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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#821

Post by lotsofpulp »

zeusk wrote: post #744
lotsofpulp wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That $77B that is now returned to shareholders can be spent on whatever those shareholders want. It isn't really Apple's money to begin with... kind of the issue with being a public company. Apple and its shareholders are the same entity when discussing “whose” money it is. If shareholders want it used to do buybacks, they vote for company leadership to do that. If they want dividends, they vote for company leaders…

Well. With such large firms, shareholders are quite a stretch of distribution. Voting proxies and the complexity of introducing a shareholder vote proposal quite drastically restricts the number of shareholders who can make stuff happen at these firms.

That is how ownership in a public company works. The more you own, the more control you have. Before you purchase, you will know what percentage you will own and you have to predict if it will be enough to enable you to accomplish your goals. Or you have to make friends with other shareholders.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#822

Post by dhosek »

1cvmask wrote: post #330
dhosek wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon and Apple also have stream rentals. That said, I have Netflix (free with my T-mobile phone service) and HBO (free with my AT&T fiber internet) and Apple+ (free with the recently purchased iPads for the kids) and Hoopla (free from the library) and Kanopy (free from the library) and Disney+ (we actually pay for this one) and I never feel the need to say, I must watch this movie which isn't available on one of th…

The tyranny of choice. Have you ever heard of the indie mubi? https://mubi.com/

Nooooooo! No more choices!

Seriously.

I've stumbled across various streaming services that look like they have stuff I might like, but I really have more than I need already. And I always forget that because my wife pays for Prime, we have Amazon Prime streaming too.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#823

Post by nightski »

aerosmile wrote: post #795
nightski wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you truly believe multinational conglomerates are the pinnacle of innovation then you may be right. But from my perspective they acquire because they can't innovate internally.

I don't think I implied that multinational conglomerates are the pinnacle of innovation. I implied that they are important to our economy, and by extension (see my other comment), they are important to our way of life, our way of thinking, and our ability to live in a free and democratic society. That doesn't mean that companies get to operate without any regulatory oversight, but I would be careful to constrain dome…

I look at it differently (and I admit I could be wrong). I don't view these conglomerates as weapons but rather as baggage holding us back. I think by freeing ourselves from them we'll have a better chance at dominating competing nations. While they do have a lot of resources, it's not often good comes from it. They stifle innovation and lack imagination.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#824

Post by hnbad »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #299
nemo44x wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the “evil mega-Corp” will gladly sell you that sci-fi in whichever medium you prefer. Hell, they’ll even recommend it to you.

There's probably books on that exact topic published by them and only possible to legally consume by purchasing it from them and reading it on their hardware.

Why suppress the revolution when you can just sell the revolution in episodic form as escapism to be consumed from the safety of your own home.

There's an argument that progressive political comedy shows are actually detrimental because they give the viewer the feeling of having "solved" the problems presented by the mere act of watching. Instead of facing the problem directly and trying to do something about it, we consume the problem as entertainment in a small neat (time)box and can then just go on ignoring it.

There have been recent findings that support for BLM and its causes among "white allies" drastically rose throughout the protests but is now as low or even lower than before (and also corporations not following through with their promises of donating money towards relevant causes because it is no longer profitable for them to signal support). This would fit the same model: most white people who supported BLM only developed an awareness for the problems due to the protests and then supported the protests (and hashtag campaigns) but as soon as the protests were over and minimal reforms (including non-reforms that actually did the opposite, e.g. police funding bills) the problem was "solved" in their mind and they abandoned the movement and maybe even felt personally attacked by anyone claiming nothing had changed fundamentally.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#825

Post by dhimes »

ajmurmann wrote: post #791
dhimes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I are no strangers to "buying" on-demand movies we enjoy. But our experience with Verizon FIOS is that every couple of months those titles "aren't available." Our "Purchased" area is empty. Last night was one of those nights. We settled in a bit early for TV (minor celebration) and decided we had time to re-watch a movie, and our kid-still-at-home would join us. But we couldn't get it and ended up watchin…

Have you tried Movies Anywhere? It syncs your purchased Movies between most major providers. I wonder if this would allow you to watch the movie elsewhere when this issue occurs at one vendor. With this I now have many of my Apple purchases on Google Play and Amazon and vice versa

Thanks- I'll look into it.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#826

Post by WorldMaker »

908B64B197 wrote: post #754
bogwog wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Python though? If a user knows what Python is, they probably know enough about technology to install it themselves. Are there any Windows 10 features that require Python?

> Why Python though? If a user knows what Python is, they probably know enough about technology to install it themselves. Yes and no, it's frequently used as an intro language. I could see advanced users being annoyed by this but I'm not certain they are the target demographic.

Yeah and it was a collaboration between Microsoft and the PSF. A lot of tutorials written for macOS and Linux literally do start with "type in python and see what happens next" and both Microsoft and the PSF were seeing complaints that on Windows nothing happened but an error message. Microsoft didn't want the maintenance burden (that macOS and Linux has) of supporting and shipping an officially bundled version (and accidentally stuck on older releases as things start to depend on it or what have you), and meanwhile the PSF realized they were excited to get Python officially into the Store (and take on the maintenance of that) as possibly the easiest way to bring in new users on Windows. (As someone who has used Python on Windows for a very long time, I welcome the Store version as really the easiest install path to date.)

(ETA: The other reason Microsoft is less than willing to include scripting languages out of the box is past bad experiences with WScript. Doing it a shortcut to the Store install actually is a decent compromise from the malware we'd possibly see if Python scripts worked out of the box in fresh Windows installs.)

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#827

Post by hnbad »

shmageggy wrote: post #424
hnbad wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carlos Maza's video on the pandemic (and Trump) provides a good explanation of this phenomenon IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJaE_BvLK6U Basically we all see ourselves as the main character and don't think boring (i.e. systemic) problems will affect us. I'm not going to die from COVID like the rest because I'm special -- I'll die in an important way when it's narratively convenient, not like an extra killed of…

Maybe I'm in the minority but I definitely see the rise of mega corps as directly affecting me. They funnel obscene amount of wealth and resources(and thus political power) to a few individuals, lessening my democratic impact; they aren't beholden to any particular community and thus often are worse for workers and demonstrate worse negative externalities (such as environmentally); and so on... The thing is I just fe…

Oh, it's absolutely affecting everyone. It just does it in a way that feels too trivial and non-dramatic to be a genuine threat to "the main character". Quoth Thanos, "I don't even know who you are" -- except unlike Thanos it's a faceless megacorp and every single person you ever interact with is an underpaid contractor working for a sub-subcontractor you likely never even heard of.

We understand individual problems ("I have cancer", "I lost my job", "My car broke down") intuitively. Systemic problems (pandemics, climate change, capitalism) not so much. Plus we've spent over a century increasingly framing every systemic problem as an individual problem and training us to think only of individual solutions ("boycott Amazon", "buy organic", "take shorter showers" -- note how many of these are explicitly about individual consumption rather than active collaboration).

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#828

Post by edgyquant »

texaswhizzle wrote: post #815
edgyquant wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does at book 8

Ah, interesting. I stopped after book 6. Can I jump straight to 8 or do I need to slog my way through 7?

You definitely need to read 7 as there’s a big change in that book that sets up 8. I will say that 7 is a lot better than 6 but, again, there’s very little proto-builder stuff. The whole series builds up to 8 in a slow drag (it sucks) but book 8 is pretty good as a high fantasy/sci-fi book. I really think these books should have just been a trilogy

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#829

Post by skystarman »

nkozyra wrote: post #258
skystarman wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We for the most part have exponentially more and better content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more convenience than 10-15 years ago. But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental…

> But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. This is not a good faith reading or interpretation. The frustration is in the fragmentation; having to subscribe to multiple services to get the content you want because it's otherwise siloed. Hitting that point - having to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a…

You don't have to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a "small subset" of the service's offerings.

You get ALL of their offerings.

The idea that you should pay less than $8 for Disney Plus because you only want to watch Mandalorian when you actually get access to literally dozens of extremely high quality titles is just fucking dumb.

The previous option was pay $14 per person to go to a theater and that's the only thing you get to watch. Or pay $120 a month for cable.

It's all just ludicrously deranged mental gymnastics to justify the fact you don't want to pay for anything.

Which you can do, that's fine, just be honest about it!

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#830

Post by WorldMaker »

bogwog wrote: post #736
vel0city wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Microsoft Store version is managed by the PSF and is a legitimate method of getting it. It went to that because you didn't choose the option to add python to the PATH, so the console didn't have a python executable to run.

I did choose to add it to the PATH, and even double checked the variable manually. The only way to get it to use my installed version was to disable that alias feature in the Windows 10 settings app.

That alias really is supposed to go away when you install Python from any install path (Store or classic EXE installer), but it does have more bugs with the EXE installer. (The alias feature is used more generally in Store installs, so it's more of a direct alias swap when installed that way.)
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