In addition to showing how prolific they are, it also shows clearly how overpriced streaming is. I stopped pirating shows when streaming was reasonably priced, but now I'm back to downloading about a quarter of what I watch, because I can only pay for so many services at once.
This is almost exactly what they have set up in Cyberpunk 2077 when you go to visit the "grave" of someone for a quest.
USAF Official Says He ‘Misspoke’ About AI Drone Killing Human Operator in Simulated Test
Twenty years ago this would happen the other way around. A highly skilled IT worker would "retire" at an early age from their salaried job and then come back to do the same job as a contractor. Companies paid more to contractors back then because they were saving on benefits and it hit their books differently. The workers would also be collecting their pension or 401k, so some made quite a bit of dough doing this. I was always jealous I wasn't of retirement age yet.
I thought I read last week that they already announced they were relaxing it for anyone that already has a Battle.net account in good standing that's at least 4 months old, and the requirement was only for new accounts. Am I wrong?
Not saying that makes it perfect for everyone, but it's a smart business move to reduce the garbage people in their game environment. Toxicity is the #1 reason I stopped playing these kinds of games years ago, and if it improves, I might come back and give them more money. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Adding advertising into content that was created without it in mind fundamentally changes the experience for all tiers of viewers, for the worse.
First, advertising tiers end up with ads shoehorned into content that wasn't created with ad-breaks in mind. You can see this first hand already on the Roku channel and other services that have gone a similar route. It's been an issue since the put movies on TV. Now imagine all those awkward ad breaks in the middle of bingable series.
Second, this effect will inevitably put pressure on content creators to tailor new content to fit into the format, reducing creative options and diminishing overall quality of original series.
Third, integrating advertising into thousands and thousands of hours of content, regardless of its source, is not free - Netflix would have to either pay for a huge amount of labor hours custom time-marking shows for ad-breaks, or rely on algorithms that have proven pretty terrible at predicting where a break makes sense without ruining the watcher's experience. That's not to mention the additional advertising and sales staff they'd have to hire. These extra expenses would eat into the additional income from advertising - possibly enough to make raising rates on paid tiers even more attractive.
In the end, it looks like a net-negative for paid subscribers, meaning they will be one step closer to cancelling their paid subscription. Viewers like me, who only watch a handful of Netflix exclusives (like the mentioned Stranger Things) will start doing what we do with Apple TV and Paramount+ right now - wait for a handful of shows we want to watch to become available, subscribe for two months, binge them all, cancel subscription, and repeat. Then it looks like a net-loss for Netflix.
As more and more services integrate cheaper or free advertising tiers, Netflix (like HBO) will only look better and better to people who are happy to pay a certain amount for good content without commercials, but not an unlimited amount.
The form worked for me, even though I hadn't yet actually received notice from Google yet about the change. I filled it out and good later got the basic remain about needing to transition.
No other useful info from Google yet...
"GCS had leased over 15 thousand of the tablets (at a cost of $200 a year)"
That's less than 13 cents each. What kind of quality did they expect??
Long after I started switching to eBooks, my wishlist still had print titles on it and I continued to receive them as gifts from friends and family that know I read a lot. I wonder if this will apply to those books that were purchased off my wishlist directly.
Of course they will only work on Kindle, since that's what Amazon sells. But that's easy enough to get around
OK look, this may sound like trolling, but I ask in all sincerity... why does a country like Romania need to be doing basic scientific research? Let the US and China do the hard work and maybe spend your time and effort eliminating cronyism and corruption in the government in general? If I was paying taxes to the Romanian government, I would be worried about a lot of other things before I wanted a dime of it to go to a Science Ministry.
And before anyone points me to the Wiki list of scientific discoveries by Romanians, I've looked at it. I don't know how many were made *in* Romania and in this century, and I didn't see any of them listed on the "Timeline of Romanian history".
I'm not saying they can't do good or useful research... just that in the current situation, I don't know why they would care very much about this.
It doesn't take a "brilliant", or even a very smart person to make the connection between "I can create accounts at will and assign them any rights" and "Those accounts can access stuff I can't".
This is why you have security procedures and audits. Dummies.
This is great news! Until the bacteria evolve to colonize humans!
I, for one, welcome our new nitrogen fixing overlords.
Your analogy is incorrect. Listening to a recording is not the same as seeing the original artist perform it, or no one would ever go to a concert. And listening to a song doesn't instantly give anyone the ability to duplicate it exactly in a live performance.
Also, copyright was around long before it was "easy" to copy or steal a musical recording.
Indeed, it's a very different world; but my point still stands. Lack of copyright didn't, doesn't, and wouldn't rid the world of creative endeavors. It would certainly change the way creativity is "done". But are there no artists in Somalia, where there is no copyright law? I don't know, I've never been there. But I suspect there are at least a few, because art is part of human nature.
If you really believe that copyright the thing preventing the world from becoming a barren, artless place, where no one ever works to write a new song or paint a new picture, I guess I'm not going to convince you.
I suspect "often" is not accurate in this case, but it's irrelevant. Copyright law doesn't encourage the artistically inclined to create. It encourages some people to try and make a living at creating. I don't have any problem with that. I just disagree with the basic premise that absent copyright there'd be no incentive to create, because IMO it's obviously false on its face.
In the time before, I imagine very few people made a decent living just by writing songs. They had to perform them pretty regularly if they wanted to eat every day. As far as I'm concerned, the idea that someone can sit down and write a song and then get paid for that one act for many years without ever again even thinking about it is stupid, and I don't think it should be encouraged.
People invented things before there were patents too, you know.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
