Linear TV’s demise?

Apple TV sells you movies and tv shows.  Tivo plays rented or purchased tv shows and movies from Amazon!

When will Comcast and the broadcast networks finally make the big plunge? It seems Comcast has in some ways.  When you watch new episodes of the final season of The Wire, you are already watching a show a week old.  Why? Because Comcast and HBO worked a deal to allow Comcast to release the episodes one week early for Comcast customers.  I was DVR’ing the show, when I realized it was being offered on Comcast’s ON DEMAND network.  So there it was, next weeks show and I just finished last week’s?

What I would like…to pay $24.95 and get to watch every episode of The Wire when I want.  Good for me to watch at my leisure over the next 30 days.

I’ve heard and known of Apple Tv.  Quite tempting.  I have netflix at home.  Convenient.  Now Tivo plays Amazon rented/purchased movies and/or tv shows.  Why am I paying for linear Tv I don’t have time to watch?

I’ve even found the few children shows my kids watch are being replayed from DVR.  Sure they catch a Sponge Bob once in a while, but they don’t like having to see if its on.  My daughter wants to watch sponge bob when she has TV time, not waste 30 mins of her TV time on something the networks want her to watch.  And she’s only four!

Why can’t I pay a monthly fee ($4.95) and get every episode of Sponge bob delivered? Maybe allow the kids to mark their favorite episodes while you shuffle new and old episodes in?

Its getting quite tempting.  I’m about to call Comcast and pull the plug.  But first I have to decide on Apple TV and/or a Tivo like device.

News? LOL…are you kidding me? We actually make sure we set channels back to kids channels, because the news has become too graphic for young children! If I need the news, I can always catch up on it via the internet.  Sorry CNN…but CNN.com sounds better and keeps my kids from stumbling across another sentence with words like bullet, murder, or rape.

What about new cartoon content, or new TV shows? How do you get someone to subscribe? The same way you do with movies.  Premier them.  Give us a free episode or two…heck even let us vote.  Why not…? 

Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon…anyone have any ideas.  Has anyone made the change already? If so, I’d like to hear your input.

When is a Tattoo not a Tattoo?

I read this story and am a bit stunned how simple the solution for non-permanent tattoos really was. I’m not promoting or strongly against tattoos. To each his/her own. I do like the idea that a tattoo can be more easily removed if that someone happened to get a tattoo in Daytona Beach, Florida during Bike Week. I’m not releasing any names.

Researchers Develop Regret-Free Tattoo

I know…right now your thinking. Either way not me. But think about the applications. Movie stars can get tattoos for their next role. And one day when/if it is affordable enough, younger teenagers will get them at a younger age too, because…well they are not permanent. Don’t agree? Yeah, well I never thought I would of heard young girls getting breast implants in high school either. It wasn’t around when I was in high school…and I’m not that old!

OpenOffice.org Writer

I’ve been using Linux for quite some time.  But one of the products I had no need for was the office products.  As I remember back now, the only time I ran Writer was by mistake, and as soon as it loaded, I quickly closed it and moved on to my next task (which was usually development in C++).

A few weeks ago I needed to write a document and email it.  Sitting in my home office on my L shaped desk, in the center sits my wide screen LCD, keyboard, mouse; all which control two main Linux boxes the file server and my desktop, Kubuntu Feisty.

To the left of my LCD I typically place my laptop from work (WinXP).  For some reason unknown to even me, I clicked in KDE and opened Writer rather than switching over to my laptop and knocking out the document in Microsoft Word.

I typed away at the keyboard, selected a few words, bold, etc and went to save the document.  This is where I paused.  Hmmm…should I save it as a MS Word document so I can exchange it with my laptop? This is when I saw … export to PDF.  I did later decide to save it in the open document format supported by Writer.

Boooooo Boston Officials!

In a corner of the earth where an important American revolution began against their aggressors and staged the Boston Tea Party, surely they haven’t fallen victim to the very fear that terrorists would love to cause in this great nation?

Boston officials — I’m am sorely unimpressed by your over reaction to a light-hearted marketing campaign. Then to go on and claim that corporate marketing greed was the motivator and demand restitution for $750,000 due to an operational cost in addressing the “bomb threat”. Did you ever consider bad judgement and over reaction is what cost your city that money?

Authorities vowed to hold Turner accountable for what Menino said was “corporate greed,” that led to at least $750,000 in police costs. — Source FoxNews.com

It sounds less like corporate greed and more like government greed trying to squeeze some money out of a corporate company to me. Nine other city’s in America did not overreact, and it was up for weeks:

“I find it kind of ridiculous that they’re making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It’s pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation,” he [Berdovsky, an artist] said. – Source FoxNews.com

Please tell me that America has not fallen into terrorists hands and are scared to allow fans of a TV show have some fun?

Here is the image that caused Boston officials to shut down parts of their city:

Price of Milk

I went to the store today to pick up two gallons of milk. Normally we purchase 2%, but since it the store was low, I purchased one 2% gallon and one whole milk gallon.

$4.69 for a gallon of Mayfield milk!