BunkBlog

If you’ve been hiding under a rock, you may not know that television shows are being pushed into new directions lately. It seems that a lot of plans were just waiting for a catalyst, and Apple gave the world that catalyst with the video iPod. Now, AOL is going to stream old shows. Some stories are claiming up to 300 shows will be available, all of them episodes you can’t get on television right now. The two that jumped out at me: Babylon 5 and Spenser For Hire. Oh, yeah, that old Avery Brooks “Hawk” character is gonna be cool to watch again.

I’m betting that AOL’s push is a play to guage interest in specific shows, to help them decide which to release on DVDs or put back in syndication. Imagine the business meeting, “We know Welcome Back Kotter will be a hit for you, because 800,000 people watched it just last week.”

This has been a good week for idiots claiming God wants towns destroyed.

Pat Robertson warned Dover Pennsylvania that they shouldn’t turn to $DEITY in any emergency, because they rejected Him when they voted the idiots out of the school board. Of course, Intelligent Design has nothing at all to do with religion, isn’t that right, Reverend?

Bill O’Reilly told citizens of San Francicso that he’d be happy to invite al Qaeda to blow up the Coit Tower, because the SF voters decided they didn’t like the military hanging around high schools trying to recruit their kids.

John 13:34 and 35

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all [men] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

That doesn’t seem ambiguous to me, but I’m a simple-minded fellow it seems. Apparently what Jesus really said was, “Love one another, unless you disagree about something, and then hope that person dies in a horrible and painful way.”

Seriously, is Veteran’s Day really a good time to attack your political rivals? I know, every day is campaign day in modern politics, but give it a rest already! I spent twelve years in the Army, and I’m proud of that service. I’m also happy to live in a country where I can disagree with a policy decision or pretty much anything else, and do so in public without fear of arrest or other bad things.

Here in San Angelo, the local school district finally decided to recognize Veteran’s Day. This is something which has been a long time coming, and is really bizarre considering how much the local population actually likes the military (not something I was used to at other postings in the Army). So, the Boy and I went to the parade again. Last year, it was cold and we had hot cocoa while sitting on a bench beside the Federal Building, watching the relatively small parade go by. This year, it was nice out, we stood in the street near the Federal Building (until he got tired and needed to take a break on the lawn), and the parade was much larger. It’s not quite as large as the parade for Rodeo Day, but you take what you can get in West Texas. I’m sure if we had a High School Football Day, the parade would be astounding in its scope. Anyway, a few new pictures up at the gallery of the Boy and the Cat. We built a gingerbread house that looks less impressive now than it did while we were decorating it. The Cat didn’t help.

So I put the Sith DVD in the computer, expecting to get the usual autorun “what do you want to do with this disk” query. Instead, it autoruns and starts playing a front-end to its own playback software (like PowerDVD isn’t good enough for George Lucas?). I kill that and look at the disk in Explorer – the DVD is named “CHARLOTTE_DISC1” – what the heck?

Apparently, they codename movies while they’re doing the DVD authoring and mastering, but forgot to change the first batch of SW3 masters to something more appropriate.

After helping way too many people unscrew their systems due in large part to Microsoft software inviting everyone into their hard drives, I’ve decided to do something drastic.

If you are visiting my webpage with Internet Explorer, it will now nag you to switch browsers. I’ve joined the Explorer Destroyer campaign, boys and girls. Oh, I haven’t gone totally ideologue on you – the site will still work for IE users, but mostly because I know people may not be allowed to use a secure and fast browser at their workplace. At home, though – please do yourself a favor and stop using IE. Not only does it ignore web standards (CSS2, PNG, etc), it’s a virus waiting to happen. I’ve had to use IE to access a couple sites recently – they almost invariably end up leaving some sort of electronic spooge on my system that takes me a half hour or more to remove. And I know what I’m doing. Other folks just say, “my computer is messed up” and eventually they stop using the machine entirely.

I’ve used a variety of web browsers over the years. When I first got a PPP internet account, I used Netscape (0.7 as I recall). As time went on, I tried IE 1.0, but stuck with Netscape. When Netscape stopped getting updates and became a giant bloated piece of dung, I reluctantly used IE for a while. When Opera came out, I grabbed it (even though I had to pay for it, it was better than IE). A while back, the Mozilla Project came out with Phoenix, which became Firebird, which became Firefox. They got sued out of their previous names, but I guess nobody wants to remember the Clint Eastwood movie so they’re safe now.

Firefox has tabbed browsing, built-in popup blocking (that actually BLOCKS everything, unlike IE’s attempt), and is fast. The program is significantly smaller than IE’s bloatware, but allows an impressive variety of extensions to be used. If you use Firefox, here’s the extensions I recommend:
Adblock – nukes any images from ad-serving web sites. Doubleclick, begone! Must-have for dialup users.
All-in-One Gestures – let’s you use the right mouse button to jump back a site, go forward, or do the hokey pokey. Until you use mouse gestures, you will not understand why people love them. once you use them, you’ll hate using a machine that omits them.
Flashblock – Allows you to decide whether to load that Flash-based content or not. Must-have for dialup users.

And here’s some that I like a lot:
TabBrowser Preferences – exposes many of the tabbed interface options that are hidden by default.
Forecastfox – shows a multi-day forecast at the bottom of your browser. Takes no space, and alerts you if there is a weather alert.

Unsurprisingly, the “I hate gays” amendment passed overwhelmingly here in Red Neck Texas. If something is already illegal, why bother with amending the state constitution? Is it just a way to say, “no, really – we hate gays?” Of course, the way the Texas constitution is written, an insane number of things require amendments rather than laws – we’re up to 437 amendments, I believe.

California – what the hell is wrong with you people? You rejected every proposition, even the reasonable ones, just because Arnold liked them all? And, um…San Francisco banned all gun ownership? Damn, even the SFPD thought that was stupid. I realize that nobody needs a gun to go hunting on Fisherman’s Wharf, but that doesn’t mean the Second Amendment is irrelevant. What part of “shall not be infringed” is unclear?

If people don’t like a particular part of our legal framework, they’re perfectly welcome to attempt changing it. Just don’t circumvent it, eh? BTW, this applies equally to people finding legal loopholes to allow torture and indiscriminate imprisonment as it does to people who hate gays or guns. Some days, it’s hard to think of people as a group having anything like brains (Kansas, I’m looking at you!).

Apple came out with the latest iPod (with video, but not part of the name so nobody who isn’t in the know can possibly tell if it’s a “video” iPod or not on the shelf – WTF?) a few weeks ago. They accompanied the launch with a new offering in the iTunes Music Store – downloadable television shows. That’s right, instead of setting your VCR or TiVo, you can pay two bucks to get a 320×240 video of Lost or Desperate Housewives on your two-inch screen. Why?

This week, NBC announced a deal with DirecTV to offer commercial-free television shows for a buck an episode, delivered to the DirecTV Digital Video Recorder. You know, the box you can use to record the shows when they are played on television for free? Yeah. Why?

And, finally, CBS announced a deal to deliver television shows via the pay-per-view channel on Comcast cable systems, for a buck an episode. They won’t delete the commercials when they send you your copy, though. Um…Why?

I understand that television studios need to find new ways to generate revenue in the age of TiVo and the internet. Their standard commercial-supported model is going to have a hard time staying viable when people can easily skip the commercials. But, can’t they find some way to add value to their offerings, rather than removing the value that was already there?

I can rent a movie for a buck (three for a new release); paying two bucks for the episode of Lost that aired ten minutes ago seems kind of retarded to me. If you notice, none of these three networks is using the same system as any other. If you want to watch ABC shows, you have to use an iPod and iTMS. If you want to watch NBC shows, you have to subscribe to DirecTV satellite service. If you prefer CBS shows, move to a city that offers Comcast cable. Fox? Nope, not playing yet. And, the networks aren’t offering all of their shows on-demand – just a select few.

I don’t see anything here that I can’t do better with existing tools (TiVo, MythTV, ReplayTV, VHS tape) and without paying per episode. Damn, I already pay an insane amount for cable television – I’m not about to pony up another hundred bucks a month to watch the shows on a 2-inch screen.

Am I missing something vital here? Apple has sold one million downloaded videos, so someone must be watching them. More money than brains, as the saying goes.

You would think Kansas would wait until after the Dover case was settled before trying this, but the Kansas educational system seems to like showing off its ignorance.

Next on the hit list, Germ Theory and the Theory of Gravity. It’s all deus ex machina, man!

If you haven’t been following the Google Print controversy, here’s the pinnacle of absurdity so far. A children’s hospital in England has a completely unique and unprecedented perpetual copyright (in the UK) on the sales and performance of Peter Pan in the UK. They are claiming that Google Print’s service will rob them of millions of pounds of income every year. Think of the children!

I wonder why they haven’t previously gone after the public domain work? You did know that the book is actually in the public domain everywhere but the United Kingdom, didn’t you? So, exactly what does the American site Google do that the American site Gutenberg Project doesn’t already do? Is it just a question of convenience?

(Via BoingBoing)

Oh, Kit! Have you seen MYPETZOMBIES.COM yet? Seems like a Christmas present idea…

Alex got a good haul of candy at the mall, and another bucketload tonight.

Why would someone be bringing little kids to my door at 9 pm? Geez, folks, get them to bed already!

Obviously, the government cares about the opinions of its citizens. We’re going to have RFID tags in American passports starting in about 12 months. When this was proposed, the State Department asked for comments from the public.

Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative.

Damn. It’s hard to think of 1.5% as a mandate from the masses, but then…oh, yeah.

Another article has this to say:

U.S. government efforts to make passports harder to forge began in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Now, I’m not 100% certain, but weren’t all of the hijackers on 9/11 here on legal passports, not forged ones? So…what does this do, exactly?

It reminds me of the ban on lighters, which was partially justified by saying that Reed was trying to bomb a plane with his exploding shoes, those shoes which he was trying to light with (wait for it) matches. Matches remain legal on airplanes. Just let it sink in for a minute. I’ll wait.

I got two new toys this week – a CD player and a camera. Not too exciting, eh?

Well, the CD player is to replace the CD/MP3 player I’ve been using at work. That one, the original RioVolt from 2000, is still working, but it has poor battery life compared to newer machines, and no radio. I like having the radio as an option. So, I’ve been looking for a replacement for a while. I even bought a rebadged iRiver Slimx from Sharper Image’s clearance rack a while ago – it was inop on arrival. So, a new Sony Psyc CD/MP3 player is now on my desk at work. Unlike most CD/MP3 players on the market (like the ones two of my coworkers have), this one actually has an alphanumeric display. Go figure – you have 100 songs on a disk, it’s nice to know what the song is other than “track 75.” Oh, and 22-40 hour battery life with one AA battery – sweet.

My other new toy, the camera, is a bigger step. My first digital camera was the Canon Powershot S10, which was the smallest 2 megapixel camera on the market at the time, with the best optical zoom. After four years, it finally gave up the ghost. I tried to take a still shot with the camcorder recently – ick. So, when Buy.com pinged me with a “for sale” sign linked to the new Powershot A610, I took a look. Half the price of that S10, uses standard batteries instead of the $35 ones the S10 used, over twice the resolution, swing-out LCD, double the zoom… Well, suffice to say, it’s sitting on my desk and it’s pretty sweet. It is slightly larger than the S10, even using SD instead of CompactFlash for memory, because it uses four AA batteries – this does lead to it working for 400 or more photos instead of the 150 I’d get from the S10, so I’ll accept the tradeoff. Still fits easily in a jacket pocket, so it meets my criteria of “the best camera to use is the one you’re willing to cart around.”

Alex decided to be a white ninja for Halloween this year. Isn’t he adorable?

BTW, I installed Gallery2 this weekend, so any old URLs you had to my photo gallery don’t work.

Kristol is on the Daily Show. It’s nice to see Jon Stewart actually harassing someone for a change – when he had Bill O’Reilly on, it seemed like he was over solicitious, which the audience didn’t appreciate. C’mon, you got a conservative to come on the Daily Show – hit him!

Anyway, Bill Kristol seems like a thoughtful man, but he kept saying the phrase which drives me crazy when discussing Iraq: Weapons of Mass Destruction. Look, chemical weapons are bad; biological weapons are bad. But neither of those categories are weapons of mass destruction – that would be a nuke or a firebomb or napalm, you know: things which destroy stuff. Chem/Bio weapons are weapons of mass denial or weapons of mass casualties. To keep calling chem and bio WMDs is to make people confuse what Saddam didn’t actually have (but wanted to have again someday soon, admittedly) with the towers falling. It seems so transparent, to make people associate our own domestic mass destruction with Saddam’s regime in every possible way.

OK, rant off.

I went grocery shopping this morning, as I usually do on Sundays. I thought I’d go ahead and pick up a six-pack of 1554, but then I realized that when I moved to San Angelo I’d moved to the 18th Century as well. Can’t buy alcohol until noon on Sundays. I have this good-looking cake recipe I want to try this week, which requires raspberry liquer in the mix. Not only can’t I buy that until afternoon, I can’t buy it in the grocery store. Although they’ve recently made it legal to sell hard liquor within the city limits, nobody is doing so as yet (licenses not issued I’m guessing). OK, fine. I know I’m stuck in Bibleland (thank you, Poppy Brite, for that term), but at least the liquor stores outside the city limits are available, right?

Not on Sundays. I don’t know whether it’s a law that they be closed or just that nobody goes to the sinful liquor vendors on church days, but they’re all closed until tomorrow. Guess I’ll make that cake another day.

Just watched Wild Things for the first time. Two things occurred to me:

1. I really shouldn’t try to watch television with my glasses instead of contacts – the prescription is just too far off.
2. Never trust a homicidal maniac with millions of dollars.

Of course, I also realize that I don’t get to see Denise Richards’s breasts frequently enough, but that’s really not as surprising.

Our own local fishwrap, the SubStandard Times, has a brief article about the Intelligent Design debacle debate. One person quoted is a biology professor at Abilene Christian University:

”I see good evidence for evolution, but on the other hand, I see my body works almost perfectly. It seems to be a tremendous leap of faith to say this body is the result of total randomness.”

It’s not total randomness! To conflate evolution with purely random chance mutations is to deliberately mislead people. How is this guy a college professor? It’s not like you have just as good a chance to evolve something bad as something good – that’s the point; the bad mutations tend to die and the good mutations tend to out-compete the nonmutated organisms. Evolution is the only theory on speciation (not the origin of life – another common confusion thrown in) that has withstood the test of time and research. There has not been any serious debunking of evolution since Darwin’s time; it looks increasingly unlikely that there will ever be a legitimate failure found in the basic tenets of the theory.

Two other professors, from a non-religious university, say the same thing that every actual working scientist has said: ID isn’t science, it’s faith. If you want to believe in a deity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, good for you. Just don’t try to use that belief to bring down science.

They also quote a Catholic Bishop, as the “other side of the debate” – there is no debate. If you want to have a theologian discuss his views on a subject that is not in his area of study, why stop there? How about if we use expert opinions on automobile maintenance from a grocery clerk? Why not take a biologist’s opinion about quantum physics as a legitimate counterpoint to an actual physicist’s research? Some things are not opinion – they are observed reality.