Thursday, June 12

 

Buh-bye!

posted by Xrlq 8:13 PM

Wednesday, June 4

 

Blog*Spot: The Best Marketing Department Hosting Matters Ever Had

Yesterday's post on Tivo was the last substantive post I will post here on Blog*Splat. All future posts will appear on my new site at xrlq.com instead. It may take a few days for the domain to fully resolve; if so, so if the link to xrlq.com doesn't work yet, try following this link instead, or just wait 10 seconds for this page to do it for you. I'll update the permalinks as soon as xrlq.com has resolved everywhere.

Any other Bloggers who are interested in defecting but are afraid to tinker with Movable Type on their own would do well to drop Dean a line. With an offer like his on the table, there's no earthly reason for anyone to use Blogger or Blog*Splat again. I'm a little less generous than Dean, but will extend a similar offer to anyone who is a regular (as defined by me) reader of this blog: find a host that supports MT, lend me a password, and I'll get you up and running.

posted by Xrlq 6:46 PM

Tuesday, June 3

 

TiVo: The Best Marketing Department Replay Ever Had

TiVo, the company whose digital video recorder (DVR) was praised by FCC Chairman Michael Powell as "God's machine," appears to have sold its soul to the devil. According to today's A.P. wire, TiVo proposes to sell information about its customers' viewing habits to the very advertisers whose annoying ads the devices were intended to help us avoid. Oh wait, did I say "avoid?" I meant almost avoid. For all their ads about the joy of skipping commercials, TiVo is the one DVR manufacturer whose unit does not actually do that. All you can do about a commercial on TiVo is to speed things up. If you were planning on skipping commercials entirely, you'll need Replay instead. Or, if you like satellite TV, there's always the Dish PVR, which I use. No, the "P" in that name wasn't a typo. Everyone in the industry except Dish may call these things DVRs, but Dish calls them PVRs instead, based on the name "personal video recorder." I guess they figured a name like "Dish DVR" would have too much alliteration to be taken seriously.

Anyway, as DVR/PVRs go, I've been using Dish for almost two years now, and I'm very happy with it. My only complaint about the PVR is that the system could be made a little smarter, so as to track shows by name rather than blindly recording whatever starting and ending times you've programmed. Nine times out of ten, that doesn't matter, but once in a while a programming anomaly can come back to bite you. For example, Mrs. Xrlq and I missed the second and final hour of The Practice, that way when we forgot to reprogram it to catch the two-hour season finale. That may be the downside to not having to pay an extra fee for programming as our DVR happily recorded the same one hour segment that would ordinarily have covered the entire show. I don't know if this is an inherent limitation in that unit's technology, or just a programming feature Dish hasn't gotten around to adding yet. I hope it's the latter. Whatever it is, I'm sure it's not a crass, P.T. Barnum move akin to TiVo's deliberate decision to leave the 30-second "ZAP" feature off the menu.

If you're considering any of these devices, I really can't think of any reason to prefer TiVo over Replay, though admittedly I've never used either of them myself. I do know that TiVo's retail prices sound much cheaper than they are, while their competitors' units are priced more honestly. For example, you can buy a TiVo DVR for $249, but plan on spending an additional $299 if you are thinking of actually using it. By contrast, Replay is currently offering its basic DVR for $329, and that includes the programming fees. Similarly, the DishPVR goes for $299 (assuming you actually pay full price rather than wait for the right promotion) and has no associated fees beyond the cost of receiving satellite TV at all.

It may be true that DVRs generically warrant such a superlative moniker as "God's machine." I'm not sure why Chairman Powell saw fit to single out TiVo in particular, however, unless he as attempting to convert a few frustrated viewers to atheism.

posted by Xrlq 6:30 PM

Monday, June 2

 

Dyslexic Perv?

Latest weird Google search: "porn pics of girls aloud"

posted by Xrlq 10:48 AM

 

Some People Never Learn

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the Ditzy Chicks...

posted by Xrlq 6:43 PM

 

Another One Bites the Dust

MSNBC reports that Yosif Salih Fahd Ala'yeeri, one of the top 20 al-Qaeda operatives and the top operative in Saudi Arabia, was killed over the weekend. It seems that Mr. Ala'yeeri, who was also known as "The Swift Sword, may not have been so swift after all. Then again, maybe he was plenty swift, but just didn't see this raid coming. As President Bush might put it, "Either way, he's not a problem anymore."

UPDATE: Note to Maureen Dowd: Yes, this means that Mr. Ala'yeeri was an al-Qaeda member until he died. Yes, it also means that he did in fact die. And yes, most importantly of all, it also means that now that he is dead, he is not a problem anymore. Now the tricky part, which I will type really slowly: no, this does not mean that al-Qaeda as a group is not a problem anymore. Jeebus.

posted by Xrlq 11:43 PM

Saturday, May 31

 

Just Thought I'd Ask

Am I the only one who finds it odd that our nation's terror alert level has just been lowered to "elevated?"

posted by Xrlq 6:08 AM

Friday, May 30

 

Rights vs. Privileges, Part Deux

Eugene Volokh questions my observation that a "right" existing at the sufferance of the state is largely illusory. He notes, correctly, that rights (i.e., legal entitlements) can be held against parties other than the state, in which case such rights are genuine indeed. Suppose, for example, that you and I were to enter into a contract, which the California Legislature could nullify by statute at any time. My rights against you, and your rights against me, would both exist at the sufferance of the state, but neither of them would be illusory (assuming, of course, that neither of us has enough political clout to force the Legislature's hand). If, on the other hand, the contract contained a clause allowing one of the parties to rescind the contract at any time, the other party's contractual rights would be illusory indeed. Thus, my original statement probably should have been worded a little more generically:

To the extent that a "right" exists only at the sufferance of the person against whom it is asserted, it scarcely deserves to be called a "right" at all.

That said, I do believe the original quote works in context. People who repeat the DMV mantra that "Driving Is A Privilege Not A Right" are asserting a right of the state, not of private individuals, to curtail the citizenry's driving rights/privileges. Thus, in this instance, a "right" existing at the sufferance of the state as illusory as anyone's contractual duty to "perform X if I want to."

None of this is intended to suggest that a right has to be grounded in the federal (or state) Constitution to be a bona fide "right" against the state. Even a purely statutory right is enforceable against those segments of the state that lack lawmaking power, such as the DMV. As to the state as a whole, however, I don't think it makes much sense to describe driving as a "right" solely because the 50% + 1 of the Legislators have not yet exercised their right to revoke it. For the word to mean anything of substance beyond that which is also implicit in a "privilege," severe burdens on driving ought to be at least slighly harder to pass than ordinary legislation, e.g., require a supermajority vote, if they are not prohibited by a separate body of law which the state cannot change at all. A federal "Right to Drive Act" would probably put the debate to rest just as thoroughly as a constitutional amendment would, although there is also a possibilty that such a law would merely shift the focus of the debate to the federal level.

posted by Xrlq 12:54 PM

 

Quote of the Day

"He's not weird, he's Canadian."

– Sarah Wynter (Kate Warner), discussing Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer).

Link via 24Weblog.

posted by Xrlq 9:59 PM

Thursday, May 29

 

Glasnost for the L.A. Times

As you've probably heard by now, editor Los Angeles Times John Carroll sent a scathing memo to all section editors on May 22, 2003, raising concerns about "the perception – and the occasional reality – that the Times is a liberal, 'politically correct' newspaper." The memo focuses on a front-page "news" item on Texas's abortion counseling law. Here's the most damning portion:

Such a person makes no appearance in the story's lengthy passage about the scientific issue. We do quote one of the sponsors of the bill, noting that he "has a professional background in property management." Seldom will you read a cheaper shot than this. Why, if this is germane, wouldn't we point to legislators on the other side who are similarly bereft of scientific credentials?

It is not until the last three paragraphs of the story that we finally surface a professor of biology and endocrinology who believes the abortion/cancer connection is valid. But do we quote him as to why he believes this? No. We quote his political views.

Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don't need to waste our readers' time with it.
[Emphasis added.]

Read the whole thing. They say that recognizing the problem is the first step on the road to recovery; may many more such steps follow.

Link via Calblog.

posted by Xrlq 6:42 AM

 

Coming Soon to the Golden State: Yet Another Nanny-Law

As if the California Legislature didn't baby its citzens enough already, Assembly Bill 45, which would prohibit the use of cell phones without hands-free devices in cars, has passed the Assembly and is expected to pass the Senate. All this because of a CHP study that purports to link cell phone use to to 611, or 11% percent of the 5,677 collisions caused by inattention factors during the first six months of 2002. Conspicuously absent from the sanctimony surrounding this feel-good measure is any explanation as to how, or even if, a person talking on a hands-free cell phone is supposed to be any less distracted than a person holding a cell phone while he drives.

posted by Xrlq 7:32 PM

 

Rights and Privileges

Glenn says that Eugene says that the old adage that "driving is a privilege, not a right" is wrong. This becomes largely a matter of semantics, however, as Eugene begins with this general observation:

There is no constitutional right to drive. (One can, I suppose, make arguments in support of such a constitutional right, but I doubt that they'll work.) The state may, for instance, refuse to issue driver's licenses to people who are under 25, or who are over 70, or who live in certain areas. In this respect, driving is like a wide range of other activity that is not forbidden by the state, that is in some measure regulated by the state, but that is not constitutionally protected. You do have a right to drive, but it's a statutorily recognized and regulated right, not a constitutionally secured one.
[Emphasis in original.]

This strikes me as a distinction without a difference. People who chant that the tired DMV slogan that Driving Is A Privilege Not A Right (TM) are not arguing that states can revoke people's licenses in violation of their own laws, but rather, that the state reserves the right to change the laws and restrict these privileges as it sees fit. To the extent that a "right" exists only at the sufferance of the state itself, it scarcely deserves to be called a "right" at all.

That said, I do believe that it is possible, and also proper, to recognize a "right" to drive even while accepting reasonable regulations on the same. It strikes me as unfathomable that the Founding Fathers Framers would have omitted a "right to drive" from the Bill of Rights if the automobile been invented prior to 1791, or even if such an invention appeared likely in the foreseeable future. After all, what individual right could be more fundamental to one's liberty than his ability to go where he wants, when he wants? Of course the automobile did not exist then, so it got left off the list, but then again, maybe this is the sort of thing the kind of thing the Ninth Amendment was supposed to catch.

Even if I am wrong on the Ninth Amendment, I understand that courts have, on various occasions, held that the general right to travel is a fundamental "constitutional" right. Granted, driving and traveling are not one and the same, but they are closely related. Until the day comes when public transportation can quickly whisk everyone off from every imaginable Point A to every conceivable Point B, I would be hard pressed to think of any way a state could arbitrarily withhold a person's "privilege" to drive without also seriously burdening his "right" to travel. So if we're serious about a "right" to travel, talk of a "privilege" to drive seems inappropriate.

So where does that leave Eugene's examples of state laws restricting driving by age or site of residence? Well, for starters, I'm not convinced that a state can constitutionally deny a person a driver license on account of where they live within the state. Such an arbitrary provision would be vulnerable to an equal protection challenge under the Fourteenth Amendment, if nothing else. The age restrictions, by contrast, are fine, but how are they different from the age restrictions states impose on citizens' right (privilege?!) to vote? DUI laws, speed limits, and the like are not inconsistent with constitutional rights, either; after all, even the First Amendment isn't absolute. So I think the better view is that driving is indeed a right, but one which, like many others, may be reasonably, but not arbitrarily, regulated by the state.

Eugene has responded to my observation that rights existing at the sufference of the state are illusory. I've responded to his reply here.

posted by Xrlq 8:41 PM

 

Interesting Google Search

elisha cuthbert ass old school

posted by Xrlq 11:07 PM