Television

DirecTV: Guilty until proven innocent

October 27, 2003

In an interview with Wired DirecTV's Larry Rissler tells the magazine "There's a legal presumption that the purchase of the device implies use, and the burden switches to the defendant to show that it was used in a legitimate manner. We're talking about products that came into existence because of the satellite piracy industry."

He goes on to explain that they determine by where you buy the card from if they should persecute (they would call it prosecution) you. Corporate oligarchies reign supreme.

Confessions

October 10, 2003

It seems to be a day for confessions. I have my own dark confessions. Years ago I needed to work late at night. When a daily dose of 700 Club failed to keep my blood boiling and keep me awake I turned to stronger alternatives. That's right I have listened to Rush from time to time to keep my blood boiling. The interesting thing is that his statement today contradicts the ads he's been running for Select Comfort. The ads say that his mattress has solved his back pain. The statement today says the pain never went away. So aside from being drummed out of ESPN for his inappropriate remarks and being investigated for buying illegal drugs it seems Rush and the Select Comfort company can now expect a call from the Federal Trade Commission.

Tired of Shark Week

August 8, 2003

Maybe it comes from being a little too young to be a Jaws fan, but I'm tired of TLC's "Shark Week" already. It doesn't start until next week, but I'm already tired of the sensational hype. When will they have Raptor week? Badger week? Why are we so fascinated with sharks to begin with?

Another reason to unplug the cable

August 1, 2003

Somewhere recently I read an article talking about the fear that satellite and cable companies will start using provisions in their contracts to prevent people from hooking up devices that may diminish advertisers revenue.

Today while waiting for the car to be re-repaired I was reading an article in this month's 2600 about the provision stating that servers can't be connected to cable companies' broadband internet. This presents some real challenges to the future of the desktop computer. A very powerful view of the future would suggest that all computers are nodes, both client and server, to others. There are applications such as Userland's Radio, and Apple's iTunes that include servers.

There are some geeks that use many servers. For example e-mail is much easier for me to handle with qmail running on each laptop with the ability to connect to various networks. This doesn't even touch the file sharing servers (NFS, SAMBA etc.) that are used to share files between the machines. And then there are database, contact etc. servers....

To truly experience the benefits that will come from personal computing in the next years it's time to unplug the cable until the cable companies get the message and begin to work a more reasonable user-agreement for everyone involved.

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