I was a little bit upset about it at first because I get on average around 2 DVDs every month and it meant I would have to drop down from my $10 streaming + 1 DVD plan to the $8 streaming only plan. At $8/mo it will be cheaper for me to buy outright the kind of content I was renting from them by mail. Observe:
Generic 26 Episode Anime Series
Netflix now: $6 extra to watch and return 1 DVD at a time over 3 months
Netflix soon: $24 extra to watch and return 1 DVD at a time over 3 months
Amazon.com: $26 to get 6 DVDs at once and keep them forever
Stated more directly:
400% of what I pay now to continue the same service
433% of what I pay now to skip all the queuing & shipping bullshit and own the content myself, permanently
The latte comment is both ignorant and arrogant and will absolutely exacerbate the already evident outrage. I am now wary about patronizing a company that has decided to mock me for being a tightwad rather than legitimately addressing the above-illustrated economic problem they have created for themselves.
Typical geek blither-blather. "I don't like it therefore everyone who does is an idiot who's being duped." Here on/. I've seen this argument used against: Apple, craft beer, very spicy chiles, tablets in general, 3d film and TV, hybrid cars, wind power, solar power, drug laws, Democrats, Republicans and organized sports.
Just accept that people like different things and move on. I realize this is a strain to the borderline Asbergers types who are rife around here, but come on. Sometimes there isn't a "right answer" for everyone.
I responded the same way ito the OP. There is far too much of this type of thinking in any crowd. I wouldn't limit it to us geeks.
I do agree with him, though, and I can make a parallel to the games industry that many of us here will understand: quality is about more than just eye-candy. Once you get past a certain level of optical titillation; tone, plot, and character development, like gameplay and control, become more important than increasing the eye-candy. It isn't that the eye-candy is bad, rather that eye-candy can never rescue a film from lack of attention to these other things. It's the reason I will never pay to see a film directed by Michael Bay and the reason I cringe every time I see a flashy new game advertising its terrible framerate by displaying in-game footage on national TV.
I am willing to take it a step further than the OP: I posit that the commercial success of 3D will not last. I will admit I base this conclusion on my own viewpoint: seeing a movie in 3D only means seeing a movie with a needlessly inflated price tag. Like buying an HDTV or upgrading my movie collection to Blu-Ray, the increase in quality is just not enough to significantly impact my viewing experience. And I think there are more of us than there are of them.
I had assumed this was why they changed their name from "Sci Fi" to "Syfy" a few years ago. Based on the programming they were airing back then, it was apparent to me that they didn't feel their science fiction platform was sustainable.
This same phenomenon has occurred with a sizable percentage of cable stations over the course of the last decade or so. Turns out, in the world of TV , niche marketing is a less viable strategy than had been originally thought.
Remeber when MTV abandoned the music-only format and found success aiming for the lowest common denominator? Other stations have followed, moving farther and farther from their niche roots and closer and closer to the mainstream. Anyone remember old school Discovery channel--shows about science and nature? Now they have Mythbusters and American Chopper. These stations are only doing what they feel is necessary to compete with the broadcast networks for advertising dollars.
This exercise is a waste. We could do a similar exercise with sectors of the lawn your dog chose to piss in and the results would be just as random and useless.
Sometimes I wonder how this stuff makes it onto the main page.
What if the carriers decide to limit upgrading their infrastructure in order to create competition for bandwidth on their network, thereby lowering the cost of upgrading the network and creating additional revenue by charging a shitload for access to the (relatively) limited bandwidth? Is that situation equitable to you? It certainly isn't efficient economically. What's even better: our "representatives" in Washington are helping them to set it up! This is the very definition of fascism. We now have rampant collusion and corruption, destroying the free marketplace and tilting it to the advantage of the gatekeepers.
AT&T is playing this like a drug dealer: selling cocaine to the clueless for pennies, then cutting production and quadrupling the price. Our society can no longer function without the tubes that they own, so they can charge whatever they want.
We are Fucked with a capital F into the forseeable future unless we step up and take the government back from the corporations. I read an article yesterday about how "brainwashed" the North Korean populace was to believe their Beloved Father was such a hero. The average American or European is no less brainwashed.
Fiscally irresponsible legislation is a bad thing without regard to who is promoting and who is detracting it.
The republicans got "dinged" when they were irresponsible earlier in the decade, and the democrats are getting "dinged" now over bailouts and healthcare. It was rightfully so in all cases.
I have to disable PhysX in the nVidia control panel to get HL2 or any of the Source engine games to run properly! I had no idea what was causing these games to crash. After disabling PhysX they work right every time!
Apparently it doesn't do anything crucial or even noticable as my games run just fine with it turned off. And now I'm told the game devs don't even want to use it?
Saxerman raises a compelling question:
Who has the authority to decide which is the correct way to play the game?
He also hints at what I believe to be the only sensible answer:
This authority can lie only with the player, because he possesses sole governance over his actions.
The only limits to the player's behavior are thus:
How will others impede him?
What level of impediment is he willing to tolerate?
This is as true in online gaming as it is throughout all of society.
Bernie's sons (and the rest of his family, including his son-in-law, who works for the SEC) were in on the scheme. No one can fabricate so many thousands of trades alone, and anyone with half a brain and a basic knowledge of securities knows that an investment touting 15% annual return year over year for more that a decade is more than fishy--it's unbelievable. No other conclusion makes sense. His sons knew. His wife knew. His whole damn family knew. His investors (obviously the insiders, but also smart outsiders) had to have known.
Bernie's sons only "ratted him out" because the scheme had become insolvent. The economy was teetering on collapse and investors everywhere were moving their money out of risky investments, and this included Madoff's. When it became obvious that the fund wouldn't be able to pay out, they knew an explanation would be required. And so they offered one.
Notice Bernie took total blame for the crimes, claiming against all logic that he had single-handedly constructed and operated the scheme. According to him, none of his family members and none of his investors knew anything about it. He alone knew. Bullshit. This is such an obvious lie that Madoff, facing life imprisonment, must have had very heavy motivation for keeping his mouth shut.
[tinfoil hat]
So who was hanging what over Bernie Madoff's head? Someone big and important must have been involved for this scheme to have been ignored for so long. Harry Markopolos sent a twenty page report to the SEC in 2005 detailing the fraud he knew to be taking place in Madoff's fund. Yet it was ignored. Why? Who shielded Madoff from the government? Who was in on the scheme? How much interest did these individuals have in it? What other grand frauds are being perpetrated on the populace, and how much interest do they have in those?
Wall Street and Washington have been in bed for a long time. When will we finally put the corruption to an end?
[/tinfoil hat]
There's nothing like a simple diagram made completely unreadable by needless flashiness. Fancy graphics shouldn't be more important than the subject matter at hand. Too many web page and game designers just don't get this.
Even so, marquee text became practically obsolete on the web in about 1997. Why would one ever dream of implementing the marquee chart?
It is a very interesting project, actually. It only took 19 generations to produce a fox with behavioral traits roughly approximating those of a common domestic dog.
What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Nothing. Chimneys can't talk.
This is not a bad joke. It is funny not because it is bad, but because the performer has exploited the audience's expectation that they are going to hear a joking response involving a conversation between chimneys. Instead, they hear a response that mocks them for buying into the ridiculous premise of the opener.
A good deal of any joke's impact is in how it is delivered. This joke is no different. The key here is this: delivering the punchline with a heavy air of incredulity that the audience would take the prospect of conversing chimneys remotely seriously, even in the context of a joke. Add to that a hint of disdain at their gullibility, and it really is funny.
Blizz did give WOW a Warcraft theme and story, but the gameplay is identical to that of Diablo, and it was released chronologically right where you would expect Diablo III to be.
Diablo III, therefore, is actually Diablo IV. It should come as no surprise that the game will look and feel a lot like WOW, which is not only its immediate logical predecessor, but has also been a hugely successful (and profitable) game for Blizzard.
I spent several years in a university biology lab. I can't speak firsthand about a tech lab, but from my associations with others I have gathered that the following similarity holds true for nearly all university research environments:
The single largest factor determining your experience will be your professor. The specific attitudes and personalities of professors and the methods by which they run their labs varies quite a lot. The only thing you can really count on is that the prof will be the overlord. The undergrads, the grads, the post-docs, and the paid laboratory employees all have their fates tied to the whims of the prof. You may be allowed time to work on your own projects, but you can expect to spend most of your time working on HIS projects.
Some advice from the voice of experience:
Make certain before you begin that you truly like the professor and are truly interested in his specific area of research. Otherwise you will be in for a long, miserable, and possibly fruitless semester. If you have problems with either your prof or the research that you think may remain unresolved, don't hesitate to look into other programs with other profs! I know more than one student who has unsuccessfully attempted to tough through a program that didn't suit him. One wasted semester is better than four or five wasted semesters.
WTF are you talking about? Are you implying that a vote for Bush makes a voter responsible for all the stupid shit that Bush did once he won the office? Bush is a lying bastard, and most of these politicians are. You can't hold voters responsible for that. Bush said ABC in his campaign and did XYZ as soon as he was in power. Predictable, perhaps, but the fault lies with Bush and his cronies, not with voters.
You want people to be more responsible? How about voting for someone who ISN'T A LYING BASTARD! Someone who, while you may not agree with his platform exactly, you believe will do his best to bring HONESTY to the process! Someone who WON'T SELL THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION OUT to his business partners! Sounds a hell of a lot better than voting for someone who will only continue the cycle of lies and corruption.
Paul understands economics better than any of the other candidates, in my estimation. While I'm sure Romney knows all about microeconomics and running a business, the debates have not shown that he knows anything of economics on a national or global scale.
Paul does not look at business in the way you describe either. He detests taxes that redistribute wealth to anybody - be it the lobbyists that are in bed with congress or through nanny programs that sustain a welfare state. He believes that free markets are the best thing for technology. While it's nice to think that the government spends money on research, you have to remember a few things: a) they have to get that money from somewhere (taxes) and b) by subsidizing technological research, unsubsidized programs suffer. As you mention, the government is likely to favor subsidies for politically-connected unproductive folks, so Paul would say: don't subsidize it at all.
What makes DTD so appealing, to me, is that it reverts to a pure, gameplay-oriented style.
DTD has laughable graphics. The sound is limited to 5 or 6 cheap effects. The story is nonexistent. The important thing here, however, is that the game is playable for hours on end despite all of this.
Glitz just doesn't do it for me. At the end of the day, when I sit down to play a game, I've come to play a game. I can't count the number of times I've been desperately wooed with dazzling graphics and immersive storylines that concealed such terrible control and gameplay elements that I had to leave them behind in frustration and disgust. If there's a bad game hidden underneath all of your fancy BS, I'll find out, and I won't want to play anymore.
I applaud DTD for its simplicity and elegance, and I applaud Sullentrop for unabashedly pointing out that it succeeds marvelously in an area where many large-budget games fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen.
I was a little bit upset about it at first because I get on average around 2 DVDs every month and it meant I would have to drop down from my $10 streaming + 1 DVD plan to the $8 streaming only plan. At $8/mo it will be cheaper for me to buy outright the kind of content I was renting from them by mail. Observe:
Generic 26 Episode Anime Series
Netflix now: $6 extra to watch and return 1 DVD at a time over 3 months
Netflix soon: $24 extra to watch and return 1 DVD at a time over 3 months
Amazon.com: $26 to get 6 DVDs at once and keep them forever
Stated more directly:
400% of what I pay now to continue the same service
433% of what I pay now to skip all the queuing & shipping bullshit and own the content myself, permanently
The latte comment is both ignorant and arrogant and will absolutely exacerbate the already evident outrage. I am now wary about patronizing a company that has decided to mock me for being a tightwad rather than legitimately addressing the above-illustrated economic problem they have created for themselves.
Typical geek blither-blather. "I don't like it therefore everyone who does is an idiot who's being duped." Here on /. I've seen this argument used against: Apple, craft beer, very spicy chiles, tablets in general, 3d film and TV, hybrid cars, wind power, solar power, drug laws, Democrats, Republicans and organized sports.
Just accept that people like different things and move on. I realize this is a strain to the borderline Asbergers types who are rife around here, but come on. Sometimes there isn't a "right answer" for everyone.
I responded the same way ito the OP. There is far too much of this type of thinking in any crowd. I wouldn't limit it to us geeks.
I do agree with him, though, and I can make a parallel to the games industry that many of us here will understand: quality is about more than just eye-candy. Once you get past a certain level of optical titillation; tone, plot, and character development, like gameplay and control, become more important than increasing the eye-candy. It isn't that the eye-candy is bad, rather that eye-candy can never rescue a film from lack of attention to these other things. It's the reason I will never pay to see a film directed by Michael Bay and the reason I cringe every time I see a flashy new game advertising its terrible framerate by displaying in-game footage on national TV.
I am willing to take it a step further than the OP: I posit that the commercial success of 3D will not last. I will admit I base this conclusion on my own viewpoint: seeing a movie in 3D only means seeing a movie with a needlessly inflated price tag. Like buying an HDTV or upgrading my movie collection to Blu-Ray, the increase in quality is just not enough to significantly impact my viewing experience. And I think there are more of us than there are of them.
I say we take it one step further and kill all humans. Cleaner and simpler.
I had assumed this was why they changed their name from "Sci Fi" to "Syfy" a few years ago. Based on the programming they were airing back then, it was apparent to me that they didn't feel their science fiction platform was sustainable.
This same phenomenon has occurred with a sizable percentage of cable stations over the course of the last decade or so. Turns out, in the world of TV , niche marketing is a less viable strategy than had been originally thought.
Remeber when MTV abandoned the music-only format and found success aiming for the lowest common denominator? Other stations have followed, moving farther and farther from their niche roots and closer and closer to the mainstream. Anyone remember old school Discovery channel--shows about science and nature? Now they have Mythbusters and American Chopper. These stations are only doing what they feel is necessary to compete with the broadcast networks for advertising dollars.
This exercise is a waste. We could do a similar exercise with sectors of the lawn your dog chose to piss in and the results would be just as random and useless.
Sometimes I wonder how this stuff makes it onto the main page.
What if the carriers decide to limit upgrading their infrastructure in order to create competition for bandwidth on their network, thereby lowering the cost of upgrading the network and creating additional revenue by charging a shitload for access to the (relatively) limited bandwidth? Is that situation equitable to you? It certainly isn't efficient economically. What's even better: our "representatives" in Washington are helping them to set it up! This is the very definition of fascism. We now have rampant collusion and corruption, destroying the free marketplace and tilting it to the advantage of the gatekeepers.
AT&T is playing this like a drug dealer: selling cocaine to the clueless for pennies, then cutting production and quadrupling the price. Our society can no longer function without the tubes that they own, so they can charge whatever they want.
We are Fucked with a capital F into the forseeable future unless we step up and take the government back from the corporations. I read an article yesterday about how "brainwashed" the North Korean populace was to believe their Beloved Father was such a hero. The average American or European is no less brainwashed.
If you don't like living in a country with a transparent government, you can always move to a place like the USA.
Alan Parsons Project! Not sure what it has to do with this thread though...
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Fiscally irresponsible legislation is a bad thing without regard to who is promoting and who is detracting it.
The republicans got "dinged" when they were irresponsible earlier in the decade, and the democrats are getting "dinged" now over bailouts and healthcare. It was rightfully so in all cases.
I have to disable PhysX in the nVidia control panel to get HL2 or any of the Source engine games to run properly! I had no idea what was causing these games to crash. After disabling PhysX they work right every time!
Apparently it doesn't do anything crucial or even noticable as my games run just fine with it turned off. And now I'm told the game devs don't even want to use it?
This "feature" has caused me nothing but grief!
Saxerman raises a compelling question:
Who has the authority to decide which is the correct way to play the game?
He also hints at what I believe to be the only sensible answer:
This authority can lie only with the player, because he possesses sole governance over his actions.
The only limits to the player's behavior are thus:
How will others impede him?
What level of impediment is he willing to tolerate?
This is as true in online gaming as it is throughout all of society.
Bernie's sons (and the rest of his family, including his son-in-law, who works for the SEC) were in on the scheme. No one can fabricate so many thousands of trades alone, and anyone with half a brain and a basic knowledge of securities knows that an investment touting 15% annual return year over year for more that a decade is more than fishy--it's unbelievable. No other conclusion makes sense. His sons knew. His wife knew. His whole damn family knew. His investors (obviously the insiders, but also smart outsiders) had to have known.
Bernie's sons only "ratted him out" because the scheme had become insolvent. The economy was teetering on collapse and investors everywhere were moving their money out of risky investments, and this included Madoff's. When it became obvious that the fund wouldn't be able to pay out, they knew an explanation would be required. And so they offered one.
Notice Bernie took total blame for the crimes, claiming against all logic that he had single-handedly constructed and operated the scheme. According to him, none of his family members and none of his investors knew anything about it. He alone knew. Bullshit. This is such an obvious lie that Madoff, facing life imprisonment, must have had very heavy motivation for keeping his mouth shut.
[tinfoil hat]
So who was hanging what over Bernie Madoff's head? Someone big and important must have been involved for this scheme to have been ignored for so long. Harry Markopolos sent a twenty page report to the SEC in 2005 detailing the fraud he knew to be taking place in Madoff's fund. Yet it was ignored. Why? Who shielded Madoff from the government? Who was in on the scheme? How much interest did these individuals have in it? What other grand frauds are being perpetrated on the populace, and how much interest do they have in those?
Wall Street and Washington have been in bed for a long time. When will we finally put the corruption to an end?
[/tinfoil hat]
There's nothing like a simple diagram made completely unreadable by needless flashiness. Fancy graphics shouldn't be more important than the subject matter at hand. Too many web page and game designers just don't get this.
Even so, marquee text became practically obsolete on the web in about 1997. Why would one ever dream of implementing the marquee chart?
Actually, there's a Russian dude that's been domesticating foxes for half a century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox
It is a very interesting project, actually. It only took 19 generations to produce a fox with behavioral traits roughly approximating those of a common domestic dog.
Oh no! It's the Exaflood! Hide in your basements or be consumed by the wave of streaming video!
This is nothing but political propaganda put forth by the "we need to censor and control the internet" lobby.
Easily one of the most popular games of the last decade, created by a pair of bored college students in their free time.
The game will feature music from every era of the Beatles' musical career.
Their revolutionary and influential material began appearing in 1965, so I'd expect to see more content from that period foreward...
A game mechanic I hope to see return: collect multiple flags for the win.
What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Nothing. Chimneys can't talk.
This is not a bad joke. It is funny not because it is bad, but because the performer has exploited the audience's expectation that they are going to hear a joking response involving a conversation between chimneys. Instead, they hear a response that mocks them for buying into the ridiculous premise of the opener.
A good deal of any joke's impact is in how it is delivered. This joke is no different. The key here is this: delivering the punchline with a heavy air of incredulity that the audience would take the prospect of conversing chimneys remotely seriously, even in the context of a joke. Add to that a hint of disdain at their gullibility, and it really is funny.
World of Warcraft pretty much is Diablo III.
Blizz did give WOW a Warcraft theme and story, but the gameplay is identical to that of Diablo, and it was released chronologically right where you would expect Diablo III to be.
Diablo III, therefore, is actually Diablo IV. It should come as no surprise that the game will look and feel a lot like WOW, which is not only its immediate logical predecessor, but has also been a hugely successful (and profitable) game for Blizzard.
I spent several years in a university biology lab. I can't speak firsthand about a tech lab, but from my associations with others I have gathered that the following similarity holds true for nearly all university research environments:
The single largest factor determining your experience will be your professor. The specific attitudes and personalities of professors and the methods by which they run their labs varies quite a lot. The only thing you can really count on is that the prof will be the overlord. The undergrads, the grads, the post-docs, and the paid laboratory employees all have their fates tied to the whims of the prof. You may be allowed time to work on your own projects, but you can expect to spend most of your time working on HIS projects.
Some advice from the voice of experience:
Make certain before you begin that you truly like the professor and are truly interested in his specific area of research. Otherwise you will be in for a long, miserable, and possibly fruitless semester. If you have problems with either your prof or the research that you think may remain unresolved, don't hesitate to look into other programs with other profs! I know more than one student who has unsuccessfully attempted to tough through a program that didn't suit him. One wasted semester is better than four or five wasted semesters.
WTF are you talking about? Are you implying that a vote for Bush makes a voter responsible for all the stupid shit that Bush did once he won the office? Bush is a lying bastard, and most of these politicians are. You can't hold voters responsible for that. Bush said ABC in his campaign and did XYZ as soon as he was in power. Predictable, perhaps, but the fault lies with Bush and his cronies, not with voters. You want people to be more responsible? How about voting for someone who ISN'T A LYING BASTARD! Someone who, while you may not agree with his platform exactly, you believe will do his best to bring HONESTY to the process! Someone who WON'T SELL THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION OUT to his business partners! Sounds a hell of a lot better than voting for someone who will only continue the cycle of lies and corruption.
Paul understands economics better than any of the other candidates, in my estimation. While I'm sure Romney knows all about microeconomics and running a business, the debates have not shown that he knows anything of economics on a national or global scale.
Paul does not look at business in the way you describe either. He detests taxes that redistribute wealth to anybody - be it the lobbyists that are in bed with congress or through nanny programs that sustain a welfare state. He believes that free markets are the best thing for technology. While it's nice to think that the government spends money on research, you have to remember a few things: a) they have to get that money from somewhere (taxes) and b) by subsidizing technological research, unsubsidized programs suffer. As you mention, the government is likely to favor subsidies for politically-connected unproductive folks, so Paul would say: don't subsidize it at all.
What makes DTD so appealing, to me, is that it reverts to a pure, gameplay-oriented style.
DTD has laughable graphics. The sound is limited to 5 or 6 cheap effects. The story is nonexistent. The important thing here, however, is that the game is playable for hours on end despite all of this.
Glitz just doesn't do it for me. At the end of the day, when I sit down to play a game, I've come to play a game. I can't count the number of times I've been desperately wooed with dazzling graphics and immersive storylines that concealed such terrible control and gameplay elements that I had to leave them behind in frustration and disgust. If there's a bad game hidden underneath all of your fancy BS, I'll find out, and I won't want to play anymore.
I applaud DTD for its simplicity and elegance, and I applaud Sullentrop for unabashedly pointing out that it succeeds marvelously in an area where many large-budget games fail.
-NT-