, you will now be getting ads.
Making that assumption, they are faced with a choice between increasing what they charge customers or finding some OTHER way of increasing revenue.
There are 2 sides to the equation. They could reduce cost. They've tried, for sure, but probably not hard enough. This page indicates that TiVO's CEO makes $600,000. That's a lot of banner ads.
The answer of 'Just attend private school' to any public school problem is simply unacceptable. Millions of kids do not have the opportunity to attend private school. What you're saying to those kids is "Bend over!"
I'm also wondering why it would be nessisary to CC the police on who didn't show up in the morning.
In many areas, Truancy is a misdemeanor, and as such, is a police matter.
Although I don't really agree with the rationale, I think the general idea is that if kids aren't in school and aren't sick, then they must be out doing "bad things".
What was your age at the time of eyesight change and family history of eye problems? In my family, eyesight deteriorates in the teens, but the change levels off in adulthood. My dad hasn't had his prescription changed in many, many years. I still have mine changed every 2-3 years. Correlation != causation, etc.
Gosh I hope you're joking. Either that or you don't understand the word "likelihood". Your one counterexample does not mean that the research is no longer valid.
but of course the windows update page only lets you in if you are on a Microsoft Operating System.
Windows Update, that is windowsupdate.microsoft.com, will only work on MS operating systems using IE. However, patches and service packs are available as binary downloads through the Microsoft Support Center (or whatever they call it) from any browser, any OS. Last time I went to Windows Update, I seem to recall that there was a link to the Download Center where you could download these binaries outside of the 'Windows Update' system. Here is the Download Center.
I however fully expect to have to reinstall everything from scratch in a few months when the next gaping hole is discovered.
Then you've bought into the FUD here. I keep my Win2k box somewhat updated, but strictly firewalled with the unnecessary services turned off. I have not had to reinstall the machine since I got it almost a year ago, and my previous machine ran for years without a reinstall. The only spyware I got was because of my own stupidity when I ran something named "START.EXE" that came along with a crack.. err security patch. I easily removed the spyware with the Adaware/Spybot combo. I use IE only for connecting to sites that do not accept Firefox (my company's webmail and Windows Update). I don't even run AV.. I go to one of the free online scanners every 6 months or so.
It's actually quite simple to keep a Windows box secure, despite what you read here every day.
You realize the 'joke' is an exaggeration used to point out how long it takes to install/update Gentoo, compared to binary distributions and Windows/MacOS. You verify this fact yourself: I installed gentoo on my p3 900 laptop in 2 days.
I'd say most people that are smart enough to use various p2p systems in the first place are probably going to go for an open and free network instead of some proprietary bullshit from some dot-com, and avoid all these ads entirely.
I'd say that people will use whatever works, regardless of advertising. I say this based on personal preference, and past history of consumer reaction to advertising. I really don't know what it is about ads that bothers some of you people so much, but most of us really aren't bothered by them. I don't even notice the ads on the top and side of slashdot, or CNN, or anything else. As long as it isn't popping up (or floating above like the newer ads), I could care less, and in fact, I encourage it, because I do not want to see more sites and services go to a subscription model.
Given the choice between non-obstrusive ads and subscribing, I'll take ads any day. When the ads begin to overtake the content, that's when I move elsewhere.
My software (AVG) is usually a day ahead of any of the major news organizations on having the fix for any new virus out there.
That's because it's the AV companies putting out the press releases about these viruses. It takes the news organizations a day to rework the press release into a 'news item'.
The chance of a fire, though low with low-powered LEDs, can be devastating in these highly crowded buildings.
You need your fire protection code updated, then. New Jersey State Law made sprinklers mandatory in dormitories after a deadly fire at Seton Hall 7 years ago.
Even so, these dorms tend to be concrete block structures and fire does not spread easily, unless there are carpets, furniture, etc., that fuel the fire.
The media did not cover some issues that were damaging to Bush, while it continued to focus on "Swift Boat Vets", polls, and an unclear, but accurate statement by John Kerry: "I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it." Why isn't there anything in the media about how the Republicans excluded Democrats from conference on the Medicare bill (among others)? Why don't we hear about bills not being read before they are voted on? Why don't we hear about how Bush's White House deliberately lied to Congress about the cost of the Medicare bill? Don't you feel that the Executive lying to Congress is a very serious matter? Doesn't this cast a negative light on every other estimate that comes out of the Bush White House? Why was there so little coverage of how we botched the job in Afghanistan? Bush talked on and on about his tax cut, completely unchallenged by the media. Why didn't the media challenge Bush's assertion that he is fiscally sane or compassionate? The man is on the record as laughing at someone he executed as Governor. Speaking of which, why didn't the media ask how Bush be a good Christian while some things he supports go directly against Christian values? A lot of stink was made about Kerry's abortion views vis-a-vis the Catholic Church. But why didn't they talk about how the Pope opposed the war? Or how there are many Christians that oppose Bush? Bush used this argument several times: There's no point in raising taxes on the rich because the rich have accountants and lawyers and will use loopholes. Why didn't the media ask Bush this: "As President, you could close those loopholes. Why haven't you?"
I could go on, but no one really cares. My point is that the media simply did not ask Bush the questions they should have. That in itself was a distortion.
FYI, I dont have sigs on, so your comment was completely out of the blue for me. Here's how it appeared to me:
and now you'd like to do the thinking for other people, using the media as your proxy.
How wonderfully...something. I was going to say "liberal"
So, to me, you were saying "It is a liberal goal to try to control the media to influence people's thoughts." What I said was that not only was it not liberal by any definition, but that everybody does this.
Can you imagine an episode of Friends or Boston Public or 60 minutes concluding that abortion is wrong, or that environmental regulations are too strict?
Why did you lump together a sitcom, drama, and news magazine? Apples meet oranges meet lemons. Last time I checked, shows like Friends and Boston Public rarely conclude anything. They tell a fictional story. There are sometimes messages in the stories, and sometimes these messages cover social issues, such as the kiss on Ellen or Roseanne or something, but by and large these shows are for entertainment. I cannot see how they are at all like 60 Minutes. Furthermore, 60 Minutes rarely concludes anything. While some feel that they do not always portray the facts accurately, they do not come out and state their opinions on the topics they cover. You don't watch 60 Minutes and are told that "Abortion is good" "Environment is good" and "Oil is bad".
I was going to say "liberal", but that's hardly an accurate word to use for such absurd elitism.
Last time I checked, 'liberal' would be inaccurate to describe elitism of any degree. You should invest in a dictionary that's not written by Ann Coulter.
now you'd like to do the thinking for other people, using the media as your proxy.
If you think that the scenario you outline is limited to liberals, you are seriously deluded. Everybody twists facts to support their positions. Everybody.
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I'm not sure you are in a position to judge whether or not the CEO of TiVo really deserves a salary that high.
I am. Let's assume for the worst case that he works 8,760 hours/yr. That means he is making ~$68/hr, whether he's working, sleeping, eating, fucking, or taking a shit. That's ridiculous.
Simply put, I am not a believer in large executive salaries. If TiVO wants to pay him that money, that's fine with me, but it's still absurd from my point of view, and I'll judge it from whatever position I'm in. Note that I said salary, not compensation. I'm a believer in performance-based compensation. I'm not a believer in paying a CEO millions in salary when the company they run is bleeding money and the real workers are getting laid off.
it's a small price to pay for someone whose job it is to keep a big company running smoothly.
He's obviously not doing that good a job if they have to completely shift their revenue model to advertisment-based.
$600,000 is drop in the bucket compared to their yearly revenue
True. Based on 2 million subscribers at $12.95/month, its only 0.2% of their yearly revenue. That's a conservative figure, since there are many lifetime subscribers. I would also hazard a guess that TiVO, like Microsoft and the XBox, sell the hardware at a loss.
However, my original point is that they probably haven't looked everywhere to cut costs. You don't need a big cut in one area to save money. You can make many smaller cuts and still save a lot of money. So, cutting executive salaries, along with other smaller cost cuts, such as increases in productivity and restructuring internal procedures could make up for the revenue they're looking to get from advertisments. Whether this is actually possible, I am certainly not in the position to say.
Diskwriter doesn't work for NSF.. I've tried several plugins. Maybe they updated it, but I know I've tried several times in the past and diskwriter doesn't cut it.
I swear people in California have the easiest DMV test in the whole US.
Doubt it. Based on what I've seen in movies, California's test is on the road. Now, I understand that movies are not real, but that's all the info I have for this one.
New Jersey's test is essentially a go-kart track with a spot where you can parallel park.
Most areas are not that densely populated
And that right there is the problem. People continue to move to places such as West Jersey/East Pennsylvania where densities are lower, and then they complain about the amount of traffic on the roads, lack of other options, etc.
You gotta live in your own filth.
If everyone went as fast as I wanted to, I wouldn't have to change lanes or tailgate. However, some people seem to think that they own the lane and that "Keep right except to pass" is only some sort of helpful tip. The question I usually ask these drivers is, "Don't you want to get home?"
From my experience, slow drivers are the cause of weavers (sometimes this is me), which are the main cause of what I call 'phantom traffic'.
P.S. By 'fast' I'm not talking about 200 mph. I'm talking about 10-15 mph over the limit in the left lane, pretty standard fare in most areas. In New Jersey, you generally have to be going 15+ before the police will even bother to stop you, let alone write you a ticket.
But cussing out or threatening the life of Bill Gates, though, is wiser than cussing out/threatening the life of a guy who endorsed the Patriot Act and doesn't believe in privacy or that POWs have a right to an attorney, instead inventing some made-up term "enemy combatant" to get around the Geneva Convention.
Bush just signed off on that. You think he came up with that himself? No, the architect of 'enemy combatant' is Alberto Gonzales, who has been nominated as our next Attorney General.
I'm familiar with NSFs only, so I don't know about other formats. NSFs are basically just the music code ripped from the game and run through an emulator. This code can specify that a tune play once, run several times, or loop forever.
I've had little success converting NSF to wav. The only way I know is to record your sound card's output (most cards and onboards can do this internally now). For an NSF with 15 tracks (about average, when you ignore sound effects), this would be a lot of manual effort, and obviously would have to be done in real-time. Plus, on many of the tracks, you would have to decide how long to make it, since it will loop forever. I guess you could emulate this by repeating the mp3, but most players have a prebuffering delay, which would ruin the effect.
That's funny. I pointed out only one item where they could cut cost, and you went on about how hard it is to cut cost. How hard would it be for the CEO to give up $400,000 of his pay? Quite simple, I would hope.
I understand that cutting operating costs is quite difficult. Cutting ridiculous executive compensation seems like it should be a walk in the park, by comparison, no?
I understand that since you pay 12.95 a month you should get it ad-free. But why not make the same request to cable television? I'm paying $33/month for cable TV, should I have the same expectation that Comedy Central is ad-free?
No, you don't understand. It's completely different.
If you were a new customer to cable, you would expect commercials on most channels. It would have been no surprise if you had done just a cursory amount of research on the service you were signing up for.
If you saw TiVO at a friend's house and signed up for it, you would not have the expectation of any banner ads whatsoever, no matter how much research you did on the service (rumors aside). All of the sudden, you will now be getting ads.
Bait and switch.
Making that assumption, they are faced with a choice between increasing what they charge customers or finding some OTHER way of increasing revenue.
There are 2 sides to the equation. They could reduce cost. They've tried, for sure, but probably not hard enough. This page indicates that TiVO's CEO makes $600,000. That's a lot of banner ads.
I disagree. Laws can be misguided, and as such, breaking the law does not automatically mean you are doing a 'bad thing'.
The answer of 'Just attend private school' to any public school problem is simply unacceptable. Millions of kids do not have the opportunity to attend private school. What you're saying to those kids is "Bend over!"
I'm also wondering why it would be nessisary to CC the police on who didn't show up in the morning.
In many areas, Truancy is a misdemeanor, and as such, is a police matter.
Although I don't really agree with the rationale, I think the general idea is that if kids aren't in school and aren't sick, then they must be out doing "bad things".
What was your age at the time of eyesight change and family history of eye problems? In my family, eyesight deteriorates in the teens, but the change levels off in adulthood. My dad hasn't had his prescription changed in many, many years. I still have mine changed every 2-3 years. Correlation != causation, etc.
Gosh I hope you're joking. Either that or you don't understand the word "likelihood". Your one counterexample does not mean that the research is no longer valid.
but of course the windows update page only lets you in if you are on a Microsoft Operating System.
Windows Update, that is windowsupdate.microsoft.com, will only work on MS operating systems using IE. However, patches and service packs are available as binary downloads through the Microsoft Support Center (or whatever they call it) from any browser, any OS. Last time I went to Windows Update, I seem to recall that there was a link to the Download Center where you could download these binaries outside of the 'Windows Update' system. Here is the Download Center.
I however fully expect to have to reinstall everything from scratch in a few months when the next gaping hole is discovered.
Then you've bought into the FUD here. I keep my Win2k box somewhat updated, but strictly firewalled with the unnecessary services turned off. I have not had to reinstall the machine since I got it almost a year ago, and my previous machine ran for years without a reinstall. The only spyware I got was because of my own stupidity when I ran something named "START.EXE" that came along with a crack.. err security patch. I easily removed the spyware with the Adaware/Spybot combo. I use IE only for connecting to sites that do not accept Firefox (my company's webmail and Windows Update). I don't even run AV.. I go to one of the free online scanners every 6 months or so.
It's actually quite simple to keep a Windows box secure, despite what you read here every day.
You realize the 'joke' is an exaggeration used to point out how long it takes to install/update Gentoo, compared to binary distributions and Windows/MacOS. You verify this fact yourself: I installed gentoo on my p3 900 laptop in 2 days.
I'd say most people that are smart enough to use various p2p systems in the first place are probably going to go for an open and free network instead of some proprietary bullshit from some dot-com, and avoid all these ads entirely.
I'd say that people will use whatever works, regardless of advertising. I say this based on personal preference, and past history of consumer reaction to advertising. I really don't know what it is about ads that bothers some of you people so much, but most of us really aren't bothered by them. I don't even notice the ads on the top and side of slashdot, or CNN, or anything else. As long as it isn't popping up (or floating above like the newer ads), I could care less, and in fact, I encourage it, because I do not want to see more sites and services go to a subscription model.
Given the choice between non-obstrusive ads and subscribing, I'll take ads any day. When the ads begin to overtake the content, that's when I move elsewhere.
My software (AVG) is usually a day ahead of any of the major news organizations on having the fix for any new virus out there.
That's because it's the AV companies putting out the press releases about these viruses. It takes the news organizations a day to rework the press release into a 'news item'.
The chance of a fire, though low with low-powered LEDs, can be devastating in these highly crowded buildings.
You need your fire protection code updated, then. New Jersey State Law made sprinklers mandatory in dormitories after a deadly fire at Seton Hall 7 years ago.
Even so, these dorms tend to be concrete block structures and fire does not spread easily, unless there are carpets, furniture, etc., that fuel the fire.
The media did not cover some issues that were damaging to Bush, while it continued to focus on "Swift Boat Vets", polls, and an unclear, but accurate statement by John Kerry: "I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it." Why isn't there anything in the media about how the Republicans excluded Democrats from conference on the Medicare bill (among others)? Why don't we hear about bills not being read before they are voted on? Why don't we hear about how Bush's White House deliberately lied to Congress about the cost of the Medicare bill? Don't you feel that the Executive lying to Congress is a very serious matter? Doesn't this cast a negative light on every other estimate that comes out of the Bush White House? Why was there so little coverage of how we botched the job in Afghanistan? Bush talked on and on about his tax cut, completely unchallenged by the media. Why didn't the media challenge Bush's assertion that he is fiscally sane or compassionate? The man is on the record as laughing at someone he executed as Governor. Speaking of which, why didn't the media ask how Bush be a good Christian while some things he supports go directly against Christian values? A lot of stink was made about Kerry's abortion views vis-a-vis the Catholic Church. But why didn't they talk about how the Pope opposed the war? Or how there are many Christians that oppose Bush? Bush used this argument several times: There's no point in raising taxes on the rich because the rich have accountants and lawyers and will use loopholes. Why didn't the media ask Bush this: "As President, you could close those loopholes. Why haven't you?"
I could go on, but no one really cares. My point is that the media simply did not ask Bush the questions they should have. That in itself was a distortion.
FYI, I dont have sigs on, so your comment was completely out of the blue for me. Here's how it appeared to me:
and now you'd like to do the thinking for other people, using the media as your proxy. How wonderfully...something. I was going to say "liberal"
So, to me, you were saying "It is a liberal goal to try to control the media to influence people's thoughts." What I said was that not only was it not liberal by any definition, but that everybody does this.
Can you imagine an episode of Friends or Boston Public or 60 minutes concluding that abortion is wrong, or that environmental regulations are too strict?
Why did you lump together a sitcom, drama, and news magazine? Apples meet oranges meet lemons. Last time I checked, shows like Friends and Boston Public rarely conclude anything. They tell a fictional story. There are sometimes messages in the stories, and sometimes these messages cover social issues, such as the kiss on Ellen or Roseanne or something, but by and large these shows are for entertainment. I cannot see how they are at all like 60 Minutes. Furthermore, 60 Minutes rarely concludes anything. While some feel that they do not always portray the facts accurately, they do not come out and state their opinions on the topics they cover. You don't watch 60 Minutes and are told that "Abortion is good" "Environment is good" and "Oil is bad".
That list would be much more credible if it included even ONE thing that the media distorted in Bush's favor.
If you're just going to respond with something like "everything was distorted for Kerry", don't waste the cycles.
I was going to say "liberal", but that's hardly an accurate word to use for such absurd elitism.
Last time I checked, 'liberal' would be inaccurate to describe elitism of any degree. You should invest in a dictionary that's not written by Ann Coulter.
now you'd like to do the thinking for other people, using the media as your proxy.
If you think that the scenario you outline is limited to liberals, you are seriously deluded. Everybody twists facts to support their positions. Everybody.