Disney had their own streaming service. No one used it, though, probably because no one ever heard of it.
I recently observed to my wife that our daughter was probably going to be the first kid in two or three generations of our families that didn't grow up actually watching Disney films, since we don't buy DVDs and don't have cable... Guess that's about to change!
Wish it wasn't an exclusive deal, though. Those are inherently anti-consumer... But it's still an improvement, nonetheless. And being a geek with kids, having Disney films on NetFlix does significantly increase the odds of me keeping a subscription permanently.
Christopher Best (profile), Dec 4th, 2012 @ 5:41am
Amazon is guilty of this as well
If I understand the article correctly, it's not that B&N isn't selling a book Amazon is selling, it's that B&N isn't selling a book Amazon is PUBLISHING.
B&N is one of the largest publishers in the US. Last I checked, Amazon didn't sell any of their books. Why aren't people complaining about that?
When Amazon announced they were going to go into physical book publishing, they approached B&N to see if they would carry their books. B&N offered them a deal: Let Kindle load Nook Books and they'd carry Amazon physical books. Amazon for some reason wasn't interested in this arrangement...
Full Disclosure: I have a little inside info (and bias) as a close family member works for B&N...
Christopher Best (profile), Nov 6th, 2012 @ 12:50pm
Re: Re:
No, to rig the election.
Except that there have been several reports, as the parent said, of voting machines doing the same thing. It is possible that this was a case of fraud, but (speaking as a software developer and as a realist) it's infinitely more likely this is just an example of incompetence, ie: a software error.
If someone wanted to commit fraud on an e-voting machine, they wouldn't make it display a different candidate than the one you selected. They would just change the ballot when it was stored to disk and not tell you!
Think about it. Romney has pissed off 47% of the American people. That, coupled with the other groups that don't like him should give Obama a landslide. If it does not, something smells and smells really bad...
Except that 47% of the American people doesn't represent a landslide by any sane definition of the world. Except that of those 47% he supposedly pissed off with his comment, the majority of them never even heard the comment, or care about it, and over half of them won't even vote. So, no. There are plenty of things that smell bad about this entire election, but a Romney win is not such an impossibility as to immediately assume something nefarious is going on. Or at least anything nefarious and out of the ordinary.
Christopher Best (profile), Nov 1st, 2012 @ 8:57am
You know what's funny?
I didn't even know who Carly Rae Jepsen is until this article. And until two weeks ago when I was riding in a coworker's car to lunch, I'd never even heard the song. I'd see the memes, of course, and I knew they were riffing on the lyrics of a pop song... But that's it.
Maybe the new album isn't doing well because she's just not particularly memorable as an artist? I learned who Jonathan Coulton was because someone shared a video of him playing Re: Your Brains with an audience at PAX, and the reason I was so taken in by his music was BOTH the fact the music was good and his incredible talent at connecting with his audience, as I was plainly able to see in the video.
CRJ may have come up with a cute, catchy pop ditty... But what did she do to build on that? What did she do to connect with the fans who were making her into a meme? Or did she just rush out a new album figuring that she had people's attention? If you want people to focus on you as an artist as opposed to just focusing on one of your songs, you need to give them a reason to do that!
PSY reposts people photoshopping Gangnam Style onto Malaysian McShaker bags via his official twitter account for cripes' sake! He fully embraced the memeing (is that a word?) and ran with it.
Never mind Gangnam Style is a better song than Call Me, Maybe in my never to be humble opinion...
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 31st, 2012 @ 7:39am
Re: And just like that....
I have two words of disagreement: John Lasseter.
Seriously, he's the man in charge of Disney's creative branch now. He's the former head creative person from Pixar, who was brought on to right the company during the Disney/Pixar reconciliation. That guy is awesome and does amazing things and (usually) doesn't allow crap to be produced under his watch.
I only wish Lucas had given up Lucasfilm 20 years ago. I met my wife via Star Wars fandom, but I've ceased being a fan a long long time ago.
That being said, John Carter of Mars does not give me high hopes for an adaptation of Timothy Zahn's books... But I'll remain cautiously optimistic, for now!
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 24th, 2012 @ 12:07pm
Re: We need to pass laws to make unlawful activities illegal
Can anyone (without having a laughing fit) please explain why we need new laws to make illegal activities illegal?
I'll take a shot at it: If you're a citizen of country A, and you break the laws of my country (B) on the Internet, currently I can't have you arrested. (Unless country B in this case is the USA, but for the sake of argument let's forget about that for this moment.)
So maybe they want to fix that little "loophole" in the law.
That way, all those criminals won't get away with insulting the President/Monarch/Prophet or whatever other crazy laws these dictators like to impose on their subjects.
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 24th, 2012 @ 10:20am
Re: Re: Maybe People Will Start to Realize
Most?
I'm allowing for the chance that there are some nations out there that I am unaware of that don't fit that bill. I'm pretty optimistic about Iceland, for instance.
lately?
When did I say they were better in the past? It doesn't matter, anyway. The only relevant data is their current behavior.
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 24th, 2012 @ 10:04am
Maybe People Will Start to Realize
How bad the U.N. really is... Or at least the General Assembly.
Sure, it's a good idea in principle: A forum for all the world's nations to get together and talk things out. Heck, that's a great idea!
The problem is when people want to give such a body any sort of power, or allow it any sort of regulatory control--primarily because it's got representatives from every nation!
Hey, guess what! Most nations in the world are despotic cesspits which are diametrically opposed to the concepts of freedom and liberty for their subjects! And yes, I use the word subject, as opposed to citizen, because that's how they view people within their borders.
Think about it this way: we know how bad the U.S. is lately in the realm of protecting their citizens' rights. Now consider the fact that the U.S. is probably still one of the best nations in the world in that respect, especially in regards to protecting freedom of speech. Scared yet?
The majority of UN member states are either:
1) dictatorships
2) ruled by religious fundamentalism
or
3) both of the above
As such, ANY policy put forward by the General Assembly is going to reflect their priorities: Control of individuals and protection of their power.
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 22nd, 2012 @ 1:17pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hey no sweat, you had me wondering! Which led to me typing in $0.01 and being treated to a message that said "You seem to have no heart! Please fill out this captcha and prove you're human!", the hilarity of which was well worth the price of admission.
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 22nd, 2012 @ 10:13am
Meanwhile, DRM-free Book Bundle Breaks $1m in Sales
Kinda interesting to see this article juxtaposed with the earlier article about the Humble eBook Bundle.
If people stopped giving money to jerks like Amazon and started giving even a fraction of that amount directly to authors, I think it'd greatly improve everyone's situation...
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 22nd, 2012 @ 10:06am
Re: Re: Re: Get it for free? Come on. It's not free at all
You know, I'm kinda a newcomer to the comments section here. I've seen references to this bob guy before, but I've come to realize he's really something you have to see for yourself, in all his glory.
Wow. Do you just hate anything good and positive on principle? I suppose society needs people like that, that question everything, so that we don't just get caught in our echo chamber...
Anyway... Bob, they're DRM free. No one is locked out. If you can't pay the price they're asking, go torrent a copy somewhere. You won't be supporting the writers, or the charities, but nothing is preventing you from getting at the "knowledge in those books".
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 22nd, 2012 @ 9:58am
Re: Re: Re:
No it's not. It never has been. The minimum to receive Steam keys has always been $1, but you can put in $0.01. Try it right now. It'll show you a picture of a starving artist, make a joke about you having no heart, and require you to do a captcha to prove you're an actual person, but it'll totally take a $0.01 donation.
Christopher Best (profile), Oct 22nd, 2012 @ 8:58am
Re:
$13.94 is what they are paying (on average), how can consumers get all this for free ?? (including the extra's)?
Ah, I love this. I love it when people make comments like this, exposing the fact that they've never donated to the Humble Bundle, and therefore probably don't have a charitable bone in their body.
Let me explain it slowly, and I'll try to use small words:
Every Humble Bundle offers a DRM-free, completely unsecured torrent file for every product that is in the bundle.
Every. Humble. Bundle
Every. Product.
DRM Free.
BitTorrent.
No login required.
So all it takes is ONE person to pay $0.01, and share the torrent file, and we can all download the books/software/music files/whatever for free! Forever! And one person to pay above average, and share the associated torrents for those files.
And yet they pull in over a million dollars.
And yet the average donation keeps going up.
Longtime Humble Bundle fans will remember that during the first Humble Bundle, the organizers actually addressed "piracy". They pointed out that many of the people "pirating" the stuff were in fact UNABLE to pay for the bundle due to silly restrictions based on their country of origin, or limited by their financial circumstances ($14 is more than many people make in a week in much of the world), nevermind those who just didn't feel like paying. With this in mind, they took no steps to try and prevent "unauthorized" downloads. All they asked is that if you WERE going to download the stuff without paying, to please use the conveniently provided torrents and save them the bandwidth bills.
And they still cleared a million dollars. On DRM-free eBooks.
Yeah, go ahead publishers. Keep pricing your eBooks at $10, to keep from "devaluing" your product. The rest of us will be over here, selling night-infinite amounts of product at a pittance and rolling around in our piles of money...
On the post: Judge Rules Woman Is Allowed To Flip Off Neighbors With Xmas Lights For Now
Missing Option
On the post: Judge Rules Woman Is Allowed To Flip Off Neighbors With Xmas Lights For Now
Unfortunately, small-town cops back home tended to be power-mad pricks... Making up obscenity statutes seems about par for the course.
On the post: Disney Chooses Netflix As Its Exclusive Distributor Beginning In 2016
2016 is a long way off...
This makes the recent announcement of the shutdown of Disney Movies Online suddenly make a lot more sense.
What's Disney Movies Online you ask?
http://disneymoviesonline.go.com/
Disney had their own streaming service. No one used it, though, probably because no one ever heard of it.
I recently observed to my wife that our daughter was probably going to be the first kid in two or three generations of our families that didn't grow up actually watching Disney films, since we don't buy DVDs and don't have cable... Guess that's about to change!
Wish it wasn't an exclusive deal, though. Those are inherently anti-consumer... But it's still an improvement, nonetheless. And being a geek with kids, having Disney films on NetFlix does significantly increase the odds of me keeping a subscription permanently.
On the post: BitTorrent Book Promotion Drives 40% Of Downloaders To Book's Amazon Page
B&N didn't carry the book before BitTorrent entered the picture
BitTorrent has nothing to do with either of those things.
On the post: BitTorrent Book Promotion Drives 40% Of Downloaders To Book's Amazon Page
Amazon is guilty of this as well
B&N is one of the largest publishers in the US. Last I checked, Amazon didn't sell any of their books. Why aren't people complaining about that?
When Amazon announced they were going to go into physical book publishing, they approached B&N to see if they would carry their books. B&N offered them a deal: Let Kindle load Nook Books and they'd carry Amazon physical books. Amazon for some reason wasn't interested in this arrangement...
Full Disclosure: I have a little inside info (and bias) as a close family member works for B&N...
On the post: Rep. Lofgren Looks To Reddit To Help Crowdsource Anti-SOPA
Luckily someone has already done the work for him!
On the post: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel On City's Illegal Recordings Of Conversations With Journalists: 'Much Ado About Nothing'
SOP in Chicago
There was a relatively notorious case of an alderman pulling a gun on some of her constituents during a shouting match. She wasn't charged, either.
There has always been a double standard in Chicago regarding criminal laws and government officials.
On the post: Cause For Concern: 'Experimental' Patches Applied To Ohio Voting Machines Without Certification
Error
On the post: Cause For Concern: 'Experimental' Patches Applied To Ohio Voting Machines Without Certification
Re: Re:
Except that there have been several reports, as the parent said, of voting machines doing the same thing. It is possible that this was a case of fraud, but (speaking as a software developer and as a realist) it's infinitely more likely this is just an example of incompetence, ie: a software error.
If someone wanted to commit fraud on an e-voting machine, they wouldn't make it display a different candidate than the one you selected. They would just change the ballot when it was stored to disk and not tell you!
Except that 47% of the American people doesn't represent a landslide by any sane definition of the world. Except that of those 47% he supposedly pissed off with his comment, the majority of them never even heard the comment, or care about it, and over half of them won't even vote. So, no. There are plenty of things that smell bad about this entire election, but a Romney win is not such an impossibility as to immediately assume something nefarious is going on. Or at least anything nefarious and out of the ordinary.
On the post: The Internet Didn't 'Kill' Carly Rae Jepsen's Career
You know what's funny?
Maybe the new album isn't doing well because she's just not particularly memorable as an artist? I learned who Jonathan Coulton was because someone shared a video of him playing Re: Your Brains with an audience at PAX, and the reason I was so taken in by his music was BOTH the fact the music was good and his incredible talent at connecting with his audience, as I was plainly able to see in the video.
CRJ may have come up with a cute, catchy pop ditty... But what did she do to build on that? What did she do to connect with the fans who were making her into a meme? Or did she just rush out a new album figuring that she had people's attention? If you want people to focus on you as an artist as opposed to just focusing on one of your songs, you need to give them a reason to do that!
PSY reposts people photoshopping Gangnam Style onto Malaysian McShaker bags via his official twitter account for cripes' sake! He fully embraced the memeing (is that a word?) and ran with it.
Never mind Gangnam Style is a better song than Call Me, Maybe in my never to be humble opinion...
On the post: George Lucas Finally Relinquishes His Tight Control Of Star Wars... To Mickey Mouse
Re: And just like that....
Seriously, he's the man in charge of Disney's creative branch now. He's the former head creative person from Pixar, who was brought on to right the company during the Disney/Pixar reconciliation. That guy is awesome and does amazing things and (usually) doesn't allow crap to be produced under his watch.
I only wish Lucas had given up Lucasfilm 20 years ago. I met my wife via Star Wars fandom, but I've ceased being a fan a long long time ago.
That being said, John Carter of Mars does not give me high hopes for an adaptation of Timothy Zahn's books... But I'll remain cautiously optimistic, for now!
On the post: UN: The Problem With The Internet Today Is It's Just Too Open & Terrorists Might Use It
Re: We need to pass laws to make unlawful activities illegal
I'll take a shot at it: If you're a citizen of country A, and you break the laws of my country (B) on the Internet, currently I can't have you arrested. (Unless country B in this case is the USA, but for the sake of argument let's forget about that for this moment.)
So maybe they want to fix that little "loophole" in the law.
That way, all those criminals won't get away with insulting the President/Monarch/Prophet or whatever other crazy laws these dictators like to impose on their subjects.
On the post: UN: The Problem With The Internet Today Is It's Just Too Open & Terrorists Might Use It
Re: Re: Maybe People Will Start to Realize
I'm allowing for the chance that there are some nations out there that I am unaware of that don't fit that bill. I'm pretty optimistic about Iceland, for instance.
When did I say they were better in the past? It doesn't matter, anyway. The only relevant data is their current behavior.
On the post: UN: The Problem With The Internet Today Is It's Just Too Open & Terrorists Might Use It
Maybe People Will Start to Realize
Sure, it's a good idea in principle: A forum for all the world's nations to get together and talk things out. Heck, that's a great idea!
The problem is when people want to give such a body any sort of power, or allow it any sort of regulatory control--primarily because it's got representatives from every nation!
Hey, guess what! Most nations in the world are despotic cesspits which are diametrically opposed to the concepts of freedom and liberty for their subjects! And yes, I use the word subject, as opposed to citizen, because that's how they view people within their borders.
Think about it this way: we know how bad the U.S. is lately in the realm of protecting their citizens' rights. Now consider the fact that the U.S. is probably still one of the best nations in the world in that respect, especially in regards to protecting freedom of speech. Scared yet?
The majority of UN member states are either:
1) dictatorships
2) ruled by religious fundamentalism
or
3) both of the above
As such, ANY policy put forward by the General Assembly is going to reflect their priorities: Control of individuals and protection of their power.
On the post: Trent Reznor Talks To Techdirt About His Unconventional New Record Deal, And Why He Still Loves DIY
Re: "the overall story was pretty much what I expected."
On the post: Humble Ebook Bundle Breaks $1 Million; All The Authors Should Be Best Sellers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Amazon Wipes Customer's Account, Locks All Ebooks, Says 'Find A New Retailer' When She Asks Why
Meanwhile, DRM-free Book Bundle Breaks $1m in Sales
If people stopped giving money to jerks like Amazon and started giving even a fraction of that amount directly to authors, I think it'd greatly improve everyone's situation...
On the post: Humble Ebook Bundle Breaks $1 Million; All The Authors Should Be Best Sellers
Re: Re: Re: Get it for free? Come on. It's not free at all
Wow. Do you just hate anything good and positive on principle? I suppose society needs people like that, that question everything, so that we don't just get caught in our echo chamber...
Anyway... Bob, they're DRM free. No one is locked out. If you can't pay the price they're asking, go torrent a copy somewhere. You won't be supporting the writers, or the charities, but nothing is preventing you from getting at the "knowledge in those books".
On the post: Humble Ebook Bundle Breaks $1 Million; All The Authors Should Be Best Sellers
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Humble Ebook Bundle Breaks $1 Million; All The Authors Should Be Best Sellers
Re:
Ah, I love this. I love it when people make comments like this, exposing the fact that they've never donated to the Humble Bundle, and therefore probably don't have a charitable bone in their body.
Let me explain it slowly, and I'll try to use small words:
Every Humble Bundle offers a DRM-free, completely unsecured torrent file for every product that is in the bundle.
Every. Humble. Bundle
Every. Product.
DRM Free.
BitTorrent.
No login required.
So all it takes is ONE person to pay $0.01, and share the torrent file, and we can all download the books/software/music files/whatever for free! Forever! And one person to pay above average, and share the associated torrents for those files.
And yet they pull in over a million dollars.
And yet the average donation keeps going up.
Longtime Humble Bundle fans will remember that during the first Humble Bundle, the organizers actually addressed "piracy". They pointed out that many of the people "pirating" the stuff were in fact UNABLE to pay for the bundle due to silly restrictions based on their country of origin, or limited by their financial circumstances ($14 is more than many people make in a week in much of the world), nevermind those who just didn't feel like paying. With this in mind, they took no steps to try and prevent "unauthorized" downloads. All they asked is that if you WERE going to download the stuff without paying, to please use the conveniently provided torrents and save them the bandwidth bills.
And they still cleared a million dollars. On DRM-free eBooks.
Yeah, go ahead publishers. Keep pricing your eBooks at $10, to keep from "devaluing" your product. The rest of us will be over here, selling night-infinite amounts of product at a pittance and rolling around in our piles of money...