thnx for the nice

So I was at the 99 cent store a couple weeks ago…trying to buy some coconut water. And I was paying with coins.

Why did I pay with coins? Well, I pay with change at the 99 cent store cuz I collect coins and that means I pay with cash alot. That means I have a great deal of unwanted coins lying around. These are mostly the ones that are of more recent years.

So anyway, I’m paying and counting my coins for coconut water and bandaids for my toe because I need to walk around town all the time in order to walk off my true emotions…and as I walk away a woman says to a stranger in line, “That’s like that commercial about the credit card and the guy’s paying with cash it it’s all slow…” Then the guy listening is just nodding from what I could see from the corner of my eye.

Yeah, thanks meme.

You just enabled someone to meme-mock me without even directly addressing my specific situation. Why? Because I wasn’t even paying with cash. I paid in coins. These were hard-earned coins.

I really don’t mind getting made fun of all the time. At least I found a 1954 quarter…I’m goona one day make a 1954 surfboard and give it to green lantern to sell to silver surfer for a big markup. Then he can use that money to pay someone to make a design of a machine that makes liquid nitrogen out of air. And then we can sell that liquid nitrogen and really get the ball rolling. Once we sell enough liquid nitrogen to eletromagnet companies I want to invest in the same company that owns her credit card. Then I’m going to send her a new credit card that replaces her name with, “MEME-MASTER.”

-Tyler

Ra is an Asgard (IMO)

In the Stargate film that came out in 1994, there was the primary villain character named, Ra. This article is not about the Real Life Mythological Being named Ra. This article is only about the fictional character in the Stargate film. Anyways, the movie always stuck out in my mind as an excellent one. But after seeing all of Stargate SG-1 and then recently re-watching the 1994 film…I noticed something. There was a scene where Ra was laying down in what I’m guessing was a sarcophagus. But when he was laying there, chilling, I realized he looked familiar.

In fact, he looked strikingly similar to an Asgard from Stargate SG-1.

Then it all hit me. We know that Ra was a Goa’uld because he could use the naquadah technology. So that means he must have definitely been the parasite inside the host. But what I’m guessing is that Ra, being the most powerful of the system lords, must have had an extremely powerful host body. And that host body was an Asgard. That would make sense why Ra was the most powerful, an Asgard host body and mental capabilities would give Ra access to tremendous technology and knowledge. It would make him the most likely candidate for being the strongest of the system lords. But of course the only catch is that Asgard bodies are generally weaker and harder to repair than human bodies.

That being said, there were some difference in physique between my alleged Ra in Asgard form and the Asgards from the TV series. The most note-able differences are that Ra has small teeth and no visible nose. But I think that maybe Ra got some plastic surgery before entering his flying pyramid.

-Tyler

A few months ago I at a Carl’s Junior. I ate my burgers and then left. But then when I got in the car I noticed I lost my sunglasses. So I walked back into the restaurant and looked near my booth. A man turned to me and said, “Hey.” And I said, “You find some glasses?” And then he kind of was like, “Yeah…” and I said, “They are held together with tape.” A moment later the man laughed and said, “Ha, ha, yeah it looks like they are held together with tape.” Then he handed them back to me and said, “Here you go, hehe.”

After hearing that I realized that the man must have had two laughs that day. The second laugh was that my sunglasses were held together with tape. And the first laugh was that the economy was doing very poorly so not everyone can run out and get new sunglasses all the time. One big, laughy-laugh comedy day for you sir.

One guy posted a couple days ago that he lost some designer brown glasses in Laguna. He says there is a reward. Well, first of all, I hope it was an overcast day in Laguna. Because since you’re a beach town, most people who find glasses will probably just use them. And second of all, I hope the reward is better than the selling price.

Someone seriously just posted that they are missing their microchipped dog. What’s up? Don’t they know that you can GPS the dog if they have that? I can GPS my phone and it has microchips. Get with the program.

Another person said they found some eye glasses at a garage sale and they want to return them to the owner. I bet the garage sale proprietors didn’t realize that people sometimes just want to get involved in businesses any way they can. The person probably really liked the garage sale and how it was handled. So he or she put the glasses down as a way to be part of the fun.

One person put up pictures of their lost cat and their house looked so messy that it is doubtful that anyone is going to contact the original owners besides the producer from, “Hoarders.”

This is unbelievable. Somone put on Craigslist that they found a wallet with over 1-grand in cash in it. Didn’t you see Edwards Scissorhands? You’re supposed to give the wallet to the police. Cops need wallets too bro.

-Tyler

Hard Drive

External Hard Drives for computers have undergone a tremendous amount of evolution over the past 13 years. In the mid-late 1990′s, the hip thing was to use Zip Disks. These disks were very similar to 3 and 1/2 inch floppies, but they had around 80 times the storage space. The zip disks needed a special reader that plugged into the computer via parallel port. Before zip disks, people needed to have large boxes full of floppy disks. We would use WinZip to make backups of files that were larger than 1.44 megabytes. I remember having to “recurse subdirectories” in order for the backups to work correctly for folders with subfolders.

Zip Disks could sometimes hold up to 100 megabytes and so one of my custom built machines actually had a zip drive built in. Nowadays, some computers don’t even come with floppy ports.

As databases for business and space requirements for video and gaming grew, so did interest in hard drive technology. And as hard drives gained in capacity, so did their external counterparts.

The first large external hard drives for consumer use were bulky and expensive. They required their own power sources and were noisy and also generated a significant amount of heat. Since they were heavy, they were highly susceptible to damage from falling.

Before USB 2.0 came along. External Hard Drives used different connectors. Depending on the year they were made and their intended purpose, external hard drives used everything from parallel ports, custom proprietary ports, USB 1.1, or even FireWire.

FireWire was a huge breath of fresh air over USB 1.1 especially when massive amounts of data and throughput was required for video editing and other demanding tasks. USB 1.1 was great for connecting peripherals, but the hard drive storage capacity potential exceeded 1.1′s transfer rates during the early 2000′s. Although one could use 1.1 for transferring data, it was a migraine for power users. FireWire and USB 2.0 did a great job of coping with the new size of hard drives and the demands of users.

The advent of USB 2.0 made it so large external hard drives could be powered by the USB port of the laptop or desktop that they were connected to. This was a huge boon to professionals and consumers hobbyists alike, because it meant more portability, and the need for one less electrical socket at a meeting or in an apartment. But the external hard drive evolution didn’t stop there.

Around the same time in the middle of the 2000′s, two important things happened. The explosion of capacity for large external hard drives took place in he hundreds of gigabytes. Every six months, someone could look at the newspaper and try and find a large Fry’s advertisement on the back page. We would be astonished by the rapid rate of capacity for internal and external hard drives. This contrasted with he seemingly less impressive growth in CPU speed. CPU speed used to be the talked about number in he 86 years o the DX’s and the DX2 all the way up to the advent of Pentium and AMD cores. But eventually hard drive space, and especially portable hard drive space became the hot discussion.

The second major thing hat happened during he mid 2000′s was the miniaturization of external hard drives. For those needing large amounts of space, the drives became less bulky. Today, external hard drives continue on that trend and the last drive I purchased was a USB 3.0 external hard drive with a capacity of 500 gigabytes. The drive is a quarter of the physical size of one of my old Seagates and it is a third as heavy. Yet the hard drive evolution took a proverbial mutation detour, when hard drive technology learned a thing or two from Random Access Memory.

Random Access Memory or RAM as we all know it now, is quite different from conventional hard drives that used magnets to store and write data. RAM was designed to temporarily store program data so it can be executed by the computer and eventually displayed on the screen and made so users can interact with the programs. That is a very rough description of the process but a quick analogy could be to think of a Hard Drive as a human’s long term memory where important information is stored for long period of time. But the RAM is like our short term memory where we hold information about the cheese we need to purchase for today’s omelet and how much change we got back from the cashier. That information is only needed for each moment of the day.

Well, RAM and External Hard Drives had a strange love child which is what we call the new style Flash Drives. Flash Drives use chipsets that are slightly similar to RAM, but these Flash Drives have long term storage capacity like Hard Drives. These Flash Drives have grown in capacity and decreased in size so fast that we have seen drives become smaller than the USB interfaces that connect them to the computers. This type of technology makes it so someone can hold a 10 gigabyte flash drive in his or her pocket that has the capacity of more than 6,900 old-school floppy disks. Imagine bringing 6,900 three and-a-half inch floppy disks to a business meeting in order to demonstrate a video presentation. You would need an entire team of people to just get your presentation into the room, and then what happens if one disk got misplaced?

The evolution continues to grow and the camera and photography industry did an excellent job of developing small SD cards to store data. These SD cards began as things that only held a couple hundred of megabytes of data. But eventually they became so advanced as to being able to store gigs on a little piece of plastic that is no bigger than an adult man’s big toenail. This revolution was made even more popular by the Sony Playstation Portable’s use of SD cards for originally storing game data, and then transitioning to storing the actual games themselves.

Today, External Hard Drives are becoming ever more relevant despite the cloud computing craze. External Hard Drives are become integrated parts of wireless devices like iPhones and iPads, and how these hard drives connect and communicate is getting quite interesting. There is software apps such as, “Bump” that allows people to share data from these hard drives within portable devices wirelessly. This completely bypasses needs for USB connectors, but it can raise some security concerns as well. As innovation continues to grow the bottom line is that information storage and the ability to keep it secure and portable will be a primary concern for developers, artists, gamers and consumers alike. This evolution will not stop because the size of files are not getting any smaller, and people’s thirst for information these days is completely insatiable.

In conclusion, the evolution of External Hard Drives started as a necessity for the portability of information. But now it has become a convenience and form of social interaction through the popularity of information sharing. This is so much so, that having the ability to quickly give someone your latest song that you wrote or action film that your friend is trying to promote has become a status-symbol and fashion statement. As this technology becomes more efficient, so will the transmission of our creative information, and thus…our very lives.

-Tyler

gym determination

At the gym lately something has been changing. It was subtle at first, but now it is more clear than ever before. People are determined. This may seem obvious, this is a Gym we’re talking about after all. But this is beyond simple summer buffing up and puffing out. This is more than firming muscles and leaning down specific physical areas. I’m seeing people taking control of their lives in a conscientious and productive way, day by day. And despite how busy the gym has gotten even during non-peak hours, people are extremely kind and courteous and respectful at every turn. I’m seeing it from the staff to totally buff strong dudes who you would expect to be macho. These guys are usually the ones who have the best attitudes are go out of their way to share the gym environment.

The strange thing is that during times like these, where things are uncertain, one might expect that people would hole up and isolate themselves. And I’m sure that’s happening…but not at our gym. I’m seeing less idle conversations and people are exchanging nods of respect and getting serious workouts completed. I see friends from Facebook and the neighborhood all the time, but I try to keep the conversation and pleasantries to a minimum. The reason for this, is because we are trying to do something. What that something is, I’m not completely sure yet.

Of course, this is Orange County, and people usually try to look their best here. But what’s been happening lately is not indicative of vanity. The feeling I get when I’m at the gym, is that we are all preparing.

Some of us may be preparing for the next day of work, others prepare for the dating scene or family, and others still prepare for the unknown, that distant event that the newspapers keep pointing at without actually saying it. I find myself preparing to become a better human battery, a better source of energy to be utilized when the time is right.

Today I was going to use a leg exercise machine, and a gentleman who was about 30 or 40 years older than I am obviously was interested in using it. I yielded to machine to him without a moments hesitation. It had nothing to do with honor or chivalry, it just felt right and I wanted to pass on the same courtesy that so many others have shown me.

When I sit back and think about what the future holds for us. I seriously come up with a blank. I just finished with a degree in International Relations and I should have some predictions…or something. But the more I learn, the more preparation instead of prediction seems to be the sturdier path. A bridge made of a million wires can support more than a bridge made of two beams of the strongest steel.

We all have busy lives, and busier minds. But at the gym, we slow things down. There will always be someone who is faster, stronger or tougher. Being at the gym is less about competition and more about showing up and making some progress. With every step on the StairMaster, and every crunch on the sit-up table, we add a small weight on the scale…and we will eventually tip it in our favor.

-Tyler

NAFTA and the SPP - CLICK here for full PDF

About two weeks ago, I had to write a paper on a US / Latin American policy issue. I wanted to write on an issue that I didn’t already know much about. And I found that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was something that I heard referred to by theorists and paranoid people…but I had trouble finding any decent analysis of it on the web. But since I had to write the paper for school, I had access to the Library Systems to research the subject and also get a good grade on a paper that might be interesting to my professor as well. And it turned out that I got an ‘A’ on this paper and it helped pull my grade from a B to an A so I am very happy to share it with everyone. Although this paper goes into a some slight detail into a specific issue of the Trans-Texas Corridor, it is by no means an all encompassing analysis of the entire SPP. This is merely a starting point for visitors to spark their interest and seek further information.

At request of some friends of this website, I’ve decided to make the paper available for viewing or download by clicking HERE.

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view the paper.

-Tyler

PS: To students. This paper was written by another student so it does not count as a peer reviewed article as a secondary resource for one of your papers. But you can feel free to look at the bibliography on the last page and use any of the resources there for your own information. Some are pretty dry but others were quite interesting and had a great deal of personality shining throughout the articles.

$4.99 for toothbrushes - May 26th, 2011 - CLICK for enlarged view

Inflation is a hip topic lately. Everyone has an opinion and a story, but these stories oftentimes seem disconnected with everyday life. Even gasoline has the feel of a process that takes time, technology and geo-strategic positioning to secure. But there is an item that I’ve been purchasing every couple months that does not change much in scarcity or design. That item is a Double-Pack of Firm toothbrushes.

I’ve watched he price of these very basic toothbrushes go up in price over the last year. But today, the price of a 2-pack of firm basic toothbrushes was $4.99 plus tax.

These were the same style toothbrushes that I’ve purchased for years now. The model or style has not changed. But the price sure has.

Do you remember talking to your parents about the price of a movie ticket back during their childhood? Even though their stories were shocking, there always was this distance about it. It never really seemed like an alarming change because so much time had passed.

Well, if I showed myself the receipt for the $4.99 plus tax double pack firm toothbrushes to myself even five years ago…I would have laughed in my own face.

I can’t remember how much he same pack cost a few months ago. But I know it sure wasn’t $4.99 lemme tell ya.

For $4.99, I would expect the toothbrush to come with something, like a gift certificate for toothpaste or a pair of brass knuckles or something. Wait, that doesn’t make sense with how the precious metals have been doing in the marketplace lately.

The difference between inflation and hyperinflation is the rate and scale in which the things happen. Inflation is actually a normal thing that happens in a healthy economy. But hyperinflation means that the currency is poising purchasing power and value at a much faster rate than the economy is growing into new markets. Hyperinflation becomes self evident to even the laypersons who know little about economic theory or mathematics. They directly experience the hyperinflation by witnessing and experiencing ridiculous jumps in prices in basic items that require little advanced technology to create.

For example, a flat screen tv or a sports car might not be the best determiners for hyperinflation. The parts inside can be the subject of market forces and also the labor and machines in order to mass produce them require energy to create the product. But toothbrushes are made out of basic plastic by machines with some bristles. Seeing huge price hikes in toothbrushes are beyond concerning.

The biggest warning sign will be when the price of the most basic form of Internet service increases. Because the Internet will be the main way for people to discuss how to make items for themselves. Man, I wish I paid more attention during cub scouts and sea explorers.

UPDATE: Ryan E. gave some information saying that Hyperinflation is actually when the inflation rate gets to 10% per day or 50% per week. I looked on Wikipedia and this confirmed this. So I concede the fact that this may not be “textbook” hyperinflation, there are some things that are happening in the marketplace to ease it from being so. One thing is how outsourcing and automation has decreased the production costs of many mass produced goods. If it were not for automation and cheap labor, then this Toothbrush 2-pack probably would have cost much higher than $4.99 plus tax.

Of course, that being said, if it wasn’t for automation and outsourcing we probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Yet when I think about toothbrushes, these things should only cost around $1.50 or $2.00 or so. So perhaps this is more a cusp transition grey area between inflation and Hyperinflation.

-Tyler

After looking into this further, the release date for Limitless was in March.

From what I understand, most films take between 6 months and 2 years to film and produce. So for a movie to be talking about Libya in the way that it did with the timing that it had struck me as interesting.

I concede the fact that little things like this can always be added near the end of the production or even be overdubbed last minute. But the scene where Deniro and the protagonist were in the car didn’t look like it had been manipulated any more than any normal scene is. And the dubbing looked flawless. So I doubt that the lines were changed recently.

Actually, when I think about it. I think this is a perfect example of what I call Collective Unconscious Meme Convergence. There has been so many developments brewing in the Middle East region of the world, it may have just been at the tip of the proverbial tongue for Libya to be an area of interest for a film that was about powerhouse financial hardball players. There is oil there that is important to the EU and other nations etc.

So this whole thing could have possibly been a very well placed and fortunate coincidence.

But isn’t it odd that a film that is a fictional presentation about a character who has superhuman predictive power, could predict a situation that happened in real life that directly affects the audience?

I don’t wear hats but if I did, it would definitely tip to the director/writing team right now.

-Tyler

Diligence isn't just for lawyers anymore

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is just information that I have gleaned through experience in running a website. Take any of this information or anecdotes with a grain of salt and remember that I am not actually suggestion that you do anything. I am probably using the word ‘you’ in the same sense as the royal ‘we.’ Read at your own risk.

In the past few months I have received emails from people that they wanted to exchange ‘links.’ At first I didn’t understand why people would want to do this, if we didn’t know each other or have similar websites. But then I learned about the desire for some websites to acquire things like Pagerank and other web rank things. This practice of linking to other sites in order to gain rank is unethical and can seriously jeopardize one’s reputation and I have no idea what search engines do if they find out if people are abusing cross-linking…but I can expect that it doesn’t bode well for the searchability of articles.

So when I got the email a few months ago it basically said that the person ran a website and they liked my website and they wanted to post a link to me on their page and have a link pointing at their website on overidon.com. It sounded innocent at first, but then I did some Due Diligence and took a look at their website. They quite literally had over 500 links to other websites in the sidebar to their blog in tiny print. I instantly thought to myself, “Are you kidding me, Snoopy?”

So I sent the person an email saying, “No thanks.” And I explained how their site made no sense.

But extremely recently, I got an email from a company that wanted to purchase a link on overidon.com. I thought to myself…”Cool, someone wants to purchase an advertisement.”

I took a quick look at their website and it definitely was not a linkfarm. It actually had no outgoing links at all that I could see. It was a shareware looking web-utility site.

I sent the person an email saying hello and I told them that I sell advertising space on the right sidebar only and the prices depended on the size of the ad and the duration it will stay on the site.

I went to writer’s group and later that night I got an email back saying, that they wanted to only purchase a ‘text’ link, not a picture advertisement. And they wanted to have a quote on pricing for quarterly and yearly ad time periods.

This surprised me, because I thought that a company would take more than a a few hours to get back to me. So that raised a yellow flag in my mind. And the second suspicious thing was that the person said they only were interested in a text link, not a color advertisement.

Well, being a skeptical person, I decided to do some Due Diligence before giving any price estimates. What I found was that this shareware company had a terrible reputation on forums. The software was allegedly hard to uninstall, had minimal tech support and did not do the functions that it claimed to do.

I looked at other forums and there were a bunch of perfect “5″ star ratings, with a tremendous amount of “1″ star bad ratings. This was a huge red flag for me and I did more reading and many people recounted their experiences of how the company promoted its software in any way possible and claimed that it could do things, when in fact it could not.

After evaluating this information, I decided that any price would not be worth risking the small, yet adamantine reputation that we’ve established here at overidon.com. So I replied to the company and told them that we weren’t interested.

There are a lot of temptations out there for webmasters who want to gain popularity and/or incoming links. But slow growth that is based on respect will win over shortcuts every time.

-Tyler

n0n-consensual Auto Login

This has been going on for over a year, Automatic Facebook Logins for websites. I have absolutely no problem when a website asks me if I want to connect with Facebook or not. But when a website automatically and non-consensually logs me in the comment area via Facebook and knows my middle name…that’s when things start to get creepy. There are some sites that I never logged into a single time, and whenever I am logged into Facebook they already know who I am before I push a single button. One site even had a drop down menu, asking me if I wanted to leave a comment as Tyler Stansfield Jaggers or The Grey Mage. How the heck do they know who The Grey Mage is? My guess is that these websites must have some sort of special contract with Facebook and have access to peoples’ entire Facebook account information, and all they need to do is be logged into Facebook and it counts as an automatic login for their site. I find this to be highly unnerving and it makes me feel like I am being totally monitored on their website and have ZERO anonymity. When I end up on a website that non-consensually logs me into their site via Facebook, I simply don’t return to the site…period.

Lots of websites allow you to connect via Facebook, but they ask you first. Stumbleupon.com and Scribd.com both asked me before I connected via Facebook the first time. And then they saved the cookies for consequent visits. This is perfectly fine and I have no problem with this. But at least there was a single layer of courtesy being given before they got all my info. I’m truly curious how and why a website would go about getting a auto-Facebook login for their 3rd party website. Do they have some sort of special plugin or did they pay for this special treatment from Facebook?

One websites that I’ve noticed is like this. They automatically know who I am. Personally, I was considering leaving a comment on a few videos on one of these types of websites, but I didn’t want to use my freaking real name. I like just being, “Tyler” and then having a link to my website. That’s all I want. I don’t want people to see my latest facebook profile pic. This is especially the case since if you look at the picture above it looks like I don’t even know how to use a forward facing camera (which is actually the case, I’m new to this).

Just 20 seconds ago I ran an experiment with one of these sites. I usually log into Facebook via Mozilla Firefox as my primary browser, so I tried visiting a song and as I expected, I was already logged into the site via facebook as Tyler Stansfield Jaggers. But then I thought about how I rarely use Internet Explorer and I don’t even keep history on that browser. So I loaded up Internet Explorer and I went to the site. When I went to the same video in the comment section it asked me if I wanted to “log in” by using Facebook.

I didn’t press anything.

Instead I opened another tab in Internet Explorer. And in this new tab I loaded up Facebook. Of course I wasn’t logged in so I went ahead and entered my email and password for Facebook and logged in. Then after I saw that my wall and everything was up and running, I went to the other tab with the site. It still said that I wasn’t logged in. Then I pressed “F5″ or “refresh” and reloaded the browser window. And low and behold I was automatically logged into the aforementioned website. What the heck?

So my recommendation for websites and services is to at least give people, THE CHOICE of whether or not they login via Facebook. Or else have an actual login system where people can create an alias like normal. The “convenience” of being automatically and non-consensually logged into a website is a sort of identity violation that can make even a 30 year old man in his Khakis feel uncomfortable.

If I want to see my partially shaven face on your website…I’ll let you know.

-Tyler

The clothing is an illusion. It probably looked like I had some money and a decent job. In fact I had more money years ago when I would roll into the bank wearing a t-shirt from hot topic. But it doesn’t matter because the clothing creates a very colorful illusion that the mind can make tremendous amounts of assumptions on.

Now if you combine clothing with posture and body language a whole slew of assumptions can be made. People will come up with the wildest back stories for a stranger in a microsecond.

I hadn’t been at a bar in a long time because I don’t drink. But when I went to one a couple weeks ago to meet an old friend for his birthday, I could feel the difference in energy levels. It’s a whole different world from Jack in the Box or even Starbucks lemme tell yah.

At the bar I had come from seeing a film for school. At school I was wearing a t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt. But when I parked near the bar, I decided to leave the hoodie in the car because I wanted to look extraverted and hoodies are warm and send signals that you are either cold or feel isolated. The only problem was that the t-shirt was the one that I bought for a costume party. So it was a V-neck t-shirt with sassy designs on it.

I looked in the car window to see how I looked and I thought, “hmm this isn’t my style…but hey I’ll just play the part.”

So I walked into the bar and had body language that made me look like I was trying to balance a pencil with my upper lip. And you know what? I got pretty fast and polite service! And within minutes I talked to some girls so that was fun.

-Tyler

TV Room

There have been hour long television programs for a very long time. But the actual length of the content in those programs have changed since the 1960′s. Last night I watched the the first episode of original 1960′s TV show, “The Prisioner” on DVD. I truly enjoyed the program and I’m going to watch the entire series. But I noticed that I almost felt mentally fatigued about 40 minutes into the show. I thought about that fact and I double checked the time left for the episode. The bar showed that there was more than ten minutes left for the program. So I watched the entire episode and noticed that the show was about 51 minutes long, including credits and the intro. This felt odd to me, so I double checked another intense show that is currently on the air called, “The Event.”

The Event’s most recent episode called, “Face Off” was only 42 minutes and 40 seconds in length. And I love the show, The Event and it is an excellent program. But quite literally, it is eight minutes shorter than the first episode of “The Prisioner.”

So the obvious argument is that in an hour program, producers and network executives have decided to limit the amount of actual content in the programs in order to make more room for advertisements. That’s a given and it isn’t the point of this article. Everybody knows that with the advent of more competition for the gaze of the viewer via the internet and forms of self-entertainment, TV decision-makers have had to cope by basically ‘raising their prices.’

What I mean by raising their prices is that, network TV is free. But it is paid for by the advertisements, which people sit through in order to watch their show. So it really isn’t free. You pay with your time. But as the cost of business, and the desire for greater profits, and reactions to alternative media increases, so has the amount of time spent on commercials to counteract these inherent costs.

But what I’m most interested in, is what happened in those eight minutes. What was lost in that chunk of time. The first thing that comes to mind is nuance and milieu. The setting and how the main character, number 6, in The Prisoner is integrated. I’m only one episode into the series, and I’ve already established a deep-rooted connection to the environment of “Your Village.”

-Tyler

digital compatibility-based rivalry

Last night when I wanted to watch, “Firefly” on DVD, I loaded up Windows Media Player. But I also had my Verizon iPhone charging via USB at the same time. And for some reason, when I played the final episode on the disk, there was no sound playing. It was truly strange. I’m running Windows Media Player 11 on an XP machine and my iTunes is version  10.2.1.1, so things pretty much seem up to date. But when I unplugged my iPhone from the cord connecting it to my computer, and then restarted Windows Media Player…the sound WORKED! It was such a strange conflict. Why would an iPhone make it so Firefly wouldn’t play on Windows Media Player? Very odd.

I guess I should just be thankful that the two devices work at all together. It was just a relief that there was just a simple fix necessary. Because that last episode of Firefly was good, albeit quite disturbing. That show got super dark super fast.

-Tyler