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WBW: “Big Data” – Where’s the Beef?

Clickford, Steven M.

In 2017, when I went to my first spring NAB, I met the rep of Viz who was well known at WMUR-TV as their weekend meterologist. As he touts Viz to do so much, the irony is that a vast a majority of Boston TV stations (including WMUR-TV) use Viz for some form of graphics engines. Viz is a platform where art and SQL knowledge is required for one person to understand. And you wonder why graphics are ether too CGI or too bland? On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about “rendering” said graphics, or in laymans terms “exporting” or “baking”. Yet this “big data” that Viz touts does not seem to result in confirming if the 2010s climate in New England is real or has been previously concurrent.

The data sucks because the content is non existent and as a result, using flashy graphics as a way to get the viewers to come back is not winning the station’s already bruised reputation. All across the Nielsen measured DMAs, local news has been falling like an avalanche. What should be creeping the managers at the Boston TV stations, is their carrers are on the line as a figurative avalanche from Mount Washington is set to make its way across the 128 beltway taking out the last amount of cash revenue and viewers these stations are producing.

I’d rather be ignorant and dead and be informed and be scared. ~ Steven Clickford.

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(Sidenote, I am not bitter at these people personally. I understand their job. Their job is to report to the news directors and do what they are tasked to do, create drama and fear for ratings, even if they don’t feel like it. I have nothing personal against said person or company, I personally do not agree with their approach as too much data can overwhelm the viewer. Viz does not support standards by the creative community, that was done when Photoshop ’88 was on the market in 1991, when a famous broadcast graphics designer set some guidelines on what to put on the screen at a single time.

Due to the use of personal computers and the ability to superimpose them on TV, the 8 point Arial font that was a no-no 20 years ago is now acceptable because the industry  doesn’t care if you put a paragraph as a “lower third” because they feel you want to have “stats” be shown at you. Hence why I was so skeptical throughout the 10 minute duration for the Zone. )

Cable TV Franchise Woes, part three

Clickford, Steven M.

In early October, the following was submitted to the Town of Merrimack’s Media Services unit with the intention that this memo would become some form of public information, pursuant to RSA 91a, the Right to Know Law.

For the exercise of privacy, the address is withheld for this post.  The memo outlines things that would benefit the intelligence of the consumer, and should’ve got people in the position of power to question Comcast. Read on

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Stonewall – Missing my Netgear Firewall

Clickford, Steven M.

How my Netgear firewall became a piece of stone was I didn’t listen to the F.B.I. Being a native New Englander, the Feds have a reputation, especially in the Boston office for aiding and abetting in keeping Whitey Bulger, the notorious mobster to stay loose in Boston for a number of years. Whitey was in the news for years and years, till he got captured in 2011, found guilty virtually on all counts in 2013 to passing away the day before Halloween of this year.

Not that I don’t trust the Feds, but if the agency couldn’t keep a mobster off the streets, how should I take their intel that there was malware being transmitted over the Interwebz and to just restart the firewall to clear out the bad bug? When you hear the F.B.I., it is about the whereabouts of a Most Wanted person, not that there is malware, logically wouldn’t that be the responsibility of say Homeland Security? I did not take matters seriously, and didn’t take their warning seriously. And, it goes that I knew this device was End of Support later to be End of Life because Netgear decided to pull the plug on development in 2017, nearly a year after I acquired it new. Not only that I also was starting to try out other firewalls. As I didn’t take the threat seriously, I was left to these alternative firewalls, with the hope that I would use it for another year, giving me time to migrate.

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Dial-A-Phony – PhoneWire.com

Clickford, Steven M.

In today’s installment of people claiming to respect one of the oldest social mediums in the form not just being hip, but to peeve on it at the same time.

The Missouri company called PhoneWire.com is the offender. The Instagram account not only ripped content w/out consent from me, but also Joe from Chicago, behind the joetheucxguy.com site (or “blog”.)

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Buy AMERICAN Commercial Software and Services!

Clickford, Steven M.

I’m writing this with a bit of a kicking myself in the balls for not learning this sooner.

I do not support non profit Open Source Software (OSS) anymore. For years, I have remained highly skeptical, and now I am fully against using any software that doesn’t pay taxes into our society. (I am not open to debating why not, and if anyone comments and attacks me personally, or even tries to threaten me, I will take your IP address and report it to your LOCAL authorities for criminal punishment.)

One of the things in 2018 that turned me away was how much consolidation in the Unified Communications front in OSS world. (Look at Freeswitch switching corporate sponsors and the infamous merger of Free PBX and Asterisk, which was the former’s offspring or “fork” in the coding world.) OSS touts themselves to be more open by having “peer reviewed” investigation of code. You mean “group think” right? What about accountability such as sustainability and looking at the long term? Oh wait, they are just as notorious as commercial software with a lifecycle.

Of course OSS today is the “freeware” or “shareware” of the new Millenium  , if you want more features, you have to pay for it right? OSS also stands for Free Open Source Software, but the reason why I stuck to OSS was you’re seeing a LOT more commercial support or free software that requires an unlock situation whether it’s a free community login or some key that will always keep free stuff to a minimum (VMware) or what have you.

So how is it any different than the commercial software?

I don’t see much differences especially when Microsoft’s visual looks, has looked cheap (err it looks like Linux some days); and given how the cloud has degraded the “power user” (thats-a-me) what difference does it make?

I am also sick and tired of the lectures that for profit companies are evil and they aren’t caring and they are solely making money. So what do you do, the FOSS programmer – live in your parent’s basement and not make any buck for a living? Nothing is ever “free”!

When you hear someone say “It’s free and open source”, it should be treated as an oxymoron because most “free and open source software” requires someone to compile the code to make the app work. Most often its a defensive mode by the open source community to keep “non technical” people out of using technology; a tactic known as calling “users” indirectly as  “computer illiterate people” a page out of the IBM tech playbook back in the 1950s.

I am also defending acquiring AMERICAN-based vendors. I got f—d over by a Canadian company called CounterPath earlier this year acquiring a SIP softphone app for my legacy workstations to find out after burning $90 that it needs to be on an active WAN to work and not only that the software is going EOL after May 2019 because of a certificate that is expiring. This was not publicized in March while the package was still available to purchase and they gave me a notice in May, after burning this amount of cash for 2 licenses, and the support tech was like “well we told you a couple of times”, NO I only got a stern notice in May. I shouldn’t be lied like that and should get the Windows 7 and greater app for free because of this technical-person-like emotional manipulation support tactic is so far from bait and switch.

I waited too long because I had a life where I just didn’t have the time to set it up. The site doesn’t explain how the licensing works, while I did research prior to. And by the time I confronted their technical support, my PayPal protection lapsed.

Make sure you buy American software, and commercial grade, not some degrading “free” and complex software that only geniuses can  figure out. Oh wait, they are in jail because they had raped children because only “technical people” do things that aren’t socially acceptable by law…

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Steven is Out of the Office

Clickford, Steven M.

I wanted to post a quick note here since I have noticed unusual hits yesterday and Tuesday as well as these hits were on unusual trafficked pages as well. I also have not had a lot of time to follow up as well as the social media posts have been used lower than average lately. I do not want to single a person out, or a group out specifically or disclose what hits were triggered recently, other than I feel a bit creeped out that someone could be monitoring me in ether a troll like matter, or in the legalese way. I say this because it has happened twice in the last year, and I am only speculating.

Because of some loose ended posts recently, I wanted to disclose that I am currently unavailable for the foreseeable future. There are a lot of personal struggles in my life right now. Along with the recent self discovery, and other concerns addressed to me, I probably won’t be active here for a while.

And because WordPress gives me basic statistics, and seeing the hits, I felt I should come clean and explain the reason why the site has not been updated and there will not be any plans anytime soon because I have a lot on my plate and I do not have any muscle to keep holding the world around me singlehandedly.

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Giving up on Tech, part five

Clickford, Steven M.

Earlier I had a few rants against Voice over IP.

One of the things that angers me is how some “VOIP office phones” ring like the sound a caller hears when someone makes a call. Obviously I wanted to have you hear at least one time as opposed to twelve hours.

Grandstream, Polycom and Allworx have this as their ring tone package or is the default ring tone. Never in the history of telephones did an electronic ringer sound like what was heard in the central office until a few boys that were working for datacom decided to do some really stupid things such as making crappy office telephones.

I just so want to GTFO out of this interest.

Giving Up on Tech, part four

Clickford, Steven M.

I hate Voice over IP and it’s “evolution” back to the 1960s in the step by step switching era. It offends me as a phone guy to see how cloud and Asterisk-like VOIP providers LECTURE to the audience about how antiquated the old “digital” telephone systems are and defend a really POS of a phone service. Most Asterisk “PBX” systems scale horrifically, and a lot of the pricky IT weridos think a “PBX” is an “on prem” phone system. NO! This is why I had The Museum of Telephony in the first place! “Features” today are the standard 19 features you can get for your cell or analog phone line, and app integration for your Salesforce, or  other “apps” that do not do call vectoring, advanced call routing, priority ringing, etc.

AND DO NOT GET ME started with how they assume Interactive Voice Response is the VERY SAME THING as an “Auto Attendant”. I so want to scream and strangle these asexual, virgins or rapists – these guys who sell these systems make me want to do a background check. They scream sex offenders!

VOIP is cool, there is a lot of great advantages, but they are doing it in the wrong ways. Latest-and-greatest and fashionable technologies such as Session Initiation Protocol and disgusting “VOIP phones” do SQUAT! Dissing “H323” standards because it’s “not open” shows how close minded “open” minded IT pricks are. There’s a reason why H323 is more reliable, but because you guys are too lazy to learn application specific technologies, well your arrogance is hurting the rest of us!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjyazEhlzQv/?taken-by=steven.clickford

And what’s so disturbing is how a Polycom phone is almost as dumb as a rotary telephone! There was a time when everyone was drinking the AT&T haterade around 1984, that black rotary telephone was all the anger. Well I find Polycoms and Cisco phones to be s— but yet the communistic Open Source community has raped about 90% of the enterprise or small end voice market and yet no one is bitching about that.

Talk about double standards.

Old Man of the Mountains Fifteen Years Plus 1 Month

Clickford, Steven M.

On Saturday, May 3rd, 2003, the “face” of New Hampshire changed forever. The Old Man of the Mountains, located at Franconia Notch State Park, was a natural formation of an old man when seen to the pointing to a certain perspective facing south near Profile Lake.

It was man-preserved for many years up till an early May night, when it came crumbling down into Profile Lake. It made headlines the following morning. Since it was almost a couple hours where I once lived, we went right up there.

©2003 Steven Clickford. Please do not use these photos publicly without permission.

“911onWFXT”?

Clickford, Steven M.

My favorite Fox Show got a little distracting when the station ID ran on the bottom of the screen for a few seconds.

I don’t understand why I’m seeing this more and more on local stations. I am well aware of the FCC rules, despite the rules being strict, there is leniency such as a “natural break”. Like a promo where where a stations logo and ID shows at like :57 hour the hour. It’s not that complicated. WBZ -TV earlier in the fall used to have a large “CBS 4” bug with the WBZ – TV [CBS 4 logo]  Boston  on the bottom. But time went on, and the size shrunk.

But on WFXT the following is shown

“WFXT – Boston 25”

This is a continued trend by the new owners (of over 3 years) to continue on giving Fox the middle finger in branding only because the viewers they think who are watching hate the Fox News Channel. Cox Media Group plays dirty with the viewers. For gawd’s sakes alive, they don’t even use the Fox promotional graphics for time and night of the show. I didn’t see the snappy graphics Fox uses till I went to New York and saw them on WNYW. They overlay it with the news anchors of Boston 25 News . If they do this for promos, who knows the bug may say “#911onWFXT” with a Boston 25 bug. 

This station is a disgrace. I don’t get this superimposing station IDs and a station emphasizing a local identify that never was and taking half of the station’s visual makeup.

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