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This is anecdotal of course, but this is more or less true for me.

Ever since the advent of Amazon MP3, and eMusic, I haven't downloaded any more music (I've used Jamendo before which also provides DRM-free music, but they didn't have any of the artists I cared about).

Hulu has precluded me from downloading a lot of videos, and it's also got some interesting movies I'd never bother to rent at a video place (I recommend Ink, and Strictly Sexual).

http://www.hulu.com/watch/55587/saturday-night-live-pampers

It's not like we discovered more numbers since then.

My good friend Sean Connery would disagree with you, sir.

but you need an HTPC setup and to navigate to Hulu via a browser

Actually I was pleased to find out about Hulu Desktop.

It works with my Media Center remote and you can even integrate it with Windows Media Center.

You still need an HTPC, but it is much better than having to use a keyboard and mouse to navigate the web page.

Not that I am defending them, but you can still watch hulu with 64 bit flash in linux if you use hulu desktop. If, like me, you had to compile a firefox plugin to keep flash from crashing all the time because your cpu doesn't support the lahf instruction you will need to preload the plugin to get hulu desktop to work. Something like this should do the trick:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flashplugin-lahf-fix.so huludesktop

Your paths may vary.

http://www.hulu.com/world-of-adventure-sports

If they can't integrate it into something I can use with a remote

Uhhhh, dude... Hulu Desktop was created explicitly for use on Media Center computers, complete with support for Media Center remotes.

And it's been available for some time now.

AND it runs on Linux!

....Personally speaking, I just wish that Hulu (or... anything that can offer a reasonable flat rate per month for that matter) would give better user experience and picture quality than the scene releases have for the last decade or so. We'll get progress some day.

Agreed. When I heard this story on NPR last night the first thing I thought was that this person might be a protected whistleblower, as it appears that the "state secrets" that were leaked don't relate to national security as much as bureaucratic incompetence and governmental inefficiency. The NPR story doesn't seem to mention the idea that this person might be considered a whistle-blower (admittedly I didn't catch all of the story.) The infamous "most Americans" oh heck, maybe even most Americans (not just the Slashdot libertarian geeks and the teabaggers hanging on Glenn Beck's every utterance) might well wind up thinking something rather different than the government expects them to. If Americans decide he was a whistleblower on billions of dollars of waste fraud and mismanagement, Thomas Drake might wind up as a folk hero and a commentator on the Sunday morning talk circuit. Presumably he'll seek some legal shelter under the Federal Whistleblower Protection Act. However, since he blew the whistle on the NSA and not the park service, that shelter might be pretty thin.

On the brighter side, it will be highly amusing to watch Fox News try to figure out how to present this story, what with it's spooky quantum both a particle and a wave nature (he's a dangerous spy... and a hard working taxpayer folk hero!") We'll get to revive the Shimmer dessert topping and floor wax meme for this one.

The same Hulu whose video - since 2008 - has been encoded in H.264? What's more likely:

-- Hulu finds a way to serve H.264 content via HTML5 to mobile devices that support it, just like youtube is doing (in beta form) today?
-- OR --
-- Hulu says "Sorry, since Apple won't let Flash run on the iPad and iPhone, you guys can go fuck yourselves"?

Hulu does not heart Adobe. Youtube does not heart Adobe. The Flash Player was a way for them to accomplish their goal: making money off of serving video interspersed with advertisements. A new technology is poised to do the same thing, and allow them to write to an open standard that should work across multiple platforms. Which do you think they'll choose as a long-term strategy?

That very attitude would sink another company.

Yes, it's a shame about how airlines, cable companies, phone companies, and all those other industries that failed to provide great customer service went under.

One time I spent 10 hours delayed at an airport because United didn't have a plane ready for the scheduled flight. What did they do to make it right? Offer me $100 off the next time I bought a ticket from them. Maybe I could just not fly United again, but that attitude isn't going to be any different than any other airline out there.

The reality is that a corporation has one goal, and one goal only: to make money. For some, the best way to make money is to help the customer out the best they can. For many, it means realizing that there is little to no alternative and that all their competitors are going to be doing the same thing, so cutting costs is the best way to make more money. Don't like your bank's policy? Go to another one. Just don't be surprised when you see the exact same behavior there, too. Or, perhaps, different annoying policies that simply treat you like a walking wallet.

CmdrTaco: We here at Slashdot recognize our obligation to bring resposible opposing viewpoints to our articles. Here now with an editorial reply is Miss Emily Litella.

Emily Litella: What all this fuss I keep hearing about Verizon's CEO wanting to hunt down heavy users? Why it's outrageous! Hunt down fellow human beings? Why that's murder! A man gains a little power and he thinks he can do whatever he wants! Any why single out the heavy users? They're slower and make bigger targets! Is he a cannibal? If he wants real sport he should be hunting the skinny ones! And it's a fine way to be treating customers anyway! He should be going after people who use Boost Mobile! If I hear one more person saying "Where You At?" I'll get a gun myself!

CT: Um, Ms. Litella..

EL: What, what?!

CT: Mr. Seidenberg was referring to heavy broadband users, not heavy people. And when he said "hunt them down" he was speaking metaphorically. He wants to charge people who use broadband all the time more than those who don't.

EL: Oh, I see. That's very different.

CT: Yes.

EL: Kind of a misleading headline.

CT: Well, we'll speak to timothy about that.

EL: Never mind. But this guy's still being a dick though.

10 years of smoking and damnit I'm still alive, dammit I hoped I would skip watching my kids fuck robots. I'm not looking to that Guess who is coming to Dinner homage.

There is a documentary called "High Score" it is about a guy named "Bill" who tried to get the high score on Missile Command and attempted Asteroids.

It's pretty interesting.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/135697/high-score

Perhaps I do contribute to the BBC. What makes you think otherwise?

Do you live in the UK and pay your TV License? No? Then you don't get the content. I don't either. I don't think this is some sort of heinous disaster. Perhaps you also think it's disgusting that I cannot browse Hulu, and neither yourself nor a UK citizen cannot browse TVNZ On Demand?

For some sites, this is true... sites that don't care if it's a little easy to download their video will do that, and probably will switch to HTML5.

On the other hand, if you can tell me how to download, e.g., this or this, just by typing some URL I can obtain relatively easily from the source of a page into the browser, I'd forever be your friend.

She sounds like Down Syndrome Girl!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/128019/family-guy-down-syndrome-girl

Couldn't you write a Facebook-like P2P program that just copied files from people you knew personally, or if they didn't have it, sort of copied from someone they knew to them, then to you?

Like, I don't know Dorothy, but I know Alex. And Alex knows Bill who knows Carrie who knows Dorothy. Alex and Bill and Carrie don't have Timberlake's "Motherlover" (Low quality, non-hulu link) song, but Dorothy does. She sends it to her friend, Carrie, who sends it to her friend, Bill, who sends it to my friend, Alex. Now I can get it, and all the sharing has been perfectly legal.

Of course, the natural result here would be that everyone and their sister would either a) have a copy of every single piece of media on the internet, or b) be constantly downloading/uploading/deleting tons and tons of data. But it'd be legal.

It has a non-web interface. Use Hulu Desktop. Or boxee (though that uses the web interface using mozilla as a plugin IIRC). Hulu Desktop works great on my mac mini.

> Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?

No, no it doesn't:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/123218/stossel-thu-dec-10-2009

I'm all for switching from fossil fuels to renewables as quickly as is practicable. I can hardly wait for the day when I can go into a dealership and buy an affordable electric car, and can charge it on a nuclear-fed electric grid instead of the coal-based grid I'm on now. I want solar panels on every roof where they'd do any good and wind turbines wherever they'd be useful. BUT, we don't have to risk our economy to get there. We don't have to be taken in by lies and exaggerations to get there.

Climate change is a fact. How much of it is anthropogenic is far from certain. What we should do about it is, basically, the same thing we should do regardless--cleaner, renewable energy is the logical future in any event. But the AGW alarmists would have us cripple our economies with carbon taxes and gas taxes and all sorts of boondoggles to try to make the change quicker, whereas the reality is, as is pointed out in the video discussion linked above, we should be slow and steady and reasonable about changing our economy to rely less on fossil fuels. Being too hasty and redirecting too many resources will end up killing millions more through aid cuts than will be killed by climate change.

It also reminds me a bit of the "celestial chamber" from the (original) Battlestar Galactica finale.

This is another revision over previous 64-bit Flash revisions. I've been using it for months, mostly without trouble.

Around mid-January though, Hulu broke with all Linux clients running 64-bit Flash. You get "Sorry, we are unable to stream this video", and the support forum is full of people reporting it. As far as I know Hulu has provided no response, and there are rumors that something related to video DRM that Hulu enabled (must be recently) is not supported in the 64-bit Flash player yet. Workarounds including using the Hulu desktop (which some report as buggy), watching at least some of the videos via Fancast (which I didn't even know existed), or using the 32-bit plugin. I just tried this 10.0.45 release and it has the same problem.

I use my N800 daily, too ... to play Klondike. The FBReader software is a terrible user interface. A pity, really.

So I've tried to use my laptop. I've tried installing Amazon's Kindle for PC under Wine. It installs but won't run, so I don't know if it's suitable for reading or not.

Calibre seems intended for downloading and feeding data to devices like the Sony reader.

All in all, the laptop doesn't seem to be a good candidate for curling up with a book. If I perch it on my stomach it has a habit of spontaneously loading up Hulu and rotting my brain.

Dammit. I need coffee.

It is on Hulu:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/50395/family-guy-the-freaking-fcc

And it's Season 4, episode 14. Somehow my copy is mislabeled.

Okay, breaking news from Engadget about a very interesting HTC Touch HD2-size phone with Android and AMOLED screen ... and WiMax?! That's very surprising, but it would be very welcome news. I hope the thing about it only being in white is false, because, DAYUM, that'd be a big mistake. I guess I could always get a black cover for it. The article is here: Engadget.

I second this. Sliders is a very excellent idea which went haywire due to various reasons (as stated by the parent). I just got brought back into this series due to the fact that the first three seasons are now available on Hulu. But, I do agree - after John Rhys-Davies was yanked, the show just continued to go downhill from there. Plus, while I realize the show needs a plot, can it stop being from the standpoint of, "Quinn decides to be dumb and save a damsel in distress and gets everybody into a heap of trouble" and instead have something more imaginative.

Haven't these guys seen the hygiene video?!
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4510/futurama-anti-robot-propaganda

" In remote central Siberia, there was a time when the Tungus people told strange tales of a giant fireball that split the sky and shook the Earth. They told of a blast of searing wind that knocked down people and whole forests. It happened, they said, on a summer's morning in the year 1908. "

About 20 years later the legend of the fireball led to the search and discovery of what has become known as the 'Tunguska Event'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

As seen in Carl Sagan's Cosmos, episode 4, Heaven and Hell.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/63316/cosmos-heaven-and-hell

Cheers.

Old Glory Insurance

http://www.hulu.com/watch/80885/stargate-sg-1-fail-safe#x-0,vepisode,1,0

although apophis was the name of the one that sent the asteroid not the asteroid

You show 'em! Did you drop it on the floor, or did you throw it on the ground ?

He should had moved his van down by the river! ;)

Does it cost $10,000/lb?

http://www.hulu.com/watch/111111/better-off-ted-heroes

:)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/111164/spacerip-saturns-aurora

Sweet!

Try Annuale!

Hey, I found him.

Mark was also on The Simpsons after Mr. Burns won Austin Celtics team.

"and show that giving poor countries technology so that their people can learn, grow and prosper will work out better then just throwing food and money at them just too keep their miserable, go nowhere lives going."

Maybe, but before you all decide that technology is the silver bullet to what ails the third world. You might want to view this Global Voices video over at Hulu.

Actually, I've never paid for cable TV (got my own place in 1992 and just installed an antenna), so maybe I'm not their target demographic anyway.

Last night I watched a 35 minute lecture by Robert Sapolsky on YouTube the night before, a random TED talk. The night before that, hulu, and Netflix has been cheaper than premium cable forever. My parents-in-law gave up their TV in about 2001 and we gave them a cheap PC and Netflix subscription instead, they love it.

Yeah, cable service has been as dead to me for a long long time now.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

http://www.hulu.com/

http://www.youtube.com/movies

http://www.getmiro.com/

I haven't paid for TV for over a year now. Neither did I torrent.

The latest "Bones" episode on Hulu consumed a pretty consistent 93 kB/s-- probably limited by my ~768 kbps DSL line. Hulu itself recommends 1 Mbps for 360p videos, 1.5 Mb/s for 480p, and for 720p; 3.5 Mb/s.

360p is watchable, but it breaks up in places. The picture isn't all that detailed, and it looks miserable when blown up to a full screen. If you want to watch some TV while checking email, browsing the web, or writing some more classes, it'll do. If you want to devote your full attention to watching something on hulu, the artifacts can be distracting.

Now, if you had a non bandwidth restricted connection, 480p would be a natural choice for hulu-- a no brainer. If you had a high resolution display, you'd probably wonder why a 720p version was unavailable.

I don't really think that there's a "reasonable" upper limit for video, in the absence of bandwidth limits. Consider that the 13 episode first season of dollhouse is published on 3 bluray disks-- 130 gigabytes total, and 8 -- 9 gigabytes per episode. That's about 23-24 Gb/s with h.264. And people with bigger displays and better eyes than mine could probably still find fault with the video.

If hulu had a 1080p setting comparable to bluray, it wouldn't remain unused.

You want free videos:

http://www.tioti.com/
http://quicksilverscreen.com/
http://www.veoh.com/
http://www.hulu.com/
http://www.alluc.org/
http://www.sidereel.com/_home
http://alloftv.net/
http://www.4kidstv.com/

I haven't checked them all but most of them I checked were legal, and Quicksilverscreen and TIOTI are people that share their videos via the web site that may be grayware and not 100% legal but it is like them taping a VHS tape and sharing it with you.

here is a link to tens of thousands of free music links mostly by third party artists who don't have a distributor and share their music via the Internet.

If you are going to use BitTorrent why not find free and legal torrents to use with it and avoid the piracy.

of the things being pirated. The RIAA and MPAA should offer the lowest possible prices that still allow them to earn a profit and then sell at more reasonable prices. That would put big cuts in piracy of materials. Sell in quantities at lower prices, rather than sell less at higher prices and force poor people who cannot afford the materials into piracy.

Most piracy happens because the person is too poor to afford the materials, but they can afford a computer and Internet connection and then get a free P2P file sharing program and get as many materials as they want for free.

Hulu was a good idea, free TV shows and movies but with commercials. The RIAA and MPAA need to make a free access Hulu like site for videos, movies, TV shows, songs, music videos, etc and offer commercials in-between them for making money. Paid members can have the commercials removed and then buy the media for a low cost to download it to their computer or media playing device. The Internet is really based on a free content model of business, people don't want to pay access for a web site, but they do want to pay low prices to download media.

If the RIAA and MPAA did a Hulu like site, then there wouldn't be any need for media piracy as you could watch all you wanted for free, and then pay a small fee to download the media file you watched to your computer or media playing device. Commercials will pay for such free sites, and paying members can skip the commercials.

But I doubt the RIAA or MPAA would do that, as it makes too much common sense, and they are more of suing people for downloading content and are in fact suing their fans and customers. That makes a bad business model and gives bad PR.

Here is a great documentary on the town of Picher.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/53867/independent-lens-the-creek-runs-red

Hulu says that their reason for restricting content is "clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography." Well, why not make the site available to at least all of the places where these rights are already cleared. Eh? Name a show that is in the U.S. that are explicitly banned in, lets say, Canada. But to be honest, I only care about the fact that I can't access Pandora

Actualy, they probably don't have the rights for a show in Canada. For exmample, CBC might own the rights to broadcast Heroes in Canada, while NBC owns the rights to broadcast it in the US. Therefore, Hulu needs to pay money to CBC to show Heroes in Canada. (It's a terrible outdated model, I know, but its very difficult to undo the hundreds of already existing licensing deals.)

Hulu says that their reason for restricting content is "clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography." Well, why not make the site available to at least all of the places where these rights are already cleared. Eh? Name a show that is in the U.S. that are explicitly banned in, lets say, Canada.

But to be honest, I only care about the fact that I can't access Pandora

I don't mind VOD / pay for new movies. I can see people paying for latest-run TV shows, I guess.

And there's a lot of BBC stuff I'd like to be able to stream, legally - with some sort of reasonable model.

I'd like to see Doctor Who and whatever that series was that had the British flying around trying to sell franchises, as well as many others - any of the early BlackAdders come to mind as well.

But these are OLD tv shows. You can make a few bucks selling ads and selling ads for DVD / Blu-ray discs. Consider the following VOD:

http://www.slashcontrol.com/free-tv-shows/babylon-5 (yes - all five seasons)

Next ones go without saying:

http://www.hulu.com/

http://www.crackle.com/

And here's the best content manager I know:

http://getmiro.com/

Note to BBC - I hear your iplayer is working now. Great. We don't need the DRM or the extra charges for shows that will come around in rerun on the same non-tiered channels we saw them on outside of your country in the first place - cheers, thanks a lot.

Too bad Mythbusters isn't on Hulu. Neither is Dirty Jobs. Sure, they're technically there. But just excerpts and clips. So how do I watch these two shows? Bittorrent.

Too bad Mythbusters isn't on Hulu. Neither is Dirty Jobs. Sure, they're technically there. But just excerpts and clips. So how do I watch these two shows? Bittorrent.

Just download the Hulu Desktop app

Dude, you just changed my life.