Indeed. Shades of many predicted futures are unfolding before us. What's important is the future that we strive towards.

Television Advertising is an aging enterprise; we can see the wrinkles, hear the joints make disappointed sounds and smell the death in the air. Advertising Production continues to be vibrant and fresh at the forefront, but also dated and tiresome at the rear. Advertising commerce and leadership is even more atrocious; gaudy incentive-based models and over-wrought statistics models that snuff any possible gains from consumer feedback by dissecting them until the results are almost completely irrelevant. It's a most appalling beast.

In the U.K. and around Europe, the model is to provide a block of advertisements at the start of a time-slot, then play the show in its entirety. This is better in two ways; the story is told uninterrupted, and one avoids the gross repetition of ads that bombard us about the most trivial of purchasing opportunities. (see above about the "least of competitive differences" for some good examples) Speaking of repetition, it seems that nowadays it's not uncommon to see the same ad twice in a row. Are they also trying to drive us insane with dejá vu?

So, maybe our new DVR culture could take a page from that get-it-over-with-firstly model. Dish® has taken the extreme stance of, "our technology, our customers, our rules" and they're welcome to pursue that suicidal path. (Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!) Here however, is a possible compromise; use this revolutionary technology to re-structure advertising. (vs. eliminating it)

Here's how that would look: Say you've just recorded the latest Big Bang Theory and are about to watch from disk. The prompt on the screen says, "Would you like to group all ads before watching the show? This will eliminate ads during the program." The magic lies in the grouping; heuristics have determined which ads are duplicate, which are longest and which are shortest, which are local and which are national-feed, etc. It then proceeds to present the ads in rapid-fire fashion (to which we are accustomed) in a specific sorting order, such as national-then-local, or longest-to-shortest, or some other scheme. (configurable, perhaps?) Add to that, when the ads are complete, the DVR announces the beginning of the program with a signature tone and a short pause, which may be skipped if you're sitting right there.

In this way, the DVR finally stops resembling its linear-tape predecessors and truly emerges as an indispensable tool of the Digital Age... and without burning the ecosystem that spawned it. If left unchecked, techniques such as DVR Proofing vis-a-vis storyline-integration advertising, (where you have to watch the ad because it is actually part of the story/episode) contextual advertising and addressable advertising become not only necessary evils, but the norm.

Dr. Sagan was most insightful about one thing above all; the most advertising money is thrown at the least of competitive differences. (e.g., light beer, chewing gum, fast food, automobile dealerships, etc)

The American viewing audience is no longer taken-in by commercials. There's nothing "magic" about TV any more. We know that advertising is meant to deceive, persuade and ultimately to control our consumer buying potential. This is being taught in early education under Social Sciences; ergo, the adults today knew better long before they had a consumer vote. We're not the brightest bulb, but neither are we that easy to fool.

I don't think anyone really views commercials as any form of inspiration or as fostering loyalty to a particular brand... it's all just another form of entertainment.

Let's look at it this way; advertising as entertainment. It's fairly natural, and supported by psychology, that we are drawn towards that which amuses us. Yet, we as a nation are conditioned to focus our attention for roughly ten minutes before taking a "break", vis-a-vis the commercial break. The idea behind that was to brutally interrupt the story in order to hijack that attention into exerting some kind of influence about how we spend our money. We're so conditioned to stop paying attention at regular intervals that it has subsumed our very culture; note that most online videos are no more than 10 minutes, unless of course they are based upon a broadcast program. Ratings for blocks of programming that are only 10 minutes long (slated as a 15-minute program, including promos/ads) are surprisingly popular, despite that the content is neither enriching, nor terribly captivating. Is our tendency to enjoy small "chunks" of storytelling getting the better of us? Do we prefer the format to the substance?

Ask yourself this: Could an epic story-arc, such as Game of Thrones or True Blood, be told in 10-minute episodes? Changing the timing really does change the story.

This ideology is so prevalent that documentaries (the shows that are supposed to be enriching and substantial) and so-called "reality shows" re-hash the premise of the episode and/or the most recent happenings upon resuming after every commercial break. For an hour-long show, that ends up as 5-6 times re-telling what the show is about or catching us up. This burns our attention, burns valuable broadcast time and burns those of us that actually want to pay attention. No wonder we're thought of as dense.

Um... you do understand the circumstances that would necessitate an "isolation" event, right? By the time BART declares a problem and shuts down your phone, they've already become aware of an emergency. Calling 911 is moot; the fire (or bomb scare or disaster, etc) is probably the cause of your cell going dark. In fact, that might be comforting... someone already knows what's happening.

BART may be doing a favor to Bay Area Municipal Services by mitigating dozens (hundreds?) of redundant calls.

The point about the heart attack is still valid, but then again you wouldn't exactly be safer having an infarction in the middle of a "situation" with or without a working cellphone. The phone isn't going to save your life, but people could. To that end, could the EMT's get to you amid the chaos? Could they even find you? (GPS is also moot; underground, remember?) Are you going to dial while you're seizing? Maybe someone around you could help? Maybe someone is a doctor? (maybe not?) It's really not that different than any other time having a heart attack; you either get lucky or you don't. The lesson here is; look after your own health, dammit.

Here's a scenario; the terrorists have called in a bomb threat. It's determined to be a remote triggering mechanism and likely tied to a cellphone. Would you want your personal freedom to call/text/email someone at the expense of sustaining the very technology that makes the bomb go off? Cutting the signal could very well grant the space to de-fuse the threat. Is that what your precious mobile service is worth; innocent lives?

Next, you would probably argue that cutoff should only be "last resort"; only after confirming that a threat is tied to cellphone services. Here's a likely dramatization of such an event:

Field Agent: "Dispatch, Bravo Delta"

Dispatch: "Go Bravo Delta"

Field Agent: "Indigo Echo Delta, package visible"

Dispatch: "Indigo Echo Delta confirmed, report status"

Field Agent: "Package is hot, trigger remo--" [burst of static]

Ka-boom.

The insurgent in this scenario had a public-band scanner and heard the conversation as it happened. He(She) blew it up before anyone learned how to disarm it.

That conversation would have continued if the bomb (or bomber) was cut-off from the signal. Think about it.

If you need to make a call so badly, take the stairs.

Micro Center is a store here in south Denver, CO. It has many other stores nationwide. Visit them to learn more.

They are selling a refurbished D-Link DIR-601 (hardware rev. A1) for something like fifteen bucks. Typical WiFi router; one aerial and four LAN ports.

That hardware is confirmed to work with current DD-WRT builds AND you can easily convert it back to OEM. There's OpenWRT support as well, but I just prefer the browser GUI over CLI.

I bought one, immediately converted it, and it's working like a champ. If you want to stay with the OEM firmware, it's IPv6 ready with QoS, traffic filters and all the typical bells and whistles. It's actually quite impressive out-of-the-box, considering the price.

My old WRT54GS is still in use... as a switch. (DD-WRT Repeater Bridge mode with radio off, WAN port bridged to switch, still hummin')

Good luck!

When someone makes a robot to travel the diameter (rather than a circumference arc) of the Earth, then I'll be really impressed.

What. A. Hipster. Doofus.

Does Shuttleworth honestly think he's drawing the line between "cool" and "hip" here? Is cognitive dissonance somehow perceived an sovereign right of industry leaders?

Let's turn back the clock a bit... see who else has made claims that cut across the "cool" grain:
NOTE: Emphases are my own.

In 1987, Bill Gates said:

"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

In 1994, he said:

"I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years."

...and the infamous one:

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good."

(s/good/slick)

Let's hear from Steve Ballmer as well (circa 2007):

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

If I were Mark Shuttleworth, I would STFU and learn from the foot-and-crow gourmets that came before me. There's no reason to get personally invested in your own innovations. Steve Jobs once insisted that the Macintosh would never have a cooling fan, didn't he get fired once? (What? Too soon?)

This Unity farce kinda reminds me of the rally MS put forth for "Microsoft Bob" after the first few bad reviews. Yeah, I said Microsoft Bob and they said it "looks really slick" too... back in the day. I admit it. I was, and am "too cool" to use Microsoft Bob. I don't use Unity either.

I'm sure Unity has it's place, it's place just doesn't happen to be on the desktop.

Parent modded "insightful", personally I would have gone with "funny".

I agree with others in thread; context is key to preserving spatial memory. POTS dialing is essentially dead, we all dial with thumbs now, if not with our voice.

I'm typing this with my Android(R) keypad, also using thumbs. Has it destroyed my ability to touchtype? I can say, with certainty, no.

I also use Swype (TM), which similarly has a negligible effect on my typing abilities.

Like others, I'm sure, I practice 10-key by touch. This discipline is absolutely dependent on the 7-8-9 top-row keys. So, unless you're proposing to re-wire 99% of the calculator-like devices in existence, I suggest you cut your losses and learn to work the numbers like the rest of humanity.

Agreements to all of the above, adding that Ballmer is a crazed monkey to boot. Time to retire. A pension of 640k should be enough for anybody.

...and you might be on to something.

By "something", I would mean the true spirit of this "freedom" thing y'all are talking about.

Think about it. Keep your WEP, WPA, MAC filters and all intact... but get with your neighbors and interlink your routers. Nobody gets to "steal" that bandwidth, but you both get to benefit from each other's bandwidth.

Now a two-neighbor scenario may not seem like much freedom. Get a whole neighborhood involved—maybe a dozen routers or more—and you're talking something like a movement. Contribute to each other, provide guidance and security wisdom, don't let it be a one-way street. In the end, everyone benefits from the shared bandwidth, reduced downtime and maybe even get to put a few new dots on the Internet map. When Comcast blacks out, make FiOS take up the slack, and vice-versa. Pity the poor community that ever has to rely on someone's DSL... but a whole building of DSL connections could make for some sweet bandwidth.

Just... think about it.