So many memories of those early /. days have come flooding back.

RIP Roblimo.

Happy Birthday /.

It is difficult to fathom that the site has been around for 20 years, because I've "only" been online for 25 or so and I can't possibly be that old. Right? Right??

The electric company subscription service provides the voltage and amperage I need (all the time) when I need it (right now.) Without it, life would be very difficsy8907^#!Z NO CARRIER

I view streaming content on a variety of devices off of a perfectly acceptable cable internet connection and I still see the compression, but the worst of it is seen on the "main" family TV. Netflix offers the best experience (followed by Amazon Video, followed by the truly horrific Google Play), but it's still there.

I fully admit that I am not a hardcore video guy and not obsessed with tweaking a bunch of TV settings so there is indeed room to make adjustments. That said, I'm very happy with up-scaled DVDs of the same movies on the same TV. Adjusting contrast/brightness would only force the shadows even deeper for disk-based video and that's not an acceptable trade-off.

I should clarify my previous statement above. When I wrote "Visible gradients ruin every single scene always" I didn't meant to imply I'm seeing gradients all the time. I'm only seeing them in scenes containing large percentages of darkness/black.

Call it anything you want: "Netflix uses bagels to compress video" I don't really care. I just wish they would take a closer look at the darkest parts of a scene and stop compressing the hell out of it. Visible gradients ruin every single scene always.

I too read this when I was young, as a part of a science fiction anthology book we had in school. It is the one story from that time that has always stuck with me. The over-shadowing sense of futility and loss in the story really triggered something in my brain.

2005 wasn't that long ago, was it?

http://it.slashdot.org/story/0...

". If a species goes extinct because of us then it wasnt fit to live"

By who?

Maybe it was fit to cure cancer, and we weren't fit to know that because we're glib dumbasses and wasted them all before we bothered finding out.

It's like /. was bought by a bunch of old guys.

Nor did his scientific speculations revolve around applying the scientific method,

You don't actually know anything about Clarke's work, do you?

http://scifi.stackexchange.com...

Clarke also invented the communications satellite. Or, the idea of it.

We should start taking our contaminated water and dumping it in the swimming pools of the 1%.

I want to see them explain why this is bad for them.

Gawd. No, they fucking do not.

One day you guys will get over the Cult of Snowden and realize what truly childish and useless people you've chosen to truckle with.

I read Cuckoo's egg when I was in my early 20's.

It was published, back in my early 20's. Surprised to see anyone else even knows about it.

You ignorantly shoot your mouth off, get virtually every important detail wrong, get called on it, and cry fuck off?

What a jackass. Did you forget to go over and swim in the fucking sewer on 4chan? Sounds like that's where you belong.