September 28, 2015 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized
Do you want to know when America will be great again? When an announcement of water on Mars preempts Donald Trump on the news channels.
CNN, Fox, and MSNBC are all covering the Donald Trump news conference. Only the BBC is covering NASA live.
They are saying that there may be life on Mars, but obviously not on cable network news.
Welcome to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
The BBC covers real news. The others do PR.
1I second JAKvirginia. That’s why I read the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/us
from the UK and hunt up the Washington Post’s science and environment writers. There’s what’s going on in the three-ring circus, and then there’s a real world where things will still matter 100 or 1000 years from now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=Mooney
https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=eilperin
https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=Darryl+Fears
The Guardian has Mars as their lead story for now. And, hot rats, Shell has suspended looking for more Arctic oil!
2I am to the point with MSNBC I hardly ever switch it on any more. Hayes & Maddow, that’s it. DVR it so I can watch if I miss it and fast forward through the advertisements on replay.
Maybe I am getting crotchetier with age but when a channel starts doing a Trump cast I switch, moreover if the next one I try is also Trump media chances are very good I will use the power off button.
#TiredOfTrump
3Yes, MSRNC does indeed sux. I second the Guardian web site for real news.
4I, too, am tired of Trump and his constant refrain of “I…”. The only reason Trump, Carson, and Florida are ahead in the polls is because of the constant coverage by our media which no longer is based on anything other than ratings and/or what they owe their corporate bosses. I wish there was one actual news station available for watching what is truly happening here and abroad. MSNBC has totally moved away from any good commentary with the exception of Hayes, Maddox, and Lawrence.
5Shh…….
I gave up my “cable” months ago.
You, by gawd, live through it.
I read.
TV watching is for (1) baseball… and (2) football.
If someone else’s opinion matters a lot to you, keep watcing tv news. It’s a lot more opinion than “news”. A lot more.
#Tired of Trump (also).
6The only good Trump coverage is watching him get booed.
7When all else fails … I will watch PBS News … Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill are easy to listen to. And PBS also has the BBC News, as well.
8@Maryelle … and even when Donald gets booed, he hears it as folks cheering for him!
9As a person that has a good chance of being ruled over by King Trump, I find the stupid that oozes from his mouth more important than once upon a time water on MARS. Once upon time water is not going to try to take my SocSec payments away!!! Not that it matters as I do not have TV.
10I’ve started reading Aljazeera for ‘balanced’ news. My usual morning is JJ; other noteworthy blogs; NYT (not as reliable as it was); CNN; and, BBC. LAT has one of the worst designed web sites and I only go there to find out what’s happening in my former home town.
11Yes, I go to Al Jazeera, The Guardian and the BBC on line, but the BBC is a lightweight compared to the other two. I have others in the U.S., including blogs, but these are good foreign based news sources.
12Yes, Aljazeera is great. I was on the site this morning and saw a documentary about Texas women having to go to Mexico for abortion services.
13WashPost had an article about JEB!’s bankers warning him to rise in the polls or else. I’m starting to wonder what happens if all of the slightly sane candidates drop out because they’re polling at 2%, and then whoever’s in charge takes a long look at Trump, Carson, and Fiorina and says, Oh *hell* no…. What’s left? They have to run somebody…..
14Marcia in CO says:
September 28, 2015 at 11:36 am
When all else fails … I will watch PBS News … Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill are easy to listen to. And PBS also has the BBC News, as well.
Okay, but be aware that the Kook Bros. are now members of the board of directors for PBS, mostly due to their large $$ gifts. I don’t trust PBS any more than the rest.
15Life on Mars? Perhaps they should concentrate on finding intelligent life on Earth.
16You can tune in Democracy Now with Amy Goodman
http://www.democracynow.org/
and Free Speech TV channel 9415 on Dish Network.
17We already have an answer to intelligent life on Earth, the answer is no way, Jose. Instead, we’re going to concentrate the effort to life elsewhere in the universe.
And that’s a fact. (End with tongue spittle)
18Marcia, that’s exactly what he did when a reporter asked him about the booing. he said they were cheering. He has lost touch with reality.
19I still hang onto my cable for the local news (but I hate the editorializing as in “there was a house fire in XX and there were chillllllllllllllllllllllllllldren inside”. The Weather Channel. Antiques Roadshow, American Pickers (love Dani), and a few others on Public Television, endless reruns of Doc Martin and Midsomer Murders. Then I read.
20FYI Dr. Ben Carson says that the water on Mars is SATAN!
21FSTV is also on DirecTV, on channel 348. AFAIK, ComCast doesn’t carry it.
NBC Nightly News (network) is reporting water on Mars as I type. They do report this stuff, if time allows after the daily Bloviation and Celebrity Review.
22Ralph Wiggam, Dr. Carson need not worry. Should his new found billionaire friends find their escape hideaways under water and launch off to Mars, he is in no danger of an invite to their residences on Earth or Mars. As for the good doctor’s wingnut voter friends, maybe he should ask them about a possible invite to their rapture express.
23There’s this marvelous miracle available all around town. It’s called THE LIBRARY. We all pay for ours anyway. Why not go there and read, use their databases, access them from home, take home stacks of books, go to hear good speakers or workshops. If you can’t find yours, let me know and I’ll research it for you. No charge. The only TV shows I like are the cooking shows, if I could figure out how to turn on the TV. Back to reading.
24I listen to NPR on Sirius radio whenever I’m in my car, except for occasional retreats my old hippie music of the 60s. The Mamas and the Papas! PBS, BBC and Rachel and Chris are good too. The Guardian is outstanding.
There is an excellent blog I read daily from South Dakota, the state I grew up in. It’s written by a journalist named Cory Heidelberger. dakotafreepress.com. Even though it’s 99% local South Dakota, visit sometime and support an individual doing real, investigative journalism in the Most Corrupt State in the USA. (Really, SD tops the crooked standings every year.)
Marge, the library is simply superior to everything else.
25@20
Linda Phipps says:
September 28, 2015 at 4:45 pm
I still hang onto my cable for the local news..
OK, I don’t get this (not for just you Linda).
Do y’all know that you can receive Over-The-Air (OTA) digital television programming from ALL your local channels for free (and many more channels are now available too, movies, shopping, whatever)?
Many of the channels will be received in full High-Definition 1080p (which is a pretty nice image), for free, all you need is an antenna (more on this below).
Almost all TV’s made since about 2008 have built-in OTA receivers and many are also true HD (some TV’s sold today as “HD” only display a 720p image, noticeably different from full 1080pHD, so you have to read the specs).
If you have an older TV that doesn’t receive digital OTA (analog TV signal only), you can get a small converter box for it.
Even if your TV has a digital tuner, you might want to get the converter box (see my recommendation below, ~$40)), because some of them are also “PVR’s”, personal (digital) video recorders, and much cheaper than those from YKW.
These PVR’s have a standard USB port that you can plug in a flash drive or even a hard disk drive (via an inexpensive (~$10-20) adapter) and have almost as much storage space as you can use for capturing programs (and if you fill it up you can delete what you want, or simply take it out, plug it into your computer and transfer stuff, then put it back and reformat it to full capacity again).
So, if you’re not addicted to cable/sat/whatever, and/or want to save some big $$$’s, there is a much cheaper alternative. Beyond buying a couple of components for about $60, it is then free forever.
Equipment:
1. TV of your choice, old or new(er).
2. A converter box/PVR recorder, I highly recommend the IView 3500STBII (less than $40 from Newegg.com, just search their site).
It takes a digital OTA signal and feeds it to an input on your TV, whether a simple coax, or HDMI, or component inputs.
The HDMI connection, depending on the source channel, can deliver a fantastic picture and sound, maybe even better than your TV’s native pic (Newegg has cheap high quality cables too, EG: Walmart $10-40, Newegg $2-10).
The IView 3500STBII is also a full-featured, very easy to use PVR recorder, and the storage device you choose (USB stick/card, hard drive) can be up to 3 Terabytes in size (will hold a lot of programs).
3. An antenna. Even your old rabbit-ears will work to receive a digital radio/tv signal. But for $5-20 (from Newegg or ?) you can get a cheap, great functioning antenna ‘designed’ for digital OTA TV signals, self-powered/amplified or not. Mount it up high and you might even receive TV channels from distant cities.
4. (getting into the tech weeds here) If you want to reformat those recorded video’s from the PVR, in order to play on any other device (like tablets, etc), you can get a program that does video conversions. A free one I highly recommend is Anysoft’s “Any Video Converter”, AVC, or look for a copy of Nero on sale.
5. Aaand, if you don’t want to bother with all that: If you have an unlimited or high data cap on your smartphone (Apple or Android, etc), there are some apps that allow you to display whatever is on your phone screen onto your TV screen (smart TV preferred, but with a $20 wireless adapter* you can use any TV with an HDMI input port).
So you can stream ANY TV program, youtube, netflix, or movie, whatever, available online, directly to your TV screen, and in full 1080p HD (or higher if avail).
You can also set up full sized video calls (using Skype or Google Hangouts apps for example) displayed full-sized on your TV too, in HD.
The apps are called Miracast, Airplay (Apple), and a couple others. They are native to your newer smartphones operating system, so you needn’t buy anything extra, just a few clicks to activate them (free) from your menu or one from a screen shortcut.
*$20 wireless HDMI adapter: Many available, but this $20 (Newegg) one works great:
Tronsmart T1000 Elite Wireless Display HDMI Dongle. Supports Miracast, DLNA, EZCAST, AirPlay. Compatible with Android/iOS/Windows/Mac OS support.
OK, this should probably go on ‘Consumer Reports’ pages, and got long, but I hope it helps some of you save a bunch of $$$ and screw the cable company too.
26Yes, I saw the coverage the scientists proclaiming the existence of water on Mars. Around here it lasted about 48 hours and then everything went back to alternate universe. And that announcement went nowhere with the RWNJs on the Hill who swear that all scientists are snake oil salesmen sons of Satan. Wow! The god of the RWNJs is indeed very small and weak!
27Sand ridge –
Okay, I understood a tiny sliver of that, but it sounds cool. I have a slightly different issue.
We have the full-bore spendy DirecTV, and over a year left on our contract. So cheaper isn’t my current goal. But what I’d like to do is transfer some programs I recorded onto DVD discs, so I can keep them permanently and free up some storage space on the DVR (TIVO thing). I Couldn’t get it to work, and when I contacted Customer Support, they told me it couldn’t be done, and is a violation of copyright law. Which is ridiculous, because before we had the DVR function, I would record directly off the air onto VCR tapes or DVD discs all the time. Why would that be any different from transferring a temporary to a permanent recording?
I know this isn’t a tech forum, so if you could just point me toward a DIY website, or email me the info (JJ, I okay release of my address for this), that would be fine. I’ve got episodes of the Daily Show, Ed Schultz, and of course all 3 seasons of Veronica Mars, that I’d really like to keep.
28thanks!
Lunargent,
29I’m not familiar with your particular DirectTV DVR setup (of course, never having had cable/sat), but the basic functions are the same.
The whole area is actually very complicated, much is due to ‘digital rights copyright protection’ features built into both the hardware and software (and even the cables), so I’ll get back in a bit after I look up some stuff.
I’m thinking if you can output a signal of what you want to ‘record’ via an HDMI cable into a TV, you should be able to input it to a recording device too.
But the actual configuration and adapters, cables, devices needed might be complicated (or very simple).
If you can output the signal via the old coax cable or component leads (3 RCA jacks/plugs) recording it should be trivial.
Lunargent,
There are various video capture devices and software available (from boxes, USB dongles, cards that plug into your PC, etc).
However, a disclaimer I find with some of these devices (I’ve been looking all over newegg.com) has to do with the newer “copyright protection” anti-copy designs the industry has implemented (they have actually forced hard/software makers into going along, see the Wiki link below).
Your DVR is almost certainly using this, which makes simply copying/recording the video output very difficult (your DVR actually registers an encrypted video/audio connection to the TV, which also has the same protection system, as does even the cable used (like using a username/password to access your various accounts online, only more complicated). The devices are actually made with unique cryptographic keys embedded in them.
I’ll just quote something from a Hauppauge capture device on newegg ( * Hauppauge HD PVR2 Gaming Edition – High Definition Video Recorder in H.264 w/ HDMI & component interface and One-touch Record button ; they make several other types of capture devices, and are good stuff):
“Note: HD PVR 2 will not record video from HDMI with HDCP copy protection.”
Wikipedia description of HDCP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP
“High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation[1] to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections.
…
HDCP devices are generally divided into three categories:
Source
The source sends the content to be displayed. Examples include set-top boxes, DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players, and computer video cards. A source has only an HDCP/HDMI transmitter.[4]
Sink
The sink renders the content for display so it can be viewed. Examples include TVs and digital projectors. A sink has one or more HDCP/HDMI receivers.[4]
Repeater
A repeater accepts content, decrypts it, then re-encrypts and retransmits the data. It may perform some signal processing, such as upconverting video into a higher-resolution format, or splitting out the audio portion of the signal. Repeaters have HDMI inputs and outputs. Examples include home theater audio-visual receivers that separate and amplify the audio signal, while re-transmitting the video for display on a TV. A repeater could also simply send the input data stream to multiple outputs for simultaneous display on several screens.[4]
Each device may contain one or more HDCP transmitters and/or receivers. (A single transmitter or receiver chip may combine HDCP and HDMI functionality.)[4]”
This is what you’re now up against, there are a lot of hacker places that might know how to defeat the system, but I don’t mess with it.
And I don’t do anymore than get free OTA TV programming and pipe it to my non-smart TV’s and PC, sometimes recording programs. Never had any interest in paying for it, cable (“Veronica Mars”, whut dat? Absolutely not a pro sports fan, IMO, thieves who steal from everybody to build their stadiums, etc.).
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116084
30Click on the ‘Hauppauge’ link near the top of page to see many more devices.
Sandridge –
YIKES!!
Maybe I can still record directly to my VCR/DVD player from my old fuzzy TV in the bedroom.
But if it’s true that you can no longer make a permanent recording from a broadcast, that’s a travesty. A throwback to the days before the VCR. And it means the only things that can be kept are whatever is selected to be sold as an online download or disc. Utter BS.
Thanks for doing all that legwork.
31Lunargent says:
September 29, 2015 at 9:31 pm
Yep, we’re focked again. What gets me is how few realize it.
(For the cable and sat stuff. There is still no problem recording the free OTA TV programs as outlined above. There are ways to record internet streamed programming too (on your PC or smartphone) , but everything is much more complicated.)
If you want to record anything on the OTA TV channels, I highly recommend my previous ‘highly recommend’ stuff above at @26.
And that cheap IView 3500STBII is one hell of a PVR/DVR/recorder, very easy to use, many, many features, and records HD video that is stunning (if the broadcast signal received is good, and also HD).
It does take some storage space to record though.
An hour long recording can use up from 2GB to 5GB of hard drive or memory stick/USB flash/etc space (HD uses more than double SD).
One of those portable ‘backup’ 1-3TB hard drives ($40-110 at newegg, a little more at Wally’s) is perfect for this, they usually have a USB cable connection, you just plug it in the front of the box (it also has a wallwart for power).
The Iview box can erase, delete, format, etc., the drive(s) too.
So a 32GB USB stick (or chip like used in phones/cameras, with a USB adapter) will hold about 7 hours of HD video programming.
It is easy to access and replay, and also delete, individual recordings too, from the Iview.
The recording files (each program recorded is stored as a file, forget the extension) can then be transferred to your PC via the storage drive or USB mem stick.
But they have to be converted to a playable file format (MP2, MP4, dozens more) to be played on various devices, or burned to DVD).
So you will need that free AVC conversion program, or something like Nero, to do the file conversions.
It’s taken me a while to get all this sorted out, I used to just set the ol’ VCR’s to record programs. When TV went digital it changed everything.
32When I was on the road (often to around that go&&%$#ned Houston area…) I’d program a whole week of PBS stuff at home on several VCR’s. Still got boxes of tapes that need to be burned to DVD’s, yikes, old Mystery and Masterpiece stuff particularly.