It's cheaper than PayPal. It's cheaper than Interac Email. Heck, it's cheaper than the ATM transaction fees to taking out cash. Too bad it is yet another bank account to manage. It would have been nice if they had buy-in from Interac for this.
Parent reading the bedtime story vs. Kindle2 reading the bedtime story is an interesting argument. Let's take it further - it's 100 years into the future and the android nanny is putting the kids to bed. Is it illegal for the nanny to read the bedtime story aloud? It's text-to-speech after all. This is like a really boring chapter of I, Robot...
I don't even see how this would reduce revenue at all.
Today if I want an audiobook, I'll go buy the audiobook. I won't buy the paper book as well.
In the future, when TTS is perfect and indistinguishable from a real human, if I want an audiobook I'll go buy the book and have my eBook read it to me.
In both scenarios, I purchased the book once. And as noted, in scenario 2 I can't resell the eBook. Why are they against this again? Maybe the Voice Actors Guild should be worried, but not the author's guild.
It's also led to a LOT of news and talk shows. On CTV today I see news at 6AM-9AM (news talk show), 12-1PM, 1PM-1:30PM (news talk show), 5-5:30PM, 5:30-6:00PM, 6:00-7:00PM, 7-7:30PM (news talk show), 11-11:30PM, and 11:30PM-midnight. 8 hours of "news" programming, all of it Canadian content. I don't see any other Canadian programming on at all today on CTV.
If you are talking about Bell TV and Star Choice inserting commercials into US broadcasts, then you need to blame the US broadcasters. The same thing happens in smaller markets in the US - the broadcaster has a "national" commercial that the "local" re-broadcaster is allowed to replace. In this case, the re-broadcaster is Bell TV and Star Choice.
If you are talking about Bell TV and Star Choice replacing the US broadcast with the Canadian broadcast of the same show, you can blame licensing agreements. For example, CTV pays for the rights to show CSI in Canada. If you try to watch it on CBS instead, you can't because the CTV feed gets put in place of the CBS feed during that show. (The CRTC is only involved in that there is a long list of rules defining when and how they can make this switch.) The re-broadcaster (Bell TV, Star Choice) is forced to make this switch - they don't have any say in the matter.
You can already see similar agreements in place online. Try heading on over to comedycentral.com from anywhere in Canada and you will be redirected to thecomedynetwork.ca. The CRTC and your ISP didn't have anything to do with it.
If a local Canadian station is over-the-air broadcasting the same show, in the same format, at the same time as a US station, then the CRTC says that the cable/satellite company must "override" the US broadcast for the Canadian one. If CTV is broadcasting the superbowl in SD only, and NBC is showing it in HD, you don't get the substitution on the HD channel. There are very few HD over-the-air channels in Canada right now (Vancouver and Toronto mostly, CTV just launched an HD broadcast in Calgary a few days before the superbowl) so most people (unless they are on Bell TV, who just gives the whole country the Toronto feeds) still get unmolested US HD feeds.
Amazon even disables their service within the US if you don't use a US credit card. (I can walk into any record store in the US while on vacation and buy a CD or DVD using my credit card, but I can't buy songs or videos from Amazon because I don't have a US billing address. How silly.)
It's the Mars Lander (Phoenix), not the Mars Rover, that is going into standby.
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
Are you the ass who manages to get 2 suitcases and a laptop bag (and a coat, and a briefcase) on every United flight I have taken in the last 2 years? Since I usually take a aisle seat, and United boards the aisle seats last, this means I often get to carry my laptop bag and coat on my lap for the entire flight since every overhead bin is crammed full long before I even got in line to board.
I think that banning "suitcase" carry on bags would be one of the best things any airline could do. The plane would board and deplane faster, and there would be more room on the plane for humans.
It -can- be transmitted over analog, the standard is CGMS-A. That doesn't mean it -was- transmitted over analog in this case.
For those who are using digital cable with a set-top cable box, the CGMS-A flags will get inserted into the analog video output signal based on the presence of their digital counter parts. So using the component, RF, or S-Video outputs won't solve this problem (unless you are using a device to "fix" the VBI.)
Yes, you could blame MS for actually obeying the do not copy flag. You can also blame just about every DVD recorder on the market (they also obey these flags.) However, MS had to agree to obey these flags in order to get Vista CableCard certified, so really you can blame Cablelabs too.
You also need to blame NBC. The do not copy flag is ONLY supposed to be used for pay-per-view and video-on-demand content. So called "High Value" content. Putting it on any other content is not only a mistake, it can also get you a hefty FCC fine (assuming the FCC cared about anything other than nipples.)
In the end, you can likely blame the producers of video encoding software and hardware. They make it WAY too easy to enable the do not copy flag. If you look for it, you can often see it popping up on commercials, the evening news, etc. It's not supposed to be there, but it's all too easy to accidentally enable it.
The thing is, many elite athletes are already tracked, just not with GPS. They have to fill out detailed logs accounting for their locations and activities for every hour of the day. If the information they provide is found to be inaccurate, they can be suspended or fined.
I picked up a 500GB HP Media Vault recently, and it works great. Runs BusyBox, has 2 drive bays for up to 1.3TB, and only cost me $180. The new Windows based Media Vaults are coming out, and a lot of places are clearing out the older versions for a song.
the whole pay you 6+ bucks a month for the box thing is getting old.
A nice HD dual tuner PVR costs more than a decent PC. That's just the way it is. Motorola charges $500+ for the box, the cable company will sell it to you for $600, or rent it to you for $6/month. Those are your simplest choices.
Motorola, SA, and Pace are not going to just sell boxes one at a time to end customers, just like you can't call up GM headquarters and buy a truck. You have to deal with a distributor. Don't want to buy the box from Comcast? Buy it from TWC, or Cox, or one of the small online retailers. They will sell you a cable card ready STB that will work on your cable companies plant. Then call up your cable company and get a cable card.
CableCard was never designed to benefit the end customer. It was never designed to benefit the cable company. It was never designed to benefit the STB companies. It was designed to benefit the big consumer electronics companies. Sony absolutely hates that they put all of the effort into interface branding on their TVs, only to have you see the Motorola UI on the STB. CableCard is 100% about letting the big guys like Sony build devices that have their own branding and will work with digital cable.
Cable companies hate CableCard as much as you do. A CableCard costs more than a low-end STB. So now you have almost doubled the cost to get a customer hooked up to digital cable. Which is why a lot of them are dragging their feet on CableCard support and waiting on DCAS. Yup, give it a couple of years and your CableCard system will be obsolete.
Most (good) credit cards have a 60-90 day price protection policy. Check into it, you might be able to get some cash by filling out a form and sending in some receipts.
CableCard is a stop-gap solution. It DOUBLES the cost of a low-end cable set top box. That sucks. Almost all of the cable companies were begging the FCC to let them develop DCAS, the Dowloadable Conditional Access System. Some smaller cable companies have received permission to ignore CableCard entirely. You wouldn't need a special card to insert into your set top box of choice with DCAS, you would be able to download a software module that does the conditional access. This only adds a small cost to each box. (Although it makes certification of the entire box a pain, since you have to have a secure computing platform now...)
But the FCC said "sorry, time's up", so consumers get CableCard today, while the proper (DCAS) solution will replace it in about 2 years.
I have this feeling that the people who whine about how Nickleback has only one style are the same people who whine when U2 releases an album that isn't a clone of The Joshua Tree.
They found success with a style, fans demand more of the same, and they delivered. Kinda like Austin Powers 2.
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It's cheaper than PayPal. It's cheaper than Interac Email. Heck, it's cheaper than the ATM transaction fees to taking out cash. Too bad it is yet another bank account to manage. It would have been nice if they had buy-in from Interac for this.
But cheap cars can succeed. Just look at the Hyundai Pony. It was the best selling car in Canada the year it was released.
Parent reading the bedtime story vs. Kindle2 reading the bedtime story is an interesting argument. Let's take it further - it's 100 years into the future and the android nanny is putting the kids to bed. Is it illegal for the nanny to read the bedtime story aloud? It's text-to-speech after all. This is like a really boring chapter of I, Robot...
I don't even see how this would reduce revenue at all.
Today if I want an audiobook, I'll go buy the audiobook. I won't buy the paper book as well.
In the future, when TTS is perfect and indistinguishable from a real human, if I want an audiobook I'll go buy the book and have my eBook read it to me.
In both scenarios, I purchased the book once. And as noted, in scenario 2 I can't resell the eBook. Why are they against this again? Maybe the Voice Actors Guild should be worried, but not the author's guild.
I sure hope there is a 5th season, but I have no evidence either way.
It's also led to a LOT of news and talk shows. On CTV today I see news at 6AM-9AM (news talk show), 12-1PM, 1PM-1:30PM (news talk show), 5-5:30PM, 5:30-6:00PM, 6:00-7:00PM, 7-7:30PM (news talk show), 11-11:30PM, and 11:30PM-midnight. 8 hours of "news" programming, all of it Canadian content. I don't see any other Canadian programming on at all today on CTV.
If you are talking about Bell TV and Star Choice inserting commercials into US broadcasts, then you need to blame the US broadcasters. The same thing happens in smaller markets in the US - the broadcaster has a "national" commercial that the "local" re-broadcaster is allowed to replace. In this case, the re-broadcaster is Bell TV and Star Choice.
If you are talking about Bell TV and Star Choice replacing the US broadcast with the Canadian broadcast of the same show, you can blame licensing agreements. For example, CTV pays for the rights to show CSI in Canada. If you try to watch it on CBS instead, you can't because the CTV feed gets put in place of the CBS feed during that show. (The CRTC is only involved in that there is a long list of rules defining when and how they can make this switch.) The re-broadcaster (Bell TV, Star Choice) is forced to make this switch - they don't have any say in the matter.
You can already see similar agreements in place online. Try heading on over to comedycentral.com from anywhere in Canada and you will be redirected to thecomedynetwork.ca. The CRTC and your ISP didn't have anything to do with it.
ReGenesis is, without a doubt, the best SciFi show on the air today.
If a local Canadian station is over-the-air broadcasting the same show, in the same format, at the same time as a US station, then the CRTC says that the cable/satellite company must "override" the US broadcast for the Canadian one. If CTV is broadcasting the superbowl in SD only, and NBC is showing it in HD, you don't get the substitution on the HD channel. There are very few HD over-the-air channels in Canada right now (Vancouver and Toronto mostly, CTV just launched an HD broadcast in Calgary a few days before the superbowl) so most people (unless they are on Bell TV, who just gives the whole country the Toronto feeds) still get unmolested US HD feeds.
Amazon even disables their service within the US if you don't use a US credit card. (I can walk into any record store in the US while on vacation and buy a CD or DVD using my credit card, but I can't buy songs or videos from Amazon because I don't have a US billing address. How silly.)
It's the Mars Lander (Phoenix), not the Mars Rover, that is going into standby.
Are you the ass who manages to get 2 suitcases and a laptop bag (and a coat, and a briefcase) on every United flight I have taken in the last 2 years? Since I usually take a aisle seat, and United boards the aisle seats last, this means I often get to carry my laptop bag and coat on my lap for the entire flight since every overhead bin is crammed full long before I even got in line to board.
I think that banning "suitcase" carry on bags would be one of the best things any airline could do. The plane would board and deplane faster, and there would be more room on the plane for humans.
It -can- be transmitted over analog, the standard is CGMS-A. That doesn't mean it -was- transmitted over analog in this case.
For those who are using digital cable with a set-top cable box, the CGMS-A flags will get inserted into the analog video output signal based on the presence of their digital counter parts. So using the component, RF, or S-Video outputs won't solve this problem (unless you are using a device to "fix" the VBI.)
Yes, you could blame MS for actually obeying the do not copy flag. You can also blame just about every DVD recorder on the market (they also obey these flags.) However, MS had to agree to obey these flags in order to get Vista CableCard certified, so really you can blame Cablelabs too.
You also need to blame NBC. The do not copy flag is ONLY supposed to be used for pay-per-view and video-on-demand content. So called "High Value" content. Putting it on any other content is not only a mistake, it can also get you a hefty FCC fine (assuming the FCC cared about anything other than nipples.)
In the end, you can likely blame the producers of video encoding software and hardware. They make it WAY too easy to enable the do not copy flag. If you look for it, you can often see it popping up on commercials, the evening news, etc. It's not supposed to be there, but it's all too easy to accidentally enable it.
The thing is, many elite athletes are already tracked, just not with GPS. They have to fill out detailed logs accounting for their locations and activities for every hour of the day. If the information they provide is found to be inaccurate, they can be suspended or fined.
All this does is automate the process.
I picked up a 500GB HP Media Vault recently, and it works great. Runs BusyBox, has 2 drive bays for up to 1.3TB, and only cost me $180. The new Windows based Media Vaults are coming out, and a lot of places are clearing out the older versions for a song.
the whole pay you 6+ bucks a month for the box thing is getting old.
A nice HD dual tuner PVR costs more than a decent PC. That's just the way it is. Motorola charges $500+ for the box, the cable company will sell it to you for $600, or rent it to you for $6/month. Those are your simplest choices.
Motorola, SA, and Pace are not going to just sell boxes one at a time to end customers, just like you can't call up GM headquarters and buy a truck. You have to deal with a distributor. Don't want to buy the box from Comcast? Buy it from TWC, or Cox, or one of the small online retailers. They will sell you a cable card ready STB that will work on your cable companies plant. Then call up your cable company and get a cable card.
CableCard was never designed to benefit the end customer. It was never designed to benefit the cable company. It was never designed to benefit the STB companies. It was designed to benefit the big consumer electronics companies. Sony absolutely hates that they put all of the effort into interface branding on their TVs, only to have you see the Motorola UI on the STB. CableCard is 100% about letting the big guys like Sony build devices that have their own branding and will work with digital cable.
Cable companies hate CableCard as much as you do. A CableCard costs more than a low-end STB. So now you have almost doubled the cost to get a customer hooked up to digital cable. Which is why a lot of them are dragging their feet on CableCard support and waiting on DCAS. Yup, give it a couple of years and your CableCard system will be obsolete.
I carry a circular slide rule with me on my wrist.
It's possibly one of the geekiest watches available.
Most (good) credit cards have a 60-90 day price protection policy. Check into it, you might be able to get some cash by filling out a form and sending in some receipts.
CableCard is a stop-gap solution. It DOUBLES the cost of a low-end cable set top box. That sucks. Almost all of the cable companies were begging the FCC to let them develop DCAS, the Dowloadable Conditional Access System. Some smaller cable companies have received permission to ignore CableCard entirely. You wouldn't need a special card to insert into your set top box of choice with DCAS, you would be able to download a software module that does the conditional access. This only adds a small cost to each box. (Although it makes certification of the entire box a pain, since you have to have a secure computing platform now...)
But the FCC said "sorry, time's up", so consumers get CableCard today, while the proper (DCAS) solution will replace it in about 2 years.
I have this feeling that the people who whine about how Nickleback has only one style are the same people who whine when U2 releases an album that isn't a clone of The Joshua Tree.
They found success with a style, fans demand more of the same, and they delivered. Kinda like Austin Powers 2.
So close - it's Aliens vs Predator vs Batman.
Check out http://www.ncomputing.com/ncomputing/products/dire ct.php
You can install this PCI card and have up to 4 users on a single Windows PC at the same time. Install 2 cards and have up to 7 users.
One card and 3 extenders cost less than $225.
I had not read the bit by Sailer - I was not aware of it until right now. Perhaps he should summarize it in a humorous book form...
Who said I supported him? Just some guy who co-authored a book to me.