tv – Page 18 – Stilgherrian

18 January 2009

Links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009, gahered with care and moistened with love:

All the ephemera that’s fit to print * | Noisy Decent Graphics: A lovely idea: take all the cool stuff your friends have written in the last year and print it in newspaper format.
P2P is Killing the Porn Star | Perceptric Forum: Hollywood is not the only casualty of P2P, it seems. A nice essay.
Business Sense | News.com.au Business: Buried in here is Business Sense TV, some Internet-based video productions. I have a reason for bookmarking this which is 100% Secret Squirrel.
Twitter Spreads News Of US Airways Crash In An Instant | InformationWeek: Yet another story about Twitter spreading the news of an event before the mainstream media could touch it.
Victoria Cross citation for Trooper Mark Gregor Donaldson | Department of Defence: The official Australian Army citation for the first Victoria Cross awarded to an Australian in 40 years. Terse, army bureaucratic language hides an amazing story of bravery.
Child porn laws being turn on their heads – by the kids themselves | The Inquisitr: Child pornography laws were designed to cover situations when an adult was coercing a child into sexual contexts. But what if the “child pornography” in question is “just” teenagers taking photos of each other?
Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown | NYTimes.com: A task force set up by 49 US attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of online sexual solicitation of children finds that there actually isn’t a significant problem.
Right Whales, Wrong Whales | Media Watch: It's from September 2008, but a great story about how journalists got it all wrong because they didn’t fact-check with people who know something about whale. There’s also a bonus photo of a whale penis. I rediscovered this story while researching a piece for Crikey.
Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog: What struck me about this list is that any modern journalist should been across this knowledge well before now. Knowing that your readers are smarter than you on specific topics? Knowing how to use Google’s advanced search? How to use RSS feeds? Are working journalists really this far behind the pace?
wordpress wiki plugin | Instinct Entertainment: This new plug-in which can turn selected WordPress pages into Wiki-style editable objects could be useful. I should look at it. If I had the time. Would you like to look at it for me and report back?
BT-1 Bluetooth Webcam for Mac: The new BT-1 wireless webcam streams H.264 video and AAC audio. It’s compatible with Skype and iChat, so presumably it’ll work with Cam Twist and therefore Stilgherrian Live. I want a couple NOW. Available “late Q1”.
In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates | NYTimes.com: Ted Nelson’s book Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now was an enormous influence on me and many others. He’s now 71, and this piece based on a recent interview is a reasonable introduction to his work.
How I Use Twitter at Volume | chrisbrogan.com: “At volume, [Twitter is] a bit different. It’s a lot like showing up to a very busy, very loud cocktail party, but also a business meeting, plus a focus group, plus several other social situations. Twitter, unfiltered, is like someone with mind reading powers walking down 38th Street in Manhattan. It’s not especially easy to manage, and it’s very different how things work at this pace. Looking at unfiltered Twitter at this volume just doesn’t cut it.”
You are the President of Your Career | chrisbrogan.com: One person’s framework for focusing on your goals in an economically tough year. I like the reminder that a “career path” was something for your father, but not for you.
The Bush Administration’s Most Despicable Act | Time: Joe Klein summarises the Bush II government’s contribution to the wonderful world of torture.

08 January 200911 March 2009

Conroy attacks BitTorrent: Ruins Australia online

Crikey logo

[This article was first published in Crikey on Monday 5 January 2009, and the headline is theirs. Here it is for those folks too cheap-arsed to subscribe. I’ll re-post my other recent Crikey material soon.]

The biggest criticism of the Rudd government’s plan to centrally censor the internet — apart from it being ill-defined, secretive, a potential human rights abuse, a great way to screw up broadband speeds, poorly planned, way behind schedule and tackling the problem of child sexual abuse in completely the wrong way — is that it won’t work. As Crikey has reported several times before. None of the filters tested in the first half of 2008 could touch peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like BitTorrent, which is where The Bad Stuff lives.

Just before Christmas, Senator Conroy tackled that last bit by declaring in a single sentence on his new blog: “Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.” If so, it’s news to the ISPs who signed up. But then they haven’t been given official notification yet, and the trials were meant to start before Christmas. Ahem.

BitTorrent is easy to understand, provided you skip the brain-imploding technical details. Instead of everyone downloading the same big media file from a central server, causing congestion, the file is split up into lots of little pieces. As soon as you’ve download one random piece, your computer becomes a server, swapping the pieces you already have for the missing pieces downloaded by other users — your peers. Automatically. Eventually everyone gets all of the pieces, with the work shared amongst all the participants.

BitTorrent is incredibly efficient. As we reported in March, Norway’s national broadcaster NRK used BitTorrent to distribute a full HD TV program to 80,000 people for just US$350 in bandwidth and storage charges.

Yesterday [Sunday], Crikey showed NRK project manager Eirik Solheim reports of Conroy’s plan.

“Wow!” he said. “A minister that is actively working to limit your country’s ability to distribute information and compete globally… If he plans to block BitTorrent traffic in general that would be a serious limitation to people’s ability to distribute content, creativity, ideas and information.”

Continue reading “Conroy attacks BitTorrent: Ruins Australia online”

03 January 2009

So why do you watch Stilgherrian Live?

Stilgherrian Live is currently on summer break, but will return soon. My question to you today is: Why do you watch it?

My plan is that when Stilgherrian Live returns in 2009 I’ll give you more of what you like and less of what you don’t like. Plus I’ll be getting the marketing sorted out, as well as recording it properly so it can go on iTunes and other places to reach a wider and more vulnerable audience.

So what do you like about it? It’s quite random at times and the production values are, erm, not the highest in the world. Does that matter? Is that its charm?

So far the regular segments are, in rough program order: a cheap and nasty opener, a rant about something that’s annoyed me that week, the “Cnut of the Week” segment, some random TV adverts via YouTube, Stilgherrian’s Street View (a few minutes of random footage in some street), more ranting with the occasional talkback call, a closing song — and then after the “official” program more random crap I’ve found on that Internet thing.

What should stay? What should go? What is the appeal of Stilgherrian Live? What is it that I bring to be small screen which is unique? What else should I know while I’m thinking about this? Over to you…

29 December 2008

Gname the Gnome!

Photo of female garden gnome with bare breasts and a green g-string

If you’ve watched His Benevolence Stilgherrianâ€™s Christmas Message then you’ll be familiar with this delightful creature. She needs a name.

’Pong found her at the local two-dollar shop, and things she was the only one there. However I’m certain there’s a factory in coastal China churning out vast numbers of the bare-breasted beauties, in serried ranks like the Terracotta Army only much, much sexier. Like Amazons.

Name suggestions?

25 December 200826 December 2008

And here’s the program…

…all 3.5 hours of it. All streamable and watchable as you wish. It was planned to be 2 hours, but we had to pad until His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message was ready to air.

Unlike the usual one-hour programs, we included the weird-arsed archival videos that I usually play after the program officially ends in the body of the program itself.

Tomorrow we’ll clean up the editing of the Christmas Message somewhat and post it online as a stand-alone video. Stand by.

[Update 26 December: Alas, it seems Ustream recorded only the first 70-odd minutes of the program. The rest is lost in the ether… forever.]

25 December 200825 December 2008

Stilgherrian Live Christmas Special 2008

Christmas tree with gold baubles and a star

I’ve finally decided! Stilgherrian Live will present two hours of special Christmas Day programming tonight from 6pm Sydney time, kicking off with His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message.

Actually, it might be called His Excellency Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message, or maybe just His Excellency’s Christmas Message, depending what we decide later.

I’ve been reviewing the raw video footage this morning and it’s disturbing. As is the gnome. You have been warned. See you tonight. with the gnome.

[Christmas Tree image courtesy of Icon Drawer.]