Ol Mr Joss there has a formula. Look at Buffy, look at Angel, and look at where Firefly was heading. He was planting seeds in teh first 11 episodes for several aroty arcs all of which would take a season on their own right.
a) What did they really do to River? (i.e. operative comes to hunt River down) b) How do we "fix" River so she can be a normal girl/woman? (i.e. deprogram her once the big issue is out of her head, leading to..) c) Where did the reavers come from? d) How/when will Dr Tam and Kaylee hook up (possible the jumping of the shark moment)
Those were basically 3-4 SEASONS of episodes, once you sprinkled in the side arc and humor episodes. Instead the series got cancelled. But then he got to make a movie. Realizing this was probably the last hurrah for Firefly he packs ALL of A-D into one movie.
To pick up Firefly now would effectively be about season 4 or 5. By that point in a Whedon series you have started to add in the "random new bigbad for this season" and have started killing off loved characters randomly (which he ALSO crammed into the movie already, maybe we're on season 6).
So. They're marketing this as a Blu-ray player. So you should buy it to enjoy the highest possible quality content on your HD set , which of course you have.
But not including the cable needed to actually take advantage of this.
Someone, somewhere, did not think this clever plan all the way through.
You're making a couple big assumtions here champ...
First that the PS3 will be a sell out huge success. Whereas it will sell a lot of units, many people are predicting that it will not be that great, and in fact could cause Sony to really scuttle itself.
Second, you're treating all those PS3's like they're being used as Blu-ray players, when in fact all they will really be capitalizing on is the storage capacity. Most of those PS3's are NOT going to be hooked up to anything doing HD video of any kind. They will be on TV's in gameroom, and in kids rooms. This is not adoption of a new video standard, it's adoption of a high capacity storage disc for games. And since you will never buy the same disc to play on a Xbox as a PS3 having the same media format for both is a moot point. If people don't realize they're buying a blu-ray drive and only think they're upgrading their kids gaming setup it's not a win.
The PS2 did great thing for DVD adoption but that was because there wasn't really any competition, and DVD was a significant upgrade from VHS. There's competition here.
Please to be going and reading history now. Not just jumping on a bandwagon because you've been able to vote for 4 or 5 years... There are people who could make an argument that Lincoln hurt the nation more in his handling of events surrounding the civil war.
As for the prattle that we'll be changing all this in 2008. Unless the democratic party gets it's issue of cranial-rectal inversion sorted out then no. You'll get another republican.
Go look up the facts on this before declaring that Bush is trying to destroy the world by changing how scientists will have to look up information.
The shark jumping moment for me was when he basically tried to interweave all his novels into one "multiverse" with himself, of course, as God. It felt too much like he had written a bunch of really great novels, then one say while getting stoned on the beach he thought "Wouldn't it be cool to have them all in a room with each other?!?!"
It's a pity because I love everything of his up to about Time Enough for Love. Started sliding downhill for me at Cat Who Walked Through Walls, and I didn't make it to the end of Friday.
Favorites? Job: A Comedy of Justice , The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Do you realize exactly how much money and effort has gone into PETA marketing? Exactly how much time, love, caring, adn devotion those who work for the Meat is Murder cause have put in over the years?
Just to have you throw it all away...
With your cursed science...
But think of the contrast, this could have religious extremists and PETA on the SAME SIDE in an arguement;)
I would have opted for "You are under house arrest in a house with no television, video, gaming or computer devices until such a time as you have hand written an apology to each of the mail recipients."
Some kid hacks the programs and is able to pull off the following :
"Yeah, I smell like Pot, but you can check the GPS records, we were transported by aliens to amsterdam where all kinds of things are legal and I was just trying to embrace and experience the local culture... See, right there, I drove around Amsterdame for a solid 6 hours tonight."
Since Microsoft won't be getting a cut of the games in question, and developer goodwill isn't exactly something they've had trouble getting behind the 360, what exactly would they get from just opening up the development platform?
I believe they were charing significantly more for the full scale developers kit/package which companies like EA Sports and such buy into. This makes a "tinkering/homebrew" entry point into that arena for what is only the cost of a couple games.
If you pay cash for something you'll be required to swipe your ID card through a reader anyways because "it's standard procedure to get a card swipe of some kind with every transaction"
I was expecting more. Don't know how else to say it.
And I agree that if you're adding a feature that X windows has had for over a decade you shouldn't be throwing the "start your photocopier" stone at MS.
Sounds more like they are looking to get the Grey and Whites involved. Which wouldn't be a bad thing. You just have to hope they're as good as the Blacks. Because as sure as you have a herd of people step up to test this there will be at least a few who get a copy for nefarious purposes.
I will have to agree that Zonk and the greelighters here might want to read the articles then re-read the headlines to make sure they aren't just fanning the flamewars.
The only way to make DVD's viable as a music platform IMHO would be to increase the amount of real content (i.e. music) which was on the thing.
As someone mentioned, you can cram up to 40 albums on a DVD without even getting to the higher capacity setups.
Of course studios would never do this because then you could buy , for instance, every Beatles album on one dvd. PERIOD. Either they would have to charge both arms and a leg for it (how much is the Beatles CD collection complete again?) which people wouldn't normally pay in one drop. Or they'd have to admit that larger collections of media aren't proportionally worth more than single new albums.
Not to mention several artists would struggle to put together a DVD worth of real solid content without videos.
Now, on the other hand a DVDA car stereo which could play DVD's I cram full of music? I'm on that. But easier to just get a 30g ipod with a car hookup. So no reason to push that technology either.
End result, music companies are struggling because they don't want to accept that the consumer is deciding the path of the industry and they aren't.
Being married to a gamer you might expect this sooner, but...
In the first few years of our relationship/marriage any large gift giving occasion (x-mas, bday, etc) would be easily covered by some piece of jewlery, preferrably with a diamond in it. Done, locked and loaded and I was the hero.
Now, the last few gifts? New video card, PDA, MP3 player.
1. Tivo tracks how many ads get skipped and by who 2. Ad agencies know how much less the ads are worth now and demand networks lower prices because they're delivering less. 3. Networks pull the leashes on their well paid congressional delegation to fix this with legislation. 3. If legislation doesn't work then they pay Tivo to disable skipping the commercial, or have a special code which drops the viewer out of fast forward at the beginning of each commercial block.
Is there any outcome of this that would be considered good? They're actually making MS Media Center look good. And driving me more and more towards building my own MythTV box.
You will never see a presidential candidate in a state other than NY, CA, TX, and FL. Everybody else will have to choose a president based on what they promise to do for those four states.
There is a reason the framers of the constitution hammered out these things they way they did. Some things could use some modernization, this is not one of them.
To bring this back into geek terms:
This is not a bug in the electoral process, this is a feature and is working as intended.
Once he really shows some fight in him they will drop it and it will vanish.
The more I see of their operations the more I think the MPAA and RIAA operate very much like local traffic cops. They want to give lots of tickets, and specifically to the people who will just pay the fines and move along. Then hoping that the "watch out, you could get a ticket" mentality will help them get the desired end result.
On the other hand, if he effectively counter sues for defamation of character and/or some other damages done to him by their abusive litigation practices and sets a precedent for others it could open some doors. But then it's still up to others to get lawyers to do it. Make it where the counter suit is profitable enough and lawyers could start making money on the shark-like "we only get paid if you get paid" approach. But you have to put enough blood into the water to draw them out.
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Ol Mr Joss there has a formula. Look at Buffy, look at Angel, and look at where Firefly was heading. He was planting seeds in teh first 11 episodes for several aroty arcs all of which would take a season on their own right.
a) What did they really do to River? (i.e. operative comes to hunt River down)
b) How do we "fix" River so she can be a normal girl/woman? (i.e. deprogram her once the big issue is out of her head, leading to..)
c) Where did the reavers come from?
d) How/when will Dr Tam and Kaylee hook up (possible the jumping of the shark moment)
Those were basically 3-4 SEASONS of episodes, once you sprinkled in the side arc and humor episodes. Instead the series got cancelled. But then he got to make a movie. Realizing this was probably the last hurrah for Firefly he packs ALL of A-D into one movie.
To pick up Firefly now would effectively be about season 4 or 5. By that point in a Whedon series you have started to add in the "random new bigbad for this season" and have started killing off loved characters randomly (which he ALSO crammed into the movie already, maybe we're on season 6).
In other words.. don't hold your breath.
So. They're marketing this as a Blu-ray player. So you should buy it to enjoy the highest possible quality content on your HD set , which of course you have.
But not including the cable needed to actually take advantage of this.
Someone, somewhere, did not think this clever plan all the way through.
You're making a couple big assumtions here champ...
First that the PS3 will be a sell out huge success. Whereas it will sell a lot of units, many people are predicting that it will not be that great, and in fact could cause Sony to really scuttle itself.
Second, you're treating all those PS3's like they're being used as Blu-ray players, when in fact all they will really be capitalizing on is the storage capacity. Most of those PS3's are NOT going to be hooked up to anything doing HD video of any kind. They will be on TV's in gameroom, and in kids rooms. This is not adoption of a new video standard, it's adoption of a high capacity storage disc for games. And since you will never buy the same disc to play on a Xbox as a PS3 having the same media format for both is a moot point. If people don't realize they're buying a blu-ray drive and only think they're upgrading their kids gaming setup it's not a win.
The PS2 did great thing for DVD adoption but that was because there wasn't really any competition, and DVD was a significant upgrade from VHS. There's competition here.
How can you people not see this?!?!?!
It's the liberal media trying to destroy our TRUTHINESS!
Please to be going and reading history now. Not just jumping on a bandwagon because you've been able to vote for 4 or 5 years... There are people who could make an argument that Lincoln hurt the nation more in his handling of events surrounding the civil war.
As for the prattle that we'll be changing all this in 2008. Unless the democratic party gets it's issue of cranial-rectal inversion sorted out then no. You'll get another republican.
Go look up the facts on this before declaring that Bush is trying to destroy the world by changing how scientists will have to look up information.
The shark jumping moment for me was when he basically tried to interweave all his novels into one "multiverse" with himself, of course, as God. It felt too much like he had written a bunch of really great novels, then one say while getting stoned on the beach he thought "Wouldn't it be cool to have them all in a room with each other?!?!"
It's a pity because I love everything of his up to about Time Enough for Love. Started sliding downhill for me at Cat Who Walked Through Walls, and I didn't make it to the end of Friday.
Favorites? Job: A Comedy of Justice , The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
They just had a story arc which screams for a cheap shoot-em-up.
I do agree that unlocking the FF2000 character should be a priority or epic proportions.
Do you realize exactly how much money and effort has gone into PETA marketing? Exactly how much time, love, caring, adn devotion those who work for the Meat is Murder cause have put in over the years?
;)
Just to have you throw it all away...
With your cursed science...
But think of the contrast, this could have religious extremists and PETA on the SAME SIDE in an arguement
I would have opted for "You are under house arrest in a house with no television, video, gaming or computer devices until such a time as you have hand written an apology to each of the mail recipients."
But I'm a draconian Chapeau D'âne
But what about non MS media players which run on Vista?
What hurdles will they have to get HD content on non DRM'd to death systems? Or am I off on a technological tangent which is impossible?
Some kid hacks the programs and is able to pull off the following :
"Yeah, I smell like Pot, but you can check the GPS records, we were transported by aliens to amsterdam where all kinds of things are legal and I was just trying to embrace and experience the local culture... See, right there, I drove around Amsterdame for a solid 6 hours tonight."
Since Microsoft won't be getting a cut of the games in question, and developer goodwill isn't exactly something they've had trouble getting behind the 360, what exactly would they get from just opening up the development platform?
I believe they were charing significantly more for the full scale developers kit/package which companies like EA Sports and such buy into. This makes a "tinkering/homebrew" entry point into that arena for what is only the cost of a couple games.
And it probably STILL refuses to sign that Kyoto thingy....
If you pay cash for something you'll be required to swipe your ID card through a reader anyways because "it's standard procedure to get a card swipe of some kind with every transaction"
I was expecting more. Don't know how else to say it.
And I agree that if you're adding a feature that X windows has had for over a decade you shouldn't be throwing the "start your photocopier" stone at MS.
Sounds more like they are looking to get the Grey and Whites involved. Which wouldn't be a bad thing. You just have to hope they're as good as the Blacks. Because as sure as you have a herd of people step up to test this there will be at least a few who get a copy for nefarious purposes.
I will have to agree that Zonk and the greelighters here might want to read the articles then re-read the headlines to make sure they aren't just fanning the flamewars.
I'm just sayin...
The only way to make DVD's viable as a music platform IMHO would be to increase the amount of real content (i.e. music) which was on the thing.
As someone mentioned, you can cram up to 40 albums on a DVD without even getting to the higher capacity setups.
Of course studios would never do this because then you could buy , for instance, every Beatles album on one dvd. PERIOD. Either they would have to charge both arms and a leg for it (how much is the Beatles CD collection complete again?) which people wouldn't normally pay in one drop. Or they'd have to admit that larger collections of media aren't proportionally worth more than single new albums.
Not to mention several artists would struggle to put together a DVD worth of real solid content without videos.
Now, on the other hand a DVDA car stereo which could play DVD's I cram full of music? I'm on that. But easier to just get a 30g ipod with a car hookup. So no reason to push that technology either.
End result, music companies are struggling because they don't want to accept that the consumer is deciding the path of the industry and they aren't.
"the best gift is the gift that keeps on giving"
Lingerie?
Being married to a gamer you might expect this sooner, but...
In the first few years of our relationship/marriage any large gift giving occasion (x-mas, bday, etc) would be easily covered by some piece of jewlery, preferrably with a diamond in it. Done, locked and loaded and I was the hero.
Now, the last few gifts? New video card, PDA, MP3 player.
Tang for Vampires....
Little vampire kids could run around with a bag of it licking their fingers and sticking them in it...
1. Tivo tracks how many ads get skipped and by who
2. Ad agencies know how much less the ads are worth now and demand networks lower prices because they're delivering less.
3. Networks pull the leashes on their well paid congressional delegation to fix this with legislation.
3. If legislation doesn't work then they pay Tivo to disable skipping the commercial, or have a special code which drops the viewer out of fast forward at the beginning of each commercial block.
Is there any outcome of this that would be considered good? They're actually making MS Media Center look good. And driving me more and more towards building my own MythTV box.
Simply put, newer fancier faster bigger better prettier technology is sexy and sells both upgrades and new cards.
"Better power management" gets funny looks.
Funny look != profits
Step 2. is NEVER "generate funny looks"
You will never see a presidential candidate in a state other than NY, CA, TX, and FL. Everybody else will have to choose a president based on what they promise to do for those four states.
There is a reason the framers of the constitution hammered out these things they way they did. Some things could use some modernization, this is not one of them.
To bring this back into geek terms:
This is not a bug in the electoral process, this is a feature and is working as intended.
Point taken sir...
At least it wasn't a copy of Gigli
Once he really shows some fight in him they will drop it and it will vanish.
The more I see of their operations the more I think the MPAA and RIAA operate very much like local traffic cops. They want to give lots of tickets, and specifically to the people who will just pay the fines and move along. Then hoping that the "watch out, you could get a ticket" mentality will help them get the desired end result.
On the other hand, if he effectively counter sues for defamation of character and/or some other damages done to him by their abusive litigation practices and sets a precedent for others it could open some doors. But then it's still up to others to get lawyers to do it. Make it where the counter suit is profitable enough and lawyers could start making money on the shark-like "we only get paid if you get paid" approach. But you have to put enough blood into the water to draw them out.