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| Viacom Signs Deal with Amazon Prime | Tuesday, 2013 June 4 - 12:38 pm |
| I've always told my friends that if Comedy Central and ESPN were available over the Internet instead of exclusively on cable, that would be enough for me to ditch my cable subscription and "cut the cord". I think we're getting there. Viacom and Amazon today announced that a number of shows from Comedy Central (and Nickelodeon) will now be available on Amazon Prime. It strikes me that Amazon and Netflix have become the pioneer "networks" on a new broadcast medium: the Internet. Existing content providers will have to evolve to compete, just as the broadcast networks had to become cable networks in order to survive thirty years ago. My prediction is that some time in the next couple of years, the ABC/Disney/ESPN empire will either partner with one of these outlets or create their own paid streaming service. CBS will follow next; NBC (owned by Comcast) and all the Time Warner-owned stations will come around last. Then we'll finally have an open television market where the cable companies don't have a stranglehold on the terms of distribution, and content providers can negotiate subscription prices directly with consumers. This is how a free market is supposed to work; what we have now is effectively a monopoly. The rub, of course, is that cable companies are also Internet service providers, and may respond to this threat by jacking up Internet rates or metering the bandwidth available for competing video services. So the other part of the equation is that we need a more competitive Internet market, or municipal Internet providers. Of course, stupid states like my own (North Carolina) have legislation to prohibit municipal Internet providers... in order to protect the anti-competitive market that exists today. Sigh. Can you imagine if Time Warner were your electricity provider? If they could, they'd charge you extra for electricity being used for your computer, if they knew you were using it to watch YouTube. |
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Posted by Ken in: techwatch, television |
| Site Updates | Saturday, 2013 May 4 - 2:29 pm |
| Hey, yeah, this blog is still alive... barely. Lately I've been fending off comment spam like crazy. I have a giant list of banned keywords, URLs, and IP addresses, but it always seems like I'm a step behind the spammers. My latest step is to ban all comments from certain countries, especially China... I think 90% of my comment spam comes from China. Frankly I'm not sure what's going to become of this blog in the long term. Every now and then I feel like I have a long-form essay to post, but that seems like it happens less and less often. Meanwhile all my short-form stuff goes onto Facebook, or less frequently, Twitter. Is blogging dead? Very few of my friends do it any more. I have a sentimental attachment to this site so I doubt it'll go away any time in the near future. Maybe what I need is a new project, like the frozen lunches thing I did a while back. Hmm. |
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Posted by Ken in: site-business |
| Newtown | Tuesday, 2013 January 22 - 2:09 am |
| It's been a month since the Newtown shooting and I've stayed quiet about the issue of gun control until now. But I think I need to say something. Being a civil libertarian, there's a part of me that believes that responsible gun ownership is part of living in a free society. But that doesn't mean it can't be regulated and controlled in a sane manner. I would hope that we would all agree on a couple of things. First, we should not tolerate living in a society where it is relatively easy for a teenager with mental health issues to walk into a school and murder first graders, using a weapon that has no practical use in either self-defense or hunting. So doing nothing is not the answer. The status quo is unacceptable. Second, not everyone should be allowed to own nuclear weapons, nerve gas, or fighter jets... so regardless of where you stand on handguns and assault rifles, surely you agree that there's a line that should be drawn somewhere, and the right to bear "arms" is not an absolute license to own any kind of weapon imaginable. We should be able to have a discussion on where that line should be drawn, without accusing each other of being anti-American or part of a socialist conspiracy. As for me, I will probably never own a gun. Not to be critical of my gun-owning friends, but if I ever reach a point where I think it's necessary to have a gun to keep me or my family safe, then it means that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with my life. I'll change my tune when the zombie apocalypse comes, but as of today I'm much more likely to die from alcohol poisoning than an armed assailant, and I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much. |
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Posted by Ken in: commentary, politics |
| Apple Watch: 2013 Predictions | Tuesday, 2013 January 1 - 7:22 pm |
| Time for my annual Apple predictions. Read more... |
| Permalink Comment
Posted by Ken in: techwatch |
| Election 2012 | Saturday, 2012 November 17 - 11:56 am |
| With Obama's re-election two weeks in the rear-view mirror, there's been a lot of soul-searching and hand-wringing in the Republican party lately. Obviously most of the pundits have already weighed in on this topic, but I wanted to add my take on what happened in the election, what's in store for the Republican party, and what we might see in 2016. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: politics |
| College Football Week Something Something | Saturday, 2012 November 17 - 10:53 am |
| Okay... I fully realize that I failed to post my usual college football recaps and previews for the past couple of weeks, and for my two readers that look for those things, I apologize. Let's sum up a bit. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 9 Preview | Friday, 2012 October 26 - 10:08 pm |
| Michigan plays a key divisional game at Nebraska; N.C. State takes on its biggest rival, UNC. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 8 Recap | Sunday, 2012 October 21 - 12:11 pm |
| Well, that was quite a heart-attack inducing day. Michigan and N.C. State both pull off last-minute field goals to win their respective games 12-10 and 20-18. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 8 Preview | Wednesday, 2012 October 17 - 1:36 pm |
| Michigan plays Moo U (er, Michigan State); N.C. State plays Maryland. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| Apple Watch: Media Event for October 23rd | Tuesday, 2012 October 16 - 12:53 pm |
![]() Apple has sent out a media invitation for October 23rd. This is 99% sure to be an iPad mini announcement, but we may get a new Retina MacBook Pro 13" announcement too... that would fit with the "a little more" theme. |
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Posted by Ken in: techwatch |
| College Football 2012: Week 7 Recap | Sunday, 2012 October 14 - 12:49 pm |
| Hey look! A Sunday update for a change! Michigan wins easily; N.C. State rests. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 6 Recap and Week 7 Preview | Saturday, 2012 October 13 - 11:40 am |
| Michigan and N.C. State are both building off important wins from last week. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 5 Recap and Week 6 Preview | Saturday, 2012 October 6 - 10:58 am |
| Yeah, I'm late again... combining this week's articles into one. Michigan is coming off a bye and will play Purdue; N.C. State loses a tough one to Miami FL and now has to face #3 Florida State. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 5 Preview | Saturday, 2012 September 29 - 10:52 am |
| Michigan is on a bye; N.C. State plays Miami (FL). Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 4 Recap | Saturday, 2012 September 29 - 10:44 am |
| Michigan loses in ugly fashion to Notre Dame; N.C. State rolls. This is way late, I know, but I've been depressed about last week's result. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| Apple Watch: The iPhone 5 | Saturday, 2012 September 22 - 11:28 am |
| So no, I don't have the iPhone 5. But news and reviews have been flooding in. By all accounts, it's another marvel of engineering. It's taller but thinner and lighter; the screen looks amazing; the camera is best-in-class. It's significantly faster than the 4S. It includes 4G LTE without sacrificing battery life. Of course there have been the usual array of complaints that Apple has not introduced any radical new features. Prior to its introduction we saw plenty of guesses about gimmicky features, like a laser-based virtual keyboard. Uh, no. What we should know about Apple by now is that they usually don't try to make radical changes within an existing product category; their innovation comes when they introduce new product categories. For existing products, Apple's process is to refine them and make them simply the best in their category. The most noticeable omission is NFC, which was much-rumored. But I think Apple is concerned that it's a technology looking for an application; there simply isn't a widespread retail ecosystem for NFC, and there are other ways to accomplish point-of-sale solutions. I'm not saying the idea is dead; I just think Apple has other priorities. Sales have been brisk, to say the least. Estimates are that three days of pre-orders have surpassed the monthly sales record for the 4S. Now, there are emerging reports that the anodized aluminum finish on the black model is scuff-prone, with some people complaining that it is scuffed right out of the box. I find it strange Apple would have allowed that kind of thing to escape their design and testing processes... let's hope Apple has an answer for that soon. Finally, a note about the new Maps app, which is an iOS 6 thing, not just an iPhone 5 thing. There's lots of criticism that it's inferior to the Google-based app it replaces, and those criticisms are well-founded. But Apple has no interest in continuing to feed precious customer location data to its biggest rival, and I think they're willing to suffer through the early criticism to get the business decision done. And to be sure, the problems with Maps are fixable; in fact, to some degree, you have to get Maps out to the public just to find where all the problems are. It's doubtful that Apple is devoting hundreds of engineers to pore over every inch of map data in the entire world. |
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Posted by Ken in: techwatch |
| College Football 2012: Week 4 Preview | Saturday, 2012 September 22 - 10:57 am |
| Michigan has another big night game against Notre Dame; N.C. State has another cupcake game against Citadel. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 3 Recap | Sunday, 2012 September 16 - 2:14 pm |
| Michigan and N.C. State win their cupcake games handily; some surprises nationally. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 3 Preview | Saturday, 2012 September 15 - 11:44 am |
| It's cupcake weekend for Michigan and N.C. State. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |
| College Football 2012: Week 2 Recap | Sunday, 2012 September 9 - 9:25 pm |
| Better. A win is a win. Read more... |
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Posted by Ken in: sports |