Since the release of TiVo and the release of the DVR, my broadcast TV viewing time has dropped to zero. With more and more TV series being released on DVD, or available on the internet, there is absolutely no reason for me to see it in real-time (I should add that I don't bother to keep up with sports -- for such things, I realize that broadcast TV is necessary). Right now, there are only two shows that I presently watch weekly: Heroes and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I'll catch episodes of Chuck, and The Office occasionally when I need to run something in the background, but for the most part, it is primarily DVDs and movies that I watch these days. Partially this is because I don't have time to go to the movie theaters that often, and DVDs allow me to watch my movie on my own time. With all of this being said, how important is it that there is a Hollywood Writer's strike going on right now?

Pretty damn important.

What the Writer's Guild is fighting for now are royalties over the sale of DVDs and internet broadcast/download rights. In the pre-internet era, writers got coin every time a tv station aired their TV show. The show was paid for by advertising during the commercial breaks on the tv show. With the rise of internet broadband, media outlets started putting up ways to view their TV shows online (last year for instance, I kept up with Heroes by watching the episodes off NBC's website). Even though NBC is placing advertising across these episodes, supposedly the cost goes in paying for bandwidth, and not lining NBC's pockets with cash. After all, NBC only made 15 million from the iTunes store last year. With the release of shows on DVDs, TV networks have figured out there's more money to be made in milking the consumer for dollars by releasing DVDs rather than try and sell the show as a syndicated program (also, take into consideration that syndication requires enough episodes and success that there needs to be a minimum of 65 for daily weekday broadcast, and 22 for weekly broadcast). When programs are syndicated, writers get paid royalties, but when shows are released to DVD or direct download writers aren't paid (unless they negotiated something individually).

The end result of guilds and unions is that they serve as a bargaining collective to protect the members of the organization from unfair treatment by businesses. NBC, if you didn't know, is owned by GE, and GE announced their earnings about a month ago. GE reported a 14 percent increase in net income the third quarter, while NBC's increase for the quarter was a 9 percent jump in profits, taking in $589 million this past quarter -- NBC has had 4 straight quarters of profits, taking in a total of 2.2 billion dollars so far in 2007.

NBC, if you haven't noticed, has been quietly sabotaging their own online website to fuel their Hulu startup. While NBC has been bold enough to call the $15 million from iTunes "pennies", one should also notice that no other media company with a partnership to iTunes has announced their iTunes earnings, or been stupid enough to ask Apple for a piece of iPod hardware sales, one wonders if NBC also asked electronics manufacturers for each radio and TV they sold.

I don't think this strike will be resolved quickly -- and in the meantime, expect to see mid-season replacements and re-runs filling in airtime as the strike goes on.

Brian Williams explains:

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

92 86 97 10 AA 2C 54 AE 29 B7 47 A2 92 DA 97 72

You can get your own Free 128-bit number here as well.

Early this morning, a fuel tanker became a giant fireballon the MacArthur Maze in Oakland, destroying two freeways. Traffic was already pretty bad through the Maze at peak commuter hours, and traffic will continue to be a nightmare in the area until they rebuild the damaged structure. The Chronicle has several photos of the damage to the freeways, as some structures are completely melted.

SFGate has a list of alternate routes.

via Joi Ito's Blog:

news on sina.com.cn, in which China Telecom, one the biggest ISPs in China, release an official statement:



China Telecom has confirmed that, according to China institute of earthquake monitoring, at Dec 26, 20:26-20:34 Beijing Time, 7.2 and 6.7 magnitude earth quake have occurred in the South China Sea. Affected by the earthquake, Sina-US cable, Asia-Pacific Cable 1, Asia-Pacific Cable 2, FLAG Cable, Asia-Euro Cable and FNAL cable was broken and cut up. The break-off point is located 15 km south to Taiwan, which severely affected the International and national tele-communication in neighboring regions.



It was also reported that communication directed to China mainland, Taiwan, US and Europe were all massively interrupted. Internet connection to countries and region outside of China mainland became very difficult. Voice communication and telephone services were also affected.



China Telecom has claimed that due to the aftershock of the earthquake, the repairing works would be very tough. In addition undersea operation is also not easy to handle with. So this phenomenon is going to exist for certain period.

BBC has even more details about the quake and the outage, saying that it could take 3 weeks to repair.

In South Korea, broadband provider KT Corp said six submarine cables had been affected, interrupting services to customers including banks.



Some foreign exchange trading was reportedly affected.



"Trading of the Korean won has mostly halted due to the communication problem," a dealer at one South Korean domestic bank told Reuters news agency.

Of course, as far as gaming goes, for all you MMOG players that have to face Asian guilds killing your spawn, now's the time to take advantage of their (essentially) three-week downtime to have your way with the ubers.

Researchers in Japan have discovered that a new protein, nesfatin-1 taken from the hypothalmus of the rat brain seems to have suppressed the appetite of rats:

"When the team injected nesfatin-1 directly into the brains of rats, the animals subsequently ate less. When the protein was continually administered, via a drip over 10 days, the animals actually lost weight in that time.



In a second experiment, antibodies blocking the action of nesfatin-1 were injected into the brains of healthy rats. These animals were subsequently found have increased appetite and gained weight over six days.

I guess what I find funny about all this is that we spend millions of dollars on research figuring out how to trick the body into eating less, when a regiment of exercise and conscious eating habits can give us the results we desire. But like so many things in life, we're always looking for the quick, easy way to lose weight.

Potent brain molecule curbs appetite (New Scientist)

File this one is the "wasting our legal system's time and resources":

A Starbucks customer in the US who was told her free drink voucher was worthless is launching a $114m (£60m) lawsuit against the coffee colossus.

Starbucks sued for 114 million

"A fire which broke out at a 19th Century cathedral in the Russian city of St Petersburg has brought down its main blue dome, officials say."

There aren't any reports of injuries, but it's quite a loss of historical and cultural value.

Blaze rips through Russian Church [BBC]