Thread: Asteroid almost hit the earth on Monday

  1. #1
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    9,607

    Asteroid almost hit the earth on Monday

    This past Monday an asteroid almost hit earth. Sounds like stuff right out of the movies but it's true. This asteroid was not a 'killer' asteroid but if it had hit it probably would have done some significant damage. Closest impact point was somewhere west of Tahiti which means an ocean impact. Most sites are saying it came within 45,000 miles of Earth which is roughly twice the height of our communications satellites.

    http://www.comcast.net/data/fan/html...an/default.xml

    I guess the Earth is sort of in the middle of a shooting gallery.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 03-04-2009 at 11:28 PM.

  2. #2
    verbose cat
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Posts
    209
    Apparently our economy woes are affecting the rest of the solar system too, so they're taking aim to remove the problem...

    Kidding aside, that's scary stuff. He's quite right when he says "blissfully ignorant".
    abachler: "A great programmer never stops optimizing a piece of code until it consists of nothing but preprocessor directives and comments "

  3. #3
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Posts
    290
    The story was interesting, but did anyone else think the news anchor was painfully annoying? It's pretty much all I could think about the entire time I was watching it.

  4. #4
    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    2,318
    It first shows an ad, saying that after that it's gonna show the near hit video, then it jumps to another ad, saying it will show another random video that I'm not interested in next. Then when the ad is over it skips that video too and just randomly throws another ad. When I did some tampering with their packets I found this:
    Code:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><playlist><title>Unavailable</title><choice>
    <url>http://thumbnails.theplatform.com.edgesuite.net/thePlatform/Unavailable.flv</url>
    <title>Unavailable</title>
    <description>You are not in a geographic region that has access to this content.</description>
    </choice></playlist>
    Stupid site... I can't view any videos there.
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

  5. #5
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    United States
    Posts
    9,613
    Gotta celebrate the narrow victories in life

  6. #6
    and the hat of sweating
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Toronto, ON
    Posts
    3,545
    Quote Originally Posted by maxorator View Post
    Stupid site... I can't view any videos there.
    Yeah, I just get "This content is currently unavailable" played over and over too.
    "I am probably the laziest programmer on the planet, a fact with which anyone who has ever seen my code will agree." - esbo, 11/15/2008

    "the internet is a scary place to be thats why i dont use it much." - billet, 03/17/2010

  7. #7
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Out of scope
    Posts
    4,079
    You have to be in the Comcast subscriber region to view their content. I'm not paying a premium on my cable service to provide news to Canada and Estonia! >_<

    If you really want to, you can grab a proxy in the region and it should work fine.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  8. #8
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Posts
    3,195
    bah, the video failed to play, then it showed an ad, then the net one also failed to play, btu the ads work just fine.

  9. #9
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Where circles begin.
    Posts
    1,071
    Quote Originally Posted by whiteflags
    Gotta celebrate the narrow victories in life
    Really? If it did hit, I might not of had to worry about my Political Science midterm today.
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

  10. #10
    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    2,318
    Quote Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom View Post
    You have to be in the Comcast subscriber region to view their content. I'm not paying a premium on my cable service to provide news to Canada and Estonia! >_<

    If you really want to, you can grab a proxy in the region and it should work fine.
    I'm not paying to Youtube either, but I still see its videos. Go figure...

    (Oh wait! Is streaming ads less intensive for the server than streaming videos?)
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

  11. #11
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Out of scope
    Posts
    4,079
    Quote Originally Posted by maxorator View Post
    (Oh wait! Is streaming ads less intensive for the server than streaming videos?)
    It's not intensive, at all. It's actually profitable. Every ad you see means money for them. I'm quite certain they are making more per ad than it's costing them to handle the increased bandwidth.

    What you don't seem to be getting is the fact that we, as Comcast subscribers do not get too many ads from the web site. The reason we don't is because you do. You suffer and we are accomodated better... this is, of course, because we are subscribed to their other services.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  12. #12
    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    2,318
    Quote Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom View Post
    What you don't seem to be getting is the fact that we, as Comcast subscribers do not get too many ads from the web site. The reason we don't is because you do. You suffer and we are accomodated better... this is, of course, because we are subscribed to their other services.
    You forgot the little fact that we only get ads. That means that we never return to the site after we've been annoyed by them.
    Last edited by maxorator; 03-05-2009 at 03:17 PM.
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

  13. #13
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Out of scope
    Posts
    4,079
    Quote Originally Posted by maxorator View Post
    You forgot the little fact that we only get ads. That means that we never return to the site after we've been annoyed by them.
    No, I didn't. That's the point. We, the valued consumers, get the site ad-free (or close to it) because you, the non-consumer, gets hit with ads and only ads. The more ads you watch waiting for the video to come up (even though you can clearly see in the XML that you'll never watch it), the more they can provide to us for free.

    The concept is simple, that particular website is for people in the Comcast subscriber regions only. Instead of simply not allowing you to see the site, they decided to make some money by giving you ads and only ads. Kind of a lame business practice, but I'm not complaining.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  14. #14
    The larch
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    3,573
    That means that we never return to the site after we've been annoyed by them.
    They have already affected your subconsciousness to buy the thing.

    But then, what if someone within the region happens to go outside of it for a while?...
    I might be wrong.

    Thank you, anon. You sure know how to recognize different types of trees from quite a long way away.
    Quoted more than 1000 times (I hope).

  15. #15
    and the hat of sweating
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Toronto, ON
    Posts
    3,545
    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    They have already affected your subconsciousness to buy the thing.

    But then, what if someone within the region happens to go outside of it for a while?...
    What if the person watching it doesn't even understand English very well or the thing they're selling isn't available in their country? I think the advertisers are getting ripped off.
    "I am probably the laziest programmer on the planet, a fact with which anyone who has ever seen my code will agree." - esbo, 11/15/2008

    "the internet is a scary place to be thats why i dont use it much." - billet, 03/17/2010

Popular pages Recent additions subscribe to a feed

Similar Threads

  1. Nice vistas with the equivalent Google Earth version
    By DavidP in forum A Brief History of Cprogramming.com
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 08-14-2008, 06:58 AM
  2. An Asteroid is going to DESTROY EARTH!
    By Cheeze-It in forum A Brief History of Cprogramming.com
    Replies: 48
    Last Post: 11-06-2006, 09:01 PM
  3. Hit Enter, Return mainscr();
    By stickman in forum C++ Programming
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 08-24-2004, 05:49 PM
  4. God
    By datainjector in forum A Brief History of Cprogramming.com
    Replies: 746
    Last Post: 12-22-2002, 12:01 PM
  5. Not having to hit enter after entering a character via CIN
    By Unregistered in forum C++ Programming
    Replies: 11
    Last Post: 04-27-2002, 01:12 AM