Actually if you watch the box set and listen to the commentary you can read between the lines and see what killed Buffy, and that was Joss. For example despite doing a kick ass job with nothing the director of "one down" (the last two Dark Willow episodes) complains throughout that Joss waltzed in when he got his idea for the musical and blew the entire seasons budget on it leaving him with practically nothing to finish the season. He said they literally had to draw the lines on Willow with black pens because that was what they were down to budget wise.
And I would argue that the series could have easily recovered if Joss would have actually showed up instead of only doing the musical and then phoning it in for the rest of the series because the season 8 in comic form (where Joss is actually writing again) is really good, with witty dialog and good character depth same with season six of Angel in comic form (if you wanted to know what happened after the big battle with the dragon you really ought to pick it up, its damned good.).
And for the guy that said "The last two seasons of Angel were good"? Watch the box sets starting at season one and you can tell almost to the episode where Joss started working on Firefly. About midway through season three the episode quality starts getting uneven and the season four was a soap opera that had dick to do with the rest of the series and you can tell Joss had almost nothing to do with the day to day by that time, especially with the second half.
Now compare it to season five from midway on (puppet show) where Joss found out it was to be canceled and actually showed up to finish the series? The writing is like night and day compared to the phoned in episodes. You have character depth again, you have adding to the backstory and mythos, and you have damned witty dialog, all of which are missing when Joss phones it in.
Same thing with Buffy season six where except for the musical and the last two episodes it is just one giant dark suckfest, with none of the witty writing or character development. Even Michelle Trachtenberg in a round table between season 6 and 7 asks point blank if Joss is gonna have her character killed off, because without Joss there to add depth she just comes off as a cliche whiny brat.
While I liked both shows and have the complete box sets for both if you try watching them back to back you can really tell when Joss stopped caring and got busy with other shows. It is especially noticeable when on the rare occasion Joss would show up, as with the musical in season six or the episode with Webbs (Dead friends I believe?) in season seven. The writing difference between Joss when working with his core team like Greenwald and Noxon VS when he just handed off the show to one of them solo or even worse the third stringers in season six and seven of Buffy really is striking. Hell compare the comic written by him now to season four and the first half of Angel season five and Buffy season six and seven and the writing is like night and day.
So try watching them back to back sometime, especially the first four seasons of Buffy and the first three of Angel and compare them to the latter. You'll notice pretty quickly the writing isn't snappy, the dialog is a LOT more ham fisted, and instead of character development you get cliche, because the the third stringers are simply following established character traits instead of developing the characters further as Joss did. I like the hell out of his writing but you can tell a BIG difference between his style and those he brought in to CYA, and it frankly hurt both shows badly.
And it frankly wouldn't surprise me if this is EXACTLY what happens! All it'll take is a nice phone call from Sony or one of their affiliates and PayPal will just lock the money up until the trial is over or he wastes an amount equal to the funds fighting them.
Why anyone would use a company with a history of royally fucking over their customers on any whim for an actual defense fund is beyond me, but I won't touch PayPal with a 50 foot pole. There have just been too many burned for me to allow anything of mine to touch that mess.
Well in my case I had a valid excuse as my sister, their mother was dying of MS at the time so needless to say nobody was much concerned with sex or dating at the time. When their father first found out she had it he decided that "being a dad just ain't my thing" so he skipped out leaving me to raise two kids while my mom took over full time care of my sister.
So whereas we got a few of the basics covered earlier when they asked questions such as "why do girls have boobs?" neither they nor any other member of the family was caring about the birds and the bees at the time with everyone too busy trying to spend as much time with her as possible before she passed. It was only once we had had the funeral and life began to move on that we were able to think about such things.
I just got lucky that around that time I met a truly wonderful woman who not only didn't care that I had kids but dropped everything and used up all her sick days just to come help out. Having a female shoulder to cry on other than my mother (who naturally was in no shape to help anyone) and to let them deal with their grief really helped.
But you can't really judge the average situation to what we had, because anyone who has had to deal with a long term terminal illness in the family knows you just don't have a normal life when that is going on. You do the best you can, but normalcy in that situation is about as far from anyone else as you can get.
That is pretty much the problem with ALL sci-fi though, isn't it? you let a series go on and depending on the quality of the writing to start with either very quickly or in a slow death spiral the writing just goes to shit.
And for all the guys here that moaned about Firefly getting canned? Frankly you should be grateful as Joss Whedon is notorious for getting involved in something new and just phoning it in for anything other than the "new hotness". For an example look at the last two seasons of Buffy and Angel where he was wrapped up in the new hotness that was Firefly. He ended up taking the best writers to Firefly and bringing in third stringers and just phoning it in on Buffy/Angel. Out of those last two season you have MAYBE five episodes between the two worth watching, maybe.
So in a way you should be glad it went out while it was still decent, because otherwise Whedon would have gotten another idea and then Firefly would have been given the Buffy/Angel treatment. Funny thing is now that Firefly is toast and Whedon is doing the comic version of Buffy/Angel the writing is actually good again. Maybe if we wouldn't have been phoning it in it wouldn't have gotten canceled in the first place.
I mean having Harmony have her own MTV reality show and bitching that slayers are interfering with her "God given right as an American" to shop? Now THAT is a hell of a lot funnier and more interesting than the snoozefest he put out for most of the last two years of Buffy/Angel and which I'm sure he would have done to Firefly after a season or two. The guy just bites off more than he can chew and phones it in too much IMHO, and with the kinds of shows he does you really can't do that, if the writing isn't good the whole thing falls apart.
Yes, I have multiple email accounts and one is set up simply to be a backup storage facility for things such as files and emails I may require access to out in the field, or want to make sure I don't lose like pictures or important correspondence.
You see that way my main email address is nice and neat, with only outstanding shipments of parts and currently open conversations in my inbox, whereas my bulk backup is currently at 500+ emails with everything from certain must have files I often find a need for out in the field (such as a reg file that fixes the dreaded "Windows has the sound driver but says "no device" under sound bug) and backups for any important emails sent from any of my addresses so if someone claims I never sent them something I can check by name and find a backup with the date/time stamp to back me up.
So in my case BCC makes it easier to manage multiple accounts while simultaneously giving me an easy backup of anything important just in case my main email provider were to have a "senior moment" like what happened to Hotmail users a few weeks back or Gmail users two years ago. That is why I tell people never trust a single email provider, because bugs happen and backups can get borked. Just because it is owned by Google (or MSFT or Yahoo) doesn't magically make their service perfect. Better to be safe than sorry and with webmail backups if I suddenly have to fix something when I wasn't expecting to work a simple login to my backup has the files that I use most ready to go.
Notice how I got modded down for daring to point out that "free as in freedom" doesn't always work? And as for the "analog hole" you might want to look up Janus DRM, which has been out nearly 5 years now with no major hacks because it supports kernel level DRM in Windows and OSX.
Look folks it really is simple: You can have DRM on the front in or lawsuits on the back end, which would you prefer? Would you prefer to have the content protected so that the one douchebag that posts everything he can get his hands on to P2P doesn't ruin it for everyone else, or would you like to see thousands of lawsuits ala the infamous "Shemale Yum" case we saw here a few months back?
It really is simple: Content owners need to make money or they will close down and bandwidth along with content creation costs. Now everyone wants the convenience of having everything on demand, and the content owners want to provide that to you without getting royally fucked over by the douchebag that posts everything to P2P, so how would YOU suggest they do it? And don't say "piracy exists you should ignore it" because we have seen without even token protection the piracy becomes truly rampant. IIRC the last numbers I saw was something like 86%+ of the adult videos on the "tube" sites are pirated content, and smaller films like The Hurt Locker are having to go after P2P users because the movie won't break even with all the piracy.
So how would YOU solve it? Just refuse to sell to web users? Do like Netflix and just ignore HTML V5 for Silverlight which supports Janus DRM? Because whether you like it or not content owners aren't gonna just put all their content in a format that is as easy to snatch as telling downloadhelper to download all, so you either make compromises or HTML V5 and WebM will BOTH end up being used only by niche players, just like Theora and Vorbis is now. H.264 can be wrapped in flash which supports DRM, and both.NET and Silverlight support Janus, so it isn't like the content owners don't have choices.
So what EXACTLY do you have to offer them besides "free as in freedom" which has no appeal to them whatsoever?
I'd say the bigger problem with tech
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is the rise of the "consumer centric" tech model. One of the things I miss about the old Gates era MSFT is how you had the business line in WinNT and the consumer line in Win9x. With the line split like that those that didn't want the bling bling BS and just wanted a corporate centric desktop had it, while the consumers got the bling bling hand holding.
Now and with the rise of Apple it has considerably gotten worse, is everything made for the home user FIRST and business second. If TFA is correct and BCC is dying it is just another proof of consumer centric (as consumers don't know WTF BCC is) as opposed to business centric design. in the old days business users were first and foremost in the design then afterward you might make a consumer friendly version. Now everything is flipping 3D bling bling transparent windows which is about as useful to businesses as tits on a boar hog.
So if anyone is to blame it is the sudden switch to consumer centric design. You just don't get anything mass market designed for business anymore, it is all being designed for Joe and Sally home user and business is an afterthought. Some may prefer it that way but I miss the days of low resource grey apps that just got the hell out of my way and let me work. Should I tell everyone to get off my lawn or do others miss it as well?
Not really, look at it THIS way: A sends bitchy email to B, B sends his reply with a BCC to boss C, Boss C hits reply all and A gets a copy of an email he only sent to B from his boss.
So if A sent his bitchy email to B only and suddenly his boss is sending him a copy of the bitchy email it really doesn't take Kojack to solve the case. Moral of the story is you should treat BCC as a "everybody might get a copy of this" email and not something private, as you can never overestimate the ability of a PHB to fuck shit up.
Not to mention nobody outside of corporate knew what the hell a BCC was anyway. I've shown users how to BCC themselves when sending pictures so they have a copy in their email and every single time I get "Is that what that was for? I didn't know what that thing was."
It is one of those techs like knowing how to set up your own DNS or change your IP that few outside IT and corporate EVER use or even has a clue is there. I have a feeling if it dies completely out of non corporate environments there will be so few that care it won't even raise a stink. I like BCC simply to send copies to a backup address but it isn't like I just couldn't add the address in the to: field.
Bingo! Give that man a ceeeegar! All Google has done by starting this little pissing contest between WebM and H.264 is make sure that flash wins by a country mile. Because whether FOSS users yell "free as in freedom" all day long or not the simple fact is there are millions of paysites out there and thanks to the pissing contest they will simply use a combo of H.264+flash.
Does anyone HONESTLY think all the paysites in the world are just gonna join hands with RMS and sing "free as in freedom" around the campfire? HELL NO! We are talking billions of dollars worth of content which we all know would end up on P2P 15 seconds after you dropped the DRM. So no DRM is WebM is just yet another reason (along with no iDevice support) why WebM is gonna bomb. If I am a website owner I can cover a good 99% of the planet by sticking with H.264+flash and simply keep a copy of the pre-wrapped H.264 file if I want to support iDevice users.
WebM brings NOTHING to the table, not better file sizes nor picture quality, and now no way to protect my content from ending up on P2P. Yeah, I don't think this is gonna fly.
Hi Matt! You won't have any problems as long as you are honest with your kids and actually know them. With my two boys I had them playing with my hand me down PCs almost from the time they could walk, had them a little LAN set up so they could play each other (no net access of course) at around 6 and gave them timed access to the net (most routers have time based settings) when their schoolwork started requiring research. I finally gave them full access at around the time I was giving them the talk at 15.
Funny part is I knew damned good and well what was gonna happen when I let them loose. I gave them the whole spiel about how many porn sites have bugs but I knew damned good and well the oldest would think I was full of shit and just saying that to spook him. Sure enough about 3 days later his little brother drags me towards his room laughing his ass off and there is the oldest with his head in his hands as "YOU CAN HAVE A BIGGER DICK!" and "HOT SEX IN YOUR AREA!" pop ups just flooded the screen. I looked at his little brother and we both just died laughing. A month without his PC along with having to learn how to do a spyware removal was a valuable life lesson IMHO.
So as long as you're honest with them, take it one step at a time, and realize they WILL fuck up occasionally and that ALL teens will eventually want to look at the opposite sex naked, everything will be alright. Now the oldest is in premed and the youngest is deciding whether he wants to be a chef or go into CAD, so I figure I did alright. One thing I got lucky with was dope, as my ex brother in law became a full blown meth addict which gave the kids a really great example of what drugs can do to you close up. I'm just glad I never lied to the boys or covered for him because now neither one wants a damned thing to do with any drug after seeing him fried with holes in his face where he picked himself bloody.
The world can be a scary place, but as long as you are honest with your kids and actually explain WHY there are rules (other than "because I said so!") then you'll do alright and they turn out just fine. Every friend I went to HS with that had trouble with his/her kids did the "Because I said so" bit and without a better reason the kids just thought they were being asses and pretty much ignored them when they turned teen. But other than the oldest thinking he knew more about computers and the net than me (BWA HA HA HA HA!) I never had a lick of trouble by simply being honest and giving them freedom in slowly larger increments. A little trust goes a long way.
Then here is a thought if Java is so great obey the fricking license Google! is that REALLY so damned hard? Would anybody here have bought the bullshit if MSFT said "No really MS "coffee" isn't Java, we swear! Sure all you Java code runs but it really really isn't Java, promise!"
Lets be honest guys if MSFT would have pulled this shit the crowd here would have laughed them right out of the building. Are you REALLY so in love with Google you'll let them get away with this weasel worded BS? if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, guess what? It is probably a duck!
So lets call a spade a spade folks, this is just Google trying to screw Java while getting away with not paying the mobile fees. Is this REALLY a company you are gonna trust? Mark my words all you guys that are "Android is FOSS yay!" this will NOT be the last time you see Google pull some weasel worded BS. Don't forget this is the same company that is making damned sure to avoid GPL V3 like the clap! Why do you think that is? I'll tell you why, it is so they can "TiVo trick" android at any time and there ain't a damned thing you can do about it.
So the FOSS guys better watch their back and not get too comfy around Google. if they will pull this weasel worded BS even when faced with a company like Oracle that has the money to fight back, why would they not screw FOSS that doesn't have the money to fight squat?
Not to mention this whole "habitable zone" thing is a load of crap IMHO. I mean what are the odds that some alien race is gonna come out just like us and therefor need the exact same conditions as us? We have already detected the possibility of liquid water on Europa IIRC, and that is pretty damned far from the "habitable zone" so who is to say there aren't plenty of creatures living on worlds farther out?
We have no idea what kind of gravity or other conditions may exist there so until/unless we find a way to actually get out there and look their guesses are about as useful as throwing a dart at a dartboard. hell on our own planet we have things living in conditions that would kill us instantly, things that live in unbelievable depths, things that live on methane, etc, so any guesses right now will probably be as worthless as primitive man trying to guess how the world worked.
Uhhh..you DO know the WBC protests more than just funerals, yes? They protest movies and plays, TV and pretty much anything that doesn't spew their militant BS.
Although if the asshats of the WBC are gonna picket a funeral personally I'd rather have Anonymous handing out flowers and drowning out their bullshit with happy slogans than needing a bunch of bikers to surround the WBC and practically hand them another lawsuit on a silver platter, wouldn't you?
Look at it THIS way: One way or another the WBC WILL show up and act like douches, whether or not Anonymous shows up. is it better to let the WBC act like douches unopposed, or to do everything in one's power to take away any abilities the WBC has to be douches and thus hopefully one day run off the WBC for good? We've tried fighting fire with fire with the WBC and all it does is give them lawsuit bait and help them stay afloat. it is time to fight fire with marshmallows and take away any power they had to spew hate.
Hi MR AC! The problem is the MFT bites you in the ass every single time without fail. I have a friend that works in the state crime lab and it is ALWAYS the MFT that gets you. It is almost impossible to remove file traces from the MFT (I know of a few cleaners that will, but the vast majority won't touch it for fear of making the machine unbootable) and they can tell what you had on the drive simply by doing a search of the pointers in the MFT.
Now since I doubt he is using an OS where it is trivial to clear files from the file system like FAT (they also have tools to hunt for files in EXT 2/3 and ReiserFS) and in all likelihood he is running XP or later, well then the odds he could pull off erasing the MFT without making it obvious the MFT was tampered with (remember willful destruction is a felony IIRC) are pretty much zip. It is always the MFT that gets them, especially since so few understand how the MFT works.
But there is an easy way for the Anon guys to win this thing if they are willing to put in the effort like they did with Chanology. Hey Anon guys, you out there? Listen to your old pal Hairyfeet and he'll give you the scoop:
The key to defeating the WDC is to take away their power not through DDoS or bans (which as you pointed out as pro trolls just gets them $$$ from lawsuits) but to turn everything they do into a farce ala classic Yippie absurdist theater. Imagine having members of Anon, complete with the Guy Fawkes masks, perform ballet in a circle around the WDC when they protest. Or do scenes from Shakespeare while just writing in the stupid slogans the WDC chants. In other words strip the power of hate from them by using the right of free speech and assembly to make the WDC look like the fools that they are.
The WDC ONLY has power if they can stir up hatred and by turning their entire "performance" into one big absurdist piece of performance art Anonymous can strip that power away from them. think of it as "fighting fire with marshmallows" as only the Anonymous group can. Not only would it help to get rid of the ass cancer known as WDC, it would be good for the lulz!
Don't forget the kids! That is what switched my customers, it was the kids. You don't have to replace those kid videos more than a couple of times before you get sick of it.
Another poster recommended the WD Live and I have a few that have picked it up, but they usually start with the Nbox because it is REALLY kid friendly, and ripping all the kid movies means a whole lot less crying because Suzy accidentally scratched the Dora the Explorer disc. The Nbox has a nice little menu with only 4 big icons (and the movie one looks like a TV so kids get it) and it is all alphabetical with a preview button so even the ones that can't read yet can look at the picture(although they quickly pick up how many clicks get them what they want to see) and it is cheap enough they can get it without committing any real money in case they don't like it. All it took was me converting ONE family and the next thing you know their friends and relatives are showing up (and telling THEIR friends and relatives) because nobody likes crying kids and busted discs.
And as for "creative marketing Brad"? Dude the current setup IS FUCKING STUPID okay? I don't care how much "you're a pirate ZOMG!" marketing horseshit you spew it doesn't change the fact that the current sitch IS STILL FUCKING STUPID! I mean WTF is the point of having all this kick ass high tech cheap if we can't use it? I mean we could all go back to silent 8mm which I'm sure would make the *.A.As happy because it would be hell to copy BUT IT WOULD ALSO BE HELL TO USE so what is the point?
The simple fact is folks want simple, folks want easy, folks want cheap and useful. You add that $30 Nbox to a $30 320Gb Hitachi portadrive and BOOM! No more crying Suzy, no more hunting for the discs, it is all easy peasy. With today's ripping software like Fair Use Wizard anybody can rip DVDs and drop them onto a media tank, and more importantly why the hell should we listen to a bunch of congress bribing bastards who want to charge for every format shift? Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
To quote an often used expression they are the buggy whip manufacturers of America and everyone else is driving cars. As you pointed out there are millions of sets that won't jump through their hoops and would have to be shitcanned otherwise (hell my monitor at 1600x900 has a great picture and DVI but no HDMI so I'd be SOL) and for a good 99.995% of the public upscaled DVD looks just fine to them. So I'd remind Brad of a little thing known as SACD/Audio DVD, where two standards competed on who could fuck the user more and got kicked by "inferior" MP3. If the choice is perfect picture and hoop jumping (not to mention higher costs and replacement media purchases) or decent picture and easy backups and copies to media tanks I don't think the average family will be hard pressed to choose, do you?
Hell I even switched my 68 year old Luddite father who now just hands me any new DVDs he gets and says "Rip 'em so I can have them on the good box" because once you go media tank watching discs is about as fun as reel to reel. Instant search, never having to switch discs,entire box sets played in order without interruption, it is just nicer in every way. And more importantly what the hell is the point of all this progress if we can't enjoy the fruits of it? I know having my entire 13 box set Joss Whedon collection a single button press away is a hell of a lot nicer than having to crack open the box every fourth episode and my dad thinks being able to just pop the off button when he gets a call and have it start back up right where he left off and still have it play series in order is about the coolest thing since sliced bread.
If you haven't tried one AC I HIGHLY recommend the Nbox. it is cheap, built like a tank, does 720p (or you can spend $15 more and get HDMI along with MKV and 1080p support) easy to operate and runs cool with little power usage and makes a nice gift for family. A hell of a good deal and sure beats dealing with discs! Give one to a family member with kids along with an offer to rip the kid videos for them and you are a God to them!
Uhhh pretty much all since there exists NO competition in a good 80%+ of the USA? I'll use myself for an example: Here I have the "choice" of Cox cable (boy did they choose a perfect name, since they are dicks) AT&T DSL which MAXES at 768k and which I've been told "tough shit, take it or leave it" because they have NO intention of upgrading the lines, or the local WISP that if you are lucky your connection works maybe 6 hours a day and who pulls your plug if you use close to 1Gb a day.
So where EXACTLY would my "choice" come from if Cox decides to fuck me out of Youtrube/Netflix/etc? Because while you may have piles of money in the bank to afford to abandon your place of residence and start over in some other state just for better Internet, most of us frankly can't afford that. We have wives/GFs, family, jobs, etc that simply don't allow us to just walk away and without net neutrality the ISPs know they can do anything they want while sending you a bill that is crazy priced and has a full color Goatse under complaint dept and you can't do shit because you've got nowhere to go.
So while I'm all for the free market the simple fact is there is NO free market for Internet access for the majority of us. Hell look up the broadband report article and see how many were like me complaining the numbers were an outright lie. You simply can't "vote with your dollars" if the choice is take it or enjoy dialup.
Except you seem to be missing one little important fact: We are giving the machines to poor folks not guys from black hat. And before anybody says "It'll end up on eBay!" no it won't, I've been refurbing machines for the poor and have NEVER seen one end up on eBay, because number one poor folks don't do eBay and number two as long as something works poor folks hang onto it.
I have 400Mhz-600MHz PCs still out in the field being used after all these years and what happens is if the parent happened to get something better the machine gets passed down to the child. Hell one 1.1GHz Celeron that has come through here for little repairs and upgrades a half a dozen times has passed through about 7 relatives in a single family so far, going from mother to child to cousin to aunt etc.
So there is NO NEED to go around creating more waste and destruction when it simply isn't required. in this economy there are literally millions living hand to mouth that could use any help they can get. I'm proud to say most businesses in my area haven't subscribed to the "ZOMG Destroy everything!" attitude and thanks to them I'm looking at some nice socket 478 P4s I'll be refurbing this weekend to give away to those that don't have computers. I have helped churches, a battered women's shelter, and more individuals than I can count...maybe a little story will help change folk's minds about destruction...
I got a call from an old teacher friend of mine a couple of years back asking if I would help him out as a personal favor and do a little free work for this girl taking night classes. The poor little thing was working days and taking early evening classes while her mom watched the kids in order to make a better life for her family. So I get there and the poor thing is in tears because she can't get the software she needs for class to work and Shaun is telling her "It'll be okay, Kevin is a wiz, he'll fix it".
So I get there and the poor little thing is trying to use a 486SX to do her schoolwork on. She looks up at me crying and says "Can you fix it, or at least make it so my son can use it while I try to get another one somewhere?" and I just smile and pat her on the shoulder and say "No problem ma'am, in fact I'll have you fixed up in under 20 minutes" to which Shaun looks like I'm a miracle worker or full of shit, which he can't decide.I tell her to just follow me out to my truck and to back her car up next to it. Lucky for her I'd just got done finishing up a job modernizing a company that was nice enough to let me DoD 3 the old P4s and gave me them along with the monitors/keyboards/mice so I could give them to the poor.
So I sat her box by my truck and opened up the back doors and started to load a couple of nice office P4s into her little hatchback "Oh no" she says "I can't afford to buy any computers right now" and when I told her they were 100% free and that she and her son were getting a couple of nice office machines I thought she'd never stop crying. I took the more powerful of the two into the class and loaded her software along with handing her a little autorun CD I make that has all the software like Firefox and free AV that you need for the basics and sent her on her way. I heard later she graduated with ease and got a really good office job, thanks to having those PCs which she is still using both her and her son from what I was told.
So please don't fall for the hype, poor folks ain't black hats, hell most of them are lucky if they can use a search engine. And with so much eWaste being created yearly and so many poor folks just barely surviving that machine could do some real good out there in the hands of someone needy.
And you just hit the nail on the head as to why BD is ultimately doomed. I've had several customers come in asking about BD and when they found out the extra gear and hoop jumping they'd have to do to rip it compared to DVD they were all "How much is an upscaling DVD player again?". Most around here have either figured out how easy it is to rip DVDs or has a relative that does it for them, and between that and media tanks like this one (which is one of my hottest sellers ATM, people just love the thing) while BD will have the videophiles I just don't ever see it reaching DVD level support.
But what really pisses me off about the *.A.As is the double standard bullshit they try to pull. They say "oh you didn't buy the (insert movie/game/CD) you bought a license to use it!" (and thus getting around first sale). Okay, I'll play. That means I get to replace it for free if anything happens to the media, right? After all I already have a license to use it? "Oh no" they say "You bought a copy thus you have to go buy a replacement!"
BULLSHIT! Total unbelievable bullshit! Never in history have we allowed ANY company to use either/or when it comes to copies and licenses.Physical media and licenses have clearly written rules and obligations under the law, and what these bastards are trying to pull is getting the protections of both and the responsibilities of neither. We are already being held back by a bunch that if anyone would have listened to them back in the day both video recorders and recordable media would have never existed, and now that we are finally getting all the pieces to where one can simply have all their media in a box that you can access anywhere they are holding everything back once again.
All they are doing with this kind of bullshit is yet again making piracy the more attractive option as there isn't any hoop jumping or bullshit to back up or copy that.MKV rip, no different than how the DRM and limited activation bullshit is making the pirate version of most games the more stable and nicer running version compared to the legit. If they would just listen to their damned customers for once, and give them good value in easy to use media, maybe we wouldn't have all this BS in the first place. Instead the *.A.As don't seem happy if they aren't finding a way to actively fuck over their customers, so is anyone surprised when the customer fucks them back?
Wow, color me surprised. So far I have put myself as well as a half a dozen relatives and not once was the data even close to reality. In my own case it says I have four ISPs to choose from up to 25Mbps, when in reality two of those on the list don't even service this area, the DSL offers a MAX of 768k, not the 10Mbps they are claiming because I have actually tried it, and the cable which they are claiming 25Mbps has an absolute max speed of 6Mbps, and that is only if you are willing to pay $300+ a month for a dedicated connection, otherwise it is 2Mbps.
This has to be the most worthless pile of data I have ever come across and the fact that the government NOT ONLY paid 200 million for it, but are actually gonna be basing coverage decisions on this total fairy tale? it is just disgusting. After putting in 8 different people it didn't get a single one right, not even close. I am truly disgusted and whomever compiled this garbage and wrote the checks should be SO fired! I guess that is the nice thing about having a government job, no how bad you fuck up you never get a pink slip. Hell they'll probably get a raise for this bad joke!
You don't seem to be taking into consideration the 911 clock could just be plain wrong, as depending on how long they've had 911 service in the area the tech could be seriously outdated. i know the 911 tech in my area has been pretty much locked at mid 90s levels for years thanks to tight budgets so I doubt seriously their time clocks are decently accurate and certainly not synced with an atomic clock anywhere. I doubt seriously the clocks here could be used for any case where the evidence hinges on seconds, and it is quite possible that this is the case there as well.
Then you have to figure in any possible delays in the FB service which considering their popularity I doubt they have to the second accuracy either. Not saying her ass shouldn't be grass if she was playing with her damned cell instead of paying attention to the road* but we have to be careful not to assign accuracy where there may not be any.
* I know first hand the dangers of people playing with their cells while driving as my dad nearly died last year when a girl in an SUV ran a stop light with enough force to roll a three quarter ton work van 4 times and pin my dad inside with a collapsed lung.
The bitch was we couldn't even sue or hell even muster up any hatred for the girl, as it turned out not only had her insurance lapsed because she lost her job, but she also had three kids under the age of 7 and when they x-rayed her after the accident they found a soon to be fatal cancer in her brain she didn't even know about. Dad's insurance said they could go after her house if he wanted but he said she had a big enough cross to bear and just leave her be. Made me proud to be his son when after all the pain she caused he just walked away. I heard they buried her two months ago and are now trying to find a relative to take the kids. Just sad all the way around.
Yes lets create even more waste by shredding everything, that's the ticket! As I tell my customers who are nice enough not to buy into the "destroy everything!" bullshit and let me have old machines to refurb for the poor "after a standard DoD 3 pass the ONLY way you are gonna get any data off that thing is to pay some data recovery firm (like in TFA) thousands of dollars to get maybe, just maybe, 10-15Mb worth of data back off a whole disk. Who is gonna waste that much money just for a shot at a tiny amount of YOUR data?"
Is that 10Mb of data which may or may not be recoverable and which will cost out the ass for anyone to even attempt REALLY worth creating ever more waste instead of recycling? In this economy there is a whole hell of a lot of poor folks out there that have nothing, and a working computer can help them post resumes, pick up new skills by taking some of the many free e-classes, and generally just make their life a little better.
Is what you are doing REALLY so top secret that someone will spend the kind of time and money required to get it? If not you are just destroying working hardware for no good reason. There are plenty of guys like me that are happy to refurb machines to give to the poor, but we can't afford to be replacing hardware you trash, so any with drives missing end up stripped or in the dump. Is that REALLY better than just doing a DoD 3 and letting someone have it that needs it?
Hi really old CPU dude! Let me ask you this: Do you not believe in the poor having water and electricity? Because last I checked that wasn't in the constitution either yet thanks to the WPA many poor in rural areas got running water and electricity (which not only gave them light, but may have even saved their lives by giving them early warning for tornadoes and other threats) thanks to the government.
Now personally I believe that spending the money to put Americans to work building out a nationwide infrastructure, including fiber, would be a hell of a lot better use for our money than sending it to thugs like we did with Egypt, or paying people to not work as we are doing now, don't you?
The simple facts are these: We have millions out of work and our infrastructure is frankly falling apart. We are falling farther and farther behind the rest of the world when it comes to broadband, our roads and bridges are frankly getting scary, the whole damned thing is a mess, and our ISPs brilliant idea is to just add worse and worse caps and wipe their asses with their ever increasing bonuses.
So why not put actual Americans with families to work building us the infrastructure we need to be competitive? Sounds like a hell of a better deal to bring back the WPA than to bail out banks or blow cash propping up el presidentes. Near my home there are still WPA bridges in use, built rock solid with quality instead of the lowest bidder trash we have now. I'd say a third of the apts in my building are empty now, not because these people moved up or even over, but because they lost everything and now are living on someone's couch if they are lucky.
We need infrastructure and until the morons on capital hill realize one way trade isn't "free" in any way we have million of Americans needing work. So why not put those people to work making our nation better? Because if we wait for the corps to give us nationwide even at the level the other industrialized nations have now we'll be sitting here until hell freezes over. All they will do is add caps and refuse to run lines into any place where they can't make 300%+ profit in the first year. Oh BTW I didn't pull that number out my ass, that is what one of the managers at the local cableco told me was their math for deciding whether to serve an area or not. if they don't make 300% of the cost of the line in the first year then those folks will NEVER get service. lovely huh?
It is also a 200 million dollar pile of BS. I put my mom's address in there and they have the area covered by up to 10Mbps which is complete and TOTAL horseshit. They have Verizon (doesn't service this area) AT&T (doesn't service anyone outside of town, even a single block) and Cox (which told her tough shit, they won't run the block and a half).
So surprise surprise, the government spent 200 million on yet another pile of useless data. They should have to check and see whether or not an area has coverage or if they are just BSing. Because I can tell you that while groups like AT&T will lie their asses off and say they cover a zip code in reality if you live a single inch out of town you are told to piss off. I've been trying to get something better than dialup for my mom for a decade and have just been given the finger over and over, this map is BS.
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Actually if you watch the box set and listen to the commentary you can read between the lines and see what killed Buffy, and that was Joss. For example despite doing a kick ass job with nothing the director of "one down" (the last two Dark Willow episodes) complains throughout that Joss waltzed in when he got his idea for the musical and blew the entire seasons budget on it leaving him with practically nothing to finish the season. He said they literally had to draw the lines on Willow with black pens because that was what they were down to budget wise.
And I would argue that the series could have easily recovered if Joss would have actually showed up instead of only doing the musical and then phoning it in for the rest of the series because the season 8 in comic form (where Joss is actually writing again) is really good, with witty dialog and good character depth same with season six of Angel in comic form (if you wanted to know what happened after the big battle with the dragon you really ought to pick it up, its damned good.).
And for the guy that said "The last two seasons of Angel were good"? Watch the box sets starting at season one and you can tell almost to the episode where Joss started working on Firefly. About midway through season three the episode quality starts getting uneven and the season four was a soap opera that had dick to do with the rest of the series and you can tell Joss had almost nothing to do with the day to day by that time, especially with the second half.
Now compare it to season five from midway on (puppet show) where Joss found out it was to be canceled and actually showed up to finish the series? The writing is like night and day compared to the phoned in episodes. You have character depth again, you have adding to the backstory and mythos, and you have damned witty dialog, all of which are missing when Joss phones it in.
Same thing with Buffy season six where except for the musical and the last two episodes it is just one giant dark suckfest, with none of the witty writing or character development. Even Michelle Trachtenberg in a round table between season 6 and 7 asks point blank if Joss is gonna have her character killed off, because without Joss there to add depth she just comes off as a cliche whiny brat.
While I liked both shows and have the complete box sets for both if you try watching them back to back you can really tell when Joss stopped caring and got busy with other shows. It is especially noticeable when on the rare occasion Joss would show up, as with the musical in season six or the episode with Webbs (Dead friends I believe?) in season seven. The writing difference between Joss when working with his core team like Greenwald and Noxon VS when he just handed off the show to one of them solo or even worse the third stringers in season six and seven of Buffy really is striking. Hell compare the comic written by him now to season four and the first half of Angel season five and Buffy season six and seven and the writing is like night and day.
So try watching them back to back sometime, especially the first four seasons of Buffy and the first three of Angel and compare them to the latter. You'll notice pretty quickly the writing isn't snappy, the dialog is a LOT more ham fisted, and instead of character development you get cliche, because the the third stringers are simply following established character traits instead of developing the characters further as Joss did. I like the hell out of his writing but you can tell a BIG difference between his style and those he brought in to CYA, and it frankly hurt both shows badly.
And it frankly wouldn't surprise me if this is EXACTLY what happens! All it'll take is a nice phone call from Sony or one of their affiliates and PayPal will just lock the money up until the trial is over or he wastes an amount equal to the funds fighting them.
Why anyone would use a company with a history of royally fucking over their customers on any whim for an actual defense fund is beyond me, but I won't touch PayPal with a 50 foot pole. There have just been too many burned for me to allow anything of mine to touch that mess.
Well in my case I had a valid excuse as my sister, their mother was dying of MS at the time so needless to say nobody was much concerned with sex or dating at the time. When their father first found out she had it he decided that "being a dad just ain't my thing" so he skipped out leaving me to raise two kids while my mom took over full time care of my sister.
So whereas we got a few of the basics covered earlier when they asked questions such as "why do girls have boobs?" neither they nor any other member of the family was caring about the birds and the bees at the time with everyone too busy trying to spend as much time with her as possible before she passed. It was only once we had had the funeral and life began to move on that we were able to think about such things.
I just got lucky that around that time I met a truly wonderful woman who not only didn't care that I had kids but dropped everything and used up all her sick days just to come help out. Having a female shoulder to cry on other than my mother (who naturally was in no shape to help anyone) and to let them deal with their grief really helped.
But you can't really judge the average situation to what we had, because anyone who has had to deal with a long term terminal illness in the family knows you just don't have a normal life when that is going on. You do the best you can, but normalcy in that situation is about as far from anyone else as you can get.
That is pretty much the problem with ALL sci-fi though, isn't it? you let a series go on and depending on the quality of the writing to start with either very quickly or in a slow death spiral the writing just goes to shit.
And for all the guys here that moaned about Firefly getting canned? Frankly you should be grateful as Joss Whedon is notorious for getting involved in something new and just phoning it in for anything other than the "new hotness". For an example look at the last two seasons of Buffy and Angel where he was wrapped up in the new hotness that was Firefly. He ended up taking the best writers to Firefly and bringing in third stringers and just phoning it in on Buffy/Angel. Out of those last two season you have MAYBE five episodes between the two worth watching, maybe.
So in a way you should be glad it went out while it was still decent, because otherwise Whedon would have gotten another idea and then Firefly would have been given the Buffy/Angel treatment. Funny thing is now that Firefly is toast and Whedon is doing the comic version of Buffy/Angel the writing is actually good again. Maybe if we wouldn't have been phoning it in it wouldn't have gotten canceled in the first place.
I mean having Harmony have her own MTV reality show and bitching that slayers are interfering with her "God given right as an American" to shop? Now THAT is a hell of a lot funnier and more interesting than the snoozefest he put out for most of the last two years of Buffy/Angel and which I'm sure he would have done to Firefly after a season or two. The guy just bites off more than he can chew and phones it in too much IMHO, and with the kinds of shows he does you really can't do that, if the writing isn't good the whole thing falls apart.
Yes, I have multiple email accounts and one is set up simply to be a backup storage facility for things such as files and emails I may require access to out in the field, or want to make sure I don't lose like pictures or important correspondence.
You see that way my main email address is nice and neat, with only outstanding shipments of parts and currently open conversations in my inbox, whereas my bulk backup is currently at 500+ emails with everything from certain must have files I often find a need for out in the field (such as a reg file that fixes the dreaded "Windows has the sound driver but says "no device" under sound bug) and backups for any important emails sent from any of my addresses so if someone claims I never sent them something I can check by name and find a backup with the date/time stamp to back me up.
So in my case BCC makes it easier to manage multiple accounts while simultaneously giving me an easy backup of anything important just in case my main email provider were to have a "senior moment" like what happened to Hotmail users a few weeks back or Gmail users two years ago. That is why I tell people never trust a single email provider, because bugs happen and backups can get borked. Just because it is owned by Google (or MSFT or Yahoo) doesn't magically make their service perfect. Better to be safe than sorry and with webmail backups if I suddenly have to fix something when I wasn't expecting to work a simple login to my backup has the files that I use most ready to go.
Notice how I got modded down for daring to point out that "free as in freedom" doesn't always work? And as for the "analog hole" you might want to look up Janus DRM, which has been out nearly 5 years now with no major hacks because it supports kernel level DRM in Windows and OSX.
Look folks it really is simple: You can have DRM on the front in or lawsuits on the back end, which would you prefer? Would you prefer to have the content protected so that the one douchebag that posts everything he can get his hands on to P2P doesn't ruin it for everyone else, or would you like to see thousands of lawsuits ala the infamous "Shemale Yum" case we saw here a few months back?
It really is simple: Content owners need to make money or they will close down and bandwidth along with content creation costs. Now everyone wants the convenience of having everything on demand, and the content owners want to provide that to you without getting royally fucked over by the douchebag that posts everything to P2P, so how would YOU suggest they do it? And don't say "piracy exists you should ignore it" because we have seen without even token protection the piracy becomes truly rampant. IIRC the last numbers I saw was something like 86%+ of the adult videos on the "tube" sites are pirated content, and smaller films like The Hurt Locker are having to go after P2P users because the movie won't break even with all the piracy.
So how would YOU solve it? Just refuse to sell to web users? Do like Netflix and just ignore HTML V5 for Silverlight which supports Janus DRM? Because whether you like it or not content owners aren't gonna just put all their content in a format that is as easy to snatch as telling downloadhelper to download all, so you either make compromises or HTML V5 and WebM will BOTH end up being used only by niche players, just like Theora and Vorbis is now. H.264 can be wrapped in flash which supports DRM, and both .NET and Silverlight support Janus, so it isn't like the content owners don't have choices.
So what EXACTLY do you have to offer them besides "free as in freedom" which has no appeal to them whatsoever?
is the rise of the "consumer centric" tech model. One of the things I miss about the old Gates era MSFT is how you had the business line in WinNT and the consumer line in Win9x. With the line split like that those that didn't want the bling bling BS and just wanted a corporate centric desktop had it, while the consumers got the bling bling hand holding.
Now and with the rise of Apple it has considerably gotten worse, is everything made for the home user FIRST and business second. If TFA is correct and BCC is dying it is just another proof of consumer centric (as consumers don't know WTF BCC is) as opposed to business centric design. in the old days business users were first and foremost in the design then afterward you might make a consumer friendly version. Now everything is flipping 3D bling bling transparent windows which is about as useful to businesses as tits on a boar hog.
So if anyone is to blame it is the sudden switch to consumer centric design. You just don't get anything mass market designed for business anymore, it is all being designed for Joe and Sally home user and business is an afterthought. Some may prefer it that way but I miss the days of low resource grey apps that just got the hell out of my way and let me work. Should I tell everyone to get off my lawn or do others miss it as well?
Not really, look at it THIS way: A sends bitchy email to B, B sends his reply with a BCC to boss C, Boss C hits reply all and A gets a copy of an email he only sent to B from his boss.
So if A sent his bitchy email to B only and suddenly his boss is sending him a copy of the bitchy email it really doesn't take Kojack to solve the case. Moral of the story is you should treat BCC as a "everybody might get a copy of this" email and not something private, as you can never overestimate the ability of a PHB to fuck shit up.
Not to mention nobody outside of corporate knew what the hell a BCC was anyway. I've shown users how to BCC themselves when sending pictures so they have a copy in their email and every single time I get "Is that what that was for? I didn't know what that thing was."
It is one of those techs like knowing how to set up your own DNS or change your IP that few outside IT and corporate EVER use or even has a clue is there. I have a feeling if it dies completely out of non corporate environments there will be so few that care it won't even raise a stink. I like BCC simply to send copies to a backup address but it isn't like I just couldn't add the address in the to: field.
Bingo! Give that man a ceeeegar! All Google has done by starting this little pissing contest between WebM and H.264 is make sure that flash wins by a country mile. Because whether FOSS users yell "free as in freedom" all day long or not the simple fact is there are millions of paysites out there and thanks to the pissing contest they will simply use a combo of H.264+flash.
Does anyone HONESTLY think all the paysites in the world are just gonna join hands with RMS and sing "free as in freedom" around the campfire? HELL NO! We are talking billions of dollars worth of content which we all know would end up on P2P 15 seconds after you dropped the DRM. So no DRM is WebM is just yet another reason (along with no iDevice support) why WebM is gonna bomb. If I am a website owner I can cover a good 99% of the planet by sticking with H.264+flash and simply keep a copy of the pre-wrapped H.264 file if I want to support iDevice users.
WebM brings NOTHING to the table, not better file sizes nor picture quality, and now no way to protect my content from ending up on P2P. Yeah, I don't think this is gonna fly.
Hi Matt! You won't have any problems as long as you are honest with your kids and actually know them. With my two boys I had them playing with my hand me down PCs almost from the time they could walk, had them a little LAN set up so they could play each other (no net access of course) at around 6 and gave them timed access to the net (most routers have time based settings) when their schoolwork started requiring research. I finally gave them full access at around the time I was giving them the talk at 15.
Funny part is I knew damned good and well what was gonna happen when I let them loose. I gave them the whole spiel about how many porn sites have bugs but I knew damned good and well the oldest would think I was full of shit and just saying that to spook him. Sure enough about 3 days later his little brother drags me towards his room laughing his ass off and there is the oldest with his head in his hands as "YOU CAN HAVE A BIGGER DICK!" and "HOT SEX IN YOUR AREA!" pop ups just flooded the screen. I looked at his little brother and we both just died laughing. A month without his PC along with having to learn how to do a spyware removal was a valuable life lesson IMHO.
So as long as you're honest with them, take it one step at a time, and realize they WILL fuck up occasionally and that ALL teens will eventually want to look at the opposite sex naked, everything will be alright. Now the oldest is in premed and the youngest is deciding whether he wants to be a chef or go into CAD, so I figure I did alright. One thing I got lucky with was dope, as my ex brother in law became a full blown meth addict which gave the kids a really great example of what drugs can do to you close up. I'm just glad I never lied to the boys or covered for him because now neither one wants a damned thing to do with any drug after seeing him fried with holes in his face where he picked himself bloody.
The world can be a scary place, but as long as you are honest with your kids and actually explain WHY there are rules (other than "because I said so!") then you'll do alright and they turn out just fine. Every friend I went to HS with that had trouble with his/her kids did the "Because I said so" bit and without a better reason the kids just thought they were being asses and pretty much ignored them when they turned teen. But other than the oldest thinking he knew more about computers and the net than me (BWA HA HA HA HA!) I never had a lick of trouble by simply being honest and giving them freedom in slowly larger increments. A little trust goes a long way.
Then here is a thought if Java is so great obey the fricking license Google! is that REALLY so damned hard? Would anybody here have bought the bullshit if MSFT said "No really MS "coffee" isn't Java, we swear! Sure all you Java code runs but it really really isn't Java, promise!"
Lets be honest guys if MSFT would have pulled this shit the crowd here would have laughed them right out of the building. Are you REALLY so in love with Google you'll let them get away with this weasel worded BS? if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, guess what? It is probably a duck!
So lets call a spade a spade folks, this is just Google trying to screw Java while getting away with not paying the mobile fees. Is this REALLY a company you are gonna trust? Mark my words all you guys that are "Android is FOSS yay!" this will NOT be the last time you see Google pull some weasel worded BS. Don't forget this is the same company that is making damned sure to avoid GPL V3 like the clap! Why do you think that is? I'll tell you why, it is so they can "TiVo trick" android at any time and there ain't a damned thing you can do about it.
So the FOSS guys better watch their back and not get too comfy around Google. if they will pull this weasel worded BS even when faced with a company like Oracle that has the money to fight back, why would they not screw FOSS that doesn't have the money to fight squat?
Not to mention this whole "habitable zone" thing is a load of crap IMHO. I mean what are the odds that some alien race is gonna come out just like us and therefor need the exact same conditions as us? We have already detected the possibility of liquid water on Europa IIRC, and that is pretty damned far from the "habitable zone" so who is to say there aren't plenty of creatures living on worlds farther out?
We have no idea what kind of gravity or other conditions may exist there so until/unless we find a way to actually get out there and look their guesses are about as useful as throwing a dart at a dartboard. hell on our own planet we have things living in conditions that would kill us instantly, things that live in unbelievable depths, things that live on methane, etc, so any guesses right now will probably be as worthless as primitive man trying to guess how the world worked.
Uhhh..you DO know the WBC protests more than just funerals, yes? They protest movies and plays, TV and pretty much anything that doesn't spew their militant BS.
Although if the asshats of the WBC are gonna picket a funeral personally I'd rather have Anonymous handing out flowers and drowning out their bullshit with happy slogans than needing a bunch of bikers to surround the WBC and practically hand them another lawsuit on a silver platter, wouldn't you?
Look at it THIS way: One way or another the WBC WILL show up and act like douches, whether or not Anonymous shows up. is it better to let the WBC act like douches unopposed, or to do everything in one's power to take away any abilities the WBC has to be douches and thus hopefully one day run off the WBC for good? We've tried fighting fire with fire with the WBC and all it does is give them lawsuit bait and help them stay afloat. it is time to fight fire with marshmallows and take away any power they had to spew hate.
Hi MR AC! The problem is the MFT bites you in the ass every single time without fail. I have a friend that works in the state crime lab and it is ALWAYS the MFT that gets you. It is almost impossible to remove file traces from the MFT (I know of a few cleaners that will, but the vast majority won't touch it for fear of making the machine unbootable) and they can tell what you had on the drive simply by doing a search of the pointers in the MFT.
Now since I doubt he is using an OS where it is trivial to clear files from the file system like FAT (they also have tools to hunt for files in EXT 2/3 and ReiserFS) and in all likelihood he is running XP or later, well then the odds he could pull off erasing the MFT without making it obvious the MFT was tampered with (remember willful destruction is a felony IIRC) are pretty much zip. It is always the MFT that gets them, especially since so few understand how the MFT works.
But there is an easy way for the Anon guys to win this thing if they are willing to put in the effort like they did with Chanology. Hey Anon guys, you out there? Listen to your old pal Hairyfeet and he'll give you the scoop:
The key to defeating the WDC is to take away their power not through DDoS or bans (which as you pointed out as pro trolls just gets them $$$ from lawsuits) but to turn everything they do into a farce ala classic Yippie absurdist theater. Imagine having members of Anon, complete with the Guy Fawkes masks, perform ballet in a circle around the WDC when they protest. Or do scenes from Shakespeare while just writing in the stupid slogans the WDC chants. In other words strip the power of hate from them by using the right of free speech and assembly to make the WDC look like the fools that they are.
The WDC ONLY has power if they can stir up hatred and by turning their entire "performance" into one big absurdist piece of performance art Anonymous can strip that power away from them. think of it as "fighting fire with marshmallows" as only the Anonymous group can. Not only would it help to get rid of the ass cancer known as WDC, it would be good for the lulz!
Don't forget the kids! That is what switched my customers, it was the kids. You don't have to replace those kid videos more than a couple of times before you get sick of it.
Another poster recommended the WD Live and I have a few that have picked it up, but they usually start with the Nbox because it is REALLY kid friendly, and ripping all the kid movies means a whole lot less crying because Suzy accidentally scratched the Dora the Explorer disc. The Nbox has a nice little menu with only 4 big icons (and the movie one looks like a TV so kids get it) and it is all alphabetical with a preview button so even the ones that can't read yet can look at the picture(although they quickly pick up how many clicks get them what they want to see) and it is cheap enough they can get it without committing any real money in case they don't like it. All it took was me converting ONE family and the next thing you know their friends and relatives are showing up (and telling THEIR friends and relatives) because nobody likes crying kids and busted discs.
And as for "creative marketing Brad"? Dude the current setup IS FUCKING STUPID okay? I don't care how much "you're a pirate ZOMG!" marketing horseshit you spew it doesn't change the fact that the current sitch IS STILL FUCKING STUPID! I mean WTF is the point of having all this kick ass high tech cheap if we can't use it? I mean we could all go back to silent 8mm which I'm sure would make the *.A.As happy because it would be hell to copy BUT IT WOULD ALSO BE HELL TO USE so what is the point?
The simple fact is folks want simple, folks want easy, folks want cheap and useful. You add that $30 Nbox to a $30 320Gb Hitachi portadrive and BOOM! No more crying Suzy, no more hunting for the discs, it is all easy peasy. With today's ripping software like Fair Use Wizard anybody can rip DVDs and drop them onto a media tank, and more importantly why the hell should we listen to a bunch of congress bribing bastards who want to charge for every format shift? Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
To quote an often used expression they are the buggy whip manufacturers of America and everyone else is driving cars. As you pointed out there are millions of sets that won't jump through their hoops and would have to be shitcanned otherwise (hell my monitor at 1600x900 has a great picture and DVI but no HDMI so I'd be SOL) and for a good 99.995% of the public upscaled DVD looks just fine to them. So I'd remind Brad of a little thing known as SACD/Audio DVD, where two standards competed on who could fuck the user more and got kicked by "inferior" MP3. If the choice is perfect picture and hoop jumping (not to mention higher costs and replacement media purchases) or decent picture and easy backups and copies to media tanks I don't think the average family will be hard pressed to choose, do you?
Hell I even switched my 68 year old Luddite father who now just hands me any new DVDs he gets and says "Rip 'em so I can have them on the good box" because once you go media tank watching discs is about as fun as reel to reel. Instant search, never having to switch discs,entire box sets played in order without interruption, it is just nicer in every way. And more importantly what the hell is the point of all this progress if we can't enjoy the fruits of it? I know having my entire 13 box set Joss Whedon collection a single button press away is a hell of a lot nicer than having to crack open the box every fourth episode and my dad thinks being able to just pop the off button when he gets a call and have it start back up right where he left off and still have it play series in order is about the coolest thing since sliced bread.
If you haven't tried one AC I HIGHLY recommend the Nbox. it is cheap, built like a tank, does 720p (or you can spend $15 more and get HDMI along with MKV and 1080p support) easy to operate and runs cool with little power usage and makes a nice gift for family. A hell of a good deal and sure beats dealing with discs! Give one to a family member with kids along with an offer to rip the kid videos for them and you are a God to them!
Uhhh pretty much all since there exists NO competition in a good 80%+ of the USA? I'll use myself for an example: Here I have the "choice" of Cox cable (boy did they choose a perfect name, since they are dicks) AT&T DSL which MAXES at 768k and which I've been told "tough shit, take it or leave it" because they have NO intention of upgrading the lines, or the local WISP that if you are lucky your connection works maybe 6 hours a day and who pulls your plug if you use close to 1Gb a day.
So where EXACTLY would my "choice" come from if Cox decides to fuck me out of Youtrube/Netflix/etc? Because while you may have piles of money in the bank to afford to abandon your place of residence and start over in some other state just for better Internet, most of us frankly can't afford that. We have wives/GFs, family, jobs, etc that simply don't allow us to just walk away and without net neutrality the ISPs know they can do anything they want while sending you a bill that is crazy priced and has a full color Goatse under complaint dept and you can't do shit because you've got nowhere to go.
So while I'm all for the free market the simple fact is there is NO free market for Internet access for the majority of us. Hell look up the broadband report article and see how many were like me complaining the numbers were an outright lie. You simply can't "vote with your dollars" if the choice is take it or enjoy dialup.
Except you seem to be missing one little important fact: We are giving the machines to poor folks not guys from black hat. And before anybody says "It'll end up on eBay!" no it won't, I've been refurbing machines for the poor and have NEVER seen one end up on eBay, because number one poor folks don't do eBay and number two as long as something works poor folks hang onto it.
I have 400Mhz-600MHz PCs still out in the field being used after all these years and what happens is if the parent happened to get something better the machine gets passed down to the child. Hell one 1.1GHz Celeron that has come through here for little repairs and upgrades a half a dozen times has passed through about 7 relatives in a single family so far, going from mother to child to cousin to aunt etc.
So there is NO NEED to go around creating more waste and destruction when it simply isn't required. in this economy there are literally millions living hand to mouth that could use any help they can get. I'm proud to say most businesses in my area haven't subscribed to the "ZOMG Destroy everything!" attitude and thanks to them I'm looking at some nice socket 478 P4s I'll be refurbing this weekend to give away to those that don't have computers. I have helped churches, a battered women's shelter, and more individuals than I can count...maybe a little story will help change folk's minds about destruction...
I got a call from an old teacher friend of mine a couple of years back asking if I would help him out as a personal favor and do a little free work for this girl taking night classes. The poor little thing was working days and taking early evening classes while her mom watched the kids in order to make a better life for her family. So I get there and the poor thing is in tears because she can't get the software she needs for class to work and Shaun is telling her "It'll be okay, Kevin is a wiz, he'll fix it".
So I get there and the poor little thing is trying to use a 486SX to do her schoolwork on. She looks up at me crying and says "Can you fix it, or at least make it so my son can use it while I try to get another one somewhere?" and I just smile and pat her on the shoulder and say "No problem ma'am, in fact I'll have you fixed up in under 20 minutes" to which Shaun looks like I'm a miracle worker or full of shit, which he can't decide.I tell her to just follow me out to my truck and to back her car up next to it. Lucky for her I'd just got done finishing up a job modernizing a company that was nice enough to let me DoD 3 the old P4s and gave me them along with the monitors/keyboards/mice so I could give them to the poor.
So I sat her box by my truck and opened up the back doors and started to load a couple of nice office P4s into her little hatchback "Oh no" she says "I can't afford to buy any computers right now" and when I told her they were 100% free and that she and her son were getting a couple of nice office machines I thought she'd never stop crying. I took the more powerful of the two into the class and loaded her software along with handing her a little autorun CD I make that has all the software like Firefox and free AV that you need for the basics and sent her on her way. I heard later she graduated with ease and got a really good office job, thanks to having those PCs which she is still using both her and her son from what I was told.
So please don't fall for the hype, poor folks ain't black hats, hell most of them are lucky if they can use a search engine. And with so much eWaste being created yearly and so many poor folks just barely surviving that machine could do some real good out there in the hands of someone needy.
And you just hit the nail on the head as to why BD is ultimately doomed. I've had several customers come in asking about BD and when they found out the extra gear and hoop jumping they'd have to do to rip it compared to DVD they were all "How much is an upscaling DVD player again?". Most around here have either figured out how easy it is to rip DVDs or has a relative that does it for them, and between that and media tanks like this one (which is one of my hottest sellers ATM, people just love the thing) while BD will have the videophiles I just don't ever see it reaching DVD level support.
But what really pisses me off about the *.A.As is the double standard bullshit they try to pull. They say "oh you didn't buy the (insert movie/game/CD) you bought a license to use it!" (and thus getting around first sale). Okay, I'll play. That means I get to replace it for free if anything happens to the media, right? After all I already have a license to use it? "Oh no" they say "You bought a copy thus you have to go buy a replacement!"
BULLSHIT! Total unbelievable bullshit! Never in history have we allowed ANY company to use either/or when it comes to copies and licenses.Physical media and licenses have clearly written rules and obligations under the law, and what these bastards are trying to pull is getting the protections of both and the responsibilities of neither. We are already being held back by a bunch that if anyone would have listened to them back in the day both video recorders and recordable media would have never existed, and now that we are finally getting all the pieces to where one can simply have all their media in a box that you can access anywhere they are holding everything back once again.
All they are doing with this kind of bullshit is yet again making piracy the more attractive option as there isn't any hoop jumping or bullshit to back up or copy that .MKV rip, no different than how the DRM and limited activation bullshit is making the pirate version of most games the more stable and nicer running version compared to the legit. If they would just listen to their damned customers for once, and give them good value in easy to use media, maybe we wouldn't have all this BS in the first place. Instead the *.A.As don't seem happy if they aren't finding a way to actively fuck over their customers, so is anyone surprised when the customer fucks them back?
Wow, color me surprised. So far I have put myself as well as a half a dozen relatives and not once was the data even close to reality. In my own case it says I have four ISPs to choose from up to 25Mbps, when in reality two of those on the list don't even service this area, the DSL offers a MAX of 768k, not the 10Mbps they are claiming because I have actually tried it, and the cable which they are claiming 25Mbps has an absolute max speed of 6Mbps, and that is only if you are willing to pay $300+ a month for a dedicated connection, otherwise it is 2Mbps.
This has to be the most worthless pile of data I have ever come across and the fact that the government NOT ONLY paid 200 million for it, but are actually gonna be basing coverage decisions on this total fairy tale? it is just disgusting. After putting in 8 different people it didn't get a single one right, not even close. I am truly disgusted and whomever compiled this garbage and wrote the checks should be SO fired! I guess that is the nice thing about having a government job, no how bad you fuck up you never get a pink slip. Hell they'll probably get a raise for this bad joke!
You don't seem to be taking into consideration the 911 clock could just be plain wrong, as depending on how long they've had 911 service in the area the tech could be seriously outdated. i know the 911 tech in my area has been pretty much locked at mid 90s levels for years thanks to tight budgets so I doubt seriously their time clocks are decently accurate and certainly not synced with an atomic clock anywhere. I doubt seriously the clocks here could be used for any case where the evidence hinges on seconds, and it is quite possible that this is the case there as well.
Then you have to figure in any possible delays in the FB service which considering their popularity I doubt they have to the second accuracy either. Not saying her ass shouldn't be grass if she was playing with her damned cell instead of paying attention to the road* but we have to be careful not to assign accuracy where there may not be any.
* I know first hand the dangers of people playing with their cells while driving as my dad nearly died last year when a girl in an SUV ran a stop light with enough force to roll a three quarter ton work van 4 times and pin my dad inside with a collapsed lung. The bitch was we couldn't even sue or hell even muster up any hatred for the girl, as it turned out not only had her insurance lapsed because she lost her job, but she also had three kids under the age of 7 and when they x-rayed her after the accident they found a soon to be fatal cancer in her brain she didn't even know about. Dad's insurance said they could go after her house if he wanted but he said she had a big enough cross to bear and just leave her be. Made me proud to be his son when after all the pain she caused he just walked away. I heard they buried her two months ago and are now trying to find a relative to take the kids. Just sad all the way around.
Yes lets create even more waste by shredding everything, that's the ticket! As I tell my customers who are nice enough not to buy into the "destroy everything!" bullshit and let me have old machines to refurb for the poor "after a standard DoD 3 pass the ONLY way you are gonna get any data off that thing is to pay some data recovery firm (like in TFA) thousands of dollars to get maybe, just maybe, 10-15Mb worth of data back off a whole disk. Who is gonna waste that much money just for a shot at a tiny amount of YOUR data?"
Is that 10Mb of data which may or may not be recoverable and which will cost out the ass for anyone to even attempt REALLY worth creating ever more waste instead of recycling? In this economy there is a whole hell of a lot of poor folks out there that have nothing, and a working computer can help them post resumes, pick up new skills by taking some of the many free e-classes, and generally just make their life a little better.
Is what you are doing REALLY so top secret that someone will spend the kind of time and money required to get it? If not you are just destroying working hardware for no good reason. There are plenty of guys like me that are happy to refurb machines to give to the poor, but we can't afford to be replacing hardware you trash, so any with drives missing end up stripped or in the dump. Is that REALLY better than just doing a DoD 3 and letting someone have it that needs it?
Hi really old CPU dude! Let me ask you this: Do you not believe in the poor having water and electricity? Because last I checked that wasn't in the constitution either yet thanks to the WPA many poor in rural areas got running water and electricity (which not only gave them light, but may have even saved their lives by giving them early warning for tornadoes and other threats) thanks to the government.
Now personally I believe that spending the money to put Americans to work building out a nationwide infrastructure, including fiber, would be a hell of a lot better use for our money than sending it to thugs like we did with Egypt, or paying people to not work as we are doing now, don't you?
The simple facts are these: We have millions out of work and our infrastructure is frankly falling apart. We are falling farther and farther behind the rest of the world when it comes to broadband, our roads and bridges are frankly getting scary, the whole damned thing is a mess, and our ISPs brilliant idea is to just add worse and worse caps and wipe their asses with their ever increasing bonuses.
So why not put actual Americans with families to work building us the infrastructure we need to be competitive? Sounds like a hell of a better deal to bring back the WPA than to bail out banks or blow cash propping up el presidentes. Near my home there are still WPA bridges in use, built rock solid with quality instead of the lowest bidder trash we have now. I'd say a third of the apts in my building are empty now, not because these people moved up or even over, but because they lost everything and now are living on someone's couch if they are lucky.
We need infrastructure and until the morons on capital hill realize one way trade isn't "free" in any way we have million of Americans needing work. So why not put those people to work making our nation better? Because if we wait for the corps to give us nationwide even at the level the other industrialized nations have now we'll be sitting here until hell freezes over. All they will do is add caps and refuse to run lines into any place where they can't make 300%+ profit in the first year. Oh BTW I didn't pull that number out my ass, that is what one of the managers at the local cableco told me was their math for deciding whether to serve an area or not. if they don't make 300% of the cost of the line in the first year then those folks will NEVER get service. lovely huh?
It is also a 200 million dollar pile of BS. I put my mom's address in there and they have the area covered by up to 10Mbps which is complete and TOTAL horseshit. They have Verizon (doesn't service this area) AT&T (doesn't service anyone outside of town, even a single block) and Cox (which told her tough shit, they won't run the block and a half).
So surprise surprise, the government spent 200 million on yet another pile of useless data. They should have to check and see whether or not an area has coverage or if they are just BSing. Because I can tell you that while groups like AT&T will lie their asses off and say they cover a zip code in reality if you live a single inch out of town you are told to piss off. I've been trying to get something better than dialup for my mom for a decade and have just been given the finger over and over, this map is BS.