17 Nov 2004
GOP Pushes Rule Change To Protect DeLay's Post (washingtonpost.com)

And these are the people who impeached Clinton for getting a blow job. Un-freaking-believeable. Have they not one iota of shame?

House Republicans proposed changing their rules last night to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in a leadership post, a move that would benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, according to GOP leaders.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

02:58 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

TiVo Will No Longer Skip Past Advertisers (Los Angeles Times)

The way this article is written, it makes it sound as though Tivo had this planned all along, being naught but a tool to hook consumers into "TV Your Way" and then pull the rug out from under them after they've been snagged.

But a there's a telling paragraph later in the piece that sheds some light on Tivo's "evil" motives:

While competitor ReplayTV had allowed its subscribers to skip commercials entirely — TiVo restricted its fast-forward capabilities so viewers could still see the commercial, albeit eight times faster than intended. (ReplayTV last year was forced by litigious studios and networks to adopt a more TiVo-like system.)

It was fear of industry lawyers that made Tivo adopt this engineering standard, not the wishes of consumers. And it's that same fear that's now changing their marketing strategy - they're trying to make lemonade out of the lawyerly lemons the TV industry is handing them. I'm not sure they'll succeed:

"TiVo is dependent on a psychology," says Neal Gabler, a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg and author of "Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality." "It is not just a technology. You don't want people to intrude in your life. That's the whole point of it — to give you control of that mechanism…. I think they're going to find themselves losing customers. I say this as a TiVo subscriber."

Los Angeles Times - When it debuted in 1999, TiVo revolutionized the TV experience by wresting control of screen time from advertisers, allowing viewers to record shows and skip commercials. TiVo's slogan said it all: "TV your way."

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Firefox fortune hunters

Um, I thought everybody knew you can't make money with free software. I mean, that's what Bill Gates said, so it's gotta be true, right?

Mozilla Foundation's browser may be free and open source, but that doesn't keep insiders from cashing in.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

District scraps alleged 'cross-dressing' day

For folks who don't think the religious right is wielding unholy power nowadays, we offer the following:

A homecoming tradition in which boys dress like girls and vice versa in a tiny Texas school district won't be held Wednesday after a parent complained about what she regarded as the event's homosexual overtones.

(link) [CNN]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Safety Nazis

Something is happening to America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the "baby boom", a generation not known for its sane or cautious approach to things. Yet suddenly my peers are giving up drinking, giving up smoking, cutting down on coffee, sugar, and salt. They will not eat red meat and go now to restaurants whose menus have caused me to stand on a chair yelling, "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, dinner is served!" This from the generation of LSD, Weather Underground, and Altamont Rock Festival! And all in the name of safety! Our nation has withstood many divisions - North and South, black and white, labor and management - but I do not know if the country can survive division into smoking and non-smoking sections.

P.J. O'Rourke writing in Republican Party Reptile, 1987

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Study: U.S. needs foreign-born workers

These folks won't be happy until every American employee repeats the new mantra: "You want fries with that?"

Report backed by pro-visa group sees shortages in high-skill occupations, a view not shared by all.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link