Is This Really the Start of the On-Demand Era?

Initial Blog Posting regarding Cablevision court ruling;
electronista follow-up

This decision, if taken to it's logical extremity would massively change the video-on-demand of the future. This could actually make the long-promised anything-ever-released-anywhere available on-demand reality.

How? Why do you think there would be any requirement for the Cablevisions of the world to physically have to record each and every program that their customers wish to record, which then would have to be transferred back to their network PVR? It would sure be a lot more efficient use of their bandwidth and logically little different to take a completely different approach.

Think that once a release is digitized, say even a typical mass-market, double-sided deluxe DVD taking up almost 8 gigabytes of space, you have almost frictionless direct-to-consumer distribution instantly available over an Internet provider like Cablevision or Verizon's "owned" bandwidth. Any customer who "records" this show, or even a portion of the show, since you would just need to store the actual markers of the start and end of recording if you wanted to enable partial rather than complete recording, would just need to register this information on Cablevision's Network PVR servers.

Then other than the one-time 8 gig transfer from the studio releasing the title, they completely cut their bandwidth charges for on-demand 3rd party programming, thus making the service much more profitable to them to offer. This just happens to also further increase the likelihood of filling much more of their "last mile" pipes to their customers with their own paid content instead of third parties'.

This also obviously changes the game for regular non-live network programming in that anything taped and aired on say, Lifetime, how about the ubiquitous "Frasier", could theoretically have already been licensed by Comcast for on-demand, for-pay or bundled delivery, direct to the consumer. If this were to become the norm, it would remove both the need for Comcast to carry any channel not offering live/event-based programming, and the audience the Lifetimes of the world are currently promising to provide advertisers today. Instantly the only businesses worth being in are the network owners, content providers, and content enablers (computer manufacturers and software companies).

Now how about combining this with the current FCC chair's long-desired wish to introduce a-la carte pricing to cable, just as Sirius and XM are being required to do as terms of their merger, coincidentally also a desire shared by many consumer advocates?

The networks, both broadcast and cable, either have to significantly change their programming mix to include more live and event-based programming (can you say MORE reality TV?), or they basically lose their entire reason for being.

Another Portrait of the Bush Administration Asleep at the Wheel

Foreign Workers Abused at Embassy, Panel Told - Washington Post

The Bush Administration appears to be doing a pretty spot-on, unintentional Spinal Tap parody. Only here the question isn't how much more black can an album cover be, but how much more tone-deaf can his administration be about the damage his policies and actions (and as here, inaction) are causing to America's image and interests abroad recently?

I know that's saying a lot, but I don't know how else to characterize being seen as kidnapping foreign nationals, and not to bring them home to the US do our menial labor. We've already got people illegally coming here for free to do that, plus many of them are actually skilled to boot! Instead we shanghai these hapless souls and drop them into a deeply unpopular war zone instead of a Persian Gulf paradise awash in glitz and golf (you've seen all of the Dubai ads on CNN and what-not, right?).

Don't think that because it was a Kuwaiti subcontractor at the pay end of the abuse allegations, the Kuwaitis will be the ones more reviled. The Kuwaitis are seen here as clearly doing America's bidding in supplying work on the American Embassy in American-occupied Baghdad, after we did Kuwait's bidding kicking Saddam Hussein out of their country in the early '90s. Those kinds of contracts don't go to non-friendly, or even a-political organizations and everybody knows it.

Even worse, the Kuwaitis were clearly violating the principal law of capitalism, that of supply and demand, part of the very bedrock of all that it means to be Republican. If you can't get people willing to work for what you're willing to pay them to do that work and you have no alternatives, you are clearly offering too little and need to offer more money. What's left unsaid is that in modern Capitalism you generally don't have the ability to compel your work force to show up as much as you used to, say in at the end of the 19th century (Lattimer Massacre).

At least that's how it works here. In the wealthy US, where the vast majority of citizens at even the low end of the economic pole are no longer having to deal with 3rd World poverty (exceptions granted, as John Edwards recent "Poverty Tour" amply demonstrated Edwards on Poverty - washingtonpost.com), we have private citizens who are volunteering to work hellish stints in Iraq (Civilian Contractors Face Perils in Iraq -CBS News). Only they aren't making "as little as $240 a month", more like $8,000 a month for generally non-combat support job, like running recreational facilities (see CBS again).

I'll grant that running recreational facilities is quite a few notches in importance above day-laborer, but that is still on the low end of the American contractor food chain I'd imagine, behind those operating on the front-lines, running force-protection and other missions, so maybe not that far off of an analogy, though I guess that might depend on whether or not we import or use local clerical support.

I'm not sure if we do or don't import purely administrative staff to Bahdad, like some modern-day version of a "Three Coins in a Fountain" world (IMDB link) where big American companies actually moved secretaries to exotic locales to work in the typing pool^*. The only difference is there's a long way between "exotic" and "hellish" and I can't see many American women today that willing to make that sort of leap, so I'm guessing these two positions are likely far closer in terms of where their recipients are in the pecking order.

How could this most Republican of Republican administrations have allowed this ridiculous situation to occur? At some point there have to be some Republicans in Congress and party activists starting to question on balance whether President Bush's limited ability to promote any of their agenda any longer, coupled with revelations like this, mean that he and Vice President Cheney may actively be causing long-term harm damage to their party far greater than in the 2008 Presidential election.

How soon do you think the American people will be able to forget Iraq, Katrina, and the fact that Bin Laden and Zawahiri are still alive? Especially if a Democratic President in 2009 actually re-commits significant troops and diplomacy efforts away from Iraq and towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, managing to capture or kill either of the masterminds of 9/11?

Combine that with an economy teetering on the brink of a collapse due to the lengthy and ongoing weakness in the housing market, negative real-term salary growth that means most people don't personally feel better off today than 8 years ago, despite the supposed strength of that economy overall. Most people see record corporate profits, yet little if any more money in their pockets, and do the math that if the economy is good and I ain't getting my share, that means somebody else is, and guess which party that "somebody else", the rich, are closely associated with promoting the economic interests of?

^*
Remember typing pools? My mom used to work in one, I think, if my family memory serves me correctly. She even met my father when she was working in one back in 1969, and now I don't know what the modern equivalent could possibly be. Maybe the people who respond to those "make money working at home on your computer" ads?

Name of the Year 2007 Final Four (the Grinning Edition)

In case you missed the earlier episodes:
intro
ballot page
Bulltron Regional
Dragonwagon Regional
Sithole Regional
Chrotchtangle Regional

Which brings us back to here, at the Grinning Media Edition of the 2007 Name of the Year Final Four:

4 Kyle Sackrider vs. 6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz: I've got to go with my heart over my lower regions and give the first spot in the finals to D. Zeke Ezekowitz.

8 Destinee Hooker vs. 1 Vanilla Dong: let's see, Sackrider, Hooker, Dong and Ezekowitz, notice a pattern? At least this time I have to resolve a conflict that presents a challenge, though in the end since I'm a boy I have to give it to the Hooker, right?

NOTY 2007: 6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz vs. 8 Destinee Hooker: Destinee Hooker. What can I say, when it's practically carved in stone at birth?

Stuff mentioned, referenced, alluded to above:




Here's the other version of March Madness many of us will be watching for the next couple weeks.NCAA sitefree live stream