PALAVER #7

     (THEME MUSIC up, volume holds, then dips)


      LOSTNBRONX
For Monday, December 13, 2010, it's the "Palaver Audiocast", with lostnbronx. 

     (THEME MUSIC rises, holds a bit, then dips again)

Episode 7, "A New Stereo".

     (INTRO MUSIC rises, holds, then goes out)

Hello, this is lostnbronx.

If you follow my gopher phlog, which, by name, is "Lostnblog" -- clever, 
no? -- you may know that I was on Verizon Wireless' 3G service until 
recently.  This service was our sole pipe to the outside Interneteeze, 
and it was so utterly pitiful that we were effectively back in the 
EIGHTIES again, service and speed-wise.  Resultingly, Mrs. Bronx's hair 
started getting bigger and bigger, and the melodic hymns of "A Flock of 
Seagulls" and "The Bangles" were, hideously, on the rise.  Obviously, 
something had to be done, and, thus, long story short, when DSL finally 
became an option, here on the "Lazy-LNB Ranch", we jumped on it.  We've 
been very happy with it too, as you might imagine, going from a 
figurative bread and water diet, to three square meals a day.

That was a couple months ago.  By now, we've had a chance to sink our 
familial teeth into broadband multimedia content, and, I gotta tell 
ya...it ain't as awesome as I was expecting.  I don't mean the 
connection -- that's just fine -- no, I mean, the relative lack of 
quality content being offered by the various services.  Netflix, Hulu, 
Amazon...that sort of thing.  When, after just a few short months, I'm 
back to trolling Youtube and Archive.org for content, you know there's a 
problem, and, for once, I refuse to think it's me.

Now, don't misunderstand, there's a LOT out there.  The thing is, I had 
been under the naive impression that, my Internet connection being 
something less than dial-up in quality, I was abysmally restricted in 
what I had practical access to.  Well, for a month or two, that seemed 
true.  But, I've been watching shows, and getting downloaded movies, 
and, you know what?  The artificial restrictions placed on the 
aforementioned services are smacking me broadside in the face.

Take Netflix's use of Silverlight to deliver their content: Silverlight 
don't run on Linux nohow, and we only have one Windows machine in the 
house: my wife's laptop.  Not exactly convenient for familytime viewing.  
Sure, I could put XP or something in a Virtual Machine and stream it 
through to the television -- but...NO!  Call me foolish, call me 
irresponsible, but I am NOT installing an entire Windows operating 
system on one of my Linux machines, just to use ONE company's 
browser-based service, which, dammit, Dammit, DAMMIT, oughta be 
cross-platform.  They are dicks for going that route.  I hate Flash, but 
Hulu has proven that it can be made to work pretty well, so...why 
Silverlight?

I had a buddy, back in the day -- went by the name of Crash.  Now, he 
was a Character, with a capital "C", and I could tell you stories about 
him for hours, but let me just relate this one tale to iterate a point: 
at one time in his professional life, Crash was a maintenance manager 
for a nursing home.  Now, Crash went through jobs like a wino goes 
through Ripple, but he had THIS one long enough that the commercial 
suppliers for the home got to know him.  Well, one day a supplier came 
in and was trying to sell him florescent bulbs for the place.  You know, 
that's a big sale -- places like that can have a lot of light fixtures.  
We're talking many thousands of dollars.  But Crash says, "Naw, I don't 
need any bulbs."  And the supplier says, "Well, what DO ya need?"  And 
Crash says, "...I could use a new stereo."

Guess what?  Crash bought some bulbs.

Well, somebody at Netflix got a new friggin' stereo when the Microsoft 
vendor showed up to put on his little medicine show.  Payola.  Greased 
palms.  Lined pockets.  I dunno who.  I dunno when.  But it happened.  
Of course, now that Microsoft has dropped development of Silverlight, 
that same stereophile might be sweating his or her job, since said 
person convinced Netflix to commit to a technology that will no longer 
be supported...then again, if the "stereo" was nice enough, that may not 
matter too much.

Now, Hulu's got some massive restrictions of its own, what with 
licensing or residuals, or whatever the hell, so it didn't take long 
after our Internet pipeline unclogged, here at home, for me to focus my 
time on older programs there, because the new stuff was either not 
available, or just plain crap.  And, if you go around to the various 
network's Websites, it turns out to be much the same.  It's like digging 
for gold -- mostly it's just a lot of time and effort for a few tiny 
grains of value.

In other words, so long as we, as consumers, are still dipping our 
ladles into the same big soup bowl of the entertainment conglomerates, 
regardless of the delivery system these days -- so long as Big Media is 
still giving us the majority of our content, even online, then it's all 
STILL just a Vast Wasteland.  Independent media.  Creative Commons.  
Public Domain.  That's what we want here.  Jamendo, Magnatunes, 
ccmixter, Archive.org, Vodo.net -- even Vimeo and, yes, Youtube, because 
much or even most of that stuff is ORIGINAL stuff.  Much of what I'm 
talking about here is less-professional or polished than mainstream 
media, no argument; but when mainstream media has polished the character 
and personality out of 85 or 90% of what they're offering, well, you 
ain't missin' much by missin' it entirely.

Now, not all of Hollywood is garbage.  I would never say that.  But you 
gotta shuck a whole lot of oysters to find a couple pearls.  I could 
name a few -- we could all name a few.  But I'll bet if we asked a 
thousand people to name the best pieces of professional multimedia on 
the Interwebs, we'd end up with more or less the same pieces...that is 
to say, even with a whole lot of eyes looking in Big Media's direction, 
we'd still just have a few good shows to choose from, and the rest would 
be the same old dreck.  There's just not that much good stuff coming out 
from the traditional sources, even if I CAN get it faster now than ever 
before.  I mean there's definitely something to be said about not having 
to wait a day-and-a-half for a download to complete, just to find out a 
particular show sucks, so I'm not complaining -- not about that.

But Big Media has been spoon-feeding us low-quality stuff in 
high-quality packaging for decades -- and in the case of things like 
print media, movies, and music, they've been gouging US, and screwing 
the artists royally -- and we owe them exactly NOTHING.  They don't want 
people pirating their content?  Well, fine -- they can friggin' keep it.  
It's vapid, trite, manufactured crap, and I, for one, don't need it.  
Most of it, I mean.  Again, there's EXCEPTIONS.  And if something out of 
them costs me money, or, what's far more precious, costs me my TIME so 
that I may have access to it, well it damn well better BE exceptional.  
Big Media has a poor track record, in my opinion.  And when it comes to 
what I watch and how I watch it, MY opinion is the only one that 
matters.  I think THEY'VE forgotten that.  We can only have what THEY 
give us access to?  Bullshit!  We can have BETTER, that maybe doesn't 
include them at all.

I've been going on about this for years now, so I was curious to see, 
once a broadband connection finally made it to the property line, if I 
would change my tune any, having sampled what rich online media has to 
offer these days.  Well, I haven't.  I've only changed my volume -- and 
I'm singing louder than ever.

     (THEME MUSIC up, holds a bit, then out)

Okay, here's a short thing I had left over from my Sedona adventure.  I 
didn't think it fit too well there, because it isn't about the trip 
itself, but I didn't want to round-file it either, because it's a 
subject I DO have an opinion on.

I call this one, "An Ubuntu Half-Dead Cd".

     (THEME MUSIC up, holds, then out)

     (INSERT CD SEGMENT)

     (THEME MUSIC up, then dips)

You can contact me at lostnbronx@gmail.com, that's (SPELL IT).  You can 
visit my gopherspace if you're hankering for the olden, golden, 
molderin' days.  That's 
gopher://gopher.info-underground.net/1/lostnbronx/.  My gopher phlog is 
there -- you can sign up for that, if you have an interest.  You can 
sometimes find me on Identi.ca, as lostnbronx; and you can sometimes 
find me in the #oggcastplanet channel on the Freenode IRC network.  Feel 
free to say hello -- I'm only a bastard on the inside, where it counts 
the most.

Take care.

"Palaver" is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 
3.0 Unported License.  You may use this content for any purpose, even 
commercial -- just tell 'em ol' LnB sencha, and then pass it on in the 
same way.