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Absolutely wrong. It's unfortunate that people who make things up get modded up on Slashdot.

Liberty Media is a TV company. It has nothing to do with the Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times. The Tribune Company was taken private in a buyout led by Sam Zell, a real estate entrepreneur.

The Times has not "fired most of the staff." It has cut about 20 percent of its news staff. That's less than its circulation decline from 983,727 in 2004 to 773,884 in the most recent reports. It still has plenty of good people on its payroll.

The new publisher is Eddy Hartenstein, who is not from the newspaper business. He's the former CEO of DirecTV.

If getting immediate total cooperation from everybody in a decentralized system at once was easy, we'd save a lot more than $5/month for our cable listings. Tribune Media Systems and Gemstar, who are the only two companies to compile the listings have a financial incentives to continue charging for the service. Their services fulfill the needs of a very large percentage of the customers of the cable channels. The channels won't take an action that costs them money & reaps little return. Even if there would be a greater return, not every station would make the switch & some would get it wrong.

They say that they buy their data from Tribune Media Services. Where does TMS get the data from?

There's lots of room for competition here. Others can buy from TMS. Or from where TMS gets the data. Or from TMS competition (who is that?).

Or use a P2P system like the old CDDB. If tens of thousands of people enter data for the next few days TV listings, then each person will have to enter only a few listings at random on average each day or so.

"What's on TV?" are facts about the real world, like the days the circus will be in town. They should be as copyrightable as any facts. Copying a complete, value-added compilation of them in bulk to another medium by one person could conceivably be prohibited. But one person posting a couple-few facts is too prohibitive. Especially when the listings are advertisements for the shows.

And there's the question of how to catch each person entering the data. Even if source listings include defects, fake data that can be copyrighted more strongly than can reports of fact, the sheer numbers of P2P can provide redundancy to eliminate those defects in automated data quality assurance techniques.

And what's to stop people from just pointing their own MythTV at free schedule data like IMDbTV? Why should the TV schedule publishers be unhappy that we've got automated ways to consume the exact same content in their index, but probably even more because it's easier to navigate and control our TV?

SnapStream is a TMS commercial partner, so BeyondTV users aren't affected by the labs.zap2it.com smackdown.

Old link, but establishes the relationship:

http://www.tms.tribune.com/newsreleases/050524_ent ertainment.html

"Zap2it must have a source for the information. Where do they get the feed? Does anyone know?"

They have a staff that collects and compiles the data, and maintains the relationships to get it, because they sell the data feed to newspapers and other services. "Zap2It" is just one of the consumer facing facets of a massive media conglomerate that recently reported $1.2 billion in operating revenues during the first quarter of 2007.

- Greg

This was an invaluable service - makes me wonder who's putting the pressure on them :(

Typically, one would suspect a competitor.

They are commercial!!

Zap2It is "Tribune Media Services, Inc", they provide "bulk" guide data to large TV services, such as Telco's(IPTV) and Satellite providers.
http://www.tms.tribune.com/products.html

While no longer linked from the front page, this link still works.

Basically, the content was provided free provided it remained for non-commercial use. After all, commercial ventures have to pay for those listings and if they could get it for free, nobody would pay.

I hope they at least tried to weed out the abusers before just cutting the cable.

I've got a Series 1 TiVo and I'm really starting to itch for some dual tuner action (without dropping $16/month in subscriber dues). My only concern with Myth is the guide data. Where do you get the guide data for Myth and is it accurate and up to date?

The same place TiVo gets its guide data. Tribune Media Services (which is what TiVo uses) runs Zap2it Labs, a free service for open-source and free-as-in-beer PVR projects that provides about two weeks' worth of listings. I've been using MythTV for maybe a year and a half now without any problems.

Interesting pic of this beastie on the Chicago Tribune's website here.

Free registration may be required....

1. Which is the only country on the planet that's used a nuclear weapon on civilians?

United States of America. Not the only country that has used Weapons of Mass Destruction against civilians though.

3. Who's killed more innocent civilians? Al Quaeda in the United States, or the United States military in Afghanistan?

I don't think anyone really knows the answer to this question. One of the problems is that many of the "documented" civilian deaths in the early days of the bombing capaign were propaganda by the Taliban, and no independant sources have verified their claims. I don't believe that you can trust either side for accurate numbers on this issue.

5. Who recently said that getting Bin Laden, the architect of the Sept 11th attacks, was no longer a primary military objective in Afghanistan?

Maybe he's no longer in Afghanistan. That would mean that he could no longer be a primary military objective there, right?

7. List the number of Americans being held in captivity by enemy forces even though they've had nothing to do with American foreign policy. Now, list the number of people of Arabic descent being held by American forces even though they've had nothing to do with the Sept 11th terrorist attacks.

The State Department figures that around 2,500 Americans are arrested every year in Foreign nations. I haven't found a single documented case of someone of Arabic descent being held without them also being charged with a legitimate crime (usually immigration violations). I disagree with bringing in Arabs for questioning, which has been done without evidence linking them to crimes.

8. Any feasible pipeline built from the oil fields just off the Caspian Sea is going to need to go through Afghanistan. True or False?

False. It could also go through Iran.

9. Define the word "Terrorism" in absolute terms. Now, in 50 words or less, state whether or not the School of the Americas trains terrorists and why.

I don't believe that the School of the Americas trains soldiers to be terrorists. I believe that a few of it's graduates have committed terrorists acts, and probably would have with or without the training they received at SOA.

10. Afghanistan's Taliban regime was notorious in its poor treatment of women. Now, list all the countries that have a similar record of such treatment, but are still allies of the United States.

We didn't go in there with the intention to liberate women. Even though, I agree with you, I don't think that we should ally ourselves with foreign powers that don't provide their citizens with the same freedoms and protections that we provide ours with.

Maybe it's because they are the only news organization on the fucking planet that isn't owned by AOL/Time Warner, Fox, Belo or Clear Channel?
...
I am a liberal. This means I read books and have opposable thumbs.

Oh wait, they are (relatively) conservative papers, so you can't possibly trust their reporting.

IfI want a leftist viewpoint, I read Salon. When I want to see what the extreme right wing is saying, I read WorldNetDaily. Slashdot tends to lean about as far to the left as Salon, but doesn't have as much porn, which I suspect is the real reason many people subscribe.

No, honestly, I just read it for the articles!

WRAL in Raleigh, NC has been broadcasting in HDTV for over a year now. Here's what's playing

Due to a dearth of HD programming material, most of what's shown during the day is scenic landscapes. Which, IMO, is at least two orders-of-magnatude better than the usual opinionated airheads, soap operas, and crappy infomercials.

For those of you thinking about buying the AccessDTV card, you can also subscribe to receive datacasting services (Audio, Video, and Internet) over the spare HD bandwidth:

Chip H.

In Tampa there were a apparently a number of reports that the polls were closed with people still in line.
See Here and Here It looks like a lot of people either didn't know where they were supposed to go or were getting sent around in circles until they were too late because the cops didn't have anything better to do.

The show's production company has a local listings page. Good for U.S. channels only.

There was one war where messages were encrypted by translating into an indian language (I think Cherokee, not certain), and it was the only code not broken in that war. (Vietnam? Again, not certain).

Hey all! We want to vote again here in Illinois!

We had over 120,000 ballots in Cook County declared invalid because of double voting or no holes punched.

Not to mention the thousands of voters in DuPage County who were not allowed to vote because their registrations were lost by the DMV's Motor-Voter program.

Come home, Bill Daley! Your state needs you!


Viv
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I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.

Hey all! We want to vote again here in Illinois!

We had over 120,000 ballots in Cook County declared invalid because of double voting or no holes punched.

Not to mention the thousands of voters in DuPage County who were not allowed to vote because their registrations were lost by the DMV's Motor-Voter program.

Come home, Bill Daley! Your state needs you!


Viv
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I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.

http://cnews .tr ibune.com/news/image/0,1119,oso-nation-82373,00.ht ml

"Don't blame me! I voted for Kodos!"

Based on the article I read, I was under the impression that this was a questionnaire submitted to students who were considered potentially dangerous (for whatever reason), the results of which would then be evaluated by a computer based on a set of statistics (gathered from case histories of convicted offenders and whatnot). The controversy is: will poor conclusions be drawn by school staff based on these results?

Drop a load on my head if I completely misinterpreted the article.

Here it is: jcoates@tribune.com

Alex Bischoff
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