Chilly

Would be a decent depth guy if we could sign him for cheap.

Stop being a schoolist.

Netflix does, in fact, throttle. They were sued about this back in 2005 and settled out of court. Their customer service will admit that people who rent a lower amount of DVDs will receive higher priority, but they don't go any further than that.

Rule #1 on Internet Forums: Just because the internet is "lax" about proper English does not mean that it is acceptable to write hard to read, babbling posts.

Sticks and stones

Wait, his "other" email address is pinocchio500@gmail.com ?! I wonder if he's the Peter Pan guy.

You misspelled useless.

Do you have a pic? When does she turn 18? Oh.. and is she perhaps going to the University of Texas?

Well, he does name himself after Larry The Cable Guy. That provides him the utmost authority, and lets us know that he once slept with his sister.

Don't forget the anal ice cube - its vital to the holistic cooling process.

Why are you so god damned obsessed with DraftTek?

Ya know, I tried that once. The shittiest part about it was that when you've got ice cubes stuffed into every orafice, nook, and cranny on your body, its presents multiple problems, including: 1.) Numbness, with the feeling of liquid, presenting a situation in which you have no idea if you are pissing, sharting, bleeding, oozing some other liquid, or just melting from that orafice. 2.) Electronics overheating. 3.) Only localized cooling, as soon as ice melts, you need more ice to keep cool. 4.) Needing to get up every time ice melts. 5.) The pace at which ice melts. 6.) The need for the largest ice machine in the world. 7.) The inability to keep cool while sleeping. I don't sleepwalk - how am I going to get more ice? I wish I had thought all this sh-- through before I tried it.

Well, does it block ytmnd? Not exactly a games site, but entertaining nonetheless

Triple AAA? Would that make them, God forbid, AAAAAAAAA?

Did it happen to be a Honda Fit? Please tell me it was a Honda Fit.

Tis why I didn't reply, lol

Of course, one of the central issues as to why we disagree is because we interpret the events that happened (including the timeline) differently. Multiple books/reading packets, 2 professors who used to work in the industry, and discussions with a friend who works for an Austin news program is how I formed the opinion that I have. I've already laid that out above.

No, it was happening while the audiences were still there, when 60 Minutes, the USA Today, and the other more entertainment-based news sources proved to be profitable and cost less to the companies. It was all about maximizing profits. My argument is not that the industry was never about profits. My argument is that what was considered the most profitable way to do business changed and the media as a result changed. You keep trying to insinuate that I'm ignoring the business aspect of things when my argument is based on the maximizing of industry profits and the evolution of what was considered the most profitable business model. When I said it was now a "focus on profits", I was talking in today's terms of what is considered profitable (aka less actual news service, more entertainment service). Uh, everything I've been talking about has been about that conclusion.

Yeah, I have, and youa re right, there always was fluff. However, its the amount of fluff that matters (they have to fill out a whole newspaper somehow, don't they?). Compare the content of investigative reporting 40 years ago to the investigative reporting of today and you will see a huge difference. Because the media companies themselves spend much less time and money cross-referencing stories. It costs them too much with little benefit in a news as entertainment environment. My argument is not that the media is perfect, but rather that it has changed to be less-perfect than it once was. What you are arguing is that A does not 100% of the time lead to B in this situation. That I agree with, but the general overall trends are what I stated.

The argument that I am putting forth is not dependent on whether or not CBS News operations were feeling competitive pain. Rather, it is dependent on media companies recognizing that a different type of media, news as entertainment, could provide more profits than simply news as a service could. 60 Minutes was one of the very first[ organizations to show this. It then took years for the industry to recognize this and change from the time 60 Minutes started. I do not agree with your interpretation of 60 Minutes existing for 20 years as evidence that this change did not take place. The competitive nature was only part of the overall change, one that facilitated the speed of the change itself. The change would have happened anyway due to the higher profit margins which were produced by news as entertainment over news as a service. The business side is what they are arguing as the reason for the change (aka higher profits). The other stuff that I mentioned helped to facilitate the change of the industry as a whole.

I'm not. Was sourcing a couple different pieces I read last semester in a reading packet we had. I didn't bother to talk about the CNN effect as it wasn't central to my discussion last time. It was largely 60 Minutes and USA Today which pushed traditional news sources (television, newspaper, etc) toward the realization that news as entertainment was viable and successful. The CNN effect has more to do with real time media as an agent which influences the speed of decisions and the decisions themselves. The increased influence is due to not only the speed of these media institutions but also due to the 24/7 basis on which they operate. IIRC, it was Livingston who coined the term. His piece was pretty interesting, examining the effect that "instantaneous" media had on military decisions.

Would anyone really have paid a lot of attention to it though? The NY Times had a large story on John Murtha last year and all the pork he puts into everything. Not only does he look like a pig, he has the biggest pork distribution in the US. It didn't matter one bit.

The manpower, dollars, and time spent on a story that the editors felt wasn't going to develop into anything was enormous. The initial break and research required most likely wouldn't be done today.

It looks just like you!

Let me explain a bit more what I was talking about. It used to be considered that the best way to make money in the industry was to provide the best news service. There were many media companies all competing to have the best reporting, fact checking, and news selection. Institutions and ethical codes were built to make sure that the news had a substantive quality. Stories were fact checked, corroborated over and over, and the slogan of "All the news thats fit to print" was true. When 60 minutes came along, the news magazine format represented a more entertainment-oriented view that most news companies thought would fail. It had more sensationalized news stories than what was around at the time. For the newspaper industry, it was USA Today who really represented this viewpoint. The success of the more sensationalized, colorful, divided newspaper showed that it wasn't necessarily substance that sold news. Thus, the news media began to change, and consolidation sped this process way up. The media conglomerates ignored the walls between the accountants and editors. They looked at the success of 60 minutes, the USA Today, and other similar outlets and realized that the best way to make profit is not to spend a bunch of money having the most substantive news, but to spend less money and have more entertaining news. The news media has evolved to be focused on soft news with little corroboration. The least expensive way to report the news (less facts, more sensationalism and entertainment) also proved to provide the biggest audience. As large conglomerates bought other outlets, they were transformed into these types of news outlets to keep the shareholders and owners happy. This has influenced every corner of the media world. Some outlets have done a better job at not being as blatant about it, and tend to have higher quality products (The NYT, WSJ, etc). However, the quality of the Times is nowhere near what it used to be. I think its also interesting to note that I do not believe there is anyway Watergate would happen in today's media.