When I was in college, some guys tried to brew a vat of beer in our common area. The RA confiscated it and then wrote them up. I'll never forget -- one of the guys was stoned and all he had to say was "Duuude. This is so weak. We're getting busted for intent to ferment."
One of my coworkers got VOD around the same time I got TiVo. I LOVE my TiVo but my coworker ended up dumping his VOD service because of the lousy selection of shows. Yes, the service was "on demand", but the movies never changed from month to month. He probably would have kept it if the selection was actually good.
Once again, maybe cable companies should consider taking a look at improving their own products instead of trying to shut down technology they don't like. Other industries actually have to produce a better product to ensure they get customers' money. I hate that the entertainment industry is taking the approach that it is better to just shut down any technology that threatens their desired business model than to react to the market and improve their product. How anti-capitalist.
Is it just me or have other people also been noticing a lot of anti-TiVo news stories lately like this? I feel like there has been a big uptick in the number of "TiVo is Big Brother" articles lately. Since many publishing and news agencies are in bed with cable companies, I wonder if they are trying to use the media to promote a negative image for PVRs.
This happened to me when I first got my TiVo. I had never recorded anything in Spanish so I couldn't understand why. I posted in the newsgroup and was told that it will begin to think you speak Spanish if most of the movies you record have a secondary SAP track (like closed captioning, but in Spanish). Since most of my movies were from HBO, which has SAP, it thought I spoke Spanish. Don't worry -- you don't have to start giving Thumbs Down to movies. Just give 3 Thumbs Down to any program it records with the primary track in Spanish instead of English and it will figure it out pretty soon.
The Bush administration argued libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers.
Yes, but libraries are also not required not to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines. I have been to a few libraries that have subscriptions to Playboy and erotica on the shelves. Hell, my college library had the last 15 years of Playboy archived on microfilm. If libraries are going to use filters (which I oppose), it should be decided on the local level. The Federal goverment doesn't ban pornographic or erotic books from being in libraries so why should it be allowed to mandate what can be accessed via the Internet from their facilities.
Probably posted too late to get noticed, but WTF...
(Humor) What to expect from your LASIK surgery:
1. When you stretch out on the table, you will be offered a teddy bear to hold. You will say "no thanks" because you are a mature adult with no need for stuffed animals. But trust us: take the teddy bear.
2. The doctor will numb your eye and prop it open with a lid speculum. The word speculum should make you think of a gynecological procedure involving a cold surgical instrument. If you can't imagine this, just think of two metal spoons wedging your eyelids open.
3. Relax.
4. A ring will be pressed on your eye and suctioned to the cornea. You may feel some discomfort.
5. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stare directly into the red light. If you can't do this one simple thing then maybe you shouldn't have this procedure!
6. A cutting instrument is attached to the suction ring. This blade will cut a flap in your eye to open the cornea like a flip-top box. The doctor will then dry your cornea by blowing on it as if it's a hot cup of coffee.
7. The laser is programmed to vaporize layers of your corneal tissue. For you, this will take one solid minute. It will be the longest minute of your life. The odor of burning hair will pervade your flesh. This is normal.
8. If you flinch, we cannot be held responsible for vaporizing tissue that should not be vaporized. Please be aware that something could go wrong, horribly wrong, at any time during the procedure. This may add a dimension of frantic urgency to your spirituality.
9. The doctor will use a tiny squeegee to put your corneal flap back in place. A shield will be placed over your eye. No stitches are used to hold the flap in place. If you rub your eye or put pressure on it, the flap may come loose or get folded over and then you will be sorry. Please refrain from poking yourself in the eye until the flap has healed.
10. Don't worry about putting the stuffing back into the teddy bear. Our staff handles that.
Not a cell phone thing, but when I went to see SW: AOTC the opening weekend the guy next to me would not shut up during the beginning of the movie. I politely asked him to be quiet and he said that he had paid for a ticket and would talk as much as he goddamned wanted. In my most syrupy-sweet voice I said that yes, he could talk as much as he goddamned wanted but that this theater was full of fanboys who had been waiting months to see this movie and might want to shut up if he didn't want to get his ass kicked. A few men I didn't know sitting near me turned around and said "you should really listen to her because I'd help" and that was the end of that. I just wish it was that easy all of the time.
Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam has been writing some stuff for ukulele. One of my friends who is a huge Pearl Jam fan said that the band is even doing a "fan art" contest where they want people to submit ukulele inspired creations.
I went to see Spider-Man this weekend and, after I sat down, saw that my ticket said Attack of the Clones. I asked a couple of people around me and they said the same thing. I wonder if that was just a ticket seller who didn't know what she was doing or intentional to inflate the amount of money Star Wars took in, at my theater at least. Wonder if they got some kind of bonus for Star Wars ticket sales or another incentive.
I agree. If my coworker and I provide the same level of value, he should not be docked simply because I have US citizenship and he is still working towards his Green Card.
Location of residence will always (and should) play a factor in salary decisions. It is logical that an employee living in Louisiana would make a different salary than a comparable employee living in Silicon Valley or another comparable employee living in Russia. What I am saying is that while country or city of residence is a logical factor in salary decisions, country of origin is not.
The argument that I've heard for the salary discrepancies is the extra cost for helping H1-B workers obtain Green Cards, but I think that is bull. It can't possibly cost *that* much considering most companies aren't exactly busting their humps to get their employees permanent status ASAP. On the contrary, it seems that it's in their financial interest to keep them on visas as long as possible.
I'll concede that when US companies pay workers who live and work in another country lower wages than a worker who live in the US, it could be a beneficial situation for both. The worker (hopefully) is getting a higher paycheck than he could get from a local employer and the US company saves on labor.
What I think is disgusting is how many US companies cheat foreign workers who come to the US on H1-B visas. I helped one of my coworkers with his taxes because he had never filed a US tax return before. We have similar skills but our employer was paying him a third of what they pay me. Apparently, this is very common and I think it's wrong. Salaries for visa workers should be determined by the cost of living of where the employee is working and living, not his country of origin.
What I think an ad campaign that would be persuasive would be a series of commercials where people talk about what they do with their TiVos that other people might connect with. Examples from things I've heard my friends say:
My ad would be: I like going out on Thursdays but I also like Survivor. I used to record it on my VCR but I hated that if I got home at 8:20, I'd have to wait until it finished at 9 to watch it. Now, I can start watching it from the beginning whenever I get home AND I don't have to worry about accidentally seeing who got voted off while rewinding.
Joe's: I love watching Julia Roberts when she's on Letterman. I set up my TiVo to record any time Julia's on a talk show so that I'll never miss it.
Mark's: I'm a big movie fan. I set my TiVo up to record any movie that won an Oscar for Best Picture.
And, of course, someone watching a basketball game who pauses the TV before the "big point" so he can pay the pizza guy.
These are all things that I think the average TV viewer could relate to and I think all of them are things that wouldn't anger the TV networks. (Like "I fast-forward through commercials" would.)
Where I went to school, the police department was called the Tulane Department Police Department (TUPD). Problem is that almost all references were quickly graffitied into sTUPiD. Last time I visited, I noticed that they were now called Tulane Department of Public Safety.
Check out eBay. There are a lot of people selling TiVos with lifetime subscriptions. (Lifetime Subscriptions stay with the unit, not the owner.) Most of them are selling them because they want to upgrade to a unit with even more space, not because they don't like them. I've even seen 30 hour units with lifetime subscriptions for only about $250-300.
The TV Guide info that is broadcast on a lot of cable streams is only for the upcoming 6-12 hours. The TiVo guide is for 7-10 days. It helps the machine (and you) to know what it is recording that far in the future to know if there will be any scheduling conflicts and estimate the available disk space. Also, I'd rather be able to set something up to record two weeks ahead of time rather than having to remember to do it the day before.
Good luck buying a TiVo. Things may be better now, but I had a really hard time getting one in January. The message I got from Best Buy, Circuit City, and most web sites was "we don't have them in stock and don't know when, if ever, we'll get them again." It was ridiculous -- I must have gone to 10-15 sites. I think it may have something to do with the fact that TiVo is coming out with a new DVR that also lets you play MP3s and buy things through the remote in a couple of months. They may have gotten rid of a lot of their existing stock of the old players and not wanted to make too many more before releasing their new player. (My experience was with the regular TiVo. My friend had better luck with the DirectTiVo.) I finally found one through 800.com electronics.
I'll admit it. I get that "engineer's dread" right before I have to set up a new gadget. (The "I have a degree in engineering and will look really stupid if I can't figure out how to wire this stupid thing up" worry.) I also resign myself to having to make at least one trip to Radio Shack.
Given that my TiVo had to hook together with the cable box, my TV, my VCR, DVD player, sound system, and the phone line, I thought it was going to be awful. It was one of the easiest things I've ever set up. They had pretty much idiot-proof instructions and every cord or cable you could need for almost any possible configuration of devices. I think they could legitimately stress ease of setup and use in their ads and win over some Joe SixPacks who fight with their VCRs. (Clear directions! Record a whole season by pushing one button! Never look at a blinking 12:00 again!)
(BTW -- I yanked the VCR out of the mix 2 weeks later and moved it to another TV. Between the TiVo and my DVD player, the VCR was pointless)
Forget the encoding and the storage size. What sells me on DVD over video is the physical size of the media. Which is easier - slipping 10 DVDs in a CD wallet or lugging around 10 video cassettes? After the convenience of transporting DVDs, I think it would be hard to convince people to go back to bulky videos.
My company has a document retention policy in the area of a month and I think it's a stupid idea. I back up all of my stuff (esp. emails) on my home computer. (Yes, in violation.) I can't tell you how many times I have pulled a 5 month old email out of the archive to save my company's (or my personal) butt. As long as you try to act ethically towards your fellow employees and your clients, I think saving documents will most likely help, rather than hurt, you.
Your points, etc. are fed into the Problem Driver Pointer System, a huge database maintained by AAMVA that collects all bad driver data across the US. From the web site: "PDPS is intended to assist jurisdictions in the meeting the basic tenet that each driver, nationwide, have only one driver license and one record through the cooperative exchange of problem driver information between jurisdictions."
Here is an interesting idea that some people have on how to stop people from getting real licenses by forging SS cards and birth certificates. They suggest that when you go to get a license, the DMV will query other agency and commercial databases and present you with challenge questions that make you prove your identity. The financial industry is already doing this. I know when I requested my credit report online, I had to answer a bunch of multiple choice questions like "What is the monthly payment for your auto loan with Chase bank?" before they would authenticate me. States could make you answer questions correctly on things like your tax refund, driving history, etc. to prove you are who you say you are.
Sounds like it would be more secure than the current methods but it does create a huge Big Brother infrastructure by linking all of those databases. Also, I know how hard it was to get an error on my credit report erased. I imagine maintaining the integrity of this would be a mess. Still, the concept is interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in college, some guys tried to brew a vat of beer in our common area. The RA confiscated it and then wrote them up. I'll never forget -- one of the guys was stoned and all he had to say was "Duuude. This is so weak. We're getting busted for intent to ferment."
One of my coworkers got VOD around the same time I got TiVo. I LOVE my TiVo but my coworker ended up dumping his VOD service because of the lousy selection of shows. Yes, the service was "on demand", but the movies never changed from month to month. He probably would have kept it if the selection was actually good.
Once again, maybe cable companies should consider taking a look at improving their own products instead of trying to shut down technology they don't like. Other industries actually have to produce a better product to ensure they get customers' money. I hate that the entertainment industry is taking the approach that it is better to just shut down any technology that threatens their desired business model than to react to the market and improve their product. How anti-capitalist.
Is it just me or have other people also been noticing a lot of anti-TiVo news stories lately like this? I feel like there has been a big uptick in the number of "TiVo is Big Brother" articles lately. Since many publishing and news agencies are in bed with cable companies, I wonder if they are trying to use the media to promote a negative image for PVRs.
This happened to me when I first got my TiVo. I had never recorded anything in Spanish so I couldn't understand why. I posted in the newsgroup and was told that it will begin to think you speak Spanish if most of the movies you record have a secondary SAP track (like closed captioning, but in Spanish). Since most of my movies were from HBO, which has SAP, it thought I spoke Spanish. Don't worry -- you don't have to start giving Thumbs Down to movies. Just give 3 Thumbs Down to any program it records with the primary track in Spanish instead of English and it will figure it out pretty soon.
The Bush administration argued libraries are not required to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines and shouldn't have to offer access to pornography on their computers.
Yes, but libraries are also not required not to have X-rated movies and pornographic magazines. I have been to a few libraries that have subscriptions to Playboy and erotica on the shelves. Hell, my college library had the last 15 years of Playboy archived on microfilm. If libraries are going to use filters (which I oppose), it should be decided on the local level. The Federal goverment doesn't ban pornographic or erotic books from being in libraries so why should it be allowed to mandate what can be accessed via the Internet from their facilities.
Probably posted too late to get noticed, but WTF...
(Humor) What to expect from your LASIK surgery:
1. When you stretch out on the table, you will be offered a teddy bear to hold. You will say "no thanks" because you are a mature adult with no need for stuffed animals. But trust us: take the teddy bear.
2. The doctor will numb your eye and prop it open with a lid speculum. The word speculum should make you think of a gynecological procedure involving a cold surgical instrument. If you can't imagine this, just think of two metal spoons wedging your eyelids open.
3. Relax.
4. A ring will be pressed on your eye and suctioned to the cornea. You may feel some discomfort.
5. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stare directly into the red light. If you can't do this one simple thing then maybe you shouldn't have this procedure!
6. A cutting instrument is attached to the suction ring. This blade will cut a flap in your eye to open the cornea like a flip-top box. The doctor will then dry your cornea by blowing on it as if it's a hot cup of coffee.
7. The laser is programmed to vaporize layers of your corneal tissue. For you, this will take one solid minute. It will be the longest minute of your life. The odor of burning hair will pervade your flesh. This is normal.
8. If you flinch, we cannot be held responsible for vaporizing tissue that should not be vaporized. Please be aware that something could go wrong, horribly wrong, at any time during the procedure. This may add a dimension of frantic urgency to your spirituality.
9. The doctor will use a tiny squeegee to put your corneal flap back in place. A shield will be placed over your eye. No stitches are used to hold the flap in place. If you rub your eye or put pressure on it, the flap may come loose or get folded over and then you will be sorry. Please refrain from poking yourself in the eye until the flap has healed.
10. Don't worry about putting the stuffing back into the teddy bear. Our staff handles that.
Not a cell phone thing, but when I went to see SW: AOTC the opening weekend the guy next to me would not shut up during the beginning of the movie. I politely asked him to be quiet and he said that he had paid for a ticket and would talk as much as he goddamned wanted. In my most syrupy-sweet voice I said that yes, he could talk as much as he goddamned wanted but that this theater was full of fanboys who had been waiting months to see this movie and might want to shut up if he didn't want to get his ass kicked. A few men I didn't know sitting near me turned around and said "you should really listen to her because I'd help" and that was the end of that.
I just wish it was that easy all of the time.
Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam has been writing some stuff for ukulele. One of my friends who is a huge Pearl Jam fan said that the band is even doing a "fan art" contest where they want people to submit ukulele inspired creations.
WARNING!
I clicked on the link to read the quotes and it tried to install Gator on my machine. Don't go there (or be really careful if you do.)
Evil! Evil! Evil!
I fondly remember writting a spell checker in assembler.
:-)
Sorry, dude, too easy to pass up.
I went to see Spider-Man this weekend and, after I sat down, saw that my ticket said Attack of the Clones. I asked a couple of people around me and they said the same thing. I wonder if that was just a ticket seller who didn't know what she was doing or intentional to inflate the amount of money Star Wars took in, at my theater at least. Wonder if they got some kind of bonus for Star Wars ticket sales or another incentive.
I agree. If my coworker and I provide the same level of value, he should not be docked simply because I have US citizenship and he is still working towards his Green Card.
Location of residence will always (and should) play a factor in salary decisions. It is logical that an employee living in Louisiana would make a different salary than a comparable employee living in Silicon Valley or another comparable employee living in Russia. What I am saying is that while country or city of residence is a logical factor in salary decisions, country of origin is not.
The argument that I've heard for the salary discrepancies is the extra cost for helping H1-B workers obtain Green Cards, but I think that is bull. It can't possibly cost *that* much considering most companies aren't exactly busting their humps to get their employees permanent status ASAP. On the contrary, it seems that it's in their financial interest to keep them on visas as long as possible.
I'll concede that when US companies pay workers who live and work in another country lower wages than a worker who live in the US, it could be a beneficial situation for both. The worker (hopefully) is getting a higher paycheck than he could get from a local employer and the US company saves on labor.
What I think is disgusting is how many US companies cheat foreign workers who come to the US on H1-B visas. I helped one of my coworkers with his taxes because he had never filed a US tax return before. We have similar skills but our employer was paying him a third of what they pay me. Apparently, this is very common and I think it's wrong. Salaries for visa workers should be determined by the cost of living of where the employee is working and living, not his country of origin.
What I think an ad campaign that would be persuasive would be a series of commercials where people talk about what they do with their TiVos that other people might connect with. Examples from things I've heard my friends say:
My ad would be: I like going out on Thursdays but I also like Survivor. I used to record it on my VCR but I hated that if I got home at 8:20, I'd have to wait until it finished at 9 to watch it. Now, I can start watching it from the beginning whenever I get home AND I don't have to worry about accidentally seeing who got voted off while rewinding.
Joe's: I love watching Julia Roberts when she's on Letterman. I set up my TiVo to record any time Julia's on a talk show so that I'll never miss it.
Mark's: I'm a big movie fan. I set my TiVo up to record any movie that won an Oscar for Best Picture.
And, of course, someone watching a basketball game who pauses the TV before the "big point" so he can pay the pizza guy.
These are all things that I think the average TV viewer could relate to and I think all of them are things that wouldn't anger the TV networks. (Like "I fast-forward through commercials" would.)
Whoops. Meant Tulane University Police Department (TUPD). Been a while.
Where I went to school, the police department was called the Tulane Department Police Department (TUPD). Problem is that almost all references were quickly graffitied into sTUPiD. Last time I visited, I noticed that they were now called Tulane Department of Public Safety.
That was so prevalent where I went that the School of Engineering actually printed up shirts that said:
lim (Engineering) = Business
gpa --> 0
Good luck buying a TiVo. Things may be better now, but I had a really hard time getting one in January. The message I got from Best Buy, Circuit City, and most web sites was "we don't have them in stock and don't know when, if ever, we'll get them again." It was ridiculous -- I must have gone to 10-15 sites. I think it may have something to do with the fact that TiVo is coming out with a new DVR that also lets you play MP3s and buy things through the remote in a couple of months. They may have gotten rid of a lot of their existing stock of the old players and not wanted to make too many more before releasing their new player. (My experience was with the regular TiVo. My friend had better luck with the DirectTiVo.) I finally found one through 800.com electronics.
I'll admit it. I get that "engineer's dread" right before I have to set up a new gadget. (The "I have a degree in engineering and will look really stupid if I can't figure out how to wire this stupid thing up" worry.) I also resign myself to having to make at least one trip to Radio Shack.
Given that my TiVo had to hook together with the cable box, my TV, my VCR, DVD player, sound system, and the phone line, I thought it was going to be awful. It was one of the easiest things I've ever set up. They had pretty much idiot-proof instructions and every cord or cable you could need for almost any possible configuration of devices. I think they could legitimately stress ease of setup and use in their ads and win over some Joe SixPacks who fight with their VCRs. (Clear directions! Record a whole season by pushing one button! Never look at a blinking 12:00 again!)
(BTW -- I yanked the VCR out of the mix 2 weeks later and moved it to another TV. Between the TiVo and my DVD player, the VCR was pointless)
Your points, etc. are fed into the Problem Driver Pointer System, a huge database maintained by AAMVA that collects all bad driver data across the US. From the web site: "PDPS is intended to assist jurisdictions in the meeting the basic tenet that each driver, nationwide, have only one driver license and one record through the cooperative exchange of problem driver information between jurisdictions."
Here is an interesting idea that some people have on how to stop people from getting real licenses by forging SS cards and birth certificates. They suggest that when you go to get a license, the DMV will query other agency and commercial databases and present you with challenge questions that make you prove your identity. The financial industry is already doing this. I know when I requested my credit report online, I had to answer a bunch of multiple choice questions like "What is the monthly payment for your auto loan with Chase bank?" before they would authenticate me. States could make you answer questions correctly on things like your tax refund, driving history, etc. to prove you are who you say you are.
Sounds like it would be more secure than the current methods but it does create a huge Big Brother infrastructure by linking all of those databases. Also, I know how hard it was to get an error on my credit report erased. I imagine maintaining the integrity of this would be a mess. Still, the concept is interesting.