08:00 – We made up 120 packets each of various OTC medications for the forensics kits yesterday. Things like acetaminophen, aspirin, diphenhydramine, and so on. They’re used as proxies for illegal drugs in the forensic drug testing lab sessions.
I almost choked when I started designing the labels for these. Here’s an example of the safety warnings for one of the drugs, 25 mg diphenhydramine tablets, AKA Benedryl.
Health: 3 (serious)
Fire: 1 (slight)
Reactivity: 0 (minimal)
WARNING! Extremely hazardous (eye contact). Very hazardous (ingestion, inhalation). Hazardous (skin contact).
Wear gloves and splash goggles.
This is for a Benedryl tablet! Talk about the boy crying wolf. If a Benedryl tablet presents a “serious” health hazard, why would anyone take seriously the same level of hazard specified for another chemical that actually is hazardous, such as concentrated hydrochloric acid? (Yes, both concentrated hydrochloric acid and diphenhydramine tablets are assigned a 3 (serious) for Health.) In reality, these tablets should be listed as non-hazardous, as any reasonable person would expect.
This month the euro chickens are coming home to roost. Even the eurocrats have stopped pretending that the euro can be saved. They are now talking openly about the collapse of the euro and the EMU. Spain is beyond salvage, and will be forced to seek a bailout. The problem is, Spain needs more than half a trillion dollars to carry it through the next 12 to 18 months, and the bailout cupboard is bare. Cyprus has collapsed, Spain is next, and Italy isn’t far behind.
12:58 – Here’s an interesting article from Business Insider: Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse. The author compares the newspaper business–which as little as a decade ago was still fat, dumb, and happy–with the television business, which doesn’t seem to realize that it’s in the same desperate straits now as the newspaper industry was then. At the turn of the century, the newspaper industry had its all-time highest advertising sales revenues, about $63 billion a year. Then newspaper advertising fell off a cliff, declining by two-thirds to about $20 billion last year. Meanwhile TV executives are currently enjoying record ad revenues, and seem not to realize that those revenues are about to fall off the same cliff.
Barbara and I were early adopters and early cable cutters, but now it seems that an increasingly large percentage of cable TV and satellite TV subscribers are following our lead. We haven’t watched even one network TV episode in a decade, other than on Netflix streaming or on DVD. Barbara watches golf on weekends, and sometimes ACC basketball in season. We’ll sometimes watch the local cable news/weather channel for a few minutes. That’s it. Nothing else we watch has commercials, and we watch nothing else live.
And it’s not just us. Nearly everyone we know would immediately give up cable TV if only they could get live sports otherwise. One has to wonder how much longer the NFL, NBA, and MLB will continue to in effect subsidize TV networks by selling them their programming. Each of those leagues is fully capable of going it alone, selling season subscriptions directly to their fan bases, for delivery via broadband. And there’s no question that they could make more money doing it that way. Sports fans would love it. Rather than getting whatever game the network decided to broadcast, they could pick and choose among several or many feeds and follow their favorite teams every week. Smaller sports like golf, tennis, and auto racing could make arrangements with companies like Netflix (Sportsflix?) to use their delivery infrastructure. Everyone except the TV networks would be better off.
This is a slick presentation of the relative size of thing.
http://htwins.net/scale2/
Robert,
You made mention several months ago that you were discontinuing the hardware forums. Soon after the hardwareguys.com site displayed a message that Jim Cooley was in the process of converting over to a new forum. Now I just receive the 404 error.
I realize this isn’t a simple process and requires a lot of work. I’m wondering if Jim or someone else is in fact converting your old hardwareguys forum to a newer platform?
Thanks
Steve
The new site is
http://www.hardwareguys2.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi
Yep, the TeeVee broadcasters are swirling down the same toilet as the nooz publishers and good riddance to bad rubbish. We haven’t watched broadcast OR cable TV here in over six years and we do not buy or read the nooz papers. I’d right now be willing to pay a reasonable subscription fee for JUST the NFL but they better catch me before this next season because I am kinda souring on the whole pro sports thang anyway.
We go to local minor league baseball games sometimes and we get our nooz from the net (Russia Today and Al-Jazeera) and shortwave radio.
And the euro and longtime failed experiment of the EU is all going down another toilet before the end of this year. Good riddance to the sons of bitches in Brussels who tried to set up their own totalitarian empire. It wasn’t gonna work anyway; like it or not the forces of nationalism, ethnicity and religion are not to be trifled with and we are seeing a burgeoning international resurgence.
I’d happily give up FIOS TV if I could subscribe to MLB baseball and Nascar directly at a reasonable price.
Could the internet backbone and last mile to curb handle HD for 150,000,000 TVs in the USA ?
DirecTV is reputedly running over 10 GB/s over their 5 ? 7 ? 8 ? satellites now. I think that SD over the net would probably be OK but HD (mpeg4) would cause a meltdown. And all the servers would require you start watching at a certain time … or meltdown so they could stream the same signal.
However, Can’t Stop The Signal !
I gave up watching television a couple of years ago.
Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. If I’m visiting family and friends I’ll watch it if they are, to be sociable. The only sport that interests me is Australian Rules Football and Women’s Beach Volleyball. I’m thinking of going back to watching a bit of tele, but I think life’s too short to spend it watching the drivel and advertising (lots of it) on nowadays. Back in the Sixties you’d get for blocks of ads per hour, with 4x 30 second ads per block. Now it’s saturation, offensive and highly repetitive. Pass.
*for. four
“This is for a Benedryl tablet! ”
The dire warnings aren’t for the tablet, it’s for the dihydrogen monoxide most people have to use to swallow it. That stuff is dangerous…
“…I think life’s too short to spend it watching the drivel and advertising (lots of it) on nowadays.”
There it is. And when I’ve been at other folks’ houses, like family down in MA, they have the bloody things on constantly and the evening shows, whatever they might be, have loud-ass blaring commercials every five minutes. I don’t know how on earth they can stand it!
There was a book out ages ago called “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” by a guy named Jerry Mander, I believe, but I didn’t need to read the whole book. A night or two of seeing someone else’s TV blasting its crap into the air will do it in a jiffy.
I’ll probably miss the NFL for a short while, and now that Greg mentions it, the womens’ beach volleyball (shouldn’t that be done in the nude?) but other than those, good riddance to bad rubbish.
No, it shouldn’t. I like the tease factor… 🙂
Back in the Seventies a South Australian grocery store chain called Foodland had the most offensive ad I’ve ever seen. The volume was raised significantly and someone screeched “WHERE DA YA GEDDIT?” about their various offerings. yes, I noticed, but I was so annoyed I mad a conscious decision to shop at their rivals – and I did most of the grocery shopping for the family.
One of the reasons I’m thinking of getting a new TV (the old one is now obsolete due to changes to broadcast frequencies) is for documentaries on advertising free broadcast channels. I might also watch some good Aussie Rules Football games.
How could anyone miss the NFL? A game takes 4-5 hours doesn’t it, and it has the weirdest rules and guys in armour that would make a medieval knight jealous. I mean, I grew up watching cricket, up to five days at six hours a day for just one test match. And I’d still be bored to death by Gridiron.
The NFL games used to be two hours but are now three-and-a-half, what with all the commercials and “color” commentary. The more I consider it, the more I say to hell with it all. And even all that armor has not prevented the brain injuries, like the ones that eventually led to two famous players recently committing suicide here, one guy I really liked a lot, too, Junior Seau. What a damn shame.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/story/2012-05-31/Junior-Seau-suicide-last-days-sleep-issues/55316506/1
Yeah, the loud and obnoxious commercials on the TV or radio, or even the annoying circulars and inserts that fall out of magazines and other products are enough for me to immediately cease and desist ever buying a thing from the buggers.
Bread & Circuses
Beer & Football
TV
opiate for the masses
now for real entertainment
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154283/Cats-away-Artist-turns-dead-pet-flying-helicopter-killed-car.html
Ads are everywhere, of course, but the USA is “special”. Whenever I visit, I am just astounded ad the sheer number (and volume-level) of ads on television. The infomercials. The kids programs that are, themselves, commercials.
Here, if I call some company and the lines are busy, I get music to listen to. In the US, no company misses the opportunity to play ads into your ear. The bank tellers greet customers by trying to sell them a credit card. The animated billboards along the highway – isn’t “distracted driving” illegal? The political phone calls in the evening. And on and on…
I suppose you get used to it, but the ads strike us as so pervasive that it’s a relief to escape them when we come back home. Peaceful, like.
Back in the Sixties and Seventies I used to *like* many of the ads on TV, they were quite amusing or clever. Such as the Coca Cola ad where a bikie in full leathers rolls up on a bike, takes of the helmet and out pops lots of long blonde hair attached to a very attractive female – rather than the gnarled old bikie that one expected. I’ve liked other ads that are amusing or informative, but that started changing here in the late Seventies.
A thing that changed then was that they started advertising tampons and panty liners on TV. I remember watching TV with my sister back then, one of those ads came on, she said “Women don’t like ads like this.” Another time I was watching TV with a young woman who was boarding at my house. A block of ads came on, the first of which was for a feminine hygiene product. Jenny looked over me and smiled, an embarrassed smile I think. There were three unrelated ads, then the final ad before the program resumed was a repeat of the first. Jenny, clearly embarrassed by this stage, made an exclamation of annoyance. I wasn’t embarrassed, I never am, but I’m always amused at how embarrassed women usually get at the mere mention of this subject.
Back in the good old days I welcomed ads, they came on about every 15 minutes for two minutes, so anyone could go to the loo, get a drink or snack, or whatever. Now they’re so frequent as to make programs unwatchable, and they repeat the same ads again and again.
If I’m stuck on hold on the ‘phone I’ll frequently hang up if they keep plugging their own services. Classical or easy listening popular is best IMHO.
My physiotherapist recently told me to start getting used to mousing with my left hand. I’ve had RSI problems since the mid Eighties on my right hand, now it’s getting worse. The physiotherapist said I didn’t have to mouse with my left hand all the time, just for, say, five minutes per hour. But an ergonomics adviser at work just said that people can learn to mouse as accurately and quickly with their other hand as with their natural hand.
Getting old is hell. ™
Miles, what about alternate kinds of input devices? I know people who have gone to trackballs. Personally, I like the little “trackpoint” stick that IBM introduced on Thinkpads years ago.
Kids programs as commercials.
Anyone else recall that the Children’s Television Workshop was formed to make children’s TV commercial free? Remember when Sesame Street was on PBS and commercial free? I do. Now they’re the biggest commercial on TV.
I’ve been surprised at how quickly I’m adapting to left handed mousing, so I think I’ll try and get used to it first to see if it helps.
I don’t know the details because I haven’t signed up, but MLB has internet packages that let you sign up to see just about every game online for a fairly reasonable sum. I have friends that swear by it.
It is a little problematic in that MLB has draconian blackout rules (e.g., here in Winston-Salem, Atlanta, Washington and Baltimore are blacked out). However, I assume this audience can find a way around that problem.
Anyway, for those of you above looking for such a thing, it exists. Perhaps it also exists for the NFL and NBA?
Did you switch the mouse buttons also ? One of my employees switched the mouse to his left but also switches the mouse buttons. It is awkward as all get out when I try to use it.
Yes, I did. According to the adviser some people don’t know it’s possible but get along okay. I’ve tried mousing with my left hand without switching the buttons, and it drives me nuts.
I was pretty shocked at the commercial loads upon returning after nearly 10 years away, too. Television is totally out-of-control, and radio is not far behind. Don’t know about TV today, but in radio, it is very common to have more salesman on staff than all the other employees combined. Standard commercial load is a 6 minute cluster, followed by less than 5 minutes of program material, then yet another 6 minute cluster–rinse and repeat ad-nauseam.
When I left commercial TV in 1977, the maximum limit for non-program material was 4 interruptions of a maximum of 2 minutes. Then there was a total commercial load limit depending on the time of day, but my recollection was that it was 18 minutes an hour outside of prime time, and 12 or 13 minutes in prime time. Admittedly, I do not keep up with this stuff anymore, because I will never work in commercial TV again, so I have no interest in even knowing—but I do not believe there are any actual maximum limits on commercial content anymore. And, of course, when the FCC deregulated under Reagan, guess what was the first thing to disappear? The industry self-regulating body, the National Association of Broadcasters. Yeah, the name still exists, and they put on a convention for equipment sellers every year, but nobody in my town Indy belongs anymore. Why should they? Now that the liquor warehouses are open for alcoholics to live in, who needs AA?
And nobody gets used to them. People I know who can afford it, pay for satellite radio in their cars, just so they never have to listen to commercials. That is really the only reason satellite radio has survived, IMO—for people to escape commercials.
“Interruptions” is TV talk for 1 commercial. So, in the ’70’s, one cluster (or break) could consist of 4 separate commercials totaling not more than 2 minutes. I see that is confusing; an interruption is not a commercial cluster, it is each separate, individual commercial.
Hmm. That should be “Interruption” singular above not plural. Registering is not helping. Even though I closed no windows since my last logged-in comment, it logged me out, and I did not notice. So I cannot edit the above comment.
I really miss the old boards.