The OP is modded flamebait, but he's actually posting a VERY relevant point. Sony is a shady company with a repeated history of bad decisions and anti-customer practices. There is a very easy way to avoid these types of things: Stop paying Sony to spit on you!
Actually, it started with me when my Sony home theater system broke. I sent it to them, they kept it for over SIX weeks, and when they sent it back, it was STILL broken the same damn way it was when I sent it to them to start with, but with a nasty scratch down the left side. So I sent it back again, and after several more weeks, it finally arrived, this time actually fixed. Or so I thought. A few months later, just after the one-year warranty period expired, it broke yet again. I called Sony, and they refused to fix it again without me paying for repairs, even though they had the thing in their possession over two of the twelve months of the warranty period. Instead, I took the damn thing to a recycling center.
A few months after that, my PS2 broke. It was well out of warranty, around five years old. I don't know what the useful life of a PS2 is supposed to be, but I'd hope it's more than five years. Under normal circumstances, I'd normally chalk it up to crappy luck and not be too mad about it, but since I'd just been through my home theater system ordeal, yeah, it really pissed me off. (That's mad, not drunk, for you Brits.)
Then the root kit fiasco hit shortly after that. Then my computer's Sony DVD burner stopped working. By this time, I had sworn off all Sony products. I think I remember an article hitting Slashdot around that time frame about Sony USB drives being infected as shipped from the factory. Then there was the Blu-ray shenanigans. Then there was the Other OS thing. Then the GeoHot lawsuit.
So yeah, the PSN thing didn't affect me at all. I'm convinced that it happened because of Sony's lax security practices, and it couldn't have happened to a scummier company. Personally, I think that any Slashdot reader who was affected by this is a damn fool and practically deserved it. I've told all of my friends and family about Sony, and most of them avoid the company, too.
My suggestion to everyone here is to stop accepting being butt raped by this company. Don't just post here about how sad/amused/mad/whatever you are, help spread the word. Post these headlines on your social network. If you're reading Slashdot, your geek cred is probably pretty high in your family and circle of friends, TELL people to avoid Sony. Only by putting them out of business once and for all, or impacting them enough to make them make significant changes, will they ever shape up or ship out.
In a class action lawsuit, if I'm the lucky first guy to file, I might get a couple G's to serve as lead plaintiff, the lawyers make tens of millions of dollars, and everyone else gets a coupon for $10 off their next phone.
It's the punitive aspect of it that's important. Sure, you may get a check for $0.83, but if you multiply that by millions, plus tack on legal fees, it ends up putting a serious dent in the company's profits. That's the main point of class action lawsuits. Not so much to make you rich, but to make sure the company doesn't do whatever boneheaded thing they did again, to teach them a lesson.
Of course, now, companies are free to put arbitration/non-class action clauses in every damn contract they write, and no matter how irresponsible they are, they get off scott free.
I think that was the whole point over fighting such a silly case all the way up to the Supreme Court--to virtually guarantee that you can never be subject to a class action case again. Let's not kid ourselves, who here thinks that any company will ever again sell any service again without a clause in it forcing arbitration and disallowing class action lawsuits?
Do you understand the concept of "summary"? If this were a blog about materials engineering, I might agree with you that such detail is needed. As it is, most people here probably read the summary, thought, "Cool!" and continued reading other articles. Had they had more detailed information, they would have read the summary, thought, "Um... Okay..." and continued reading other articles.
If you're counting on Slashdot to give you detailed technical information in its summaries, perhaps you're reading the wrong blog. If you happen to be a materials engineer and want more detailed technical information, well, that's what TFA is for. The article, which, incidentally, is actually yet another summary of another article from the University of Technology in Sydney, which is a summary of an article in the Journal of Applied Physics, which in turn is a summary of probably a very detailed thesis or dissertation backed by metric craptons of research data by Ali R. Ranjbartoreh, Bei Wang, Xiaoping Shen, and Guoxiu Wang.
See how it works? You start with "10 times stronger!" and it's up to you to dig as deeply as you want to in order to find the level of technical detail and/or interest that suits you. Personally, given that I'm not a materials engineer and that "10 times stronger!" is good enough to suit my level of interest and make me say, "Cool!", I'm actually glad that more technical details were not provided.
Oh so that's what everyone means when they say flash lets you see "the whole web".
Well, if they're like me, they mean being able to do things like watch Hulu.
Of course, since Hulu is blocked on mobile platforms because Adobe stupidly allowed the ability to detect the platform Flash is running on, and thus web sites such as Hulu can selectively block their content, that kind of makes it useless to me.
Unfortunately, I don't think this will work quite as well for movies.
Don't be so sure. We're already seeing the rise of series such as Felicia Day's The Guild and Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which has been free online in various official capacities. Also, Google has started producing full-length movies, such as Girl Walks Into a Bar. (The latter of which even features some semi-big names, like Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Danny DeVito, and a bunch of other names you'd probably recognize.) Also, Hulu is producing a show, The Confession, starring Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt, both big names in the business.
I honestly think--and hope!--that the times of big television networks being the gateway to what we can and can't see are soon to be over.
The one that comes immediately to mind for me is Hulu. On the iPad, they don't have an HTML 5 version of their site, so you're forced to pay their "Hulu Plus" subscription fee for access to their stand-along application. On the Xoom, I thought that once I got Flash installed, I'd be good to go, right? Wrong. "Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience." Um, wasn't one of the whole points of Flash to have platform-independent applications?
I heard somewhere (could be wrong) that it's not the user agent string that is being used by Hulu, but a setting within Flash itself that identifies the platform it's running on. If this is the case, Adobe needs to immediately disable this. It shouldn't matter whether I'm running a Flash app on my Windows PC, Linux PC, Mac, tablet, or whatever, and I consider the fact that a Flash application runs differently on my PC as it does a tablet to be a serious flaw in functionality, a bug that needs to be fixed.. And sites like Hulu are just as culpable. I know that the current working MO is to bend over and take it from content providers, but this is ridiculous.
Whoever you want to blame, though, it's killing the usefulness of tablets.
My idea of an "improved tablet" is one on which web sites cannot distinguish the fact that I'm accessing it on a tablet so that I won't get any more "We're sorry, but we don't have the content rights to display this on mobile devices" messages. Until that happens, I will always consider a tablet as a deliberately gimped PC. (That is typically actually more expensive than a PC.)
I sat here for around 20 minutes typing up a response to you, but I decided not to post it. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about, and anything I say will simply bounce off. It's like arguing evolution with a Creationist. If the Bible says it, mountains of evidence to the contrary won't convince you.
Wake me up when those evil Democratic bogeymen propose the bill. Until then, keep drinking the Fox News Kool-Aid and living in fear of stuff that doesn't exist and that won't happen.
The only people I've ever heard talk about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine are Republicans and their shills. It's especially been a talk radio talking point, and used repeatedly as a scaremongering tactic. I listen to Neal Boortz now and then, and I've heard him constantly harping on how Democrats want to shut down talk radio. The only problem is, I never hear any Democrats actually try to shut down talk radio. It's just a fabrication, another conservative scaremongering tactic just like all the others.
It's simply not true. I'm about as liberal as they come, and I have exactly zero interest in shutting down or changing talk radio. I mean, sure, some liberal out there has probably mentioned the Fairness Doctrine at some point, but I'm pretty liberal myself and I have exactly zero interest in pushing any kind of law to change or shut down talk radio and I don't know of anyone who does. This clatter all probably rose because someone made an offhand comment, and conservatives saw a chance to jump in and try to scare the bejesus out of everyone, thinking that the big, bad liberals are trying to take away the First Amendment or some crap.
I normally don't post "Mod parent UP!" posts, but damn, what a day not to have mod points of my own.:( I'd also mod the OP down. "Insightful?" Politics sometimes being sleazy isn't particularly insightful, and the claim that Democrats tried to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine is an outright lie.
Nimoy's okay, but I miss James "Scotty" Doohan. I saw Nimoy in person back in 1988 when he did a talk in Alabama. It was an interesting talk, but he didn't do autographs or anything, which was a bit disappointing. I saw Jimmy Doohan a few years later, and not only did he have an autograph session, but he actually scheduled a second impromptu one for people who couldn't make the first one, and was telling us stories the whole time. It was awesome. One of my prize possessions is an autographed copy of Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise. Not so much because the signature, but because of the memories that go along with what was happening at the time I got it.
Jimmy Doohan also happens to be a genuine war hero. He took part in the Normandy invasion at Juno Beach. He took out two snipers. He also took six bullets from friendly fire, including one in the chest and one that blew off a finger.
Photography schmotography. Know what Jimmy Doohan was doing when he was 80 years old? Having a baby girl (Sarah Doohan), that's what. If Leonard Nimoy could duplicate that feat, his family would have a boy with a great great aunt that's younger than he is.
The real problem is that people want sprawling houses, and are not comfortable living in smaller places.
And how is that a problem?
Ah, because governments don't want people getting what they want, they want to force the proles to live in Stalinist apartment blocks while only the Polibureau get houses in the country.
You know the old adage about how you can pick any two of cheap, fast, and good? It's the same principle.
Cheap, close, spacious. Pick any two. The "problem" is that there are people out there who expect it all.
Question to web 2.0 companies: Why are you keeping logs of which user logged in from which IP address in the first place? That is, if it's not out of some misplaced sense of "patriotism", or do the Feds make you do it?
I can't speak for other web site owners, but I track the IP addresses of every visitor on my site for two primary reasons:
First, so that if someone tries to hack my site, I can find them, report them to their ISP, and prosecute them if necessary. This also applies to defacement. As my sites are social-networky, if someone does something to try to deface them, I track the IP address so that I can deny it, or if necessary, a range of addresses, to the sites to keep them from just signing up with throwaway accounts and continuing to deface the site.
Second, it is included as part of the session information as a security measure. If someone attempts to connect to my site using a session (which entails not having to type his or her username and password to log in every time), the site matches the session ID against the IP address also to make sure the user is connecting via that session from the same address. If it is a different address, that is an indication that someone may be trying to hijack someone else's session and it redirects back to the login page.
I get your point, though, and for what it's worth, I don't keep the information for long; a week or two at most before it's rolled up into aggregate statistics regarding site visit trending and deleted.
At this rate Tunisia (which just abolished its state security) and Egypt (whose people raided their state security HQ) will be freer than the "land of the free".
Wow, you just kind of depressed me. Not because of what you said, but because it's so sad and you're probably right.:(
I absolutely abhor the phrase "dumbing down" when used in this context.
Linux used to be something used by a tiny minority of people who were primarily interested in hard-core computer science testing and research. It was their playground in which they could work their art. By making it more user-friendly, it has gotten it into the hands of people who are brilliant in other ways so that they can work their art. Are you a graphics guru? A UI wiz? A scripting genius? A music prodigy? A 3D design master? A business star? A poet laureate? If so, then Linux is now for you, too!
It hasn't been "dumbing down" anything. If anything, it has been dumbing up--more and more people using it in smarter and smarter ways.
And the beauty of the situation? If you're a hard-core computer scientist wanting to do testing and research with new stuff, it's still there for you, too.
Dammit, I accidentally missed the "Insightful" on the pull-down list and hit the next item up, "Redundant." I'm posting to negate my moderation on this post. >:-(
Yeah, I'm always warning my cat that he is going to become a mouse.
If this is what you think is comparable, then I can only surmise that you weren't actually there and aware of how the transition took place. Those of us who were big TechTV (and even before that, ZDTV) fans remember how it happened well. ZDTV became TechTV. When it did, they dropped a few shows and took on a few more. TechTV then became G4, dropped a few shows and took on a few more. Unlike TechTV, though, over the next year or two, they proceeded to gut everything that used to be TechTV to turn it into the junk it is today.
You present it as if when Comcast bought TechTV, it immediately became something else entirely different. ("Hey, let's make it a channel about cooking and travel instead!") That simply isn't the case. It was still tech-oriented, with more emphasis on gaming. Now, it's just a bunch of junk that no one wants to watch. (Except Kevin Pereira. I wish he would jump ship and get on a respectable network; he's awesome. He does sometimes do commentary on NPR, too.)
How DARE they cancel that show that nobody liked, and those two shows that had bad ratings. And that other show that had bad ratings. And that nine-year-old show that had a good run for years on their network.
...Says you. The thing is, when people talk about "bad" ratings, they never put it in context. "Bad" ratings to a network executive does not mean what normal people would consider it to mean, which is that people aren't watching the show. I watched it. Many of my friends watched and enjoyed it. To a network executive, though, "bad" means, "I'll bet another show can get better in its place." And so they replace it with a different show, but that show does miserably, it gets "bad" ratings too, so they replace it again. And again. And again. Unless you have a Friends, Lost, or something else performing on that order of magnitude, every show has "bad" ratings.
It used to be, network executives understood that sometimes it takes a couple of seasons for a show to really get its legs, for people to get interested in it and for its audience to build. Now, they evaluate everything on a week-by-week basis. Some shows last only two or three episodes. Very, very few last more than a season or two.
The end result of this is that I usually don't even bother watching a series now until it's at least three or four seasons into it. If it's lasted that long, then I'll start watching it. I'm just so tired of getting invested in shows just to see them pulled because they're getting "bad" ratings. This season, for example, I started watching No Ordinary Family, and I think it's one of the best shows on television. Most ratings sites say it's going to be canceled. I also started watching The Cape. Not the best show, but still, a fun throwback to the old-style action superhero genre. Likewise, probably going to be canceled. Network executives are likely thinking, "If we cancel it, maybe we'll get something in its place that is an American Idol-like ratings killer!" In reality, they're going to replace it with something even more dreadful, and thus the cycle goes on.
In theory, one of the big draws of a channel like Syfy is that it appeals to a niche audience, people who, because they are looking for that specific genre, will get a consistent audience regardless of "bad" ratings. As it gets more and more away from its roots, though, it will lose that audience and its shows, when competing against the big networks for a more general mass audience, will get killed.
Personally, I think the answer to this is hopefully the Internet. We're starting to see the birth of shows like Felicia Day's The Guild. That show doesn't need approval of network executives to keep going. As long as it's pulling in some money, she can still make it. Shoot, even if it's not pulling in money (which is not the case, I believe), she can finance it if she wants and keep it going. Yes, I know, compared to content produced by big studios, it looks a bit, um, "budget-oriented." Still, I compare it to what television was like in the very early days. Once people realize the potential and the vastness of the audience, we'll start to see more and bigger-budget content producers line up to go directly to the consumers instead of through a middle-man network executive to be the gatekeeper of what we can and can't watch.
Lol. I didn't miss your point, I explicitly acknowledged it when I said to argue morality is to miss the point. You think the end justifies the means, fine but irrelevant.
Then you did miss my point. Let me break it down for you. These people owed Amazon either the money or the DVDs. Amazon was well with their right, legally and morally, to cut their losses by keeping the money they had when the people refused to pay or send back the DVDs and recoup what they could.
You try to pitch this as if Amazon was being unreasonable. In my opinion, any store would--and should--do the same. I've been an Amazon customer for years, and I've never had any kind of problem like this with them. I'm not afraid of them using your so-called "levers" on me. Of course, I've also never tried to steal anything from them, either.
And you missed my point. If someone steals from them, they have the moral right in my opinion to use such levers. The charges that Amazon put through on the people's credit cards was valid, and several of those people disputed or otherwise avoided the charges through fraudulent means. They should count themselves lucky if their Amazon Prime membership was all that they lost. If I were Amazon, I'd be mighty tempted to have sued a bunch of them to get my money back. The only reason they didn't was probably because they're so big and could afford the write-off, and it was easier to avoid the negative PR. Still, yeah, those people acted in extremely bad faith, and I don't blame Amazon for canceling their accounts and not giving them any kind of money back for their Prime accounts.
Would you refund a thief who stole hundreds or thousands of dollars from you? I know I wouldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
The OP is modded flamebait, but he's actually posting a VERY relevant point. Sony is a shady company with a repeated history of bad decisions and anti-customer practices. There is a very easy way to avoid these types of things: Stop paying Sony to spit on you!
Actually, it started with me when my Sony home theater system broke. I sent it to them, they kept it for over SIX weeks, and when they sent it back, it was STILL broken the same damn way it was when I sent it to them to start with, but with a nasty scratch down the left side. So I sent it back again, and after several more weeks, it finally arrived, this time actually fixed. Or so I thought. A few months later, just after the one-year warranty period expired, it broke yet again. I called Sony, and they refused to fix it again without me paying for repairs, even though they had the thing in their possession over two of the twelve months of the warranty period. Instead, I took the damn thing to a recycling center.
A few months after that, my PS2 broke. It was well out of warranty, around five years old. I don't know what the useful life of a PS2 is supposed to be, but I'd hope it's more than five years. Under normal circumstances, I'd normally chalk it up to crappy luck and not be too mad about it, but since I'd just been through my home theater system ordeal, yeah, it really pissed me off. (That's mad, not drunk, for you Brits.)
Then the root kit fiasco hit shortly after that. Then my computer's Sony DVD burner stopped working. By this time, I had sworn off all Sony products. I think I remember an article hitting Slashdot around that time frame about Sony USB drives being infected as shipped from the factory. Then there was the Blu-ray shenanigans. Then there was the Other OS thing. Then the GeoHot lawsuit.
So yeah, the PSN thing didn't affect me at all. I'm convinced that it happened because of Sony's lax security practices, and it couldn't have happened to a scummier company. Personally, I think that any Slashdot reader who was affected by this is a damn fool and practically deserved it. I've told all of my friends and family about Sony, and most of them avoid the company, too.
My suggestion to everyone here is to stop accepting being butt raped by this company. Don't just post here about how sad/amused/mad/whatever you are, help spread the word. Post these headlines on your social network. If you're reading Slashdot, your geek cred is probably pretty high in your family and circle of friends, TELL people to avoid Sony. Only by putting them out of business once and for all, or impacting them enough to make them make significant changes, will they ever shape up or ship out.
In a class action lawsuit, if I'm the lucky first guy to file, I might get a couple G's to serve as lead plaintiff, the lawyers make tens of millions of dollars, and everyone else gets a coupon for $10 off their next phone.
It's the punitive aspect of it that's important. Sure, you may get a check for $0.83, but if you multiply that by millions, plus tack on legal fees, it ends up putting a serious dent in the company's profits. That's the main point of class action lawsuits. Not so much to make you rich, but to make sure the company doesn't do whatever boneheaded thing they did again, to teach them a lesson.
Of course, now, companies are free to put arbitration/non-class action clauses in every damn contract they write, and no matter how irresponsible they are, they get off scott free.
Absolutely nothing, pretty much guaranteed.
...If you're a corporation.
I think that was the whole point over fighting such a silly case all the way up to the Supreme Court--to virtually guarantee that you can never be subject to a class action case again. Let's not kid ourselves, who here thinks that any company will ever again sell any service again without a clause in it forcing arbitration and disallowing class action lawsuits?
Do you understand the concept of "summary"? If this were a blog about materials engineering, I might agree with you that such detail is needed. As it is, most people here probably read the summary, thought, "Cool!" and continued reading other articles. Had they had more detailed information, they would have read the summary, thought, "Um... Okay..." and continued reading other articles.
If you're counting on Slashdot to give you detailed technical information in its summaries, perhaps you're reading the wrong blog. If you happen to be a materials engineer and want more detailed technical information, well, that's what TFA is for. The article, which, incidentally, is actually yet another summary of another article from the University of Technology in Sydney, which is a summary of an article in the Journal of Applied Physics, which in turn is a summary of probably a very detailed thesis or dissertation backed by metric craptons of research data by Ali R. Ranjbartoreh, Bei Wang, Xiaoping Shen, and Guoxiu Wang.
See how it works? You start with "10 times stronger!" and it's up to you to dig as deeply as you want to in order to find the level of technical detail and/or interest that suits you. Personally, given that I'm not a materials engineer and that "10 times stronger!" is good enough to suit my level of interest and make me say, "Cool!", I'm actually glad that more technical details were not provided.
Oh so that's what everyone means when they say flash lets you see "the whole web".
Well, if they're like me, they mean being able to do things like watch Hulu.
Of course, since Hulu is blocked on mobile platforms because Adobe stupidly allowed the ability to detect the platform Flash is running on, and thus web sites such as Hulu can selectively block their content, that kind of makes it useless to me.
sigh...
Unfortunately, I don't think this will work quite as well for movies.
Don't be so sure. We're already seeing the rise of series such as Felicia Day's The Guild and Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog , which has been free online in various official capacities. Also, Google has started producing full-length movies, such as Girl Walks Into a Bar . (The latter of which even features some semi-big names, like Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Danny DeVito, and a bunch of other names you'd probably recognize.) Also, Hulu is producing a show, The Confession , starring Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt, both big names in the business.
I honestly think--and hope!--that the times of big television networks being the gateway to what we can and can't see are soon to be over.
The one that comes immediately to mind for me is Hulu. On the iPad, they don't have an HTML 5 version of their site, so you're forced to pay their "Hulu Plus" subscription fee for access to their stand-along application. On the Xoom, I thought that once I got Flash installed, I'd be good to go, right? Wrong. "Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience." Um, wasn't one of the whole points of Flash to have platform-independent applications?
I heard somewhere (could be wrong) that it's not the user agent string that is being used by Hulu, but a setting within Flash itself that identifies the platform it's running on. If this is the case, Adobe needs to immediately disable this. It shouldn't matter whether I'm running a Flash app on my Windows PC, Linux PC, Mac, tablet, or whatever, and I consider the fact that a Flash application runs differently on my PC as it does a tablet to be a serious flaw in functionality, a bug that needs to be fixed.. And sites like Hulu are just as culpable. I know that the current working MO is to bend over and take it from content providers, but this is ridiculous.
Whoever you want to blame, though, it's killing the usefulness of tablets.
My idea of an "improved tablet" is one on which web sites cannot distinguish the fact that I'm accessing it on a tablet so that I won't get any more "We're sorry, but we don't have the content rights to display this on mobile devices" messages. Until that happens, I will always consider a tablet as a deliberately gimped PC. (That is typically actually more expensive than a PC.)
...And now I have mod points. Taco's Law strikes again.
I sat here for around 20 minutes typing up a response to you, but I decided not to post it. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about, and anything I say will simply bounce off. It's like arguing evolution with a Creationist. If the Bible says it, mountains of evidence to the contrary won't convince you.
Wake me up when those evil Democratic bogeymen propose the bill. Until then, keep drinking the Fox News Kool-Aid and living in fear of stuff that doesn't exist and that won't happen.
The only people I've ever heard talk about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine are Republicans and their shills. It's especially been a talk radio talking point, and used repeatedly as a scaremongering tactic. I listen to Neal Boortz now and then, and I've heard him constantly harping on how Democrats want to shut down talk radio. The only problem is, I never hear any Democrats actually try to shut down talk radio. It's just a fabrication, another conservative scaremongering tactic just like all the others.
It's simply not true. I'm about as liberal as they come, and I have exactly zero interest in shutting down or changing talk radio. I mean, sure, some liberal out there has probably mentioned the Fairness Doctrine at some point, but I'm pretty liberal myself and I have exactly zero interest in pushing any kind of law to change or shut down talk radio and I don't know of anyone who does. This clatter all probably rose because someone made an offhand comment, and conservatives saw a chance to jump in and try to scare the bejesus out of everyone, thinking that the big, bad liberals are trying to take away the First Amendment or some crap.
I normally don't post "Mod parent UP!" posts, but damn, what a day not to have mod points of my own. :( I'd also mod the OP down. "Insightful?" Politics sometimes being sleazy isn't particularly insightful, and the claim that Democrats tried to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine is an outright lie.
Nimoy's okay, but I miss James "Scotty" Doohan. I saw Nimoy in person back in 1988 when he did a talk in Alabama. It was an interesting talk, but he didn't do autographs or anything, which was a bit disappointing. I saw Jimmy Doohan a few years later, and not only did he have an autograph session, but he actually scheduled a second impromptu one for people who couldn't make the first one, and was telling us stories the whole time. It was awesome. One of my prize possessions is an autographed copy of Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise. Not so much because the signature, but because of the memories that go along with what was happening at the time I got it.
Jimmy Doohan also happens to be a genuine war hero. He took part in the Normandy invasion at Juno Beach. He took out two snipers. He also took six bullets from friendly fire, including one in the chest and one that blew off a finger.
Photography schmotography. Know what Jimmy Doohan was doing when he was 80 years old? Having a baby girl (Sarah Doohan), that's what. If Leonard Nimoy could duplicate that feat, his family would have a boy with a great great aunt that's younger than he is.
The real problem is that people want sprawling houses, and are not comfortable living in smaller places.
And how is that a problem?
Ah, because governments don't want people getting what they want, they want to force the proles to live in Stalinist apartment blocks while only the Polibureau get houses in the country.
You know the old adage about how you can pick any two of cheap, fast, and good? It's the same principle.
Cheap, close, spacious. Pick any two. The "problem" is that there are people out there who expect it all.
Question to web 2.0 companies: Why are you keeping logs of which user logged in from which IP address in the first place? That is, if it's not out of some misplaced sense of "patriotism", or do the Feds make you do it?
I can't speak for other web site owners, but I track the IP addresses of every visitor on my site for two primary reasons:
First, so that if someone tries to hack my site, I can find them, report them to their ISP, and prosecute them if necessary. This also applies to defacement. As my sites are social-networky, if someone does something to try to deface them, I track the IP address so that I can deny it, or if necessary, a range of addresses, to the sites to keep them from just signing up with throwaway accounts and continuing to deface the site.
Second, it is included as part of the session information as a security measure. If someone attempts to connect to my site using a session (which entails not having to type his or her username and password to log in every time), the site matches the session ID against the IP address also to make sure the user is connecting via that session from the same address. If it is a different address, that is an indication that someone may be trying to hijack someone else's session and it redirects back to the login page.
I get your point, though, and for what it's worth, I don't keep the information for long; a week or two at most before it's rolled up into aggregate statistics regarding site visit trending and deleted.
At this rate Tunisia (which just abolished its state security) and Egypt (whose people raided their state security HQ) will be freer than the "land of the free".
Wow, you just kind of depressed me. Not because of what you said, but because it's so sad and you're probably right. :(
I absolutely abhor the phrase "dumbing down" when used in this context.
Linux used to be something used by a tiny minority of people who were primarily interested in hard-core computer science testing and research. It was their playground in which they could work their art. By making it more user-friendly, it has gotten it into the hands of people who are brilliant in other ways so that they can work their art. Are you a graphics guru? A UI wiz? A scripting genius? A music prodigy? A 3D design master? A business star? A poet laureate? If so, then Linux is now for you, too!
It hasn't been "dumbing down" anything. If anything, it has been dumbing up--more and more people using it in smarter and smarter ways.
And the beauty of the situation? If you're a hard-core computer scientist wanting to do testing and research with new stuff, it's still there for you, too.
Dammit, I accidentally missed the "Insightful" on the pull-down list and hit the next item up, "Redundant." I'm posting to negate my moderation on this post. >:-(
Yeah, I'm always warning my cat that he is going to become a mouse.
If this is what you think is comparable, then I can only surmise that you weren't actually there and aware of how the transition took place. Those of us who were big TechTV (and even before that, ZDTV) fans remember how it happened well. ZDTV became TechTV. When it did, they dropped a few shows and took on a few more. TechTV then became G4, dropped a few shows and took on a few more. Unlike TechTV, though, over the next year or two, they proceeded to gut everything that used to be TechTV to turn it into the junk it is today.
You present it as if when Comcast bought TechTV, it immediately became something else entirely different. ("Hey, let's make it a channel about cooking and travel instead!") That simply isn't the case. It was still tech-oriented, with more emphasis on gaming. Now, it's just a bunch of junk that no one wants to watch. (Except Kevin Pereira. I wish he would jump ship and get on a respectable network; he's awesome. He does sometimes do commentary on NPR, too.)
You don't have to take my word for it, read the history yourself.
USA Network is apparently the exception to this; it seems like they'll give all their original programming at least two seasons to find its legs.
Agreed! I hadn't thought about it, but you're right. It is a rare exception to the rule, and I do like its shows.
TechTV did not become G4. Comcast bought TechTV for their distribution contracts and kept a little bit of the programming.
...Or as normal people would call it, TechTV became G4.
How DARE they cancel that show that nobody liked, and those two shows that had bad ratings. And that other show that had bad ratings. And that nine-year-old show that had a good run for years on their network.
...Says you. The thing is, when people talk about "bad" ratings, they never put it in context. "Bad" ratings to a network executive does not mean what normal people would consider it to mean, which is that people aren't watching the show. I watched it. Many of my friends watched and enjoyed it. To a network executive, though, "bad" means, "I'll bet another show can get better in its place." And so they replace it with a different show, but that show does miserably, it gets "bad" ratings too, so they replace it again. And again. And again. Unless you have a Friends, Lost, or something else performing on that order of magnitude, every show has "bad" ratings.
It used to be, network executives understood that sometimes it takes a couple of seasons for a show to really get its legs, for people to get interested in it and for its audience to build. Now, they evaluate everything on a week-by-week basis. Some shows last only two or three episodes. Very, very few last more than a season or two.
The end result of this is that I usually don't even bother watching a series now until it's at least three or four seasons into it. If it's lasted that long, then I'll start watching it. I'm just so tired of getting invested in shows just to see them pulled because they're getting "bad" ratings. This season, for example, I started watching No Ordinary Family, and I think it's one of the best shows on television. Most ratings sites say it's going to be canceled. I also started watching The Cape. Not the best show, but still, a fun throwback to the old-style action superhero genre. Likewise, probably going to be canceled. Network executives are likely thinking, "If we cancel it, maybe we'll get something in its place that is an American Idol-like ratings killer!" In reality, they're going to replace it with something even more dreadful, and thus the cycle goes on.
In theory, one of the big draws of a channel like Syfy is that it appeals to a niche audience, people who, because they are looking for that specific genre, will get a consistent audience regardless of "bad" ratings. As it gets more and more away from its roots, though, it will lose that audience and its shows, when competing against the big networks for a more general mass audience, will get killed.
Personally, I think the answer to this is hopefully the Internet. We're starting to see the birth of shows like Felicia Day's The Guild. That show doesn't need approval of network executives to keep going. As long as it's pulling in some money, she can still make it. Shoot, even if it's not pulling in money (which is not the case, I believe), she can finance it if she wants and keep it going. Yes, I know, compared to content produced by big studios, it looks a bit, um, "budget-oriented." Still, I compare it to what television was like in the very early days. Once people realize the potential and the vastness of the audience, we'll start to see more and bigger-budget content producers line up to go directly to the consumers instead of through a middle-man network executive to be the gatekeeper of what we can and can't watch.
Syfy has become to science fiction like MTV is to music television. Or TechTV (now "G4") is to technology.
It's a shame. I used to love their original programming. Now... wrestling? Really?
Lol. I didn't miss your point, I explicitly acknowledged it when I said to argue morality is to miss the point. You think the end justifies the means, fine but irrelevant.
Then you did miss my point. Let me break it down for you. These people owed Amazon either the money or the DVDs. Amazon was well with their right, legally and morally, to cut their losses by keeping the money they had when the people refused to pay or send back the DVDs and recoup what they could.
You try to pitch this as if Amazon was being unreasonable. In my opinion, any store would--and should--do the same. I've been an Amazon customer for years, and I've never had any kind of problem like this with them. I'm not afraid of them using your so-called "levers" on me. Of course, I've also never tried to steal anything from them, either.
And you missed my point. If someone steals from them, they have the moral right in my opinion to use such levers. The charges that Amazon put through on the people's credit cards was valid, and several of those people disputed or otherwise avoided the charges through fraudulent means. They should count themselves lucky if their Amazon Prime membership was all that they lost. If I were Amazon, I'd be mighty tempted to have sued a bunch of them to get my money back. The only reason they didn't was probably because they're so big and could afford the write-off, and it was easier to avoid the negative PR. Still, yeah, those people acted in extremely bad faith, and I don't blame Amazon for canceling their accounts and not giving them any kind of money back for their Prime accounts.
Would you refund a thief who stole hundreds or thousands of dollars from you? I know I wouldn't.
Citation. And if they had Amazon prime, they didn't pay for shipping and handling, only the dollar or two difference in price.