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NerdTV Coming in September
Random BedHead Ed writes "After years of development, Robert X. Cringely's NerdTV is finally on its way, and will be released September 6th. The program will feature interviews with prominent nerds, such as Bill Joy and Macintosh programmer Andy Hertzfeld. But far from being a normal television show, it will be downloadable. As Cringely explained last week in his column, BitTorrent and the expansion of broadband made this the right time for such a move. The show will be available at pbs.org/nerdtv/, where there is currently an information page.
Larry Lessig points out that the show will be distributed under a Creative Commons license - the specific license is not specified, but Cringely and PBS say that noncommercial use and redistribution will be allowed."
How many Robert Cringley's are there who write tech columns and host PBS computer shows? Or does the man in question secretly want to be referred to as RXC?
This is way cool.
Really nice for us geographically challanged non-americans to get it without the usual half-a-year waiting period too.
Reminds me of the earlier internet. Thousands of sights on, aghast!, computer programming. Zero on fashion, or gardening.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
It's going to be awesome. Bob is always fun to watch and read. And he's pro splicing. So it's going to be okay to have some fun cutting up his interviews and doing interesting things to them.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
So between slashdot stories I can get my "hit" from TV?
Unless they have a mostly white back ground with a funky green menus and fonts. Otherwise I think I will stick with my Slashdot.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
The Creative Commons license is often heralded among certain music circles, because it affords an artist the ability to remix and mash licensed songs as they see fit for non-commercial purposes. ..personally, I can't wait to make my own 'remixed' versions of Cringely's show for my own nefarious purposes.
--- What
I have to sit at work listening to my fellow programmers, now I can finally go home and listen to more programmers. Thank you PBS!
Just the fact that someone is giving their show away over the internet for free earns enough respect for me to actually give this a look. I haven't ever heard of the host, but if he's smart enough to know about Creative Commons liscenses he's better than 90% of the computer show people out there.
Software is like sex. It's better when it's free. -Linus Torvalds
Are they going to be licensing Naked News? If they are going to properly service Nerds the needs the right news service.
When did it become ok to start calling people nerds ? Seriously, is it ok to call a hip-hop dance show "N*ggers that dance" ? Before you say "Well that's different because that's a racial epiteth then how about a home remodeling show "Fags have fun with your living room" ?
I mean, since nerd IS still a word that is used in a negative way it should not be bandied around like this. I don't care if you're not offended by it. Some people are.
And before you say "Well you are posting this on a site labled 'news for nerds'" I say yes, I know that Einsten. And it bothers me, but I think if anything. This is the place that a discussion like this needs to happen.
In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Vin Diesel could use to kill you, including the room itself.
Will it include commercials? If it does, and advertisers are still willing to pay even if the show is not being distrubuted via standard means (i.e. television), then we may be witnessing the beginning of a new era of advertising. Kind of like what Google did with Adwords.
It will gradually build its own cast of ecclectic personalities, building a loyal fanbase. Eventually it will reach a critical point at which it starts to slide more into the mainstream. This of course will be its doom as actual nerds are replaced by increasingly bland and mediocre television personalities. Then end will come when that scion of drek, G4, buys NerdTV out.
No, i'm not feeling hostile. Why do you ask?
If more programs start jumping on the p2p bandwagon, then it's going to start getting harder and harder to pass laws against it under the argument that it is only used for illegally trading files.
The success of this show may directly effect the future of p2p, and the internet as we know it; because if it does make it, others will likely follow suit.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
It would be great if they used bittorrent to distribute the programming. The more valid legal reasons for bittorrent to exist the better.
....is doing at http://twit.tv
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
I like the whole redistrubatable deely.. Maybe we could have an apt or portage repository.. Then one could daily do an apt-get install tvshow or emerge tvshow? Now that would be super Cow Powers!
Are you kidding? real nerds make a point of receiving NerdTV in Morse code, manually, then entering the received number in a file with ed, then un-pgp the file with a secret 2048-bit key found on an IRC channel to which you can only be invited if you request it with a phrase found in a file distributed on BitTorrent, then uudecode it, then view it with an ascii-art FLI viewer.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I want my...
I want my...
I want my Nerd TV.
Technoli
now we get NerdTV. (You know you need the 'bleeding edge' and early adopters before you get to the generally accessible fun stuff, but since they're not time-locked, it doesn't matter when you 'discover' a series.)
Wait until producers realize that they can use broadband and a content aggregator or Google to skip the entire 'kowtow and then bend-over facing the other way' process that they go through with the current lot of content disseminators.
No more canceled shows until there's no audience for them, not the current trade-off of "we can squeeze more profits with pushing ads on schlock than we can with your high concept stuff, so piss off."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available - exclusively over the Internet - broadcast television's first entirely downloadable series"
So it won't actually be airing on PBS, just on the internet?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"We're pleased to be offering this new video-download news format free to Slashdot customers." said CmdrTaco, who would not indicate whether he was hard or soft-shell, "It is another example of how Slashdot is on the fringe of digital news."
When asked why viewers should get their video news from Slashdot rather than going straight to PBS and downloading the whole news program, CmdrTaco replied "Well, we know our Slashdot readers are busy. Some of them can only check the site 10-12 times a day, and as everyone knows they don't have time to read the articles. So what we've done is cut out everything but 10 seconds of the interview, the best inflammatory bits we can find, and then added an audio-only cynical or sarcastic comment at the end, with an occasional 'Linux is getting better every day' comment for good measure. We tried video footage using a web cam for the comment, but it was, well, kinda creepy."
CmdrTaco also said Slashdot is working on another new feature called Slashdot ReMix, where existing news items are posted by different Slashdot editor and given a slightly different spin, to see how different angles of the story are received. Perceptive Slashdotters, he noted, have noticed this system in beta testing over the past few years, with more heavy testing in the last 1-2 years. He believes the system is now nearing perfection.
For some reason I don't think that there will be any kittens sacrificed because of this program.
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Excellent! Now the nattering naybobs of negativism here at work, who currently have conniptions whenever I try to use something from TV in the classroom, can't complain. Well, they can still complain, I just won't have to comply.
Cool now if this catches on (and it will) we might be able to get some real Tech shows. I would love to see Laporte and the gang do a video podcast so I can try and erase the any thoughts of "attack of the show" out of my mind. Ewwwwww!!!!!!!!! Bad TV man.... Bad TV
They should add Leo Laporte to the line up. He was one of the few good things on TechTV.
I have no
Now, channles often have nothing to do with what they are named. MTV might as well be reality TV... 4 episodes of Real World followed by 4 episodes of Road Rules, followed by 8 episodes of Real World versus Road Rules. Ugh. Then, for the 200th time a repeat of "When the 80's ruled".
But here is what gets me pissed off. Did everyone hear MTV is now using the money we paid (through watching the advertising) to start a new tv network for gays and weirdo's.
Same thing with a Nerd network. Do we really need it? How about haveing The Learning Channel and Discovery channel having real science programming? Has either station ever played The Mechanical Universe? I know it is PBS programming, but they show it at 2am once a week on a friday. Or what about either of those two stations following NASA? Or having a weekly tech show. Instead, TLC is airing Trading Spaces, a show where two neighbors redecorate their houses, and then suprise each other (How do you like it, I knew you would love your living room painted lime green).
Names are meaningless today. Just like when government passes the Patriot Act. They just pick a popular name for marketing purposes, it really does not tell you much about what it is. They should have called it the Terrorism Prevention Act, it would come a little closer to the truth, or better yet Lets Take Away All Civil Liberties Act.
I don't need 100 channels. I need 10 good ones. Give me a true science and tech channel. Give me one true news station, and not an editorial station. I already have ESPN, they are pretty good with sports. I think you could combine FoodTV and Home and Garden to have one channel, on Living (Do we really need 6 episodes of $40 dollars a day, highly offensive to me, as I watch this woman suffer to feed herself on only $40 each day, while I live off $4 a day).
Toss in a movie station for a 5th station.
And while we are at it, some RULES for all TV stations to follow. #1, get rid of the laugh track. It is not funny when a character comes on stage. I don't need a pre-recorded laughing sound to know when to laugh or what is funny. Are people that stupid that most laugh because they hear laughing? Once you hear the laugh track, and you become aware of it, it will ruin all your shows. It will become very annoying.
Rule #2, No more advertising while a TV show is airing. I don't mean commercials. I mean the boxes that pop up and take 1/9th of the screen with an advertising for what is on TV next. Or what movie is playing this weekend. Or even the ones that identify what station you are watching. I know what station I am watching.
Rule #3, Don't cut off the end credits to a show. Some of us want to know who an actor on a show was. Some of us hate the screen splitting, with an advertising on the opposite side. Some of us want to take the last minute to enjoy what we just saw, as we watch the credits.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I'd just be happy if I could get a copy of James Burke's Connections. Man, that was a good series.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Google already knows the future of "television" is shared hosting (via bittorrents, etc) of user-submitted content, and I'm sure Robert Cringley knows this well too.
Nothing stopping these producers from advertising, and it might even be cheaper to maintain an online presence than to broadcast the show the regular way.
I'd like to candidly plug my own small contribution to internet video here:
BeGeistert 14 Interview with yellowTAB
user@host$ diff
Check out http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm There is a program called Go Open.
Their claim to fame was that it is the worlds first ever TV Program dedicated to "All things Open Source."
It includes interviews with major open-source figures such as Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Jon 'maddog' Hall, and Bruce Perens, as well as case studies and discussions of Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Linux.
"If only smart people like your shit, it ain't that smart."