Slashdot Mirror
Women Control the DVR
JeiFuRi writes "While men normally hog the remote, a new study commissioned by Lifetime suggests that women are more likely to be in charge of their DVRs . Results from a survey of 1000 married woman say that 48 percent made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own and 55 percent claimed they understood the system more than their husband. Three-quarters of the women surveyed said that the reason they fell in love with DVR is that they are extremely intuitive and much easier than a VCR." The study also found some interesting things about DVR users' ad-watching habits.
And a study commissioned by ESPN found that men control the dvr.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Women also say they are the smarter sex. Since when does it matter that they "say" they know the DVR better. Everyone knows guys are television experts.
While 99 percent of women say they use their DVRs to zap through commercial spots, 76 percent reported that they stopped for ads that are entertaining or relevant to their own interests. Women are also more likely to pause for TV and movie promos.
"DVRs give them a mechanism to find commercials that are relevant, and that's a big message," Brooks said. "It's not that people don't want commercials, it's irrelevant interruptions that turn them off."
Ok, that is a big hint to the tv industry. Women do not want irrelevant commercials, but are willing to watch and advertisement that they are interested in. Unfortunately for the tv industry, I don't think men want commercials at all...
Also FTA:
The study, which was commissioned by Lifetime,
Lifetime, the network for women, is saying, "ADVERTISE HERE! WOMEN WATCH COMMERCIALS!"
See, there's a slant to everything.
Keith
This doesn't surprise me at all.
My wife and I have had cable for the last 6 years. I noticed and interesting difference in viewing patterns between us. I found that I tend to watch channels but she watches programs. I'll turn on the TV and watch news, documentary or sports channels and I'm not too fussy, I'll surf between the 4 documentary channels until I find something interesting and watch it. Her viewing decisions are made from looking at the program guide, the clock, recommendations from her friends and womens magazines and then decide what and when to watch. She will actually plan to watch a particular program (amazing I know). I don't think I've done that in years. A PVR would only improve her viewing convenience but it would make no difference all to mine.
It doesn't seem surprising to me that women would then control the PVR.
I could of told you this without any 'fancy' study..
:(
Yeah.. my Tivo is filled with my wife's crap...
She has to rewind every single time she misses the most miniscule piece of irrelevent dialog. Can't we just watch the show thru one time first?
Wake up.
Men are probably smart enough to say they don't know everything about a DVR.
Try and ask a women how to extract the video data off of the hard drive.
wow this was especially sexist. the disturbing part is that it was modded interesting.
"While 99 percent of women say they use their DVRs to zap through commercial spots,"
... or maybe they will, and they'll finally invent the Blipvert! I'd tolerate blipverts if it meant that less time per show was spent on ads. Currently it's about 15-19 minutes per hour.
Goes to show you how many people actually watch ads. I bet the percentage for men is the same. Slobbering ad executives still won't get it.
"A full 94 percent of those who said they fast forwarded commercials said they could still recognize brands and products as they zapped through the spots."
It's that whole "electrically charged exploding dude" side-effect that kinda worries me..
forgive me, some will think this is "sexist" but deep down you all know its true:
Men hunt, women gather.
Give women the opportunity to browse and pick the best [whatever] and they'll do it better than any man. A DVR does this. You can schedule things in advance, wait for them to come in, and pick the fruit when its ripened.
channel surfing without a DVR is similar to hunting. you browse, you pick a target, and you strike at it by putting the remote down. decision made, decision executed, finality. man stuff.
mod me down if you disagree, but before you do, give it some thought. its not as wrong as society would like you to believe.
Due to a strange mis-wiring in thier brains, women are only able to watch one television show at a time.
A shocking handicap, I know, but true.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
To be fair, a large number of men will also claim they are experts when they aren't.
:)
But, it is true that the entire "women can do anything" push over the last couple of decades has, on occasion, led to some individuals having more confidence in themselves then is warranted.
I'd hazard a guess that there are probably just as many men as women who are likely to do this though - it may just be more noticeable since women have just recently reached the same level as guys in ego and self-confidence, irrespective of ability
Last time I checked, Lifetime also conducts studies in order to improve the veracity of their television shows. According to their studies, 90% of married women are beaten by their husbands and 10% of those women kill/brutally maim their husbands and/or steal the children and run away.
Hmmmm.
Why does Lifetime care anyways? All their shows are the same so nobody really bothers recording them.
Because they didnt check the hidden system folder with all the videos the husband has.
"Honey why does our recording thingy say it is out of space" "Oh you know those hard drives arent built like they used to be, must be uh, bad sectors , Ill move all of my I mean ill move in another hard drive."
There is truth in humor.
Namely, the other half of the numbers. 48% of women asserted x. 55% of women responded y. Okay, interesting, but what does this have to do with sex differences? The study included men and women in roughly equal proportions, but no comparison is made to the men.
If someone could dig up the whole story, your efforts would be appreciated.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. -Bernard Berenson
Yeah, between the PBS sewing shows, hospital dramas, and all 42 variants of CSI... I'd say my wife pretty much controls our Tivo.
Then this spring I bought a second one for the spare room, but now my daughter has managed to fill that one with her stuff! I can't win...
#DeleteChrome
I bought my parents a TiVo with built-in DVD burner last Christmas (it's their favorite present ever, btw). My Mom is fairly technophobic, but picked up on how to program the thing right away. I wouldn't say she controls it necessarily, but let's just say I'm guessing she's pretty adament about certain show's being high up on the ole priority list.
Remember that old matra that was oft-spoke years ago: "someday the technology will be so advanced, it will be easy to use, and people will view their computers just like any other appliance"?
Guess what? It's here, and it's called TiVo! For the relative complexity of what it does, I'd have to say that TiVo has one of the most brilliantly-designed user interfaces I've ever seen.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Women especially with technology if they use it enough to get by will claim they're experts
Whoa, reel in the sexism there spanky. I work in a office that has some of the smartest women I've ever met. Level 3 hardcore technowizbang smart women.
Maybe you should work for a company that doesn't look for pants when they're hiring smart people. And dresses for receptionists?
any clueful woman will say "stay away from those DRM crippled dvr devices and use mythtv."
no person likes to pay for the priveledge of being screwed over.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Lifetime
Propoganda for Women.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
...I used my last mod point not more than 2 minutes ago and the Flamebait-potential of this story is astronomical. ;)
I'll have my fun yet!
This sig rocks the casbah.
Damn, two weeks spent trying to set up MythTV and all I had to do was ask my mom.
Men can't think straight when they have hard-ons. Women were naturally selected to bear offspring and nurse them.
-- Not a
My wife has like 4 or 5 directivos, 3 dish500s, a motorola DCT-5200 digital cable pvrs, and a few standalone tivos hooked up to 4dtv satellite recievers. Not to mention the DVB-S card in our home server. She even wrote special software, so they would all coordinate with each other, and not try to record something another DVR was already recording. With a terabyte fibre channel backend. It's kinda scary. She's even thinking of doing an episode guide database ala imdb, just so she can have better descriptions in the slice info.
Oh wait, that's me. She can't turn the tv off with the universal remote.
Suppose a man and a woman have the exact same knowledge of a DVR. Ask the woman if she "understands" it, and she'll take it to mean if she can use it the way it's intended to be used.
The man is more likely (IMHO) to interpret "understand" as knowing how the machine works: filesystems, video codecs, operating systems, I/O, etc etc. People are less likely to know that.
arent they both the same thing though? I mean... they both record video for me
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
It was a steep learning curve, but within a few weeks I was recording shows like a big dog. Eventually, my recording tapered off to a low level after the novelty wore off.
However, once she realized the power of the PVR, my wife really got into the thing. Within a couple of months, she became a wizard at navigating and scheduling programs. Now she schedules at least 80% of the shows.
Meanwhile, I'm getting a taste of life as a sysadmin. Now if that box ever goes down, the disk runs out of space, or the MythTV backend gets hosed, it's got to be fixed ASAP. Sure she could revert to the old VCR, but all of a sudden, using it has become archaic and inconvenient.
I used to boast about how many hours of video we'd be able to crunch to MPEG4 and store on DVDs; now I'm stuck proving that statement by saving out every hour of figure skating competition that happens anywhere on the planet.
Oh well, at least I'm appreciated as the provider of this cornucopia of video clips.
The study also found some interesting things about DVR users' ad-watching habits.
From TFA:
While 99 percent of women say they use their DVRs to zap through commercial spots, 76 percent reported that they stopped for ads that are entertaining or relevant to their own interests. Women are also more likely to pause for TV and movie promos.
This is in some way surprising? 99% of respondents saying they don't want to watch ads on TV they're paying for? That 76% of them say they watch commercials they find amusing? That people are more likely to watch commercials that flog products they would actually use?
I don't get how this is in any way unexpected....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
And I have my wife's permission to say so!
Interesting finding, the question is how high is it in terms of external validity...can we generalize it to the entire population that owns DVRs? In the beginning my wife thought that having a DVR ( I was one of the first customers to get one from TWCNYC) was just another manifestation of my nerdiness, however in less than a week my wife felt in love with the DVR ...as of this writing she still says that it baffles her or how we were able to live with it :-)
Yeah girls may be using DVR's but thats because the guys have figured out BitTorrent. We are really one step ahead!
There has been a lot of concern about DVRs destroying the advertising model TV is based on. I don't think that will happen. I did take the time to reprogram my comcast dvr remote to add the 30 second skip feature (http://dcortesi.com/2005/05/04/motorola-dct6412-c omcast-dvr-30-second-skip/) but I watch a LOT more TV now then I did before I got a DVR, and while I regularly skip the commercials, I don't every time and I'm pretty sure the extended amount of time I spend in front of the TV more than makes up for the number of commercials that I do skip.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Most idiots don't have a clue but claim they do. That's why so many people get hurt or ruin things doing DIY. Where as the true experts who do know what they are doing get so sick of the idiots they end up not caring for what they know about.
So sure Mrs. Smith might claim she knows how something works, but I claim to know how a clock works yet have no clue beyond "cogs and stuff" (to put it as simple as possible).
To claim knowledge does not mean you have it. It means you claimed it.
I like muppets.
...news at 11.
Now, what features do their husbands have that these women DON'T understand how to interface with?
John
My first instinct is to say, well naturally, we control everything... But I don't control a DVR, I don't even have one. I much prefer my capture card.
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." Albert Einstein
From TFA: In a national survey of 1,000 DVR users divided equally by sex, 48 percent of married women say the decision to purchase a DVR was their own, while 55 percent of the wives claim they understood how to interface with their unit's myriad features better than their husbands."
My guess at what the men said: "48 percent of married men say the decision to purchase a DVR was their own, while 55 percent of the husbands claim they understood how to interface with their unit's myriad features better than their wives."
Why don't the numbers add up to 100%? Because the husbands and wives don't always agree on what exactly happened in any given situation.
but I'm still the only one with root passwd on my mythbox.
What does Nickelodeon think???
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
so is it me... or do these statistics seem normal? i mean, the results are 50% men and %50 women, when taking the margin of error into consideration.
Oh please, this was not EXTREMELY sexist. This was a generalization based on sex. Sexist requires a discriminatory nature, or some sort of hate, essentially some sort of negative feeling toward the other sex. I do not have that, nor is that inherent in my comment. I was more stating a general observation. If I honestly have to think of all the people I know, I can only think of one woman I have met offline who I would genuinely say was technosavy. She had an iMac and used Photoshop, Quark, and wanted an iPod more because it could be a portable HD. Kinda hott actually. That said I have met some women who know how to use what they know, but who I wouldn't call technosavy. Then again perhaps my standards are high. But frankly you will find guys are almost always more willing to fiddle with a program to figure out how it can do what they went, than your average woman will. This doesn't mean that there are no women who know stuff, I'm just saying there are disproportional numbers when comparing genders.
While this was a legit news article, posting it on Slashdot seems to bring out the worst in the misogynist pigs. Really, what worth does it have on Slashdot? There are plenty of technically literate women, and those of us who have made careers out of IT, a male dominated field, take offense to comments like "Women only use DVRs because they're not smart enough to use BitTorrent like their husbands."
> "55 percent claimed they understood the system > more than their husband." I understand my current DVR (DirecTivo) at least as well as I understand my husband, but the previous system I maintained (MythTV) turned out to be almost as bewildering to me as women are to some Slashdotters. Ellen
LOL. Ask you average man how to extract the video data off the hard drive...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I think a lot of people are confusing the intent of the article when it speaks of woment "understanding" the technology. Whenever you speak of a particular product, keep in mind there are nearly an infinite layers of "understanding" one might have.
To a user, "understanding" means knowing how to fully unitilize a product's features. This is not a completely illegitimate point of view. Software engineers think that they understand the DVR because they know how the code works. I'm guessing that hardware engineers could make a pretty good case that, compared to them, the software engineers don't really "understand" the machines either. It's also a pretty good bet that marketing and advertising executives think that they "understand" the DVR, since they know how it's positioned in the marketplace, etc, etc.
You get the point... Understanding is in the mind of the beholder.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
55% means women control it? Who failed math?
Interesting that it's only sexism when something is said about women. But when women start talking about how much smarter they are than men ... that's headline news.
...that said that a good percentage of studies conducted in the last few years are all lies. There are three kinds of lies dear boys and girls:
1. Lies
2. Damn lies
3. Statistics
Your post says 1000 MARRIED women while the study says 1000 DVR users divided equally by sex.
This is a key point here:
a. You're surveying both men and women (which might seem obvious, but not from your post) - which is important because you're trying to claim to compare men and women habits - right? You can't do that if you only survey women.
b. You're surveying a specific slice of people: those who bought DVRs - this already profiles the people you're surverying: certain income range, certain education, affiliation with technology, and so on...
What's my point? Your post suggests that you can deduce on women vs men in general (see 'hunter-gatherer' post above...) - which is wrong: the target slice in society your "studying" is a specific group with very specific characteristics, and I don't think you can project from it on the whole group. The conclusions the survey makes can only be safely applied to DVR owners.
What your post suggests is quite different than the origianl article.
Dan
While men are at work, their wives are likely at home recording their husbands favorite shows for them. And everyone said that technology would make a woman's work easier, imagine that.
Yea, cant afford cable right now. But watching network TV sucks except for Fox just for their primetime shows. But yea, I watch programs and channels basically the same amount. When I did have cable, my remote has a surf button that is basically like preset's on a radio. I had the presets set to : The History channel, The Discovery Channel, G4TechTV, Comedy Central, TLC, SpikeTV, and ESPN. And I would just watch stuff in between those channels, and if nothing good was on ( or their were reruns, which happens in the daytime with cable ) I would flip to the movie networks. Now that I cant afford cable right now due to the lack of a job, I have to sit back and watch network TV, for which the most part sucks.
DVRs are typically boxes that are provided by the cable or satellite company. The company provides the DVR with a list of shows (program guide), and keeps the clock synchronized. So, you browse through the program guide, using the arrow keys on your remote to point to the show you wish to record, and you press the record button. The DVR is now programmed. It picks up the information about the time the show starts, the time it ends, and the channel the show is on from the data fed to it from the broadcaster. You don't need to worry about any of that. It's basically point and click.
With a VCR, you have to look up the show in a program guide, and make note of the start time, end time, and channel. Next, you have to program the start and end times into the VCR (or is it the start time and duration?). You also have to program the channel. Oh, and you also have to make sure that the time on the VCR is correct.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I hear you brother. There is no doubt about it, the VCR was mine, now my wife is hassling me to get a DVR, and she will own it. Maybe it would still be the case with VCR's if there were no DVR technology - maybe it just took women 12 years to figure out how to use it. If I had time to think about it I am sure I could figure out the answer, but right now I have to get back to washing the clothes and doing the dishes.
"Three-quarters of the women surveyed said that the reason they fell in love with DVR is that they are extremely intuitive and much easier than a VCR.""
Think about it. Women (And many Americans, male and female), back in the day of the VCR, couldn't figure out how to set the clock. (P.S. I wonder if this is why most DVD's players don't have a clock. Sure you don't need a clock on a DVD player
If given a TV properly hooked up to a VCR, and the remote for the VCR, and nothing else, you should be able to SET THE CLOCK within five minutes. If you can't, you should be shot.
And we are giving these people MORE technology? I think there is a strong argument that people don't deserve to get the new tech toys if you can't understand simple things like setting the clock on the vcr.
I remember back in the day when I used to watch a lot of the Annenburg-CPB Channel (Sue me. I can't get enough of The Mechanical Universe and its simple HS level calculus applied to physics AND Mireille in "French in Action."),
They used to advertise a show and the clip they showed was interesting and I always got a kick out of it:
A bunch of college grads (All disciplines), at graduation, were handed a simple light bulb, ONE wire, and a battery, and asked to light up the bulb (basically create a very basic circuit).
All but one showed couldn't do it. They even said it was impossible. After we saw one guy figure it out, they'd cut to a professor asking (paraphrasing),
"If college educated graduates don't even understand the basics of electricity, what does that say about a society that tremendously relies on electricity?"
I am even suggesting that most people should be allowed near a computer, until they get a good understanding of it (hardware and software). That, however, would have the impact of putting Best Buy's rip off techies, "The Geek Squad," out of business.
I have the PVR I built myself, women can claim to be experts on the simpler DVR, I think they were designed to be female proof. If by expert they mean turn on/off and adjust the volume level and fast forward through the commercials.
Guys can care less about the commercials, we don't need tv advertisements to tell us which products we need/want. When's the last time you saw a commercial for AMD or Maxtor or Acer notebooks? Never? It's Intel and their blue people and gateway with their running delivery staff and Dell with their $400 plain black towers and cheap 60Hz flat pannels(monitor not included).
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
When hunting you have some target.
I get up before dawn, put on Woodland pajamas, douse the living room in consumer urine, power on the telly and sit for hours, silent and motionless behind the couch, waiting to spot that elusive creature: the ten-point news program.
My weapon of choice? A Sony Universal with rechargeable AA Ni-MH rounds at 1.5V.
And an eight-inch call that goes "market share! market share!"
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Interesting that it's only sexism when something is said about women. But when women start talking about how much smarter they are than men ... that's headline news.
No... that's FOX news.
My wife digs certain soap opera's and follows them religiously. Since they are on during her working hours, time-warping is the only way to see them. They are like a drug.
Table-ized A.I.
I could not believe my ears when I was at Fry's one day and my wife asked me about TiVo and why we didn't have one.
So I asked her to repeat herself and she did. She then wondered if I had ever heard of one and I replied that I certainly did know what one was - but with the lifetime service and the cost of the unit, it would be nearly $500 when we were done with it.
She seemed disappointed. I was again in shock. Why the hell was she interested in a piece of "geek gear"? The answer was: Oprah talked about it one day and said how neat it was.
I then replied "Did Oprah talk about how cool those new 2.5GHz Powermacs are? The ones with the new huge cinema displays?
All that got me was a dirty look. Still, by the end of the month we had a new TiVo. And TiVo - it's TV HER way.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Here we have a Slashdot article about women, and nowhere in here does it mention how I can get a date? What the hell is this??
Well after reading the article, I'd say that this does nothing to prove or disprove anything.
Taking a statictic on a person's opinion is not scientific in the least, heck it might not even be proper measurement.
I'm suprised that only 55% of women believed that they knew more about thier DVR than thier husbands. That number seems a bit low to me, after all, this isn't a compentency test, it's a test about belief. I'd wager that 100% of all women believe that they can navigate to and from the grocery store quicker than their husbands, even though they both live in the same house, know where the nearest grocery store is located, and probably would take the exact same route.
It doesn't even matter what the men thought, because it's still playing around with perception testing, which is interesting if you want to gather information about a perception. However, perceptive information isn't consistent amonst members within a population (even a very homogenous population) so I doubt this information will have any pratical application other than sensationalisim.
In general use, of course, the two terms are used interchangeably with most people calling all such devices DVRs.
Even a blinking twelve is correct twice a day...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Maybe you should work for a company
I think he needs to graduate high school first.
And go back and learn grammar, so that he doesn't look like a complete idiot.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Results from a survey of 1000 married woman say that 48 percent made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own and 55 percent claimed they understood the system more than their husband
In a survey of 5,000 men, approximately 0% admitted to not understanding how a DVR system works, even those who had never heard of it before.
Similarly, 100% of men made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own. 98% then asked their wives' permission to spend the money and/or have that ugly thing be on the entertainment center.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
i would like to see a study on what percentage of scheduled vcr recordings are done by women. my mom would used to always record tv dramas and soap operas on tape so that she can watch them later. for me, i just watched whatever's available on tv at the moment and hardly ever use the vcr to record and watch later.
HD Trailers
nowhere in here does it mention how I can get a date?
Whoa there, cowboy. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. First you'll need a shower, then we can work on that habit of saying "nyrrrrrr" between phrases. Then another shower just to be on the safe side. Then you get to decide which of Excelsior, Enterprise, and Exeter gets disconnected from the network so we can move it to a closet.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
..and pass her the remote while you're at it.
Living at the edge--of a continent?
Lifetime says most women understand their Tivo system better than their husbands.
I wonder what percentage of these take-charge independent wives feigned absolute helplessness at the prospect of hooking the unit up.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
You're nuts. Men are far more likely to claim to know something that they don't - especially when it's a "manly" thing like technology. Men tend to be more boastful and to try to show off, whereas women are more likely to play dumb. (And before you call me sexist, I am female) But, the truth is, male or female, most people are scared of computers and scared to fiddle with programs. Go outside into that scary natural light, you'll find that it's true :-).
Oh, and yes, that was sexist. And if you walk around with the attitude of women not being tech-savy, yeah, you'll have a tough time meeting one who is because you walk in assuming the worst.
My wife has control of my DVR and all I find on it are episodes of Dr Phil and Oprah!!! Please help me!!!!!!!!!
So... it's ok for you to make an assumption about him, and where he works based on a simple comment, but it's not ok for him to say anything based on his experiences?
How is that world you're living in, anyways?
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
...does the lovely Kathleen Taco agree?
This sig rocks the casbah.
In a week and a half, my friend has gone from practically tech-illiterate to Mistress of Sky+, so that she can watch every episode of Most Haunted the box can find in one room while her boyfriend watches sport in the other. He was the one who wanted Sky+ in the first place, but she's the one making the most use of the box!
You must think in Russian.
I have to disagree... What I have expressed is a correlation between gender and personality traits, whereas the parent has assigned a personality trait to a gender. That, I believe, is what defines sexism/racism/*ism: when you assign a trait to a person of that class. There is a difference, but there's also a huge gray area in between. Futhermore, technically, you can't really make a sweeping generalization about a class. If you somehow take an average of the probability of a man/woman claiming to know something that he/she does not, the male average must come out to a number, as must the female average. All I have expressed is that, in my opinion, the male average would be much closer to 1 than the female average. You can disagree with that comparison, but you can't disagree with the fact that men and women must "tend" to be one way or the other.
It may take a woman to ask for directions, but it takes a man to understand them.
paintball
Up next on Lifetime.. "True Stories of Cancer Babies in Danger from Mad, Unfaithful Husbands"
Now that I know this, I would like a lot more commercials about:
- Feminine products that reduce the frequency of menstraul cycles
- Public service announcements regarding the importance of the low oil pressure indicator light
- The How-To's of toilet use: Look at toilet before use. If the seat is up, lower it, without comment.
- Getting what you want by actually saying what you want
- Weight Loss Success with the Microwaveable Frozen Food diet
- Beer: The new Slim Fast
- Top 10 Health Benefits of Breast Implants
- New Cure for Erictile Dysfunction: The Silent Treatment
I mean, since I'm fast forwarding through these things anyway, might as well give relevant information to the people actually watching the commercials.
paintball
Anybody got a documentary on how to get your wife to steal the children and run away?
paintball
What ! ?... I too care about relevant commercials - like how drinking Vud Blight beer will make Jay Leno look like Angelina Jolie. Or how I can overcompensate for the size of my ..uhmm.. nose with a new SUV which I can drive through two blocks to my office.
But yeah, I don't want to watch another AD on bathing soap or toothfloss... They're just not relevant.Not to be sexist or anything, life of a housewife is often one of reaction rather than plans and action. Just when my mother sits down to watch TV, my sister asks for help with her homework or I fall down off a tree or bicycle (this is about 9 years back.. btw). I can understand if she had more say in buying a DVR :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Haha I submitted the article with the title 'Women control the Magic Wand in Most Relationships', i guess the editors didn't like that :P
Make a geek version quick! Make it difficult to understand, use buzzwords .. instead of "record video" it should be "register video on hdd" and instead of "play" it should be "play file now", that should scare them from alienating your DVR !
Act now, write now to your favorite DVR maker!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
While we don't have a DVR, we do have an AVR, or Analog video recorder. Also know as a VCR. My girlfriend uses it all the time to tape shows that she doesn't want to miss. I on the other hand don't worry so much about missing shows, and rarely tape anything. I like some shows and watch a fair amount of TV, but I generally don't care if I miss an episode.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
A study by Lifetime is going to show a bias towards women.
Now I can tell you that my wife probably uses the PVR more than I do but I built it (mythtv) so I think I understand it a little. I just have less time to sit in front of the TV and watch anything.
"Honey, tape the game for me.... then go get me a beer... and then make me dinner." Seems to me like their in control of the DVR. //just kidding, karma killing
Amazingly enough I went ahead and got a DVR so I could record all my Sci-Fi and Comedy Central stuff and what not and I was amazed at how quickly her General Hospital recordings filled up the entire thing! And I have found that deleting any of those said GH recordings has severe consexquences!
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
She may be the operator of the DVR, but I have root on it.
And I have root on her.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
...and in other news, a new study commissioned by Spike TV suggests that men are better than women.
Its easier to see it as an appliance, since it's benn designed for one specific task, just like a microwave or a washing machine.
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
I'm sure the women is only in control of the functions the man has showed them how to use(several times)....
Look honey....it just won't record "Not without my daughter part 6: Afganistan" because the title is too long.....honest....
This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that more women stay home than men, would it? She's better with the DVR because she's with it all day.
55 percent claimed they understood the system more than their husband.
And I'm sure we can take them at their word.
Which is why I choose lithium AAs, clocking in a 1.7V. And last for freakin' ever. No sense taking a chance that the remote goes dead while I'm surfing and the channel gets stuck on Lifetime until I can find a new set.
(BTW - Of the 40 hours on my stock DirecTiVo, currently, I have a 30 minute Alton Brown Good Eats, my 3 year old daughter has 4 hours of Dora the Explorer, plus 2-3 hours of other kids fare, and the remaining space is taken up by my wife's stuff. Before my 120hr died, the mix was even more lopsided, as the kid and I had about the same number of hours as we do now.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They obviously didn't interview anybody with kids! If you have kids, then it's not man or woman who rules the DVR, it's the kids. Sure one of you might do the grunt work on the DVR to set it to record, but you'll be setting it to record Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer. And there's a good chance you won't even be trusted to do that. Once their a couple of years old, they can do it much better than you can. Their superior hand-eye coordination also allows them to fast forward through commercials at maximum speed without ever having to rewind because they went to far.
It would be a wonderful world indeed, if that were true. Unfortunately, you are neglecting the AM/PM indicator, which would be flashing right along with the rest of the time.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
That's a convoluted way to say that confidence interval (thus error) doesn't get significantly smaller with increasing sample size. With most such surveys you are interested only in xy.z% precision.
From the summary:
"48 percent [of women] made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own"Who allowed these women to make decisions for themselves? Next thing we know they'll be allowed to drive. Or vote. Mark my words, this is the start of a terrible slide into a bottomless pit of immorality.
Well, I hope so anyway.
...She Who Must Be Obeyed bought me a Tivo for Christmas this year. She really liked it....soon the only shows on the to do list were hers....I just bought her her own Tivo (so I can possibly get mine back).
Put a Tivo in front of a woman, give her five minutes of operating instructions, and stand back. She'll have the disk full before you know it.
I'm not really a CPA, I just play one on TV
Stay away from those DRM crippled dvr devices and use mythtv.
"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out." -- Montaigne
minutes after I post a rambling entry, the above is the slashdot quote. i'm impressed.
un burrito me trampeó.
When hunting you have some target. You have to have a particular target in order to set the PVR.
When browsing particular channels, on the other hand, you trust that certain memorized areas will bear fruit. Sounds like a gatherer's approach to me.
Actually, when hunting you don't have a single target in mind. You just have a single category. Such as when "Bear Hunting" you're setting your eyes on a specific species but not necessarily a specific breed (Could wind up with a Black Bear, Grizzly, or Brown Bear...just an i.e.). When I turn on the TV for channel surfing, I'll shoot for a category, such as "News". With "Bear Hunting," using experience, I know where the bear are going to tend to gather for food, shelter, etc. Likewise, I know that CNN, MSNBC, different local stations, etc all have news, some 24 hours a day, some at specific times... Based on the time of day and channel location I may be able to get a specific "breed" of news. So surfing between the news chanels if one hops over to a subject that I like, I have the target. If the subject turns to something I couldn't care less about, I resume the "hunt" for more of the subjects that intrest me.
Using the DVR Method, however, is more like running a farm. You can schedule all your programs to record for the week, like timing the seeds to all bear fruit at the same general time for harvest. Then on the weekend (or any other day you have off) you can 'harvest and gather' the shows you recorded during the week. With this method, you know exactly which show you are getting. Like you'd be getting the same Red Delicious Apples you planted and not Granny Smiths.
I'm not sure if this'll clarify the analogy for you any, or if there was realy any point in me breaking it down this way, but I'm just bored as hell at work waiting for a customer, and had no better things to do. Sad, Isn't it.
In our house we have a simple system: I program the DVR, and she chooses what to watch when we sit down together. That way we're both watching something that we want: I only program the DVR with shows that would appeal to me.
"...48 percent made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own..."
More like LET their husbands buy more home theatre equipment.
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
I have a DVR (Bell/Echostar PVR-5100... crap!) It gets about 300-ish satellite channels. It also sits under my PC desk and collects dust, being fired up once or twice a week at most.
Just as there are fewer female gamers in NA because there are no games for girls, the male TV segment is plummeting because it's turning more and more into reality TV, gimmicky gameshows, and godawful sitcoms. Lessee.... "Fear Factor" or GTA:SA? "Survivor XVIII: Delaware" or surfing the net? Tough choice...
Before Oxygen and WE came along, Lifetime was catering to that precious "bored housewife who likes weepy movies" demographic (have you watched this channel.. it's one of the most depressing things I've ever seen!). Of course they will conclude that women control the DVR.
:)
A quick scan of the stuff recorded or scheduled on my DVR reveals an even match between my shows (mainly revolving around either baseball or stuff on Discovery), the stuff my wife watches (stuff on Discovery and a few shows on MTV [noticeable lack of WE/Oxygen/Lifetime), stuff my mother-in-law likes (Big Brother) and stuff my son watches (PBS kids).
It should be noted that I'm the only one who knows how to hook it up in our household...
It's brilliant how poetic that statement is. You've illustrated the problem perfectly. Men must accept, revere, and worship women. But if women do anything offensive and we complain, we're just too weak.
The 'revenge feminism' angle is being played way too often. You can see it anywhere on TV if you have your eyes open. Men are consistently infantilized in entertainment and advertising. Since advertisements generally have less air time, they tend to be more egregious about it.
For example, in Canada there is a commercial about stopping the spread of HIV. On this commercial a talk-show host - female - is paneling three 'guy' penis-shaped objects. The woman asks if they ever 'try for sex' on the first date, and the guys all hum and haw about how women aren't objects, they respect their spirituality ... and the woman instantly sneers at them and screams at the audience 'don't trust your date'. The audience, full of women, cheers raucously at this. End message: men are sex-obsessed pigs, and only women care about the spread of STDs.
For me, true disgust with this odious gender bigotry pinnacled when I saw an episode of "Third Watch" (ok, it was a slow TV day) where a female detective rammed her gun into a guy's crotch and threatened to shoot off his toolkit. While this was happening heroic music was playing - see, the female cop was avenging the death of her sister, who OD'd on drugs bought from the male pusher. Hooray for justice!
The odd thing is that this swing of attention - which is outright pandering to the female demographic - has actually infiltrated even the steadfastly male-dominated cultures. Yesterday I was watching 'Appleseed', an anime movie. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which mankind has formed a symbiosis with engineered beings. Every positive character in the movie is female. The Prime Minister is female. The doctor who invented the 'clones' is female. The hero is female. The men in the story are either war-obsessed genocidal maniacs or just there to spout anti-woman dialogue to justify the revenge feminist angle. And this is Japanese anime!
Frankly as much as I find it offensive I also find it pathetic. There's a desperate neediness about the whole thing, which I don't believe truly 'equal' people would require in order to feel good about themselves. But to be fair, we've been suffering the 'white guys are lame, white guys can't dance, white guys can't jump, white guys can't play basketball' crap for years too. Hopefully it's all just a phase.
And, hopefully, someday I'll be able to sit down to dinner without being assaulted by countless vignettes in which men are the goofy idiots and women the wise sages - or, at least, fewer commercials about feminine itch, odor, and leakage.
Wrong does not justify wrong.
----- "Type theory is like pretzels on crack." -- random friend
While the previous generation got kids so finally someone would be able to program the VCR, women finally wisened up. The VCR got set allright, but to the wrong program. Now the DVR does to this generation what the anticonception pill did to the previous generation. Independence.
The next step is parthenogenesis. Human males are now entering their last century before extinction.
I'm just amazed at the level of sexism I see in some of the comments. Do we need to put up a big sign out front "Remember, there are women on Slashdot too!" ????
I'd like to see a study on what percentage of Slashdot readers are sexists dickheads... and how we could get them to go away and stop giving everyone else a bad image.
- I am made of meat.
While this kind of thing could be argued back and forth until the end of time (but on this show/network...blah blah...movies...blah...tit-for-tat, etc.), it's still important to recognize that this kind of pandering is WRONG, regardless as to which side is doing it.
;-D
/.
Oh, and just as a fun jab at the 'other side':
Maybe the reason there isn't any outrage over this kind of thing (feminism) is because Men don't feel threatened at all, and expect their weak, little-women to want fluff like this just to puff up their fragile egos. Men don't need the support of their peers to feel valid, while women go around creating support groups for every little thing under the sun.
DISCLAIMER: Hey, it's just a fun poke. Don't take it seriously. There's a ripple of truth, buried under an attitude of sexism. I'm just trying to fit in here on
Machoism and Feminism are equally repugnant. I'm sick of this culture of guilt that demands that for every wrong somebody/group performs against another person/group, the tables must be entirely reversed for several *generations* just to break even. The idea of holding the sons responsible for the sins of the fathers makes my blood boil, especially since I can't stand my father, and have never gained anything (except my wonderful genetic code) from his works. There is no justification for holding people responsible who had nothing to do with the initial problem.
My family never owned slaves, or benefitted from them. They were immigrants who made their own way via work using their own hands. I owe nothing in reparation.
I have never 'oppressed' a woman, and in fact come from a family full of strong women. I owe nothing to the opposite gender, and will never take any responsibility for their "plight."
I'm a white male who has never wronged an entire race or gender, and refuse to apologize (I've already made my peace with the people I have wronged personally). So if somebody has a problem with my race or gender, they can get stuffed.
Political Correctness is a symptom of the guilt-culture we live in, and I will never have any part of it. Those that do can keep the hell out of my life.
Generally there is _nothing_ on tv for me to watch, except for the history channel, and mythbusters. Oh malcom in the middle is funny too. Everything else is for women. My wife sometimes will watch some crap on lifetime or WE, and will get mad at me when I laugh about some stupid trajedy that just occured on her show. Why do women need to cry? or watch something so depressing about a mother with a brain tumor and four sickly kids. Whose pilot husband is having an affair with three different women. I should just cancel the cable and let my wife watch them euthanize unwanted puppies at the ASPCA.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Can you explain your sig? I don't get it.
If you're a lady and can control a DVR with some amount of skill, please post a reply to this with a short sentence showing us you know what you are talking about.
This is very important as it will facilitate great advances in pick-up line artistry:
"Hey baby... wanna come to my place and check out my TiVo?"
But seriously, I'd like to know if the article is bullshit or real.
Women, or young adult females between 12 and 25, are quite often the strongest characters in Anime, I wouldn't hinge any arguements about the "battle of the sexes" on Appleseed. Read Or Die, I think, supports your thesis much better :) Your overarching point about males being told to 'accept, revere and worship...', well, its sort of a one sided perspective. Guys make equally lame comments about women. See the rest of the /. comments on this topic if you don't believe me. The fact is their are thin percentages of difference. I am male, and a pacifist. My mother is, I believe, female, but she hasn't met a US military intervention that she hasn't liked. Individual cases are never to be generalized from aggregate data. On average some % of women are more/less likely than some % of men to engage in a specific behavior, but these things are seldom outside of 55/45 splits. Now, throwing a baseball, there is a topic for some good old sexist fun!
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
But this isn't the point. Of course some men say stupid things about women. Everyone says something stupid sometime. It's the only universal truth.
The point is that we are being conditioned to believe that women are better than men - despite ample evidence to the contrary - by our society and media. From television programs which foist this point-of-view on us, to commercials, to headlines whenever a female in any area does anything (Wie almost makes the cut, it's headlines. A female race car driver finishes like 15th and it's headlines). Focus groups are conducted about how to artificially introduce more women into fields they do not usually enter - not because there's any objective benefit to this, but because everything has to be at least 50% male and 50% female or it's sexist. Women have special female-only scholarships and funds to get them into the sciences. Women have private clubs, and if men have one (e.g. The Masters) it's considered tantamount to a Nazi death camp. On and on.
Don't delude yourself, there is a double standard. Most men ignore/tolerate it, most women think it's justified because they want revenge for sexism which, ironically, most of them weren't even around to experience.
My wife hardly every used the computer until I got a DVR, now she uses it all the time. At least now she's more willing to let me spend the money on a bigger hard drive.
women you insensitive clod!
Ed, Edd and Eddy.
What are you talking about? GP just said that it was interesting. Not that it was justified.
sexism
1 : prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women
2 : behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex
So while I see you mean to use defn 2, the word stems from analogy with racism, whose etymology is originally in the context of Nazi theories, so it's really crappy communication to use sexism for anything but 1, because of its negative connotations.
As to generatlization about people (or anything for that matter), yeah, it sucks, but that's how the brain evolved to work effectively in a world with a low S/N ratio.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
...seems to now be managed by her. Even though I brought the DVR home, and probably have a better understand of everything it can do, she's jumped all over the series recording functions, as well as occasionally browsing the Guide to find stuff she thinks we'd like. I'm fine with letting her have fun with the software; we wind up with a lot of good stuff to watch. And it's all about the hardware anyway, right? :D
its not only sexism. its racism. and just about all the other big "ism"s out there that get the reverse treatment :P
Rediculous disproportion of male domestic violence claims. Well guess who are more likey to hit thier partner and statisticaly does so more. The wife is.
"hate crime" cruft and media circus stuff as well.
somehow i started writing this with a point but it vanished. Oh wait there isnt one. Its just another stupid thing about humans.
If the disabled guy cuts in line i cant complain cause hes disabled. well sod off cause i damn well should have the right to.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Hehe. I metamoderated the "Interesting" mod as "Unfair".
Everyone who can should M2. Dealing with abuses like that can be much more interesting than spending mod points.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.