If your connection went down at the end of Friday and they promised someone out Monday, that's within a 24-*business*-hour time window.
That's perfectly acceptable in today's world, whether it is with you personally or not. That's the exact guarantee most business providers will give you -- 24 business hours, even if a truck roll is required.
This has nothing to do with "Evil Cable / Teleco". This is because the world in general has not transitioned over completely to the idea that business is a 7-day-a-week thing anymore, and not just "open Mon through Fri". You're going to have to convince the world in general to accept this before anything can be done in this regard... because 90% of the time Business means Monday-through-Friday. That's why we still call them the Business Days...
Of course, I imagine that people who "know what the problem is" are half the problem in a tech support center.
You would be correct. Half of the people like that are the geniuses who simply don't have their modem plugged in, just need a simple reboot, or didn't think to check to see if their cable TV was also working or not to know if it was just a line problem like a cut line or something.
AT&T in many areas will sell you additional IPs for ~$5/month. Perhaps that is just a local reg (low on IPs in your area perhaps) ow whoever you talked to is an idiot (or both).
AT&T allows up to five unique "addresses" (actually Computer or DNS Names) per account at $4.95/mo. for all @Home markets. No they're not static numerical IP's, but that's due to the fact that most all of the markets are on DHCP.
Where exactly do you propose you get your tech support from? People like yourself who know something almost always also would consider it "beneath" them to ever do Tier 1 tech support themselves. Not all, but a lot. There are exceptions. Someone has to do it, and it comes from somewhere... so it's pretty hard to criticize someone for doing a job you DON'T want to do yourself, regardless of how much you know... like anything else in life there are good techs and bad techs. And the bad ones don't stick around long because of their own incompetence, and the good ones don't stick around either because they move on to something else better.
Your problems were unfortunately caused by the fact that your market has already swapped hands at least twice in a short timespan -- from AT&T, to Comcast (who bought into the market), and then back to AT&T again after Comcast shipped it back to AT&T more than halfway into it for reasons unknown before the transaction was ever complete.
Well, there remains the fact that both AT&T and Comcast use the @Home network to provide service. However, I have to say, and I'm sure most of my fellow @Home users would agree, that @Home tech support would make chimps with typewriters seem like absolute fucking geniuses.
Having taken calls as an @Home technical support rep, I would also like to assure you that there are your fair share of customers, callers, and yes... Slashdot readers/posters/writers who meet those exact same qualifications.
Reading the whole story paragraph doesn't change a couple basic things like time-window for delivery. Like I said these feeds run 24 hours early at the most, generally, specifically to avoid an even earlier leak of something via a feed. By the time someone records/encodes them, distributes them, and word gets around, and some people can get them downloaded, we're talking MAYBE the ability to watch a show a couple hours before it actually airs, which by then is pretty silly anyways.
And that's only if a person knows where to go to specifically find it, which isn't easy.
We're not talking millions of people here. We're talking maybe a couple hundred, at the most, on a good day, with the capabilites, know-how, luck, and communication channels to distribute something like that OR obtain something like that from a distributor. It's a short time window.
This is why nobody is too worried about this as a "problem", and why it's all a bit silly.
Viewing pre-televised feeds off of C-Band *has* been going on for years just like the article said. I remember years ago accidentally watching the original pilot for "Sliders" on a feed before I even knew what it was. These have been readily available to big-dish owners for quite some time, so why this is a noteworthy story now just because the final episodes of Voyager got leaked online a few hours early is beyond me.
Big dish owners have always had access to feeds and alternates and such. This is something especially useful when it comes to finding things like sports broadcasts you can't find otherwise (and hey if they're feeds they're commercial-free!).
But when it comes to pre-recorded Tv shows, it's a few hours, people, almost always 24 hours max. Not the end of the world.
Shows like Geeks in Space already exist on the airwaves, and have for quite some time. It's just that very few stations will caryy them because they'd rather cram in another hour of Dr. Joy Browne, or another two hours of Coast-to-Coast with Mike Siegel (Art Bell's old shift), or something like that.
The fact of the matter is this -- until people stop listening to crap like Advice Radio and stuff like that you will NOT see any other different types of talk shows unfortunately.
There also will be no room for different shows in Satellite radio. Your options aren't going to expand, they're going to *lessen* because you'll have no local competition between and for shows. Instead of having 3 or 4 stations all airing competeing talk shows, you'll get one station airing one talk show, killing off the other three.
As someone who works in radio I absolutely HAVE to post on this and explain to everyone about the current state of the industry and where it's headed, and it's not good.
I've seen several posts warning about satellite radio and they are correct. If you, the listening public, are foolish enough to buy into satellite radio, there's no turning back down the road when people come to the realization later that it sucks and isn't what you want.
A lot of you won't realize this but radio has already hit a critical point in the industry, and I don't mean technology-wise. Voice-tracking, the Prophet System, syndication, satellite, and huge conglomerates have already thinned the talent pool in both on- and off-air jobs in the industry. Chlorine's been tossed in the talent pool.
This discussion recently came up at radioedge.net the other day. There are no new broadcast engineers out there (or the very least, there are very few). A lot of stations don't even have an engineer to maintain their equipment, and the ones that do have one engineeer have them maintaining 5 or 6 statiosn at once. Hardly enough to even really be maintaining them. And that's with just local broadcasts. Who's going to take care of the even-more complicated equipment for national and worldwide broadcasts
Also voicetracking and satellite feeds have thinned the on-air talent pool. It's become nearly impossible for young talent to be given a shot at any stations, since there aren't any live overnight shifts at most stations and the other shifts are usually filled by more-experienced voices.
It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Down the road there will not only be noone to take care of the stations equipment and such, but also no new voices to replace the old ones on the air.
Let me put it this way. Think of the radio station you hate most in your neck of the woods. Given the/. crowd, it's probably a HotAC, Top40, or Country station. Why do you hate it? Because the same songs get played every hour? Because there's never any live jocks in the studio and it's all voice-tracked? Because there's never anything local that you care about on there?
Well if satellite radio goes through as a reality, you're going to get all of the above and then some. Every station will be like this. Your options will be even more limited, your information even LESS local than it is already, and the stations are going to patronize the listening public with even LESS intellignet content than you hear already.
And as it stands already, something like satellite radio will probably be the death-knell for radio, period.
So I guess ask yourselves how much you care for radio. If you don't, then just let the industry slide away like it's doing now. A lot of people DON'T care, and I guess that's fine, to each his own.
But if you really *do* care and listen to radio more than you watch TV, I'd start questioning some of this stuff now, and make sure you actively listen to and support your local radio.
And no I'm not kidding with any of this -- the industry is in a really bad time right now and things truly are not looking good for it(thanks to ClearChannel and AM/FM). Anyone who's involved in radio because they truly love it will tell you this and confirm it.
Even then it looks like it already might be too late for the medium. You've all been warned about this...
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. It doesn't matter if it's 69 years or 103 or 2 billion...
It was freakishly bright out here last night, and somewhat tonight here though not as noticeable. And I'm used to driving home in total and utter darkness from work, especially on overcast nights like last night.
I don't care if it's a *yearly* event, but once again Slashdot users seem to be more interested in puffing up to see who's the biggest and the one with the Right Answer(TM), rather than enjoying the fact that something is happening and will happen that we normally don't get to see.
And then you wonder sometimes why nobody takes you or Slashdot's forums seriously.
Hmmmm, seems like over half of the posts I see are still (#1) computer-related and (#2) not necessarily something that has long-lasting social changes or anything the like.
While many of you may scoff, the concept of Instant Replay in television sports has become one of the best-known "hacks" today. Its original purpose long forgotten, it's now used instantaneously on major televised sporting events to criticize every little right and wrong thing in a cretain play.
IIRC, the first ever Instant Replay was used during a televised Army-Navy football game, with the intent to treat viewers simply to a second showing of a touchdown run in case they didn't catch all of it the first time. There was no slow-motion or frame-by-frame analysis -- it was simply a real-time replay of the touchdown run.
However nowadays instant replay is such a part of sports that leagues like the NFL and NHL have had to institute rules involving instant replay. Sports fans at home even get irritated if there isn't an instant replay immediately available of a certain play.
People like John Madden have made entire careers off running an instant replay over and over again and spouting great insight into a play such as "BOOM!" or "That had to hurt!"... and then John Madden begat Matt Millen who begat (*shudder*)...
The ramifications of this don't just end with in-game broadcast coverage though. It spawned and encouraged the concept of TV sports highlight reels (where would ESPN be without THAT?!) and the like. How many times have we all seen the replay of Joe Theisman's career-ending injury (ow), or of Bill Buckner muffing a grab in the World Series to lose it for the Red Sox? Or of Al Michaels screaming "Do you believe in miracles!" at the 1980 Winter Olympics? Without instant replay, those all-time great sports memories wouldn't be anywhere near as burned into our minds as they are now.
The instant replay is such a standard of modern broadcasting that maybe we take it for granted (probably most of you have no idea the organization it takes to put an instant replay on your TV screen seconds after a play is over).
Thus, I believe that Instant Replay is one of the Top Hacks of our time, because for all its positive and negative effects, there's no denying the impact it has had on both sport and broadcast.
How is this different from the recent and lame Requim: Avenging Angel? Or from Interplay's upcoming title Messiah? Neither of those two titles are terribly Christian... you run around, possess enemies and kill them because "they're evil and you and the angels must exterminate them".
I'm a Christian who plays Starcraft, trades MP3's (Christian hardcore no less), and am probably by most definitions a geek. And I know there are other Christian geeks out there too.
But don't you think God would want us to use our time better than just playing games, even if/when they are somewhat Christian?
It doesn't matter anyhow if there are a ton of licenses. As with most things, the good low-power ones will survive and make a niche for themselves. The rest will die because they won't be given the proper attention.
Someone truly wanting to do this and do it right won't have too much a problem keeping their station's listener-base, if you ask me. I'm willing to bet there are knowledgable and talented people out there willing to give it a shot.
It's just like most everything else in life, survival of the fittest.
One thing that never seems to be able to sink into the radio industry's head is that people don't like satellite radio. It's too genric and impersonal, and stations are already finding that out. It woprks OK for filling in a niche in a market where no other alternatives exist, but satellite radio can't and won't ever be a main player.
People want to hear local news. They want to hear local music. They want local interviews. They want local personalities. Not everyone wants this, but a good majority do if you ask them.
But a good portion of the radio industry doesn't want that or care about it, they just want their money from the community, not to be *part of* it.
Does anyone remember how years ago everyone was saying that FM was going to kill AM radio? Last I checked AM radio was still alive and thriving, especially with Talk, Sportstalk formats, and the like. In fact, I think it's safe to say AM radio has even been making a bit of a small comeback lately.
Seems like there were some people who thought TV was going to kill radio too. Hah. I know a lot of people who never watch TV but listen to lots of radio. Look at the state of television.
Realize it or not there are stations out there that totally ignore Arbitrons or other rating systems and are having NO problem making money as well as having a large listener base.
Sure changes are afoot in the future, but they're not going to be as successful as everyone is predicting. No Armageddons or apocalypses. Just overzealous people overreacting to a situation without fully thinking about the alternative.
I disagree on the comment about how without money you can't create a successful radio station. I've seen Pirate stations with pretty crude equipment become the most popular stations in their small market. Especially considering if they are filling in a niche in the market.
I'm pretty sure with a little money and the right location I myself could do decently with a station. Your DAW (SAW, CoolEdit Pro) software runs on a basic desktop PC, so someone with a bit of knowledge and a lot of heart, and a decent board could feasibly be putting out higher-quality programming (which isn't saying much nowadays).
Granting a low-power license to someone might be just a preliminary action -- if the low-power one has some success they are liable to up the license the next possible chance, up the power, and voila' you have a player suddenly that you might not have had in the market without a chance to test.
Someone just screwing around on a low-power broadcast won't have much success. Those taking the opportunity seriously could end up filling in niches in rather large markets. The good ones will eventually kill off all the crappy ones.
As to why it is useful? I think it's pretty obvious. I'm in the radio industry and I think that the low-power stations who end up doing things professionally and well could be the kick in the butt the so-called Big Boys need to change the way they approach radio.
Sure they'll never have a major impact on the Arbitrons, but contrary to popular belief it isn't all about Arbitrons.
Slashdot Mirror
That's perfectly acceptable in today's world, whether it is with you personally or not. That's the exact guarantee most business providers will give you -- 24 business hours, even if a truck roll is required.
This has nothing to do with "Evil Cable / Teleco". This is because the world in general has not transitioned over completely to the idea that business is a 7-day-a-week thing anymore, and not just "open Mon through Fri". You're going to have to convince the world in general to accept this before anything can be done in this regard... because 90% of the time Business means Monday-through-Friday. That's why we still call them the Business Days...
-- Primis.
You would be correct. Half of the people like that are the geniuses who simply don't have their modem plugged in, just need a simple reboot, or didn't think to check to see if their cable TV was also working or not to know if it was just a line problem like a cut line or something.
-- Primis
AT&T allows up to five unique "addresses" (actually Computer or DNS Names) per account at $4.95/mo. for all @Home markets. No they're not static numerical IP's, but that's due to the fact that most all of the markets are on DHCP.
-- Primis.
Where exactly do you propose you get your tech support from? People like yourself who know something almost always also would consider it "beneath" them to ever do Tier 1 tech support themselves. Not all, but a lot. There are exceptions. Someone has to do it, and it comes from somewhere... so it's pretty hard to criticize someone for doing a job you DON'T want to do yourself, regardless of how much you know... like anything else in life there are good techs and bad techs. And the bad ones don't stick around long because of their own incompetence, and the good ones don't stick around either because they move on to something else better.
-- Primis.
-- Primis.
Well, there remains the fact that both AT&T and Comcast use the @Home network to provide service. However, I have to say, and I'm sure most of my fellow @Home users would agree, that @Home tech support would make chimps with typewriters seem like absolute fucking geniuses.
Having taken calls as an @Home technical support rep, I would also like to assure you that there are your fair share of customers, callers, and yes... Slashdot readers/posters/writers who meet those exact same qualifications.
-- Primis.
And that's only if a person knows where to go to specifically find it, which isn't easy.
We're not talking millions of people here. We're talking maybe a couple hundred, at the most, on a good day, with the capabilites, know-how, luck, and communication channels to distribute something like that OR obtain something like that from a distributor. It's a short time window.
This is why nobody is too worried about this as a "problem", and why it's all a bit silly.
--Primis.
Big dish owners have always had access to feeds and alternates and such. This is something especially useful when it comes to finding things like sports broadcasts you can't find otherwise (and hey if they're feeds they're commercial-free!).
But when it comes to pre-recorded Tv shows, it's a few hours, people, almost always 24 hours max. Not the end of the world.
-- Primis
The fact of the matter is this -- until people stop listening to crap like Advice Radio and stuff like that you will NOT see any other different types of talk shows unfortunately.
There also will be no room for different shows in Satellite radio. Your options aren't going to expand, they're going to *lessen* because you'll have no local competition between and for shows. Instead of having 3 or 4 stations all airing competeing talk shows, you'll get one station airing one talk show, killing off the other three.
Welcome to the future of radio.
-- Primis.
As someone who works in radio I absolutely HAVE to post on this and explain to everyone about the current state of the industry and where it's headed, and it's not good.
I've seen several posts warning about satellite radio and they are correct. If you, the listening public, are foolish enough to buy into satellite radio, there's no turning back down the road when people come to the realization later that it sucks and isn't what you want.
A lot of you won't realize this but radio has already hit a critical point in the industry, and I don't mean technology-wise. Voice-tracking, the Prophet System, syndication, satellite, and huge conglomerates have already thinned the talent pool in both on- and off-air jobs in the industry. Chlorine's been tossed in the talent pool.
This discussion recently came up at radioedge.net the other day. There are no new broadcast engineers out there (or the very least, there are very few). A lot of stations don't even have an engineer to maintain their equipment, and the ones that do have one engineeer have them maintaining 5 or 6 statiosn at once. Hardly enough to even really be maintaining them. And that's with just local broadcasts. Who's going to take care of the even-more complicated equipment for national and worldwide broadcasts
Also voicetracking and satellite feeds have thinned the on-air talent pool. It's become nearly impossible for young talent to be given a shot at any stations, since there aren't any live overnight shifts at most stations and the other shifts are usually filled by more-experienced voices.
It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Down the road there will not only be noone to take care of the stations equipment and such, but also no new voices to replace the old ones on the air.
Let me put it this way. Think of the radio station you hate most in your neck of the woods. Given the /. crowd, it's probably a HotAC, Top40, or Country station. Why do you hate it? Because the same songs get played every hour? Because there's never any live jocks in the studio and it's all voice-tracked? Because there's never anything local that you care about on there?
Well if satellite radio goes through as a reality, you're going to get all of the above and then some. Every station will be like this. Your options will be even more limited, your information even LESS local than it is already, and the stations are going to patronize the listening public with even LESS intellignet content than you hear already.
And as it stands already, something like satellite radio will probably be the death-knell for radio, period.
So I guess ask yourselves how much you care for radio. If you don't, then just let the industry slide away like it's doing now. A lot of people DON'T care, and I guess that's fine, to each his own.
But if you really *do* care and listen to radio more than you watch TV, I'd start questioning some of this stuff now, and make sure you actively listen to and support your local radio.
And no I'm not kidding with any of this -- the industry is in a really bad time right now and things truly are not looking good for it(thanks to ClearChannel and AM/FM). Anyone who's involved in radio because they truly love it will tell you this and confirm it.
Even then it looks like it already might be too late for the medium. You've all been warned about this...
-- Primis.
You'll say you'll wait until next year, when the "real" consoles come out? What, Nintendo's Dolphin? MS's global joke, the X-Box?
Please elaborate because if you're putting your faith in those consoles, you're even stupider than you're making the people buying PS2's out to be.
-- Primis.
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. It doesn't matter if it's 69 years or 103 or 2 billion...
It was freakishly bright out here last night, and somewhat tonight here though not as noticeable. And I'm used to driving home in total and utter darkness from work, especially on overcast nights like last night.
I don't care if it's a *yearly* event, but once again Slashdot users seem to be more interested in puffing up to see who's the biggest and the one with the Right Answer(TM), rather than enjoying the fact that something is happening and will happen that we normally don't get to see.
And then you wonder sometimes why nobody takes you or Slashdot's forums seriously.
-- Primis.
Hmmmm, seems like over half of the posts I see are still (#1) computer-related and (#2) not necessarily something that has long-lasting social changes or anything the like.
While many of you may scoff, the concept of Instant Replay in television sports has become one of the best-known "hacks" today. Its original purpose long forgotten, it's now used instantaneously on major televised sporting events to criticize every little right and wrong thing in a cretain play.
IIRC, the first ever Instant Replay was used during a televised Army-Navy football game, with the intent to treat viewers simply to a second showing of a touchdown run in case they didn't catch all of it the first time. There was no slow-motion or frame-by-frame analysis -- it was simply a real-time replay of the touchdown run.
However nowadays instant replay is such a part of sports that leagues like the NFL and NHL have had to institute rules involving instant replay. Sports fans at home even get irritated if there isn't an instant replay immediately available of a certain play.
People like John Madden have made entire careers off running an instant replay over and over again and spouting great insight into a play such as "BOOM!" or "That had to hurt!"... and then John Madden begat Matt Millen who begat (*shudder*)...
The ramifications of this don't just end with in-game broadcast coverage though. It spawned and encouraged the concept of TV sports highlight reels (where would ESPN be without THAT?!) and the like. How many times have we all seen the replay of Joe Theisman's career-ending injury (ow), or of Bill Buckner muffing a grab in the World Series to lose it for the Red Sox? Or of Al Michaels screaming "Do you believe in miracles!" at the 1980 Winter Olympics? Without instant replay, those all-time great sports memories wouldn't be anywhere near as burned into our minds as they are now.
The instant replay is such a standard of modern broadcasting that maybe we take it for granted (probably most of you have no idea the organization it takes to put an instant replay on your TV screen seconds after a play is over).
Thus, I believe that Instant Replay is one of the Top Hacks of our time, because for all its positive and negative effects, there's no denying the impact it has had on both sport and broadcast.
-- Primis.
How is this different from the recent and lame Requim: Avenging Angel? Or from Interplay's upcoming title Messiah? Neither of those two titles are terribly Christian... you run around, possess enemies and kill them because "they're evil and you and the angels must exterminate them".
I'm a Christian who plays Starcraft, trades MP3's (Christian hardcore no less), and am probably by most definitions a geek. And I know there are other Christian geeks out there too.
But don't you think God would want us to use our time better than just playing games, even if/when they are somewhat Christian?
-- Primis.
It doesn't matter anyhow if there are a ton of licenses. As with most things, the good low-power ones will survive and make a niche for themselves. The rest will die because they won't be given the proper attention.
Someone truly wanting to do this and do it right won't have too much a problem keeping their station's listener-base, if you ask me. I'm willing to bet there are knowledgable and talented people out there willing to give it a shot.
It's just like most everything else in life, survival of the fittest.
-- Primis.
You are correct.
One thing that never seems to be able to sink into the radio industry's head is that people don't like satellite radio. It's too genric and impersonal, and stations are already finding that out. It woprks OK for filling in a niche in a market where no other alternatives exist, but satellite radio can't and won't ever be a main player.
People want to hear local news. They want to hear local music. They want local interviews. They want local personalities. Not everyone wants this, but a good majority do if you ask them.
But a good portion of the radio industry doesn't want that or care about it, they just want their money from the community, not to be *part of* it.
Does anyone remember how years ago everyone was saying that FM was going to kill AM radio? Last I checked AM radio was still alive and thriving, especially with Talk, Sportstalk formats, and the like. In fact, I think it's safe to say AM radio has even been making a bit of a small comeback lately.
Seems like there were some people who thought TV was going to kill radio too. Hah. I know a lot of people who never watch TV but listen to lots of radio. Look at the state of television.
Realize it or not there are stations out there that totally ignore Arbitrons or other rating systems and are having NO problem making money as well as having a large listener base.
Sure changes are afoot in the future, but they're not going to be as successful as everyone is predicting. No Armageddons or apocalypses. Just overzealous people overreacting to a situation without fully thinking about the alternative.
-- Primis.
I disagree on the comment about how without money you can't create a successful radio station. I've seen Pirate stations with pretty crude equipment become the most popular stations in their small market. Especially considering if they are filling in a niche in the market.
I'm pretty sure with a little money and the right location I myself could do decently with a station. Your DAW (SAW, CoolEdit Pro) software runs on a basic desktop PC, so someone with a bit of knowledge and a lot of heart, and a decent board could feasibly be putting out higher-quality programming (which isn't saying much nowadays).
Granting a low-power license to someone might be just a preliminary action -- if the low-power one has some success they are liable to up the license the next possible chance, up the power, and voila' you have a player suddenly that you might not have had in the market without a chance to test.
Someone just screwing around on a low-power broadcast won't have much success. Those taking the opportunity seriously could end up filling in niches in rather large markets. The good ones will eventually kill off all the crappy ones.
As to why it is useful? I think it's pretty obvious. I'm in the radio industry and I think that the low-power stations who end up doing things professionally and well could be the kick in the butt the so-called Big Boys need to change the way they approach radio.
Sure they'll never have a major impact on the Arbitrons, but contrary to popular belief it isn't all about Arbitrons.