It’s been pretty ridiculous recently with Steele claiming to bring Urban cred to the Republican party. I think they feel like they have to have a black guy too. It’s just odd that suddenly after Obama’s President, they have a black chairman.

Well, I know that eventually Hulu will pull this clip.  But until they do, enjoy the extremely creative editing of the The Colbert Report’s team in this rap battle between Colbert and Republican Chairman Michael Steele.

A lot of people have been warning that rules/laws that everyone considers stupid are a very dangerous thing.  Essentially, what happens when every single person you know is a “criminal”?  It begins to create a sense that rules are pointless and if everyone’s disobeying this rule, why not disobey that one and so on.  These people see the current problems with copyright infringement as potentially being the catalyst to the end of civilized society.  I’m not sure I would go that far by a long shot, but it is an interesting question.

There’ve been a lot of people recently on the MythTv mailing list talking about Boxee as a convenient way to was content on Hulu.  However, the Boxee developers have blogged that Hulu has nixed that idea.  ( And here’s Hulu’s side of the story)  I read a bunch of comments as well as both of those blog posts (I also read this great blog post) and the only conclusion I can come up with is that the TV execs that license their content to Hulu are braindead.  Here are the best reasons I read in the comments (summarized for brevity) :

The other day I was messing around with flickr’s slideshow feature and I came across this:

And here it is zoomed in:

This comes from an episode where the characters are discussing the founder of Springfield who uses the word Embiggen and some teachers debate whether it’s a real word.  I love the way programmer put little homages into the code they work on.

Over the last few days I’ve been watching season 1 of the British version of The Office.  I’ve come to the conclusion that to say, “the American The Office is based on the British The Office” is a gross understatement.  For the first season, at least, it’s almost a 1:1 copy of the British version.  Examples:

• Both Dave and Michael Scott have a raunchy friend who teases him, but he thinks he’s in on the joke
• Tim and Jim look almost exactly the same and react to the camera in almost the same way
• the British Pam character is dating a guy from the warehouse who’s less than romantic
• Both Dave and Michael Scott have a female boss who is much more competent than them
• In both shows a temp is hired in the first few episodes and knows way more than the boss
• In both shows Tim/Jim put Garrett/Dwight’s stapler in jello
• in both shows the “kevin” character wants to be in a band
• Both Garrettt/Dwight know karate and other such things

There are probably a few more similarities.  I almost feel like I’m watching the first season of the American version again.  There are a few differences, though, that make the American version more enjoyable to me.  Jim and Pam have more chemistry and play more pranks.  Of course, the American show has more episodes than the British one so there is more time for mischief-based shows.  I like Dwight’s quirkiness more than Garrett’s.  So far there isn’t an HR person that the boss in the British version hates and the animosity towards Toby made the show for me many times when the Jim/Pam love triangle was taking forever.  Oh yeah, the British opening theme is SO British.

My father-in-law is over today and he’s been dying to watch the Bizarre Foods Paris episode.  I’m opposed to buying video media off of iTunes because of the digital restrictions management (DRM).  But, he’s been wanting to watch that episode forever and we no longer have cable so I can’t record it onto MythTV.  We bought it off of iTunes and then tried to watch it in iTunes.  It was skipping and stuttering worse than a Youtube video.  It was reminding me of the old dialup days when the buffer would keep running out.  Any TV show I have ever downloaded for free off the net has not had this problem - it has played flawlessly - even if it was an HD recording.  So why should I pay $2 for a stuttering video when I could get it for free and have HD quality??  And I’m not the only one - I searched the web and  3 million pages came up on this issue.  The solution was to play it in Quicktime, outside of iTunes.  This is ridiculous - pay content should NEVER be worse quality than free content if you want people to pay.  That is, after all, how the free market works.

This week was my last week with cable television.  I’ve had it since I was around 12 years old or so.  Now I’ve been on my own for a few years now and I noticed two things.  One, I don’t watch much cable television.  Just a few programs here and there.  Two, it’s pretty expensive!  It was $50 per month for just a few programs here and there.  And now, it’s no longer necessary.

The following was live-blogged on 25 Jul 2008:

Got my Neuros OSD today via UPS!  w00t w00t!  I’ve been lusting after this since it was featured in Linux Format Magazine last month.  (or was it two months ago?)  I unpacked the contents and skimmed through the quick start guide.  Then I hooked it up in my bedroom and connected it to the ethernet network. They have a neat little opening animation about how Neuros is about open technology.  Unlike other companies that build on open source technologies (I’m looking at you TiVo), the guys at Neuros Technology are proud of this and are using it to their advantage.  In fact, they have a few Google Summer of Code projects working on improving the firmware - free engineering hours.  That’s one of the benefits of open source.  Another benefit is that someone like me (or, more likely, someone with lots of programming chops) can take the hardware they’ve developed and then tweak the code to make it do whatever they want.

Today I consider whether or not TV Stations as a distinct programming lineup have become obsolete.  More or less since the beginning of commercial television there have been TV Stations to tune in to.  (eg ABC, HBO, TNT)  These stations create and broadcast original programming or buy the rights to broadcast programming created by others so that I can pick it up on my television.  Every year they decide which television shows will play throughout the day for the next year.  This show should play on Thursday at 2000 because that’s when such and such an age group will be watching.  That show should be on at Monday at 2100 because otherwise it might have to compete with a show from another network.  Some shows have nearly literally lived and died based on the timeslot they were shown in.  Sometimes shows are moved around to follow other shows to benefit from the inertia of the viewers of the previous show to carry this one until it either proves itself or fails.

A diagram of how the Neuros OSD connects to your VCR, DVD player, or camcorder, and allows you to record video and play back onto your TV or portable devices A diagram of how the Neuros OSD connects to your VCR, DVD player, or camcorder, and allows you to record video and play back onto your TV or portable devices