gentooguy

dysamoria said:

gilly33 said:

Typical coming out of Washington. I have no confidence in these damn politicians no matter what party they represent. This crisis has further exposed how f**ked up the system is and both parties have been playing with the public’s interest long before this. This is still the greatest country in the world in my opinion but what a joke we are right now. But it’s easier to pretend they care about our privacy. Both parties need to be held accountable for this debacle and whole thing needs an overall. How and when that will ever happen is another story. Just my two cents. 

“Greatest country in the world” is nationalism. Be a patriot, not a nationalist.

First of all quit imposing your ideology on people. Second, there is nothing wrong with being a nationalist. Being a nationalist means liking your own country better than other countries and having a vested interest in it, a sensible position because your own political, economic and social fate is inextricably tied to your own country. So any patriotism without that sense of nationalism is just empty words. Third, the problem isn't when you prefer your country to others. The problem is that when you try to impose your preference for your country on others. I recall reading somewhere that when Nazi Germany took over Austria, they required the Austrian kids to be taught their own inherent inferiority to the Germans ... and they required the Austrian kids to learn German for that purpose! Sorry, but the idea that "everything that falls short of my own cosmopolitanism is fascism" that you see bandied about these days is wrong. In fact if you go back so much as a few years, even very liberal or progressive Democrats like Tom Daschle, Jimmy Carter and (oh yeah) Barack Obama and Joe Biden never claimed that and frequently proclaimed their opinion that America was the greatest country in the world. 

The people who are asking "why did Apple partner with Google on this anyway!" ... are forgetting that less than half of all smartphone users in the US run Android. Another thing ... we have to consider "expertise" here. While Apple is great at taking their time to come out with excellent things on the hardware and UX/UI design front, the ability to rapidly come out with software and services isn't their wheelhouse. Never has been. And that is precisely what software companies like Google and before them Microsoft exploited. The idea that Apple was going to get a complex software/services initiative like this off the ground in weeks as opposed to years ... they don't have the track record. If it wasn't Google - who has a very good knowledge of iOS because they are a leading app developer on that platform as well as its default search provider - it would have had to have been Microsoft, Facebook or some other company that Apple fans would have found just as distasteful. From the perspective of people who agree with this effort - I agree that not everyone does and their concerns are valid - this app is something that was needed on multiple platforms and hardware types yesterday (even in a clunky and imperfect form) and not refined, tuned and perfectly engineered into a single ecosystem stack two years from now. Google's wheelhouse is the former, Apple excels at the latter, and no use pretending otherwise.

the monk said:

seanismorris said:

I had no idea they were in the video streaming market.

Me neither which is why they’re probably closing down. They wanted to be like an Amazon. For Pete’s sake, stick to what you know.

You may wish to take your own advice. Wal-Mart launched Vudu almost 20 years ago to sell MP3 downloads and DVDs, and later to sell digital copies of DVDs and Blu-Rays. They were only streaming the movies that you had already purchased on the site, or previous to then had purchased from Wal-Mart and redeemed through Vudu. Fandango was one of their partners back then, part of the UltraViolet digital locker consortium, along with Flixster. Amazon was going to join Ultraviolet also, but decided to use their own tech. Still, just like Wal-Mart, back in the day, "Prime Video" was also simply a way to download and watch digital copies of DVDs that you bought or rented through Amazon Prime, and you even needed your own "Prime Player" to do it (because they were DRMed to keep you from playing it on VLC, iTunes, Windows Media Player or anything else) and didn't launch their legit streaming service until years later. Curious thing though with music ... where Amazon automatically loaded the songs that you bought through them into iTunes, Wal-Mart tried to compete with Apple with Microsoft and their Zune Player thing where your songs would be added to the Windows Media Player library automatically. (You had to port them into iTunes manually.) But that is an aside. Yes, Wal-Mart considered their own streaming service, but mainly because streaming services hammered DVD and Blu-Ray sales. Another thing that hurt them was the "MoviesAnywhere" service (which was created by Disney to compete with Ultraviolet. This was back before Marvel and Star Wars when Universal, Paramount and even Sony were bigger movie industry players than Disney). UltraViolet collapsed soon after. True, Wal-Mart joined it, but most people simply imported their old digital content from Wal-Mart to other platforms like Amazon and iTunes and used those to watch their old "purchased from Wal-Mart" movies and to buy new ones. Wal-Mart wasn't benefiting from that arrangement at all and now they are getting out. Fandango has a better shot because it is better integrated with the movie industry but even with Vudu's customers it is still an uphill battle for them.