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Post NAB Show Commentary, part three

Clickford, Steven M.

On Sunday of the NAB Show, The Next Big California Shakeout was the subject using Metapub. While some claim that funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is funding Big Bird, Nova, Arthur, or All Things Considered, that is far from the fact. CPB funds smaller market stations whether it’s PBS or NPR stations.

The context for this was developing metadata for digital and traditional radio stations that use HD Radio or Radio Display Services. Currently many radio stations display mostly “static” information, such as talent, song information, and other information. Some vehicles with RDS encoders can match album IDs against what is being received, since RDS currently broadcasts text on on HD Radios.

The Metapub system is a real paradise for coding, since it uses XML and other technologies to pull information from the NPR hub.

This process changed last year using a new system called Radio DNS, that almost acts as an Electronic Programming Guide (you know like what you can retrieve on your set-top box or how the old Prevue Guide used to work) This process enables producers to push out little bits of information within 24 hours in advanceto poll the Metahub

On Monday, a very interesting subject of news gathering was discussed. The use of replacing your existing microwave Electronic News Gathering to build your own 4G network. How this works, from the speakers and from questions asked by yours truly is replacement of boxes in your ENG vehicles, choppers, and alike and certain radio equipment at the receiving sites, the studio to transmitter links or STLs and the equipment inside the station. Basically it uses the same radio spectrum but from what I know it’s basically being transmitted over IP.

Basically 4G is also known as Long Term Evolution or even better Wi Max. If you think of it in the simple context, WiMax is like a large scale WiFi and if you can build a strong internal WiFi then this is how WiMax/4G/LTE can be done.

Because it’s a data network, you can bundle other thing such as the IFB, the prompter, video and audio on the same channel. Traditionally most live trucks required seperate radios for IFB, return feed from the station (whether it was an open OTA feed on a two way radio; or a simple antenna receiving the station’s transmitter pictures or in some cases IFB signals are basically using “music on hold” from the station’s PBX system.) A lot of field cameras that are using Panasonic’s P2 camcorders are PCMCIA based cards to record uncompressed video. These same slots can support a modem and you can now do liveshots (albeit rough not be the be all, end all) on the camera. You also see better pictures (real HD video) from the field because reporters are uploading packages from USB enabled modems on edit notebooks that get fed via FTP drops over their IP network.

The latter two requires broadband mobile Internet. With this innovation, your mobile bills are cut suddenly using the same technology but you own it instead.

In one slide, CNN had replaced their DC ENG network with receivers at multiple locations but fed back to their base over fiver.

More stations are moving to IP and engineers are more savvy to IT according to these speakers. The concern of a completely IP based ENG operation could have unintended consequences. You could theoretically cram a bunch of  feeds more than the system could handle. However according to the folks that did their talk, automation and self intelligence can prevent too many feeds from jamming in if you had all six live trucks plus your copter coming in and the system being overloaded. One feed could take precedence if it went that far.

iPAWS was another interesting subject.

#Shift Happens or #Shift is Happening

Nice choice of words, Cisco!

On the Tuesday of the NAB Show, Cisco’s evangelist spoke for nearly 45 minutes speaking about the future (or the “shift”) to Software Defined Networking.

Post NAB Show Commentary, part four

Clickford, Steven M.

Grounding!

What a sexy subject!

Well it was. Compared to the virtualization, IP and IT gospel preached nearby, this had a standing corner only crowd.

From a speaker in Florida known as the lighting capital of the world, he started to discuss a Florida emergency dispatch center that used an old Motorola radio system. The problem is if one part goes down, the entire system needed to be replaced., as a result the cost was nearly $100,000 with an insurance policy.

Of the recommendations:

  • racks – do not touch concrete (where water is)
  • The National Electrical Code is barely legal and it’s not good enough for data centers.
  • Telephone grounding – attach to electral service, nearest to the ground. Lighting travels down on telephone lines (not up.)
  • Be careful when bundling wires (cross contamation)
  • Bolt in circuit breakers, use double nuts and bolt washers
  • Do not daisy chain!

Most often, data centers are more prone due to the IT’s lack of electrical engineering, and their need to keep costs down, remember IT is profit center, not a division (Clickford’s words).

 

Is Software an Expense?

Clickford, Steven M.

They say software is the real beauty of technology. The inner technology is the most valuable in the field. While it’s cheaper for say a technology company to avoid producing too much hardware using off the shelf parts at a razor thin margin, the real question is can people really afford software, and why is that not a “commodity”? Is the inner beauty could very well be it’s own worst enemy?

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Content Neturality

Clickford, Steven M.

For so many years, the hoopla was the “evil” ISPs and how they have charged customers or throttled their Internet traffic because they are subsidizing big companies. The theoretical, but unconfirmed claim that “a future Facebook” cannot be created under the current climate of the free market system. Laws created by the Obama administration lead to a “Net Neutrality” regulations that the large Internet Service Providers had opposed to.

To make it simple, it would enable ISPs to not discriminate traffic, and allow people to use the Internet for whatever they wanted. Especially if the ISP is unable to handle the out of control nature since after all various apps use various “ports” (like pipe valves), and the Internet travels from one ISP to another (splitting valves) and most of the “speeds” the ISP touts is at the “last mile” (those metallic boxes with a power meter) that could range from five customers to over a hundred possibly sharing that same fiber optic link. It’s at this point where it converts to coaxial to your house. Since routers and switches are like computers moving files from one network to another; such anarchy could put the networks at risk for failure, crashes, etc.

This is an simplified definition.

But that is not the problem. The problem lies on the content providers. This includes social networks like Facebook, and social media sites like Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Twitter, Facebook’s Instagram, etc.

Creativity is at greater risk, not getting your download faster than you wished. Internet content companies have gotten to the point where they are a major media platform. As a result, these argumentatively newer mainstream media platforms is bound by the standards set by lawyers these days. Also these companies are picking and choosing who will be the next social media star.

YouTube has departed in so many ways away from their Broadcast Yourself  days. YouTube originally created in a Silicon Valley pizza shop, on the second floor, originally had webcam content from users. While some took advantage and exploited the ability to post old and vintage TV programs, and very frivolous clips like station IDs and promos – these were in the eyes of lawyers for at least a couple of years. Very early on, lawyers for CBS was very fixated on taking down a number of very whimsical promos from WCBS-TV in the mid 1970s, the WCBS-TV Celebrates New York campaign. (The cynical side of me thinks it wasn’t because of “infringements” but moreover that they were ordered by the suits to cover up better content unlike what airs on CBS 2 New York today.) Worse, Viacom, owned by the long time geriatric Summer Redstone, had not agreed to a license agreement about a decade ago and forced YouTube to remove any Viacom-owned content for a number of years.

Then came 2015 and 2016.

Copyright laws were changing for the worse; Happy Birthday is still copyrighted even though the original songwriters passed away many, many ages ago. Pandora was under pressure to pay more royalties, and with the advancements of artificial intelligence and algorithms brought new things to “content creators”. Content ID.

This means, that virtually any song that isn’t open sourced under Creative Commons or an actual public domain song can be used in multimedia in the social media world. For many years, YouTube and Facebook would remind users before uploading to not post “copyrighted” content; but a vast majority of decent users would use the “fair use” defense, if there is even such.

Facebook started to implement this last year and typically you get a cutesy statement of a failed upload stating that such work “that belongs to someone else”. And recently, Facebook even identifies the music. YouTube will now flag any audio it can figure out and ether ban it altogether by muting the audio (typically if it’s a Warner label); take away ad revenue on that particular video and the money goes to the artist/label (that’s fine), or depending on the country you live in, ban it by your IP address.

This makes the digital rights management the icing on the cake if you are a lazy executive in Hollywood, since Hollywood doesn’t want people to do anything but watch or listen to the work at home.

The original intent of copyright was to encourage creativity by building upon [within reason] with the intent to respect the artist. And this is where ASCAP and BMI is supposed to come in, but with the recent changes to a now global rights system, it may only be the third world where they could hear works, and the developing nations will be banned.

Hollywood likes to make movies targeting Wall Street or anything to do with capitalism, but their actions sure as hell make them do everything they condone in the film and TV space.

But far reaching copyright rules isn’t the only problem, it’s the simple idea to get “seen and heard”; it is very hard build a Facebook page and try to drill down on all the data to see who is following you, where they are, how they landed on you, what did they search,what did they click, etc. YouTube is a little easier, but still too many drill downs and really the app-y interface makes my life a living hell as my CPU cycles go through the roof. And the cynical side of me thinks this is by design to enable people who have such tolerance to non user friendly interfaces to engage.

Facebook requires you to have a mobile number to add a handle. So yet another company has a number more vulnerable to ID theft than say my Social Security number. YouTube is even worse, in order to have a handle in the URL, I have to have at least 100 followers, plus the very high resolution “channel art” (which is larger than a 1080p TV screen) and that’s hard to scale to see on a desktop.

Social media providers are using criteria to see who will make it or not. And for the people who are doing it out of their hearts, is more of “work” than for fun, because of the inabilities a user can enjoy, if the rules were not so stringed.

The most recent example was Eli the Computer Guy, once a platform to learn IT skills. Many of his early videos going as far back as 2009 (and I discovered him in 2012) on 60 minute lessons on the said subjects. But he was in some identity crisis in 2014/15, then evolved to doing live shows, then went into the wilderness, to suddenly in early 2017 doing “Geek Sexy News”. Apparently in some of his live shows, he talked about the Baltimore saga, and some thin skinned “special snowflake”-type must’ve hit the trigger. He is a very successful YouTuber, with millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers. For someone so successful, one hit shouldn’t take him down right?

Wrong!

In many of his 2016 videos, he had stated that he had sudden “purge” of followers; had to contact Google Corporate to resolve a single video that caused his entire YouTube page to be flagged; to the point where he went back to civilian level, having 15 minute limits of what he could post. The “Geek Sexy News” is now a result to Google’s immaturity of dealing with a high profile YouTuber who is punished to someone like your’s truly, just another guy on the web. Now how is that fair for him? While Eli could move forward with his Geek Sexy News portal; how many others can successfully move away from the chains of Google?

The question is can you? Well if you hate YouTube and Facebook so much, can you legally build your own platform? Well that problem goes back to copyright laws, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act; and the egregious lawyers that are involved in “protecting” the brands of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube alike. If I built a Facebook from a decade ago (the days when the profiles and pages didn’t act like apps), I probably would be taken down, because even if I “reversed engineered” how a Facebook type of service works; that’s most likely a violation of copyright or Intellectual Property laws.

While these companies have given in to Big Hollywood, they themselves do not want to see people move from another service, a service where hey – someone could pay and help a startup be more valuable as opposed to just a single source revenue. Even better, let the users upgrade to being a customer and pay a fee to store more stuff and allow to use copyrighted content without them having to go through the struggles of getting an ASCAP license.

Even if I banded together and took an opportunity of a new startup, it most likely would get squashed – by the IP bullies out west for most likely “stealing an idea” even though the idea isn’t well documented to be “copyrighted”.

The content providers are having the control of what content can be posted, allowed, what people can or cannot say; what they can or cannot be allowed to do, etc. And if you thought the Time Warners and AT&Ts were bad, all they are trying to do is make a buck on their investments of their Layer 4 and 5 routers and switches from years ago.

Even eBay has gotten so far from reality. But that will be it’s own story for it’s own day.

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The Insanity of Excessive Explanation

Clickford, Steven M.

There is a practice known to parents and professionals of special needs to always explain everything at all times regardless of the context. The person with the disability has no say of when to ask any follow up questions, because by default, the professionals or parents just explain things that are the obvious.

What do I mean?

Let’s use say a follow up statement to what is typically an unmentioned topic as the low level information; and the general idea as the high level topic. The higher level topic is something that should be adopted through general knowledge or experience. So a further example say picking up the clothes off the floor in the bedroom (the higher level topic) will often be explained such as:

Johnny, pick up the clothes because you could trip!

By default, it’s known that they’ll say the because assuming the individual will ask “why”. Because should be the breaking point of the low to high level thinking.

Another example recently was my mother telling me this, low level is in boldface

I left the downstairs light on because I saw other lights in the office for you to turn off.

Obviously?

Essentially I cut people off when I hear the “because” without a challenge/response mechanism. Taking a page out of of computer security, a human if they are unaware of any unintended consequences would typically give some form of authentication to get further information such as a puzzled look or the childlike “why?”

But this doesn’t happen. I’ve seen this too many times where people just automatically talk at the low level, basically explaining every little detail that doesn’t need to be mentioned out loud. Any “statement” after “because” is basically causing people with a developmental or intellectual disability to further halt growth. The ability to learn from mistakes, or learn the obvious that is from a normal person’s eyes typically is left out for people with various intellectual disabilities.

As a result from constant communication, chatter, and bajillion references of “because” annually, many people won’t be able to have any intelligence and information processing because “the adults in the room” are too busy instructing these people all the time. When someone is being “instructed” its akin to having training wheels on ones bike forever because they won’t be able to use a natural intelligence based on their experiences riding on bikes to know when to break, when to fall over with grace, etc.

And as a result, people with a legitimate case of “special” needs are basically being treated like they are bubble wrapped human beings, and is basically treated like a machine because only machines (up till about now with AI) are the ones that have to be told how and what to do.

The halting of the logic of low and high level information processing is the reason why so many people (like your’s truly) has been unable to succeed, because we have been treated like machines.

Sadly I do not see that changing with the current establishment running the various advocacy and leadership processes.

Decoding Autism: Stop Coding The Condition!

Clickford, Steven M.

As I have explained a number of times, autism is a condition that impacts people. Not boys, not just kids, but adults too. Some develop later in their childhood years, and some apparently from the routine MMR vaccines and classify that as an “injury”. Or you have some nit wit of a celebrity who uses every semantics similar to a person with a cancerous condition of “beating the odds, my child is cured!”

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The Big Three-Zero Wish List

Clickford, Steven M.

I’ll be turning thirty within the next month. Excuse me while I puke my guts out in disgust of getting old.

Anyways, its a big deal. I break up my wish list in to three sections (Reasonable, Storage, this may break the bank and Vintage)

Reasonable Wish List:

  • Xfinity DVR box. Not too hip into X1, but it needs to be a Ci$co box because our network runs off the ol Scientific Atlanta. (this is really wish request to the family. When we upgraded to X1 it came with a basic DVR to rewind up to 20 minutes of a single channel. Consider this checked.)
  • a Specific 720p HD LED TV set that will also act as a monitor for return video for the Xbox 360 and Mac (video editing, media playing, etc.) The mother knows. (For the record, this is the first time I had actually put a TV set in a wish list ever.)
  • iPod Nano! I can’t believe I can still get a model with a UI resembles pre iOS 7. Of course it uses it’s own OS and it functions like an old school iPod (meaning you could use such devices to boot Macs like an Apple Genius!)
  • Final Cut Pro jog shuttle. This basically controls the video playback or the media clip that is. It’s basically a mouse with the sole purpose of having scrolling. This is a must if you’ve worked in video editing for way too long.
  • Standard gift cards to Barnes & Noble, A.C. Moore, American Eagle, Aeropostale (opps that’s a joke!) Always can take reload to my Starbucks!
  • Memory Max to my MacBook, and Mac mini
  • Storage!
  • (I could use some more storage solutions in my closet, but no this is computer storage.) Hard drives. I cannot have enough of them with the data going through the roof! Mostly for media storage. I guess I can make this into sublist
  • 2.5″ SAS Hard Drives: (Link is for reference only) This stands for Serial Attached SCSI. They look like SATA laptop drives, but they use SCSI. For consumers this feels like a trip back to 1992 with Desktop macs. It’s not. I use a Proliant Server to store virtual machines. Due to the technical physics SCSIs, they tend to hold less data. I have 146 gigs, but would love a couple or more 300GB and move them off site and swap them every quarter for disaster-proofing purposes. Appropriate 2.5″ caddies would be needed.
  •   500GB ATA hard drives. These are the maximum the ATA series can hold, and most likely will have to find them used and/or new old stock. I use this for my Power PC Xserve, as my directory and file storage and sometimes an app server. ATA Xserve caddies would be nice, but not needed at this time
  • FireWire hard drives. I love the Lacie drive I got a year or two ago. They don’t sell the FireWire version anymore (thanks to Apple depreciating their own technology) but after being in the modern Apple craze for a decade now, I still use the technology, and just started to in the last couple of years.
  • SD cards, can’t have enough. I use SanDisk HDSD cards
  • A large stuffed teddy bear, you know the 4′ ones. I know go ahead and laugh…

Telephony

You wouldn’t think a big list wouldn’t include telephones right? You thought wrong!

  • Avaya 302A or B Attendant Console. this is the bad boy that would complete my Definity experience.  This serves for operators to take or place calls and monitor the general health of trunks and lines
  • PUSH BUTTON Telephones! CallDirector, 10 line, 20 line etc.
  • ComKey – the first electronic telephone system in  small setups by Ma Bell
  • Merlin Telephones. Any of the original 5 button, 10 button, BIS, etc.
  • The Western Electric 302 metal telephone (not to be confused with the operator console)
  • Who would not want to own a Snoopy and Woodstock AT&T telephone from the 1970s?

Vintage

(because I am getting old, that I will be OLD so what happens when you GET OLD – you want vintage stuff!)

  • Always a sucker for a DEC VT-300 series terminals, most notably the VT-320. I could take a VT-220 terminal, that was cute looking
  • Alphastation computer workstation based on the Alpha CPU. Would love to run VMS for the hell of owning one!
  • The grey metal based MacPro, since Apple is probably calling the first gen towers from a decade ago “Vintage”, but you know how I get “vintage” tech to work…
  • My first Apple love was a ether a Macintosh II or an LC II (can’t remember which came first). Any of the two CPUs I’d take in a heartbeat. (LC III/475 – not interested)
  • SCSI CD-ROM Drive. Old School SCSI. To throw model, Apple CD-600E. Something so I can install apps onto the old Macs because I had an SCSI drive or two and tossed them.
  • SCSI ZIP drive. Again for the Macs in the vintage world
  • The Fisher Price Telephone. Awww, does it dial back to your childhood? 😛 For the stupidest reason, I junked mine and same with my mother!
  • A Pay telephone, because what telephone enthusiast wouldn’t want one (5 cents to call internally, 10 cents for a page and 25 cents for a local call and 50 cents a call for long distance?)
  • Switchboard. Not kidding, those old fashioned switchboards, more of breadbox for the hell of making calls in the house!
  • A Mickey Mouse Telephone
  • A couple of “Insulators”

This is a short list, of really “wishful” things over a “need”. Additional lists can be seen on my Amazon, Etsy, and BestBuy wish lists

NBC Boston Is A-Comin’ (The Holy War of NBC and their non-owned affiliates, part two)

Clickford, Steven M.

A major change to Boston TV will occur in the first time in nearly twenty-two years. NBC will no longer be affiliated with WHDH-TV Channel 7 beginning on New Years and will be moving to a weak digital UHF station in New Hampshire and a translator in the Greater Boston Area. Most of the cable systems will be on channel 10, HD on ether 710 or 810. Some of the stations that carried New England Cable News’ HD feed will be on that channel while NECN HD will be reassigned. (Check your local listings.)

Since my writings in January, I’ve learned more about NBC’s antics against large market affiliates not owned by larger entities. And the man who founded the largest fraudulent autism organization, may exhibit signs of Asperger’s Syndrome himself.

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The Other Evil Empire: ASAN

Clickford, Steven M.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is also another sin to the Autism narrative. As I have previously stated, ASAN is no different than any other organization headed by millennials. These rich Caucasians have believed in a dilliusion that autism in every case should be treated like a gift, and there is a zero tolerance policy of any cure of the disorder, even if its disruptive. They believe that every case should allow individuals to be themselves, even if they are disruptive per se.

Like all tax evading organizations, they are exempt from the rules. So they hire just autistics to speak on autism. And these many radical leftists that act at activists are preaching that April should only be Autism Acceptance Month instead. Apparently these upity, everything is awesome Millenials are so naive that there is still many people not aware or familiar with autism directly. ASAN pretends to not “get” or “accept” the harsh realities.

the super high functioning autistics also have mixed homosexuality and other pet causes into the autism narrative. Autism is not synoumus to the queer or African American community and should remain as such. More disturbingly most of these leaders live in cities and not in small towns and as I previously stated, they have lectured from 3,000 miles away in the form of a memo to the Arizona government and how they use Medicaid Waiver services.

Also, they have used vague but unconfirmed claims that Autism Speaks “portrays autism as a tragic burden” that latter two words has yet to be confirmed with hard facts. They dislike the puzzle as they claim to be a human, but they forget to google the history of the ASA version of the puzzle ribbon. Rainbows is for the queer community, sorry I have to be honest.

Walk in red is walking in anger. Also, that annoying hashtag “#ActuallyAutistic” makes you more weaker than stronger.

I know I don’t agree with many if not all high functioning types, you can’t be so rosey and attack an organization  that discriminates against autistics but also discriminate against normal people.