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HGTV has its own streaming service

The link "Sign In to Your Provider" at the top of this page makes me think HGTV streaming is yet another "TV Everywhere" that requires authenticating a subscription to a package on a traditional multichannel pay television (that is, cable or satellite) provider that includes HGTV. The FAQ backs this up.

HGTV has its own streaming service

The link "Sign In to Your Provider" at the top of this page makes me think HGTV streaming is yet another "TV Everywhere" that requires authenticating a subscription to a package on a traditional multichannel pay television (that is, cable or satellite) provider that includes HGTV. The FAQ backs this up.

HGTV?

What you propose turns out to be, in practice, a pipe dream. If you don't know anything about cars, you're getting ripped off by car mechanics and dealerships every time you visit them. And I do mean ripped off; I'd think an average car-driving american can easily waste $20k over their life that way. If you know nothing about basics of home construction, you'll be lucky if you end up on Holmes on Homes and get a $100k gift to fix the mess you got yourself in -- if $100k is enough, that is. I've seen myself houses on the market listed for $100-$150k where it'd be cheaper to rebuild than to fix. If you don't ask questions, have no company at the hospital and know nothing about medicine, you're at elevated risk of various medical mistakes (sorry, I don't have a link handy, but that's my personal experience). If you don't know anything about science and can't visualize meaning of numbers, you'll be easily fooled by politicians, marketers and bankers alike. Knowing your orders of magnitude and being able to do mental math to visualize things is way more important than knowing about Shakespeare, unless you've got a wealthy uncle sponsoring you, that is. Not that I have anything against learning of Shakespeare's work, mind that.

There is a minimum amount of general education that one needs to succeed in today's society -- and no, that doesn't mean knowing literature or whatever else classically passes for general education. You need to know basics of various "technical" disciplines that directly affect you in your life. To me, that's what contemporary civics should mean. It should be the role of grade schools (up to grade 12) to teach kids the basics of what makes the world tick, so to speak. Unfortunately, that's not what's done, and the adults in charge are none the wiser...

Most of what passes for civics these days is entirely useless trivia: stuff that you can't base any decisions on. It's as useful as entertainment is: good for you if that's what you like to know/do, but not helpful otherwise. I'd even go as far as claiming that, say, learning the names of all U.S. presidents or the roots of the U.S. government is an abominable waste of time -- again, if you're forced to do it at school. It's knowledge with absolutely no application to everyday life. Some people may find such trivia entertaining or interesting, but then it's their choice how to apportion their free time, and I sure as heck can't tell them not to learn it. But if they choose memorizing the presidents over knowing what malware is and how to protect oneself: it's them who lose, not myself. Let's face it: computers and automobiles are everyday tools that livelihoods depend on, especially in the U.S.

What you are talking about happens in just about every industry. Nobody can be an expert at everything. When Joe the non computer geek goes out and buys a pc, guess what? He pays more for less than he would if he were an expert. Joe's idea of computer security is probably one of those cables you glue to the case and then glue to the desk. Computer security is in a sad state because as it sits today, it requires some significant technical skills and usually has a significant impact on performance and operations of computers. The computer security industry has a lot of maturing left to do.

What you propose turns out to be, in practice, a pipe dream. If you don't know anything about cars, you're getting ripped off by car mechanics and dealerships every time you visit them. And I do mean ripped off; I'd think an average car-driving american can easily waste $20k over their life that way. If you know nothing about basics of home construction, you'll be lucky if you end up on Holmes on Homes and get a $100k gift to fix the mess you got yourself in -- if $100k is enough, that is. I've seen myself houses on the market listed for $100-$150k where it'd be cheaper to rebuild than to fix. If you don't ask questions, have no company at the hospital and know nothing about medicine, you're at elevated risk of various medical mistakes (sorry, I don't have a link handy, but that's my personal experience). If you don't know anything about science and can't visualize meaning of numbers, you'll be easily fooled by politicians, marketers and bankers alike. Knowing your orders of magnitude and being able to do mental math to visualize things is way more important than knowing about Shakespeare, unless you've got a wealthy uncle sponsoring you, that is. Not that I have anything against learning of Shakespeare's work, mind that.

There is a minimum amount of general education that one needs to succeed in today's society -- and no, that doesn't mean knowing literature or whatever else classically passes for general education. You need to know basics of various "technical" disciplines that directly affect you in your life. To me, that's what contemporary civics should mean. It should be the role of grade schools (up to grade 12) to teach kids the basics of what makes the world tick, so to speak. Unfortunately, that's not what's done, and the adults in charge are none the wiser...

Most of what passes for civics these days is entirely useless trivia: stuff that you can't base any decisions on. It's as useful as entertainment is: good for you if that's what you like to know/do, but not helpful otherwise. I'd even go as far as claiming that, say, learning the names of all U.S. presidents or the roots of the U.S. government is an abominable waste of time -- again, if you're forced to do it at school. It's knowledge with absolutely no application to everyday life. Some people may find such trivia entertaining or interesting, but then it's their choice how to apportion their free time, and I sure as heck can't tell them not to learn it. But if they choose memorizing the presidents over knowing what malware is and how to protect oneself: it's them who lose, not myself. Let's face it: computers and automobiles are everyday tools that livelihoods depend on, especially in the U.S.

Forget HP and Iran. Can someone please tell me why in the bloody hell the RSS abstract for this and almost every other Slashdot story over the past few weeks has included a banner ad for HGTV's "Myles of Style"? What exactly is their target audience here? I'm pretty sure the number of Slashdot readers who are interested in the finer points of choosing drapery fabrics to match the floor lamp can probably be stored in the register of an 8080 with two or three bits to spare.

Maybe their ad relevance engine picked up this story a few weeks back and misunderstood the meaning of "design patterns"?

A machine learning professor at University of Colorado built a Adaptive Neural Network House that learns from his behavior. It learns when to turn lights on and off, heating and cooling, radio, etc. Some of the inputs are time of day, temperature, day of week, as well as motion and audio sensors in the house. So for example the house learns that every time you walk into the bathroom you turn the light on, and when you leave the bathroom you turn it off. Pretty soon it does it for you. Really neat.

The home and garden channel even had an episode of Extreme Homes that mentioned it.

well that's kinda the point. The barrier for distribution (sorta) has gone down. If you/someone could produce a quality gardening show on the cheap, this idea could be replicated for that topic.

you hear that Paul james?!

It's not all THAT bad.
It's not like there are other useless channels out there.

No, the guy still didn't comply.

The Copeland mentioned above is Al Copeland. Has anyone ever eaten at a Popeye's Fried Chicken. Al Copeland started Popeye's. http://www.popeyes.com/popeyesstory.html
He then bought Church's Chicken, and wound up loosing them both. He still owns the company the supplies the spice for Popeye's.

He also owns the more upscale Copeland's Restaurant, which is actually quite good. http://www.copelands.net/

And yes, this is the same Al Copeland that had Anne Rice sending out the Vampire Lestat out to talk to him about the color of his neon light. http://www.kicon.com/law/cases_e/annrice.html and http://www.nola.com/haunted/?vampires/021297straya .html and http://www.nola.com/haunted/?vampires/092797straya .html

So if you want to see some Real Christmas Lights, go the the end of Transcontinental drive by the lake in Metairie, La, just outside of New Orleans. He has around over a million lights. Yes, he has his own transformer. He used to hire college engineering students to help put them up. It is really something to see. http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/remodeling/article/0,1797 ,HGTV_3659_1581560,00.html and http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3660533&p 1=0

There's a place in the UK similar to what you have described. It's called Mole Manor. Located in Gloucestershire, it was documented in several web pages. I saw the documentary on TV once, and I thought it was really cool to live like a hobbit. In case you're interested in looking for the opportunity to buy an underground house in the UK, there's adedicated property guide. Interestingly Mole Manor was valued at 950,000 pounds (around 1.4 million dollars) about a year ago.

There is also an underground log cabin in Idaho. Could this be similar to the place you described.

Bend up and sniff my anal vapor. You are my shit-tower. Golden Shower.

Anybody wanna see my whang?

Ha! I watch too much HGTV and I always laugh when people spend a bunch of money on a remodel and include a custom cabinet to hold their 4:3 TV perfectly because I know they are going to be kicking themselves in a few years. I'm glad (in a gloating way) to see that it's already started ;-).

Oh, and kids... pot and jr high dont mix well either (excuse the pun). Most of us stopped trying to get people to call us "Wonko the Sane" many years ago. *sigh* The rest moved on to design eco-homes and smoke even more copius quantities of weed at burning man 98.

Saw this demo'ed at this year's builder's show in Atlanta (?) via a program on HGTV.

There was supposedly a whole system of signals guiding African-American slaves to escape to the north. The signals were hidden in quilts, which could be left out in the open. It's written up in Hidden in Plain View, and you can see some of the symbols here. This was very low-tech, and the end-users didn't even have to be literate. Haven't you seen spy movies where signals were passed according to whether a curtain was open or shut, the color of a shirt hanging on a clothesline, etc.? This kind of low-tech signal would leave much less footprint than anything composed or transmitted via machine.

Conventions are turned into inventions, as an old window grate becomes a unique centerpiece or a wagon wheel is transformed into a fine shabby-chic chandelier. Host Christine Pullara shows how to snoop in flea markets and salvage yards, burrow through basements and attics, and turn trash into decorating treasure.

1) Turn old printouts into "high-tech" wallpaper.

2) Glue old broken DAT tapes to AOL coasters [boy-girl-boy-girl] and volia', a desktop letter holder !

3) Old hard drives make great bookends !

4) And a whiteboard, supported by discarded 286s, makes a nice partition for when you get a partner in your 10'x10' cube....