Actually, I just read a very interesting message posted by a guy who did accounting for movie theaters.
He claims he has never once seen a theater that would have been profitable if it wasn't for selling concessions!
Apparently, Hollywood screws over the theaters pretty bad on their cost to show new films. (Typically, they do a 90/10 deal. Hollywood gets 90% of whatever a new movie earns in ticket sales, and the theater keeps the other 10%. After the film runs for so many weeks, the amount drops on a sliding scale. So after a few weeks, it might be 70/30 instead of 90/10 - but lots of people already saw the movie by then.)
Furthermore, Hollywood often forces the theaters to enter a contract guaranteeing they'll show the movie for no fewer than a set number of weeks. (That partially explains why so many of the mom and pop theaters, and maybe even some of the drive-thrus, have closed down. To offer a decent selection of movies all showing at once, you have to have a large number of screens.)
For old movies, they sometimes offer a deal where a theater can simply buy it, instead of renting it - and then can make 100% of the profit showing it whenever they like. This is rarely done, however. (Hollywood makes exceptions to this rule for perennial favorites like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", where a theater would obviously rather just buy it outright if they could.)
So what you really have is a business model of selling people food and drinks, not making money showing movies. That's why the stuff seems like such a rip-off.
I agree with your assertions, but just FYI - we have a rather unique situation where I live. Here in St. Louis, Missouri - one of our municipalities (Kirkwood) has their own power company. I'm not quite clear on how this came to be, but I understand the power company handling the rest of the area has made numerous attempts to buy them out - and all have been rejected. (Well, actually, the power company handling everything other than Kirkwood used to be "Union Electric", but now they're "AmerenUE". No idea what AmerenUE thinks about the Kirkwood situation.) Kirkwood residents seem to prefer their own local power provider.
This isn't a case of "duplicating infrastructure", though - which would seem to be unworkable. Instead, a local power company just happens to own the resources for the area, instead of the larger "monopoly" electric company. Not sure if this is the case anyplace else in the U.S.?
Bleah.... All your story does is gives me less respect for Gateway. Microsoft simply can't "force" any business to stop providing an alternate office suite. Oh sure, they can threaten and suggest that they might not get as good of pricing next time around, if they don't change their ways. But ultimately, the PC makers hold all the cards.
Now, more than ever, most of the computer being sold come from a handful of vendors. (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba, etc.) Microsoft is the one who can't afford a rebellion by even one of these vendors. Ever since 1995 or so, it's been a "given" that MS Office is a requirement for a PC used for "productivity". Now, that's slipping away, because workable alternatives exist at lower prices. Of course, MS feels that the Windows OS is another "given", which all the vendors "need" from them to build a sellable PC.
It sounds to me like they're trying to leverage the Windows OS (their last real "jewel") to keep people buying their Office products. How long until they lose their "lock" on the marketplace with Windows, too?
Anyway - for what it's worth, I have no qualm with Microsoft Works. I've loaded their latest version on PCs as slow as Pentium 100Mhz systems with 32MB of RAM, and it's *still* functional. It's certainly not "bloated" like most MS code. It lacks a lot of "power features", but it's targeted squarely at a buyer who doesn't use those features anyway. It's also priced reasonably. So in the grand scheme of things, one could do a lot worse than having MS Works on their PC.... I just don't like the corporate B.S. that says "We had to switch from StarOffice to this, because MS said so."
Yeah, I was glad to see someone bringing up AMI Pro. (Otherwise, I was going to do so myself!) That was my favorite word processor too, for quite a while.
It looked like the "WordPro" incarnations were noticeably better than the AMI Pro I used to use, too. As an experiment, I loaded a copy of WordPro on my brother's laptop so he could use it when he went away to college. Unfortunately, he said it just didn't work out for him - because he was the only student there not using MS Word. He didn't like having a unique set of menus and features, because he could never follow other people's step-by-step directions to perform tasks.
If it wasn't for IBM/Lotus's terrible job of trying to unify the products in "SmartSuite Millenium" - I would still use WordPro myself. Like you said though, the interface between the Lotus apps isn't even consistent - and their toolbar/launchbar thing is a screen real-estate wasting annoyance.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right - but the numbers of these folks keeps decreasing. The point is, in the *long run*, the AOL business model will probably become non-viable.
EG. At my last employer, we had several users who had AOL accounts. When we started allowing remote access to our systems through a VPN, the VPN tunneling software had compatibility issues with AOL's software. Of course, AOL made no effort to correct the issues. (It was pretty much "over the heads" of those doing their phone tech. support anyway.) We enacted a policy that "AOL is unsupported", if people wanted to use our corporate systems remotely.
A couple die-hards still refused to switch. One guy even got a seperate Inet dial-up account just for connecting to us at work, but still used AOL for everything else. The biggest roadblock in the way of ditching AOL? Usually, the kids/family. The employee wanting to switch wasn't willing to make his kids and/or wife suffer through getting a brand new email address, learning everything all over again, etc.
So yeah, right now, some people feel pretty "locked-in" to using AOL -- but the pressure is on them to move away from it. Every time AOL software causes conflicts with other software packages people need, it shrinks their customer base. Every time Microsoft makes it easier to get online without the need of additional software on top, AOL's customer-base shrinks. Every time someone is lured in by the benefits of broadband via their local phone company (who also serves as the ISP), AOL's customer-base shrinks.
Hey, I just modded you up, because your viewpoint is pretty interesting - and doesn't just mimic the same old stuff I read over and over on these issues.
On the other hand, I really think the "killing good, but sex bad?" question is much more easily explained when it comes to video games.
The bottom line is, games require action, excitement, and plain old fun, or else they're just not any good. Ever since most of us were little kids, we liked playing with toy guns. (Most of us probably owned a squirt gun, or a cap pistol, or something....)
There's a since of "power" that comes with holding a gun (even if it's just a toy one, and you're playing imaginary games using it). It also requires practice and skill to become good at shooting.
This seems like a perfect formula to translate into the "virtual world", as a shooting game. Since it's obviously computer-generated anyway, why not experiment with dropping the player into situations that you wouldn't *really* want to be stuck in, in real life? (EG. Fighting off the "bad guys" in the middle of a war.) You get all of the excitement, all of the potential glory of victory, and none of the negatives (such as real people dying!).
On the other hand, dropping sex into games generally does little to nothing for their "fun value". Whether you're talking about "true love" or plain old "lust", it's all about two people arousing and stimulating each other. When this is reduced to showing you animated drawings of naked people, much is lost. At best, an extremely well-rendered sexual image of a member of the opposite sex might get you a bit "stimulated", but you're simply going to desire a real person afterwards. The game itself isn't ultimately going to "do anything for you".
Games are supposed to serve as escapes from reality -- not reminders of things you want/desire but can't/don't currently have.
The public only switched from LP and cassette to CD because it was several magnitudes of order better. (No more rewinding and fast-forwarding tapes that tend to wear out, or accidently get erased when someone runs by them with the vacuum cleaner. No more flipping the record over to hear the other half of the album. No more background hiss or pops and clicks.)
In fact, I'd wager that the actual ability for CD to reproduce sound more faithfully than the other formats was the *last* thing on people's list of reasons to switch, truth be told. (Most of the consumers who raved about CDs sounding so much better were really referring to the afore-mentioned lack of pops, clicks, tape hiss, or warbling effects of a turntable not spinning at the perfect speed, or tape transport mechanism slipping. They weren't really referring to improved high-frequency response, etc.)
(Heck, most of the CD players people first purchased were built onto sub $200 boom-boxes, that certainly weren't paragons of quality audio reproduction!)
The public simply won't switch formats again, simply on claims of "better than CD quality" sound. Most people won't even be able to notice the improvements, when they go to check this new technology out.
I tried to watch Buffy a few times, due to all the hype surrounding it. It did nothing for me. I felt like it was simply a show I would have enjoyed if I was still a teenager, but now? Uh-uh... (I have no idea how old you are, but for reference, I recently turned 31.)
Friends.... I'll grant you it's funny, sometimes, but nothing "draws me to it". It's one of those shows I could handle sitting down to watch at a friend's house, if it was already on and everyone else was watching it. Would I ever bother to actually tape it? Nah....
Angel... saw 2 episodes, and didn't like it a bit. Why? Dunno, just seemed too "fake" to me, and maybe I'm a bit "tough" on any show featuring a female heroine character to start with. (After all, 99% of the time, these end up being cheezy excuses to oogle at some actress/model - and the actual plot is weak to non-existant. Think Charlie's Angels, or V.I.P., for 2 examples.)
Of the shows you mentioned, Enterprise is the one I'd be most likely to make a real attempt to watch regularly. Unfortunately, I don't get UPN on my Dish Network subscription right now. I'm stuck watching ST:TNG re-runs on TNN.
Haven't seen Firefly or John Doe yet, so it's not fair to pass judgement on those.
Yeah, while I can't really fault you for using whatever makes you happiest and gets the job done -- I honestly think most people take the other route.
AKA. I hate MS and their pricing, so therefore I run a pirated copy of Windows, and use Linux occasionally (either on another box, as a server - or in dual-boot configuration).
Who's more "right"? Technically, you are. Which method lets someone get more use of applications from their PC for their dollar though? Umm, I have to go with the guy pirating Windows.
I completely agree. I had a number of discussions about BeOS and its merits with one of my friends who does software development for a living. He was a huge BeOS fan, and is probably the one responsible for me giving it a good second look. (I installed a free copy I received with a magazine, but quickly uninstalled it after it didn't seem very useful at first glance.)
It seems to me that most BeOS fans are, in fact, software developers. Most of the really powerful features inside BeOS are only appreciated by a developer. (Users really don't care how threads or objects are handled, as long as they like the look and feel, and functionality of whatever software they're using!)
I think this is what will lead to its eventual death, and certainly what caused the end of its original production and updates.
First and foremost, an OS has to cater to its *users*. For an operating system that was so "developer friendly", I didn't see all that much real development going on. You had the typical re-hashes/ports from the Unix/Linux world, and a relative "handfull" of original programs. Much of the shareware I downloaded for BeOS was quite bug-ridden and broken. Sure, they did regular updates - but you shouldn't have to suffer through 4 or 5 updates to your favorite IRC client before you get one that quits crashing and shutting down during use.
Not only that, but if there was any supposed "niche" potential to BeOS, it was supposed to be multimedia. Where was the firewire support for downloading from DV camcorders, then? Where were the up-to-date video drivers for high-performance cards? Where were all the hard disk recording and MIDI sequencers? (Sure, someone had 1 or 2 shareware MIDI sequencers for BeOS - but at least give me *one* commercial "standard" in a Be version! Cakewalk? Steinberg CuBase? Logic Audio? Nope.... not there.)
It seems to me like this was really an OS that died before it was even ready to get started. It probably could have gone someplace if they built the apps and secured deals with commercial vendors to port to it BEFORE it was officially announced to the public.
Did you read the entire article that this discussion is linked to?
The guy who wrote it even explains *why* drinking liquid nitrogen isn't always "safe".
He says he successfully did that experiment a couple dozen times with no problem, until the last time - when the enamel on his two front teeth shattered from contracting, due to the extreme cold.
I don't think I'd want to risk screwing up my teeth over this stunt....
Huh? This argument of yours has more holes in it than swiss cheese.
1. If someone suddenly earns a big increase in pay, they quickly adapt to it. It's called "living within one's means" and it happens all the time. People don't automatically expect it should cost "no more than a McDonalds dinner" when they start earning enough money to go to fancy restaurants. They won't suddenly expect movies should be nearly free either, just because they were getting pirated movies dirt cheap in the past.
2. Plenty of things are "against the law", yet people opt to ignore that fact anyway. That's because morality doesn't equal legality. How many times have you chosen to exceed the posted speed limit when driving? How often did you choose not to report that sales tax you technically owe on your mail order purchases? Did you have a problem with your conscience afterwards? (I bet not!)
When it comes to movies, I see it as quite parallel with entertainment software. Almost nobody can afford to see everything (or buy everything) that's released. You have a certain monthly budget you can allocate towards these entertainment expenses, and that's about it. Most people *do* occasionally go see a movie in the theater. If they download and watch several more, so what? Yeah, once again, it's technically "illegal", but they most likely have a clear conscience about it - precisely because they know they're already spending as much as they're going to spend on going out to see movies. They might not go see the ones they downloaded, but they'll go see others. The industry achieved their goal: "Get the consumer to pay to watch as much of our material as possible."
Furthermore, it sounds to me like if digital becomes the de-facto standard for theaters and projection -- they'll begin doing such things as downloading new movies via satellite.
Once this happens, you can be sure the hackers will be right there, finding ways to break whatever encryption is used - and streaming the new movies onto their hard drives from the comfort of their own homes.
No, I don't consider it "rude" to ask what problem I have with "passive entertainment". In fact, it's a very good question.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with it, as such. I'm certainly not a "workaholic". I'm more the type who starts getting annoyed quickly if I'm stuck at work more than 8 hours in a day. (Sure, I'll do it if there's a really good reason for it, but not just because I can't get enough - or because I think it somehow makes me look like a better worker in the bosses' eyes.) I simply find that as a rule, TV programming is lacking in value. Even the shows I find I enjoy tend to get "stale" after the first few seasons - when the fresh ideas in them start running dry.
Most TV is based around the same old themes. You've got the ever-present cop shows, the hospital shows, the love stories/soap operas, the reality-TV stuff, cartoons, and either sci-fi or witchcraft/super powers shows.
Sometimes, sure, you just need a break. You don't necessarily want to fall asleep, but you're ready to relax and let someone "tell you a story" through a movie or TV. I just question it when people start making plans around TV sitcoms and the like. (EG. This gal at my last job used to come in every day asking people if they saw this program or that, and talk about them all day long. She had to be religiously watching at least 4 or 5 shows per night. That's scary when one stops to think about it. She's missing out on living her own life, complete with interesting experiences to share. Instead, she's sitting around memorizing others' ficticious stories.)
I'm a little curious what these 6 programs are that you find worthwhile to record every week? Like I said before - I can't find that much that I care enough about to bother recording it. I used to love watching MST3K and the Simpsons, King of the Hill, the X-Files, Star Trek: TNG, and for a brief time got into Forever Knight. I *still* watch the Star Trek re-runs occasionally on TNN, because there's so little else worth watching. Otherwise, I'd just as soon turn on CNN Headline News, TLC, or Discovery and learn about something real.
Re:whew, I'm not the only one ...
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The Aging Gamer
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yep, agreed!
I recently turned 31 myself, and last Xmas, I bought myself a PS2 and several games for it. Granted, I was always a bit selective about what I purchased/played. There seem to be quite a few "teenie-bopper" games out there that don't do anything for me.
But how can you place an "age limit" on sports games, billiards games, flight simulators, well-done car racing sims, and any games with "mature" themes + good graphics, sound, and all around gameplay (like GTA3 for example)?
As a matter of fact, one of the guys I worked with who was a few years older than me got hooked on PS2 after I kept telling him about the stuff available for it. (Initially, he wrote it off as kid stuff - but his interest was piqued when he heard about Gran Turismo 3 and the like.) I think he bought one "for his kid" as an excuse, and ended up playing it himself.
In fact, I think one of society's big problems today is the number of folks who live in relative boredom and depression because of a self-inflicted lack of fun/hobbies. There's this prevelant sense that as you reach age 30 or so, you're "not supposed" to do lots of stuff anymore. (No more big car stereo upgrades.... no more video games.... yadda, yadda.) Screw that. I never want to grow old and be one of the "statistics" that sits around drinking beer in front of the TV, watching only football, baseball and/or hockey - goes to work, eats, and sleeps, and never really does anything else "for the fun of it".
I never tried buying music CDs on eBay, but I do know for a fact there are quite a few DVD movies up there that are in a "grey area".
For example, do a search for the collections of all the season episodes of the X-Files TV shows on DVD. You may find a few US editions, but you'll also see many cheaper ones that are imports. They seem to be counterfeits, but they may just be cheaper quality, yet still legal for sale in the country of origin, versions. I couldn't determine for sure. (They did seem to be packaged in authentic packaging.)
No - you *assume* you're losing that much in sales because of your purely anecdotal evidence.
In fact, perhaps your market for your videos is drying up. Maybe you've sold enough copies to all the folks who wanted them. Perhaps all that's left now are people thinking "Eh, I might pay $5 for a copy to check it out - but it's not worth more than that to me."
Seriously, I do believe it's probably a combination of things (not *just* what I mention above) -- but I hate these bogus statistics of losses on "pirated materials".
Right.... I've even done bid "shilling" on eBay a time or two, with the help of a friend who also used eBay.
Fact is, this behavior would go away if it wasn't for eBay's fee structure. eBay says "If you want to ensure you don't sell your item for under X amount, set a reserve price, or start the bidding higher." Unfortunately, doing so means eBay slaps you with a fee for using reserve pricing, or they get a larger listing fee - since you start your bidding price at a higher amount.
Many users refuse to even bid on "reserve auctions" because they don't like having no idea what you're actually looking to get for a given item.
I try to start my auctions at $1.00 (or less) to spark interest. Unfortunately, once in a while, I have something fairly valuable up for auction, and nobody bids until the last minute. (Fine, except only so many bids can even be placed in that last 45-60 second window when everyone starts bidding madly.) There's just no way I'll let some of these things go for only $5 or whatever.... That's where the "shill" bids come in. You throw a few bids into the mix, throughout the length of the auction, and it usually gets the item noticed. After that, you let people bid on their own.
Note: I'm not advocating jacking the prices up as high as you can with shill bids. I'm simply talking about using them to prevent bidders from practically robbing you of quality items for a buck or two.
Thank-you! I don't know why your comment wasn't modded up -- but I suppose it's still the minority view here for some twisted reason.
The fact is, eBay shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of the users, any more than the local grocery store should be held liable if people post fraudulent sales on their cork boards near the entrances.
If eBay isn't even bothering to cancel/disable accounts after multiple frauds are reported, well - that's irresponsible on their part. But honestly, I don't think that's the crux of the issue. I *often* see accounts that are suspended, when I look back through user info on bidders of my old auctions who had negative feedback.
More than anything, this is a case of "kill the messenger" - because people get angry when they're ripped off, and look for someone to point the finger at. It's easier to pick on eBay (who has lots of $'s) than it is to hunt down and prosecute the person who actually scammed you.
If TiVo actually does go under, I really feel that it will be a reflection of the relative lack of TV programming worth recording in the first place....
Let's face it, VCR's are dirt cheap nowdays, and the tapes have the advantage of being removeable and easy to trade with others.
Most of us only have one or two TV programs we care enough about to bother recording them, if that. For a task that small, a regular old VCR does the trick.
TiVo is very cool, but primarily, it just encourages the user to watch more TV they wouldn't have bothered watching otherwise. That's not something I'd pay hundreds of dollars for, and many others won't either.
Personally, I make a conscious effort to limit my TV watching time. It's all too easy to sit back and get passively entertained by television nonsense, and suddenly realize you've wasted hour after hour, accomplishing nothing.
I use that method here, too. But generally, I find it's not extremely effective - because the auto-dialers you hang up on like that just try back again and again, at least 3 or 4 more times, until they detect you've actually picked up and talked to them.
Thanks for this informative post, but I beg to differ on how some telemarketing operations work.
I actually did telemarketing for about a year for an area carpet cleaning company. (Talk about a job I'll never do again.)
Anyway - they in fact *did* want to pay the employees to manually mark the calls as busy, answering machines, etc. We all had dumb terminals at our desks, and it worked like this:
Dialer would call out from the phone number database, and as soon as it was finished dialing a number, would attempt to pass it to the first available telemarketer. (If everyone was on the line, it would apparently just abort the stray call; judging from the number of times people seemed irate as soon as we talked to them, acting like we'd been calling and hanging up on them previously.)
When a call was passed to you, you'd immediately say "Hello", and glance at your dumb terminal screen, which was supposed to already be showing you the customer's name and address, etc. Assuming it displayed their last name, you'd immediately follow the "Hello" with a "Mr." or "Mrs." and the name shown, so it all appeared natural. (Sometimes the system got slow, so you had to change your opening pitch to something like "Hello! I'm calling with xxx carpet cleaners, to offer you specials, Mr. Doe.") If you heard a busy signal, a disconnected line, or an answering machine, you'd key in a letter code (such as "B" for busy) and it would close your line, clear your screen - and you'd wait for the next call.
We also had a letter code we could key in if a customer told us not to ever call them again. It was supposed to mark the number for deletion from the dialing database. (I believe the numbers were actually deleted only overnight, when the manager started running a database clean-up and update type operation.)
I don't remember the exact details on the other letter codes, but I believe they basically instructed the dialer to try the call again after preset numbers of minutes. (EG. Typing in a D for a disconnected line might tell it to call back again in 20 minutes, while a B for busy might tell it to try again in 10 minutes.)
Ah, interesting. I never caught that Bell was officially adding that service (scam?) automatically to new line installations.
I got into a fight with SWBT recently because they added the DSL version of that service to my DSL circuit. The strange thing was, they didn't even add it right away. The charges just started appearing on my monthly bill several months after I had the line put in. They did end up taking it back off and crediting me for the previous month as well, but refused to explain how it got there in the first place.
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Actually, I just read a very interesting message posted by a guy who did accounting for movie theaters.
He claims he has never once seen a theater that would have been profitable if it wasn't for selling concessions!
Apparently, Hollywood screws over the theaters pretty bad on their cost to show new films. (Typically, they do a 90/10 deal. Hollywood gets 90% of whatever a new movie earns in ticket sales, and the theater keeps the other 10%. After the film runs for so many weeks, the amount drops on a sliding scale. So after a few weeks, it might be 70/30 instead of 90/10 - but lots of people already saw the movie by then.)
Furthermore, Hollywood often forces the theaters to enter a contract guaranteeing they'll show the movie for no fewer than a set number of weeks. (That partially explains why so many of the mom and pop theaters, and maybe even some of the drive-thrus, have closed down. To offer a decent selection of movies all showing at once, you have to have a large number of screens.)
For old movies, they sometimes offer a deal where a theater can simply buy it, instead of renting it - and then can make 100% of the profit showing it whenever they like. This is rarely done, however. (Hollywood makes exceptions to this rule for perennial favorites like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", where a theater would obviously rather just buy it outright if they could.)
So what you really have is a business model of selling people food and drinks, not making money showing movies. That's why the stuff seems like such a rip-off.
I agree with your assertions, but just FYI - we have a rather unique situation where I live. Here in St. Louis, Missouri - one of our municipalities (Kirkwood) has their own power company. I'm not quite clear on how this came to be, but I understand the power company handling the rest of the area has made numerous attempts to buy them out - and all have been rejected. (Well, actually, the power company handling everything other than Kirkwood used to be "Union Electric", but now they're "AmerenUE". No idea what AmerenUE thinks about the Kirkwood situation.) Kirkwood residents seem to prefer their own local power provider.
This isn't a case of "duplicating infrastructure", though - which would seem to be unworkable. Instead, a local power company just happens to own the resources for the area, instead of the larger "monopoly" electric company. Not sure if this is the case anyplace else in the U.S.?
Bleah.... All your story does is gives me less respect for Gateway. Microsoft simply can't "force" any business to stop providing an alternate office suite. Oh sure, they can threaten and suggest that they might not get as good of pricing next time around, if they don't change their ways. But ultimately, the PC makers hold all the cards.
Now, more than ever, most of the computer being sold come from a handful of vendors. (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba, etc.) Microsoft is the one who can't afford a rebellion by even one of these vendors. Ever since 1995 or so, it's been a "given" that MS Office is a requirement for a PC used for "productivity". Now, that's slipping away, because workable alternatives exist at lower prices. Of course, MS feels that the Windows OS is another "given", which all the vendors "need" from them to build a sellable PC.
It sounds to me like they're trying to leverage the Windows OS (their last real "jewel") to keep people buying their Office products. How long until they lose their "lock" on the marketplace with Windows, too?
Anyway - for what it's worth, I have no qualm with Microsoft Works. I've loaded their latest version on PCs as slow as Pentium 100Mhz systems with 32MB of RAM, and it's *still* functional. It's certainly not "bloated" like most MS code. It lacks a lot of "power features", but it's targeted squarely at a buyer who doesn't use those features anyway. It's also priced reasonably. So in the grand scheme of things, one could do a lot worse than having MS Works on their PC.... I just don't like the corporate B.S. that says "We had to switch from StarOffice to this, because MS said so."
Yeah, I was glad to see someone bringing up AMI Pro. (Otherwise, I was going to do so myself!) That was my favorite word processor too, for quite a while.
It looked like the "WordPro" incarnations were noticeably better than the AMI Pro I used to use, too. As an experiment, I loaded a copy of WordPro on my brother's laptop so he could use it when he went away to college. Unfortunately, he said it just didn't work out for him - because he was the only student there not using MS Word. He didn't like having a unique set of menus and features, because he could never follow other people's step-by-step directions to perform tasks.
If it wasn't for IBM/Lotus's terrible job of trying to unify the products in "SmartSuite Millenium" - I would still use WordPro myself. Like you said though, the interface between the Lotus apps isn't even consistent - and their toolbar/launchbar thing is a screen real-estate wasting annoyance.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right - but the numbers of these folks keeps decreasing. The point is, in the *long run*, the AOL business model will probably become non-viable.
EG. At my last employer, we had several users who had AOL accounts. When we started allowing remote access to our systems through a VPN, the VPN tunneling software had compatibility issues with AOL's software. Of course, AOL made no effort to correct the issues. (It was pretty much "over the heads" of those doing their phone tech. support anyway.) We enacted a policy that "AOL is unsupported", if people wanted to use our corporate systems remotely.
A couple die-hards still refused to switch. One guy even got a seperate Inet dial-up account just for connecting to us at work, but still used AOL for everything else. The biggest roadblock in the way of ditching AOL? Usually, the kids/family. The employee wanting to switch wasn't willing to make his kids and/or wife suffer through getting a brand new email address, learning everything all over again, etc.
So yeah, right now, some people feel pretty "locked-in" to using AOL -- but the pressure is on them to move away from it. Every time AOL software causes conflicts with other software packages people need, it shrinks their customer base. Every time Microsoft makes it easier to get online without the need of additional software on top, AOL's customer-base shrinks. Every time someone is lured in by the benefits of broadband via their local phone company (who also serves as the ISP), AOL's customer-base shrinks.
Hey, I just modded you up, because your viewpoint is pretty interesting - and doesn't just mimic the same old stuff I read over and over on these issues.
On the other hand, I really think the "killing good, but sex bad?" question is much more easily explained when it comes to video games.
The bottom line is, games require action, excitement, and plain old fun, or else they're just not any good. Ever since most of us were little kids, we liked playing with toy guns. (Most of us probably owned a squirt gun, or a cap pistol, or something....)
There's a since of "power" that comes with holding a gun (even if it's just a toy one, and you're playing imaginary games using it). It also requires practice and skill to become good at shooting.
This seems like a perfect formula to translate into the "virtual world", as a shooting game. Since it's obviously computer-generated anyway, why not experiment with dropping the player into situations that you wouldn't *really* want to be stuck in, in real life? (EG. Fighting off the "bad guys" in the middle of a war.) You get all of the excitement, all of the potential glory of victory, and none of the negatives (such as real people dying!).
On the other hand, dropping sex into games generally does little to nothing for their "fun value". Whether you're talking about "true love" or plain old "lust", it's all about two people arousing and stimulating each other. When this is reduced to showing you animated drawings of naked people, much is lost. At best, an extremely well-rendered sexual image of a member of the opposite sex might get you a bit "stimulated", but you're simply going to desire a real person afterwards. The game itself isn't ultimately going to "do anything for you".
Games are supposed to serve as escapes from reality -- not reminders of things you want/desire but can't/don't currently have.
Basically, yeah - I'm with you on this one.
The public only switched from LP and cassette to CD because it was several magnitudes of order better. (No more rewinding and fast-forwarding tapes that tend to wear out, or accidently get erased when someone runs by them with the vacuum cleaner. No more flipping the record over to hear the other half of the album. No more background hiss or pops and clicks.)
In fact, I'd wager that the actual ability for CD to reproduce sound more faithfully than the other formats was the *last* thing on people's list of reasons to switch, truth be told. (Most of the consumers who raved about CDs sounding so much better were really referring to the afore-mentioned lack of pops, clicks, tape hiss, or warbling effects of a turntable not spinning at the perfect speed, or tape transport mechanism slipping. They weren't really referring to improved high-frequency response, etc.)
(Heck, most of the CD players people first purchased were built onto sub $200 boom-boxes, that certainly weren't paragons of quality audio reproduction!)
The public simply won't switch formats again, simply on claims of "better than CD quality" sound. Most people won't even be able to notice the improvements, when they go to check this new technology out.
Ok, fair enough.
I tried to watch Buffy a few times, due to all the hype surrounding it. It did nothing for me. I felt like it was simply a show I would have enjoyed if I was still a teenager, but now? Uh-uh... (I have no idea how old you are, but for reference, I recently turned 31.)
Friends.... I'll grant you it's funny, sometimes, but nothing "draws me to it". It's one of those shows I could handle sitting down to watch at a friend's house, if it was already on and everyone else was watching it. Would I ever bother to actually tape it? Nah....
Angel... saw 2 episodes, and didn't like it a bit. Why? Dunno, just seemed too "fake" to me, and maybe I'm a bit "tough" on any show featuring a female heroine character to start with. (After all, 99% of the time, these end up being cheezy excuses to oogle at some actress/model - and the actual plot is weak to non-existant. Think Charlie's Angels, or V.I.P., for 2 examples.)
Of the shows you mentioned, Enterprise is the one I'd be most likely to make a real attempt to watch regularly. Unfortunately, I don't get UPN on my Dish Network subscription right now. I'm stuck watching ST:TNG re-runs on TNN.
Haven't seen Firefly or John Doe yet, so it's not fair to pass judgement on those.
Yeah, while I can't really fault you for using whatever makes you happiest and gets the job done -- I honestly think most people take the other route.
AKA. I hate MS and their pricing, so therefore I run a pirated copy of Windows, and use Linux occasionally (either on another box, as a server - or in dual-boot configuration).
Who's more "right"? Technically, you are. Which method lets someone get more use of applications from their PC for their dollar though? Umm, I have to go with the guy pirating Windows.
Excellent post!
I completely agree. I had a number of discussions about BeOS and its merits with one of my friends who does software development for a living. He was a huge BeOS fan, and is probably the one responsible for me giving it a good second look. (I installed a free copy I received with a magazine, but quickly uninstalled it after it didn't seem very useful at first glance.)
It seems to me that most BeOS fans are, in fact, software developers. Most of the really powerful features inside BeOS are only appreciated by a developer. (Users really don't care how threads or objects are handled, as long as they like the look and feel, and functionality of whatever software they're using!)
I think this is what will lead to its eventual death, and certainly what caused the end of its original production and updates.
First and foremost, an OS has to cater to its *users*. For an operating system that was so "developer friendly", I didn't see all that much real development going on. You had the typical re-hashes/ports from the Unix/Linux world, and a relative "handfull" of original programs. Much of the shareware I downloaded for BeOS was quite bug-ridden and broken. Sure, they did regular updates - but you shouldn't have to suffer through 4 or 5 updates to your favorite IRC client before you get one that quits crashing and shutting down during use.
Not only that, but if there was any supposed "niche" potential to BeOS, it was supposed to be multimedia. Where was the firewire support for downloading from DV camcorders, then? Where were the up-to-date video drivers for high-performance cards? Where were all the hard disk recording and MIDI sequencers? (Sure, someone had 1 or 2 shareware MIDI sequencers for BeOS - but at least give me *one* commercial "standard" in a Be version! Cakewalk? Steinberg CuBase? Logic Audio? Nope.... not there.)
It seems to me like this was really an OS that died before it was even ready to get started. It probably could have gone someplace if they built the apps and secured deals with commercial vendors to port to it BEFORE it was officially announced to the public.
Did you read the entire article that this discussion is linked to?
The guy who wrote it even explains *why* drinking liquid nitrogen isn't always "safe".
He says he successfully did that experiment a couple dozen times with no problem, until the last time - when the enamel on his two front teeth shattered from contracting, due to the extreme cold.
I don't think I'd want to risk screwing up my teeth over this stunt....
Um, not only that - but each ball in the "stack" has to be considerably more massive than the one directly above it.
Sure, for a demo with only 2, a basketball and tennis ball do the trick. For 3, you could probably use a ping-pong ball as the 3rd. one.
You quickly reach a point where you run out of useful objects though. With 20, what's the size of your ball on the bottom? A small meteorite?
Huh? This argument of yours has more holes in it than swiss cheese.
1. If someone suddenly earns a big increase in pay, they quickly adapt to it. It's called "living within one's means" and it happens all the time. People don't automatically expect it should cost "no more than a McDonalds dinner" when they start earning enough money to go to fancy restaurants. They won't suddenly expect movies should be nearly free either, just because they were getting pirated movies dirt cheap in the past.
2. Plenty of things are "against the law", yet people opt to ignore that fact anyway. That's because morality doesn't equal legality. How many times have you chosen to exceed the posted speed limit when driving? How often did you choose not to report that sales tax you technically owe on your mail order purchases? Did you have a problem with your conscience afterwards? (I bet not!)
When it comes to movies, I see it as quite parallel with entertainment software. Almost nobody can afford to see everything (or buy everything) that's released. You have a certain monthly budget you can allocate towards these entertainment expenses, and that's about it. Most people *do* occasionally go see a movie in the theater. If they download and watch several more, so what? Yeah, once again, it's technically "illegal", but they most likely have a clear conscience about it - precisely because they know they're already spending as much as they're going to spend on going out to see movies. They might not go see the ones they downloaded, but they'll go see others. The industry achieved their goal: "Get the consumer to pay to watch as much of our material as possible."
Furthermore, it sounds to me like if digital becomes the de-facto standard for theaters and projection -- they'll begin doing such things as downloading new movies via satellite.
Once this happens, you can be sure the hackers will be right there, finding ways to break whatever encryption is used - and streaming the new movies onto their hard drives from the comfort of their own homes.
No, I don't consider it "rude" to ask what problem I have with "passive entertainment". In fact, it's a very good question.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with it, as such. I'm certainly not a "workaholic". I'm more the type who starts getting annoyed quickly if I'm stuck at work more than 8 hours in a day. (Sure, I'll do it if there's a really good reason for it, but not just because I can't get enough - or because I think it somehow makes me look like a better worker in the bosses' eyes.) I simply find that as a rule, TV programming is lacking in value. Even the shows I find I enjoy tend to get "stale" after the first few seasons - when the fresh ideas in them start running dry.
Most TV is based around the same old themes. You've got the ever-present cop shows, the hospital shows, the love stories/soap operas, the reality-TV stuff, cartoons, and either sci-fi or witchcraft/super powers shows.
Sometimes, sure, you just need a break. You don't necessarily want to fall asleep, but you're ready to relax and let someone "tell you a story" through a movie or TV. I just question it when people start making plans around TV sitcoms and the like. (EG. This gal at my last job used to come in every day asking people if they saw this program or that, and talk about them all day long. She had to be religiously watching at least 4 or 5 shows per night. That's scary when one stops to think about it. She's missing out on living her own life, complete with interesting experiences to share. Instead, she's sitting around memorizing others' ficticious stories.)
I'm a little curious what these 6 programs are that you find worthwhile to record every week? Like I said before - I can't find that much that I care enough about to bother recording it. I used to love watching MST3K and the Simpsons, King of the Hill, the X-Files, Star Trek: TNG, and for a brief time got into Forever Knight. I *still* watch the Star Trek re-runs occasionally on TNN, because there's so little else worth watching. Otherwise, I'd just as soon turn on CNN Headline News, TLC, or Discovery and learn about something real.
Yep, agreed!
I recently turned 31 myself, and last Xmas, I bought myself a PS2 and several games for it. Granted, I was always a bit selective about what I purchased/played. There seem to be quite a few "teenie-bopper" games out there that don't do anything for me.
But how can you place an "age limit" on sports games, billiards games, flight simulators, well-done car racing sims, and any games with "mature" themes + good graphics, sound, and all around gameplay (like GTA3 for example)?
As a matter of fact, one of the guys I worked with who was a few years older than me got hooked on PS2 after I kept telling him about the stuff available for it. (Initially, he wrote it off as kid stuff - but his interest was piqued when he heard about Gran Turismo 3 and the like.) I think he bought one "for his kid" as an excuse, and ended up playing it himself.
In fact, I think one of society's big problems today is the number of folks who live in relative boredom and depression because of a self-inflicted lack of fun/hobbies. There's this prevelant sense that as you reach age 30 or so, you're "not supposed" to do lots of stuff anymore. (No more big car stereo upgrades.... no more video games.... yadda, yadda.) Screw that. I never want to grow old and be one of the "statistics" that sits around drinking beer in front of the TV, watching only football, baseball and/or hockey - goes to work, eats, and sleeps, and never really does anything else "for the fun of it".
I never tried buying music CDs on eBay, but I do know for a fact there are quite a few DVD movies up there that are in a "grey area".
For example, do a search for the collections of all the season episodes of the X-Files TV shows on DVD. You may find a few US editions, but you'll also see many cheaper ones that are imports. They seem to be counterfeits, but they may just be cheaper quality, yet still legal for sale in the country of origin, versions. I couldn't determine for sure. (They did seem to be packaged in authentic packaging.)
No - you *assume* you're losing that much in sales because of your purely anecdotal evidence.
In fact, perhaps your market for your videos is drying up. Maybe you've sold enough copies to all the folks who wanted them. Perhaps all that's left now are people thinking "Eh, I might pay $5 for a copy to check it out - but it's not worth more than that to me."
Seriously, I do believe it's probably a combination of things (not *just* what I mention above) -- but I hate these bogus statistics of losses on "pirated materials".
Right.... I've even done bid "shilling" on eBay a time or two, with the help of a friend who also used eBay.
Fact is, this behavior would go away if it wasn't for eBay's fee structure. eBay says "If you want to ensure you don't sell your item for under X amount, set a reserve price, or start the bidding higher." Unfortunately, doing so means eBay slaps you with a fee for using reserve pricing, or they get a larger listing fee - since you start your bidding price at a higher amount.
Many users refuse to even bid on "reserve auctions" because they don't like having no idea what you're actually looking to get for a given item.
I try to start my auctions at $1.00 (or less) to spark interest. Unfortunately, once in a while, I have something fairly valuable up for auction, and nobody bids until the last minute. (Fine, except only so many bids can even be placed in that last 45-60 second window when everyone starts bidding madly.) There's just no way I'll let some of these things go for only $5 or whatever.... That's where the "shill" bids come in. You throw a few bids into the mix, throughout the length of the auction, and it usually gets the item noticed. After that, you let people bid on their own.
Note: I'm not advocating jacking the prices up as high as you can with shill bids. I'm simply talking about using them to prevent bidders from practically robbing you of quality items for a buck or two.
Thank-you! I don't know why your comment wasn't modded up -- but I suppose it's still the minority view here for some twisted reason.
The fact is, eBay shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of the users, any more than the local grocery store should be held liable if people post fraudulent sales on their cork boards near the entrances.
If eBay isn't even bothering to cancel/disable accounts after multiple frauds are reported, well - that's irresponsible on their part. But honestly, I don't think that's the crux of the issue. I *often* see accounts that are suspended, when I look back through user info on bidders of my old auctions who had negative feedback.
More than anything, this is a case of "kill the messenger" - because people get angry when they're ripped off, and look for someone to point the finger at. It's easier to pick on eBay (who has lots of $'s) than it is to hunt down and prosecute the person who actually scammed you.
If TiVo actually does go under, I really feel that it will be a reflection of the relative lack of TV programming worth recording in the first place....
Let's face it, VCR's are dirt cheap nowdays, and the tapes have the advantage of being removeable and easy to trade with others.
Most of us only have one or two TV programs we care enough about to bother recording them, if that. For a task that small, a regular old VCR does the trick.
TiVo is very cool, but primarily, it just encourages the user to watch more TV they wouldn't have bothered watching otherwise. That's not something I'd pay hundreds of dollars for, and many others won't either.
Personally, I make a conscious effort to limit my TV watching time. It's all too easy to sit back and get passively entertained by television nonsense, and suddenly realize you've wasted hour after hour, accomplishing nothing.
Hey, if you ate LAN party quality snacks and drinks for 86 hours straight - you'd probably have one heinous session at the toilet too.
Maybe it was just the smell that overpowered him?
I use that method here, too. But generally, I find it's not extremely effective - because the auto-dialers you hang up on like that just try back again and again, at least 3 or 4 more times, until they detect you've actually picked up and talked to them.
Thanks for this informative post, but I beg to differ on how some telemarketing operations work.
I actually did telemarketing for about a year for an area carpet cleaning company. (Talk about a job I'll never do again.)
Anyway - they in fact *did* want to pay the employees to manually mark the calls as busy, answering machines, etc. We all had dumb terminals at our desks, and it worked like this:
Dialer would call out from the phone number database, and as soon as it was finished dialing a number, would attempt to pass it to the first available telemarketer. (If everyone was on the line, it would apparently just abort the stray call; judging from the number of times people seemed irate as soon as we talked to them, acting like we'd been calling and hanging up on them previously.)
When a call was passed to you, you'd immediately say "Hello", and glance at your dumb terminal screen, which was supposed to already be showing you the customer's name and address, etc. Assuming it displayed their last name, you'd immediately follow the "Hello" with a "Mr." or "Mrs." and the name shown, so it all appeared natural. (Sometimes the system got slow, so you had to change your opening pitch to something like "Hello! I'm calling with xxx carpet cleaners, to offer you specials, Mr. Doe.") If you heard a busy signal, a disconnected line, or an answering machine, you'd key in a letter code (such as "B" for busy) and it would close your line, clear your screen - and you'd wait for the next call.
We also had a letter code we could key in if a customer told us not to ever call them again. It was supposed to mark the number for deletion from the dialing database. (I believe the numbers were actually deleted only overnight, when the manager started running a database clean-up and update type operation.)
I don't remember the exact details on the other letter codes, but I believe they basically instructed the dialer to try the call again after preset numbers of minutes. (EG. Typing in a D for a disconnected line might tell it to call back again in 20 minutes, while a B for busy might tell it to try again in 10 minutes.)
Ah, interesting. I never caught that Bell was officially adding that service (scam?) automatically to new line installations.
I got into a fight with SWBT recently because they added the DSL version of that service to my DSL circuit. The strange thing was, they didn't even add it right away. The charges just started appearing on my monthly bill several months after I had the line put in. They did end up taking it back off and crediting me for the previous month as well, but refused to explain how it got there in the first place.