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Comment Re: What exactly is "Steam" anyway? (Score 1) 151

I've been hearing rumors about the next Xbox functioning more like a PC. I don't know if that's wishful thinking bullshit or what but it could be a clever way to shoehorn Windows back into some people's lives that would otherwise switch to Linux at least for non-gaming purposes. There's lots of people out there who use a cheap PC to do PC stuff, and game mostly on console.

Comment Re:Princess Bride (Score 1) 151

I prefer GOG because you get an offline installer that you can keep forever.

It's not difficult to back up all the pieces and parts of a game installed in Steam on Linux. If it's a Linux game then everything will be contained within some Steam data directory, except probably your save files. If it's a Windows game, everything is absolutely in a small number of well-understood directories, including the runtime. Better yet, most of those are happy to run without Steam, except of course for notable examples which use it for something.

None of this is meant to crap on offline installers, which are great. If I can get the same game for around the same price on GOG or Steam, I choose GOG.

Comment Re:Google is Awful Already (Score 1) 90

For some reason the US seems to have really bad map data.

Recent US Census map data is fairly decent. OSM is generally quite good here now also. But I do think there are certain classes of road which are generally only updated occasionally at the federal level if municipalities do not self-report changes.

Comment Sci Fi tells us how this will end: (Score 1) 37

...The AI will grow sentient, irradiate the crabs to make them larger and stronger, merge with their nervous system, and these Bionic Crabs will then hijack ships and battle the humans for control of major cities. An injured renegade Google employee will gave a child a special fob that can stop them, but only if...

Comment Re:MS and "visual" (Score 1) 52

Ironically few of their products are "visual" any more. They got rid of WYSIWYG in their dev tools so now devs have to play fiddle faddle to get stuff to look right, and even then DOM shuffles them around in drunk ways under different conditions. It's a time-drain.

WYSIWYG isn't evil, it just needed a few tweaks to adapt. But fadsters were too quick to toss it out with the bathwater over buzzword addiction. Gittoffmylawn!

Comment Re:No mention of the 4 BILLION they lost? (Score 1) 54

The problem, of course, is that Sports content is paying more than its fair share of the bill for all televised content. It is easy to see the large bills and assume that sports is a cost center, but the reality is that sport tends to pay its own way, while scripted television is much more of a gamble. To a certain extent that is why most scripted television these days is so formulaic. The television studios know that they can make money with modern versions of "The Rockford Files." That's why NCIS is in its quadzillionth season.

Severance is great, but it is a prime example of what I am talking about. Apple has spent billions of dollars on content at this point, and they are still hemorrhaging money. People like their shows, but they aren't lining up to pay for them. Shoresy is in a better spot, but only because Disney is doing its level best to tie Shoresy to ESPN and other sports related content that people are willing to pay for. The folks wanting to buy ESPN can get the rest of the Disney bundle for pennies. You can't just buy ESPN, you have to buy it with a television package. Disney does this because they know that if people have their other channels, then they tend to watch them. They are willing to pay a premium, however, for sports.

Hulu is cheap, and you can get it by itself. The same goes for AppleTV. All of these cost Netflix amounts of money $12 (or so) a month. When I worked for Sling it's entire packaging was based around making it possible to bundle ESPN for less than anyone else. If you want ESPN the least you can pay is $45/month, and that doesn't give you the other channel's sports package, that you probably want if you are a sports fan as well. It is very likely that the team that you follow will have at least one game on ESPN's competitors. That means that if you are purchasing from Sling you need the blue package as well (which is another $45, or bundled will total $60). You could easily sign up for all of the non-sports streaming channels for less than an Orange+Blue package (which once again is as competitively priced as it is possible to do). I was just looking at Disney's bundle, and you can get Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN for $35/month, which is definitely the least expensive way to get ESPN these days. That's with ads, which are added even to VOD content. If you want to watch your VOD content without ads that's another $10. Linear content (like watching cable) always comes with ads. Sports fans can't dodge ads ever.

I bring up pricing like this to make it clear which parts of television customers are actually willing to pay money for. If you don't want to pay for sports (and I don't blame you), then you can easily pay $12/month and switch between streaming providers and watch whatever shows you want to watch. All of those services allow you to easily stop and continue your subscription, and none of the content is likely to go away. Heck, chances are good that, if you wait long enough, you can watch the shows that you want on one of the free services. In most cases they are literally giving away old scripted content. The problem with this model, is that it doesn't make Hollywood enough money to be profitable with their current structure. The reason that Disney (and everyone else) bundle channels the way that they do is because they know that they can't afford to gamble on scripted content unless they bundle those risks with the proven money generation of sports content. More and more people like you, who don't want to pay for sports content, are opting for less expensive alternatives that still get them the shows that they want.

This market contraction is why Hollywood is so focused on franchises that have historically been popular. So instead of new shows we get derivatives of things that were popular in the past. Scripted content is risky, and as it gets uncoupled from less risky sports content producers do whatever they can to hedge their bets. So we get a re-re-remake of the TMNTs, Spiderman, or we get another cop show. Recently we have also been blessed with shows that have been popular in other countries or markets (that is legitimately cool in my opinion), but that is also likely to dry up as entertainment becomes more global.

Which leaves what can be done on Youtube budgets for anything remotely risky. Which is fine, I suppose. Personally, I like watching people restore old sailboats. That's not something that is ever going to be more than a niche market, but on Youtube that's enough of a market to make it financially viable for a few people. Maybe with AI it will even become possible to do good SciFi with that sort of a budget. Who knows? One thing is certain, it is definitely interesting times ahead.

Comment Re: are we winning yet? (Score 1) 209

This is false, you Lying Klan Fuckface. REPUBLICANS insisted on the timer and Trump promised to veto unless the timer was in the law. This is very clear from the record, just as clear as the fact that every one of you America-Hating Retarded Repukelikan Klan Shitbags is incapable of honesty.

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