THE FUNDERFUL WORLD OF INFOGRAPHICS!

[Iason Ouabache]

Did someone say infographics? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhl8frFh3NQ

[Cramulus]

[AFK]

At least in my experience, the DVD one is a bit overblown and exaggerated.  It makes it sound like it's taking half an hour for all that stuff to happen.  It's like maybe a few minutes.  Which of course is the time you could be popping your popcorn, etc. 

Also, maybe I just have some kind of magic DVD player, but I can often times skip over the trailers just by hitting the next button. 

But then again, I also don't have a short attention span so maybe I'm the wrong audience for that one. 

[Cramulus]

IIRC all that stuff does occur on the Matrix DVD

[Don Coyote]

IIRC all that stuff does occur on the Matrix DVD

That is just a sign from the gods not to watch the Matrix anymore.

[Jasper]

I hate it when people do that in traffic.

Also I hate it when people don't plan ahead at all and expect me to let them into the lane they HAVE TO BE IN at the LAST SECOND.  I knew what lane I had to be in a half a mile ago, where were you?

[Iason Ouabache]

Parts of the bottled water one that I know are wrong:

We test for e. Coli at least once a day, sometimes more often. We also test for yeast/mold and total bacteria count.
Our source is our own personal well with water that we treat through reverse osmosis, not tap water.
I do hourly quality tests for conductivity, ozone, and total dissolved solids. They are very rarely outside of specs.

However, I don't know how many of those are corporate standards and which ones are required by law. I don't know what the cheaper brands are doing to their water. I know that there are some shady companies that take it right out of tap with no treatment.

Personally, I think we as a society are too obsessed with bottled water and that tap water has gotten a bad rep due to minor insolated incidents. Tap water in the United States is better than in most other countries (unless you live near an oil field then you're fucked.).

[AFK]

We drink tap water every day in my house and its fine.  Well, the tap water that comes out of the refrigerator, but it's the same thing.  And now that they've taken our water cooler away at work, I'll be taking in big waterbottles full of tap water for the work day. 

[Cramulus]

My one caution on refilling water bottles is that you shouldn't drink out of the same plastic disposable bottle for more than like a month.

I don't have a citation on this, but my mom once cut out an article for me from some popular science mag

they were comparing test scores of fifth graders. group A had been taking a new water bottle to school every day since kindergarten, group B had been refilling the same water bottle every day and only replaced it every few months. And group B's test scores were slightly lower than group As.

hopefully I got all those facts right, but that was the gist of it 

[Placid Dingo]

My one caution on refilling water bottles is that you shouldn't drink out of the same plastic disposable bottle for more than like a month.

I don't have a citation on this, but my mom once cut out an article for me from some popular science mag

they were comparing test scores of fifth graders. group A had been taking a new water bottle to school every day since kindergarten, group B had been refilling the same water bottle every day and only replaced it every few months. And group B's test scores were slightly lower than group As.

hopefully I got all those facts right, but that was the gist of it 

Also wonder where socio-economics/parental involvement plays into that.

[AFK]

I was gonna say, I would suspect that the fact the family is dirt poor and has to use the same bottle over and over again may be a factor.  But that said, I do recall reading or hearing somewhere that you shouldn't re-use plastic water bottles.  I imagine there are carcinogens or some such thing leeching into the water over time.  But then again, you have the BHA problem with a lot of the re-usable water bottles. 

Fuck, everything is going to kill us man. 

[Triple Zero]

At least in my experience, the DVD one is a bit overblown and exaggerated.

Totally. According to that infographic, pirates insert a DVD before watching a pirated movie? wtf? Is that some kind of leftover Pavlovian condition thing, or something?

That's like, if someone misses the feel and smell of vinyl records in their MP3s, they fondle a random record and sniff it while listening to their iPods?

"No man, I gotta insert this disc into the DVD player, yes I know it's not connected to the TV, but otherwise it just doesn't have the same feel you know? Now sit down and watch these trailers on YouTube while I go make some popcorn."

It makes it sound like it's taking half an hour for all that stuff to happen.  It's like maybe a few minutes.  Which of course is the time you could be popping your popcorn, etc.

Also, maybe I just have some kind of magic DVD player, but I can often times skip over the trailers just by hitting the next button.

It's correct that not all DVD players listen to the "you're not allowed to skip over this bit"-flag, but it definitely exists. I find that this flag is always set for the FBI warning stuff (yes we get FBI warnings as well as the Dutch variant thereof on DVDs produced for NL), which you cannot skip, but not always for the trailers.
But it definitely depends on the DVD player. If you use the DVD drive in your computer or laptop (with a VGA cable to the TV), you can generally skip everything. Hell, sometimes you don't even get the DVD menu!

It also depends on which edition of the DVD you got, if you bought the (expensive) version right when it comes out you don't get nearly as much crap as you get when you buy a cheaper reprint--and for some reason, it seems that in my experience, the crappier the movie, the more crap you get in the trailers.

But then again, I also don't have a short attention span so maybe I'm the wrong audience for that one.

Hey now. Who's got a short attention span when they don't want to wait unnecessarily? You don't like to wait in line in the supermarket, does that mean you have a short attention span?

Not saying that makes it right to pirate movies, though.

What really bugs me about DVDs though is this. Just around the corner near my house we have one of the best DVD rental stores in town. Not part of a national chain, in addition to the default inventory, has a load of really cool movies, cult classics, alternative stuff, arthouse, you name it. I want to support them. And I do, except not by renting DVDs (they had this action where you could buy 40 euros in credit, for the price of 25. that was years ago, and it will be years before I use it all up. but they do have my money. and I buy my cigarettes there :-P). (and no you can't buy cigs from the credit)

Anyway, the problem is, about half of the time there's a little scratch on the DVD and there's a little glitch halfway through the movie. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes you don't notice it, but still.

Also, you can't seek in a DVD. Well, you sort of can, with scene selection, and fastforward and rewind but it sucks. When I play an .AVI in VLC, seeking rocks. Move the mouse and you can click anywhere on the timeline. Ctrl-left and ctrl-right skip by one minute. And shift-left and shift-right skip by 5 seconds. Spacebar pauses and unpauses the playback. All this happens instantly. For some reason, a DVD always has a delay, and has to spin the disc a lot if you want to skip large bits, and you can forget it if you want to jump to a specific moment in the movie (say to start where you left off yesterday).

What I really wish is if the DVD Rental store would rent out USB-sticks with the movie on them so I could play them in VLC. I would totally pay money for that. It would also save them zillions of space in the store, they would not need to have multiple copies of the same DVD to rent it out to multiple people (o wait no that'd be copyright violation) and they could simply keep backups so they wouldn't have to worry about damaging the movies or some dude not bringing one back.

Afaik the ONLY reason they don't do this, is that they're not allowed, because the industry feels that people could much more easily copy and share the USB sticks with the video files on them. Except that copying a DVD to your computer isn't all that hard either, and downloading it via torrent is even more easy. So it's not like they're facilitating copying anyway. It's just a sign that the industry doesn't understand what's what. I'll ask the DVD Rental guys next time I'm over to buy my cigs.

I mean, I know it's wrong, I think I agreed to that much when the topic came up last time, but I still do it, even though I 1) don't have to pay anything at all [since I already paid for more credit than I'm going to use ever] and 2) leaving the house and coming back with a rented DVD literally takes no more than 7 minutes (excluding the time you could spend browsing) and 3) because they're awesome they usually also have obscure movies if I want to see them .. I STILL prefer getting the video from Pirate Bay or wherever, because DVDs just plain suck.



Oh and this one time, I got a pirated movie, and for some reason they hadn't removed the FBI warning. They usually do. I was amazed, it was wonderful! For once in my life I was watching the FBI warning in a movie and it actually applied to me--I think I rewound (ctrl-left!) and watched it several times out of sheer wonder and to make up for all the times I should have seen it but didn't.

[AFK]

Actually, it doesn't really bother me to wait in lines at the supermarket. 

[Doktor Howl]

Actually, this - and the recent ad shennanigans on Youtube - has convinced me.

AVAST, YE SCURVY SPAMMING-BASTARD PRODUCTION COMPANIES!  PREPARE TO BE BOARDED!

Dok,
Arrrrrrrrrr!

[Cramulus]

ARRRRGHHH ALL ABOARD YE LANDLUBBIN' COPYWRITE RESPECTIN' FELCH SWAB

LET'S WATCH GROW GNARLY PIRATE BEARDS AND WATCH SAVED BY THE BELL