Not that I'm aware of. You need to ask the shop owner for those games. Eventually he ordered copies and brings one from the closet. Or he might order it for you then. Of course, your chances of success are much better at specialized gaming stores than big malls that only sell the Top 10 games for additional revenue.
Why is that ridiculous? That guy had offered a service (http://www.my-g-mail.com/) before Google came up with its GMail. That service also dealt with email. The difference is that you could get your emails delivered as physical (snail) mail, too.
In opposite to the typical domain grabber, there's an actual product behind, which he tries to defend. And just for your information, the first german court rulings dealing about case date back to 2005 (http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61419), so this is not something brand new.
I won't put him in the categorie "get big money quick", given the fact that he didn't try to make monetary deals with Google since two years, but instead defends his business.
Darüber hinaus wurden eine Vielzahl von Computerspielen, darunter überwiegend sogenannte Egoshooter aufgefunden. Als Auswahl sind insoweit zu benennen: "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "Unreal 2", "Hidden", "Half-Life", "Undying", "Die Hard", "Gothic", "Hitman", "Quake III Arena" und "Quake III Team Arena", "Medal of Honour" und "Soldier of Fortune".
Quick translation: "In addition, a lot of computer games were found, most of them are so called egoshooters. To name a few:
So, if we're complaining about misinformed politians, we better get our facts straight first.
No, we're not. As an industry, we look produce products and perform services that are dictated by our own failings and conveniences rather than our customers' needs.
The problem here is that "customer needs" contradict themselves. And that they're not putting their money where there mouth is. They want i.e. maximum comfort and ease (understandable) and they want maximum security (also understandable). But given the means we got (that's where the money part comes into play) we can either make it comfortable (i.e. no passwords at all) or secure (minimum PW length, expiring PWs after x days, etc.). Too complicated? I see. And I even understand. Now than hand me over the money to build something comfortable, easy to use and secure. Too expensive?... Remember Henry Ford? "You can get it cheap, fast and good. Any two."
The user should have got a simple, understandable message that the printer was out of paper. That's a failure of the OS designer and printer driver developer.
No, please, don't. Another application that's spamming my monitor with useless and obvious messages? No, thanks. I wonder how those users recognize that their cup of coffee is empty, given the fact that not too many mugs I'm aware of have any kind of "coffee empty alarm" built in. Not even to speak about coffee machines...
The user's email software should have picked up the typo and suggested a correction (in fact, most email clients do)
How is that a typo? aol.con is a perfectly valid domain name, although obviously not in use yet. And I bet pennies for dollars that said user simply ignored the suggested correction.
The user is employed by your company to work. They generate income for the company. You are employed by your company to service the tools they use to generate the money that pays your salary. You are a cost to the company.
They owe you politeness out of common decency, but common sense suggests you should avoid interrupting their work.
Shouldn't they also help me in helping them? After all, I cost money, as you pointed out. So, the faster I fix the problem, the less expensive I am. But as of today the most common answer I received when asking what they did just before the problem occured: "Nothing!". No, you don't need to be able to speak "IT blahblah", just explain as good as you can in your own words what you did. And don't leave out important things such as "There was a message poping up, but I just clicked it away as I thought it was nothing important." Even if you can't remember what message there was, that *may* be that little hint that I need to egt your problem solved fast.
The user needs to get a 75MB file to the customer. Stop whining and arrange for it to happen.
I agree with you on this one. But I'd put it slightly different. I'd say: "There seems to be a policy at your receivers site that prevents attachments that large. Ask her/him to contact his IT department. If they can't resolve it or are not willing to make an excemption, pass them over my contact details so that we can look for alternative ways of submiting that file.
Besides all the technical/content details discussed already, my main concern about episodic games would be that the publisher or studio goes out of business "in the middle" of the story, leaving me with an unfinished game.
Take Neverwinter Nights 1 for example. You could have split it up in three parts. Let's say the first part ends after you accumulated all incredients for the curing potion, Desther steal the potion and disappears...(to be continued)
Now you eagerly wait for part two to chase down Desther... and then Bioware or Atari/Infogrames goes out of business. And no other company picks up that title and continues it. We would have lost one of the best RPGs around.
It's definitely a game for adults because most of the young'ns will get bored in the first few months while you're building your character up to the point where you're not just toast as soon as you leave a station.
With the slight difference that I would substitute the word "adult" with "patient people", I wholeheartly agree with you here. EVE is not for the unpatient ones. This and the point that the game doesn't force you into some predefined professions/careers is perhaps the most attracting point about EVE.
And, as Scuttlemonkey already pointed out, being able to train your char while being offline, let's me dictate the game's schedule, not the other way around. Got some intense work to do? Just set a long skill. Feel like spending more time with your friends/family? Set a long skill to train. Going on vacation?...you got the picture. Finally you come back to the game and you haven't fallen behind your corp members in terms of "experience". Granted, you might make no money menawhile (other than perhaps some items have benn sold meanwhile you had put into the market). But than again you haven't spent money either.
You're already at a disadvantage being in operations as everything you do costs money and it is unlikely that you bring in revenue to the company. If your people are in fact "too busy" to log the work you it becomes even more important for them to actually log everything. You need to explain to them that logging is important not because you are a jerk but because it justifies their continued employment and future headcount increases.
We're forced to do the same thing (logging calls). The question is do you (or your management) like problems be solved or do you like to protocol problems. Your users will appreciate the first, while management seems to be more interested in the later.
How about that: Do detailed logging for one month. Don't work any overtime. See if you still get your work done. If not, ask management for an additional employee to do the logging.
A side note: After we and our suppliers started logging calls, problems take way longer to be solved than before, as everyone is forced to log those damned calls. The sentence "The call has been escalated" has meanwhile become sort of a running gag in our department. If it wasn't so sad for the user who actually can't work (and therefore losing money), it would be really funny.
As I write this I'm struggling with a faulty DSL modem. The power supply is dead. Stupid me, I thought "Oh well, let the supplier just ship a preconfiured replacement modem." A modem arrived, plain vanilla out of the box. No configuration on it whatsorever. That particular store is now closed since last Wednesday! I have a call full of mails flying back and forth BUT HAVEN'T GOT ANY SOLUTION YET! That's what I call progress!
Well, I'm far away of supporting that party (CSU), but you're wrong on some points.
In some aspects, the CSU is even further to the left than our socialdemocrats. So, "mots right-winged" depends on which aspect you look at. The position that "there should be no room for a (democratic) party to the right of us" makes sense in so far as they try to integrate voters into the democratic spectrum who otherwise would vote for a Nazi party.
Bavaria has the lowest rate of crimes with racist background of all german states, so conservatives=>don't like immigrants doesn't sound right either.
It's not soldiers refusing to use their weapons. It's a shift in the mission, that were not comfortable with (giving our history). Right now, we're stationed in the north of Afghanistan and doing nation building. But we're urged to move to the south and engage in battle. But that's not what our parliament has sent the troops over for.
The other one: Well, the SWAT team was of course overkill. But as we already have laws in place that forbid the "glorification of violence" (as it's put in the law), the house search was a perfectly legal thing, technically speaking. Of course, we can argue if that law makes sense, but as long as it's in place, there's nothing wrong with it. And there are a lot of laws in a lot of countries on this earth that doesn't make sense to me.
Germany has a complex over the whole Third Reich thing - it's understandable, but let's face it, if you weren't involved or responsible somehow, you need to build a bridge and get over it.
Problem is, whatever we do, we're wrong. If we try to keep out of armed conflicts like U.N. missions, we're told "get over it, you need to learn to kill again" (quote from an english officer regarding german forces in Afghanistan). If something happens like the article mentions, we're called "Nazis" again.
It's a game we can't win and I guess it still needs a few centuries (if ever) until this situation has vanished.
And perhaps, although this is an uncomfortable situation for us Germans, the world as a whole does benefit from always remembering the Holocaust. Nobody wants to be the "Next Nazis". If that's what it's good for, so be it.
Yeah, but he's a gamer, who are all - in Beckstein's weird mind - doomed to run amok sooner or later. And about Anno 15xx, 17xx (whatever;-)): You do kill "human like beings" as well. Not through a first person perspective, though. But you kill nonetheless.
If estimated gaming community is 2Mln people, that one shooting idiot make up about 1/2mln*100 = 0,00005% of gamers.
You didn't specify if you meant those 2 million to be "Hardcore gamers". Numbers I've read, that came up in articles surrounding that silly suggestion from Beckstein, where from 10 to 20 million gamers in Germany. Those figures seem fairly plausible to me, looking around my friends (most of them are not geeks) and workmates. Heck, even my father is addicted by Anno 1502;-)
Not "it would", "it is". It was done after 9/11 when NATO decided to declare the treaty to become active after the attacks and before going to Afghanistan. It's still in place today.
I don't think so. What "news" will common people report? If it's the same common people that decide which TV program is successfull, by switching to a different channel if the current program requires at least some brain cells to follow, than the outcome and the quality of such news is nothing I'm looking forward to.
Besides that, there's another issue here: Turning away responsibility from the journalist/magazine/TV station to the common people. A german boulevard newspaper ("BILD") already publishes pictures taken by readers, rewarding them with very little money. That's a brilliant deal for the newspaper. Good paparazzi shots for little money and they can't get sued, because it wasn't them who shot the picture, but that little unknowing reader who contributed and now gets sued the hell out of him. And the newspaper just sits there and giggles about that.
At this point, I'd say that the difference in military might between the US and all of Europe is greater now than it was between Germany and the rest of Europe at the beginning of WWII
Ehmmm...you are aware the Germany's military power was nowhere near to be superior at the start of WWII? It was the underdog in any military branch. Airforce: British Spitfire's were superior, Navy: Anything but submarines were better from the Brits, Germany not even possesed a single carrier throughout the whole war, Army: It took Germany 'til 42 until they had anything that could kill the Soviet's T34 with a front shot, not to mention the JU-1. It took until 43 'til the Tiger and Königstiger and Pz. V (Panther) arrived at the scene. The only weapon capable of effectivly fighting those russian tanks was - ironically - an AA gun, the so called "eighteight" (8,8 cm caliber). High frequency and high range and caliber strong enough to make it through the heavy front armor plates of the T34. That's why the Tiger was equiped with the "eighteight" as well. The only advantage Germany had, was their superior commanders, from general down to platton leaders (that fortunately changed when Hitler took over general command) and tactical knowledge ("Blitzkrieg", anyone?).
So, given all this: WWII, Afghanistan (both the Soviet invasion and the nowerdays trouble), Vietnam, current Iraq, to just name a few, teaches the lesson that tactics have a much greater impact on the battle's outcome than numbers/equipment.
So unless the directive gets repealed (IIRC Ireland has brought it before the EU court of justice), providers will have to keep all this info anyway.
It depends...you can't trial the EU directive as of yet in Germany, because it hasn't become national law yet. *After* it has become german law, it will be trialed at the BVG (german constitutional court), several groups have already prepared the papers to do so. Now, if BVG rules the EU data retention directive unconstitutional, it can't become german law. So, (german) providers might not be forced to store the data anyway. Of course, politians will try to wrangle the court's ruling in such a way that they can stuff it onto us nonetheless.
It should work in Australia. Privacy laws here state that: [...]
Exact same thing here. On top of that, various courts, including the BVG (constitutional court) have stated that data storgar must be minimized to only the data necessary to fullfill the request service/transaction. I.e. a site providing a newsletter might not store (and not even ask for) anything more than your email address (and perhaps which newsletter you'd like to subscribe, in case the site provides more than one newsletter).
In addition to having hate speech law, Germany has also been accused of persecution of religious minorities
Ah, nice twist by the Scientology spin doctors. Scientology is not considered to be a "religion" in Germany. Therefore there can't be any "persecution of religious minorities". They're a company with any rights and duties each other company has in Germany.
But they're also considered to be an anti-constitutional. Their goals are against our constitution. Therefore our secret services ("Verfassungsschutz") has them on their watch list, like any other suspicious anti-constitutional organsations like NPD (german neonazi party) or Al Quaida.
And I truely welcome the above actions. We once had a fascistic regime here, no need to have another one (Scientology)
Germany takes privacy laws to the extreme, in my opinion.
As a admin, working for a german company in Germany, I know that our privacy laws are a PITA.
As a german citizen, living and working in Germany I think our privacy laws are way too relaxed.
That said, I very much welcome the decision of the court. We had a couple of similar decisions lately. And one always got the impression that the judges not only talking about the very case they had to handle, but that their sentence was also aimed at our politians to show them how german courts think about the EU data retention act. This one can't be trialed in Germany yet, as it hasn't become german law as of now. So this seem like a warning about what to expect when that gets taken to court, once it made it into german law.
- the public TV programmes are of good quality. Maybe not appealing to all viewers, but it is clear that care has been put in making them.
- some commercial TV programmes like RTL are not that bad, but the amount of commercials (and especially the length of commercial blocks) is awful.
I guess we need to distinguish what kind of shows we compare. If we're to compare entertainment (movies, TV serials), most of the time the big commercial channels have better things to offer.
But when it comes down to information, no commercial channel (not even the news channels) has such a wide and good variety of shows as the public channels. And if you move your attention over from the two "big" public channels to the smaller ones like Phoenix, 3SAT, arte you'll find documentations that no commercial channel will ever produce because the number of people interested in those topics will be way to low or the content documantary will be to radical for any promoter who's willing to buy ad space in a show.
And those are exactly the kind of shows this fee was originally intended for. Of course, like anything else invented in good will, it has degraded over the years.
Take for example, [...] Flickr or any of the myriad social networking sites. Frankly, I wonder why anyone would even want to use them while sitting at a desk.
Frankly, I wonder why anyone would even want to use them at all.
OK, this might be why I will never become a billionaire. I could never have "invented" something the like, because I never, ever thought that someone will actually find crap like this usefull.
Slashdot Mirror
Better make that the world. No need for other countries to repeat what we did in order to not forget it.
Not that I'm aware of. You need to ask the shop owner for those games. Eventually he ordered copies and brings one from the closet. Or he might order it for you then. Of course, your chances of success are much better at specialized gaming stores than big malls that only sell the Top 10 games for additional revenue.
Why is that ridiculous? That guy had offered a service (http://www.my-g-mail.com/) before Google came up with its GMail. That service also dealt with email. The difference is that you could get your emails delivered as physical (snail) mail, too.
In opposite to the typical domain grabber, there's an actual product behind, which he tries to defend. And just for your information, the first german court rulings dealing about case date back to 2005 (http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61419 ), so this is not something brand new.
I won't put him in the categorie "get big money quick", given the fact that he didn't try to make monetary deals with Google since two years, but instead defends his business.
Objection overruled.
While I hear that claim quite often (and I somewhat wish it was true), it clearly ignores the facts. From the official report of the Gutenberg Kommission (http://www.thueringer-allgemeine.de/ta/ta_media/Quick translation: "In addition, a lot of computer games were found, most of them are so called egoshooters. To name a few:
So, if we're complaining about misinformed politians, we better get our facts straight first.
The problem here is that "customer needs" contradict themselves. And that they're not putting their money where there mouth is. They want i.e. maximum comfort and ease (understandable) and they want maximum security (also understandable). But given the means we got (that's where the money part comes into play) we can either make it comfortable (i.e. no passwords at all) or secure (minimum PW length, expiring PWs after x days, etc.). Too complicated? I see. And I even understand. Now than hand me over the money to build something comfortable, easy to use and secure. Too expensive? ... Remember Henry Ford? "You can get it cheap, fast and good. Any two."
No, please, don't. Another application that's spamming my monitor with useless and obvious messages? No, thanks. I wonder how those users recognize that their cup of coffee is empty, given the fact that not too many mugs I'm aware of have any kind of "coffee empty alarm" built in. Not even to speak about coffee machines...
How is that a typo? aol.con is a perfectly valid domain name, although obviously not in use yet. And I bet pennies for dollars that said user simply ignored the suggested correction.
Shouldn't they also help me in helping them? After all, I cost money, as you pointed out. So, the faster I fix the problem, the less expensive I am. But as of today the most common answer I received when asking what they did just before the problem occured: "Nothing!". No, you don't need to be able to speak "IT blahblah", just explain as good as you can in your own words what you did. And don't leave out important things such as "There was a message poping up, but I just clicked it away as I thought it was nothing important." Even if you can't remember what message there was, that *may* be that little hint that I need to egt your problem solved fast.
I agree with you on this one. But I'd put it slightly different. I'd say: "There seems to be a policy at your receivers site that prevents attachments that large. Ask her/him to contact his IT department. If they can't resolve it or are not willing to make an excemption, pass them over my contact details so that we can look for alternative ways of submiting that file.
Besides all the technical/content details discussed already, my main concern about episodic games would be that the publisher or studio goes out of business "in the middle" of the story, leaving me with an unfinished game.
Take Neverwinter Nights 1 for example. You could have split it up in three parts. Let's say the first part ends after you accumulated all incredients for the curing potion, Desther steal the potion and disappears...(to be continued)
Now you eagerly wait for part two to chase down Desther ... and then Bioware or Atari/Infogrames goes out of business. And no other company picks up that title and continues it. We would have lost one of the best RPGs around.
With the slight difference that I would substitute the word "adult" with "patient people", I wholeheartly agree with you here. EVE is not for the unpatient ones. This and the point that the game doesn't force you into some predefined professions/careers is perhaps the most attracting point about EVE.
And, as Scuttlemonkey already pointed out, being able to train your char while being offline, let's me dictate the game's schedule, not the other way around. Got some intense work to do? Just set a long skill. Feel like spending more time with your friends/family? Set a long skill to train. Going on vacation?...you got the picture. Finally you come back to the game and you haven't fallen behind your corp members in terms of "experience". Granted, you might make no money menawhile (other than perhaps some items have benn sold meanwhile you had put into the market). But than again you haven't spent money either.
We're forced to do the same thing (logging calls). The question is do you (or your management) like problems be solved or do you like to protocol problems. Your users will appreciate the first, while management seems to be more interested in the later.
How about that: Do detailed logging for one month. Don't work any overtime. See if you still get your work done. If not, ask management for an additional employee to do the logging.
A side note: After we and our suppliers started logging calls, problems take way longer to be solved than before, as everyone is forced to log those damned calls. The sentence "The call has been escalated" has meanwhile become sort of a running gag in our department. If it wasn't so sad for the user who actually can't work (and therefore losing money), it would be really funny.
As I write this I'm struggling with a faulty DSL modem. The power supply is dead. Stupid me, I thought "Oh well, let the supplier just ship a preconfiured replacement modem." A modem arrived, plain vanilla out of the box. No configuration on it whatsorever. That particular store is now closed since last Wednesday! I have a call full of mails flying back and forth BUT HAVEN'T GOT ANY SOLUTION YET! That's what I call progress!
Well, I'm far away of supporting that party (CSU), but you're wrong on some points.
In some aspects, the CSU is even further to the left than our socialdemocrats. So, "mots right-winged" depends on which aspect you look at. The position that "there should be no room for a (democratic) party to the right of us" makes sense in so far as they try to integrate voters into the democratic spectrum who otherwise would vote for a Nazi party.
Bavaria has the lowest rate of crimes with racist background of all german states, so conservatives=>don't like immigrants doesn't sound right either.
There's also a TV movie about it: "The wave". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083316/
It's not soldiers refusing to use their weapons. It's a shift in the mission, that were not comfortable with (giving our history). Right now, we're stationed in the north of Afghanistan and doing nation building. But we're urged to move to the south and engage in battle. But that's not what our parliament has sent the troops over for.
The other one: Well, the SWAT team was of course overkill. But as we already have laws in place that forbid the "glorification of violence" (as it's put in the law), the house search was a perfectly legal thing, technically speaking. Of course, we can argue if that law makes sense, but as long as it's in place, there's nothing wrong with it. And there are a lot of laws in a lot of countries on this earth that doesn't make sense to me.
Problem is, whatever we do, we're wrong. If we try to keep out of armed conflicts like U.N. missions, we're told "get over it, you need to learn to kill again" (quote from an english officer regarding german forces in Afghanistan). If something happens like the article mentions, we're called "Nazis" again.
It's a game we can't win and I guess it still needs a few centuries (if ever) until this situation has vanished.
And perhaps, although this is an uncomfortable situation for us Germans, the world as a whole does benefit from always remembering the Holocaust. Nobody wants to be the "Next Nazis". If that's what it's good for, so be it.
Yeah, but he's a gamer, who are all - in Beckstein's weird mind - doomed to run amok sooner or later. And about Anno 15xx, 17xx (whatever ;-)): You do kill "human like beings" as well. Not through a first person perspective, though. But you kill nonetheless.
Why is that ironic? We're not allowed to have fun with them and use them. Now, what's left? Keep tuning and twekaing 'em. ;-)
You didn't specify if you meant those 2 million to be "Hardcore gamers". Numbers I've read, that came up in articles surrounding that silly suggestion from Beckstein, where from 10 to 20 million gamers in Germany. Those figures seem fairly plausible to me, looking around my friends (most of them are not geeks) and workmates. Heck, even my father is addicted by Anno 1502 ;-)
So it's even less than what you came up with.
Not "it would", "it is". It was done after 9/11 when NATO decided to declare the treaty to become active after the attacks and before going to Afghanistan. It's still in place today.
I don't think so. What "news" will common people report? If it's the same common people that decide which TV program is successfull, by switching to a different channel if the current program requires at least some brain cells to follow, than the outcome and the quality of such news is nothing I'm looking forward to.
Besides that, there's another issue here: Turning away responsibility from the journalist/magazine/TV station to the common people. A german boulevard newspaper ("BILD") already publishes pictures taken by readers, rewarding them with very little money. That's a brilliant deal for the newspaper. Good paparazzi shots for little money and they can't get sued, because it wasn't them who shot the picture, but that little unknowing reader who contributed and now gets sued the hell out of him. And the newspaper just sits there and giggles about that.
Ehmmm...you are aware the Germany's military power was nowhere near to be superior at the start of WWII? It was the underdog in any military branch. Airforce: British Spitfire's were superior, Navy: Anything but submarines were better from the Brits, Germany not even possesed a single carrier throughout the whole war, Army: It took Germany 'til 42 until they had anything that could kill the Soviet's T34 with a front shot, not to mention the JU-1. It took until 43 'til the Tiger and Königstiger and Pz. V (Panther) arrived at the scene. The only weapon capable of effectivly fighting those russian tanks was - ironically - an AA gun, the so called "eighteight" (8,8 cm caliber). High frequency and high range and caliber strong enough to make it through the heavy front armor plates of the T34. That's why the Tiger was equiped with the "eighteight" as well. The only advantage Germany had, was their superior commanders, from general down to platton leaders (that fortunately changed when Hitler took over general command) and tactical knowledge ("Blitzkrieg", anyone?).
So, given all this: WWII, Afghanistan (both the Soviet invasion and the nowerdays trouble), Vietnam, current Iraq, to just name a few, teaches the lesson that tactics have a much greater impact on the battle's outcome than numbers/equipment.
Exact same thing here. On top of that, various courts, including the BVG (constitutional court) have stated that data storgar must be minimized to only the data necessary to fullfill the request service/transaction. I.e. a site providing a newsletter might not store (and not even ask for) anything more than your email address (and perhaps which newsletter you'd like to subscribe, in case the site provides more than one newsletter).
I regard that principle as highly appreciated.Ah, nice twist by the Scientology spin doctors. Scientology is not considered to be a "religion" in Germany. Therefore there can't be any "persecution of religious minorities". They're a company with any rights and duties each other company has in Germany.
But they're also considered to be an anti-constitutional. Their goals are against our constitution. Therefore our secret services ("Verfassungsschutz") has them on their watch list, like any other suspicious anti-constitutional organsations like NPD (german neonazi party) or Al Quaida.
And I truely welcome the above actions. We once had a fascistic regime here, no need to have another one (Scientology)As a admin, working for a german company in Germany, I know that our privacy laws are a PITA.
As a german citizen, living and working in Germany I think our privacy laws are way too relaxed.
That said, I very much welcome the decision of the court. We had a couple of similar decisions lately. And one always got the impression that the judges not only talking about the very case they had to handle, but that their sentence was also aimed at our politians to show them how german courts think about the EU data retention act. This one can't be trialed in Germany yet, as it hasn't become german law as of now. So this seem like a warning about what to expect when that gets taken to court, once it made it into german law.
I guess we need to distinguish what kind of shows we compare. If we're to compare entertainment (movies, TV serials), most of the time the big commercial channels have better things to offer.
But when it comes down to information, no commercial channel (not even the news channels) has such a wide and good variety of shows as the public channels. And if you move your attention over from the two "big" public channels to the smaller ones like Phoenix, 3SAT, arte you'll find documentations that no commercial channel will ever produce because the number of people interested in those topics will be way to low or the content documantary will be to radical for any promoter who's willing to buy ad space in a show.
And those are exactly the kind of shows this fee was originally intended for. Of course, like anything else invented in good will, it has degraded over the years.