Agreed, this seems like a vague retread of old news (Fox was rumored to be moving this direction months ago). It would be nice to know if there's any new developments here, of if it's just a really slow news day over at the Post...

Obviously the cable companies like this because it preserves their aging business model. But from what I understand it was Fox who was really pushing this early on. My guess is that they don't want to reveal just how much money per subscriber they are extorting out of the cable companies for the rights to their content, which is why they'd rather move this way than let Hulu charge for the same content on its own.

There has always been an inherent tension between what's good for Hulu itself and what its corporate overlords (various TV networks) want from it. The latter group only ever wanted a stop-loss against piracy, initially by providing a way for legitimate TV viewers to catch up on the occasional missed episode without resorting to file sharing. Hulu has been hamstrung by this myopic perspective since the beginning, and it looks like it's only going to get worse in the near term.

Right now the problem is that retransmission fees have put the "broadcast" networks in the same position as traditional cable channels, in that a sizeable portion of their revenue comes directly from the cable companies (and ultimately from cable subscriber fees). Ads alone aren't enough for them any more, especially when Hulu's ads still don't generate as much revenue as regular TV ads do. Hulu's own preferred solution is Hulu Plus, a pay service that effectively competes with cable on its own terms. But Fox, at least, has chosen the alternate path of tying the service directly to the incumbent distribution services, and Hulu is powerless to refuse them.

Personally I *like* the "soap opera effect", as seen on 120/240Hz TVs. The only problem I have with it is that the interpolation works so much better with CGI material than with live shots, which means that in mixed content (eg. live-action sci-fi movies) the difference becomes glaringly obvious. Actually shooting live video in the higher framerate should help to reduce this discrepency, so personally I'm all for it.

Very interesting post, thanks.

One thing I would like to nitpick is the implication that factory jobs like Foxconn provide a "step up" or a way out. The fact is that most of these factory workers will never be allowed to integrate into the urban society, and in fact are legally barred from doing so. In China there really is such a thing as a "second class citizen": people from the rural areas are not allowed to settle in the cities on any permanent basis, and are denied most social services even while they are there. They are allowed to work in the factories but have to live in dormitories and generally can't take advantage of being in the city.

The only reason most of them are there is to earn money to support their impoverished families back home. The one part that does match up is that the eldest are often sent to work in order to pay for the education of the younger siblings --except that it's basic *elementary* education that has to be paid for (again, no social services for rural dwellers).

And this rural vs. urban classification is hereditary, so even if one of them manages to slip past the system somehow, they still can't change their enforced social class for themselves or their children.

Aside from the obvious chicken/egg problem, the other reason why public transit sucks in the US is because we're so spread out. Distances are larger, population density is lower, and a lot of people live outside of the main city/town centers. Of course our car addiction has helped enable that last point, but it's not the only thing. There's also the fact that we treat the ability to live in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere as a fundamental right, to the point of heavily subsidizing utility services to such customers. That greatly lowers the incentive to live in a town center, as most do in other countries.

I'm wondering what an MIT team was doing studying traffic at the home of Virginia Tech? Were the two cooperating, or was there some sort of one-ups-man-ship going on?

Ah, yes, the haunting "Torgo Theme"...

We have always been at war with Eurasia...

...our post-nuclear mole rat overlords!

OR: All I ever needed to know about high-radiation biology, I learned from Fallout 3.