I suppose it's a difference of how I use the media. When I watch tv, I don't do anything wacky. I watch shows that I want to continue being on the air. If I remember to leave a delay, I fast forward through the commercials. I just can't see getting worried about this, seeing how I mention what shows I watch on my website and try to talk other people into watching them.
Otoh, web surfing is for educational use. I'll go to an anti-government site or something just to see what they're saying. Therefore I don't care in the slightest what my tivo reports, but I'd be a little more worried about my web browsing. It's a lot easier to see immoral, illegal, or just plain non-mainstream stuff on the web than on tv after all.
If someone keyboard sniffed my computer, they could get passwords and credit card numbers. If someone remote sniffed my tivo, they'd discover that I like Buffy and the Seattle Mariners. Seeing how I have bought Mariners season tickets and Buffy dvd's in the past, this isn't exactly a stunning invasion of my privacy.
So then someone can find out that 3 years ago someone used a tivo that I owned and hit the instant reply button over and over again to see a close play at the plate in a Mariners' game. Not that!
Since they have no idea who actually was watching the tv, color me non-worried on this.
No they're not perfect. I'm enjoying mine, mind you, but I've noticed two things:
(1) Even at best quality, the picture suffers some loss. Especially watching sports, you can notice the difference. Of course, the endless instant replays and the ability to have the passes go in slow motion if you want to increase the tension some do make up for it, but it's something to be aware of.
(2) About 1 out of every 15 recordings fail. The channel changer thingie is slightly off. So if I really want something, I have to make sure that it records it, which defeats the whole purpose.
"It's time to wake up. You don't believe that the government is hiding anything so serious? Explain why they have deliberately terminated the existence of those who have dug too far into the "conspiracy" involving UFO's, Illuminati and alien abductions. Explain why they continue to threaten those who get to close. Explain why they keep this information highly confidential... Can you explain why military advertising campaigns have drastically increased since the mid-90's... Explain why our education systems are so poor ( the future of our world ) does not receive the financial support it deserves... Explain why the world government is constantly stocking up on nucular/electronic warfare, tanks, bombs, high-tech computer systems, helicopters. etc.. Explain why our United Nations are the only ones allowed to hold onto nuclear warfare.. Explain why our world government has established a large sum of top secret underground bases around the globe.. Explain why so many are so blind, yet to open their eyes and see the truth... until now. "
There's a classic rule that scientists use, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Conspiracy theorists believe in the opposite of that one. The wilder the claim, the less evidence needed. Just talk loudly and make wacky claims and someone will believe you. Hey, the only reason there's no evidence is because of the coverups after all.
Anyone else notice that the fortune at the bottom of this page (1/24/02 9:32 PST) was, "I'll be Grateful when they're Dead." Seeing how this story is about Deadhead taper networks, that's a tad ironic.
Here's a standard info file for a show taken from etree.org:
12/31/99 Big Cypress Seminole Reservation
evening set, aka "ph2000-01-01"; Earthworks SR-77 > Lunatec V2 > ADC-20 > DA-P1 & M1 (concurrent); Location: Front row, stage left corner of tapers; DAT > CD > SHN: PCM-R500 > Audiomedia III/Powermac G3/233 > Pro Tools 4.3.2; Panasonic 7502 (burn/extract); taped and mastered by M. Vernal; no music missing; d4t1 ~:23 noise is fireworks; alternate tracking using 6 discs, with 2x80 and an overburn
The people in charge of it do. Believe me, the fans of bands that allow taping can be more agressive than the MPAA in stopping illegal trading of stuff that shouldn't be. There's a record store that sells Phish bootlegs. Whenever the owner posts about anything on rec.music.phish, about 10 people gang up on him to tell him to go away until he stops selling them.
The problem with this, of course, is at some point people will balk and just stop buying DVDs. There is a limit to how much you can annoy your customer before they stop being your customer.
Actually why the archos? It can't shuffle play the entire hd and upgrading the hd is a real pain. Go for the neo25 jukebox. Changing the hd is like changing a battery.
Who is really going to spend $2000 on an mp3 player? I'm an mp3 player consumer. I own two of them. I have issues with my Neo25, so I've been looking at other options. When the iPod came out I checked it out. $400 for 5 gigs only (my mp3 collection is over 20 gig) and I'd have to buy a new computer for it? Pass.
For 2 years during my tech support days, I was Seanet's token jew employee. I was the only person who would work that day, manning all of the phones. In 1995, it was all worth it. Seanet is located on the 68 floor of what was then called the Columbia Tower. That day a thick fog had rolled into Seattle. When I got into the office, the view was amazing. You couldn't see the city below, but you could see the Cascades (and the occasional top of a building) poking through the clouds below. I spent the day watching that, blissfully unbothered by customers - apparently no one wanted to call an ISP on Christmas.
For the record, Chanukah is the booby prize of holidays. Never a major holiday, the only people who care about it really are Christians who feel bad about the fact that Jews are left out of it. The big holidays on the calendar are Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Pesach (Passover in English). If Chanukah fell more frequently in October than December, no one would remember it existed.
I wrote a Hanukka fun guide for a column for jambands.com. It's located at http://www.jambands.com/dec00/columnists/zzyzx.htm l [jambands.com... but you probably knew that]. I'm pasting it here, but the lameness filter didn't like my ASCII art. Go to the orginal if you want to see that.
The Hanukkah Fun Pack
What is Hanukkah?
Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah, Hanuka, and pretty much any other way
you can arrange h's, a's, n's and k's to make that sound) commemorates
a military victory over the Greek empire some 2400 years ago. After
the Maccabees (aka "The Good Guys") defeated the Greeks
(aka "The Bad Guys"), they went to light the everlasting light in the
synagogue. Despite having only enough oil to last one day, somehow
the light remained lit for the entire 8 days that it took to get some
more.
Why Should I Care?
Beats me. Never a major holiday, Hanukkah only really took importance
in the 19th century. Frustrated with hearing their kids whining about
not getting any Christmas presents, people noticed a holiday located
conveniently close to Christmas. Not only was the
timing helpful but, unlike most Jewish Holidays, this one didn't even
require you to dwell on your failings for 10 days, or do a sundown to
sundown fast, or eat all of your meals outside, or not eat bread for 8
days. In fact, this one could even be described
as fun. Rabbis poured over the Talmud, figuring that having a fun
holiday must be against Jewish law somehow. They were pursuing an
investigation over a digression inspired by some 15th century debate
over whether killing a snake that wandered into your
tent on the Sabbath counted as "work," when someone reminded them of
Purim. While Hanukkah is enjoyable, it doesn't hold a candle (that's
a little holiday humor there, laugh ok?) to Purim - what with the
story involving oral sex and rampaging hordes of angry Jews, the
encouragements to go out and get drunk, and kids given noisemakers and
told to be really loud and annoying.
Wait a second! You said "fun." Is there any actual enjoyment here?
Well kind of. The celebration of Hanukkah revolves around three
things - fire, grease, and gambling.
Fire: The most ritualistic aspect of the holiday involves lighting a
menorah for 8 days. No menorah was included in this Fun Pack because:
(1) They tend to be expensive.
(2) If you knocked over the Menorah and burned down Concur,
everyone would end up blaming me most likely.
(3) There's an annoyingly complicated special way that you
have to light the candles.
Despite their absence here, Menorahs do provide many happy
memories. For example, there was the time when my parents left the
house, leaving me in charge of the menorah lighting.
I then decided to show some basic candle tricks to my brother
(including the "flaming ball of wax" trick). Ok, when they got home,
I did have some questions to answer - such as, "Why is there wax all
over this table?" - but any excuse to play with candles is a good
thing.
Grease: Since one of the major parts of the Hanukkah story involves
oil burning longer than it should, an aspect of celebration involves
eating food fried in oil (traditionally potato pancakes, but I like to
push this rule). How often can you say, "I'm eating these Jo-Jos for
religious reasons." Eight days of Onion Rings and Mozerella
Sticks. That's my idea of a holiday.
Gambling: This is the biggie. You may have noticed many tops inside
this package. These are known as dreidels. Each side has a Hebrew
letter on it. The letters are the first letter of each word in the
phrase "A Great Miracle Happened Here." While some
people question whether misestimating the amount of oil you have
really qualifies as "great miracle" - it clearly doesn't match up
well with - say - the birth of a savior - the phrase does sound better
than "A New Measuring Device Was Needed Here."
The way the dreidel works is simple. You start out with a pot of M&Ms
or Gelt or something in the middle. You spin the dreidel and see what
side comes up.
If gimmel comes up, that means Get... you get the entire contents of
the pot.
If hey comes up, that means Half... you get half of what is in there.
If nun comes up, that means Nothing... nothing happens.
If shin comes up, that means Shit, I have to put one back.
I thought about being a dreidel hustler who would wait until the pot
got really big and then say, "No, you must have misheard me. THIS one
is gimmel," when I spun. Instead though, here is a little ascii
hebrew letter guide:
[Guide removed to satisfy lameness filter]
Look for the tail there for gimmel
Now you can tell this game is made for kids, because it's all about
getting lots of M&M's and rarely about giving them back. The
question becomes, what do you do with your dreidels when you're sick
of candy. One thing is to do stupid dreidel tricks. My favorite is
the spin the dreidel on its head trick, but the bounce and then spin
trick is also cool... when I can get it to work.
Other games (such as high stakes dreidel gambling and strip
dreidel) are to be played at your own risk. Know your limits. If you
find yourself dreidelling uncontrollably, please call the Washington
State Council on Problem Gambling Hotline number at 1-800-547-6133.
What if I think this whole Hanukkah thing is kind of lame?
The only problem with this is that it's easy to see what was wrong with Divx - you didn't own the movies, you could be accidentally charged, if the company went out of business you'd lose the ability to view the movie - but a lot harder to explain why this is wrong.
What would be your answer to a non-techie friend who said, "Ummmm why exactly shouldn't I buy this dvd player?"
I made a couple of these points in other threads, but I decided to lump them all together for ease of people telling me I have no taste or something. Mind you I'm only about 50 pages into book 2, so maybe these complaints get better as time goes on, but I have read 300 pages. I can handle slow starting books, but this has transcended that. Also from reading other comments on amazon and aintitcoolnews, I get the feeling that these are systematic complaints. I'd be curious about feedback from LotR fans. Am I giving up too soon or are these just not the books for me?
1) There's no dialogue. Ok that's an exaggeration. There's plenty of long passages giving the history of the ring or of the lineage of a weapon or a song that happens to tell the history of an ancient war, but no actual character interaction. When Sam makes a comment along the lines of, "I wonder what these insects ate when they don't have hobbit," it stood out for being the only line like that in a 100 page stretch of text or so.
2) The story is subservient to the history. A well defined universe can add a lot to a story. However, I believe the story I've heard about the origin of LotR (it was written as an excuse to use the language he invented). Take out the history and the endless descriptions of the passages that they walk over and what I've read would fill 15 pages or so. Allegedly that gets better though.
3) Only the darkness is defined. One of the (legitimate) problems that people have with Harry Potter is that the villain is really poorly defined. Voldemort's motivations really aren't addressed that much for all of his import. FotR is having the opposite problem. Tolkein seemed to only like darkness. The Shire and Rivendell are more boring than anything. Tom Bombadil is a dork. To use another popular example, look at Narnia. Sure Narnia isn't 1% as well defined as Middle Earth, but there are many scenes of joy there. When Narnia is in danger, it affects me because I can see what would be lost. When Middle Earth is in danger, I don't care. At some point you have to show what people are fighting for, not just what they're fighting against.
There might be more, but those are the main ones. If I don't care about the characters or the world, it's hard for me to want to dive into the history. I need the carrot first. So will 1) and 3) get better, or should I reread the Chronicles of Narnia again?
"I am really disappointed to hear of the changes that have been made to a story that has stood on it's own for 50+ years. One of the things about the story is the depth that Tolkein gave to the characters, and the variety of characters (ie Tom Bombadil) "
depth? Hmmmmmm different strokes I guess. 300 pages into FotR, I'm finding them all pretty much interchangable - in large degree again because no one ever says anything other than reciting 3 page long poems or giving dire warnings.
As for Tom Bombadil, he was dropped for a reason. If he appeared on a movie screen, half of the audience would start laughing at him and the spell would be ruined.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose it's a difference of how I use the media. When I watch tv, I don't do anything wacky. I watch shows that I want to continue being on the air. If I remember to leave a delay, I fast forward through the commercials. I just can't see getting worried about this, seeing how I mention what shows I watch on my website and try to talk other people into watching them.
Otoh, web surfing is for educational use. I'll go to an anti-government site or something just to see what they're saying. Therefore I don't care in the slightest what my tivo reports, but I'd be a little more worried about my web browsing. It's a lot easier to see immoral, illegal, or just plain non-mainstream stuff on the web than on tv after all.
If someone keyboard sniffed my computer, they could get passwords and credit card numbers. If someone remote sniffed my tivo, they'd discover that I like Buffy and the Seattle Mariners. Seeing how I have bought Mariners season tickets and Buffy dvd's in the past, this isn't exactly a stunning invasion of my privacy.
So then someone can find out that 3 years ago someone used a tivo that I owned and hit the instant reply button over and over again to see a close play at the plate in a Mariners' game. Not that!
Since they have no idea who actually was watching the tv, color me non-worried on this.
esp because $80 *.62 $49.60 US.
Read what you pasted. It says that Win2K had FEWER vulnerabilites than Red Hat7.0
No they're not perfect. I'm enjoying mine, mind you, but I've noticed two things:
(1) Even at best quality, the picture suffers some loss. Especially watching sports, you can notice the difference. Of course, the endless instant replays and the ability to have the passes go in slow motion if you want to increase the tension some do make up for it, but it's something to be aware of.
(2) About 1 out of every 15 recordings fail. The channel changer thingie is slightly off. So if I really want something, I have to make sure that it records it, which defeats the whole purpose.
From the hacked site:
"It's time to wake up. You don't believe that the government is hiding anything so serious? Explain why they have deliberately terminated the existence of those who have dug too far into the "conspiracy" involving UFO's, Illuminati and alien abductions. Explain why they continue to threaten those who get to close. Explain why they keep this information highly confidential... Can you explain why military advertising campaigns have drastically increased since the mid-90's... Explain why our education systems are so poor ( the future of our world ) does not receive the financial support it deserves... Explain why the world government is constantly stocking up on nucular/electronic warfare, tanks, bombs, high-tech computer systems, helicopters. etc.. Explain why our United Nations are the only ones allowed to hold onto nuclear warfare.. Explain why our world government has established a large sum of top secret underground bases around the globe.. Explain why so many are so blind, yet to open their eyes and see the truth... until now. "
There's a classic rule that scientists use, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Conspiracy theorists believe in the opposite of that one. The wilder the claim, the less evidence needed. Just talk loudly and make wacky claims and someone will believe you. Hey, the only reason there's no evidence is because of the coverups after all.
And they had 2 Jar Jar's (Merry and Pippen) instead of just the one that The Phantom Menace could deliver.
Oh and the reason that they were running 2 decks is that they were taping a set that ran for over 7 hours.
Anyone else notice that the fortune at the bottom of this page (1/24/02 9:32 PST) was, "I'll be Grateful when they're Dead." Seeing how this story is about Deadhead taper networks, that's a tad ironic.
Here's a standard info file for a show taken from etree.org:
12/31/99 Big Cypress Seminole Reservation
evening set, aka "ph2000-01-01"; Earthworks SR-77 > Lunatec V2 > ADC-20 > DA-P1 & M1 (concurrent); Location: Front row, stage left corner of tapers; DAT > CD > SHN: PCM-R500 > Audiomedia III/Powermac G3/233 > Pro Tools 4.3.2; Panasonic 7502 (burn/extract); taped and mastered by M. Vernal; no music missing; d4t1 ~:23 noise is fireworks; alternate tracking using 6 discs, with 2x80 and an overburn
Yes we are an obsessive community
The people in charge of it do. Believe me, the fans of bands that allow taping can be more agressive than the MPAA in stopping illegal trading of stuff that shouldn't be. There's a record store that sells Phish bootlegs. Whenever the owner posts about anything on rec.music.phish, about 10 people gang up on him to tell him to go away until he stops selling them.
Depends what you want. For my needs (getting Phish and Dead boots) etree servers suit me just fine.
The problem with this, of course, is at some point people will balk and just stop buying DVDs. There is a limit to how much you can annoy your customer before they stop being your customer.
yeah but if you get a 30 or 40 gig drive in your neo player, you never have to refresh your contents.
Actually why the archos? It can't shuffle play the entire hd and upgrading the hd is a real pain. Go for the neo25 jukebox. Changing the hd is like changing a battery.
Who is really going to spend $2000 on an mp3 player? I'm an mp3 player consumer. I own two of them. I have issues with my Neo25, so I've been looking at other options. When the iPod came out I checked it out. $400 for 5 gigs only (my mp3 collection is over 20 gig) and I'd have to buy a new computer for it? Pass.
I have two things to say back: Merry and Pippen.
For 2 years during my tech support days, I was Seanet's token jew employee. I was the only person who would work that day, manning all of the phones. In 1995, it was all worth it. Seanet is located on the 68 floor of what was then called the Columbia Tower. That day a thick fog had rolled into Seattle. When I got into the office, the view was amazing. You couldn't see the city below, but you could see the Cascades (and the occasional top of a building) poking through the clouds below. I spent the day watching that, blissfully unbothered by customers - apparently no one wanted to call an ISP on Christmas.
I wrote a Hanukka fun guide for a column for jambands.com. It's located at http://www.jambands.com/dec00/columnists/zzyzx.htm l [jambands.com... but you probably knew that]. I'm pasting it here, but the lameness filter didn't like my ASCII art. Go to the orginal if you want to see that.
The Hanukkah Fun Pack
What is Hanukkah?
Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah, Hanuka, and pretty much any other way you can arrange h's, a's, n's and k's to make that sound) commemorates a military victory over the Greek empire some 2400 years ago. After the Maccabees (aka "The Good Guys") defeated the Greeks (aka "The Bad Guys"), they went to light the everlasting light in the synagogue. Despite having only enough oil to last one day, somehow the light remained lit for the entire 8 days that it took to get some more.
Why Should I Care?
Beats me. Never a major holiday, Hanukkah only really took importance in the 19th century. Frustrated with hearing their kids whining about not getting any Christmas presents, people noticed a holiday located conveniently close to Christmas. Not only was the timing helpful but, unlike most Jewish Holidays, this one didn't even require you to dwell on your failings for 10 days, or do a sundown to sundown fast, or eat all of your meals outside, or not eat bread for 8 days. In fact, this one could even be described as fun. Rabbis poured over the Talmud, figuring that having a fun holiday must be against Jewish law somehow. They were pursuing an investigation over a digression inspired by some 15th century debate over whether killing a snake that wandered into your tent on the Sabbath counted as "work," when someone reminded them of Purim. While Hanukkah is enjoyable, it doesn't hold a candle (that's a little holiday humor there, laugh ok?) to Purim - what with the story involving oral sex and rampaging hordes of angry Jews, the encouragements to go out and get drunk, and kids given noisemakers and told to be really loud and annoying.
Wait a second! You said "fun." Is there any actual enjoyment here?
Well kind of. The celebration of Hanukkah revolves around three things - fire, grease, and gambling.
Fire: The most ritualistic aspect of the holiday involves lighting a menorah for 8 days. No menorah was included in this Fun Pack because:
(1) They tend to be expensive.
(2) If you knocked over the Menorah and burned down Concur, everyone would end up blaming me most likely.
(3) There's an annoyingly complicated special way that you have to light the candles.
Despite their absence here, Menorahs do provide many happy memories. For example, there was the time when my parents left the house, leaving me in charge of the menorah lighting. I then decided to show some basic candle tricks to my brother (including the "flaming ball of wax" trick). Ok, when they got home, I did have some questions to answer - such as, "Why is there wax all over this table?" - but any excuse to play with candles is a good thing.
Grease: Since one of the major parts of the Hanukkah story involves oil burning longer than it should, an aspect of celebration involves eating food fried in oil (traditionally potato pancakes, but I like to push this rule). How often can you say, "I'm eating these Jo-Jos for religious reasons." Eight days of Onion Rings and Mozerella Sticks. That's my idea of a holiday.
Gambling: This is the biggie. You may have noticed many tops inside this package. These are known as dreidels. Each side has a Hebrew letter on it. The letters are the first letter of each word in the phrase "A Great Miracle Happened Here." While some people question whether misestimating the amount of oil you have really qualifies as "great miracle" - it clearly doesn't match up well with - say - the birth of a savior - the phrase does sound better than "A New Measuring Device Was Needed Here."
The way the dreidel works is simple. You start out with a pot of M&Ms or Gelt or something in the middle. You spin the dreidel and see what side comes up.
If gimmel comes up, that means Get... you get the entire contents of the pot.
If hey comes up, that means Half... you get half of what is in there.
If nun comes up, that means Nothing... nothing happens.
If shin comes up, that means Shit, I have to put one back.
I thought about being a dreidel hustler who would wait until the pot got really big and then say, "No, you must have misheard me. THIS one is gimmel," when I spun. Instead though, here is a little ascii hebrew letter guide:
[Guide removed to satisfy lameness filter]
Look for the tail there for gimmel
Now you can tell this game is made for kids, because it's all about getting lots of M&M's and rarely about giving them back. The question becomes, what do you do with your dreidels when you're sick of candy. One thing is to do stupid dreidel tricks. My favorite is the spin the dreidel on its head trick, but the bounce and then spin trick is also cool... when I can get it to work.
Other games (such as high stakes dreidel gambling and strip dreidel) are to be played at your own risk. Know your limits. If you find yourself dreidelling uncontrollably, please call the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling Hotline number at 1-800-547-6133.
What if I think this whole Hanukkah thing is kind of lame?
See that koosh ball in there? Play with it.
The message directly below yours did though. Guess it wasn't that hard.
The only problem with this is that it's easy to see what was wrong with Divx - you didn't own the movies, you could be accidentally charged, if the company went out of business you'd lose the ability to view the movie - but a lot harder to explain why this is wrong.
What would be your answer to a non-techie friend who said, "Ummmm why exactly shouldn't I buy this dvd player?"
*whew* I was getting really worried about my reading comprehension skills there.
I made a couple of these points in other threads, but I decided to lump them all together for ease of people telling me I have no taste or something. Mind you I'm only about 50 pages into book 2, so maybe these complaints get better as time goes on, but I have read 300 pages. I can handle slow starting books, but this has transcended that. Also from reading other comments on amazon and aintitcoolnews, I get the feeling that these are systematic complaints. I'd be curious about feedback from LotR fans. Am I giving up too soon or are these just not the books for me?
1) There's no dialogue. Ok that's an exaggeration. There's plenty of long passages giving the history of the ring or of the lineage of a weapon or a song that happens to tell the history of an ancient war, but no actual character interaction. When Sam makes a comment along the lines of, "I wonder what these insects ate when they don't have hobbit," it stood out for being the only line like that in a 100 page stretch of text or so.
2) The story is subservient to the history. A well defined universe can add a lot to a story. However, I believe the story I've heard about the origin of LotR (it was written as an excuse to use the language he invented). Take out the history and the endless descriptions of the passages that they walk over and what I've read would fill 15 pages or so. Allegedly that gets better though.
3) Only the darkness is defined. One of the (legitimate) problems that people have with Harry Potter is that the villain is really poorly defined. Voldemort's motivations really aren't addressed that much for all of his import. FotR is having the opposite problem. Tolkein seemed to only like darkness. The Shire and Rivendell are more boring than anything. Tom Bombadil is a dork. To use another popular example, look at Narnia. Sure Narnia isn't 1% as well defined as Middle Earth, but there are many scenes of joy there. When Narnia is in danger, it affects me because I can see what would be lost. When Middle Earth is in danger, I don't care. At some point you have to show what people are fighting for, not just what they're fighting against.
There might be more, but those are the main ones. If I don't care about the characters or the world, it's hard for me to want to dive into the history. I need the carrot first. So will 1) and 3) get better, or should I reread the Chronicles of Narnia again?
"I am really disappointed to hear of the changes that have been made to a story that has stood on it's own for 50+ years. One of the things about the story is the depth that Tolkein gave to the characters, and the variety of characters (ie Tom Bombadil) "
depth? Hmmmmmm different strokes I guess. 300 pages into FotR, I'm finding them all pretty much interchangable - in large degree again because no one ever says anything other than reciting 3 page long poems or giving dire warnings.
As for Tom Bombadil, he was dropped for a reason. If he appeared on a movie screen, half of the audience would start laughing at him and the spell would be ruined.