Comment Re:Unfortunate (Score 1) 360
They loss 1/3 of their new subscription rate. I Should have clarified.
They loss 1/3 of their new subscription rate. I Should have clarified.
This feature is actually on Netflix for xbox360. I was surprised to find t here.
Hollywood isn't making money from the popcorn and drinks, that's the theaters. Hollywood gets the money from ticket sales.
While I hate the idea that Netflix may not be around much longer, I'm not surprised. Mr. Hastings strategy seems to be focusing on maximizing contribution margins instead of maximizing profit. Getting one doesn't mean you'll get the other. What I don't understand is why Hastings believes that the major studios will allow Netflix to operate the online distribution at the price levels consumers demand. It is clear that Hollywood has no interest in lowering prices on digital content even though the marginal costs of distribution is minuscule. It won't be long before Netflix changes to a "on-demand" pricing model that Apple, Amazon, and a whole other set of competitors are already doing, and the recent exit of a third of their customers due to the recent price increase is a clear indication that Netflix is selling a highly elastic product. When will Hollywod ever learn that we don't want to pay 2.99 per episode for a show with DRM restrictions that force you to re-purchase the damn video for every device you have, and that paying $14 for a digital download when the DVD is selling at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target for $10 is price gouging.
As someone who has and still works in the call center industry, let me say that it's not about Americans not wanting call center jobs, it's about the costs of low level call center work. For example, if you're a credit card company, you can train a low-wage non-American to do the simple stuff like tell you your balance and available credit, accept a payment, or reissue you another card. But the more complicated stuff will come back on-shore in smaller call centers. Things like credit card disputes, fraud management, and more common sales work.
It's not about finding just cheap labor, but about finding cheap specialized labor. The best part about offshoring is the added benefit of attracting highly skilled and intelligent workers on the cheap. But add American and British culture in the mix and it becomes a little more difficult for the really cheap labor from degree holding Indians or Filipinos to understand cultural cues. It's part of the reason why those who make the mistake of placing Level 3 support in these countries where cultural miscommunication occurs through lack of training and little value of the customer's time causes offshoring to have a bad name.
Subscribers have asterisks next to their name.
Very Old Interstellar Large Array.
Exclusivtivity is just one attribute of Apple's brand. It's one way Apple differentiates itself from other computers. It's not the basis, just a part. My explination was just an example of how Apple leverages their brand to push product that on a tech/price comparison gives Apple a way to say "Apple products are more than just computers."
Brand is everything if you think about it. A brand is just the attributes that people use to describe your product or company. If you sell shitty product, then you'll have a brand of shitty quality products. Let's be honest, most consumers don't understand technology and even fewer can predict what's going to be the next big thing in tech, so consumers use brand to differentiate products and reduce selection complexity. They assume that the higher the price the better the quality, be damned if it doesn't work. Apple is a great proponent of brand utilization. Often times, their products are under specced and priced higher than the competition. Even though there are far technical alternatives that on a apples to apples comparison make Apple products look 5 years old, they price their products so high that only a select few can purchase them, the products become a status symbol instead of providing utility, and they develop a brand that equates to high quality. Real computer science nerds know the difference but the average soccer mom does not, nor do they care. If Meg can change HP's brand to be the high quality standard of beige boxes, then that's good for consumers and great for investors. If HP continues the strategy that they're getting out of the PC and consumer device market to focus on consulting, then she can develop the brand that SBU managers know and trust for their tech needs in the way we trust IBM and Accenture now.
Privacy aside, this is a very interesting way to solve the talk and surf problem for those stuck on the EDGE network with no 3G coverage, since plain text messages can be sent and received while on the phone. Yes, this would be painfully slow and inefficient, but it is a work around nonetheless.
There are specific exclusions for DOD or any government contract that allow electronics to NOT be required to be made in the USA.(read the FAR guidelines)
You've completely missed the point of the GPL, it was never about money, it was about giving people choice. When I develop software that's open source, my intentions are to have a great piece of software accomplish a task and share this software with others. If they feel they need to make a change to it for their liking, then go for it; however, if they make a change and deliberately prevent others from making a change in the future, then you've abandoned my principles for the sake of your profit line. You've deliberately truncated the freedoms of others in order to get an advantage over your competitor. If I wanted to deliver an exclusive license to just you that doesn't apply to anyone you distribute my code to, then I would have given you a license to do so. I don't mind if you take my hard work and make money off it, I do mind when you take my hard work and remove the freedoms I granted you and anyone you distribute my software to in order to make money. If you stick to my principles, then make a mountain of cash and I won't ask for a dime. Violate my intentions for that cash, then I'll ensure you don't get to keep a single red cent.
"I have an iPad(iOS 5 -- I'm a developer)....My iPad is really just glorified personal media player" - Ditto. Even after jailbreaking, it's still just an oversize iPod touch. For media, it is great; for everything else, you should get something else. However, I believe this was Apple's goal the whole time. This tablet can't replace the functionality of my Windows XP Motion M1400 (which is now dead), but it does a wonderful job of replacing my phone for media viewing and web surfing. It's something that I could leave with my mother and not wonder if she's updated her virus scanner recently.
I've been thinking about that ASUS Transformer as a laptop (I don't have one since the Motion tablet died), and I don't need a crap load of power to create a few docs either, but almost $600 for tablet and dock is making me consider a cheap laptop.
Where the hell are you getting free Xooms from?
What's really sad is that as of right now, you couldn't get more than 20% of all Facebook users to understand what secure tunneling is, so those that do understand it will just make it a one-click-fix for the other 80%, bypassing all of the ISPs' hard work.
Really it reminds me of Sony and the PS3 all over again. Most of Sony's PS3 gamers don't know the ins and outs of security hacking, yet Sony managed to piss off that 1% of users that do and open the flood gates for another 20% to follow a video tutorial on YouTube.
When will these giant corporations learn that you can't take a sledge hammer to a pin and think you're going to accomplish something. If you want piracy to drop, make your content more easily accessible. I'm guilty of using a torrent to download a TV episode or two, but only after I can't "one click to buy it" on Amazon or iTunes. $1.99 for 21-45 minutes of entertainment isn't going to break me, I'm just tired of paying $100+/month for access to that 21-45 minutes a week I want because the providers are too stubborn to put the damn content online where I can easily purchase it without having 20+ accounts at 20+ different websites.
Variables don't; constants aren't.