In case you missed it, something very important happened last week, when some DVR users were prevented from recording a particular NBC television program.

By all accounts of the parties involved, it may have been a “mistake” on the part of MS and/or NBC. Leaving that discussion aside (since it’s speculation and not the point anyway) , it’s critical to realize that a test of public opinion has been conducted. Whether this test was initiated intentionally or accidentally doesn’t matter nearly as much as the results of the test, and so far they’re not encouraging.

In case you’re wondering, the essence of the test is determining how the public will react to these sorts of restrictions. Ever since the Sony vs. Universal case of 1984 established the consumer’s right to time-shift their media-consuming experience, the content producers have been looking for ways to undermine that right. (See DIVX - for those of you not old enough to remember this, it would have changed the concept of DVDs as we know them)

With the advent of digital distribution, they sought to reassert this same old claim, this time using technological means, since it had already been denied them via legal channels. Fortunately, three years ago consumers successfully rallied to defeat the broadcast flag mandate, a collusion between the FCC and the studios to take back this right from the consumer again.

With that decision, it was established that while content producers could pass a flag indicating that they don’t wish particular content to be recorded, software and device manufacturers (and consumers) are under no obligation to honor that wish, since it would violate their previously established right.

As of last week, two things are clear: some manufacturers have decided to willingly honor it, and some content providers have decided to attempt to make use of it. The test is how we as consumers will respond to those two actions. Will we make it clear that such actions are not acceptable and force them to reconsider disrespecting that right, or will we not bother since it doesn’t really affect most of us right now?

The sad answer is probably the latter. After all, tons of people have already gotten used to the idea of “buying” crippled and restricted media (music and video) from stores like iTunes, essentially endorsing the same kind of perpetual producer-ownership mentality that is behind the broadcast flag, by voting in the way that’s most meaningful to the companies involved - their dollars.

Two joggers who had witnessed the crash were running over from the other side of the street, and waved at me - asking me to call 911. I did so, and got a busy signal. I kept trying as I pulled over and got out of the car, and never sucessfully connected. Luckily someone in a house nearby shouted over the wall that they had reached 911, so I gave up that part.

As I approached the car, it was a wreck, and I was prepared to see the worst. The car had knocked out a bus stop pole as well as a no parking sign pole, with the sign having been flung off the pole and far down the sidewalk. A large tree had stopped the car, embedding itself / slicing through the passenger side of the front of the car, from the headlight up to and partially through the windshield, leaving the car basically halfway wrapped around the tree. The driver’s side headlight had ejected itself out of its “socket” (sorry not a car person) and into the middle of the street.

There was oil and other fluid spilling everywhere from beneath the car; there were odd smells, but no distinct smell of fuel and the car was no longer running. Getting a little closer I could see that the airbags had deployed and could hear the driver (a young girl) crying. She then started flailing a bit and pushing the airbag out of the way, and was moving around quite a bit, which I figured was a surprisingly good sign.

I asked her if she was OK and she answered “yes”. Her voice was still weepy, but I could tell at this point that she seemed a bit more scared than hurt. Then her hand pops up to her head, holding her phone - turns out she had dialed 911 herself as well and had gotten through. She started talking to them a bit, and then reached over, opened her door, and stumbled out of the car. A woman who had come out from a nearby house helped her stumble over to a curb and sit down, but amazingly she seemed to be able to walk somewhat on her own (kind of) for at least that short distance.

Looking at the absolutely demolished state of the vehicle, I considered her relative well being (at least based on outward signs) to be nothing short of a miracle.

Pretty crazy night. On a lighter note, if anyone’s interested, I actually have another story of an encounter I had with a single car accident a long time ago in a far away land, with a bit more humourous slant to it. Let me know if anyone’s interested in hearing that one.

Anyway, here’s the basic outline of the way I’ve got things set up to meet my needs for regular Twitter usage:

• For the people I follow and from whom I want to read everything, I have them set with IM device updates on, so that their messages flow into the jabber gateway (acessed via Google Talk - the web client, not locally installed).
• Then (in GTalk / jabber), I “track” things like my name and randomly add and remove other subject-based words and phrases to track, depending on what I’m interested in at the moment.
• Since I’m usually not connected via IM for most of the day, the above two steps result in an e-mail message in my inbox periodically with an easy to read summary of everything that would have come in on Google Talk, had I been logged in.
• For everything else (people I’m not including in the above method - whether I’m “following” them or not), I add the RSS feed of their Twitter account to folder/tag in Google Reader that I just let pile up, and read it whenever I  feel like it, and clean it up without reading if it gets too big. I might investigate further subdividing (or cross-filing) these into various folders/tags to make it easier to sort through depending on what I’m interested in seeing at any given moment.

And that’s about it. My usage patterns have changed over time, even since I so recently began using it, and I’m sure they’ll continue to change as I go. So far, I’ve found that the above techniques allow me to fairly easily throttle the flood of incoming information into something manageable that I can digest, and also that I can tweak at any given time to give more or less content.

There’s a lot more to say about Twitter itself, ranging from the technical to the sociological / philosophical, and I’m realizing as I write this that I haven’t really mentioned it much before here on the blog. I’m thinking maybe I won’t, since I think it might be a mistake to try to wrap it in very hard-lined boundaries this early in its evolution as a platform. While I’m certainly not turning into a raging Twitter evangelist, I certainly was once very skeptical about it and am now realizing how vastly better / more disruptive it is than any of the other up-and-coming social network platforms (Facebook, Pownce, etc.).

So, if you haven’t already, check it out and find out how it works best for you. If you give it some time, you might grow to appreciate it (even and especially the character limit constraints). You can follow me using the link at the top left of this page.

As a teaser, Twitter, along with my other various content sources, will shortly take a more prominent role here on my blog. It’s something that I’ve been planning for a long time, but only recently started working on. More to come…

Does every product or service always have to “grow” in order to be considered successful? And why?

I think it may be primarily an influence of the stock market investment model that drives a lot of tech companies, but is that the only way to measure things?

Del.icio.us is a good example of a service that has always done what it does well, and (unless I’m missing something) is still just as useful today as it was when it came out. The drive to “improve” by adding features just for the sake of showing progress is not always wise, especially for a simple system with a clearly defined scope like this one.

There has been a lot of talk about the 2.0 version, but I’ve never really read any of it, or cared about the delays, because the current version works just fine for me.

Last night, our second trip to The Melting Pot secured its place at (or at least near) the top of the list of my favorite places to eat. It really is a unique dining experience; so much variety throughout the various courses, but it all still fits together and everything is excellent. It’s interesting how the “communal cooking” process almost forces you to slow down and savor your meal and your company, too.

You can get a visual sample / walkthru of what it’s like on their web site (assuming you have the Flash player installed and enabled), but nothing beats actually going and doing it. So, go and do it!

He was one of my favorite sci-fi writers, for reasons too numerous to list here. His influential ideas, such as the often quoted three laws of prediction, span the boundaries between imaginative story telling and real world science, theory, and philosophy.

In my opinion, he brought out the very best in the genre of science fiction by telling stories in a manner that actually inspires hope for the real-world future, and stirs a desire to challenge the boundaries of what we know and accept to be the limits placed upon us and our world.

Like many others, my fascination with his work began with the movies (2001 and 2010). I was later thrilled to spot the third book in the series (2061) in a used book store for 50 cents, and I didn’t even know it existed before that moment. I devoured it and then quickly sought out the final book in the series (3001). The latter two never made their way to the motion pictures, but are still just as interesting and thought provoking as the first two.

Here’s hoping that the generation(s) of scientists and creative thinkers he inspired will go on to discover and achieve some of the great things they have been allowed to dream about because of the stories they’ve read, and that his work will continue to foster the imaginations of people for ages to come.

Unfortunately, things haven’t progressed very far at all. In this day and age I find it less and less acceptable for a system like this to not offer (complete) RSS feeds to keep up with the content. Heck, even e-mail notices would be an acceptable alternative, but as of right now, there are still several key parts of the system that you can only see by using the client app or going directly to their site in a browser.

I orginally believed that the saving grace would be its open nature; that some eager developer out there would step in and provide the features that I (and I’m sure others) perceive as “missing”. No luck, unfortunately. Occasionally, I’ve even briefly pondered doing it myself, but the fact is there’s only so much time in the day, and for me, there’s not enough for this. Further, as evidenced by the glacially slow progress of the API, it doesn’t even seem that Red Hat is really behind it all that strongly either.

I’ll still keep my account and check it periodically, but only because there are a few people that post stuff and share links using that system exclusively (at least as far as I can tell) that I want to keep up with. I honestly would have dropped it altogether a while ago if not for that.

But, as I do continue to use it, every time I have to switch over to their app or website directly it stands out in sharp contrast to all the other similar services I don’t have to do that for. Here’s hoping they get better.

PS - maybe someone will see this post and comment, pointing me to a vibrant community of third party apps built to address the stuff that I’m looking for that I just haven’t found yet. Keeping my fingers crossed…

It was odd how many sites are covered with (and aesthetically ruined by) ads. Even the ones that fit in (in terms of style and/or context) are still extremely annoying when you’ve gotten used to not seeing them. I guess the ad blocking extension (plus others like NoSscript) has been sheltering me to the degree that I didn’t notice how bad it was getting.

Anyone else notice this? If you are browsing the web without these kind of extensions, why?

Right now I’m just basically getting time to catch my breath and do a few quick posts, catch up on feeds, etc., because it’s been basically a solid week of good technical learning. There’s a huge amount of new stuff to explore, and (as usual with these types of things) the main challenge is resisting the urge to jump in and start a hundred new little side projects to explore all the new stuff, and ending up staying up all night, etc.

On the non-techie front, the plane ride up was pretty bumpy. Going from LA to San Jose airport they use the smaller planes, so you really feel the turbulence quite a bit. A couple people I talked to on the plane that make the trip regularly did say that it was rougher than usual, so at least that’s encouraging for the upcoming ride back.

I’ve got a rare chunk of free time now tonight, so I think I’ll spend the rest of it catching up on non-programming related stuff (for a bit of balance), head out to grab some dinner, and then maybe watch a few of the Star Trek episodes I brought with me.