Seriously, I couldn't agree more. Science Channel did wander a bit off the reservation with the whole 'Punkin Chunkin' thing, but otherwise they tend to stay pretty much within the realm of science-related bits.
In the late 1970s, TVOntario seems to have pioneered the idea of taking a series like The Prisoner or Dr. Who and framing it with first-class commentary by a journalist like Warner Troyer or the science fiction writer Judith Merril.
If I remember rightly, supplementary materials were available for The Prisoner as part of a distance learning course for college credit.
The first time I can remember a commercially broadcast TV series being given that kind of academic credibility and significance.
Since when is it news that a second rate basic cable channel gets the rights to air a show?
The Science Channel is a Discovery network.
Market penetration, 100 million households for Discovery Channel, 50-70 million households for each of its second-tier networks.
Discovery Networks U.S.
Discovery tends to stay on target. True crime on I.D. Animals on Animal Planet. No pro wrestling to pump up the male demographic. I'm looking at you, SyFy.
You could do much worse if you were looking for a new home for "Firefly."
I heard Sony loses money for every PS3 sold, so I went ahead and brought one to help out the cause.
Don't believe everything you hear.
The much-simplified and cheaper to manufacture PS3 Slim is the only model currently in production.
It's worth taking a moment to look at some stats:
Installed base: about 48 million units. PSN accounts: 69 million PlayStation Home: 17 million accounts MOVE 4 million units
The PS3 is a family-oriented home entertainment center. It's natural home is below or to one side of the big screen HDTV and theater sound system -
and at $400 for the MOVE bundle - firmware upgraded - that is where it is going to stay, unless you want to be the Dad who gets permanently exiled to the couch in the basement.
The PC market does fine without subsidies, let console players pay the full price of their hardware so they stop saying how cheap their hardware is compared to a PC, while typing said message from a PC
The PC is doing fine as an office machine, as a home entertainment center like the video game console or Internet-enabled HDTV, not so well.
1) Blu-Ray players will soon shut off people from using component video to play 1080p content
Only if a flag is set on the Blu-Ray disk. Down-scaling is not enabled by default.
Component Video output is on the way out. Three bundled cables for video, optical/RF and analog outputs for audio. No one wants that hassle anymore.
3) YouTube videos can be quite easily scraped off the site and downloaded
20% of peak hour Internet traffic in the states was a Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming-only service.
The client is everywhere, any new HDTV set offers a suite of perhaps twenty or thirty such "apps," all built on the same content-protected model and with many more to come.
OnLive gaming to Vizio very soon now.
"Openness" is under assault. But the geek isn't looking in the right direction - and so he shoots himself in the foot.
The "app" doesn't need the browser. It doesn't need the PC.
What it needs and what it has is content protection that satisfies the major providers.
In light of all this, why is WebM such a big deal? Are there any vendors (aside from Google) that have products out using it (or using only it)?
Google Shopping returns 80,000 hits for H.264.
30,000 or so for H.264 CCTV applications like video security.
102 hits for WebM - of which maybe ten are relevant, all software transcoders, no hardware of any kind.
Do you own a digital HDTV set, a set-top box for DirecTV or the Dish Network? Freeview in the UK? Then you own a licensed H.264 decoder.
The geek is so obsessed with the web that he forgets that there are other markets, very big markets, very rich markets, for data compressed digital video.
The H.264 licensor or licensee is most likely to be a global giant in manufacturing and other ventures, a cartel like Mitsubishi, Philips, Samsung, Yamaha and Panasonic.
Which means that they are at the Enterprise Cap and licensing H.264 support for a new product line costs them nothing.
He was there, legitimately. So, that argument doesn't have merit in this case. He mis-represented what his ULTIMATE goal was, but he went to the school, represented what he was going to do correctly, and followed through
That is the jailhouse lawyer I hear talking.
The con that makes the big heist possible is still a con.
He recorded his star performance in an empty classroom - as planned - and - selectively - edited the kids in later, as planned.
I am pretty sure that you can stand off of school grounds, and take pictures of kids playing.
True or not, it doesn't matter.
He lied his way in - and that makes it a criminal trespass.
However, in a free country he shouldn't have anything to worry about on the criminal front. The question is, is Michigan free?
He was in deep shit from the moment he lied about why he wanted access to these kids.
It goes back to the civil rights era of the sixties and to later and well-publicized cases of parental and stranger abductions, school shootings, hostage-takings, rapes and other acts of violence.
You have a legitimate reason for being on the school grounds. You play by their rules - or you are going to see some jail time. It is that simple.
Michigan doesn't have a Photoshop defense.
If you edit the video of a child - or any part of a child - into your X-rated final cut, it will be taken at full value.
If you conned your way into a grade school to get that facial shot of a six year old girl you needed, expect the cops to come around for a look at the porn on your PC and the panties in your dresser.
It is serious shit, lying to a school to gain access to their kids.
These 6 and 7 year old children were edited into the video in a way that would achieve maximum shock value. That is a good working definition of "pornographic."
The publication of the video violates any notion of privacy, any notion of informed consent by the parents, the teacher, the children or the school.
The law in Michigan does not give you a "Photoshop" defense. The depiction of a child - or any part of child - that is pornographic in context is criminal.
It doesn't matter that the children near heard the obsence lyrics. It matters that audiences were being led to believe they were part of the performance.
That a singer whose career has been going nowhere fast did this simply as a "prank" stretches credibility to the breaking point:
Parents learned on Wednesday that the video was first shown on Valentine's Day while Emory was performing at a local comedy club
This is not Ford buying up the Los Angeles public transport company in order to shut it down and increase the demand for cars.
"Roger Rabbit" is fantasy.
The suburban electric line was in deep financial trouble before WWI.
The operating cost of the Ford Model T was about a penny a mile. Portal-to-Portal for passengers and freight. It scarcely needed a road and could be re-purposed to do almost anything:
The Model T was (intentionally) almost as much a tractor and stationary engine as it was an automobile, that is, a vehicle dedicated solely to road use. It has always been well regarded for its all-terrain abilities and ruggedness. It could drive down a rocky, muddy farm lane, ford a shallow stream, climb a steep hill, and be parked on the other side to have one of its wheels removed and a pulley fastened to the hub for a flat belt to drive a bucksaw, thresher, silo blower, conveyor for filling corn cribs or haylofts, baler, water pump, electrical generator, and countless other applications.
Today though, hardware is so cheap that paying $100 for Windows is starting to be a big problem on a $300 PC. Netbooks would be running Linux if Microsoft hadn't cut deals with OEMs to make Windows free or almost free
Sales of the Linux netbook tanked the instant Windows entered the netbook market.
Walmart - with its enormous purchasing power and stranglehold on big box retail - was never able to make a go of OEM Linux on any platform.
Never able to offer a significant discount on OEM Windows by the time product reached retail shelves.
But this is community based software development we're talking about. Everybody already has their equipment, no office space is needed, and nobody should need to be hired (except if they need a web designer or lawyer temporarily I guess).
The Mozilla Foundation receives about 90% of its funding - $60 millon a year - through AdSense.
That means a project can have an independent - full time - staff to provide direction and maintain momentum.
The project is more than the code.
Microsoft spends billions on the study of office work and the office worker.
The developer - the geek - can be very distant from the user and at times almost openly hostile and that comes at a price.
You can schedule a room and a projector in Outlook.
It seems a very simple thing, but you won't see the need for it until you have people on your team who have spent some time down in the trenches.
But, if you can cut just a few corners, user lesser known actors (but then you might actually have to put some effort into casting! The horror!), and independent special effects companies you can make a movie for 1/5th the typical Hollywood action movie budget and it becomes much more profitable.
Some effort indeed.
The Coen brothers auditioned thousands of girls before they found Hailee Steinfeld - and without her you do not have a movie.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the right actor and the wrong actor is the difference beteen the lightning and the lightning bug.
The problem with special effects is that they do not remain special for very long - and the talent pool is much shallower here than the geek likes to pretend.
That is why you build a real Batmobile instead of a CGI prop.
Now and again, the low budget, no-name, production will click. More often it's Fox and "Space Chimps" vs Pixar and "Wall-E."
"About eight out of every 10 Web browsers run by consumers are vulnerable to attack [CC] by exploits of already-patched bugs, a security expert said Thursday.
Speakers include former President Bill Clinton, General Keith B. Alexander, Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, William Lynn III, Deputy Secretary of Defense...
This is about a "bait and switch" with the core functionality of hardware that I bought. Mainly, the OtherOS feature and backwards support for PS2 games
The "core functionality" of the PS3 is not Linux.
The firmware upgrade has allowed the baseline PS3 of 2006 to remain feature competitive with the high end stand-only Blu-Ray player of 2011.
The firmware upgrade supports stereographic 3D video gaming and the MOVE controller.
There have been solid - marketable - enhancements to PSN.
It is fair, I think, to take a look at the numbers:
48 million PS3 consoles. 69 million PSN accounts 17 million PlayStation Home accounts 4 million MOVE controllers
To make the case for the OtherOS compelling, you need to show a level of interest and activity on the same scale - and you need to show that the cheater and the pirate are not the driving forces here.
More likely it's just because Bill Gates' protege Ballmer doesn't think software should be free. See his infamous Computer Users Group letter from circa 1977.
The letter was from Gates.
The tens of millions the Moz Foundation receives each years from AdSense means that Moz can afford to pay competive wages to a full time staff.
Freedom is not the freedom to pirate.
"Free as in Freedom" is not the same thing as "Free as in Beer."
It's also reminiscent of how Microsoft sent letters to schools warning them that using open source and/or pirated software could be dangerous with possible legal consequences. As a result we have stories like Karen the Teacher sending a student to detention, because he was handing-out Linux OS discs. (She thought she was doing the right thing based upon Microsoft's warnings.)
She was doing the right thing.
Little Johnny's Dad calls in to tell the Superintendent that his hard drive was wiped.
That is not a win for Linux.
Does you employer allow you to pass out software at work from unknown/untrusted sources?
How, using technology available as of this month, can a pure wireless mesh network independent of the regulated Internet reach from Los Angeles to Tokyo, or even from Los Angeles to New York for that matter?
How does the mesh network leap tall buildings, mighty rivers?
How does it leap four blocks down the suburban street or a single mile of country road?
There's no "app-ification of the web", there's just a rush to cash in on the "app" and "appstore" buzzwords that Apple pushed from solely developer lingo into the mainstream.
Here is small sampling from Vizio's Internet Apps for the HDTV:
Amazon Video Facebook Flickr Hulu Plus Netflix Pandora Rhapsody Twitter WikiTV (The Wikipedia)
and (Coming Soon) OnLive gaming.
Add Skype to the list and support for the Kinect controller and you are in Hog Heaven.
The suite of apps for the Internet-enabled HDTV, Blu-Ray player, home theater receiver, video game console and mobile device is growing ever larger and more ambitious.
The OS is invisible - and the browser - and the ideologies and the politics which surround it - has no meaning here.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, I couldn't agree more. Science Channel did wander a bit off the reservation with the whole 'Punkin Chunkin' thing, but otherwise they tend to stay pretty much within the realm of science-related bits.
In the late 1970s, TVOntario seems to have pioneered the idea of taking a series like The Prisoner or Dr. Who and framing it with first-class commentary by a journalist like Warner Troyer or the science fiction writer Judith Merril.
If I remember rightly, supplementary materials were available for The Prisoner as part of a distance learning course for college credit.
The first time I can remember a commercially broadcast TV series being given that kind of academic credibility and significance.
Saying BCC is dead because people use facebook is like saying SSH or FTP is dead, because my mom doesn't use either.
Close enough.
When was the last time you saw anyone but the alpha geek use a stand alone FTP client?
Since when is it news that a second rate basic cable channel gets the rights to air a show?
The Science Channel is a Discovery network.
Market penetration, 100 million households for Discovery Channel, 50-70 million households for each of its second-tier networks. Discovery Networks U.S.
Discovery tends to stay on target. True crime on I.D. Animals on Animal Planet. No pro wrestling to pump up the male demographic. I'm looking at you, SyFy.
You could do much worse if you were looking for a new home for "Firefly."
I heard Sony loses money for every PS3 sold, so I went ahead and brought one to help out the cause.
Don't believe everything you hear.
The much-simplified and cheaper to manufacture PS3 Slim is the only model currently in production.
It's worth taking a moment to look at some stats:
Installed base: about 48 million units.
PSN accounts: 69 million
PlayStation Home: 17 million accounts
MOVE 4 million units
The PS3 is a family-oriented home entertainment center. It's natural home is below or to one side of the big screen HDTV and theater sound system -
and at $400 for the MOVE bundle - firmware upgraded - that is where it is going to stay, unless you want to be the Dad who gets permanently exiled to the couch in the basement.
The PC market does fine without subsidies, let console players pay the full price of their hardware so they stop saying how cheap their hardware is compared to a PC, while typing said message from a PC
The PC is doing fine as an office machine, as a home entertainment center like the video game console or Internet-enabled HDTV, not so well.
dumb. let's do a simple maths demo. go get your calculator
Let me suggest another starting point:
The number of people who have the skills, time, money, resources and the motive to crack a partcular DRM scheme.
Subtract from this the number who have something real at stake.
Perhaps they are balancing the risks of prosecution on a criminal charge.
DRM doesn't have to hold forever, It doesn't have to lock everyone out. It only has to preserve a viable market for the product.
1) Blu-Ray players will soon shut off people from using component video to play 1080p content
Only if a flag is set on the Blu-Ray disk. Down-scaling is not enabled by default.
Component Video output is on the way out. Three bundled cables for video, optical/RF and analog outputs for audio. No one wants that hassle anymore.
3) YouTube videos can be quite easily scraped off the site and downloaded
20% of peak hour Internet traffic in the states was a Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming-only service.
The client is everywhere, any new HDTV set offers a suite of perhaps twenty or thirty such "apps," all built on the same content-protected model and with many more to come.
OnLive gaming to Vizio very soon now.
"Openness" is under assault. But the geek isn't looking in the right direction - and so he shoots himself in the foot.
The "app" doesn't need the browser. It doesn't need the PC.
What it needs and what it has is content protection that satisfies the major providers.
In light of all this, why is WebM such a big deal? Are there any vendors (aside from Google) that have products out using it (or using only it)?
Google Shopping returns 80,000 hits for H.264.
30,000 or so for H.264 CCTV applications like video security.
102 hits for WebM -
of which maybe ten are relevant, all software transcoders, no hardware of any kind.
Do you own a digital HDTV set, a set-top box for DirecTV or the Dish Network? Freeview in the UK? Then you own a licensed H.264 decoder.
The geek is so obsessed with the web that he forgets that there are other markets, very big markets, very rich markets, for data compressed digital video.
The H.264 licensor or licensee is most likely to be a global giant in manufacturing and other ventures, a cartel like Mitsubishi, Philips, Samsung, Yamaha and Panasonic.
Which means that they are at the Enterprise Cap and licensing H.264 support for a new product line costs them nothing.
Here you go folks, let those at the Muskegon Prosecutors office know how you feel about their use of tax dollars....
The Muskegon prosecuor has the Muskegon parents at his back. People he knows and who know him. The geek in the dock has Sprouticus and you.
He was there, legitimately. So, that argument doesn't have merit in this case. He mis-represented what his ULTIMATE goal was, but he went to the school, represented what he was going to do correctly, and followed through
That is the jailhouse lawyer I hear talking.
The con that makes the big heist possible is still a con.
He recorded his star performance in an empty classroom - as planned - and - selectively - edited the kids in later, as planned.
I am pretty sure that you can stand off of school grounds, and take pictures of kids playing.
True or not, it doesn't matter.
He lied his way in - and that makes it a criminal trespass.
A school is a public place, hence no real expectation for privacy.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!
The school is one of those places where trespass laws have teeth that can bite and bite hard.
You are welcome on the premises only when you have a legitimate reason for being there - and only when you play by the rules.
However, in a free country he shouldn't have anything to worry about on the criminal front. The question is, is Michigan free?
He was in deep shit from the moment he lied about why he wanted access to these kids.
It goes back to the civil rights era of the sixties and to later and well-publicized cases of parental and stranger abductions, school shootings, hostage-takings, rapes and other acts of violence.
You have a legitimate reason for being on the school grounds. You play by their rules - or you are going to see some jail time. It is that simple.
Michigan doesn't have a Photoshop defense.
If you edit the video of a child - or any part of a child - into your X-rated final cut, it will be taken at full value.
If you conned your way into a grade school to get that facial shot of a six year old girl you needed, expect the cops to come around for a look at the porn on your PC and the panties in your dresser.
He wasn't saying sexual remarks to children, how about you RTFA.
He lied to the school to gain access to their kids.
That is criminal trespass under almost any jurisdiction you could name.
Without permission, he used an empty classroom as a stage for his sexually explicit performance. That again is criminal trespass.
Without anyone's informed consent he edited videos of six and seven year old kids into his adolescent and obsene music video.
There are well-timed cuts to particular faces.
The video makes these kids part of the performance ---
and that is all that Michigan law requires for prosecution on the felony charge.
The video was posted to YouTube and played to a local comedy club. That looks less like a prank and more like commercial exploitation.
It is serious shit, lying to a school to gain access to their kids.
These 6 and 7 year old children were edited into the video in a way that would achieve maximum shock value. That is a good working definition of "pornographic."
The publication of the video violates any notion of privacy, any notion of informed consent by the parents, the teacher, the children or the school.
The law in Michigan does not give you a "Photoshop" defense. The depiction of a child - or any part of child - that is pornographic in context is criminal.
It doesn't matter that the children near heard the obsence lyrics. It matters that audiences were being led to believe they were part of the performance.
That a singer whose career has been going nowhere fast did this simply as a "prank" stretches credibility to the breaking point:
Parents learned on Wednesday that the video was first shown on Valentine's Day while Emory was performing at a local comedy club
Evan Emory's YouTube classroom video turns into felony sex charge for singer
This is not Ford buying up the Los Angeles public transport company in order to shut it down and increase the demand for cars.
"Roger Rabbit" is fantasy.
The suburban electric line was in deep financial trouble before WWI.
The operating cost of the Ford Model T was about a penny a mile. Portal-to-Portal for passengers and freight. It scarcely needed a road and could be re-purposed to do almost anything:
The Model T was (intentionally) almost as much a tractor and stationary engine as it was an automobile, that is, a vehicle dedicated solely to road use. It has always been well regarded for its all-terrain abilities and ruggedness. It could drive down a rocky, muddy farm lane, ford a shallow stream, climb a steep hill, and be parked on the other side to have one of its wheels removed and a pulley fastened to the hub for a flat belt to drive a bucksaw, thresher, silo blower, conveyor for filling corn cribs or haylofts, baler, water pump, electrical generator, and countless other applications.
Ford Model T
Today though, hardware is so cheap that paying $100 for Windows is starting to be a big problem on a $300 PC. Netbooks would be running Linux if Microsoft hadn't cut deals with OEMs to make Windows free or almost free
Sales of the Linux netbook tanked the instant Windows entered the netbook market.
Walmart - with its enormous purchasing power and stranglehold on big box retail - was never able to make a go of OEM Linux on any platform.
Never able to offer a significant discount on OEM Windows by the time product reached retail shelves.
This will become a problem as time goes on and more of these online "stores" pop up.
--- and the "app store" is popping up on more and more devices.
The HDTV set. The video game console --- and each new device is further removed from the PC and from any tradition of "openness."
But this is community based software development we're talking about. Everybody already has their equipment, no office space is needed, and nobody should need to be hired (except if they need a web designer or lawyer temporarily I guess).
The Mozilla Foundation receives about 90% of its funding - $60 millon a year - through AdSense.
That means a project can have an independent - full time - staff to provide direction and maintain momentum.
The project is more than the code.
Microsoft spends billions on the study of office work and the office worker.
The developer - the geek - can be very distant from the user and at times almost openly hostile and that comes at a price.
You can schedule a room and a projector in Outlook.
It seems a very simple thing, but you won't see the need for it until you have people on your team who have spent some time down in the trenches.
Perhaps you should look more at plausible deniability
"Plausible" is in the eyes of the man holding the cattle prod.
But, if you can cut just a few corners, user lesser known actors (but then you might actually have to put some effort into casting! The horror!), and independent special effects companies you can make a movie for 1/5th the typical Hollywood action movie budget and it becomes much more profitable.
Some effort indeed.
The Coen brothers auditioned thousands of girls before they found Hailee Steinfeld - and without her you do not have a movie.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the right actor and the wrong actor is the difference beteen the lightning and the lightning bug.
The problem with special effects is that they do not remain special for very long - and the talent pool is much shallower here than the geek likes to pretend.
That is why you build a real Batmobile instead of a CGI prop.
Now and again, the low budget, no-name, production will click. More often it's Fox and "Space Chimps" vs Pixar and "Wall-E."
"About eight out of every 10 Web browsers run by consumers are vulnerable to attack [CC] by exploits of already-patched bugs, a security expert said Thursday.
The venue is worth a mention: RSA Conference 2011 - San Francisco
This not a second-tier event.
Speakers include former President Bill Clinton, General Keith B. Alexander, Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, William Lynn III, Deputy Secretary of Defense...
In Open Source from Qualys:
BlindElephant Web Application Fingerprinter
This is about a "bait and switch" with the core functionality of hardware that I bought. Mainly, the OtherOS feature and backwards support for PS2 games
The "core functionality" of the PS3 is not Linux.
The firmware upgrade has allowed the baseline PS3 of 2006 to remain feature competitive with the high end stand-only Blu-Ray player of 2011.
The firmware upgrade supports stereographic 3D video gaming and the MOVE controller.
There have been solid - marketable - enhancements to PSN.
It is fair, I think, to take a look at the numbers:
48 million PS3 consoles.
69 million PSN accounts
17 million PlayStation Home accounts
4 million MOVE controllers
To make the case for the OtherOS compelling, you need to show a level of interest and activity on the same scale - and you need to show that the cheater and the pirate are not the driving forces here.
More likely it's just because Bill Gates' protege Ballmer doesn't think software should be free. See his infamous Computer Users Group letter from circa 1977.
The letter was from Gates.
The tens of millions the Moz Foundation receives each years from AdSense means that Moz can afford to pay competive wages to a full time staff.
Freedom is not the freedom to pirate.
"Free as in Freedom" is not the same thing as "Free as in Beer."
It's also reminiscent of how Microsoft sent letters to schools warning them that using open source and/or pirated software could be dangerous with possible legal consequences. As a result we have stories like Karen the Teacher sending a student to detention, because he was handing-out Linux OS discs. (She thought she was doing the right thing based upon Microsoft's warnings.)
She was doing the right thing.
Little Johnny's Dad calls in to tell the Superintendent that his hard drive was wiped.
That is not a win for Linux.
Does you employer allow you to pass out software at work from unknown/untrusted sources?
I didn't think so.
How, using technology available as of this month, can a pure wireless mesh network independent of the regulated Internet reach from Los Angeles to Tokyo, or even from Los Angeles to New York for that matter?
How does the mesh network leap tall buildings, mighty rivers? How does it leap four blocks down the suburban street or a single mile of country road?
There's no "app-ification of the web", there's just a rush to cash in on the "app" and "appstore" buzzwords that Apple pushed from solely developer lingo into the mainstream.
Here is small sampling from Vizio's Internet Apps for the HDTV:
Amazon Video
Facebook
Flickr
Hulu Plus
Netflix
Pandora
Rhapsody
Twitter
WikiTV (The Wikipedia)
and (Coming Soon) OnLive gaming.
Add Skype to the list and support for the Kinect controller and you are in Hog Heaven.
The suite of apps for the Internet-enabled HDTV, Blu-Ray player, home theater receiver, video game console and mobile device is growing ever larger and more ambitious.
The OS is invisible - and the browser - and the ideologies and the politics which surround it - has no meaning here.