Bah! I went to the Roasters Guild retreat this year and do you know what they had for every attendee? A jug of espresso stout. Free* as in beer and, unlike what the patent covers, beer** as in beer.
* Free as in free with purchase
** I suppose a certain amount of this comes down to how broadly you're willing to define beer
Yes, this kind of RAM is still new enough to be useful. Check out your local charities. Perhaps you have a local Tech Corps taking donated computers and turning them into computer labs for K-12 schools. It isn't uncommon for donated computers to have a pathetic amount of RAM installed or even for them to show up stripped, and a network server can always use a little more RAM. The worst case scenario is you get a tax writeoff and the charity properly disposes of the RAM.
Wow, you even quoted it while it whooshed right over your head. Okay. Slowly now.
Point. There are two primary purposes for a VCR: recording from a video source (such as television) to view later and playing prerecorded video (movies).
Point. There are superior technologies available for both of these tasks: DVRs for recording and DVD players for watching movies.
Point. Many people have moved away from VCR technology to these next generation technologies, which might cause some people to believe that the product lifespan for VCRs is over.
Point. It is still easy to go into a store and buy VHS copies of new movies. It is still easy to go into a store and buy a VCR. (supply)
Point. People continue to buy VCRs and VHS media. (demand)
Conclusion. The product lifespan for VCRs is not yet over.
It's not that hard. In my original post, I used myself as an example because my practices with game consoles are in line with my views on product lifespan, not (as you insist) because my views on product lifespan depend on my personal buying habits (you confused cause with effect). The VCR example was designed to show that the lifespan of a product line can continue beyond my personal use for it, but you missed that.
Perhaps this could be brought back on topic if you'd like to discuss reasons why the PS2 will probably reach the end of its lifespan closer to the release of the Xbox360, PS3, or Revolution (which one and due to what factors), but this story is getting old, so it probably isn't worth it.
No, as I didn't get the PS2 at launch. The lifespan of the console is from when it first comes out, not to when the manufacturer releases something else they'd prefer you buy, but until it no longer serves its primary purpose satisfactorily. Just because the manufacturer of whatever microwave oven you own discontinues an old model and puts out a new improved mircowave oven doesn't mean that your perfectly good working microwave oven has reached the end of its lifespan. With entertainment devices, a key consideration is its ability to play new titles. There has never been a next generation console release that coincided with the end of game production for the previous generation. A better analogy might be the phase out of VHS in favor of DVD. I don't intend to buy any more movies on VHS, but VCRs have not quite yet reached the end of their lifespan.
Probably, but the PS2 might just end up with a 10 year lifespan as well. It first came out in, what, 2000? I tend to wait on next generation consoles until either selection on my current console dries up or there are enough games that really interest me on the next generation consoles. It'll be a while before new PS2 games stop coming out and while I'm sure at least one of the next three consoles will build a library that looks interesting to me, and while I'd guess this will happen around 2007-8, it could take as long as until 2010.
Not a problem. By then if whichever console I decide to buy had production problems, they should be sorted out and I can avoid the early adopter tax.
You mean you used to play games that would have gotten a T rating when you were younger than 13 and have grown up fine, right? IIRC, the ESRB has only been around since 1994. Had you been 12 then, you'd be around 23 now. The game companies would still usually have some lower limit on player age printed on the box, but it was a statement rather than a box containing a big letter. You had to read the box to see it. Same here, but I did most of my young gaming with friends whose parents also played video games so it wasn't as though I was alone in my room for hours on end being raised by violent games.
It would be easy enough to add a (PDF) after the link to let people know that the article is a PDF, but I suspect most people here are able to position the cursor over the article link and look in the status bar, note the.pdf at the end of the URL, and know that this is a PDF. Now this doesn't work everywhere, but even Lynx gives the helpful message when you try to follow the link, "application/pdf D)ownload, or C)ancel". Sure, it would be nice to have, but it doesn't warrant all those icky caps in PLEASE, IF, or NOT (and it's not insightful either).
I've got one. I read somewhere that high level chess players don't view the current game state so much in terms of exactly where each piece is, but in terms of piece groupings. I'm more of a go player myself, but it seems like that would probably be right. Perhaps a richer yet more abstract structure representing game state would be better. In this way, situations where the structure of play dynamics are the same even while the key pieces are in different positions could be picked up on. This combined with your game fragment notion would probably allow the chess filter to learn much faster.
No, gopher died because it was archaic and difficult to use. The Web, with or without graphics was much easier to use, especially once the early portals and search engines started popping up. It's the links from one site to another to another to another that killed gopher, not graphics.
Granted, without graphics, the Web wouldn't have caught on nearly as well, particularly among corporations, but gopher would still have become one of those things that people don't notice on the Internet.
Starbucks ensures that all of its drinks are made on well-maintained machines by well-trained baristas.
Not quite. Starbucks was a lot better when they were a chain in the Northwest. These days they're just too big. Too many stores and too many people and while they try, it has become impossible for them to keep up with training. This is the real reason behind moving to super automatic machines: to reduce the need for a skilled and knowlegable barista. Of course, that doesn't really work as these machines do go out of adjustment and if the operator doesn't know how to pull a perfect shot of espresso, the chances of that person being able to stay on top of these things with a more automated machine are pretty slim. I'm not going to go as far as another poster and say that super automatic machines are not real espresso machines. Properly cared for, they can produce an excellent drink. I can also see how they'd be useful in restarants and hotels where a properly trained person from the local roastery might be in regularly to make sure everything is okay while delivering the coffee as it would mean better coffee than you would otherwise get at a place that isn't really in the coffee business. There's a gas station a little ways out of town where I am that has a super automatic machine, but the person running the station knows how to deal with it and keeps it running well. I've had worse at real coffee shops.
Now, there are some places where the Starbucks really does have the best coffee in the area. There's a common misconception that going into the coffee business is a great way to get rich quick and easy, so there are a lot of places where nobody has bothered to learn anything about coffee. After all, it's just coffee, right? But as you say, there's a lot to coffee and there's more to it than even a lot of people who know there's a lot to coffee think there is. That said, it isn't hard to make coffee better than what Starbucks makes. Why?
Simply because Starbucks is a market leader, but they're in a somewhat sticky situation. You see, while it's true that they produce far less coffee than, say, Sara Lee, they do need to supply more coffee than they can while still sticking to excellent coffees. For example, it would be impossible for them to look at the recent eCafe Ethiopian coffee auction as there isn't enough of it. They seem to think that $1.20 per pound is a premium price. You just don't get the best quality Yemen Mocha Sanani or Papua New Guinea for prices that low. Now, to a large extent that doesn't matter as the Starbucks roast is darker than is really ideal for most coffees. That masks certain distinguishing characteristics across coffees, potentially improving consistency and hiding the lesser defects in these cheaper coffees.
Bringing this back to espresso, it is interesting to note that this situation is comparable to buying practices in Italy. For all the romantic notions of Italian espresso, Italian roasters tend to get robusta and cheaper arabicas yet coffee establishments in Italy are still able to produce a good espresso. Why? Skilled roasters and blenders, well trained baristas, and good machines would certainly come into the picture somewhere.
There are certain qualifications a person should have before they are called a barista. At a minimum, they should know the basics of pulling a shot of espresso, steaming milk, and putting together basic drinks. (That you find people who have worked for Starbucks for five years claiming to be a barista yet don't know what an espresso macchiato is says two things about the quality of training needed to become a Starbucks "barista".) More seriously, I would expect someone claiming to be a barista to be able to talk sensibly about the coffees they have available to work with, provide advice to people who a
While I am all for not getting email (legitimate) filled with incorrect spelling and typographical errors, you'd need some sort of decent spell checker embedded in the keyboard. I've yet to see a spell checker that knows Yirgacheffe (and its half dozen other correct variant spellings) out of the box. Plus, what if I'm using TeX and have the first character of a word as an argument to a dropcap macro? Then there's the standard C library! Is there anything in that which would not trigger this feature?
Maybe the keyboard could only fry people while they are using Microsoft Word or Outlook Express. They'd be accustomed to pain anyway.
That wasn't there four years ago. Plus, I had subscribed with my credit card, so that they hadn't just charged my card and continued the subscription throws red flags on this new text. It seems in my case they tried to make retroactive changes in the legalese without warning (there may have been some kind of provision like the kinds you see in software EULAs, but nothing worse than price subject to change without notice). Of course it didn't work in my case and they have given up on me.
I'll stick to not even flipping through a copy at the news stand and get magazines that do no worse than two dozen please renew letters followed up by a lifetime supply of, "Hey, wouldn't you like to subscribe?"
Really? It happened to me a couple years ago. I had read the fine print (unless that was hidden by CSS or something, I didn't select View Document Source while subscribing). Automatic resubscription was not in it. So no, I should not have had to notify Wired to cancel an expired subscription.
Does it occur to anybody else that even if everybody getting this had agreed to a recurring subscription that it would have been better to have that just come off of the credit card automatically rather than have all that waste in renewal notices/collections? That they started out by asking for renewals without mentioning that they thought I had opted for a recurring subscription also seems out of place.
There's a deeper, scummier scheme at work here, but I'm not sufficiently interested in conspiracy theories to find it.
I don't think it really means a lot of bad press for wired. This happened to me a couple years ago (BTW, I just kept ignoring the letters and, while they kept coming for quite some time, they did eventually stop) and while I've certainly told a lot of people that Wired is scummy and I refuse to buy one ever again, this is the first time I've encountered negative press on the issue.
But really, she should be able to drum up more business, right? After all, any readings she has done just might not be right now that a bit of that comet was blasted. Clearly the right thing to do would be to send letters out to all her clients letting them know about this disruption in the celestial order and past readings may no longer be entirely accurate due to this change. Readings appropriately adjusted at a discounted rate for a limited time only.
Ah, but that would take work. Better to just send out the lawyers.
French is not completely devoid of irregular pronunciations, though they are rarer than they are in English. This makes a certain amount of sense as English is, at its heart, a bastard language. The examples you give, however, do not really demonstrate your point. To give an example, in a French class once, the instructor put a sentence on the board with a word with a non-standard pronunciation in it. I don't remember what it was as this was many years ago. She asked for a volunteer to read it and so I read it aloud perfectly, having never encountered this non-standardism. She asked how it was that I knew how to pronounce that, so I explained that while someone may expect the word to be pronounced one way, it wouldn't sound French. The words you give may, on sight, look as though they should be pronounced similarly, but if you put those words in a sentence and try various possibilities, you will find that only the correct ones sound like English. Some of the others are extremely difficult to say.
Would this throw a first or second year student learning English? Certainly. After that, they should know how the language sounds.
I believe the bastard roots of English have contributed greatly to the success of the English language and its irregularities and (as some may call them) imperfections have been a positive influence on the literary arts. It is a wonderful language and while you may disagree, I certainly can argue that it isn't horrible.
Preemptive flame retardent: Yes, I know that this post has too many commas and in a recent post I used the word queue when I meant cue. I've also mixed up compliment and complement on at least one occasion.
For 3-4 episodes I take it you mean for North American releases. I'm not familiar with how the Japanese handle longer series like Naruto (and I'm too lazy to look it up right now), but the Japanese DVD releases often only have 1-2 episodes per disc, at least for single season and shorter shows.
Depends. I see a lot of fansubs these days where it's pretty clear the fansubbers never watched it on an old 19" television. Some DVD releases have been like that, but there at least there's usually the dub and sometimes that's good enough for me. If you're talking translation-wise, then yeah. I picked up the Mahou Tsukai Tai TV series when it was released here mainly to see how it compared to the translation I did (no, you probably didn't see it, the show was licensed as I was working on getting the timing right (LD source through a Quadra 840 AV out to VHS, it's so much easier today with digital files)) and I was amazed at how similar it was, but they screwed up a word (that was in English) in the opening (yes, I checked against the soundtrack lyrics).
Sure, as soon as the Japanese DVD releases start coming out regionless and with an English subtitle track. If you want to kill fansubbing in North America, release the DVDs fast, make them playable everywhere, and include an English subtitle track. Even keeping them R2, but with a fast release with English subtitles would help (regionless DVD players are easy enough to get and I certainly purchased the 3 disc R2 version of Mononoke Hime that was so much better than the domestic release). Granted, that wouldn't really kill fansubbing. There's going to be that hole for anything broadcast between the original air date and the DVD release and it isn't an ideal solution as it might make these titles less appealing for American companies to pick up (or maybe I'm wrong about that), but probably not by much as most of the domestic companies are trying to embrace the casual viewer rather than the rabid anime fan. Still, a combination of quick region free DVD releases with English subtitle tracks combined with polite letters that both inform of the availability of these discs and requests for the fansubs to no longer be distributed would put a huge dent in fansubbing while at the same time looking good to people who produce and view fansubs, many of which would gladly go online and pick up such a release.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah! I went to the Roasters Guild retreat this year and do you know what they had for every attendee? A jug of espresso stout. Free* as in beer and, unlike what the patent covers, beer** as in beer.
* Free as in free with purchase
** I suppose a certain amount of this comes down to how broadly you're willing to define beer
Yes, this kind of RAM is still new enough to be useful. Check out your local charities. Perhaps you have a local Tech Corps taking donated computers and turning them into computer labs for K-12 schools. It isn't uncommon for donated computers to have a pathetic amount of RAM installed or even for them to show up stripped, and a network server can always use a little more RAM. The worst case scenario is you get a tax writeoff and the charity properly disposes of the RAM.
Did anyone else misread that model number as a 2000 watt phone and think that would be a little excessive?
Wow, you even quoted it while it whooshed right over your head. Okay. Slowly now.
Point. There are two primary purposes for a VCR: recording from a video source (such as television) to view later and playing prerecorded video (movies).
Point. There are superior technologies available for both of these tasks: DVRs for recording and DVD players for watching movies.
Point. Many people have moved away from VCR technology to these next generation technologies, which might cause some people to believe that the product lifespan for VCRs is over.
Point. It is still easy to go into a store and buy VHS copies of new movies. It is still easy to go into a store and buy a VCR. (supply)
Point. People continue to buy VCRs and VHS media. (demand)
Conclusion. The product lifespan for VCRs is not yet over.
It's not that hard. In my original post, I used myself as an example because my practices with game consoles are in line with my views on product lifespan, not (as you insist) because my views on product lifespan depend on my personal buying habits (you confused cause with effect). The VCR example was designed to show that the lifespan of a product line can continue beyond my personal use for it, but you missed that.
Perhaps this could be brought back on topic if you'd like to discuss reasons why the PS2 will probably reach the end of its lifespan closer to the release of the Xbox360, PS3, or Revolution (which one and due to what factors), but this story is getting old, so it probably isn't worth it.
No, as I didn't get the PS2 at launch. The lifespan of the console is from when it first comes out, not to when the manufacturer releases something else they'd prefer you buy, but until it no longer serves its primary purpose satisfactorily. Just because the manufacturer of whatever microwave oven you own discontinues an old model and puts out a new improved mircowave oven doesn't mean that your perfectly good working microwave oven has reached the end of its lifespan. With entertainment devices, a key consideration is its ability to play new titles. There has never been a next generation console release that coincided with the end of game production for the previous generation. A better analogy might be the phase out of VHS in favor of DVD. I don't intend to buy any more movies on VHS, but VCRs have not quite yet reached the end of their lifespan.
Probably, but the PS2 might just end up with a 10 year lifespan as well. It first came out in, what, 2000? I tend to wait on next generation consoles until either selection on my current console dries up or there are enough games that really interest me on the next generation consoles. It'll be a while before new PS2 games stop coming out and while I'm sure at least one of the next three consoles will build a library that looks interesting to me, and while I'd guess this will happen around 2007-8, it could take as long as until 2010.
Not a problem. By then if whichever console I decide to buy had production problems, they should be sorted out and I can avoid the early adopter tax.
And to think, they named it after a computer that went insane.
You mean you used to play games that would have gotten a T rating when you were younger than 13 and have grown up fine, right? IIRC, the ESRB has only been around since 1994. Had you been 12 then, you'd be around 23 now. The game companies would still usually have some lower limit on player age printed on the box, but it was a statement rather than a box containing a big letter. You had to read the box to see it. Same here, but I did most of my young gaming with friends whose parents also played video games so it wasn't as though I was alone in my room for hours on end being raised by violent games.
It would be easy enough to add a (PDF) after the link to let people know that the article is a PDF, but I suspect most people here are able to position the cursor over the article link and look in the status bar, note the .pdf at the end of the URL, and know that this is a PDF. Now this doesn't work everywhere, but even Lynx gives the helpful message when you try to follow the link, "application/pdf D)ownload, or C)ancel". Sure, it would be nice to have, but it doesn't warrant all those icky caps in PLEASE, IF, or NOT (and it's not insightful either).
I've got one. I read somewhere that high level chess players don't view the current game state so much in terms of exactly where each piece is, but in terms of piece groupings. I'm more of a go player myself, but it seems like that would probably be right. Perhaps a richer yet more abstract structure representing game state would be better. In this way, situations where the structure of play dynamics are the same even while the key pieces are in different positions could be picked up on. This combined with your game fragment notion would probably allow the chess filter to learn much faster.
I don't think anybody really thought you were talking about METAFONT programmers.
No, gopher died because it was archaic and difficult to use. The Web, with or without graphics was much easier to use, especially once the early portals and search engines started popping up. It's the links from one site to another to another to another that killed gopher, not graphics.
Granted, without graphics, the Web wouldn't have caught on nearly as well, particularly among corporations, but gopher would still have become one of those things that people don't notice on the Internet.
Not quite. Starbucks was a lot better when they were a chain in the Northwest. These days they're just too big. Too many stores and too many people and while they try, it has become impossible for them to keep up with training. This is the real reason behind moving to super automatic machines: to reduce the need for a skilled and knowlegable barista. Of course, that doesn't really work as these machines do go out of adjustment and if the operator doesn't know how to pull a perfect shot of espresso, the chances of that person being able to stay on top of these things with a more automated machine are pretty slim. I'm not going to go as far as another poster and say that super automatic machines are not real espresso machines. Properly cared for, they can produce an excellent drink. I can also see how they'd be useful in restarants and hotels where a properly trained person from the local roastery might be in regularly to make sure everything is okay while delivering the coffee as it would mean better coffee than you would otherwise get at a place that isn't really in the coffee business. There's a gas station a little ways out of town where I am that has a super automatic machine, but the person running the station knows how to deal with it and keeps it running well. I've had worse at real coffee shops.
Now, there are some places where the Starbucks really does have the best coffee in the area. There's a common misconception that going into the coffee business is a great way to get rich quick and easy, so there are a lot of places where nobody has bothered to learn anything about coffee. After all, it's just coffee, right? But as you say, there's a lot to coffee and there's more to it than even a lot of people who know there's a lot to coffee think there is. That said, it isn't hard to make coffee better than what Starbucks makes. Why?
Simply because Starbucks is a market leader, but they're in a somewhat sticky situation. You see, while it's true that they produce far less coffee than, say, Sara Lee, they do need to supply more coffee than they can while still sticking to excellent coffees. For example, it would be impossible for them to look at the recent eCafe Ethiopian coffee auction as there isn't enough of it. They seem to think that $1.20 per pound is a premium price. You just don't get the best quality Yemen Mocha Sanani or Papua New Guinea for prices that low. Now, to a large extent that doesn't matter as the Starbucks roast is darker than is really ideal for most coffees. That masks certain distinguishing characteristics across coffees, potentially improving consistency and hiding the lesser defects in these cheaper coffees.
Bringing this back to espresso, it is interesting to note that this situation is comparable to buying practices in Italy. For all the romantic notions of Italian espresso, Italian roasters tend to get robusta and cheaper arabicas yet coffee establishments in Italy are still able to produce a good espresso. Why? Skilled roasters and blenders, well trained baristas, and good machines would certainly come into the picture somewhere.
There are certain qualifications a person should have before they are called a barista. At a minimum, they should know the basics of pulling a shot of espresso, steaming milk, and putting together basic drinks. (That you find people who have worked for Starbucks for five years claiming to be a barista yet don't know what an espresso macchiato is says two things about the quality of training needed to become a Starbucks "barista".) More seriously, I would expect someone claiming to be a barista to be able to talk sensibly about the coffees they have available to work with, provide advice to people who a
Quiet, you. The PS3 does not exist. We don't know anything about such a console.
Damn Sony Jedi mind tricks.
NOOOO!!!!!
While I am all for not getting email (legitimate) filled with incorrect spelling and typographical errors, you'd need some sort of decent spell checker embedded in the keyboard. I've yet to see a spell checker that knows Yirgacheffe (and its half dozen other correct variant spellings) out of the box. Plus, what if I'm using TeX and have the first character of a word as an argument to a dropcap macro? Then there's the standard C library! Is there anything in that which would not trigger this feature?
Maybe the keyboard could only fry people while they are using Microsoft Word or Outlook Express. They'd be accustomed to pain anyway.
That wasn't there four years ago. Plus, I had subscribed with my credit card, so that they hadn't just charged my card and continued the subscription throws red flags on this new text. It seems in my case they tried to make retroactive changes in the legalese without warning (there may have been some kind of provision like the kinds you see in software EULAs, but nothing worse than price subject to change without notice). Of course it didn't work in my case and they have given up on me.
I'll stick to not even flipping through a copy at the news stand and get magazines that do no worse than two dozen please renew letters followed up by a lifetime supply of, "Hey, wouldn't you like to subscribe?"
Really? It happened to me a couple years ago. I had read the fine print (unless that was hidden by CSS or something, I didn't select View Document Source while subscribing). Automatic resubscription was not in it. So no, I should not have had to notify Wired to cancel an expired subscription.
Does it occur to anybody else that even if everybody getting this had agreed to a recurring subscription that it would have been better to have that just come off of the credit card automatically rather than have all that waste in renewal notices/collections? That they started out by asking for renewals without mentioning that they thought I had opted for a recurring subscription also seems out of place.
There's a deeper, scummier scheme at work here, but I'm not sufficiently interested in conspiracy theories to find it.
I don't think it really means a lot of bad press for wired. This happened to me a couple years ago (BTW, I just kept ignoring the letters and, while they kept coming for quite some time, they did eventually stop) and while I've certainly told a lot of people that Wired is scummy and I refuse to buy one ever again, this is the first time I've encountered negative press on the issue.
But really, she should be able to drum up more business, right? After all, any readings she has done just might not be right now that a bit of that comet was blasted. Clearly the right thing to do would be to send letters out to all her clients letting them know about this disruption in the celestial order and past readings may no longer be entirely accurate due to this change. Readings appropriately adjusted at a discounted rate for a limited time only.
Ah, but that would take work. Better to just send out the lawyers.
Yes. We need problems. After all, how else are we going to know what an invention is good for?
French is not completely devoid of irregular pronunciations, though they are rarer than they are in English. This makes a certain amount of sense as English is, at its heart, a bastard language. The examples you give, however, do not really demonstrate your point. To give an example, in a French class once, the instructor put a sentence on the board with a word with a non-standard pronunciation in it. I don't remember what it was as this was many years ago. She asked for a volunteer to read it and so I read it aloud perfectly, having never encountered this non-standardism. She asked how it was that I knew how to pronounce that, so I explained that while someone may expect the word to be pronounced one way, it wouldn't sound French. The words you give may, on sight, look as though they should be pronounced similarly, but if you put those words in a sentence and try various possibilities, you will find that only the correct ones sound like English. Some of the others are extremely difficult to say.
Would this throw a first or second year student learning English? Certainly. After that, they should know how the language sounds.
I believe the bastard roots of English have contributed greatly to the success of the English language and its irregularities and (as some may call them) imperfections have been a positive influence on the literary arts. It is a wonderful language and while you may disagree, I certainly can argue that it isn't horrible.
Preemptive flame retardent: Yes, I know that this post has too many commas and in a recent post I used the word queue when I meant cue. I've also mixed up compliment and complement on at least one occasion.
For 3-4 episodes I take it you mean for North American releases. I'm not familiar with how the Japanese handle longer series like Naruto (and I'm too lazy to look it up right now), but the Japanese DVD releases often only have 1-2 episodes per disc, at least for single season and shorter shows.
Depends. I see a lot of fansubs these days where it's pretty clear the fansubbers never watched it on an old 19" television. Some DVD releases have been like that, but there at least there's usually the dub and sometimes that's good enough for me. If you're talking translation-wise, then yeah. I picked up the Mahou Tsukai Tai TV series when it was released here mainly to see how it compared to the translation I did (no, you probably didn't see it, the show was licensed as I was working on getting the timing right (LD source through a Quadra 840 AV out to VHS, it's so much easier today with digital files)) and I was amazed at how similar it was, but they screwed up a word (that was in English) in the opening (yes, I checked against the soundtrack lyrics).
Sure, as soon as the Japanese DVD releases start coming out regionless and with an English subtitle track. If you want to kill fansubbing in North America, release the DVDs fast, make them playable everywhere, and include an English subtitle track. Even keeping them R2, but with a fast release with English subtitles would help (regionless DVD players are easy enough to get and I certainly purchased the 3 disc R2 version of Mononoke Hime that was so much better than the domestic release). Granted, that wouldn't really kill fansubbing. There's going to be that hole for anything broadcast between the original air date and the DVD release and it isn't an ideal solution as it might make these titles less appealing for American companies to pick up (or maybe I'm wrong about that), but probably not by much as most of the domestic companies are trying to embrace the casual viewer rather than the rabid anime fan. Still, a combination of quick region free DVD releases with English subtitle tracks combined with polite letters that both inform of the availability of these discs and requests for the fansubs to no longer be distributed would put a huge dent in fansubbing while at the same time looking good to people who produce and view fansubs, many of which would gladly go online and pick up such a release.
"network services"
(queue ominous music)