Seven Generational Ruminations

Did you think GW could sing? Neither did I. But here he is "singing" the song Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Enjoy.

From: video.google.com

I grew up watching television, just like all the kids around me. It was the 60's, and the shift from black and white to color television was just beginning. Yes, there were color televisions available, but they were more expensive so we didn't get one until pretty late in the 60's. And, yes, the installation of the color TV involved a lot of guys fiddling with technology and it might have coincided with the Super Bowl.

Who was it that sang "I can't drive 55"? A Meditation On the Speed Limit is a project launched by a group of college students who wanted to prove 55 is a ridiculous speed limit.

Earlier I wrote about plans by BellSouth and other ISP's to discriminatorially throttle 3rd party Internet traffic. The BellSouth CEO was quoted saying, essientially, those other companies (such as Google) need to pay to use their lines. And that if those 3rd parties did not pay up, they'd throttle however much of their lines those 3rd parties can use.

The other day I was at Target looking for clothes, and wandered by the video section. This one rack had "The Wedding Crashers (unrated edition)", some unrated edition of some other movie, plus Toy Story 2. Well something in my mind clicked and I started wondering what an "unrated" version of Toy Story 2 would be like. What kind of toys would appear in the unrated version? And what would Cowgirl Jessie, the old prospector, etc, all be doing? And we might learn why the main character's name is Woody...

Well ....

Microsoft has a long history of copying ideas from elsewhere. I've been watching them for years, and have yet to see them come up with an inventive idea. Oh, wait, they have a visual effect for tooltips which has them "unfurl" from top-to-bottom, that's probably a true invention by Microsoft. Okay, they've had one minor original idea. In particular they seem fond of copying ideas from Apple -- in fact, its well understood that Windows was developed because Bill Gates saw the Mac and got scared and told his people he wanted something like that.

Boy, it seems like just a couple days ago I was talking about the possibility of broader deliver of television shows over the Internet. er.. Gosh, yes it was just a couple days ago.

Coming soon, Nightly News, free and online Next week, America's No. 1 newscast will stream worldwide after it airs (October 31, 2005, MSNBC.COM)

It is being presented at Nightly.MSNBC.com.

iTunes store counts 1 million video downloads (By Dinesh C. Sharma and Ina Fried, Special to CNET News.com, Published: October 31, 2005, 7:04 AM PST)

"Selling 1 million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests that there is a market for legal video downloads," Jobs said. "Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods."

I guess journalists like to find ways to spin the stories they write so there's a life and death struggle, two titans up there clashing against each other, one of them about to stomp the other one into the dust. And what better story than for a surprise newcomer to arise from nowhere and whack the head off the ruling king?

The Internet and the future of TV (By Marguerite Reardon, Staff Writer, CNET News.com, Published: October 31, 2005, 4:00 AM PST)

Suppose you're a TV addict? I'm not, I haven't owned a TV for over 10 years. But I appreciate that a lot of you out there are TV addicts. It's for you that the video iPod exists, I suppose. But in the iTunes Music Store they offer only a small number of TV programs, so what if you want more?

TVHarmony has been offering software for a long time to improve the TiVo experience. Their software now supports converting recordings from a TiVo to the format required to view on the video iPod.

Enjoy your addiction.