I agree with you. I have a ReplayTV and love it; I recently bought a Tivo for my folks and they love it.
In fact, I even find some things on the Tivo better than the ReplayTV. (And vice versa, although less of that.)
However, the one thing that bothers them the most is that, after they do the key sequence to convert the "return to live" button to be "skip ahead 30 seconds", it works for a day or so and then resets itself!
This is atrocious. Devices once configured should stay configured, otherwise we should save them from the terrible secret of space and push (shove?) the damn thing down the stairs.
I still have a ReplayTV 2020. I've upgraded it from 20 GB to 80 GB, and even that seems too small now (I save too many movies...).
I have had this device since early 2000. That's over 5 years. I bought the "lifetime subscription" (you couldn't buy it without it back then; then price was about $200 more than Tivo, and was worth it because of the subscription difference). I haven't had any issues with the device that weren't caused by the cable company (i.e., downtime).
I knew they were sold to SonicBlue, but didn't know they had been sold to DNNA. Nice to know, but my service hasn't even been interrupted. Go Replay!
My only gripe is this old model doesn't save the captions, so I can't play it back with captions. (I like widening my peripheral vision...)
And I've always liked that it's composed of two words, "go ogle", which can be interpreted to mean "searching" or "looking for". (And turn off the adult filters and image search "brick" to ogle for your self!)
Your paranoia is not sufficient for me to reveal my identity. Thus, I can tell you with full certainty that I did receive a letter from BayTSP, regarding the download of the movie Mean Girls, which I never downloaded and in fact own, so a) why would I download it, and b) wouldn't that make downloading legal, from a backup standpoint?
However, I will not make a copy of the letter available for you to read. You'll just have to trust me on this. (In my case it was a movie, not a TV show, and re-reading your post it seems to be more questioning whether downloaders of TV shows will receive the letter, but it also seems to question whether downloaders (who are also uploaders in bittorrent) are getting letters at all; I can tell you that they are.)
I remember an old episode of The Young Ones (also invented in the 80s, at least that's when I saw the BBC sitcom on MTV), in which the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse were sitting around eating sandwiches, and one of them asked, "So, Death, what's new?" He replied, in a deep bass monotone, "Microchip technology."
I was ROFL.;-) The joke's a bit dated now; I suppose you could change it to be "Nanotechnology" but then it just kinda wears...
The robots will remove manufacturing jobs and ever expanding self-service industry will cut out jobs from the service sector.
And it's probably not all that difficult (engineering-wise) to re-tool an automobile plant to produce... more robots!
Then they can start selling the robots to the other auto manufacturers. This will eliminate their competitive advantage, at least as far as making cars goes, but they'd be the sole supplier of robots which would make them some profit.[1]
The future (for humans) lies in design, not the mundane act of moving dirt around.
[1] -- I'm not too sold on whether it makes good business sense, though, as keeping their automotive competitive advantage may make financial sense (or, may make sense for a few years). And "sole supplier" may sound a bit too-far-juice, but it's definitely possible if patents are involved.
OT re: your sig: I do the same thing. I like to hear what people who don't like me have to say; either it confirms why they don't like me (ideologically opposed), or it may help me improve.
I also give a +1 bonus to my Foes. I may have once disagreed with something they said (the one Foe I have was verbally abusive to me in a post), but it's sometimes amusing to watch him fucking up elsewhere.;-)
Just remember that when you're faced with losing a job to the robot overlords, you've got to stand tall, don't think small, don't get your back against the wall.
She reminds me, quite a lot, of a young Jessica Alba. (I loved Dark Angel, then saw an old movie she was in and only barely recognized her; apparently, she got a lip job between the movie and Dark Angel because her lips were so much smaller in the movie.)
With a swarming protocol, the more boxes you put in people's houses, the less it costs to distribute the data.
Just because a person doesn't pay for a show doesn't mean it might not already be on their box--it'll just be hidden, waiting for them to pay their $0.12 for it.
In fact the current "problem" in copyright is that it simply falls apart when you attempt to extend it to were it was never intended to go, where it was never intended apply and never expected to function, the non-commercial activities of millions of individuals.
In fact, you could go even further and say that the current administration is attempting to bring scarcity back to a non-scarce world.
With bits, digital works can be copied exactly, for "nothing", and the original owner still retains the original (so copying is not "theft" in any way). This is quite literally unheard of in generations past; all copying back then required a lot of time and effort (and therefore money, since time and effort are both expenses).
Today, copying is simple, requires almost no cost (basically electricity, and if the media isn't local then you might want to purchase an Internet connection as well), and gives us a world of abundance.
Books, music, movies, radio and TV shows are all freely available, if you know the right place to look and can manage to hide your presence from BayTSP et al. Every citizen should have both the ability and the right to download the entire Library of Congress for their perusal. It saddens me that we haven't yet achieved that.
Libraries don't have to be physical places any more. It costs much money for inter-library loan, since they have to spend gas and people's time in packing and shipping and stocking. If library patrons could simply turn on their computer to download books from the library, it would save so much time and money, and we'd be a more efficient society.
Sadly, efficiency in society is not what the current administration desires.
Both meth and P2P are equally harmful when laying dormant. Just because I make a P2P app, or methamphetamine, doesn't mean I'm going to use it to break the law. (Well, the law is "possession" of a substance == go directly to jail, but that's just an insidious way of controlling the populace by planting evidence.)
I could be doing chemistry experiments, and just seeing if I have the skills/ability to make a particular substance. Just like Bram Cohen made BitTorrent for Linux ISOs, and does not infringe on copyright.
Meth is simple to make, but I don't see anyone using that as excuse to make it legal.
No, but it is one of the reasons that it's a "social infection" that's damn hard to stamp out.
Same with pot. It's a weed, fer chrissakes. It'll find a way to grow through concrete, and in areas where other plants will die. It's practically impossible to eradicate it (until we've got nanotech, but even then I think it would be foolish to attempt; once we have nanotech, there'll be much easier ways to achieve a high with far fewer side effects; and it can be maintained indefinitely while being ultra-productive as well).
Hmm, you just gave me an idea for the next vector of infection: a virus which changes your Registry's idea of the license number to a known hacked one, thereby preventing future Service Packs from being able to be installed (and also increase a business' chances of an audit by teh SPA).
Hopefully that can be protected against, too... I'm not sure how it's configured in the Registry, perhaps they already encrypt it, but if XP can decrypt it to verify, then someone can debug while it does so...
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal! Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys! [Gates' lackeys trash the room.] Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on! Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
-- Bill Gates buys Homer's Internet company, "Das Bus"
So... you're saying that speeding and megadollar fraud are equivalent?
I realize this is somewhat OT, but I have a really hard time with speeding being a crime. I mean, yes, the intent was to reduce injuries and fatalities, and I haven't looked up how the stats differ between flat Kansas, NYC, and Germany's autobahn, so there might be something to it...
But it seems to me that it's used these days more as an income base for the local/state government than any actual reduction in public harm. Somewhat like those new red light cameras that were installed with new yellow lights that cycle faster (in order to maximize "revenue").
It just irks me that something that causes no harm is something that can result in a punishment. It's not far from there to a complete police state (which it's looking like we already have: from another story, a guy is getting 25 years for shining a laser pointer... up...).
Do I like seeing American soldiers dying trying to help free Iraq? Hell NO!!! Should we be doing it? Hell YES!!!
Feel free to volunteer for the armed services and put your money where your mouth is.
The fact that we didn't even declare war before bombing the shit out of Bagdad (and still haven't!) is to me atrocious. But not so atrocious as the loss of a single American citizen in a military action which was uncalled for.
If the evidence isn't clear, I think prudence would have us gather more evidence instead of scare-mongering the world (or, more accurately, the American consumers) into believing that Saddam was a threat. War isn't something to be entered into lightly, and there are plenty of other options available to us before we start shooting and bombing.
No offense, but you just basically said "We should make sure all humans on the planet have full bellies before we attempt space travel."
Why, in your mind, are the two mutually exclusive? Some areas are a lot more expensive to get bandwidth to. Should everyone be forced to the lowest common denominator? What happened to capitalism, in which you can spend your money wherever you choose to? ("You" including corporations.)
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In fact, I even find some things on the Tivo better than the ReplayTV. (And vice versa, although less of that.)
However, the one thing that bothers them the most is that, after they do the key sequence to convert the "return to live" button to be "skip ahead 30 seconds", it works for a day or so and then resets itself!
This is atrocious. Devices once configured should stay configured, otherwise we should save them from the terrible secret of space and push (shove?) the damn thing down the stairs.
I have had this device since early 2000. That's over 5 years. I bought the "lifetime subscription" (you couldn't buy it without it back then; then price was about $200 more than Tivo, and was worth it because of the subscription difference). I haven't had any issues with the device that weren't caused by the cable company (i.e., downtime).
I knew they were sold to SonicBlue, but didn't know they had been sold to DNNA. Nice to know, but my service hasn't even been interrupted. Go Replay!
My only gripe is this old model doesn't save the captions, so I can't play it back with captions. (I like widening my peripheral vision...)
No wife, no horse, and no moustache either...
And I've always liked that it's composed of two words, "go ogle", which can be interpreted to mean "searching" or "looking for". (And turn off the adult filters and image search "brick" to ogle for your self!)
However, I will not make a copy of the letter available for you to read. You'll just have to trust me on this. (In my case it was a movie, not a TV show, and re-reading your post it seems to be more questioning whether downloaders of TV shows will receive the letter, but it also seems to question whether downloaders (who are also uploaders in bittorrent) are getting letters at all; I can tell you that they are.)
I'm surprised Jon Stewart didn't make the list...
I was ROFL. ;-) The joke's a bit dated now; I suppose you could change it to be "Nanotechnology" but then it just kinda wears...
I haven't seen Coupling in a year or so but I believe that was probably Jeff's diatribe. Thanks for the recall. ;-)
And it's probably not all that difficult (engineering-wise) to re-tool an automobile plant to produce ... more robots!
Then they can start selling the robots to the other auto manufacturers. This will eliminate their competitive advantage, at least as far as making cars goes, but they'd be the sole supplier of robots which would make them some profit.[1]
The future (for humans) lies in design, not the mundane act of moving dirt around.
[1] -- I'm not too sold on whether it makes good business sense, though, as keeping their automotive competitive advantage may make financial sense (or, may make sense for a few years). And "sole supplier" may sound a bit too-far-juice, but it's definitely possible if patents are involved.
I also give a +1 bonus to my Foes. I may have once disagreed with something they said (the one Foe I have was verbally abusive to me in a post), but it's sometimes amusing to watch him fucking up elsewhere. ;-)
Just remember that when you're faced with losing a job to the robot overlords, you've got to stand tall, don't think small, don't get your back against the wall.
She reminds me, quite a lot, of a young Jessica Alba. (I loved Dark Angel, then saw an old movie she was in and only barely recognized her; apparently, she got a lip job between the movie and Dark Angel because her lips were so much smaller in the movie.)
Just because a person doesn't pay for a show doesn't mean it might not already be on their box--it'll just be hidden, waiting for them to pay their $0.12 for it.
In fact, you could go even further and say that the current administration is attempting to bring scarcity back to a non-scarce world.
With bits, digital works can be copied exactly, for "nothing", and the original owner still retains the original (so copying is not "theft" in any way). This is quite literally unheard of in generations past; all copying back then required a lot of time and effort (and therefore money, since time and effort are both expenses).
Today, copying is simple, requires almost no cost (basically electricity, and if the media isn't local then you might want to purchase an Internet connection as well), and gives us a world of abundance.
Books, music, movies, radio and TV shows are all freely available, if you know the right place to look and can manage to hide your presence from BayTSP et al. Every citizen should have both the ability and the right to download the entire Library of Congress for their perusal. It saddens me that we haven't yet achieved that.
Libraries don't have to be physical places any more. It costs much money for inter-library loan, since they have to spend gas and people's time in packing and shipping and stocking. If library patrons could simply turn on their computer to download books from the library, it would save so much time and money, and we'd be a more efficient society.
Sadly, efficiency in society is not what the current administration desires.
Both meth and P2P are equally harmful when laying dormant. Just because I make a P2P app, or methamphetamine, doesn't mean I'm going to use it to break the law. (Well, the law is "possession" of a substance == go directly to jail, but that's just an insidious way of controlling the populace by planting evidence.)
I could be doing chemistry experiments, and just seeing if I have the skills/ability to make a particular substance. Just like Bram Cohen made BitTorrent for Linux ISOs, and does not infringe on copyright.
No, but it is one of the reasons that it's a "social infection" that's damn hard to stamp out.
Same with pot. It's a weed, fer chrissakes. It'll find a way to grow through concrete, and in areas where other plants will die. It's practically impossible to eradicate it (until we've got nanotech, but even then I think it would be foolish to attempt; once we have nanotech, there'll be much easier ways to achieve a high with far fewer side effects; and it can be maintained indefinitely while being ultra-productive as well).
Heh, hydraulic assemblers...
Hopefully that can be protected against, too... I'm not sure how it's configured in the Registry, perhaps they already encrypt it, but if XP can decrypt it to verify, then someone can debug while it does so...
Because you throw them, too? (You bastard.)
Well, it might be tough to see, but the lasers the Ghosts use are visible...
Well, 8 weeks anyway...
I realize this is somewhat OT, but I have a really hard time with speeding being a crime. I mean, yes, the intent was to reduce injuries and fatalities, and I haven't looked up how the stats differ between flat Kansas, NYC, and Germany's autobahn, so there might be something to it...
But it seems to me that it's used these days more as an income base for the local/state government than any actual reduction in public harm. Somewhat like those new red light cameras that were installed with new yellow lights that cycle faster (in order to maximize "revenue").
It just irks me that something that causes no harm is something that can result in a punishment. It's not far from there to a complete police state (which it's looking like we already have: from another story, a guy is getting 25 years for shining a laser pointer ... up...).
Feel free to volunteer for the armed services and put your money where your mouth is.
The fact that we didn't even declare war before bombing the shit out of Bagdad (and still haven't!) is to me atrocious. But not so atrocious as the loss of a single American citizen in a military action which was uncalled for.
If the evidence isn't clear, I think prudence would have us gather more evidence instead of scare-mongering the world (or, more accurately, the American consumers) into believing that Saddam was a threat. War isn't something to be entered into lightly, and there are plenty of other options available to us before we start shooting and bombing.
Why, in your mind, are the two mutually exclusive? Some areas are a lot more expensive to get bandwidth to. Should everyone be forced to the lowest common denominator? What happened to capitalism, in which you can spend your money wherever you choose to? ("You" including corporations.)