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gecko
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: Mar 02, 2002
Member#: 14
Posts: 394
    
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 Posted:
Sat May 17, 2003 4:05 pm Post subject: |
 
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Yep, figured since I had to fix it again since Jeric changed the colors again (I like the new colors better, by the way) that I may as well stick something new in there. |
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Slash
Cadet 3
Joined: May 02, 2002
Member#: 75
Posts: 12
Location: California
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Posted:
Tue Aug 05, 2003 7:20 pm Post subject: Please fix this! |
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| JERIC wrote: |
| Caray wrote: |
| Isn't 24hrs a bit stiff ? |
With over 6 weeks of music in the playlist, no I don't think it is too stiff. If people want to hear the same track everyday then they should either buy the CD or listen to FM radio. I'm proud of the playlist depth and I want to show it off. |
One of the greatest features of the StreamingSoundtracks site is the freedom of choice which you afford the users. But by declaring a replay cycle of 24 hours, you are damaging that strength by forcing a certain tyrannical constraint on how people can make choices.
You may like the huge selection of music you have available, but IMO you should allow the users to choose what they enjoy listening to. The benefit of the large selection is readily apparent when a user goes to the requests page  There is no need to enforce such a huge cycle time on users.
Perhaps a couple hour time limit on replay is reasonable, but 24 is way too much IMO.
I would guess that the average session time for users of the stream may well be under an hour timeframe. Furthermore, the average queue length is likely around 3 or 4 songs ... (much of the day it sits at 2 songs!), meaning that much of the time random selections are being made, right?
Freedom of choice is a benefit, not a bane.
Slash |
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Yvond
Lieutenant
Joined: Apr 02, 2002
Member#: 39
Posts: 178
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Posted:
Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:11 pm Post subject: Re: Please fix this! |
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| Slash wrote: |
One of the greatest features of the StreamingSoundtracks site is the freedom of choice which you afford the users. But by declaring a replay cycle of 24 hours, you are damaging that strength by forcing a certain tyrannical constraint on how people can make choices.
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ROTF
Slash, you must really hate it now that Jeric's up'ed it to 48 hours, not 24, huh?
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JERIC,
You tyrant you! How dare you encroach upon our freedom after slaving away 2 years of your life to get this site to where it is now. You think that gives you freedom and leeway here? Slacker! What!? Don't those dontations we give you create a defacto board of directors where what the board says, goes? You mean you sometimes dictate how things go around here?!? Let me tell you something, here, Sonny. Don't you realize that by restricting our Inherent, God-given, Divine Internet Right to listen to whatever we want to, whenever we want to, wherever we want to---that you are ruining our lives by only allowing for 95.7% of the playlist to be available over a 48 hour period, assuming it takes a statistical average of about 3 minutes per song with only 22,344 songs available? And that reminds me! Why haven't you bought every soundtrack in the world yet? Why don't you have 1000 streams each running 256, 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1 kb/s yet? Heck. That's only 9,000 streams with an aggregate bandwidth still less than 1 Gb/s, right? The economy's on the rebound, and so's Telecom. Bandwidth's cheap. And here's another thing. Why haven't you re-formated every song to Ogg format yet? Why haven't you switched from Windows XP to Linux yet? Why haven't you banned Cocles from the site yet?
What? Do you think you own this site, or something?
No Taxation without Representation!
No Taxation without Representation!
No Taxation without Representation!
No...wait...that doesn't work. We don't pay for this site anyway...
Jeric, why don't you just shell out all of your own money so we don't have to donate anymore? And while you're at it, the chat sucks. It needs a new upgrade. Heck, it needs to be re-written from scratch. Again. I can't believe that we can't see time stamps anymore unless we move the cursor over to one of the names. Loser.
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Leggy, I was wrong. We don't live in "The 'MTV' Generation". I seem to have dated myself more than I ever thought possible. We now live in the "I'm Entitled to the Everything for Free because I'm an American (especially when I live in Orange County, California) and it should Always be Available to Me Generation." aka, "The 'Kazza' Generation".
JERIC, I think it'd be cool if one day you made it "No Repeats until Every Song in My Collection is Played Day. Er, Days." Hey, it'd only take about 46.5 of them, right?
Last edited by Yvond on Wed Aug 06, 2003 3:37 am; edited 8 times in total |
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Yvond
Lieutenant
Joined: Apr 02, 2002
Member#: 39
Posts: 178
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Posted:
Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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Man, I've got to stop talking to Cocles at 3:00 in the morning while I finish my thesis. He's starting to rub off on me in a really bad way... |
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 JERIC 
Fleet Admiral (Proprietor)
Joined: Feb 12, 2002
Member#: 1
Posts: 4939
Location: Richmond, VA
 
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Posted:
Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:12 pm Post subject: |
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Boy oh boy, where do I start? Thanks Yvond for the satire. That was amusing.  Can I add to that? How about I make the whole playlist available to download so people can burn CDs of it or even make their own radio station?
I can’t believe I’m even going to waste my time responding to the ridiculous post.
First of all, Slash, you are right. "Freedom" of choice is a benefit. But you act like it is an entitlement. You really have a lot of nerve.
The 48-hour policy is fair to the daily and all-day listeners. These are the people I care most about (I’m one of them ). Sorry I don’t feel the desire to bend over backwards for the people who come to SST just to request a song they couldn’t find on Kazaa. If you listened every day you would understand. I’m assuming you are NOT a daily listener; otherwise this wouldn’t be an issue for you. You would also know that the policy is now 48 hours not 24 hours. When did I change that? Many weeks ago! Welcome back to SST. This is a RADIO STATION not a P2P network or Burger King. Do you honestly think that the radio station would be better if you could hear the same song every 2 hours? Well, I guess you're not saying that. You're saying you want to come to SST once in a while and request a new/popular soundtrack without it being forbidden so you can preview it here, whenever you desire, then click on our Amazon link so we can get a few cents of commission. Is that right? And yes, the policy DOES have to be enforced. Otherwise you’re stuck at 5 pm EVERYDAY listening to Meet Joe Black – Somewhere Over The Rainbow or 12 minutes of Morricone whistling in the desert. That’s just the way some people are. There’s nothing wrong with that but I don’t want to hear that everyday especially at the same time everyday. I think most people will back me up on this one. If you want repeats try one of the top rated Live365 channels—oh wait, they don’t have requests.
I guess this is proof that you can only keep some of the people happy some of the time. I think I will rename the site to DriveThroughSoundtracks.com. We'll all have a feast!
_________________
"Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?." -Maximus
Please do not PM me. Use email, Feedback or Contact Us links. |
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Slash
Cadet 3
Joined: May 02, 2002
Member#: 75
Posts: 12
Location: California
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 12:59 am Post subject: |
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| JERIC wrote: |
Boy oh boy, where do I start? Thanks Yvond for the satire. That was amusing. Can I add to that? How about I make the whole playlist available to download so people can burn CDs of it or even make their own radio station?
I can’t believe I’m even going to waste my time responding to the ridiculous post.
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Arogance, rudeness and fabrication aside, it seems you do not value your "customer's" opinions or their attention in general.
It sounds to me like you have a somewhat narrow idea about how to exploit and improve the fantastic potential of the site you have created. For example, it is not a "radio station", but something much more capable and flexible. I think it's a mistake to conceive of it as simply a means of spoon-feeding entertainment to the listeners the way traditional one-way broadcast media are forced to operate.
IMO, the property you have here is highly valuable with a nice slick request page interface and so on. It's too bad you only seem interested in serving some tight clique of friends, rest of the public be damned.
I wish you guys were more civil around here... Your current attitudes seem a rather poor way of encouraging donations and sponsor sales.
Slash |
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Yvond
Lieutenant
Joined: Apr 02, 2002
Member#: 39
Posts: 178
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 1:18 am Post subject: |
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Slash,
Before Jeric up'ed the request limit to 48 hrs, this station was begining to sound like your generic Top 40 pop radio station. The same stuff was played over and over and over and over and over again. The value of SST and what makes it so nice is that it isn't like *all* those other stations. Jeric wishes to show off his playlist. Do you really think that only having 96% of the songs available to you at any given point in time is that big of a hassle? That wasn't fabrication. I did the calculations myself. And with every song Jeric adds to the playlist, that percentage increases asymtotically to 100%.
Come on, is 48 hours *that* big of an inconvience to you when you have 22,000+ songs to choose from? No offense, but it just seems like whining to me. Personally, I think that there shouldn't be any repeats up to every 5 - 7 days or so. It gives you an appreciation for stuff that you'd never dream of listening to otherwise.
You speak of arrogance and rudeness, but you fail to see that your first post was exactly that. To an extreme. Calling the owner and designer of the site tyrannical isn't exactly the best way of getting him to listen to your arguments. My initial post was over the top, but that's just because the way you presented what you did was done in very poor taste.
If you feel that Jeric is wasting the potential of his site, then write a constructive post telling him all about your ideas...or send him a private message. He's always responded to every PM or question I've ever given him.
There's also a big difference between being civil and having a chip on your shoulder, or are feeling like you are entitled or are specially privelleged. Jeric does an excellent job of listening to user feedback, be it from Joe Shmo off the street or a "cliquey" Admin. Perhaps if you weren't so demanding and rude in the first place, the responses would have been quite a bit softer. I don't think you have any idea how much work Jeric's put into this site over the past 2 and half years. I saw it grow up from an unstable 3 person connection that changed it's name every other day, with no web page, to what you see before you today. He's worked his butt off (as you should know), and some of us who've been around the block a few times get tired of all the whining that goes on from many of the newbies (or long lost old timers acting like newbies)---especially when considering that this is a free site, dontations or no donations; sponsors or no sponsors.
Speaking for the management, and hopefully not too inaccurately...
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Cocles
Commodore
Joined: Mar 06, 2002
Member#: 15
Posts: 2587
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 5:07 am Post subject: |
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Arrogant Admin? Rude? No, no, no... Slash, you're confusing Jeric with me. Jeric's the benevolent sweetie pie. I'm the *ahem* "asshole".
That's right boys and ghouls! The sun's gone down and it's time for your ol' uncle Cocmeister to roll out of his... er.. well, where ever the hell it is I come from.
Slash, an oft-absent oldtimer, good to see yeh ol' buddy ol' pal. Pull up a chair! 
I see where yur, comin' from Slash. As an internet station we have the capability of being an "On-Demand" service, but for some stupid reason we've obstructed this amazing technology without any apparent reason other than to exert our god-like authority over you puny peon patrons of complacency, and to "show off". 
Well my fine finicky friend, the reason you're sitting there with your underwear up over your head from the superb online wedgie my cohorts gave you is because your post was written as if we're idiots who couldn't possibly have an intelligent reason for what we do here at SST.
When we allow SST's stream to be On-Demand the station hits a rut. Not only do the same songs always play, but they play at the exact same time everyday. This is obviously because boys like Donald Dingus get home everyday at 5:49pm and want to work out naked in front of their mirror to "Eye of the Tiger".
For those of us who listen frequently if not throughout the day, we get sick of Donald Dingus's daily request. On-Demand is a pain in the cheeks when it's on a communal stream. (Especially when all of Donald Dingus's friends show up and start making their daily request too.) In the end we're left with the same 20 songs playing between 4pm and 5pm everyday, 365. And this horrid monotony continues every hour, all day, everyday.
You, my merry melo-dramatist, are obviously a friend of Donald Dingus. And you guys don't care about this daily broken record effect, 'cause you're gone as soon as your request has played and you've finished your 30 butt-clenches in front of the mirror. And as much as we all like butt-clenches (believe me, I can crack walnuts with mine) many of us also like a little variety for what gives us our daily eargasms.
You're obviously running around like a monkey with a Fourth of July sparkler up your ass, because you've figured out that Jeric instated the 48 hour repeat limit specifically to require guys like you and Donald Dingus to request something else for your nude aerobics (might I suggest Sex-O-Rama?).
You claim we don't care about your opinions or general attention? Well we do actually, but your opinions are wrong. Not to mention you admit yourself that the foundation of your argument is a "guess" (and that's just a fancy word for assu'ing).
How do you know what the habits are of the "average" SST listener? You and caray are the only two to complain since we explained why we introduced the limit, and caray has since seemed to grow quite fond of it.
Jeric does not cater to some clique. The general SST listener tends to listen for hours throughout his workday. Donald Dingus and his buds are the clique who make this station monotonous for everyone else. If SST caters to anyone it is the long time listeners who are also the majority who support this site.
Perhaps you should begin to view the limit as a challenge instead of a hindrance.
Now if you'll excuse me, two days have passed and it's time for my bi-daily Debbie Does Dallas workout.
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Don't be a Donald Dingus! |
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Legolas
Commander
Joined: Aug 08, 2002
Member#: 178
Posts: 857
Location: Drunkest state in USA
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 9:37 am Post subject: |
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OMG!!! THAT WAS PEE YOUR PANTS FUNNY!!!
It hurts to laugh this hard.... "Donald Dingus" ROFL
"KAZAA generation" LOL
You all gave me tears! B-E-AUTIFUL!
HEY slash, sorry that guns and roses split up, but uhm maybe you could not get mad at these past posts. Instead, laugh at the funny parts and then try and understand the more serious parts
Lots of us here like the no request limits, it would be nice to see it go up some more... sure it sucks when a new album comes on here and some late night nut plays all the songs and then by morning i see that a new album is here but have to wait 48 hours to play it. But that minor snag, isn't that big of a deal... it just builds my excitment, and makes that "eargasm" that much better |
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jk2silly
Commander
Joined: Mar 26, 2002
Member#: 30
Posts: 582
Location: Philadelphia Pa USA
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 10:42 am Post subject: |
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Do you want a tissue now lego or a Q-tip?
_________________
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day. - Calvin and Hobbes - |
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Slash
Cadet 3
Joined: May 02, 2002
Member#: 75
Posts: 12
Location: California
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 10:55 am Post subject: refinement of my suggestion |
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If repetition is really as bad as you guys say it is, then I would suggest an adaptive cycle time. Every time a track plays, you adjust it's specific cycle time depending on how close the replay was to the cycle time (t):
replay occurred within 2t?: t = 1.5t (grow timer)
replay occurred beyond 2t?: t = 0.9t (shrink timer)
t = max(1h, t)
t = min(48h, t)
This way songs that get replayed a lot won't get replayed a lot Otherwise, songs that are only occasionally chosen will almost always be available for selection.
This solves both problems of painful repetition and choice denial (in most cases).
In regard to the word "tyrannical", in sys-admin and interface development circles you will hear people use terms like this in an effort to convey when an administrator or an interface element is unecessarily restrictive to the user. Restriction of choice is one of the fundamental evils in user interface design since it promotes frustration... In this context the word is not a commentary on social morality.
In a competative economy, users are a precious commodity and a source of livelihood. Treat them with care...
Slash
Last edited by Slash on Wed Aug 06, 2003 11:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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jk2silly
Commander
Joined: Mar 26, 2002
Member#: 30
Posts: 582
Location: Philadelphia Pa USA
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 11:13 am Post subject: Re: refinement of my suggestion |
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| Slash wrote: |
If repetition is really as bad as you guys say it is, then I would suggest an adaptive cycle time. Every time a track plays, you adjust it's specific cycle time depending on how close the replay was to the cycle time (t):
replay occurred within 2t?: t = 1.5t (grow timer)
replay occurred beyond 2t?: t = 0.9t (shrink timer)
t = max(1 hour, t)
This way songs that get replayed a lot won't get replayed a lot Otherwise, songs that are only occasionally chosen will almost always be available for selection.
This solves both problems of painful repetition and choice denial (in most cases). |
Slash I believe you are missing the point here. Jeric set up SST so that he could listen to his vast array of music at work. He (and this is important) LETS us share the music with him. He and most others enjoy hearing the obscure tracks that the 48 hour restriction forces users to dig up. Should Jeric wish he can set up a special playlist to "feature" an album or type of song or he can, and has been known to, add any track(s) to the album out of the goodness of his heart.
| Slash wrote: |
In regard to the word "tyrannical", in sys-admin and interface development circles you will hear people use terms like this in an effort to convey when an administrator or an interface element is unecessarily restrictive to the user. Restriction of choice is one of the fundamental evils in user interface design since it promotes frustration... In this context the word is not a commentary on social morality.
In a competative economy, users are a precious commodity and a source of livelihood. Treat them with care... ;)Slash |
Current # of registered members as of this date is 2682. Not to bad for a service less than 2 years old. I think our friend Jeric is doing SOMETHING right.
_________________
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day. - Calvin and Hobbes - |
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Legolas
Commander
Joined: Aug 08, 2002
Member#: 178
Posts: 857
Location: Drunkest state in USA
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 11:30 am Post subject: |
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Not to shabby!
This request software that you speak of... Can you create it, and then make it work with SAM and everything else Jerics needs to have this site work they way it does now 
Slash, I think you are missing what's going on here... You have a group of "regulars" here, and we have all donated money here. (Even if it was last christmas0
You see we enjoy the variety. Personally I agree with Yvond  (I was confused about that too  ) but I agree with even making it 72 hours. I hear enough repeats over two days...
We can't have all the power to request, and Jeric can't have all the power (all though he does cause he owns it) but what I am trying to say is that there needs to be a balance. Jeric can see it, I see it, and every other "Randy Regular" can see it. That's why Jeric allows us to have requests to begin with... It a nice privilege, but its not our right...
You see we donate, not subscribe, therefore we are not paying for this service. We just help him out when we can. It's a nice balance, and it works. You can see this by looking at this thread, 5 against one.
Good luck, slash  |
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Cocles
Commodore
Joined: Mar 06, 2002
Member#: 15
Posts: 2587
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 2:27 pm Post subject: Re: refinement of my suggestion |
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| Slash wrote: |
replay occurred within 2t?: t = 1.5t (grow timer)
replay occurred beyond 2t?: t = 0.9t (shrink timer)
t = max(1h, t)
t = min(48h, t)
This way songs that get replayed a lot won't get replayed a lot Otherwise, songs that are only occasionally chosen will almost always be available for selection. |
The request software and service does not support code like this. If it did we might consider it (although I'm of the opinion that it needlessly complicates things).
With the playlist steadily closing in on over two months worth of songs, anything played twice within 2 day is already playing to much.
"Occasional" is a relative term. And with SST's behemoth of a playlist, 48 hour repeats is "occasional" enough.
Oh and remember, "Don't be a Donald Dingus."
Last edited by Cocles on Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Slash
Cadet 3
Joined: May 02, 2002
Member#: 75
Posts: 12
Location: California
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Posted:
Wed Aug 06, 2003 5:11 pm Post subject: Re: refinement of my suggestion |
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| Cocles wrote: |
| Slash wrote: |
replay occurred within 2t?: t = 1.5t (grow timer)
replay occurred beyond 2t?: t = 0.9t (shrink timer)
t = max(1h, t)
t = min(48h, t)
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The request software and service does not support code like this. If it did we might consider it (although I'm of the opinion that it needlessly complicates things).
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Hmm, that's too bad. So the only scripts on the site are 1) request song X, and 2) play song X? Everything else is mediated through some third party site?
It shouldn't be too hard to set up your own queue mechanism, but I spose that "hard" is somewhat relative. The advantage of having your own queue is it gives you much more operational fidelity in that you can create lots of adaptable algorithms to enable the site to be a more smooth and pleasant experience. It enables you to react to abusers more elegantly as well.
For example, you could have a request timer that adapts to the current length of the queue (does it already do that yet? It didn't used to...) That way if there are a couple people listening and they have all used up their request recently, they aren't forced to listen to the computer's obscure random choices of bizzare, grating 15 minute percussion pieces, etc.
Also, you could have the random selector weight it's choices based on the quality vote people have assigned to each track, making 1-star tracks very rare.
Anyway, I would normally offer to do such a thing, but since I've gotten such a hostile and unpleasant reception here, I'm not so interesting in pitching in my time.
| Quote: |
The problem with you suggestion here is you songs that get played a lot won't get played a lot. At this point, with the playlist steadily closing in on over two months worth of songs, anything played twice within 2 day is already playing to much.
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I don't understand your objection. The solution I proposed simply tracks a replay time for individual songs and allows people to select a given song in a short period of time only if that song is rarely played overall. This enables much more free choice without forcing people to hear something over and over again in a narrow time period.
| Quote: |
Oh and remember, "Don't be a Donald Dingus." |
Sorry, I got about 3 lines into your long post above and just ignored the rest cause it seemed it was going to be obnoxious. I have no idea what you're talking about here.
Whatever...
Slash |
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