Groening should have forseen this and approached a niche channel for it, Discovery Channel or Comedy Central. Definitely not Fox.
Actually, I would have to applaud Fox for even taking a chance on a series like this. The "major" networks are probably the only ones with deep enough pockets to afford a fully-animated weekly series like Futurama.
There were plenty of geek humor in Futurama, like Bender's CPU being a 6502, church of Robotology: 10 SIN, 20 GOTO HELL, and so on.
A couple more good geek jokes:
Prof. Farnsworth: "Dark Matter... each pound of which weighs 10,000 pounds."
In the convenience store booze aisle: a box of Klein beer, served in Klein bottles.
Walking thru the health gym, past various workout machines including a woman (shown from waist-up) on the Kegelizer.
I hope Kodak increased the picture quality. The previous models I had quality was bad. It was like painting for some pictures...
Really? That's a shame because I always thought the Kodak cameras took great pictures with good color accuracy.
I have a DC240, wonderful and simple to use from the 1.1Megapixel days. It suffered a break in the "battery-tray" retension mechanism (darn plastic instead of metal), making it pretty much un-usable, but otherwise a lovely camera. I also had a CX3700 which I thought took wonderful , sharp photos, but my wife could never get anything in focus and subsequently smashed it into a billion pieces (she claims it was an accident).
I just got my mother a C300 because it is cheap and dirt-simple to operate. Takes nice photos (seems a little pink, but it may be her printer). Plus the C300 can take regular AA batteries, since Mom will never remember to charge this thing.
I'm sorry you have had bad luck with your Kodak. I've normally been impressed with their offerings.
I'm not spending $$ on and carrying around AA's. I thought we got over that nonsense with the original GBA.
AA batteries have the distinction of being available at just about any airport, train station, and drug-store anywhere. In general you don't need to "carry around" the batteries if you don't want.
In contrast, dedicated Lithium cells requiring a special charger and a wall outlet is definitely a drawback when your game runs out of juice.
P.S. I still much prefer the original gameboy advance design because of the easily replaced standard 'AA' size batteries. I'd have bought the GBA-SP, but the lack of standard batteries and lack of standard headphone port precludes me from getting one.
today's cellular carriers will be tomorrow's next-generation broadband providers
No they won't. With the greed and unwillingness to give customers what they really want the cell carriers shown already that they'll overprice, meter, and "extra-cost" everything. No thanks.
If anything, this policy is a continuation of a standing policy for all consoles, and they probably deal with far more disk-eating PS2s than disk-eating 360s, simply because of the installed base.
Yeah, but the fact that they'll clear your 360 request queue and the fact that the machine has only been out 2 months makes this a big deal. Already there are folks reporting various levels of both abuse and non-abuse noticing the circular gouges on their game discs. Microsoft is of course tight-lipped about the actual level of problem, but has directed retailers to replace scratched discs.
There's enough prattle and din about this issue that something is certainly wrong with the design of this machine.
It comes down to how "constitutional" the use tax really is. Already in Michigan we've got the smokers suing the state trying to collect extra taxes on tobacco bought out-of-state, due to the empty state coffers they are trying anything and everything to grab revenue. Should be interesting to find out how these lawsuits work out, especially now that they want to automate the "use tax" collection with other states.
Yes, we *could* keep M and AO video games out of the hands of minors, at the request of the government. But think about that for a moment. Government would then be deciding what's best for our children, rather than parents.
Its even more basic than that, and the basis of the overwhelming continual defeat of these types of laws. Keeping M and AO videogames out of the hands of minors gives censorship and governmental powers to a private industry group (The ERSB) which provides these ratings to begin with.
As a citizen of a state which tried to pass one of these horrendous laws (Michigan) I'm appalled that they keep coming up. The fact that Indiana has already gone through this seems to fit the definition of insanity (trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different result), and a number of legislators IMHO should be removed from office due to imcompetence.
Having worked at a small ISP and now working at a large medical company, its like night and day. The attitude is much different too, at the ISP we would skimp on the quality of things and sometimes try to save money here and there. At the larger company, we only buy high quality stuff.
In other words, the smaller company is concerned with costs and your "medical" company doesn't bother... which helps drive up healthcare costs to current astronomical levels for me and everyone else.
I failed to articulate my points, so I suppose I deserve the vitriol.
Taking money from customers - what will we think of next?
As your greed becomes so obvious, don't be surprised when your victims (or sorry, ex-customers) dump you like old laundry.
Everything about the 'new' live is designed for extra-cost after the initial purchase. Marketplace is set up to push extra-cost content at people (I'm sure you brilliant folks at MS would use a term like "Value Added"). Things which should be free cost ridiculous amounts, like the "Skins".
Why is it that you can't remove creditcard information once it is entered? How long until missing levels from $60 games start showing up as purchasable content? Extra cars or characters for extra-cost purchase to complete otherwise unattainable portions of a game? I'm sure someone like you will call it a "Good Idea", where the folks who have already dropped $60 on a title will feel fleeced. Sorry, I'm not biting.
Uh....NET isn't a web service. If you're going to slam our stuff, you could at least get your story straight.
As if you guys at Microsoft could explain.NET to begin with.
.NET (aside from a unification API) is a platform to move applications "online", and guess who wants to be the tollbooth in the middle? Oh yeah, Microsoft! The console Live service is obviously a big market test towards that end.
First off, that "10% or so of original Xbox players" is impressive. It's easy to say that it was "only" a tenth of the potential, but how many people own original Xbox systems? 10% of *that* number isn't too shabby (you *did* read the article, right?).
The article stated you Microsoft guys want 50% of 360 customers on Live. Yes, I'm afraid it is ridiculous, especially when you are moving to the cell-phone model of charging extra for everything.
Seriously, yo - a lot of good people put a lot of work into the Xbox, the 360, and Xbox Live. There's nothing wrong with slamming a technology, or a company, or whatever, but you could at least do so from an informed point of view.
I'm hardly slamming the machine itself. But the greedy, extra-charge everything on Live coupled with your company's insane idea that 50% of owners will go online makes it seem you are driking too much of the Kool-Aid.
I've said before, I'm concerned about Microsoft's huge push into "online" with the new 360 console. Its way too soon, and they seem to be trying to tie everything about Xbox into the "Live" service. If it isn't already obvious, this is Microsoft's attempted way of extracting monthly revenue out of their customers. You can see it in the way they are now re-attempting to push web services like Office Live and.NET.
Microsoft wants that monthly charge, from everybody. But they are pushing way too hard with this generation of console, especially since they never garnered more than 10% or so of original Xbox players. We should rename Live to MS Wallet, or more specifically MS Hand In Your Wallet.
Yeah, I knew when I posted that that it would be food for the trolls, to come out from under their bridges. It was just supposed to be a setup for a Funny, but I guess I was too late to posting.
The fact is, most people grouse about their boss at sometime or other. I'd be more worried about a boss who tries too hard to be buddy-buddies with their hires.
My wife runs her own firm, and even though all her employees like her and enjoy working with her, there have been fly-on the-wall times where they bitch about a policy or some goings on at the office. You get all kinds of feedback -- whether you want it or not -- when your own mother is the main receptionist. Of course, being a mother, I'm sure she has very protectionist feelings about her daughter and her workplace. My wife understands that people will bitch behind your back some of the time, it is just natural. Usually it is compliance regulations, liabilities, or somesuch, which people often find intrusive into the way they perform their jobs or the way bonuses/health insurance/taxes need to be handled.
Having been the boss at places before, it is already hard enough because the staff has a natural tendency to hate their supervisors. Now even the computers can hate me, too.
The worst part of reading a pulp newspaper is navigating the various pages to read the articles. Editors love to post "hunks" of articles across various pages, for various reasons. Some, to free up space on the Front Page, but most of the time it seems simply to force you to skim ads as you search for the next 4-inches of article text. And of course the text is smashed up into small columns already so as to fit around the ads in the paper. Personally, I hate trying to read the 'paper'.
So now we have online news. Well, again many times it is hard to read and navigate because the text is often smashed into thin columns and forced around ads (often obnoxious, animated ads). Most online articles worth reading are broken into multiple "pages" which need to be clicked through, and entirely unneccessary most of the time, except to create more opportunity for ads. Online "papers" seem to be designed by similar people whom design the print versions, with the same headaches for readers.
A side note, and personal peeve. Online, you see a lot more press releases passed around as actual news items.
Great post. I've never seen such a succinct and accurate post about the 'new Microsoft', which is mostly like the old Microsoft (pervasive everywhere, but now incorporating "online").
Every few years there is enough sea change in computing and technology that Microsoft has to put on a "nice face", and that is much of what this list is about. It is simply the Embrace part of a new Microsoft cycle of embrace- extend- extinguish. RSS is just buzzword du jour which as the dominant name in computing they feel they must have a part in whilst they figure out a way to charge money for it. Similarly, their "open document" push is more of a way to compete with ODF without actually supporting ODF (publishing a tagging scheme while hiding the operation of certain tags still means its proprietary).
Several of the items at the end of the article tie into Live services. With moderate success in Xbox Live, MS is trying to push Office and.NET into such pay per use online services. Soon we will need a "tollbooth" Slashdot icon for Microsoft articles.
Tollbooth in the middle of all web-services, indeed.
Early CD systems were extremely expensive, too. What killed DAT, aside from the delays, was the onerous copy-prevention systems which locked out owners (mostly garage bands) from their own works. It totally killed the idea of DAT mixing workstations. Not much point to perfect digital archives on digital tape if it can't be replicated.
G4 was a terrible channel that tried to be MTV without first establishing credibility.
Actually, what they did was try to buy their way into credibility by purchasing the suffering but somewhat respected TechTV channel (and studio), which was already picked up by many cable and satellite providers. But then they gutted everything but Xplay, so they lost everything they had bought into. Including the (much larger) TechTV audience.
will just drive software and hardware development out of the US
I'm surprised that the number of times I've seen this type of phrase bandied about, that nobody seems to respond with the obvious reason:
Hardware is already made in foreign (to the U.S. anyway) countries.
Movies are made domestically (whether actually true or not, its the mainstream belief).
Therefore, I am never surprised to see draconian measures enacted to protect domestic content producers at the expense of foreign electronics makers.
Even more nefarious when you realize that a lot of "content" is being filmed overseas, but they still want heavy local protectionism after they "import" their work back here.
Heh. Yeah, I only got an Xbox after they were $150 and I spent a lot of time rationalizing that it was OK to buy a Microsoft thing. I eventually came up with the dissembling cognitive dissonance-resolver that I'd be happy if Microsoft were to take off as a games company and give up on Windows and all that other stuff that I find so threatening.
You can rationalize it like I did: Microsoft is subsidizing your Xbox purchase. It is still taken as common knowledge that MS is losing money on each console unit, so they've effectively help pay for you to have the 'box. Then what you do is only buy used titles for it, so they never make it back the licensing fees.
Oh yeah, and a softmod with XBMC and a SNES emulator make it teh R0x0r!
Gmail is still the only one of the three to still offer free POP3 support. I can use my own favorite client (currently Thunderbird) with gMail. For free.
What's even worse is that the ESRB, whom really has been handling themselves quite well during all this crap IMHO, the ESRB already sent a letter to Billary telling her "Thanks" but No Thanks because it has already been proven in state courts across the coutry to be unconstitutional.
The games industry does not really need to self-regulate any more than it has, because the ESRB has already been doing a pretty decent job of it.
I remember reading about this story somewhere, maybe Wired magazine or something. The basic problem is that the guy was an ex-con essentially running an honest business and trying to make good for a couple years, and gained a good reputation. Then turned back to the dark side and got greedy. He was willing to sink his seller account to score some big bucks and skip town.
There is really nothing in the eBay system to prevent this, and even today there is still nothing to prevent it. The fact that eBay continues to drag their feet in these issues is really bothersome., especially since they keep raising the listing fees (and the paypal fees as well, since they own paypal).
I like eBay for small things, nothing too expensive. But I also make sure to only deal with folks with a 99.8% rating or above. You'd be surprised how many scammers work with still a 90%++ rating, so as a purchaser you really have to raise the bar for whom you are willing to deal with. Like others have said, I'd really love to see Google create a viable competitor to eBay.
You geeks know nothing about business.Its called an investment.
Riiiiiight!
Just like in the late 90s how all those internet businesses lost money on every sale... but they'd be sure to make it back on volume. Because it was an investment!
I was just reading a blurb in Game Informer magazine, about some 'patented' process Sony is working on with PS3 to undercut the used game market. Something to do with tying your game disc to your specific console. This and the reported Blu-Ray DRM which can disable your machine makes the Sony rootkit fiasco look tame by comparison.
Microsoft has been moving full steam ahead with Xbox Live, offering downloads for sale right into your 360's hard drive. I think it is both interesting and embarassing for MS that one of the most engaging Xbox 360 titles is a $5 download called Geometry Wars. But again, this is about locking in your customers, so you can nickel and dime them to death. I find it ironic that Microsoft touts media freedom with the 360, but you need a pricey MCE2005 PC setup to use it and it still doesn't support xvid nor divx MP4 videos.
If this is what they are offering customers this time around, I'm much more interested in seeing what Nintendo has to offer.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I would have to applaud Fox for even taking a chance on a series like this. The "major" networks are probably the only ones with deep enough pockets to afford a fully-animated weekly series like Futurama.
A couple more good geek jokes:
Yes, we will know when the PS2 has reached its technical pinnacle when we have...
Photorealistic cartoons?!?
Really? That's a shame because I always thought the Kodak cameras took great pictures with good color accuracy.
I have a DC240, wonderful and simple to use from the 1.1Megapixel days. It suffered a break in the "battery-tray" retension mechanism (darn plastic instead of metal), making it pretty much un-usable, but otherwise a lovely camera. I also had a CX3700 which I thought took wonderful , sharp photos, but my wife could never get anything in focus and subsequently smashed it into a billion pieces (she claims it was an accident).
I just got my mother a C300 because it is cheap and dirt-simple to operate. Takes nice photos (seems a little pink, but it may be her printer). Plus the C300 can take regular AA batteries, since Mom will never remember to charge this thing.
I'm sorry you have had bad luck with your Kodak. I've normally been impressed with their offerings.
AA batteries have the distinction of being available at just about any airport, train station, and drug-store anywhere. In general you don't need to "carry around" the batteries if you don't want.
In contrast, dedicated Lithium cells requiring a special charger and a wall outlet is definitely a drawback when your game runs out of juice.
P.S. I still much prefer the original gameboy advance design because of the easily replaced standard 'AA' size batteries. I'd have bought the GBA-SP, but the lack of standard batteries and lack of standard headphone port precludes me from getting one.
No they won't. With the greed and unwillingness to give customers what they really want the cell carriers shown already that they'll overprice, meter, and "extra-cost" everything. No thanks.
Yeah, but the fact that they'll clear your 360 request queue and the fact that the machine has only been out 2 months makes this a big deal. Already there are folks reporting various levels of both abuse and non-abuse noticing the circular gouges on their game discs. Microsoft is of course tight-lipped about the actual level of problem, but has directed retailers to replace scratched discs.
There's enough prattle and din about this issue that something is certainly wrong with the design of this machine.
It comes down to how "constitutional" the use tax really is. Already in Michigan we've got the smokers suing the state trying to collect extra taxes on tobacco bought out-of-state, due to the empty state coffers they are trying anything and everything to grab revenue. Should be interesting to find out how these lawsuits work out, especially now that they want to automate the "use tax" collection with other states.
Its even more basic than that, and the basis of the overwhelming continual defeat of these types of laws. Keeping M and AO videogames out of the hands of minors gives censorship and governmental powers to a private industry group (The ERSB) which provides these ratings to begin with.
As a citizen of a state which tried to pass one of these horrendous laws (Michigan) I'm appalled that they keep coming up. The fact that Indiana has already gone through this seems to fit the definition of insanity (trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different result), and a number of legislators IMHO should be removed from office due to imcompetence.
In other words, the smaller company is concerned with costs and your "medical" company doesn't bother... which helps drive up healthcare costs to current astronomical levels for me and everyone else.
I failed to articulate my points, so I suppose I deserve the vitriol.
As your greed becomes so obvious, don't be surprised when your victims (or sorry, ex-customers) dump you like old laundry.
Everything about the 'new' live is designed for extra-cost after the initial purchase. Marketplace is set up to push extra-cost content at people (I'm sure you brilliant folks at MS would use a term like "Value Added"). Things which should be free cost ridiculous amounts, like the "Skins". Why is it that you can't remove creditcard information once it is entered? How long until missing levels from $60 games start showing up as purchasable content? Extra cars or characters for extra-cost purchase to complete otherwise unattainable portions of a game?
I'm sure someone like you will call it a "Good Idea", where the folks who have already dropped $60 on a title will feel fleeced. Sorry, I'm not biting.
As if you guys at Microsoft could explain .NET to begin with.
.NET (aside from a unification API) is a platform to move applications "online", and guess who wants to be the tollbooth in the middle? Oh yeah, Microsoft! The console Live service is obviously a big market test towards that end.
The article stated you Microsoft guys want 50% of 360 customers on Live. Yes, I'm afraid it is ridiculous, especially when you are moving to the cell-phone model of charging extra for everything.I'm hardly slamming the machine itself. But the greedy, extra-charge everything on Live coupled with your company's insane idea that 50% of owners will go online makes it seem you are driking too much of the Kool-Aid.
I've said before, I'm concerned about Microsoft's huge push into "online" with the new 360 console. Its way too soon, and they seem to be trying to tie everything about Xbox into the "Live" service. If it isn't already obvious, this is Microsoft's attempted way of extracting monthly revenue out of their customers. You can see it in the way they are now re-attempting to push web services like Office Live and .NET.
Microsoft wants that monthly charge, from everybody. But they are pushing way too hard with this generation of console, especially since they never garnered more than 10% or so of original Xbox players. We should rename Live to MS Wallet, or more specifically MS Hand In Your Wallet.
Yeah, I knew when I posted that that it would be food for the trolls, to come out from under their bridges. It was just supposed to be a setup for a Funny, but I guess I was too late to posting.
The fact is, most people grouse about their boss at sometime or other. I'd be more worried about a boss who tries too hard to be buddy-buddies with their hires.
My wife runs her own firm, and even though all her employees like her and enjoy working with her, there have been fly-on the-wall times where they bitch about a policy or some goings on at the office. You get all kinds of feedback -- whether you want it or not -- when your own mother is the main receptionist. Of course, being a mother, I'm sure she has very protectionist feelings about her daughter and her workplace. My wife understands that people will bitch behind your back some of the time, it is just natural. Usually it is compliance regulations, liabilities, or somesuch, which people often find intrusive into the way they perform their jobs or the way bonuses/health insurance/taxes need to be handled.
Oh, Terrific!
Having been the boss at places before, it is already hard enough because the staff has a natural tendency to hate their supervisors. Now even the computers can hate me, too.
The worst part of reading a pulp newspaper is navigating the various pages to read the articles. Editors love to post "hunks" of articles across various pages, for various reasons. Some, to free up space on the Front Page, but most of the time it seems simply to force you to skim ads as you search for the next 4-inches of article text. And of course the text is smashed up into small columns already so as to fit around the ads in the paper. Personally, I hate trying to read the 'paper'.
So now we have online news. Well, again many times it is hard to read and navigate because the text is often smashed into thin columns and forced around ads (often obnoxious, animated ads). Most online articles worth reading are broken into multiple "pages" which need to be clicked through, and entirely unneccessary most of the time, except to create more opportunity for ads. Online "papers" seem to be designed by similar people whom design the print versions, with the same headaches for readers.
A side note, and personal peeve. Online, you see a lot more press releases passed around as actual news items.
Great post. I've never seen such a succinct and accurate post about the 'new Microsoft', which is mostly like the old Microsoft (pervasive everywhere, but now incorporating "online").
Every few years there is enough sea change in computing and technology that Microsoft has to put on a "nice face", and that is much of what this list is about. It is simply the Embrace part of a new Microsoft cycle of embrace- extend- extinguish. RSS is just buzzword du jour which as the dominant name in computing they feel they must have a part in whilst they figure out a way to charge money for it. Similarly, their "open document" push is more of a way to compete with ODF without actually supporting ODF (publishing a tagging scheme while hiding the operation of certain tags still means its proprietary).
Several of the items at the end of the article tie into Live services. With moderate success in Xbox Live, MS is trying to push Office and .NET into such pay per use online services. Soon we will need a "tollbooth" Slashdot icon for Microsoft articles.
Tollbooth in the middle of all web-services, indeed.
Early CD systems were extremely expensive, too. What killed DAT, aside from the delays, was the onerous copy-prevention systems which locked out owners (mostly garage bands) from their own works. It totally killed the idea of DAT mixing workstations. Not much point to perfect digital archives on digital tape if it can't be replicated.
Actually, what they did was try to buy their way into credibility by purchasing the suffering but somewhat respected TechTV channel (and studio), which was already picked up by many cable and satellite providers. But then they gutted everything but Xplay, so they lost everything they had bought into. Including the (much larger) TechTV audience.
If you're talking about a hero who saves the day without costing/spending any money, its already been done -- MacGyver!
I'm surprised that the number of times I've seen this type of phrase bandied about, that nobody seems to respond with the obvious reason:
Therefore, I am never surprised to see draconian measures enacted to protect domestic content producers at the expense of foreign electronics makers.
Even more nefarious when you realize that a lot of "content" is being filmed overseas, but they still want heavy local protectionism after they "import" their work back here.
You can rationalize it like I did: Microsoft is subsidizing your Xbox purchase. It is still taken as common knowledge that MS is losing money on each console unit, so they've effectively help pay for you to have the 'box. Then what you do is only buy used titles for it, so they never make it back the licensing fees.
Oh yeah, and a softmod with XBMC and a SNES emulator make it teh R0x0r!
Gmail is still the only one of the three to still offer free POP3 support. I can use my own favorite client (currently Thunderbird) with gMail. For free.
What's even worse is that the ESRB, whom really has been handling themselves quite well during all this crap IMHO, the ESRB already sent a letter to Billary telling her "Thanks" but No Thanks because it has already been proven in state courts across the coutry to be unconstitutional.
The games industry does not really need to self-regulate any more than it has, because the ESRB has already been doing a pretty decent job of it.
I remember reading about this story somewhere, maybe Wired magazine or something. The basic problem is that the guy was an ex-con essentially running an honest business and trying to make good for a couple years, and gained a good reputation. Then turned back to the dark side and got greedy. He was willing to sink his seller account to score some big bucks and skip town.
There is really nothing in the eBay system to prevent this, and even today there is still nothing to prevent it. The fact that eBay continues to drag their feet in these issues is really bothersome., especially since they keep raising the listing fees (and the paypal fees as well, since they own paypal).
I like eBay for small things, nothing too expensive. But I also make sure to only deal with folks with a 99.8% rating or above. You'd be surprised how many scammers work with still a 90%++ rating, so as a purchaser you really have to raise the bar for whom you are willing to deal with. Like others have said, I'd really love to see Google create a viable competitor to eBay.
Riiiiiight!
Just like in the late 90s how all those internet businesses lost money on every sale... but they'd be sure to make it back on volume.
Because it was an investment!
I was just reading a blurb in Game Informer magazine, about some 'patented' process Sony is working on with PS3 to undercut the used game market. Something to do with tying your game disc to your specific console. This and the reported Blu-Ray DRM which can disable your machine makes the Sony rootkit fiasco look tame by comparison.
Microsoft has been moving full steam ahead with Xbox Live, offering downloads for sale right into your 360's hard drive. I think it is both interesting and embarassing for MS that one of the most engaging Xbox 360 titles is a $5 download called Geometry Wars. But again, this is about locking in your customers, so you can nickel and dime them to death. I find it ironic that Microsoft touts media freedom with the 360, but you need a pricey MCE2005 PC setup to use it and it still doesn't support xvid nor divx MP4 videos.
If this is what they are offering customers this time around, I'm much more interested in seeing what Nintendo has to offer.