Okay, they're pissed about a 30-second skip feature. How about a 2-minute skip feature? There are almost at least 2 minutes of commercials per break. If the industry bigs are up in arms about the 30-second skip, then SonicBlue et al should just say "Okay, okay. You got us. We will remove all 30-second skip features from our boxes" and replace them with 2 or 3 minute skip functions. That way, we just have to press the button once and we zap the whole block, and then just ff through the last couple.
What that dickhead Kellner and the like don't realise is that with 30 second skip, we have to keep hitting the skip button. With a 2 or 3 minute skip, we blow right by all of them.
I know that for the most part we're just tempests shouting in our own little teapot, but I hope some of the higher ups are reading this. The people on/. are the people that will be writing the hacks around their court-ordered restrictions and selling them to their neighbors. Can you say "cottage industry"? I knew you could. And we're smart enough to code around any spy tactics you want to try.
Why is it that I have to "opt-out" of these things? My data is me, and although I am one of your "valuable assets" as a customer, I am not for you to sell. I admit that I haven't opted out of anything because I don't feel I should have to jump through the hoops, use a stamp and send in my request to NOT BE BOTHERED. Most credit card/bank opt-outs don't even have a web site to go to, you have to mail it in. C'mon. Get real. I can check my account and transfer thousands of dollars between accounts online, but I can't say "don't bug me"?
So I have a "no solicitors/unidentified calls" message on my phone. I'm using one technology to filter the people that the banks sell my info to. Stupid.
Ok, I'll be Captain Anal here and mention that while watching the movie, I noticed the dial tone (but didn't know about the no-dial-tone-after-hangup thing), but then thought "hey, I didn't hear MJ talking, how come I hear the dial tone?"
Sounds like his friends never let him be Luke when they played as kids.
I feel like I'm kinda out of SW now. I liked TPM fine, AotC has a stupid name, but that's never been a huge movie criteria for me either. I dont know if it's because I've read too many reviews/spoilers or what, but I'm not quite as jazzed.
Of course, it could be that I just saw Spider-man and LOVED it and can't wait for the sequels....
I know, I did the same with my Newton, and that's why I bought my wife a Visor, so she could play solitaire and I could play with my Newton.
Wait, that didn't come out right.:)
But like I said, you're right about using it for more than "the features listed on the side of the box". I guess I'm just trying to justify a need for the iPod other than it's just a f'ing cool MP3 player/toy.;) And at the same time not have to buy yet *another* device. But, I guess for the same price as the Sony device I could get an iPod and a Visor.
Thanks for the tip. That's pretty much my expectations, though. Something to store phone#s/addresses etc. I can input at my desktop, I rarely add addresses while on the go. I currently have a Newton MP 2000 (I wish it was still updated/supported, but it's time to move into the '00's) and don't do that much updating. And thinking about it, I rarely use it anyway, so the iPod might just be the perfect thing, especially if I end up getting a laptop, which is the current plan.:)
After reading the ZDNet review, I'll probably go iPod. Without wireless, the Sony device just a really slick PDA. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have one of these than a Treo or any Palm device, but for what I need (address book, MP3 player) the iPod is just fine, plus double (triple?) as a large Firewire HD, for about the same price.
Excellent point, but if we're talking about violent games, I'd rather have my kids pointing a fake gun at a fake enemy and "pulling" a fake trigger than pointing a stick at a real kid yelling "bang! bang!" Keep the fantasy in the game, not the real world. Fantasy in the box, real world, no kill.
But then again, I'd rather my kids not do that at all. I only have Crash 2, GranTurismo and Tekken3 for my PSX, so my kids aren't in any danger. The violent games I have on my PC, which I supervise to the utmost, but interestingly (or not) enough, now that I think of it, no gun games.
On topic? I think parents should regulate what their kids do, or have a full role in it. Playing Temple of Apshai when I was what, 9? 10? I had to shoot arrows through giant ants and zombies. I don't now nor ever have had any urges to kill people, but if I met a giant ant or a zombie, I might.
You know, I would pay what my current cable bill is ($50) to have basically 2 channels: Food network and MTV2. Okay, I want my broadcast channels and Nick@Nite. And MTV, and a few others. But I *DON'T* want any shopping channels, I don't need M$NBC and probably half the channels I get.
Why not charge for what I watch? Why am I paying for 15-20 channels that I never watch? I don't mind commercials, I understand the tradeoff, I can zone out when they come on or whatever. But why am I paying for them in the first place?
To address the issue, Kellner's on crack if he thinks it's stealing. Also, he's not offering no commercials for $250/year, he's telling you that for you to have the "privelige" of doing a 30 second manual skip on your PVR. If he were offering that, sure, lots of people would take him up on it. Also, the idea of him being a "friend" has some merit, because I'm betting that aside from the techies and geeks, it's high-dollar CEOs that have these devices and make the most use of the commercial-skip feature to save their own time, and once these comments travel back up the food chain, he'll probably get a smack or two from his buddies at the country club.
Sometimes things look more fake on the tv screen. I remember seeing Titanic (yes, my wife dragged me along...but it wasn't too bad...) and was surprised that the scenes that I had remembered looked bad on tv weren't as bad as I had thought. Perhaps something about the lighting in the theatre, the grand scale, something helped it to look better.
That said, when I saw the Star Wars special edition, I was amazed that the big lizard that the stormtroopers were riding on looked "real", Jabba the Hutt looked "real", but the stormtroopers looked CGI. I wrote it off at the time to the human brain's ability to detect human-like movement and physics, whereas the movement of a giant lizard and a Hutt were foreign and slipped by. But, IANAP or BS (physicist or brain surgeon)
And when they move to "adless", be on the lookout for the ad companies to start asking commercial building owners for space on their buildings, talking to governments about "sponsoring" stretches of road and the like, and we'll be living in "Blade Runner" before long.
The thing is, most of America has NO idea this stuff is going on.
I know 2 people who have TiVo. They don't know each other, but they've both made the same comment, independently: It changes the way you watch TV forever.
I've never actually used one and I want one!
Especially the ability to program via the Internet. Would be sweet to be on vacation, see that something I wanna watch/have is on and go program TiVo to get it. (However, I'll probably end up with Dish's PVR instead of TiVo - less useful, I know, but I wanna get rid of AT&T and it's the only other game in town. Well, besides DirecTiVo, but for whatever reason Dish seems like the better deal....)
I would also say that it's the responsibility of advertisers to make commercials that we want to watch. People watch the Wazzup? ads because they're little tiny events. Ads for Pledge I tune out because they're boring, not because I don't dust.
And I'll watch the ads on the Food network because that's what I'm watching for. It's target marketing to the fullest, and that makes sense. Just like all the toy ads on Cartoon Network. When you're watching Friends, you could have ads for all sorts of things, and I end up tuning most of them out, because they don't have anything to do with me.
And don't start up with taking this feature away on PVR's, too! I'm just waiting for the new DishPVR 721 and I'm kissing AT&T goodbye! (but in reality, it's more for recording convenience than channel skipping. This guy, however, is a tool. Theives. The very idea. Off-topic, we're entering a dangerous period of adjective hyperbole -"thieves", "axis of evil", "pirates".... Shall we tone the rhetoric down a bit, people?)
This is the best statement I've heard on this issue, ever. The most succinct and to the point. I'm going to copy this and refer to it whenever this issue comes up.
Excellent point...I was accused of stealing a street sign while I was in college. The condo/townhome complex told me they had evidence that I did it and I should just cooperate. I told 'em to get bent, and I never heard anything more.
I cannot believe that they actually have a right to personal user's computers, unless that person is using the computer for business purposes, in which case they might have a point.
I'm glad to see other "shower" comments here. I think about a huge range of things while in the shower, and while it's tempting to read into this shower-time more about "what you're doing in the shower to help you relax" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), it's not about that.
I do have to say, though, that you need to have some way of keeping what you think about/problem you solve in mind after you get out. There have been (unfortunately) many times I've gotten out of the shower after having a brilliant idea and then the kids run in, or that damned music from "Unsolved Mysteries" sends me into a rage and the brilliant idea is *poof*, gone.
Interesting that the article starts with 3 bullet points about things you should be concerned about and then launches into a table of Q & A that has pretty much nothing to do with the bullet points....
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What that dickhead Kellner and the like don't realise is that with 30 second skip, we have to keep hitting the skip button. With a 2 or 3 minute skip, we blow right by all of them.
I know that for the most part we're just tempests shouting in our own little teapot, but I hope some of the higher ups are reading this. The people on /. are the people that will be writing the hacks around their court-ordered restrictions and selling them to their neighbors. Can you say "cottage industry"? I knew you could. And we're smart enough to code around any spy tactics you want to try.
So I have a "no solicitors/unidentified calls" message on my phone. I'm using one technology to filter the people that the banks sell my info to. Stupid.
Captain Anal, over and out.
I feel like I'm kinda out of SW now. I liked TPM fine, AotC has a stupid name, but that's never been a huge movie criteria for me either. I dont know if it's because I've read too many reviews/spoilers or what, but I'm not quite as jazzed.
Of course, it could be that I just saw Spider-man and LOVED it and can't wait for the sequels....
Wait, that didn't come out right. :)
But like I said, you're right about using it for more than "the features listed on the side of the box". I guess I'm just trying to justify a need for the iPod other than it's just a f'ing cool MP3 player/toy. ;) And at the same time not have to buy yet *another* device. But, I guess for the same price as the Sony device I could get an iPod and a Visor.
Thanks for the tip. That's pretty much my expectations, though. Something to store phone#s/addresses etc. I can input at my desktop, I rarely add addresses while on the go. I currently have a Newton MP 2000 (I wish it was still updated/supported, but it's time to move into the '00's) and don't do that much updating. And thinking about it, I rarely use it anyway, so the iPod might just be the perfect thing, especially if I end up getting a laptop, which is the current plan. :)
After reading the ZDNet review, I'll probably go iPod. Without wireless, the Sony device just a really slick PDA. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have one of these than a Treo or any Palm device, but for what I need (address book, MP3 player) the iPod is just fine, plus double (triple?) as a large Firewire HD, for about the same price.
But then again, I'd rather my kids not do that at all. I only have Crash 2, GranTurismo and Tekken3 for my PSX, so my kids aren't in any danger. The violent games I have on my PC, which I supervise to the utmost, but interestingly (or not) enough, now that I think of it, no gun games.
On topic? I think parents should regulate what their kids do, or have a full role in it. Playing Temple of Apshai when I was what, 9? 10? I had to shoot arrows through giant ants and zombies. I don't now nor ever have had any urges to kill people, but if I met a giant ant or a zombie, I might.
Why not charge for what I watch? Why am I paying for 15-20 channels that I never watch? I don't mind commercials, I understand the tradeoff, I can zone out when they come on or whatever. But why am I paying for them in the first place?
To address the issue, Kellner's on crack if he thinks it's stealing. Also, he's not offering no commercials for $250/year, he's telling you that for you to have the "privelige" of doing a 30 second manual skip on your PVR. If he were offering that, sure, lots of people would take him up on it. Also, the idea of him being a "friend" has some merit, because I'm betting that aside from the techies and geeks, it's high-dollar CEOs that have these devices and make the most use of the commercial-skip feature to save their own time, and once these comments travel back up the food chain, he'll probably get a smack or two from his buddies at the country club.
That said, when I saw the Star Wars special edition, I was amazed that the big lizard that the stormtroopers were riding on looked "real", Jabba the Hutt looked "real", but the stormtroopers looked CGI. I wrote it off at the time to the human brain's ability to detect human-like movement and physics, whereas the movement of a giant lizard and a Hutt were foreign and slipped by. But, IANAP or BS (physicist or brain surgeon)
The thing is, most of America has NO idea this stuff is going on.
I've never actually used one and I want one!
Especially the ability to program via the Internet. Would be sweet to be on vacation, see that something I wanna watch/have is on and go program TiVo to get it. (However, I'll probably end up with Dish's PVR instead of TiVo - less useful, I know, but I wanna get rid of AT&T and it's the only other game in town. Well, besides DirecTiVo, but for whatever reason Dish seems like the better deal....)
And I'll watch the ads on the Food network because that's what I'm watching for. It's target marketing to the fullest, and that makes sense. Just like all the toy ads on Cartoon Network. When you're watching Friends, you could have ads for all sorts of things, and I end up tuning most of them out, because they don't have anything to do with me.
And don't start up with taking this feature away on PVR's, too! I'm just waiting for the new DishPVR 721 and I'm kissing AT&T goodbye! (but in reality, it's more for recording convenience than channel skipping. This guy, however, is a tool. Theives. The very idea. Off-topic, we're entering a dangerous period of adjective hyperbole -"thieves", "axis of evil", "pirates".... Shall we tone the rhetoric down a bit, people?)
Good show, Paul.
I cannot believe that they actually have a right to personal user's computers, unless that person is using the computer for business purposes, in which case they might have a point.
Now that's funny! I, too, wish to subscribe.
I do have to say, though, that you need to have some way of keeping what you think about/problem you solve in mind after you get out. There have been (unfortunately) many times I've gotten out of the shower after having a brilliant idea and then the kids run in, or that damned music from "Unsolved Mysteries" sends me into a rage and the brilliant idea is *poof*, gone.
Where intel chips belong, of course.
Interesting that the article starts with 3 bullet points about things you should be concerned about and then launches into a table of Q & A that has pretty much nothing to do with the bullet points....