computer

Courts Are Looking At Approving Profanity and “Nudity” on Television

by on January 11, 2012

in Entertainment, television

Brusimm Cinema Static TV NewsThough it may take six months to actually come to a conclusion, the U.S. Supreme Court is actually pondering the idea if censoring, to some degree, is even worth the effort in this day and age of cable TV and time-shifted viewing.

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The FCC is a powerful entity whose biggest, arch nemesis, Howard Stern, has been on Sirius XM satellite radio for the last few years… though Howard Stern is coming to America’s Got Talent.

But all joking aside, the FCC is becoming an antiquated entity with the rules it is enforcing and maybe the money spent there can be placed like say, into education programs so more teachers don’t lose their jobs?

Look, if the Nielsen Ratings org can adapt to streaming entertainment in their metrics, sooner or later the advertisers will embrace it more… seeing as how adverstisers spend nearly $10 billion per season on ads!

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Everyone behind the TV industry has been rather slow to adapt to what is evolving as far as watching TV goes, but if you think about it, TV is no longer about sitting down at 8pm to catch a TV show.  Today, “TV” is about when you’ll pull up your favorite show or on what device you might watch it.

Advertisers still base their funding decisions on live+7 TV ratings.  That’s counting who watches a TV show live, then they also take into account viewership for the next 7 days.  But like I noted, TV is no longer just, well, on TV any more.  It’s all over the place.   It’s on our phones, our computers, in our cars, it’s at the gas stations, at sporting venues and what not.

So when the Supreme Court starts pondering the idea of why worry about censoring time-shifted TV viewing, you know we’re starting to take a step in the modern era.

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How To: Setting Which Internet Browser To Be Your Default Browser

by on August 29, 2011

in consumer

Interested in figuring out how to set your default web browser to one that you want instead of what the computer OS or application thinks you want?  Read on because the following help me set my web browser choice (FireFox) for any link I clicked on!

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FireFox Web Browser logoThe other day I was tackling a certificate issue and low and behold, while I was tackling the issue at hand, I had noticed that when I clicked on a link in my Thunderbird email client, it would seem that when I last installed Opera, it made itself my default web browser and everything was opening there.

Bad Opera.  Bad browser!

I know I didn’t select any option that agreed to make Opera my default client, I’m too OCD about my working environment to let that happen.  Yes, I’m weird that way, where I want my own computing environment to be what I want it to be and not what the very next app that comes along thinks it should be.

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First, I had found one set of instructions that told me to go to (BTW:  This IS NOT the answer)

  • Start;
  • Settings;
  • Control Panel; and then
  • open ‘Add or Remove Programs’ and then to
  • choose ‘Set Program Access and Defaults.’

I was then instructed to choose ‘Custom,’ and then to select what I wanted to be my default browser.

That worked about as well as walking through a crowded mall with a blindfold on.  That option resetting itself to “use my current web browser.”  Wow, that was a futile exercise.

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Defeating The auto-logout In UNIX & the tcsh shell [Consumer-ish]

by on July 27, 2011

in consumer

Auto-logout stopped!

The other day my UNIX computer operating environment had changed from a bash shell to the tcsh shell. We all thought this would be a good thing as we were moving our work environment from one set of machines to another.

UNIXBut oddly, the master account and my own personal UNIX account started to auto-logout users after thirty minutes of inactive time.

It was rather annoying.  My usual work environment involves at the minimum 7 different access sessions open to various machines or processes.  On average, I have about 12 sessions open on my workstation.  Of course with some of these sessions, I run monitoring processes.  I started noticing after I had swapped shells that I was getting logged out and kicked back to the original machine that I had ssh‘d  or “su -” from.

It was annoying to be constantly logging back in to these windows.

I started asking our various support personnel about this, but I kept getting told that there is no auto-logout feature set.

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Consumer Computer Alert with Usama bin Laden (Pls Share)

by on May 4, 2011

in consumer

Consumer Alert from Consumer-Bits:

As is the nature of some “folk” who like to take advantage of the latest trend, so too are they taking advantage of the Usama bin Laden situation.

The FBI itself has announced a consumer alert warning the public that there are a flurry of emails and Facebook and Twitter links and such purporting to show either images or video of the situation related to bin Laden’s death.

Yet the links and such have destructive computer viruses associated with them on the other side.

“This malicious software, or “malware,” can embed itself in computers and spread to users’ contact lists, thereby infecting the systems of associates, friends, and family members. These viruses are often programmed to steal your personally identifiable information.”

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With that, I am going to reiterate a few warnings, suggestions and some common sense practice about dealing with computer viruses.

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Mobile Entertainment… Time to Think About Embracing It

by on December 17, 2010

in consumer, Entertainment

Amazon 3rd Generation KINDLE

Amazon 3rd Generation KINDLE

Before you go off on me, think about this, I come  from an old-school take on things…  Don’t be rude and answer your phone while talking to someone; TV is for TV; books are to be held and pages turned; and phones are meant to only make phone calls.  (Yea, that last one is a bit freaky.)

A few years back I had to get a Smartphone and it was a begrudging relationship, it was because the phone I had wasn’t designed well or did not have a lot of support for it.  Then I picked up my Droid X from Motorola and suddenly, it was a different world all together.  Suddenly I could check email while walking to work.  I can crank my holiday music while checking my email while walking to work!  Heck, I can read books on my phone before going to sleep, and putting the “book” down, my phone is near me.  And heck, I didn’t know I had a Kindle on my Droid when I bought it!

Suddenly, after being dragged into the pool, I suddenly found myself saying, “Hey, it’s not so bad in here!”

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Receiving Weird Phone Calls Does Not Mean Following Their Instructions

by on November 24, 2010

in bruce's thoughts

TelephoneIf you were staying at a motel and you received a  phone call from the hotel manager, or more specifically, someone stating they were the manager, would you abide by their instructions to destroy your hotel room?  Or would you maybe go to the front desk and confirm the request?

In South Carolina, there’s at least one man who does exactly as instructed, which included throwing his TV out of his room, smashing all the mirrors and to tear through the hotel wall to save the entrapped midget next door.

Seriously.

This new rage in hotel phone pranks seems to be taking hold to some degree around the country and this is the latest gag/victim to succumb to the fake demands.

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Hash Tags in Twitter – I asked Why?

by on October 17, 2010

in consumer

Twitter Hash Tags

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Of late I’ve been questioning the use of hash tags on Twitter.  My question is why are we doing this any more?  At one point, it was useful in the early days but now search and trend tools for and within Twitter focus on bare terms and hash tagged terms.  So I wondered if  … but I think hash tagged words are slowly fading but many still use them.

I also feel that hashtags are an uncontrolled aspect of Twitter.  There’s no oversight on the tool and anyone can use any term for any hash tag that fits the moment.  If I want to tag something for Halloween, do I tag it scary, halloween, ghosts, vampires, monsters or any hundreds of possibilities that could represent Halloween?  Without a centralized oversight to help focus the hash tag community, it’s a diluted community tool.

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Computer Notebook Recall from Toshiba

by on September 11, 2010

in consumer

Consumer News on Brusimm: That SoB Consumer

Consumer News on Brusimm: That SoB Consumer

Toshiba has a consumer product recall in affect for their Satellite T135, Satellite T135D and Satellite ProT130 Notebook Computers.

The issue with these models is that the AC Adapter plug-in can overheat with the potential of a burn hazard.

So far, there have been 129 reports of the overheating where the plastic has deformed around the AC adapter plug and a few minor burns have also been reported.

Consumers should immediately download the latest version of Toshiba’s BIOS computer program to their notebook computer at http://laptops.toshiba.com/about/consumer-notices. This new computer program will detect whether the notebook computer is overheating, and if so, disable the notebook computer’s external power and display a message directing the consumer to contact Toshiba for a free repair. Consumers who do not have Internet access should contact Toshiba to arrange for installation of the updated BIOS.

To see this recall on CPSC’s web site, including pictures of the recalled products, please go to: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml10/10330.html

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Television Ads Are Taking Over Our TV Hours

by on August 24, 2010

in Entertainment, television

TELEVISION COMMERCIALS

Our TV Time is Running Out

Cinema Static on Brusimm - TV and Movie Stuff, Weeding through the Static

I remember the good old days when we’d get 46 or 45 minutes of TV program time per hour and the ads would take up the rest of the hour. In the 60′s, TV viewers had 51 minutes of programming per hour, the rest were television commercials. Today, it’s 42 minutes of programming, while 30-minute programming consists of 22 minutes of show. Some networks screw you even further out of your time and only run 18 minutes of programing in a 30-minute slot with ads filling the rest!

But ads during our TV shows pay the bills so the show gets made. It’s a necessary evil that we can’t get away from, even if they are WAY TOO LOUD and become too frequent.

And ads aren’t restricted to TV. We see ads everywhere we go, even this website, though I’d rather get paid to write, this is how I’m achieving that goal at the moment… when you visit Amazon.com via my links where I get a tiny percentage of the purchase price when you buy something there. (Via my link. Nudge, nudge.)

And ads are getting more insidious. They exist at the bottom of the TV screen now, where sometimes they confuse or ruin the ambiance of the moment in the show.

So even though we’re getting pummeled by 18 minutes of television commercials per hour, we’re also getting pummeled by over 10 minutes of in-show brand advertisements per hour. For example, when you can clearly see that huge and bright Apple symbol on computers, or can easily identify a product in something you’re watching… that’s not something that just happens, that’s contractual obligations to demonstrate the product to you, the viewer/consumer.  When all is said and done, we’re literally being exposed to almost 30 minutes of advertising an hour. All this advertising time actually increase and went up 5% from ’08 to ’09 to boot.

And now they are even starting to use characters from the TV show to push products in commercials… sometimes making the ads a part of the show, or making them look like it.

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UNIX – Copying and Pasting With EMACS and Spawning New Windows

by on August 21, 2010

in consumer

Using EMACS

&

SPAWNING New Windows

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Using EMACS in UNIXI use EMACS often and I find that I often am copying lines of text into files I’ve opened with emacs. It’s what I do. I have a huge KSH script, I want to add a section, so I test the new add-in by itself. Then when I am satisfied, I copy & paste from my test script/executable into my target code. But if you’re somewhat new to this arena, especially with using UNIX, you’ll probably wonder how the heck I’m opening an emacs sessions and still copy and paste into it?

One of my favorite methods of using EMACS is by adding a child session spawn signal to the end of my command line. (That’s my own name for it) It looks like this:

‘emacs filename &‘

The ‘&’ opens a new window and it leaves the original window available for use, just as always.

When I first started using the ‘&’ symbol, I typed it all the time and then found myself getting tired of typing it. (I’m what I jokingly refer to as lazy, and end up writing scripts and aliases for my work.) When I decided to add an alias to my CSH environment, this is one of my example lines from my ‘.cshrc’ file for using emacs and automatically adding the child process spawning symbol to the end of my command:

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