There's an iPhone app called Save Benjis that scrapes a bunch of sites for info (though apparently they got a C&D from Amazon, which sucks) and gives price comparisons.
They say that barcode scanning was at the top of their feature wish list, but after working for a month on it, they gave up because of the focal length problem. They tried sharpening algorithms, etc. They were even trying to use OCR to read the numbers under the barcode, but it was apparently really slow.
I told them about the Clarifi case, and I just ordered one for myself.
(A long time ago I ordered the CC-49 lens for the Nokia 3650 after finding a tech demo app that could read barcodes, but it never went anywhere. I've been wanting to do this for a LONG time.)
As it was just pointed out to me, the content of the site has changed. It now reads:
* * *
"Why is firefox blocked?
Because some douche wants to infect your computer with popups, search bars and endless ads, the same kind of douche that made you get Firefox in the first place because of horrific popups, search bars and endless ads.
[ Link to download Firefox 2 and "Upgrade Now / Take back the web" ]
Given that I have an HD TV I guess that puts me in the OTHER 12% (the percentage with HD TV's) as well. I don't have HD cable, as I live in Chicago and have about 16 channels of HD or standard-def digital available to me OTA.
If someone was using a converter box to feed a digital OTA signal into a normal TV with an S-Video or even composite (gasp) input, the picture quality would be strikingly better. Even if they had to re-modulate the signal to an analog signal (eg 'channel 3'), it could still look better.
I'm referring to ghosting issues, static, etc. Sure, I realize that there can be multipath issues, and mpeg glitches on digital signal strenghts below 60%, etc. But overall, my experience has been that a digital standard-def signal looks better than an analog one, even when viewed on a normal TV set.
Want to know about the availability of signals in your area? Check out antennaweb.org. Just put in your next door neighbor's address and don't tell them your name, etc. They don't need that to tell you if you have coverage.:)
I thought the article was pretty funny. But some part of me thinks kids will read this article. So I'd suggest removing the 'lighting a cigarette' bit.
Then again, I'm probably just getting old. Soon I'll be supporting legislation to mandate v-chips, too!
Please, kill me now.
"consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities."
Dude! My neighbor sure drives his car a lot! He's probably using it to transport illegal drugs! In fact, he drives a Hummer, and it guzzles a hell of a lot of gas... Lock him up!
> If you can see it on HD, I'd recommend it. It's a good show and HD could only make it better.
I recently got a 37" LCD HDTV. (Details here.) And all I can say is, I sat and watched a program on PBS HD about guys restoring the Iowa state capitol building and applying gold leaf to the dome, because it was in HD. Then, a poorly edited show about Milwaukee with little or no dialogue... because it was in HD.
Sadly, since we only have analog cable, I won't be able to enjoy BSG in HD. But apparently I'll be able to tune in and watch Manor House instead!!!!!1
Random-access vs. linear
on
DVHS on a Budget
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I got tired of shuttling around on cassette tapes, way back when (either to listen to music or to load programs!); the CD and floppy were both improvements on these storage media, because they gave direct access to the information you wanted.
Along the same lines, we hardly use the VCR anymore, we just record stuff on the computer; once we got a HDTV, we just got another tuner capable of pulling in HD over-the-air programming. Considered getting a hardware appliance like a T*Vo but balked at the idea of paying a monthly subscription fee for something we could get for free (e.g. a two-week listings / scheduling service like TitanTV.com and the devices/programs it supports.)
So, given the choice between buying a DVHS recorder, a T*Vo, and a HTPC, I'll go with a HTPC. Disk space and burnable media are cheap enough (and take up less physical space to store.)
The up-front cost of a HTPC setup vs. a DVHS recorder may indeed be higher, and the cost of media is still higher, but it seems pretty competitive right now. (My thinking is, say a buck per gig on a hard drive, typical 1-hour program is ~8 GB. DL discs (8.5 GB, $6-$10?) here compete with the price of DVHS tapes, but only store half as much as a tape right now. But costs of DL discs will fall quickly (remember how much 4.7 GB DVD-R media USED to cost?) and Blu-ray or DVD-HD will even this out quite a bit more, soon enough.
More importantly -- what's your time and physical storage space worth? (I realize that a HTPC could end up being pretty large, and could also become quite the time-sink, but: in my case, I'm talking about a Mac mini and a ready-made eyeTV hardware/software package from ElGato.)
The one downside to my argument is the 5C flag nonsense. I'd just as soon *not* support yet another copy protection scheme by paying for a DVHS player made by one of those five companies. But the tradeoff is, I have no way of saving anything that is 5C flagged, ie for 'copy once' use. Though there are software based 'virtual' DVHS apps for streaming transport streams over firewire, I haven't seen any 'cracks' for them that disable 5C (yet.)
I got one of the EyeHome refurbs they were offering for $150. So far I'm not nearly as impressed with it as I was with my EyeTV 200.
The short list:
* I had two 10/100 hubs in-lined between my Mac and my EyeHome. Video sometimes stuttered, but usually just fell off. This happened regularly. There is no easy way to go back to where you were if the program dies. I had to home-run a second cat5 just for the EyeHome, to the hub the computer was plugged into.
* Fwd/rev are unreasonably slow on feedback, i.e. you push a button then wait about 10 seconds or more for the result. And of course, sometimes it dies.
* It doesn't let you watch live or time-shifted TV, only programs you previously recorded. You cannot be recording the end of something using your EyeTV while watching the beginning of it using your EyeHome. Which IMO is kind of dumb. But I do have to wonder about the amount of data being written to / read from the disk.
EyeTV does allow you to watch live and timeshifted TV, but only on your computer.
* No '7 second instant replay' or 'skip forward 30 seconds' buttons for EyeHome. These features ARE available on EyeTV, as is the ability to easily edit out commercials.
My guess is, they think you don't need a commercial skip button since you already removed them. No logical explanation for lack of 7 second instant replay, though.
* You basically are running Tomcat / jsp stuff on the server side (your Mac) in order to share your media (previously recorded TV, movies you ripped (and presumably own), your iTunes music library, your iPhoto albums, etc.) But it's not open, which is retarded.
IMO the SliMP3 / Squeezebox is much cooler in this regard. (The last version I used of their server, I wasn't that impressed with, but at least with open source, I had no excuses for not getting in there and making it better. Plus, you could hack additional IR codes that it received to do other things. Which is awesome.)
* They licensed the technology from someone else. While I don't know what the relationship is there, it makes me wonder about the frequency of updates (if any). I saw someone else who I think is licensing from the same company (Syabas) but their box looks newer, which has me worried - great, can't upgrade this box anymore? etc.
HTH.
Spoor: "We're here to install the fiber, eh mate?" Dowser: "...mmm the fiber, ya."
Sam: "Yes, but do you have a twenty-seven B-stroke-six? Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork."
(... a bit later, Sam can be seen switching the "Fiber" and "Raw sewage" lines. Spoor and Dowser's plastic suits fill up completely with excrement and explode.)
Sam: "Shit!" Tuttle: "We're all in it together, kid."
Eduardo Kac - Time Capsule took place almost seven years ago, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was a performance art piece in which he injected himself with a (much larger, and more painful) RFID tag, then registered himself online as both owner and property in a database used for tracking lost animals.
I won't get into the ethical implications of this, or how forward-looking it was, or whatever. Instead let me just mention that I saw the video of this piece being performed. OUCH. Guy has stones.
I work at a planetarium and we researched this product as a means to project video onto our dome theater. It can do any number of near-realtime distortions to the video, including hemispherical mapping, or you can use included software to create custom mappings (like corners).
We concluded that this product was perhaps one generation early but looked promising. Hopefully they sold enough of them to stay afloat and work on v2.0...
I realize that this only covers the 'geometry' portion and not the 'color' one, but to me it seems like the harder half to tackle. Maybe I don't have enough knowlege of the subject, but given the input from the camera, enough time and filters, solving the color problem seems doable too.
I am... Torgo..; I.. polish the... fiber while the Master... is away...
There is no way... out of.. here, the fiber will.. go dark... soon, there is no way... out of.. here...
etc, etc.
Super Barbie Talking Pager
on
Old Toy Modding?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As an art project for Michael Rodemer's Art 454 class at the University of Michigan, I 'hacked' the Barbie Super Talking pager using a PIC chip and an ISD sound chip.
The original toy did not function as a real pager; rather, you clipped it on a little belt that came with it, pushed a button and walked nonchalantly into a room, presumably where grown-ups were. After a few seconds, it would beep! Oh my, you're someone important! You got a voice page from Barbie! She wants to call Ken and go to the movies!
Seriously, I was like, "What the FUCK are we teaching these kids?!" So I modified it. I re-etched a new circuit board to support the PIC/ISD chips and re-mounted it back inside.
Basically, I just wanted Barbie to give more realistic messages to her fans... the prototype worked great, though the case got a little damaged in the process. People seemed to get a pretty big kick out of it. Then it got ripped off.
Anyway, the sound files are all online at:
http://www.unithom.com/misc/barbie/.
I think the PIC source is pretty old and full of bugs, not the most recent one, but the WAV files are worth a listen.:) I ended up buying two of these things so some day I may re-do the hack a little more cleanly -- and keep a closer eye on the toy this time, when it's done.
I had an opportunity to see the media sneak preview at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. I'm not a huge fan of the old series (as I was too young to appreciate it), but I can comment on what I saw. (The first night, 2-hour show.)
The audio was pretty nice. The CG was obviously budget (they stated that the effects we saw were 'not final'; I'm waiting to see what, if anything, is different.)
For SciFi it was pretty high quality. Acting is a little over the top sometimes. Bits of it moved kind of slow. But I found myself getting interested in some of the characters. I'll definitely watch it again to see what changed, and the next episode to see who lives, what happens, etc.
So, it was decent. Free popcorn and sodee pop, with light-up LEDs in the ice cubes. Kind of neat to see a whole movie theater full of them.
Spoilers...
Actual Cylon 'robots' are only shown very briefly, as they've 'evolved' into 12 identical Victoria's Secret models, bent on the destruction of all colonies. Woot. When you turn her on, her backbone glows.
Cylon ships are pretty cool, but all of the technology has this kind of Jules Verne quality to it... like it was all created to look very similar to the design of the ships from the old series, as if it evolved. That's a nice consideration.
Plot devices: estranged father and son. Can they ever see past their differences? Will one of them even live long enough to be in the next episode?
The commander of the military vs. the new galactic president (well, okay, the secretary of education...) Will she convince him to put an 802.3 network on the Battlestar Galactica... "for the teachers"?
(Oh, and on a world where they have flying fricking cars, they haven't cured cancer? Give me a break.)
Will the assistant to the secretary of education... ever find his way out of the bathroom and to the guest quarters?
Hotheaded re-gendered Starbuck punching alcoholic XO. Will she break out of the brig in time to save us from the Cylons? Members of the deck crew having illicit affairs with pilots. The horror!
Egotistical genius scientist accidentally giving away the entire contents of the 'defense mainframe' to his hot girlfriend... who turns out to be oops, guess who? Will he escape an impending nuclear holocaust on his colony planet and somehow earn the forgiveness of humanity.. by saving them again?
Aren't people without spacesuits supposed to, I dunno, explode, when you are forced to vent their deck to extinguish a fire?
Why the hell do we hear things from outside the ship? They're in space. But whatever.
It is quite a strange feeling to come to the end of a thread and see yourself quoted.
If you don't believe me, I can probably find my old calculator, and dig out the program that we used to do it. My friend had a Jeep Grand Cherokee, we borrowed the key fob, recorded the signal, and played it back. Woo, the doors opened.
This is not unlike using a copy of OmniRemote these days on a palm pilot to 'learn' the buttons of your remote control.
I don't know if they still use IR for car entry systems, but I doubt it.
Uh, actually, Peter did receive a small amount of initial $ for each ad, but that didn't scale. The site also had a number of banner ads, though anyone will tell you how little those can make you.
He also experimented with paypal donations, especially during the superbowl, and was trying to implement a subscription-based service, with differently-throttled bandwidth.
And of course, there's always the analysis of the data collected from user votes, server logs, and the like. I think they were trying to pitch the data as market research.
IMHO, AdCritic was a perfect vehicle for advertisers because it was a pull media, not push; instead of spending millions broadcasting their ads to predicted demographics and trusting the statistics, they could pay pennies and target individuals who wanted to see their ads. Those are justifiable, well-spent advertising dollars any way you look at it.
I just wish that Peter et al had been gutsy enough to make that case and set up a proportional, 'pennies per download' model (for the companies advertising, not for subscribers). Everybody wins: big companies can justify spending the money when there are proven results, and we'd still have funny ads to watch.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an iPhone app called Save Benjis that scrapes a bunch of sites for info (though apparently they got a C&D from Amazon, which sucks) and gives price comparisons. They say that barcode scanning was at the top of their feature wish list, but after working for a month on it, they gave up because of the focal length problem. They tried sharpening algorithms, etc. They were even trying to use OCR to read the numbers under the barcode, but it was apparently really slow. I told them about the Clarifi case, and I just ordered one for myself. (A long time ago I ordered the CC-49 lens for the Nokia 3650 after finding a tech demo app that could read barcodes, but it never went anywhere. I've been wanting to do this for a LONG time.)
As it was just pointed out to me, the content of the site has changed. It now reads:
* * *
"Why is firefox blocked?
Because some douche wants to infect your computer with popups, search bars and endless ads, the same kind of douche that made you get Firefox in the first place because of horrific popups, search bars and endless ads.
[ Link to download Firefox 2 and "Upgrade Now / Take back the web" ]
* * *
Given that I have an HD TV I guess that puts me in the OTHER 12% (the percentage with HD TV's) as well. I don't have HD cable, as I live in Chicago and have about 16 channels of HD or standard-def digital available to me OTA.
:)
If someone was using a converter box to feed a digital OTA signal into a normal TV with an S-Video or even composite (gasp) input, the picture quality would be strikingly better. Even if they had to re-modulate the signal to an analog signal (eg 'channel 3'), it could still look better.
I'm referring to ghosting issues, static, etc. Sure, I realize that there can be multipath issues, and mpeg glitches on digital signal strenghts below 60%, etc. But overall, my experience has been that a digital standard-def signal looks better than an analog one, even when viewed on a normal TV set.
Want to know about the availability of signals in your area? Check out antennaweb.org. Just put in your next door neighbor's address and don't tell them your name, etc. They don't need that to tell you if you have coverage.
I thought the article was pretty funny. But some part of me thinks kids will read this article. So I'd suggest removing the 'lighting a cigarette' bit. Then again, I'm probably just getting old. Soon I'll be supporting legislation to mandate v-chips, too! Please, kill me now.
"consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities." Dude! My neighbor sure drives his car a lot! He's probably using it to transport illegal drugs! In fact, he drives a Hummer, and it guzzles a hell of a lot of gas... Lock him up!
I recently got a 37" LCD HDTV. (Details here.) And all I can say is, I sat and watched a program on PBS HD about guys restoring the Iowa state capitol building and applying gold leaf to the dome, because it was in HD. Then, a poorly edited show about Milwaukee with little or no dialogue... because it was in HD.
Sadly, since we only have analog cable, I won't be able to enjoy BSG in HD. But apparently I'll be able to tune in and watch Manor House instead!!!!!1
Eduardo Kac, artist ahead of his time: http://www.ekac.org/timcap.html
Along the same lines, we hardly use the VCR anymore, we just record stuff on the computer; once we got a HDTV, we just got another tuner capable of pulling in HD over-the-air programming. Considered getting a hardware appliance like a T*Vo but balked at the idea of paying a monthly subscription fee for something we could get for free (e.g. a two-week listings / scheduling service like TitanTV.com and the devices/programs it supports.)
So, given the choice between buying a DVHS recorder, a T*Vo, and a HTPC, I'll go with a HTPC. Disk space and burnable media are cheap enough (and take up less physical space to store.)
The up-front cost of a HTPC setup vs. a DVHS recorder may indeed be higher, and the cost of media is still higher, but it seems pretty competitive right now. (My thinking is, say a buck per gig on a hard drive, typical 1-hour program is ~8 GB. DL discs (8.5 GB, $6-$10?) here compete with the price of DVHS tapes, but only store half as much as a tape right now. But costs of DL discs will fall quickly (remember how much 4.7 GB DVD-R media USED to cost?) and Blu-ray or DVD-HD will even this out quite a bit more, soon enough.
More importantly -- what's your time and physical storage space worth? (I realize that a HTPC could end up being pretty large, and could also become quite the time-sink, but: in my case, I'm talking about a Mac mini and a ready-made eyeTV hardware/software package from ElGato.)
The one downside to my argument is the 5C flag nonsense. I'd just as soon *not* support yet another copy protection scheme by paying for a DVHS player made by one of those five companies. But the tradeoff is, I have no way of saving anything that is 5C flagged, ie for 'copy once' use. Though there are software based 'virtual' DVHS apps for streaming transport streams over firewire, I haven't seen any 'cracks' for them that disable 5C (yet.)
The short list:
* I had two 10/100 hubs in-lined between my Mac and my EyeHome. Video sometimes stuttered, but usually just fell off. This happened regularly. There is no easy way to go back to where you were if the program dies. I had to home-run a second cat5 just for the EyeHome, to the hub the computer was plugged into.
* Fwd/rev are unreasonably slow on feedback, i.e. you push a button then wait about 10 seconds or more for the result. And of course, sometimes it dies.
* It doesn't let you watch live or time-shifted TV, only programs you previously recorded. You cannot be recording the end of something using your EyeTV while watching the beginning of it using your EyeHome. Which IMO is kind of dumb. But I do have to wonder about the amount of data being written to / read from the disk.
EyeTV does allow you to watch live and timeshifted TV, but only on your computer.
* No '7 second instant replay' or 'skip forward 30 seconds' buttons for EyeHome. These features ARE available on EyeTV, as is the ability to easily edit out commercials.
My guess is, they think you don't need a commercial skip button since you already removed them. No logical explanation for lack of 7 second instant replay, though.
* You basically are running Tomcat / jsp stuff on the server side (your Mac) in order to share your media (previously recorded TV, movies you ripped (and presumably own), your iTunes music library, your iPhoto albums, etc.) But it's not open, which is retarded.
IMO the SliMP3 / Squeezebox is much cooler in this regard. (The last version I used of their server, I wasn't that impressed with, but at least with open source, I had no excuses for not getting in there and making it better. Plus, you could hack additional IR codes that it received to do other things. Which is awesome.)
* They licensed the technology from someone else. While I don't know what the relationship is there, it makes me wonder about the frequency of updates (if any). I saw someone else who I think is licensing from the same company (Syabas) but their box looks newer, which has me worried - great, can't upgrade this box anymore? etc. HTH.
Dowser: "...mmm the fiber, ya."
Sam: "Yes, but do you have a twenty-seven B-stroke-six? Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork."
(... a bit later, Sam can be seen switching the "Fiber" and "Raw sewage" lines. Spoor and Dowser's plastic suits fill up completely with excrement and explode.)
Sam: "Shit!"
Tuttle: "We're all in it together, kid."
Also, one I like a bit better:
iHAL
I won't get into the ethical implications of this, or how forward-looking it was, or whatever. Instead let me just mention that I saw the video of this piece being performed. OUCH. Guy has stones.
http://www.siliconoptix.com/products/index.shtml
I work at a planetarium and we researched this product as a means to project video onto our dome theater. It can do any number of near-realtime distortions to the video, including hemispherical mapping, or you can use included software to create custom mappings (like corners).
We concluded that this product was perhaps one generation early but looked promising. Hopefully they sold enough of them to stay afloat and work on v2.0...
I realize that this only covers the 'geometry' portion and not the 'color' one, but to me it seems like the harder half to tackle. Maybe I don't have enough knowlege of the subject, but given the input from the camera, enough time and filters, solving the color problem seems doable too.
I am... Torgo..; I .. polish the. .. fiber while the Master... is away...
There is no way... out of.. here, the fiber will.. go dark ... soon, there is no way... out of .. here...
etc, etc.
As an art project for Michael Rodemer's Art 454 class at the University of Michigan, I 'hacked' the Barbie Super Talking pager using a PIC chip and an ISD sound chip. The original toy did not function as a real pager; rather, you clipped it on a little belt that came with it, pushed a button and walked nonchalantly into a room, presumably where grown-ups were. After a few seconds, it would beep! Oh my, you're someone important! You got a voice page from Barbie! She wants to call Ken and go to the movies! Seriously, I was like, "What the FUCK are we teaching these kids?!" So I modified it. I re-etched a new circuit board to support the PIC/ISD chips and re-mounted it back inside. Basically, I just wanted Barbie to give more realistic messages to her fans... the prototype worked great, though the case got a little damaged in the process. People seemed to get a pretty big kick out of it. Then it got ripped off. Anyway, the sound files are all online at: http://www.unithom.com/misc/barbie/. I think the PIC source is pretty old and full of bugs, not the most recent one, but the WAV files are worth a listen. :) I ended up buying two of these things so some day I may re-do the hack a little more cleanly -- and keep a closer eye on the toy this time, when it's done.
Yeah, but can *you* speak Wall? And if so, how fast?
This is old news, ever since Meg healed her little brother Charles Wallace by teaching his cells how to sing. Or Kythe. Or something.
Not.
I always thought Microsoft had some Mickey-Mouse DRM...
I had an opportunity to see the media sneak preview at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. I'm not a huge fan of the old series (as I was too young to appreciate it), but I can comment on what I saw. (The first night, 2-hour show.)
.. by saving them again?
The audio was pretty nice. The CG was obviously budget (they stated that the effects we saw were 'not final'; I'm waiting to see what, if anything, is different.)
For SciFi it was pretty high quality. Acting is a little over the top sometimes. Bits of it moved kind of slow. But I found myself getting interested in some of the characters. I'll definitely watch it again to see what changed, and the next episode to see who lives, what happens, etc.
So, it was decent. Free popcorn and sodee pop, with light-up LEDs in the ice cubes. Kind of neat to see a whole movie theater full of them.
Spoilers...
Actual Cylon 'robots' are only shown very briefly, as they've 'evolved' into 12 identical Victoria's Secret models, bent on the destruction of all colonies. Woot. When you turn her on, her backbone glows.
Cylon ships are pretty cool, but all of the technology has this kind of Jules Verne quality to it... like it was all created to look very similar to the design of the ships from the old series, as if it evolved. That's a nice consideration.
Plot devices: estranged father and son. Can they ever see past their differences? Will one of them even live long enough to be in the next episode?
The commander of the military vs. the new galactic president (well, okay, the secretary of education...) Will she convince him to put an 802.3 network on the Battlestar Galactica... "for the teachers"?
(Oh, and on a world where they have flying fricking cars, they haven't cured cancer? Give me a break.)
Will the assistant to the secretary of education... ever find his way out of the bathroom and to the guest quarters?
Hotheaded re-gendered Starbuck punching alcoholic XO. Will she break out of the brig in time to save us from the Cylons? Members of the deck crew having illicit affairs with pilots. The horror!
Egotistical genius scientist accidentally giving away the entire contents of the 'defense mainframe' to his hot girlfriend... who turns out to be oops, guess who? Will he escape an impending nuclear holocaust on his colony planet and somehow earn the forgiveness of humanity
Aren't people without spacesuits supposed to, I dunno, explode, when you are forced to vent their deck to extinguish a fire?
Why the hell do we hear things from outside the ship? They're in space. But whatever.
Okay, I'm done.
It is quite a strange feeling to come to the end of a thread and see yourself quoted.
If you don't believe me, I can probably find my old calculator, and dig out the program that we used to do it. My friend had a Jeep Grand Cherokee, we borrowed the key fob, recorded the signal, and played it back. Woo, the doors opened.
This is not unlike using a copy of OmniRemote these days on a palm pilot to 'learn' the buttons of your remote control.
I don't know if they still use IR for car entry systems, but I doubt it.
Best,
Thom Brooks
He also experimented with paypal donations, especially during the superbowl, and was trying to implement a subscription-based service, with differently-throttled bandwidth.
And of course, there's always the analysis of the data collected from user votes, server logs, and the like. I think they were trying to pitch the data as market research.
IMHO, AdCritic was a perfect vehicle for advertisers because it was a pull media, not push; instead of spending millions broadcasting their ads to predicted demographics and trusting the statistics, they could pay pennies and target individuals who wanted to see their ads. Those are justifiable, well-spent advertising dollars any way you look at it.
I just wish that Peter et al had been gutsy enough to make that case and set up a proportional, 'pennies per download' model (for the companies advertising, not for subscribers). Everybody wins: big companies can justify spending the money when there are proven results, and we'd still have funny ads to watch.