Cablevision and ABC couldn’t reach an agreement so ABC got pulled from Cablevision. That prompted this terrible headline from CNBC. It’s terrible because no one in New York even remotely faces not being able to watch the Oscars.
I know it’s hard for people to envision living in a time without cable, but there was a time and thousands of people still do it. Do you still remember the whole Digital transition? Do you know what that was about? ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/PBS/CW and others depending on your market are available via free over the air transmissions. Seriously and they’re in HD too!
Instead of whining about Cablevision pulling ABC subscribers could do numerous things:
A)
Figure out if your TV has a built in tuner (odds are if you bought it in the last
3-5 years it does. Both my cheap westinghouse and dynex sets have them)
Have it scan channels (my two automatically merge OTA and cable channels,
otherwise check your manual – you still have that right?)
Watch the fucking Oscars in free HD*.
B)
Go to Best Buy or any other electronics store and pick up an OTA antenna (you can get them pretty cheap if you don’t plan to use it much).
Hook it up and set up your TV
Watch the fucking Oscars in free HD*.
C)
Call up Cablevision and tell them to shove it
Repeat steps in A or B.
Watch the fucking Oscars in free HD*.
Call up another provider tomorrow and resume cable viewing
D)
See A or B
Tell Cablevision to suck it
Watch the fucking Oscars in free HD*.
Realize you don’t need cable and keep watching the free OTA stuff
Seriously people I know it’s annoying that Cablevision pulled the channel on a day like this, but come on something like picking up ABC over the air should be understandable for anyone who owns a TV.
*Need an HD television of course
Ars Technica has jumped on the ad blockers are bad bandwagon and that those who use them are effectively stealing from them. Those of us (me included) who actively run ad blocking software are stealing resources from these sites without giving them anything in return. If we’re running ad blockers we do it with the explicit intent to get this content for free. Wrong. I block ads because for one a majority of them are intrusive and secondly because they have proven to be the weak link leading to viruses
But the funny thing is that the author contradicts his own argument with his solution. He says if we disagree with ads a site is running we should just not go there because “is far better to vote with page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything in return.” Aren’t pageviews something in return? Aren’t pageviews still in some aspects a form of measurement for selling ads?
Let’s return to that idea of simply not visiting sites that show ads with don’t like. That is one of the most boneheaded and impractical ideas out there. It’s simply impossible to do and it’s going to do far more harm to the Internet than whatever affect Ars thinks ad blockers have. A lot of smaller content publishers (individuals, smaller blog companies) don’t have the reach or connections and are forced to use terrible ad networks like Adsense for their ads. I’m not a fan of adsense ads, but if I follow Ars’ model I should ignore all the people who use them, thus effectively silencing them solely because they’re using what they can. Ars wants to combat the superficial problem, people not seeing ads on their site, but doesn’t want to deal with the root issue; online advertising is terrible and until there is widespread commitment to change ad blockers will be used.
But this brings me to the bigger issue with this post, they want to pass the blame rather than innovating. If ad revenue is falling, one can figure out why and try to fix it, or create a new business model. The Internet loves to attack newspapers who fail to innovate when their old business model dies out so why don’t we do the same for the Internet? Mike Masnick over at Techdirt has the model of CwF+RtB (Connect with fans and give them a reason to buy), and it works. Masnick offered a T-shirt around Christmas that read The contents of this shirt have been removed because of a DMCA notice, it cost $25 and it sold like hotcakes (I own one for the record). Ars needs to stop placing blame and looking to the past, and instead look forward. There issue is that at best they are playing from behind instead of innovating.
Addendum
One thing I obviously didn’t mention was the fact that if Ars Technica was so upset about us “free-loaders” stealing their content they could easily throw the site behind a paywall. They wouldn’t do that because their revenue would plummet and page views would reach close to zero. The point here is that most of this post is hot air, they’d rather keep people with ad blockers around rather than turn them away because they still add something to their revenue stream.
One other thing, if people vote with page views and don’t bother telling sites why they aren’t showing up, what do you think will happen? Besides the site going out of business, people would be cut from the staff and the site would start adding more ads to make up for the lower page views.
I’m a fan of the macheist promo that pops up from time to time. They tend to be able to put together a few apps that really make it worthwhile even though you get a bunch of crap ones to go along with the ones you will use. This time they’ve released the nanobundle 2 which frankly is disappointing.
The software in the pack:
Macjournal: basically it looks like a desktop blog client that allows you to store notes and writings not necessarily just blog posts. For one I bought MarsEdit to do blogging and love it so there goes the blog aspect, and secondly everything I write outside of Marsedit is stored in plain text or docs to enable easy syncing.
Ripit: DVD ripper, the one product I was actually wanting from the bundle. Basically I paid $20 bucks for Ripit, which is well what it normally costs.
Clips: multi-clipboard app. Have never had a use for one in the past why now?
Flow: FTP client. Maybe it’d be nice be Cyberduck works fines for the little I need of FTP.
CoverScout: Nice idea, terrible program. Went to register the app and was prompted to sign up for an account. No No No.
Tales of Monkey Island: 1) I’m using a mac mini 2) not a huge gamer in general let alone a computer gamer 3) It got an 85 on gamespot so I guess it’s worth a play or two but it only unlocks at 50K downloads. Let’s hope it gets there.
RapidWeaver: Ok so a web design program for dummies? I don’t do web design outside of extremely limited fiddling so I doubt it would do much besides clutter my applications folder.
As with anything whether the bundle is good or not is subjective to your personal needs. I personally could have passed on the bundle but I’ve been looking at ripit for a while now so it gave me a reason to buy. Go check out the bundle for yourself at [macheist.com](http://macheist.com]
I’m hesitate to discuss Google Buzz as I see no real redeeming value in either discussing it or using it, but at some point Google’s Tactics get so out of hand that you’re left with no choice.
I popped into my inbox yesterday and found Google Buzz turned on. I can’t remember signing up for it or clicking ok, but somehow it was there. After searching around I finally found how to turn the damn thing off (way down at the bottom, tiny link). Now it’s being reported that Buzz determines who you follow based on who you talk to on via email or google talk.
I use Gmail yes, but if I need to do something serious or personal? Hell no. Granted I don’t do that kind of email often or at all, but anyone who does that in Gmail is a grade A idiot. Which brings me to my question of how Google gets away with it.
Google failed at making a social network once with Jaiku (ok I guess dodgeball or whatever it was called counts too), and now they’ve solved their issue of market share: just force a social network down everyone’s email throat. Next they say “hey you probably have no want to use this, but let us help you automatically follow people.” Through all of this early adopters and social network pundits can’t seem to understand why everyone is so upset.
Google is growing tentacles into everything and yet no one in the tech field sees anything wrong with it. Just look at what Google has a hand in:
Advertising
Search
Office Suite
Email
Telephones
Browsers
Social networks
Desktop OS
Mobile OS (which to be fair I own, and I guess in a way phone hardware)
GPS
Broadband internet
I can go on but you get the picture. I use Google and Gmail but only because they are frankly the best option out there (oh and my college signed on to allow Google to host our webmail rather than running our own imap servers). People berate those who attack a service while at the same time attacking it, but what are we suppose to use when Google has driven all the other potential competitors out? Guatemalans termed the United Fruit company el pulpo or the octopus because it hand its hand in everything (fruit, electric, rail, shipping). The term applies to Google just as much.
From their blog:
Today we’re announcing that the full version of Simplenote is available as a free download for iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide. We’re partnering with the great Fusion ad network to make this possible. (If you use the free version of Tweetie for Mac, then you know what Fusion is all about).
Our goal is to be the best app for text notes in the world in terms of price, quality, and customer support. We’re already delivering great quality and support, but until now, we’ve been at a huge disadvantage in terms of price.
Some of you might disagree. We sometimes hear that we should be charging more for Simplenote. But this usually comes from people like John Gruber, who is very tech-aware, and more than happy to pay for an online service that measurably improves his life.
However, we view our main competitor to be Apple’s free, built-in Notes app, whose millions of users might only have a vague awareness of syncing and how it can help them. And it’s hard to compete with free! By making Simplenote free as well, we’re eliminating a huge barrier that stands between Simplenote and all the note-takers who might benefit from our fast and easy syncing.
I paid for simplenote quite a while ago (and just two days ago paid for the Premium features at full price) and it really was a shame more people weren’t using the app simply because of the price tag.
Now I could be mad at losing out on $5 dollars, but when you use Simplenote, complaining about something like that is asinine. Go download the app and pay the guys for premium.
Use the free alternative they say, does the same thing without the price. Funny I don’t remember 1Password taking over my toolbar with multiple instances.
Interesting Nexus One review from Engadget
…[T]he way Android’s evolution in particular has gone down certainly seems like a bait-and-switch from an outsider's view. Take Motorola and Verizon, for example: what had seemed like a deep, tight partnership literally just weeks ago with the announcement of Eclair and the selection of the Droid / Milestone as 2.0's launch platform has taken a distant back seat just as quickly as it rose to the top. In a word, Google is plunging head-first into the dangerous game Microsoft has adamantly sought to avoid all these years on WinMo: competing head-to-head with its valued (well, supposedly valued) partners. Whether Android risks losing support over manufacturers and carriers being treated like pieces of meat remains to be seen, but realistically, Motorola (which has very publicly gone all-in with Mountain View over the past year) and others are likely to grin and bear it as long as the platform pays the bills — no matter how awkward competing with the company that writes your kernel and huge swaths of your shell might be.
I picked up the Droid a week ago and I knew Google was coming out with something but the review solidifies picking up the Droid. The Nexus One lacks a keyboard (but comes with a track ball enough though nothing needs it) and most of the OS “improvements” are cosmetic.
Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
Wordpress 2.9 released
Other snazzy features include a built in image editor, easier video embeds, and a global trash option to help those of us who are trigger happy, but dear God the batch upgrade should have been in there since the start.
The new features also assumes that RT’ing something always means that you agree with it. That it’s a Google-esque “vote” for that content. That’s not the case. Sometimes I’m retweeting things because I think the content is moronic and I want to add my own commentary and point it out. I don’t get that right anymore.
…
Now when you retweet something, you’re ‘liking it’ the way you do on Facebook. You’re not creating something new and of value, you’re simply attaching your meta data to something that already exists. It’s no longer a separate tweet. Andrew Mueller thinks this was done to bring value to Bing and Google.
Outspoken Media
The article also talks about the jarring affect the avatars of people you don’t follow showing up in your timeline has, but I don’t find that to be too big of a deal. I do find the lack of flexibility to add your own message, or add context to a retweet a serious issue.