Good choice! I'll remove blues from my channel title, and we can both enjoy our new more streamlined channels. You realize that we are bitter rivals from now on, right?

This guy's service call experience is not that unusual. Much service is subcontracted out and I would expect that public-related services would probably do the same. With cable, satellite and phone line/optics video services available, service (and pricing) are competitive causing cost controls and streamlining where possible, including service. The people that screwed up his satellite order could just as easily screw up his medical order (like removing the wrong leg). There are other public health care concerns.

And, btw, the Post Office does suck. How many other services continue to INCREASE in cost while the service reamins the same (if not worse) and the volume of work (probably) DECREASES?

MilkmanDan,

Sounds like he didn't make any effort to diagnose the problem. A cut cable is an obvious thing. So, if you leave yourself at the full mercy of the service people, then you get what you didn't necessarily pay for.

I am as avid an Opera fan as dag is a fan of Apple. The speed of Opera is fantastic, and all the gadgets that gwiz mentions are just what I need for a streamlined browsing experience. They are almost all extremely useful, and don't seem like bloatware to me at all. Features I use all the time are among others mouse gestures, speed dial, inline search (this one especially is much overlooked and AFAIK exclusive to Opera), Opera Link, and a very decent adblocker. Sure, you can get a lot of it as addons with Firefox, but then you have to work for it, and you run into scenarios like blankfist's above. Plus that Opera seems to have a keen sense of what the consumers need, and is often first out with new useful features.

Chrome is unacceptable to me due to Google harvesting statistics on my browsing habits. And running in incognito mode all the time is impractical.

Such Precision and Grace, the chicken is streamlined for speed and agility. It's not until a masterpeice like this that we get to observe to cherished bird in all it's glory

I was looking into doing the same thing years back, but programming became the thing that paid my bills, homeslice. I think you're a talented filmmaker, so I wish you the best, brother.

I'm not married, but I can speak from vicarious experience that most people want coverage (two cam coverage is typically enough, though if you can go up to three, you're doing better than most.).

And, don't listen to Dag, wide angle lenses are easy to shoot with (typically no focus issues), but they make people look like aliens (great for cinema, terrible for weddings). What bride wants to look like an alien, I ask you? You want to keep the viewpoint close to something the human eye understands or something longer... for 35mm that means a 50mm lens. What does that mean for a video zoom lens? I have no fucking clue, but you can easily just zoom in a bit tighter than the broad wide setting and do well, I'm sure.

Speed and cost. I actually know a thing or two about this, believe it or not. Let me just say that most professional wedding-ographers do well to create a streamlined process. Those that make decent money understand what they need to get (footage) and how to cut it quickly. They also offer packages where they charge more for various mediums of delivery (e.g, DVD, VCD, Web, photos, VHS, etc.). The more options, the higher the cost.

Also, a big thing they want is for you to disappear in the background and NOT be a part of their wedding, but when they see the final video they want to see that you were there amidst the crowds. Hence the longer lens comment above.

They sure are creeping out of the woodwork. I thought republicans were insane in 2000 when they elected Bush, and even more so in 04, but this is basically the modern face of conservative America these days. These fucking loonies..., and billo and limbaugh, just outright crazy fucking douchebags and your occasional streamlined hypocrite. Looking forward to Fred Phelps winning the GOP nomination in 2012.

I just had to register a new account to reply to this.

1. You're basing "design" on how we, as humans, consider it. So, as a designer myself, I know that when you design something, it is not streamlined. It won't perform the best way. It's a concept! You iterate, change things, modify how stuff works.. So therefore design *evolves*. An evolution of design throws a kink into the idea of a God getting it right the first time and gives more credence to Darwin's theory.
2. Bad example using the hotel. You're not proving your point, nor discrediting his.
3. You're completely avoiding the answer objectively. You're saying that there must be a God to give moral authority if there is none to begin with. That's very very presumptuous. Humans create moral authority based on majority opinion. They're called "laws" and they existed for a long, long time even before civilized society.
4. I would echo what Shuac had to say. On top of that, if people of the world are to obey the first commandment, God would have people's undivided attention if he just appeared one day to the world saying, "Hey guys I'm here," performed a miracle or two, and left. Whamo, you have one world under one religion instantly.
5. Proof of God interests me. It would change me. But right now, there will be a day where Science will indeed disprove many more religious beliefs. Science will evolve. How will the church respond? Will they edit the bible? What human has that authority? Won't that cast doubt on the credibility of religion?

I have questions too:

1. Why does God want us to worship him?
2. Why do we need the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, and Clergymen, and why should they dress up the way they do? Why should they have any authority over anyone?

And finally:

3. Generally, are people smarter and/or more intelligent than people 2000 years ago? Reason I ask is that I look through history and I see plain ignorance guiding lives. A century ago, people were fascinated by magicians. Some probably thought they had supernatural ability. During the Salem Witch Trials, people were burnt at the stake for doing things that were misunderstood or suspicious. Earlier than that, some cultures murdered babies for being deformed. Cultures sacrificed virgins to volcanoes to appease their gods. Crazy huh?

Isn't it then a matter of fact that people, generally, were more stupid and gullible 2000 years ago than they were today? If you did a magic card trick to the Apostles, they would think you had special powers too..

>> ^burdturgler:
http://blog.videosift.com/campionidelmondo/My-New-GM-Script-Invoca
tion-Links


Why not leave the option of star invoked commands but have the option of using buttons like these, which then don't eat a comment at all? You could stick the buttons where the invocations list resides now, and get rid of the description of traditional invocations entirely.

That was if you want to use invocations in some creative comment you can, but the 90% rest of the time they won't clutter up comment space.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Sure, absolutely not pissed off at all and more then happy to chime in.

The system we have now is kind of complex, but I think your suggestion brings with it its own complexity too - if videos don't expire out of the queue in a time-based fashion, they are more than likely to hit 40 unique views *eventually* and get published, which sort of defeats the purpose of trying to get a higher quality of post filtered in.

I do think is that we need simplification, and I've been reading this thread and the others over the past couple of weeks for ideas.

The truth is that Lucky and I have begun planning VideoSift 4.0 with a very well-known Sifter who does fabulous UI work.

We are in the very early stages and very soon I'd like to post a workshop discussion with links to this post and the streamlining the Sift post and a few others. Change is coming to VideoSift.

>> ^lucky760:
It's as if this whole opinion thing is somehow specific to each individual and not the same among all people.

That's a bunch of bull and you know it. There's only one opinion, and anyone who pretends otherwise is desperate for attention and should be yelled at repeatedly. I'm just glad we have the Internet nowadays; it streamlines the whole process.

if everyone would be using the same avatar it will save costly bandwith. think about it.

but on a more serious note: i kinda agree with the burd, streamlining videosift in a bandwith-saving / cost-cutting way should be the first priority (and i'm sure dag and lucky are already working on that), afterwards we can start thinking about shiny bandwithmunching hobbit buttons. for now i'm more than happy with the scripts Campioni is providing (and they are quite easy to use)

>> ^burdturgler:
http://blog.videosift.com/campionidelmondo/My-New-GM-Script-Invoca
tion-Links


Damn, that's neat. Now see, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Why can't we have something to that effect?

I feel like you guys are clinging to your DOS boxes while GUI interfaces are marching their way in. You're the hardcore fanbase which is the foundation of any good website, but you need to think in terms of what the average user is gonna want because they outnumber you 1000:1.

>> ^jonny:
How would you create the buttons for channel and nochannel invocations?

You wouldn't. You know how when you look at your own video you see a link that says "Modify video details"? I'm proposing that starred members can see that link on someone else's videos. Of course, the field to enter the title would be greyed out or not there at all.

>> ^paul4dirt:
i actually like how its now some kind of commandline interface very much.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the uniqueness of the system. I've never seen anything like it on any other website. It's kinda neat. But I feel like it's starting to outgrow itself. Like the boundaries are being pushed farther than the framework should allow.

but this problem could be solved by making the commands-comments a different category of comments, and could have an option of hiding them. (or something like that)

I mentioned earlier in another Sifttalk post that the solutions offered on here serve to complicate things further. I think this is a prime example of that.

it would be better if the difference was made more clear (by just removing the comments one cannot invoke, or a strikethrough or something)

First off, how many people actually notice those invocations in the comment box? It took me a while.

Besides, I think new members are operating on a system of "monkey see, monkey do." They see starred members invocating so they give it a try as well, and are confused to see they can't do it.

Damn this all very complicated. Can you guys just bullet point what you wanna say in the most simplistic way possible? Kinda like Sagemind. Here's mine -

1. PQ videos should not be able to sit indefinitely. They should expire.

2. PQs should hold a finite amount of videos. Say, maybe three.

3. There should be a minimum vote count to get a video into your PQ.

4. PQ browsing should be streamlined. Going out of your way to a specific individual's PQ is too arduous.