jqubed

This was always going to happen. Producing content is not cheap. Investors in public companies want to see a certain level of profit every reporting period. Cable put so many channels in the tiers because at that price level because there would be enough channels in it that a customer at that price point want that they would get sales for that, even though basically nobody wanted all of those channels. Everyone would see some channels they didn’t want, and that would vary from person-to-person, but there was enough they wanted that it didn’t matter.

On the back end, the cable networks were getting money from each subscriber the cable companies had, whether those subscribers wanted those channels or not. They weren’t actually making much money per subscriber, but there were so many subscribers that it worked out. Most channels were under $1 per person, typically in the 25-75¢ range. Only ESPN had the clout to command serious money, nearing $5 per subscriber for a package that often included 4 or 5 channels.

There are a lot of those channels where people would say they’d be happy to pay 50¢ or even $1 a month in building their own package. The problem is those numbers only work when everyone pays. If a channel was on cable companies with 50 million customers that got them 50¢/month each, that’s $25 million/month. If that channel was a streaming service with 1 million customers who actually want their content they’d have to charge $25/month for the same revenue.

The only advantage customers have in this streaming landscape is no one is making them subscribe to all the services and there usually are no contracts, so consumers could change who they subscribe to every month. If you’re only watching a couple shows on one or two services you can save money. But it seems like many people don’t do that.

Maybe Pierce would’ve done it for marketing class and said something misogynistic about making the Asian woman thinner

I have basically never been able to tell someone liked me if I was also interested in them. I could only recognize interest from the ones I was not interested in. Even with my now-wife it took me 4 months to figure it out and ask her out, and she kind of gave up for a while in there.

They already have authorized resellers, who they link to on their website. This problem would only come from unauthorized resellers, who would not qualify for warranty service. It might not help software support requests, but I don’t know how much support they offer for software since I don’t think they’re supplied with any. Anything hardware they should be asking for a receipt from an authorized reseller, and if the customer can’t provide it then it’s not covered by the warranty. And even if the customer can provide a receipt from an authorized reseller in their name, if it comes in for repair and has the wrong RAM then it’s not a warranty repair anyway (although I’m guessing for something this inexpensive they don’t repair individual units, they probably just send a replacement, so the counterfeit parts might not get noticed).

There were already a lot of grumbles about the stadiums that put in natural turf this summer for the FIFA World Cup only to switch back to artificial for the NFL season.

Weirdly a few years ago when the FIFA Women’s World Cup was in Canada, FIFA made all the stadiums switch to artificial turf for the tournament, even stadiums with natural fields. They were using it as an experiment but the players did not like it, so I guess it’s natural turf only now.

I appreciate the implication that hamsters are constantly spewing profanities in their language

Dude’s never even heard of leg day

Didn’t know about that, although it makes sense. That does complicate things!

That’s a good point, there are still a lot of those information/alert radios around and they’re basically all a low powered AM station. That could be important for people driving by and not having that option reduces safety. I have a hard time believing that AM receivers are that expensive for cars that it’s really worth the trade-off. It’s probably not something that gets used often, but when it’s needed you want people to have it.

This reminds me of a lost game—two, actually—that I’ve been searching for off-and-on over the years. I can find no trace of them online, but still have hope that I might pull them off an old hard drive at some point. It was a little free multiplayer LAN game written in Java called Tank Killen, and the sequel Tank Killen 2. I think it was written by a couple Swedish guys and the website seemed to be just one of the guy’s web hosting shares from his ISP.

It was a top-down game where you would drive around a map with your tank and shoot at the other players’ tanks. There were various power-ups scattered around the board. Both games were similar but the sequel was visually better and had some improved power-ups like a guided missile you could fly around the map.

I actually got the sequel early because with the first game somewhere there was a note offering to send a level editor to anyone who was interested. I asked but they offered to send me the sequel they were working on instead because the level editor for the first game was very difficult to use. On the sequel it was fairly straightforward and I actually added a level into the copies I had and shared.

My brother and I played a little at home but it wasn’t as fun with just two people. It was much better at school with up to 8 players; that’s where I played the first version. There were computers networked all over the school (unusual around the year 2000), and for a while playing games was allowed after school in a designated classroom. I don’t know who introduced the first version, but I introduced the sequel. I think by that point games weren’t allowed anymore but IT never removed the files or blocked the network traffic. The game and the subsequent detentions might be my legacy at the school, probably even for a few years after graduating.

What kind of camera are you using? I see a lot of venues prohibit cameras with interchangeable lenses