Asteroid almost hit the earth on Monday

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03-04-2009
VirtualAce

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.
03-05-2009
jEssYcAt

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".
03-05-2009
arpsmack

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.
03-05-2009
maxorator

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.
03-05-2009
whiteflags

Gotta celebrate the narrow victories in life
03-05-2009
cpjust

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxorator

Stupid site... I can't view any videos there.

Yeah, I just get "This content is currently unavailable" played over and over too.
03-05-2009
SlyMaelstrom

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.
03-05-2009
abachler

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.
03-05-2009
psychopath

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.
03-05-2009
maxorator

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

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?)
03-05-2009
SlyMaelstrom

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxorator

(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.
03-05-2009
maxorator

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

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.
03-05-2009
SlyMaelstrom

Quote:

Originally Posted by maxorator

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.
03-05-2009
anon

Quote:

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?...
03-05-2009
cpjust

Quote:

Originally Posted by anon

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.
03-05-2009
ಠ_ಠ

like if you live and china and one of the advertisements is for a mail order bride?
03-05-2009
abachler

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

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.

Except it causes them to lose potential customers. It doesn't come across as 'ads and only ads for non-customers' it comes across as poorly written scripting and broken links, which usually means I never return to that site, let alone become a customer.
03-06-2009
VirtualAce

Sorry I did not realize the news was only for Comcast subscribers.

You can google it though as there are plenty more stories about it...and better ones to boot.
03-06-2009
SlyMaelstrom

Quote:

Originally Posted by abachler

Except it causes them to lose potential customers. It doesn't come across as 'ads and only ads for non-customers' it comes across as poorly written scripting and broken links, which usually means I never return to that site, let alone become a customer.

And if it did come across as ads for non-customers, you'd return to the site? The idea is that you don't return to the site. Why would you? You're not getting the content no matter why you think you don't. The point is that while they got you, they're making some money off of you. You only need to see an ad once to decide whether or not you want to buy it.
03-06-2009
cpjust

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

And if it did come across as ads for non-customers, you'd return to the site? The idea is that you don't return to the site. Why would you? You're not getting the content no matter why you think you don't. The point is that while they got you, they're making some money off of you. You only need to see an ad once to decide whether or not you want to buy it.

Yeah, that's assuming we're actually paying attention to the ads.
I'm sure most people are so used to seeing commercials & ads everywhere that they're immune to them and their brains don't even notice them anymore.