Did you just cite a sitcom (WKRP in Cincinnati) as evidence in a debate? I can't tell if this is a tongue in cheek piss taking or if you honestly believe a comedy bit happened in real life.

I'm just speaking from personal experience. Well seeded, reliable, hi-def shows seem to take about 24 hours to appear on the torrent sites I frequent. YMMV, and there may be outliers.

I think he's right to look at piracy as competition. But his cures are worse than the disease. I mean, give away your shows, simultaneous to air time, in hi def, with no interstitial ads. Just because any other way would not be competitive with piracy. Balloney.

First, if you want a high def copy of the show, you're going to wait an average of 24 hours. If the big networks streamed high def copies of the show in real-time, that is already a huge competitive advantage! You could air it with full commercials for the first 24 hours easily without turning away the audience. Maybe 24-48 hours after the show has aired, you can turn off interstitials and just go with an opening 30 second ad. This would also recognize that one of the chief annoyances to anyone discovering a show and catching up to it would be sitting through the same stale interstitial ads over and over again as they plow through a show.

You don't have to beat a competitor at every level to be competitive. The content producers have the following competitive advantages.

* They own copyrights and they are legal.
* They can release their material at the same time as the show airs, or even BEFORE if they choose.
* They can release pristine copies in high def.
* They can properly support subtitles easily.
* They are easy to find, and their websites SHOULD be free of malware.
* They can hold archives of past shows in an obvious, easy to understand, search, and index way.
* They can monitize some of these perks (early showings, subtitles, etc) with a subscription model if they choose to.

I'd almost prefer a model where I don't subscribe to channels per se, I subscribe to shows. I buy "season passes" to my favorites for $15/season. I'm sure they'll figure it out, but them "figuring it out" will not be them giving away their product, for free, in high def, with no restrictions whatsoever. If this character was NBC's CEO, they'd go bankrupt.

That's crazy, and it's not about the ruralness of your company. There is lots of metro IT shops that are run that way. That's about the lack of sensitivity to people's lives from the people on top. Not all places are like that. Brush up your resume and leave it for the next guy who is willing to be underpaid and used up. Don't be that guy!

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps

This is even worse when you think about the naked money grab nature of it. He's releasing the blurays of the movies, then he's releasing these, then he'll release the blurays. Again. The man is just printing his own money at this point.

I've bought the THX remastered VHS tapes of the classic trilogy, the "special" editions of same, the DVD releases of the prequels, and the DVD release of original trilogy. I'm done. No more. Not one more red cent. Buying the prequels was already a bridge to far if I'm being honest with myself. The ONLY way I will EVER buy another version of Star Wars is if they make Bluray copies of the ORIGINAL series, no special editions. Or even better, make branching copies so I can select which I want to watch or in my dream scenario, blend in the stuff I like about the special editions (the improved models in the Battle of Yavin, improved matting on the Battle of Hoth) and keep the rest as is.

I've got high quality versions of the original trilogy ripped from laser disc. They do just fine, thanks George. Let me know when I can pay you for the old, non fucked up editions, and you can have some (more) of my money then.

Hey, I live in the boonies. Still have a quality library, that networks with other libraries, has online reserve and renewal, and all the other modern features that larger, metropolitan areas have. Just because one lives in the "sticks" doesn't mean one has to accept sub-standard services.

Good point. I actually had a counter argument in the back of my mind RE: Left 4 Dead, which uses a director system to ramp up the difficulty of the game, by playing with the size of and timing of the zombie hordes, and supply of health and ammo. A person that sucks at FPSs and a veteran can play the same game with wildly different difficulties, with the same end result: having to fight through a massive amount of zombies and just barely surviving to the safehouse.

I can imagine the same could be said for Dwarf Fortress. From what I know, the core experience of the game is going to be similar, with similar situations and encounters, even if the difficulty varies.

So you might be right. I still think the less strategic and more "arcadey" a game is, the less this will hold true. But it's just a feeling, and probably fueled not a little bit by some grognard standards I have for gaming difficulty now versus the "good old days". :)

Totally agree. As we talked about on my podcast, I want to know people were in the deep shit with me. When I talk about NES-era Ninja Gaiden with a fellow aging geek, and I see the look of pain flash on his face? I know. I know he knows. And I know he knows that I know. You know? That experience has currency.

If it had some kind of sliding difficulty scale, and he says "what do you mean? I thought the game was easy." What does that mean? Is he a god of gaming? Does he suck and the game took mercy on him? There is a shadow* of the same feeling war veterans get talking with fellow soldiers who spent time in the same conflict together. Well designed but brutally difficult games can spark that kind of "Band of Brothers" conversation in groups of gamers.

* A small shadow. A shade. Like, on an overcast day.

The single "best" story of zombifying parasites have to be the Sacculina barnacles. Read this to lose some sleep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacculina

The basics: Barnacle attaches itself to crab. Weaves tendrils throughout crabs central nervous system to take control of the crab and also leach neutrients from it. The crab stops growing and molting at that part. It will not engage in normal behavior like regrowing lost limbs. Anything behavior that does not serve the parasite is suppressed If the crab is a female, the barnacles sprouts an internal egg sac at the exact place a crabs would be and causes the crab to care for the eggs as if it is its own.

If the crab is a male? IT REWIRES THE CRABS INTERNAL PLUMBING AND *MAKES* IT A FEMALE!!

Truly insane stuff. I remember first reading about them in the book Parasite Rex (highly recommended, btw), and one biologist recounts the crabs behavior when it feels the parasite latch on to a joint in its armor. At first, the crab is panicked, flailing around, trying to scrape the damn thing off. Then, as the hours go by, and the parasite takes over its system, it slowly stops its resistance, until it becomes a zombie crab. It will then be used up and discarded.

Pretty horrifying, if you ask me. No crab deserves to go out like that. :)

One of the coolest moments at this years inaugural PAX East was getting my hands on an original Vextrex machine to play frogger and moon lander. It was lovingly maintained and restored, and the detail and some of the effects they pulled off were amazing. Don't get me wrong, it was crude as hell, but the effect of your frog dying, how it kind of shriveled up and deformed into a single point of light was the kind of awesome you're never going to see again.

Indeed. And when lipos go, they don't just go up in flames, or at least the ones in RC models don't. They produce an intense, almost blowtorch like flame that can cut through, melt, and ignite materials instantly. See the following video for an example of a 4000mah battery. That would be sufficient to power a 1/8th scale car for 10 minutes or so, or a 1-2lb stunt plane for a similar time. Now imagine something sized big enough to power a car.

There are containment devices sold that effectively (basically a kevlar/asbestos bag, although I don't think it was asbestos. Similar materials, though) prevents the discharge from destroying the surrounding environment. So I think you could engineer around this, but yeah. The dangers are very real.

As a power user I hated the ribbon for about four weeks, until I actually quit bitching and moaning about it and started using it. Now I prefer it, and don't like the former interface. Even for relatively advanced spreadsheet tasks involving remote data access with cubing and other analytic voodoo, I find that the ribbon is faster and easier to use for every task I use Word, Access, and Excel for, and on the rare occasions I have to use a new feature it is easier to guess at what category of task they filed it under than the old nested menu bar. Even our oldest, gnarliest, set-in-their-ways troll-beasts in accounting have grudgingly accepted and even begun to admire the ribbon.

Even worse, many standards business are forced to live with (PCI-DSS for one) require the kind of account policies you and the article decry. You can either require ridiculous password policies and be compliant or not and risk significant fines and penalties. The decision is completely out of the admin's hands. On the whole I think PCI has lead to good things overall with bringing many companies kicking and screaming up to base line security competence, but some of the requirements seem to cause as many problems as the solve.

And the United States, a self-confessed democracy over its existence, managed to kill at minimum one out of 50 of its own citizens in a civil war, eradicate a substantial fraction of its native population, forcibly import a substantial number of people for servile labor, imprison a large number of citizens based on coincident heritage of one combatant party during a mid-century war (but ignoring those of coincident heritage of other combatants), and expend a significant amount of post-war energies persecuting those who made the mistake of agreeing with the governing philosophy of a nation we had made an erstwhile ally of that conflict.

Goddamn what a great country! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!