Burn your TIVO!

I caught a segment on Marketplace on NPR last night which talked about a few of the features that TiVo plans to release. The first appears to be restricting the use of Fast Forward to skip passed commercials. In fact, as Marketplace reported it, the TiVo feature will show some sort of advertisements of its own when you hit Fast Forward! The other change for TiVo appears to be that certain Pay Per View events will have a maximum storage lifetime. You will be able to save the event for only a certain period of time on your TiVo device. These, among other things, I found reported on PVRblog. Although I always like the idea of TiVo I, was always put off by the subscription charge, and now I'm sort of glad I didn't succumb because of how TiVo has been chipping away at its features. What I find more alarming is how our Fair Use rights are being whittled away chip by chip without us being able to put up a fight. Although I understand the entertainment industry's concern, they have to remember that we are their customer. Without us, they will not exist. They need to find new ways of generating revenue without annoying us. And without lawsuits against innovators like TiVo. Since I built a homegrown PVR from ATI's incredible All-In-Wonder products years ago, the TiVo problem doesn't nececessarily effect me, save for the thought that legislation will soon make All-In-Wonder a thing of the past too.

(2004-11-18 12:26:48.0) Comments [3] // Permalink

File Sharing to Preserve History

As I have been pondering the transcoding idea of my archive of The Tick episodes on VHS, I have been thinking about Masood Mortazavi's blog entry titled Copyright extension. In particular, the last paragraph from his excerpt by Lawrence Lessig. Its quite thought provoking. Let me explain. As I have been combing over The Tick fan-sites, I found a couple of people mention that you can sometimes find the entire series on VHS sometimes on Ebay. And you can even sometimes find episodes on, dare I say it, File Sharing Networks, like Kazaa or Bit Torrent. With a little searching, indeed I did find the entire The Tick series, among other titles, such as My So Called Life for example, and others that aren't currently being aired. In the Lessig excerpt, he states "To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have made mistakes that we have, we need to have access to this history.". This is undoubtedly true. In consideration of that, you could consider the File Sharing Networks to be a form of living library. It is most certainly preserving our access to much of history that would otherwise be locked behind doors of some corporate entity, gathering dust. Stuff like The Tick. Stuff that is a part of me. Something which my kids may sometime be interested in investigating to figure out why their daddy is so weird. While people yell copyright foul when talking about File Sharing Networks, they can indeed prove to provide access to a history that is ours. There is no doubt that had I tried to contact FOX Network to try to obtain a copy of The Tick, there would have been no end to the run around I would have gotten into just get access to a show that I was too stupid to record in the first place. And yet, if its a part of me, don't I have a right to that? You could almost make a point that in some cases, File Sharing Networks are actually doing a good thing, for once.

(2004-10-18 17:10:33.0) Comments [2] // Permalink

Lard, Soap, Rendering and what not.

Last week I was listening to the local morning radio show on the drive in to work, and I can't remember the context, but they had started talking about euthanizing pets. As the discussion progressed, they started to wonder where the remains of the animals go, so they went to the phones to see if anyone could explain. Several callers mentioned that the animals are shipped off to rendering plants. Made me curious as to what they really do, so I made a mental note to do some searching on the web when I got into the office. Those mental notes usually don't stick but on this occasion I did actually remember. After a little searching, I found a page titled Rendering: The Invisible Industry. Now, I'm not a vegetarian, and this page clearly has a PETA-like spin on it, but it sure does make you wonder about all the meat products we use. Oh and yes, the page does mention that sources of rendering can be pets, in states which allow it. What's worse, over the weekend, my nephew was baptised, which as accompanied by a grand Latino celebration. Needless to say there was alot of deep-fried foods. Deep-fried in lard. Rendered lard. Ish, bad week to learn something new.

(2004-08-02 10:01:09.0) Comments [2] // Permalink

511 - Bay Area Traffic Info

I found this great traffic info service a while ago. 511 - both web and telephone access. For the last month I have been comparing reported incidents against what I see on the little stretch of 101 between Willow Road in Menlo Park and the 85 interchange in Mountain View, and I gotta say, it is with out a doubt the most accurate service I have seen. What's great about it is that slow downs are very often reported even if there is no real incident, such as a broken down vehicle, or crash. Even though I drive maybe a 10 mile stretch on 101, when its slow its sloooow, so being alerted early so I can take an alternate route is handy. And what's more, the automated attendent on the phone is so friendly. I simply tell him what cities and freeways I want a report on and he politely gives me the "511" on the conditions. I sometimes find myself wanting to call just to talk to someone on the way home :-)

(2004-07-14 15:57:23.0) Comments [1] // Permalink