If I could use NFC at every store that takes Paypass, and Google Wallet was available here, then I would be the first to sign up. One less piece of crap in my wallet.
See, that's the part I don't get. Even if you plan on using NFC in your phone, I would imagine you'd still have to carry cash or a credit card just in case. What if the reader is down, what if you need gas and they don't have a reader, etc. There are some places around here that take Paypass, but more that don't -- especially restaurants, grocery stores...all the place I tend to spend more than a few dollars at once. Even though I pay with credit whenever I can, it's still handy to have some cash on hand. Or am I over-thinking it -- do you hope to only shop where you can use your NFC device?
Yeah, that's flat out obnoxious. I like the one at Continental Airlines: "We are sorry but we are experiencing higher than usual call volume. Please try again later." Then they disconnect you. No chance to ever speak to anyone, which is a shame if, say, they cancel your flight, 200 angry people are lined up at the one woman at the ticket counter, and you're already four hours late for takeoff. Or so I've heard, anyway.
Along the same lines of your comment, Bank of America has this great feature to "Request a Chat", which would be perfect because I don't want to call (they have bad hours for phone support), and as I'm not an account holder I can't send an email (using their 'secure email' from inside your account)...except chat is never available. It's just there to taunt me. Sheesh.
Bank accounts (or at least I would, if my bank wasn't retarded).
What is this about? Seems to be more widespread than it should be. At one point, I had a bank account that, among other things, did not allow passwords longer than 8 or 10 characters. I think any non-alphanumeric characters were also out. And I'm supposed to trust them with my money?
I've also had an account somewhere (I forget if it was a 401k, employer payroll system to see my paycheck, or maybe something less important) that uses your SSN as the login name and requires a short (numeric-only) PIN for the password. Plus some sort of funky javascript to "encrypt" each character on each keypress (which also means I can't type it at breakneck speed).
Now, I go out of my way not to deal with companies that force me to use weak passwords...
You're speaking about the early days of TV -- history, really. The GP is speaking in the present tense, so while you're right about the origins, saying "That is so horribly wrong" is actually, um, wrong itself. I believe stox, the poster above you was correct when stating that the tolerances needed when color was introduced meant a better timing source was needed.
That's a great story..I mean, not the fact that the machine that makes or breaks the contract is that old and fragile, obviously, but I remember when my HDD was 20MB and there's no way I could recover some of those files anymore, or even use them if I could. It doesn't help that one of my biggest data losses was when I was in the middle of writing a file to 5.25" floppy on an Apple ][c -- which had no hard drive, and I was working on the only copy of my text files...and mistakenly pulled the disk before it had finished writing. Clobbered quite a bit in that one error in judgement, but fortunately it was only personal, nothing like the lathe you fixed. Nice of him to reward you (both finanicially and by telling your boss), but even better that he took your advice and checks things out monthly.
Some said I should have reamed the kid on the price, since he needed them so much, but by being square with the kid not only did we end up with the job modernizing their offices, but they probably threw us another $10k-$20k worth of work for businesses and families that were connected to them. So it pays in the long run to treat people with fairness, and not try to gouge them just because they are in a bad way.
I'm with you -- we have this same discussion at work from time to time and I never think it's worth getting a few extra dollars now at the expense of definetely never working for them again. As you said, better to be fair. I'd rather have that be my repuatation anyway.
I'm on the same page as you at least -- while we didn't bother going to extremes for the transfers as it was mostly personal stuff, one of my clients recently decommisioned their last 3/4" deck (somewhat prematurely, if you ask me, as a lot of important archival/historical material hasn't yet been transferred). The engineers spent that week cleaning all the oxide off the heads after just about each tape that went through, which is what came to mind when reading the GP.
I, of course, had the foresight to transfer my material years ago, but it was mostly the talent with their big interview of so-and-so or the time they were on location at such-and-such. I'd say only half of the tapes even played anymore. Wish i would have thought to help bake them, I could have been a hero:-)
It's kind of frustrating, though -- "back in the day" there were very few formats to chose from, now I've got material spread across at least five tape formats and four or five proprietary file types/codecs...in five or ten years, it's going to be a lot harder to transfer everything than it was getting material off of 3/4.
OSX ships with a much better PDF reader out of the box
I used to think this, then within a week or two I had the following problems
Created a PDF from OS X which someone couldn't open (not sure what reader she was using but as it was a corporate PC and she does a lot of PDF work, I assume it was the full Adobe suite).
Edited a lengthy interactive PDF, saved it with my input, and sent it back to someone else, who saw a blank form (I ended up using my PC which has Foxit Reader to re-enter everything).
Tried to open an interactive PDF that had form fields filled in, but the fields were just blank.
That's when I decided that Preview is okay for quickly viewing simple PDFs but that I really need to find a replacement program for anything serious.
Very interesting, but compare the details of the filing to the statement released by the superintendant that states:
Upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the District's security and technology departments...This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.
Seems someone needs to get their story straight...
Seriously, what could have made the school district think that this was, in any way, a good idea? Well, it seems bone-headed now but a year ago when (theoretically, I don't actually know) a few laptops were stolen on the bus, from the locker rooms...figuring out which students were stealing them doesn't seem so bad, does it? Okay, you're right, it still seems like a bad idea...
The main problem was with resource forks causing a bunch of._foo files, but there's not too much you can do about that if you're copying data from HFS+ to something else
Calling it "excellent" might be a stretch but a lot of what they do is generally "better than average" -- take Gmail, since that's mostly what this article is about. Before Google, no free email provider offered POP access, much less IMAP; incoming and outgoing attachments were required to be small, and archiving old messages was limited by severely small data limits. Gmail really raised the bar of expectations.
Not that being this way excuses their behavior, especially in cases like this; but there's certainly more to Google's "reputation for excellence" than just their search engine.
...OSX doesn't have native write support for NTFS.
Sure it does.
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/
No, that's not native, which the GP specifically mentioned. There's nothing like trying to coach my coworker through downloading and installing ntfs-3g (and, until the latest version, MacFUSE first) over the phone (especially the time there was no internet access). Good luck trying to explain why they need it, too, since the drive is RO with the native driver ("if I see it, why can't I write to it?").
Also, last time I checked (I don't use it that much), performance was abysmally slow. I just realized I'm a bit outdated, so I'll have to upgrade and see if that fixes it.
It's not really the same thing; in the US we have network breaks and local breaks, they're scheduled as such and all the local stations take their local breaks at the same time -- the network doesn't air anything during those spots so nothing is "covered up". In Canada, they apparently cover up both the local and network breaks with their own breaks, effectively blocking all the network commercials that we look forward to.
Hope I've explained this sufficiently; it's the difference between a scheduled local spot when there is no network spot run versus the (highly-anticipated) network spots being covered up.
Where do you get that BLACK is full power in an NTSC signal? Any time I look at a scope for analog signals I see black as 7.5 IRE and white as 100 IRE.
Actually, the GP is correct -- the US 525 (and most other modern systems, with the exception of France) use negative modulation. 100%+ white can even cause the RF transmitter to completely cut out, I'm told. (actually I just looked in to it a bit further, apparently anything over 130 IRE causes the zero carrier, which leads to the buzz we've all heard [leitch PDF]).
Anyway, IRE isn't the same as the percentage of full modulation -- IRE is a (somewhat invented) scale for referencing the luma information; to continue your scope comment you also see -40 IRE as part of the sync pulse; this of course doesn't correspond to the video signal being at -40% modulation, so it doesn't necessarily follow that 100 IRE == 100% modulation.
Anyway, this old wikipedia article[1] is the best explanation I can find online right now and also has some information on why negative modulation is preferable to positive modulation.
By the way, I'm not 100% certain but believe this negative modulation is only the AM RF over the air transmission and not the vanilla component/composite video in a facility. If that's true (and again, I'm not sure); that certainly would lead to further confusion in measuring and testing.
Hope this helps rather than confuses:-)
1: The section above about "IRE Interpretation" completely confuses me, though. I think the writer wrote "100% white" in a few places they meant "black"
Last I heard the only things actually broadcast in HD are the World series and the Super Bowl
Not to sound like a jerk, but what are you talking about? Every network's prime time programming is HD, as are most of the syndicated afternoon and evening shows, every network sports broadcast and many regional sports broadcasts, most network morning shows...the availability of HD telecasts is past the tipping point and has been for some time. Now as far as what the viewer at home actually sees, that's another matter (as other posters have mentioned, having the ability to receive HD signals and having an HD screen doesn't mean the viewer is tuned to the HD channel or has the best quality connection between their cable box and their set, but still; the programming is available.
Sorry to post here but you've no email address in your profile. What did you and your wife do at the Olympics? We might know each other. I do tape and EVS. My email address is in my profile here if you're interested in dropping me a line.
It lets you reconnect to your ssh sessions and pick up where you left of. My life's gotten a lot easier since I discovered it; perhaps it will help you as well.
No, what will make the iPhone 2G and 3G are software updates - that we can get on the iPod/iPhone of today
True enough the changes could be done in software -- but I doubt Apple would actually do so. I've got an iPod photo running the latest firmware but it lacks at least one key feature I'd love to have (searching). My friend's video iPod has it, I imagine it's a rather trivial feature to backport, but Apple would rather have me buy the newer hardware than stick with the one I've got. Not only do I want that feature (not enough to ditch my working-perfectly iPod), but now I've got feature-envy of my friend's toy. It's a great way to keep up the hype as well as move products.
Just my two cents; for what it's worth I agree with the rest of what you've said and found your second paragraph ("The iPhone...") very insightful.
just fyi, the car talk show is available as a podcast.
Thanks! They used to only offer the "Call of the Week" for free and charge for the entire podcast, but apparently that's changed now. I never would have known if not for this comment, so thanks!
Ah, yes -- a very good point and something I forgot about. The whole reason for that, though, is not the league's policy but can be blamed on one man: Bill Wirtz. As far as I know, no other team in the league has that kind of policy.
For those who don't know, as the owner of the Blackhawks he thinks TV coverage hurts actual game attendance which results in him loosing money. Of course fans hate him for this -- plus he doesn't want his team going to the Stanley Cup Playoffs since they're too expensive, go figure why the fans are angry. ESPN voted his leadership of the team the worst franchise in sports.
It's really a shame for fans like you, between ticket prices, not such a great record, and little TV coverage; it's no wonder you're an "almost former" fan.
Thanks for your interesting posts (I've read the other two as well). It's great to hear what you have to say on the matter. I don't know why this is even newsworthy, all my credentials say things similar to what you posted above, basically prohibiting written descriptions until at least after the game is over. From the high school football championships to the Stanley Cup Finals, there are some standard terms -- the guy knew (or should have known) the terms of his credential being issued, ignored them, and got caught. End of story.
By the way, I'm a freelance TV technician, I've probably worked at your university...I'm curious which one it is. I'm not a producer or anything, I just sit back and push buttons, so we've probably never met, but if you want to drop me a line my email address is in my profile.
This is the same motivation by which professional teams black out their local coverage when a game is not sold out.
This only can happen with NFL games; the rest (namely MLB and NHL) are stipulated by the league and the broadcaster's contract; for example if a game is being covered by both the home TV crew and ESPN, ESPN may be blacked out in certain areas so that viewers are forced to watch the game on the local broadcaster. National coverage seems to becoming more exclusive, see ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, Fox's Saturday afternoon baseball, and NBC's hockey coverage for instance, when their coverage is the only game being played and they have the exclusive TV rights to it.
The NFL blackouts are worst for the at-home fan, a game has to sell out 72 hours before gametime in order to be aired within something like 75 miles of the stadium. Instead of maybe not seeing the announce team you'd like as with the MLB, you just don't get to see your game at all.
I don't know offhand what the NCAA blackout restrictions are; I believe it's more a factor of the broadcaster's contract than it is a ticket-sales motivator.
Heh, that reminds me of a time I freaked an engineer out. I work in the sports broadcast end of things and casually called the engineer over because "the router locked up" and I needed him to reset it. Now the HD-SDI router controls everything, not only tape deck inputs but the monitor wall and even our transmission output, so loosing that would have been very very bad...well, I should have been more specific that it was the wireless internet router, not the video router, because when he came running back to me his blood pressure must have shot through the roof! Fortunately it was well before we went on the air and he had a good laugh about it once he realized that I hadn't ruined his day.
Me too! Class off 2003, though, so my news may be a bit dated. For all I know I was the only Linux user at the time (I had a desktop system running Debian). I had no trouble (other than the time cron started mailing error logs to root at kutztown.edu instead of root@localhost; but they were *very* friendly about that). At the time they were changing some policies; my last year they had a w2k server for students to use as a file server but hardly anyone did so. I was able to print from my windows laptop by plugging in to the network; I assume I could have done the same from Linux but never tried as the labs and resnet were on separate subnets or some such. At the time anyway, resnet was as simple as plugging in to the port in your room or the common area; you'd get an address from DHCP. We were firewalled off from the internet, so I couldn't host my own www or vnc server even though we had real IP addresses. There wasn't much to the resnet other than grabbing a DHCP address, so any platform that could handle that should have worked. No login required or any such business...very straightforward.
As far as the CIS department (where I took several CIS classes but I'm actually an Electronic Media grad), the C++ and Java programming was taught on Suns, which was great, since I already knew Linux. There were two classes in Visual Basic but as I recall everything else (algorithms, all the introductory stuff, etc) used the Suns.
presumeably, the reason they use blue and green is to allow for photography of subjects that are in the other color range (ie, guy with green shirt on bluescreen, guy with blueshirt on greenscreen). nobody keys against chroma red because obviously everyone's skin would cause them to be semi-transparent.
I doubt it -- the keyer only looks for the specific hue and chroma values you've selected; otherwise everything would be somewhat transparent even with green screens. That's why the green screen is so green, because they maximize the chroma in the key so the light greenish tint in your sweater won't key out. To put it in computer terms, since this is slashdot after all, it only keys out RGB values 0,255,0, so something of 0,200,0 is unaffected (this is just an analogy, the color space is different and 0,255,0 isn't even a legal value for video). I suspect the reason red isn't used is because analog video handles red very poorly and the key wouldn't be clean.
Like others have said, I don't know how well this would work; I think chromakey techniques (green or blue screens) are better (but because chroma keys are cleaner than luma keys, not because of the black problem); but your theory could work just fine under the right circumstances. I work in TV and have done keys just as you describe (though graphic keys, not people, but the concept is the same). With analog (composite) video, the blackest part of the picture should be 7.5% (IRE) -- not 0; because of some boring complicated details related to using a 60-ish year old standard. If you use, say, 0 or 3 IRE as the part to be keyed out and leave the true black of the image at 7.5 IRE, you could easily set your switcher to key properly with the proper black levels. What you describe is called a Luma Key.
Now a lot of production is done digitally (SDI), where the blacks are at 0%, so that makes it more complicated, but it might still work, though I haven't tried it.
It would allow lighting the subjects without worry about any light spill onto the background
A very interesting idea. There are plenty of times one wants exactly this effect and having walls like you describe might make it easier.
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If I could use NFC at every store that takes Paypass, and Google Wallet was available here, then I would be the first to sign up. One less piece of crap in my wallet.
See, that's the part I don't get. Even if you plan on using NFC in your phone, I would imagine you'd still have to carry cash or a credit card just in case. What if the reader is down, what if you need gas and they don't have a reader, etc. There are some places around here that take Paypass, but more that don't -- especially restaurants, grocery stores...all the place I tend to spend more than a few dollars at once. Even though I pay with credit whenever I can, it's still handy to have some cash on hand. Or am I over-thinking it -- do you hope to only shop where you can use your NFC device?
Yeah, that's flat out obnoxious. I like the one at Continental Airlines: "We are sorry but we are experiencing higher than usual call volume. Please try again later." Then they disconnect you. No chance to ever speak to anyone, which is a shame if, say, they cancel your flight, 200 angry people are lined up at the one woman at the ticket counter, and you're already four hours late for takeoff. Or so I've heard, anyway.
Along the same lines of your comment, Bank of America has this great feature to "Request a Chat", which would be perfect because I don't want to call (they have bad hours for phone support), and as I'm not an account holder I can't send an email (using their 'secure email' from inside your account)...except chat is never available. It's just there to taunt me. Sheesh.
What is this about? Seems to be more widespread than it should be. At one point, I had a bank account that, among other things, did not allow passwords longer than 8 or 10 characters. I think any non-alphanumeric characters were also out. And I'm supposed to trust them with my money?
I've also had an account somewhere (I forget if it was a 401k, employer payroll system to see my paycheck, or maybe something less important) that uses your SSN as the login name and requires a short (numeric-only) PIN for the password. Plus some sort of funky javascript to "encrypt" each character on each keypress (which also means I can't type it at breakneck speed).
Now, I go out of my way not to deal with companies that force me to use weak passwords...
You're speaking about the early days of TV -- history, really. The GP is speaking in the present tense, so while you're right about the origins, saying "That is so horribly wrong" is actually, um, wrong itself. I believe stox, the poster above you was correct when stating that the tolerances needed when color was introduced meant a better timing source was needed.
That's a great story..I mean, not the fact that the machine that makes or breaks the contract is that old and fragile, obviously, but I remember when my HDD was 20MB and there's no way I could recover some of those files anymore, or even use them if I could. It doesn't help that one of my biggest data losses was when I was in the middle of writing a file to 5.25" floppy on an Apple ][c -- which had no hard drive, and I was working on the only copy of my text files...and mistakenly pulled the disk before it had finished writing. Clobbered quite a bit in that one error in judgement, but fortunately it was only personal, nothing like the lathe you fixed. Nice of him to reward you (both finanicially and by telling your boss), but even better that he took your advice and checks things out monthly.
Some said I should have reamed the kid on the price, since he needed them so much, but by being square with the kid not only did we end up with the job modernizing their offices, but they probably threw us another $10k-$20k worth of work for businesses and families that were connected to them. So it pays in the long run to treat people with fairness, and not try to gouge them just because they are in a bad way.
I'm with you -- we have this same discussion at work from time to time and I never think it's worth getting a few extra dollars now at the expense of definetely never working for them again. As you said, better to be fair. I'd rather have that be my repuatation anyway.
I'm on the same page as you at least -- while we didn't bother going to extremes for the transfers as it was mostly personal stuff, one of my clients recently decommisioned their last 3/4" deck (somewhat prematurely, if you ask me, as a lot of important archival/historical material hasn't yet been transferred). The engineers spent that week cleaning all the oxide off the heads after just about each tape that went through, which is what came to mind when reading the GP.
I, of course, had the foresight to transfer my material years ago, but it was mostly the talent with their big interview of so-and-so or the time they were on location at such-and-such. I'd say only half of the tapes even played anymore. Wish i would have thought to help bake them, I could have been a hero :-)
It's kind of frustrating, though -- "back in the day" there were very few formats to chose from, now I've got material spread across at least five tape formats and four or five proprietary file types/codecs...in five or ten years, it's going to be a lot harder to transfer everything than it was getting material off of 3/4.
I used to think this, then within a week or two I had the following problems
That's when I decided that Preview is okay for quickly viewing simple PDFs but that I really need to find a replacement program for anything serious.
Very interesting, but compare the details of the filing to the statement released by the superintendant that states:
Seems someone needs to get their story straight...
Seriously, what could have made the school district think that this was, in any way, a good idea?
Well, it seems bone-headed now but a year ago when (theoretically, I don't actually know) a few laptops were stolen on the bus, from the locker rooms...figuring out which students were stealing them doesn't seem so bad, does it? Okay, you're right, it still seems like a bad idea...
Try rsrc = false in your unison profile.
Calling it "excellent" might be a stretch but a lot of what they do is generally "better than average" -- take Gmail, since that's mostly what this article is about. Before Google, no free email provider offered POP access, much less IMAP; incoming and outgoing attachments were required to be small, and archiving old messages was limited by severely small data limits. Gmail really raised the bar of expectations.
Not that being this way excuses their behavior, especially in cases like this; but there's certainly more to Google's "reputation for excellence" than just their search engine.
...OSX doesn't have native write support for NTFS.
Sure it does.
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/
No, that's not native, which the GP specifically mentioned. There's nothing like trying to coach my coworker through downloading and installing ntfs-3g (and, until the latest version, MacFUSE first) over the phone (especially the time there was no internet access). Good luck trying to explain why they need it, too, since the drive is RO with the native driver ("if I see it, why can't I write to it?").
Also, last time I checked (I don't use it that much), performance was abysmally slow. I just realized I'm a bit outdated, so I'll have to upgrade and see if that fixes it.
NTFS-3G is awesome, true, but isn't native.
It's not really the same thing; in the US we have network breaks and local breaks, they're scheduled as such and all the local stations take their local breaks at the same time -- the network doesn't air anything during those spots so nothing is "covered up". In Canada, they apparently cover up both the local and network breaks with their own breaks, effectively blocking all the network commercials that we look forward to.
Hope I've explained this sufficiently; it's the difference between a scheduled local spot when there is no network spot run versus the (highly-anticipated) network spots being covered up.
Where do you get that BLACK is full power in an NTSC signal? Any time I look at a scope for analog signals I see black as 7.5 IRE and white as 100 IRE.
Actually, the GP is correct -- the US 525 (and most other modern systems, with the exception of France) use negative modulation. 100%+ white can even cause the RF transmitter to completely cut out, I'm told. (actually I just looked in to it a bit further, apparently anything over 130 IRE causes the zero carrier, which leads to the buzz we've all heard [leitch PDF]).
Anyway, IRE isn't the same as the percentage of full modulation -- IRE is a (somewhat invented) scale for referencing the luma information; to continue your scope comment you also see -40 IRE as part of the sync pulse; this of course doesn't correspond to the video signal being at -40% modulation, so it doesn't necessarily follow that 100 IRE == 100% modulation.
Anyway, this old wikipedia article[1] is the best explanation I can find online right now and also has some information on why negative modulation is preferable to positive modulation.
By the way, I'm not 100% certain but believe this negative modulation is only the AM RF over the air transmission and not the vanilla component/composite video in a facility. If that's true (and again, I'm not sure); that certainly would lead to further confusion in measuring and testing.
Hope this helps rather than confuses :-)
1: The section above about "IRE Interpretation" completely confuses me, though. I think the writer wrote "100% white" in a few places they meant "black"
Not to sound like a jerk, but what are you talking about? Every network's prime time programming is HD, as are most of the syndicated afternoon and evening shows, every network sports broadcast and many regional sports broadcasts, most network morning shows...the availability of HD telecasts is past the tipping point and has been for some time. Now as far as what the viewer at home actually sees, that's another matter (as other posters have mentioned, having the ability to receive HD signals and having an HD screen doesn't mean the viewer is tuned to the HD channel or has the best quality connection between their cable box and their set, but still; the programming is available.
Hi Rokewaju,
Sorry to post here but you've no email address in your profile. What did you and your wife do at the Olympics? We might know each other. I do tape and EVS. My email address is in my profile here if you're interested in dropping me a line.
~ibennetch
One word: screen!
It lets you reconnect to your ssh sessions and pick up where you left of. My life's gotten a lot easier since I discovered it; perhaps it will help you as well.
True enough the changes could be done in software -- but I doubt Apple would actually do so. I've got an iPod photo running the latest firmware but it lacks at least one key feature I'd love to have (searching). My friend's video iPod has it, I imagine it's a rather trivial feature to backport, but Apple would rather have me buy the newer hardware than stick with the one I've got. Not only do I want that feature (not enough to ditch my working-perfectly iPod), but now I've got feature-envy of my friend's toy. It's a great way to keep up the hype as well as move products.
Just my two cents; for what it's worth I agree with the rest of what you've said and found your second paragraph ("The iPhone...") very insightful.
Thanks! They used to only offer the "Call of the Week" for free and charge for the entire podcast, but apparently that's changed now. I never would have known if not for this comment, so thanks!
Ah, yes -- a very good point and something I forgot about. The whole reason for that, though, is not the league's policy but can be blamed on one man: Bill Wirtz. As far as I know, no other team in the league has that kind of policy.
For those who don't know, as the owner of the Blackhawks he thinks TV coverage hurts actual game attendance which results in him loosing money. Of course fans hate him for this -- plus he doesn't want his team going to the Stanley Cup Playoffs since they're too expensive, go figure why the fans are angry. ESPN voted his leadership of the team the worst franchise in sports.
It's really a shame for fans like you, between ticket prices, not such a great record, and little TV coverage; it's no wonder you're an "almost former" fan.
Thanks for your interesting posts (I've read the other two as well). It's great to hear what you have to say on the matter. I don't know why this is even newsworthy, all my credentials say things similar to what you posted above, basically prohibiting written descriptions until at least after the game is over. From the high school football championships to the Stanley Cup Finals, there are some standard terms -- the guy knew (or should have known) the terms of his credential being issued, ignored them, and got caught. End of story.
By the way, I'm a freelance TV technician, I've probably worked at your university...I'm curious which one it is. I'm not a producer or anything, I just sit back and push buttons, so we've probably never met, but if you want to drop me a line my email address is in my profile.
This only can happen with NFL games; the rest (namely MLB and NHL) are stipulated by the league and the broadcaster's contract; for example if a game is being covered by both the home TV crew and ESPN, ESPN may be blacked out in certain areas so that viewers are forced to watch the game on the local broadcaster. National coverage seems to becoming more exclusive, see ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, Fox's Saturday afternoon baseball, and NBC's hockey coverage for instance, when their coverage is the only game being played and they have the exclusive TV rights to it.
The NFL blackouts are worst for the at-home fan, a game has to sell out 72 hours before gametime in order to be aired within something like 75 miles of the stadium. Instead of maybe not seeing the announce team you'd like as with the MLB, you just don't get to see your game at all.
I don't know offhand what the NCAA blackout restrictions are; I believe it's more a factor of the broadcaster's contract than it is a ticket-sales motivator.
Heh, that reminds me of a time I freaked an engineer out. I work in the sports broadcast end of things and casually called the engineer over because "the router locked up" and I needed him to reset it. Now the HD-SDI router controls everything, not only tape deck inputs but the monitor wall and even our transmission output, so loosing that would have been very very bad...well, I should have been more specific that it was the wireless internet router, not the video router, because when he came running back to me his blood pressure must have shot through the roof! Fortunately it was well before we went on the air and he had a good laugh about it once he realized that I hadn't ruined his day.
Me too! Class off 2003, though, so my news may be a bit dated. For all I know I was the only Linux user at the time (I had a desktop system running Debian). I had no trouble (other than the time cron started mailing error logs to root at kutztown.edu instead of root@localhost; but they were *very* friendly about that). At the time they were changing some policies; my last year they had a w2k server for students to use as a file server but hardly anyone did so. I was able to print from my windows laptop by plugging in to the network; I assume I could have done the same from Linux but never tried as the labs and resnet were on separate subnets or some such. At the time anyway, resnet was as simple as plugging in to the port in your room or the common area; you'd get an address from DHCP. We were firewalled off from the internet, so I couldn't host my own www or vnc server even though we had real IP addresses. There wasn't much to the resnet other than grabbing a DHCP address, so any platform that could handle that should have worked. No login required or any such business...very straightforward.
As far as the CIS department (where I took several CIS classes but I'm actually an Electronic Media grad), the C++ and Java programming was taught on Suns, which was great, since I already knew Linux. There were two classes in Visual Basic but as I recall everything else (algorithms, all the introductory stuff, etc) used the Suns.