Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 24th Feb 2012 21:59 UTC
An interesting anecdote at MinimalMac about television being broken. The author's young daughter, who is growing up in a Netflix/Hulu/iTunes/etc. household, was confronted with actual TV for the first time, and wonders why she can't pick what to watch, why the shows are being interrupted all the time, and so on. Clearly - TV is broken.
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RE[2]: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It
by Bobthearch on Sat 25th Feb 2012 03:07
in reply to "RE: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It"
Member since:2006-01-27
RE[2]: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It
by TheIdiotThatIsMe on Sat 25th Feb 2012 03:36
in reply to "RE: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It"
Member since:2006-06-17
"About 10 years ago, I stopped subscribing to cable. And since then online services have gotten a lot better (Hulu, Netflix). Before I joined those services, I just bought used DVDs of movies and shows I wanted to see. Buying all that 'used' media was still cheaper than me subscribing to cable and I still had the opportunity to customize my programming so-to-speak. TV therefore is now an archaic technology...or rather...medium to me. But I know I have to remember I have been fortunate enough to afford the bandwidth to customize my own programming.
I wonder when the majority of TV audiences will finally shift to watching the most of their shows online, and when that shift happens I wonder if TV Media will finally accept online viewing as the primary medium or will they try weird antics to keep people glued to a TV set. And I am sure Ubuntu TV and Apple TV are going to try to change the game in that area as well.
One thing I will say about TV, in my experience, is that I have found traditional TV to be more social than online viewing. Huddling around the TV with friends at a specific time to watch shows, calling friends up after a show with the whole "WTH, did you see that?!?" moments, etc. just dont happen the same way online imo. And then sometimes I miss random re-runs that appear on TV (hello random Star Trek TNG episode).
I wonder when the majority of TV audiences will finally shift to watching the most of their shows online, and when that shift happens I wonder if TV Media will finally accept online viewing as the primary medium or will they try weird antics to keep people glued to a TV set. And I am sure Ubuntu TV and Apple TV are going to try to change the game in that area as well.
One thing I will say about TV, in my experience, is that I have found traditional TV to be more social than online viewing. Huddling around the TV with friends at a specific time to watch shows, calling friends up after a show with the whole "WTH, did you see that?!?" moments, etc. just dont happen the same way online imo. And then sometimes I miss random re-runs that appear on TV (hello random Star Trek TNG episode).
You've got to be kidding. Nobody who has a life wants to watch the compressed crap on services like Hulu and Netflix for any real amount of time.
Just watching it at friends' house gives me a headache.
No way would I subscribe to any of these "services" "
I'm actually a bit surprised you had such bad experiences with it. I'm subscribed to both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video; I've never had a problem wit the quality of either. I use Netflix quite a bit, since I don't use cable or broadcast TV, and it's library is worth the 7.99 for me (I'm a sucker for Bones and Psych, and a few other TV shows on there with some movies sprinkled in). When I have people over, no one can tell the difference between Netflix and an upscaled DVD on the PS3 (most HD I usually just buy on Bluray).
Staying away from piracy (it is illegal where I live, and even if a business isn't "competent" to some people's standards, I won't break the law to obtain something without payment if it is available legally) is largely what drove me to services like Netflix and Amazon MP3; easy access to digital goods.
Before that, I did what the person above you stated; I mostly bought used DVD's (and often still do, I'm a movie lover).
I feel those in situations like Thom's have very valid points: when there is no real business presence to offer the services and legal avenue for obtaining these items, you can't be surprised when people take to torrents. But I do sometimes think people here in the US try to use similar arguments that don't hold up as well here, as an excuse for piracy.
RE[3]: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It
by bert64 on Sat 25th Feb 2012 20:11
in reply to "RE[2]: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It"
Member since:2007-04-23
Streaming quality depends on available bandwidth, if you don't have enough bandwidth available you will get a low quality version.
This is one of the reasons why i don't like streaming services, i have a bandwidth cap during the day (unlimited late at night), and during peak times my available bandwidth goes down quite considerably due to network congestion.
I would much rather schedule a download at night, and then watch it the following day when i finish work (ie peak time when i wouldnt have enough bandwidth to stream)...
RE[2]: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It
by Bill Shooter of Bul on Sat 25th Feb 2012 16:08
in reply to "RE: Gave Up Cable, Dont Miss It"
Member since:2006-07-14
You're an video-audiophile. Most people aren't. I grew up watching tv on a 19 inch screen with all mannor of analog interference. Use the blender, no tv sound. Use the vacuum, no tv picture.
Digital tv in any format I've very seen blows the ever loving snot out of that. I care about good plots and good acting. If there are good visuals, well neato, but it doesn't make a crappy movie good.
In all reality, most people are more like me than you.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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I wonder when the majority of TV audiences will finally shift to watching the most of their shows online, and when that shift happens I wonder if TV Media will finally accept online viewing as the primary medium or will they try weird antics to keep people glued to a TV set. And I am sure Ubuntu TV and Apple TV are going to try to change the game in that area as well.
One thing I will say about TV, in my experience, is that I have found traditional TV to be more social than online viewing. Huddling around the TV with friends at a specific time to watch shows, calling friends up after a show with the whole "WTH, did you see that?!?" moments, etc. just dont happen the same way online imo. And then sometimes I miss random re-runs that appear on TV (hello random Star Trek TNG episode).
You've got to be kidding. Nobody who has a life wants to watch the compressed crap on services like Hulu and Netflix for any real amount of time.
Just watching it at friends' house gives me a headache.
No way would I subscribe to any of these "services"