From what I could tell scanning through the morning news on the Tivo, there was about 2.75 hours of Michael Jackson coverage on CNN, with the remaining 15 minutes devoted to other less important stuff: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, health care legislation, etc. This cartoon sums it up nicely . . .
I finally made my way back to Barcelona for a quick weekend visit on my way home from the U.K.
As the technology for reading eBooks gets better and cheaper, I think this is going to become a bigger problem. Best-selling authors will probably still be able to make a living, but I think we’re likely to see a reduction in the volume and quality of books in the niche categories.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/a-pirates-victim-wonders-how-to-fight-back/
A nice place to go for a swim.
I was lucky enough that the one sunny day during my trip to the UK was a Saturday.
Based on my recent experiences with Slingbox support, I can no longer recommend the product. Slingbox seems to feel free to push out software updates that will break the Slingbox. If you then call tech support, you will discover that if you’ve owned the box for more than 12 months they want to charge you $29 per call to discuss the problem.
After a recent software update, my Slingbox Pro now thinks that “it was not originally designed to be used in the USA” and has forgotten all of the remote control settings. So, while I can now see what’s on my television at home, I can no longer change the channel or access the DVRs. For the record, the Slingbox has only been used in the U.S. (California, specifically).
I’m definitely not the only person seeing this problem:
http://www.slingcommunity.com/search?search=%22not%20originally%20designed%22%20usa
http://www.slingcommunity.com/forum/thread/30100/Error-This-Slingbox-was-not-originally-designed-to-be-used-in-USA/
http://www.slingcommunity.com/article/10580/How-to-Add-New-Remote-Control-Codes-to-Your-Slingbox/
I should point out that this experience is a marked contrast to the support that I’ve received on other pieces of home networking hardware, including routers from DLINK, Buffalo, and Netgear. I suspect that all it would take to get my system back up and running would be to revert to the earlier software version, but Cass (the supervisor I spoke with) and the other people on the tech support line refused to provide me with those files.
So, I finally made my appearance in the “365 Days of Burning Man” calendar that I mentioned a while back :-)
For more information about the art in the background, check out the Mutopia page on the Flaming Lotus Girls website.
