I disagree. If you are funny or talented enough and you put yourself out there, the marketing will come to you claiming that you need them to get started. Maybe it used to be true that you needed heavy promotion through television, but I don't know if it is anymore. Things are changing, and for the better IMO.

I think the success of this experiement proves that you DON'T necessarily need all that marketing cash. You DON'T need to have every one of your customers exposed to 12 ads to ensure they see a video, not when the Internet is your word-of-mouth. The cost of marketing has been over-inflated by the assumption that box office / DVD success is the only valid success.

If you don't use the big Marketing Machines to promote your movie, maybe you won't make a hojillion dollars at the box office, but you know what? I don't watch that many things at the movies anymore - it's too expensive, inconvenient, and often a poor experience when compared to viewing in a home theater setup. The relative "success" of a movie puts too much emphasis on this overpriced and outdated mode of distribution. There's a reason why big screen-warping action blockbusters make that box office bank - they are the only movies really enhanced by being 3 stories tall and louder. And I'd be willing to bet that the long-run digital/DVD revenue for some of the high-quality but low-marketed movies more than made up for a shoddy box office performance.

With regards to home video, I can't exactly justify $20 or more to buy a movie or video to own that I will only watch once. Times are hard, bills are more important than entertainment, and I'm much more willing to wait than I ever used to be for something to come down to a reasonable price, regardless of the distribution method. I just don't see the point in buying anything I won't watch multiple times. Rental, sure. Digital rental via subscription (netflix, hulu) definitely. Bring the price down to a level that doesn't assume I will watch it 20-30 times over its life and we can talk. And I've digitally rented TONS of movies or DVDs that I never saw a single commercial for just because a peer recommended it. On the Internet.

When you add in his honest appeal to human decency and the attractiveness of paying an extremely talented artist directly instead of a media conglomerate, I was sold. A fair price didn't hurt either.

This is the crux of the argument, right here.

Comcast doesn't want to pass the costs off to customers because they don't want to issue an across the board rate hike or be the first to install metered billing. Rightfully, the extra costs should be the burden of the customer, but if you thought the complaints were loud for this issue, it's a echoing whistle in a mineshaft compared to the cacophony a rate hike or metered billing would cause. Not to mention the reactionary net subscriber loss is MUCH higher for a rate hike than for some bad PR. So they're trying to hot-potato the extra financial load around.

Bottom line, we need to stop thinking of the internet as all-you-can-eat. The ONLY thing keeping metered billing at bay is that nobody wants to step up and be the first to implement it across the board. One day that dam will burst and a major provided will go metered. Every other ISP will follow within 6 months to 1 year, guaranteed.

I, for one, welcome our new "I, for one, welcome our new arsenic-based overlords" comment thread.

One thing I can all but guarantee, it won't be cheaper than cable/satellite. The a la carte television service is not a new idea. The same people that fucked it up when it was explored back in the early cable days and who fucked it up for Netflix, Hulu, and every other streaming service will be there for this one. And no, it won't be Comcast or AT&T or any of the people that actually bill you. They WANT to provide people the most flexible service they could, that would draw more customers.

No, this will be reinvented to death by the content providers.

You will see $10 monthly subscriptions for each media producing company's channel packages, tiers of packages for the big ones like Turner or Disney, and my guess is you'll end up with a la carte that costs just as much as your bundled cable TV does if not more. You will likely be able to buy comparable "bundles" at the same cost per month as traditional subscription television. But if you truly want a la carte programming, you'll end up paying as much or more for fewer overall channels.

The carriers (Comcast, ATT, etc) are not going to give you a choice of ignoring the providers' experimental networks and shows, they're locked into paying for them just as you are by contracts printed in the 80's and they already oversell their ad space with the channels they have. They would start a riot with their advertisers over the suddenly very narrow marketing window if they didn't force you to accept some channels you don't want. If they did, new channels would never get off the ground and niche channels would die out from lack of funding.

Well, why do I need a channel anyway, you might ask. Let me just watch the shows I want and stuff the channels.

That is the reason why Netflix and Hulu are getting the push back on providing streaming content that they are. The entire business system is based on a model that presumes upon timeslot-based content to promote and target prime advertising and shows. The technology to provide the media has changed, but the business model behind it never had to. Now it is suddenly bucking hard against what they see as the iTunes to their RIAA, coming to slay the lumbering beast of their outmoded business plan. There are simply too many people who ALL have to be on board for it to work.

I'm not saying it will never work, but I'm saying don't get too excited about this announcement. Microsoft will play ball with content providers, it won't try to leverage them into the 21st century (like Google or Apple). You might see it change down the road for the better as studios and networks start to realize that they cannot dictate how we watch their programming anymore. If they want to join the rest of us in the World of Tomorrow, some big sweeping changes to their business has to take place first. And that will be slow and painful for them, and for us in the meantime.

Touche.

I think the term "illegal" isn't the right one to use. Which one is more immoral is probably more accurate.

One country is revoking DNS service for a relatively small list of sites when its investigations show these sites violate that nation's (and in some cases international) trade or copyright laws. These sites are shut down without due process or prior notification. There is fear that if unchecked, this power could be extended to remove ideas that are unwelcome to those in control of these mechanisms.

Evil, yes. But our own brand of evil, evil that benefits our own subtly neo-feudal power structure and shores up the foundations of our capitalist economic structure. It does this by directly preventing the operation of some who seek to circumvent established monetary contribution channels for intellectual and real property holders. Whether you agree with the core concept of monetizing intellectual property or not, the rules guarding it are pretty clearly and publicly defined and this action supports enforcement of those ideals. So I would say there is a potential for evil in this if taken to extremes, but by and large it mainly supports the established tenets of the nation.

Another country has been caught using the trust extended to them in the form of DNS root servers to change the information provided by these servers to prevent access with the country's political interests and restrictions on tolerated ideals. The country's agencies have been known to intercept and effectively hijack the Internet connection of an uncertain number of global users whose traffic happened to be entrusted to their equipment due to load balancing. It is not known what the intention was, the extent of the data captured was never fully understood, there was no overt manipulation or presentation of purposely deceptive information, all that is truly known is that China has a policy of strict regulation of ideas of its people and that a great potential for harm exists if the country chose to pursue it.

This is evil, but it is evil defined by ideals that happen to be antithetical to our core belief structure. Looked at (mostly) objectively, this has the ring to me of something that was a toe in the water or groundwork laid towards true purposeful evil, but in and of itself was not deliberately harmful. Everyone can point to how bad it COULD be, but nobody can clearly define how bad it actually was. Policing the exploration of ideas is widely considered to be much more evil than policing the exploitation of others' ideas, however one of the core principles of said nation is enforced unity of ideals and purpose. So I would say there is a large potential for evil in this if taken to extremes, but it mainly supports the established tenets of the nation.

So I would say when looked at this way that both countries are nearly as morally in the wrong, but that our level of perceived "transparency" in the process is greater in that we are told a version of what is going on and then can vent our frustrations by complaining about it. With China there is a long history of secrecy, double dealings, and heavy spin, so there's the same level of abuse potential combined with MUCH greater levels of mistrust due to the lack of transparency. The actions were essentially the same, only the methods were different. Whether that means we're more honorable or just more subtle than China, I'll let you decide.

It sounds like your tastes are just changing to more serious and thoughtful titles. You'd rather play an interactive story instead of a press-the-button-when-the-flashy-thing-blinks-game. Good thing for you is, it's right in the middle of a resurgence.

The relative success of Heavy Rain and Telltale's success with reviving the adventure game formula is bearing some really awesome fruit. Check out LA Noire by Rockstar - I think it'll be right up your alley. http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/agegate/ref/?redirect=

Also I hear great things about Red Dead Redemption and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Both are purported to have great stories to go with gameplay that's not quite so frantic.

There may be all sorts of science-y reasons why we would want to examine an 18-inch rock on mars, that I can get behind.

But naming it? Seriously? If we start naming every rock and boulder and sand dune we run across, we're going to run out of all the cool names. Then later when we land on an area with an 1800 meter meteorite, we'll have to settle for "OR XXVI" or something dull like that. Plus, think of the future - we'll have stupid historical markers and protected rover trails all over the terraformed landscape with the Historic Site of Oileán Ruaidh and the Pebbles of Aljsdfk Splksd and stupid gift t-shirts and little mini-rovers and 18-inch rock keychains for sale in stands run by the mutants who can no longer work in the mines.

I'm just saying, let's save names for the impressive things. Think of the merchandisers!