Posts tagged as:

television

Why Do People Want Everything For Next To Nothing?

by mark on July 12, 2011

You quickly realize how many nutcases are sharing the planet with you, when you read blog comments attached to posts about pretty rational things.

Take for example, Netflix’s announcement that their unlimited plan that lets you do all of the streaming while having one physical disk out at a time, all for $9.99/month, was going to be eliminated.

Now you can have a $7.99 plan that includes unlimited DVDs (1 out at a time), a $7.99 unlimited streaming plan, or both.

So, for $15.98, you can continue to have what you had yesterday at $9.99.

Oh the humanity! A 60% increase! Overnight! GASP!

The comments sections everywhere, Twitter, and Facebook have erupted into outrage. People talking tough about sticking it to Netflix with threats of taking their business elsewhere. Ingrates are saying that they’ve enjoyed Netflix, but this is it… the relationship is over! There are those complete dopes who can only muster up four-letter words to drop into the comments sections to express their outrage. %&#$ YOU NETFLIX!

Reality: Netflix gives people a ridiculously great bargain for years, and then when they ask for a little more — $5.99/month more to be precise &mdash to cover additional streaming costs, or royalties that have to be paid, people are ready to dump Netflix altogether?

I’ve been a customer since 2000. I love Netflix. I wish they streamed at 1080p instead of 720p, but streaming is convenient. They are really fast at receiving my physical discs and sending out the next one in my queue. They have a great website. They have a huge selection. At $15.98, it’s a great value.

Some of you might be too young to remember having to drive to the local video store to pick up a VHS or DVD, wandering around in the store looking for something worth watching in the store’s horrible selection, picking something out, paying $2.99 for a 2 night rental, forgetting to drive it back on time, getting charged another few bucks for the late fee… And I’m saying this while back in the 80′s my family owned a video rental store.

It still amazes me that there are video rental places that are still in business.

So where are all of the outraged people going to go? I will bet that half of them stay with Netflix, and the other half will go somewhere else, realize how much the alternatives suck, and return to Netflix.

Sure, Amazon has streaming, but you’re paying $2.99-$3.99 per rental, good for only 48 hours (at least that’s how it was the last time I checked). They give Prime members free streaming on a limited selection, but it’s mostly stuff you wouldn’t have paid for anyways.

I will remain a loyal Netflix customer as long as I feel that I’m getting value out of their service. I look at it this way: For the cost of two movie tickets at a theater where I’ll have to deal with uncomfortable seats and other rude theater goers, I can have unlimited movies for an entire month, delivered right to my mailbox or streaming device. If these price hikes ensure Netflix continues to improve and works towards 1080p streaming, they can keep hitting my credit card.

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Are You Celebrating “Screen-Free Week”?

by mark on April 20, 2011

It’s the middle of my kid’s school vacation this week. The kids are spending a portion of the week at their grandparent’s house, and a long drive to and from.

We’re also in the middle of Screen-Free Week. This used to be called “TV Turnoff Week”. We once threw together and promoted a “PC Turnoff Week”.

What’s one week when you have fifty-one other weeks in the year where kids are going to gorge themselves with screen-time no matter what? How many screens do your kids interact with. There’s the TV, the computer, the iPod, the smart phone, etc.

Managing screen time is something that parents should be doing all year long.

You can limit computer time, but they might just get on their iPod touch and play games, or text their friends on and off when they should be doing homework.

It’s a challenge to manage multiple kids and multiple screens. Have you been effective at doing this within your family, or have you thrown your hands up?

ComputerTime will do the job on your Windows PCs to reign in excessive use, and more importantly eliminate the arguments between parents and the kids, but are you using any tools to help with the other technologies in your home?

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Family Unplugs for Week; No Deaths Result

by mark on February 4, 2011

A Dad, Mom, and six kids tried an experiment and totally unplugged from their gadgets for a week.

What do you it turned out like? Yelling? Arguments? Kids breaking down and going into total melt down mode? Will Mom and Dad even be able to resist their urges and overcome their addictions?

“But it was too hard, and I worked out I didn’t have room at work, so I unplugged everything from the wall and took all the remote controls and hid them instead.”

Despite the trepidation, the result came as a surprise to everyone.

Rather than fall apart, the family rediscovered the value of spending time with each other instead of staring at a screen.

“I didn’t think it would go as easily as it did,” Mr Mason said.

“Fortunately the weather was good, meaning the kids could spend a lot of time playing with the neighbours’ kids in the street outside.”

Puzzles, board games and conversation also filled the gadget void.

The Masons said the social experiment had changed their lives as a family. For a start, television viewing is now banned at the weekends, enabling them to spend more quality time together.

And this this part hasn’t surprised me one bit, because it echo’s what so many ComputerTime customers have told me over the years:

“We’ve seen a totally different attitude from the kids,” Mr Mason said.

He said it was fascinating to watch how his brood changed their behaviour and adapted to the altered circumstances.

“At the start of the week they whinged a bit, but by about Wednesday they were over it.

“By the end of the week they weren’t asking for anything because they knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

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Screens are Not a Substitute for Parental Involvement

by mark on March 23, 2010

Attempting to buy children’s affection with TVs and computer games… not a good idea.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said increasing numbers of children failed to respect authority or consider the needs of other pupils after leading “isolated lives” at home.

…

“Often it’s the well-off middle classes that buy off their children through the computer and the TV,” she said. “That then isolates them within the home, and then they’re surprised when their child isn’t coming to school ready to learn.”

Last year, Dr Bousted raised concerns that families were leading separate lives under one roof instead of sitting down to dinner together, with youngsters spending hours watching TV alone in their rooms.

The Whole Story.

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Post image for The Seven Words Television Uses to Lure Viewers

The Seven Words Television Uses to Lure Viewers

by mark on November 15, 2009

It’s getting harder to find clean television programming that doesn’t contain offensive language, according to the New York Times in the article More Than Ever, You Can Say That on Television.

Ever since George Carlin laid out the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” in 1972, television writers and broadcasters have been digging more deeply into the thesaurus, seizing on new ways to titillate, if not offend. And while the word “douche” is neither obscene nor profane — although this usage is certainly offensive to many people — it seems to represent the latest of broadcast television’s continuing efforts to expand the boundaries of taste, in part to stem the tide of defections by its audience to largely unregulated cable television.

I added the emphasis on that last sentence.

Rather than striving for better quality entertainment, the broadcast networks are striving to keep up with their cable counterparts by competing in the art of pushing the boundaries of bad taste. They are actively trying to offend, in order to garner more attention.

I’m all for freedom of expression — in the right context, and in the company of adults, movies and television programs can be raw and realistic.

The 10:00pm boundary should be respected so that parents can make a choice. If you don’t want your kids being subjected to offensive language and suggestive or explicit images, knowing that television is safe before 10:00 would be comforting. A firm boundary lets parents set limits. If you don’t want your kids soaking up that stuff, then you have an “off by 10:00pm” rule.

Music and radio isn’t really much better. I’ve filed complaints with the FCC in the past over local pop radio stations that my kids in middle school had been listening to. Songs with offensive lyrics and morning DJs that talked openly and joked about celebrities and sexual themes. Yeesh! I was driving my pre-teens to school for Christ’s sake!

What are your strategies for combating these offensive onslaughts?

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Post image for Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

by mark on June 17, 2009

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

The rectangles even help Americans to successfully emote, often by using a combination of visual and aural signals to indicate when laughter or tears should be produced.

“Life would be very different if it weren’t for these magical squares of light,” cultural studies professor and social critic David Ostroff typed to reporters using one of his wireless messaging rectangles. “Sry. Have 2 go. Movie about 2 strt.”

On average, Americans interact with anywhere from 53 to 107 pulsating rectangles every week. For many, however, this is simply not enough. Despite having a leisure rectangle in every bedroom, along with multiple work rectangles, a rectangle just for the children, and one or two rectangles that can do the work of several rectangles in one, many citizens admit to being dissatisfied.

If Apple really wanted to be different, they would avoid building another rectangular device and do something insanely great, like give us a glowing nonagon, or a let’s get all retro and go back to the 1950′s style glowing squircles.

Have you ever measured how much time your kids are in front of all glowing rectangles? It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if we actually did measure all of that time with TV, computers, iPods, and video games, if it would make us more likely to impose limits.

If you do come up with measurements, post them in the comments.

For my two kids, my son exceeds my daughter by a large margin. My daughter is mostly in front of her computer, while my son does a considerable amount of TV and iPod Touch staring in addition to the time he spends on the computer and it can consume an unhealthy amount of time.

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The Only Thing We Have to Fear…

by mark on February 24, 2009

“Your kids may be in danger!” says the news media. They know fear gets people’s attention; attention let’s them sell advertising. The truth may just be less attention-grabbing.

Is the Internet a dangerous place where evil lurks and kids are at risk? Do we need to worry?

No. Probably not. Recent findings from a task force created by 49 state attorneys general suggests that parents can relax.

Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown. There is no significant problem after all according to the report.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal criticizes the report and insists that “Children are solicited every day online. Some fall prey and the results are tragic. That harsh reality defies the statistical academic research underlying the report.”

Actually, most of the children are being solicited online by other children, and most children that get involved with adults online are actively pursuing such activity. Statistics don’t always tell the whole story and the fear mongers will withhold details if it doesn’t serve their purpose.

The whole report can be found here: Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies.

Porn and violence have become more prevelent in various media, yet teens are having less sex and there is less real violence. Is there a relationship there? Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds asks, are porn and violence good for America’s children? Then he says:

Maybe the porn, and the videogames, provided catharsis, serving as substitutes for the real thing. Maybe. And maybe there’s no connection at all. (Or maybe it’s a different one — research indicates that teenagers, though safer and healthier, are also fatter — so perhaps the other improvements are the result of teens sitting around looking at porn and videogames until they’re too out-of-shape and unattractive for the real thing…) Most likely, the lesson is that — once again — correlation isn’t causation, despite policy entrepreneurs’ efforts to claim otherwise.

In another report, video games do not lead to violence.

If we can trust these reports, then kids are not at increased risk of physical harm. Good! How about other detrimental psychological effects? Does it affect their brains? They’re social skills? Will it give them ADD?

Psychologist Dr. Helen Smith asks, Do social websites harm children’s brains? Helen points to the news about a neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, who refers to sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like and says, “My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment…”

Wait a minute… haven’t kids of all ages, over the past century, been attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights? Don’t all teenagers have small attention spans and live for the moment? That’s a safe bet.

But let us not be so quick to be entirely dismissive. Parents are witnesses to their kids growing up around 24/7 cartoon cable channels, Internet access, Facebook, YouTube, cell phones, and instant messaging. Many have seen that when they don’t impose limits, hell breaks loose. Raising teenagers regardless of technology is one big exercise in imposing limits.

So what’s a parent to do in the absense of a definitive study that gives us clear results on if technology is beneficial or detrimental? Set limits, of course. Make sure the kids are finding time to do all of the other things that kids should be doing. Everything in moderation. Take everything the media tells you with a grain of salt and trust your parental instincts.

Here is a smattering of additional links that I’ve collected over the past few months that I want to share, but don’t feel like addressing individually right now. Enjoy.

Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains

More ‘Screen Time’ Linked to Poor Fitness in Girls

How the Internet Damages Our Culture

Culture Makes the Internet Cruder, Not the Other Way Around

Study links TV and depression

What are your thoughts on all of this?

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Tech Makes Us Dumber… Smarter… Dumber… Smarter…

by Mark on September 23, 2008

…or technology makes our lives better… worse… better… worse…

The recent post on television made a point that people will disagree until the cows come home about if television is good or bad. Or if it makes us smarter or dumber. But it’s not about the technology. It’s about how the technology is used. Television can bring educational material to you that you just can’t get in your local schools. That’s fantastic. But you can also get 24/7, inane Disney channel programming that can sap the life out of your family and reduce the kids to zombies who come back alive and freak out when you yank the plug. That’s horrible.

People continue to argue for one side or the other of that debate as if devices can change you, and as if there is one right answer.

Perhaps it’s not the devices (TV, computers, video games, cell phones) that actually change people. Maybe those devices merely accentuate or exacerbate a person’s preexisting tendencies to be distracted, waste time, and avoid doing other important and more productive things. If the person’s tendencies are towards being responsible and being focused on the right things, then they will make good use of the device.

A laptop, in the hands of an intelligent, motivated, focused person will allow the person to do wonders as they work towards goals. The same laptop in the hands of an unmotivated slacker that suffers from ADD will probably only get used playing online games, watching YouTube videos, and IMing their friends all day long.

In the end, they’re just tools to be used, and then can be used positively or negatively. Does it make sense to blame the tool for the outcome?

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Like You Really Need More Evidence

September 20, 2008

Godfrey Reggio’s, Evidence. The blank, comatose look. I’ve seen it myself. You can easily witness it too. Just watch your kids watching TV. Give them a few minutes to settle into it. It’s like watching a person go under hypnosis. I know that feeling too. I used to watch more TV myself years ago, even [...]

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