lostfan

If you have any type of regulation at all, any whatsoever, then it's not a "free market." Such a thing doesn't exist and never has no matter how many times people say it does, not even in the Gilded Age. The market is whatever we say it is. Then it adapts accordingly. Whether it adapts in a positive or negative way is what we argue about. Whenever people talk about the government (some phantom nefarious entity) "interfering" they miss the obvious. Who is it, exactly, that's interfering? Where does it start? Look at who's left with all the money. Again, there's your answer. How many people should've been in prison after 2008? How many people actually went? Y'all don't want me to be president because I will have these people in guillotines with their executions broadcast during prime-time along with the sentencing and verdict being read aloud. I'm not even kidding.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:47 PM) Tyrus was the JaMarcus Russell of the NBA> Nah that's not fair, Tyrus showed occasional glimpses of brilliance and a couple times looked like was actually making progress. Plus he admitted he was his own biggest enemy.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:38 PM) I was the same way. It was a fun place to work during high school/college. I stole a lot, too. lol we could never get away with stealing b/c our store had probably the highest theft rate in the district. The DM would always talk about firing the whole staff in the store and we'd look, like "have you noticed this store is kind of in suburbia's hood?" You think employees stole 100 DVDs and left the lock boxes out there on the floor?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:35 PM) I've wondered for the last couple years what would have become of a guy like Thomas if he'd come into the league and had Thibs as his coach. He seems to be a lot better at getting the point across to guys than Skiles ever was, and he's much more deserving of employment than VDN, so who knows. Tyrus Thomas is such a huge waste of talent. He actually did put in some work, though, and seemed to be at least kind of self-aware and accountable for himself. But like you said, Thibs seems to have some kind of ability to reach players that other coaches don't have.

The main thing you need to succeed under Thibs is discipline (basketball-related, that is). For as much as I've dogged Rose the past few weeks, he's always had this in spades. Rose happens to be exceptionally talented, so it works out. But look at a guy like Joakim Noah. Dude was a god damn clown when they drafted him and to some extent he still is. However he was willing to be pushed and do what it takes to win, as corny as that sounds, and Thibs will push you hard. Of course you need talent but you've got to be able to put in work or else you become Tyrus Thomas.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:21 PM) This is where Blockbuster went wrong, and it had nothing to do with late fees, etc...that was their attempt to band-aid their original gaffe, which started the dominoes falling. "In 1998, at the dawn of the age of the DVD, Blockbuster made a decision that would change the future of Hollywood. Warren Lieberfarb, who then headed the home-video division of Warner Bros., offered Blockbuster CEO John Antioco a deal that would have made the DVD the same kind of rental business as that of the VHS tape, which, at the time, provided the studios with $10 billion in revenue. Lieberfarb proposed that Warner Bros. (which, along with Sony, was launching the DVD) create a rental window for DVDs during which sell-through DVDs would not be available for new movies." "With this window, Blockbuster, which then accounted for nearly half of the studios' rental income from new movies, would have had the opportunity to rent out DVD releases before they went on sale to the general public. In return, the studios would receive 40 percent of the rental revenues that Blockbuster earned from DVDs, which was exactly the same percentage they received for VHS rentals. In fact, it was Sumner Redstone, whose Viacom conglomerate then owned Blockbuster, who personally pioneered the revenue-sharing arrangement for video. Only a few years earlier, Redstone had told Lieberfarb, "The studios can't live without a video rental business—we [blockbuster] are your profit." Yet, even though Lieberfarb was only asking that the same deal be extended to DVD, Blockbuster, perhaps not realizing the speed with which the digital revolution would spread, turned him down." In the end, after WB was turned down, WB was successful in showing the DVD selling business was vibrant, and no such deals needed to be made with the big chain rental shops in order to turn home movies into money. The original thought in Hollywood was that people would only buy very very specific movies, but never "collect" them in mass quantities that could essentially replace revenue sharing with rental. The remaining studios quickly copied WB's new model, and Blockbuster was history in the making. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_hol...new_zombie.html I never knew of a specific deal until reading that but I did always wonder, why were movies available for rent several weeks before you could buy them but this didn't apply when we started getting DVDs in 2000? To an employee, the way this looked is the sale price would show on the computer screen of a new release VHS for something like $109 (next to the rental price of $3.99 or whatever) until it was designated "for sale," when Blockbuster would start selling it in stores along with other stores. But when we started selling DVDs, the sale price was the standard $19.99 or $24.99 and you could get the movie at any other retail chain.

I don't understand why people are so sensitive about the fact that there's people who don't like Hawk as much as they do (or not at all). Then will say "I don't know why people don't love Hawk" after reading several people in a row give a list of specific reasons. What is that about? Also, how are you going to argue someone's opinion?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:55 PM) He has tons of talent. He just has a lot of word to do to hit his ceiling. He is a terrible defender, and could use some work on his basketball IQ for sure. That alone would make him a tough fit for Thibs. He wouldn't play for at least a year, mabye two. Derrick Rose wasn't a good defender at all when he first came to the Bulls. Not so much poor work ethic, as much as he just didn't really know what he was doing. If you have athleticism and you can be coached, you can learn in Thibs' system.

When the foreclosure crisis first started really getting rolling in 2009 or so you see these empty houses and new constructions unoccupied, while you see people being kicked out of their houses and unemployment spiking while more people go homeless. It makes you wonder what for. And then you see the banks get protected (because they're the ones running the show, and they wrote all the laws) and you have your answer. This isn't normal and doesn't have to be inevitable, but it's what happens when you defend any type of activity and chalk it up to the "free market" (as though such a thing existed in a concurrent reality that we can never touch) like putting a stop to it is going to do harm.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:53 PM) Here's a recent write-up I just found on how FV is still alive: http://www.bnd.com/2013/02/25/2506834/few-...ill-thrive.html The big thing appears to be that they own their property, whereas the others were leasing. I still think it comes down to pricing too. Edit: I think in 20 years you probably won't see a FV anywhere. Everything will be digital at that point. But for now there is still a sizeable portion of the country that doesn't have good enough internet and/or they like the idea of a hard disc at a cheap price. Same with gaming. We'll get to that point eventually, but probably not for another decade or more. That is what I was getting at. Blockbuster needed a lot of space and it's not like they could just pick up hundreds of stores and move them. It was a pretty huge corporation at its peak and those supply chains started becoming a burden. I notice how he said streaming isn't killing the business, I had been saying that too. Streaming is a lot of hype until we actually get the broadband infrastructure for everyone to do it, and then people actually get hardware that can do that.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:31 PM) Wouldn't you just prefer we get better talent? We have enough of a project for thibs in Teague. How's Hardaway not talented though? Great athlete, would be good value at #20. Or wherever the Bulls pick. I forget. I'm crossing them with the Bears in my head.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:09 PM) Lower prices and they didn't over expand. It's been years since I rented a video, but I used to always go to Family Video over Blockbuster. It was like 2 bucks versus 5 to rent a movie, and that was mainly due to the fact that blockbuster bought 100 copies of the new movie whereas family video bought 25. I was willing to wait a few days after a release to get the new movies and save myself some money in the process. Nah this isn't really true. Blockbuster had a massive distribution center, and generally handled a lot more volume than somewhere like Family Video. If they got 120 copies of a hot new release (let's say, something like Zero Dark Thirty) then trust, all those movies would be off the shelves for the first week, and every Friday/Saturday/Sunday for the next 3 weeks. You'd get one if you hung around and waited for someone to drop one off (ask the employee who's running movies to hold it for you when they see it) but it wasn't out for more than a few minutes once it got back on the shelf. Occasionally we'd have a f***up or accounting glitch somewhere above our level where we'd get way too few of a really hot movie. We got 12 copies of American Beauty once (Calumet City store)... that sucked. Sometimes when I got the rare copy returned I'd hold it for one of the good customers I knew had been asking for it and call them to tell them to hurry and come get it. They loved that. To your point, what did Blockbuster in was its outdated operating model (brick and mortar stores everywhere, large inventories) they couldn't do anything about while Netflix and Red Box were lighter and agile with much lower operating expenses.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 12:08 PM) Blockbuster made a lot of mistakes back-to-back. They were really humming along when their prices were reasonable and they had one-night rentals. Basically, you knew if you went to Blockbuster on Friday or Saturday night and hung around for 20 minutes, you'd land the new release. They over-stocked that s*** and always had the good stuff. Then enter the no late fees. First, people were confused. Trust me, I worked there and dealt with the patrons. They couldn't understand that if they kept the movies more than two weeks they'd be charged for it as if they bought it. I'd kindly explain - listen, you had the movie for 45 days, it's not a no-limits thing. It was just a dumbass concept. People will not return movies without some sort of reason to do so. So they crank up the fees to rent (from something reasonable like 1.99/2.49 for one night to 3.99, 4.99 even 5.49) and then deal with tons of customer service and return issues. And then, of course, bare shelves for all the best, new films (the only real reason to go to Blockbuster). Then add the absurdity of charging $11.99 for a 5-day video game rental? They took all their value and the reason for people to come to the stores and s*** all over it. Regardless of how many exclusive deals they made with different film studios to have the ability to rent before anyone else, it didn't matter, because the movies were rarely on the shelf. They just completely f***ed up, and also waited way too long to get their Blockbuster Online/In-Store program figured out - they resisted the new wave and thought raising prices was the answer to recouping lost traffic. Brilliant. They did the no-late fees thing a few months after I stopped working there. I wondered how they made money off that? Evidently, they didn't. They reason they charged late fees in the first place (or Extended Viewing Fees, giving it to the customer for another full rental period, another poorly marketed concept they didn't communicate well if at all) was because they couldn't make money off the copy the customer was holding if they had it another 4 days after they were supposed to bring it back. Especially with new releases, that movie was going to be rented out at least twice more in that period. I think the last thing they did a solid job marketing was the "return by noon" concept. A lot of customers were confused by this and I honestly felt if you didn't understand it, it wasn't Blockbuster's fault, you were just dumb. I had people cuss me out about changing the return time without their consent and one guy said it was 12 hours less and we were being deceptive. No, dips***, it would've been due "tomorrow by midnight" like it's been for the company's entire existence, but we gave you an extra 12 hours. You can still return it the following evening if you want but now you won't be late if you return it in the morning, and the store loses no money because the movie's not gonna be rented early in the morning anyway.

Hardaway Jr. not having handles is kind of baffling considering his father's were pretty legendary.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 11:44 AM) That's what happens when your front office is run by scouts. The Bulls certainly have an eye for talent, but very piss-poor cap management (and at times, downright not understanding how the cap works it seems). if they were as good at contract negotiations as they are at scouting they'd be f***ing golden.

The Bulls appeared to be selling the fanbase an idea of shedding salary - communicated that very poorly though, and they got blasted by the fanbase for being cheap and doing it only to avoid the luxury tax. It was totally logical why they let Asik go. You can't give that kind of money to a backup center even if he's a legit starter. They gave up Korver for essentially nothing - in isolation, this was stupid, but as part of an overall strategy it made sense (like dumping Hinrich to Washington before the 2010 season). Then they turned around and completely undid this and made it clear nothing made sense and they didn't really have a coherent plan. The Taj Gibson extension, then bringing back Kirk Hinrich... what was that? So they went into the luxury tax because of Rip Hamilton and Kirk Hinrich, for the first time in franchise history. Really? And although I was on board at the time with Rip Hamilton, in theory, it turns out signing an actual pane of glass would've been much cheaper.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 11:06 AM) Reagan is without a doubt way less controversial and way more popular than Thatcher was. Especially now, you have a democratic president who praises him, and so the youth don't realize the divisions that were occuring in the 80s at home. On the other hand, I really couldn't stand having to act like we needed to respect Jesse Helms when he died. Yeah, my point is, they don't do that in the UK. If they thought you were a s***bag when you lived they'll call you a s***bag when you're dead. Here, if you do that (even if it's someone who wasn't shy about doing the same thing to others when they lived, and it's clear they wouldn't have cared) everyone will wag their finger at you and you have this awkward waiting period.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 10:18 AM) Also, I'm going to be lol'ing at all you guys who are deriding Rose right now when you eventually get back on the DR1 bandwagon (and believe me you all will)... This is irrelevant, along with how good the team is or isn't without him right now. The exceptionalism that Rose gets is nonsense. He is exactly the same as any other player even if he is better than all of them. Am I still a Derrick Rose fan? Yes, of course. That's not even in question. That doesn't mean I'm not sick of his bulls*** right now and that I shouldn't be calling him on it. I'm not fazed by the tsk-tsking of the "he can do no wrong" crowd.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 8, 2013 -> 11:45 PM) At the end of the day, Michigan just didn't defend enough. This. And Michigan did a pathetic job on the boards.

Way too much talk (mostly by Michigan fans) about the officiating as being what decided the game. That's just not true. Michigan couldn't stop a parked car from about 5 minutes left in the second half, throughout the rest of the game. If Michigan plays better defense, especially in the second half, we aren't even talking about this. Burke's block was all ball, for example, but that wasn't even a momentum-changer.

Calling a player a vagina should actually be a compliment based on the description I gave above. Kobe Bryant, for example, is a huge vagina.

QUOTE (Jake @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 09:32 AM) I'm going to go test this hypothesis. See you in a few months Make sure you get consent first. I'm not trying to get arrested and you can say you got this idea from me. lol.

You can beat up a vagina pretty good and in most cases it's as good as new within a couple of days, tops. You could even push a baby out of it and it's back in "game shape" within a few weeks, maybe earlier. That can't be said about certain people.

I like that British politics doesn't have this fake deference that we do here. When Reagan died there was this bizarre frozen silence and nobody would dare speak ill of him for some designated amount of time (Reagan has an entire cottage industry dedicated to pumping up his legacy, but that's another topic). In London people just openly cheer it. They won't criticize Thatcher here, either, they just say "she was a controversial figure" and leave it at that.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 8, 2013 -> 12:39 PM) How does this even happen? Lunch denied to some Attleboro students Telling children to literally throw food away because their meals accounts didn't have enough money. WTF. Yeah I would be pissed as f*** if this was my kid. Geez we are talking about like 2 bucks - if my kid doesn't have enough on their account it's probably because I forgot to add more and/or didn't see the reminder. Since this is kind of a revolving credit kind of deal, is it that important that it doesn't just show -1.00 or whatever?