Easter Island wallpapers

Here are some nice wallpapers from Easter Island.
There are many sets, for example also this set from NYC, Sep 2011.

They are from a venerable, free e-magazine called About This Particular Macintosh. I like that they have published continually for over 15 years, and for some reason I like that they make it like a "real" magazine, in PDF format (for easy offline reading, perhaps on other devices). Maybe it makes it feel like more of a package or something. A web site is such a dang nebulous thing.

Ooh, this one is nice:

Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything

Secret Software on Millions of Phones Logging Everything, article/video on Wired.

From there, the data — including the content of  text messages — is sent to Carrier IQ’s servers, in secret.
By the way, it cannot be turned off without rooting the phone and replacing the operating system. And even if you stop paying for wireless service from your carrier and decide to just use Wi-Fi, your device still reports to Carrier IQ.

How the heck do you manage to get such software, which has to be illegal, onto millions of phones from different providers?

Related, here's Wired's 9 Reasons To Wear Tinfoil Hats article.

The Patriot Act
National security letters, perhaps the most invasive facet of the law, are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, bank records and arguably websites you have visited.
The FBI need merely assert, in writing, that the information is “relevant” to an ongoing terrorism or national security investigation. Nearly everyone who gets a national security letter is prohibited from even disclosing that they’ve received one.

Within a couple of hours after the fall of the WTC towers on 9 Sep 2001, I knew that something like the Patriot Act would be proposed very soon. It just struck me out of that clear blue September sky: fuck, they are really gonna use this, ain't they?
I might have had a faint hope that sanity would prevail, but it was only a faint one I'm sure. "Never underestimate the power of human fear", to paraphrase Bob Heinlein. It seems 99% of everybody is always willing, nay, eager to give up basic liberties in exchange for a little sense of false security.

Update: US senator Al Franken has sent an open letter to Carrier IQ.

How COPPA Teaches Children to Lie

How COPPA Teaches Children to Lie, article.
Children are getting online at ever-younger ages these days, sometimes with sites like Facebook, and sometimes for school requirements. But did you know that many major online services, including those from Google, Apple, and Facebook, don’t allow children under 13 to join at all, thanks to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act? The end result is that parents are being forced to teach their children to lie online.

It's typical. We always go overboard, especially with "protecting the children".
Same with child labor laws. Because there once was a problem with exploitive child labor, now it's forbidden in most of the western world for children to work at all, which cripples children's sense of self-worth, and their chance of earning their own money for the things they want.


Another quote:
...in response to the question, “Who should have the final say about whether or not your child should be able to use Web sites and online services?” 93 percent of respondents said the parent should. 3 percent felt the company providing the service should have the final say. And amusingly, only 2 percent said that the government should have the final say, which matched exactly with the 2 percent of parents who said that the child should have the final say. (Snarky logic would thus conclude that parents trust the government and their children equally in this regard. Speaking as the parent of a 12-year-old who can’t be relied on to tie his shoes, that’s not a ringing endorsement of governmental regulation.)
-

Producing vs creating

In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.

           -- Raoul Vaneigem

A good observation. 

For example, one of the most important criteria for the galleries to take on and support a new artist is whether he is continually producing (and in the same quality and style). But one thing I have noticed is that when somebody in a creative field gets into a situation where he has to produce more regularly than he would by himself, the quality always suffer. Sometimes dramatically. 

It's a difficult conflict, because on the other hand the business side of things is indeed often hurt by long breaks between output. 

There are no free lunches on the internet

There are no free lunches on the internet, article.

...the thing to note is that the business model of all these free services involves exploiting what they know about you. Or, to put it more crudely, if you use "free" services then what you have to accept is that you (or, more precisely, your identity) are their product.
The penny drops for most suckers, er, users when it occurs to them that the service is, somehow, becoming more intrusive...

I find it interesting that investors will continue to pour money into companies which month after month, year after year have ever-growing and huge expenses and no income in sight. Apparently enough people will bet that if a company becomes big enough, some kind of profitability is sure to follow eventually. I guess we'll learn more about how that goes.

But interestingly, I doubt Twitter (not that I value it a lot, as you know) would have become a world-wide communications phenomenon if it had not been free. 90% of people just find "free" to be an intensely attractive thing. Many find it essential, and will work for free for hours to get something "for free".

It's just about impossible to imagine Twitter disappearing by now. But if it never finds an income source, then what?

Stony Kill Falls

Photos by my friends Jeff and Laurie, taken by Stony Kill Falls in New York, yesterday. (In New York state "kill" often means river/stream, especially in place names.)

I think these are great, I especially like the blue one for wallpaper.

----
Funny thing: my instincts, from all my early training as photographer, is to adjust the contrast of the angel photo, to get out the shadow detail (as below). But when I do it, it actually seems wrong, the composition falls apart and it becomes messy.
It's amazing how hard it is to learn to not take technique too seriously, that all the rules are only in the service of the picture, and not one of them is true always.

Art lessons

Art Instruction Blog, a site with lots of free lessons in painting and drawing. Thanks to my artist friend Zeppelina for the link.

iPhone lens dial

New kool toy from Photojojo: a three-lens dial for iPhone. Fish-eye, wide-angle, and short tele (portrait).
I wouldn't expect high-range optical quality, especially in the edges of photos, but it should be fun to use, and it looks awesome, reminiscent of an ancient movie camera. I'll bet it's a geek- and babe-magnet.

René Goscinny

I was just wondering what happened to the wonderful comedic comics which warmed my childhood and youth. Then I looked things up and realized that René Goscinny created and wrote Luky Luke, Asterix, and Iznogoud. And he died in 1977, so there went the neighborhood! It's just incredible that a single man could create and write three of the very best long-standing comedic comic books ever. I miss him.

Admittedly Asterix is the most complex and full-rounded of them, and I can't honestly say how much I'd love the other two if I hadn't enjoyed them as a kid.

(It'll be the name of my next band: "Admittedly Asterix".)

Homer's achievement wisdom

"All my life I've had one dream: to achieve my many goals." 
- Homer Simpson

By the way, when Homer hears the advice "live every day like it was your last," he heeds it and obeys by sitting down and wailing, "Woooaaa! I don't wanna die!"
Makes sense. Somebody else might get four call girls (or men) and the most expensive hotel suite they could find, and put it on credit cards.

Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power

Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power, new novel by David Pogue.

I've bought it in the audio version, I expect it to be good fun like most of David's writings. So far as I know it's his first new novel since Hard Drive about 20 years ago. But considering his standard output in nonfiction (his two NYT columns and managing the Missing Manuals book line), just the fact that he has found time to write even one more novel is almost enough to make one believe in magic. (Wow, cheap line. Well, you take what you find.)

WILDRZ: A Kids Graphic Novel

WILDRZ: A Kids Graphic Novel, Kickstarter project.

I only really noticed this thing because of their funding goal: one hundred thousand dollars! Jeepers! For one thing: what do they need that much money for, for making an app? Secondly, as I understand it, if a Kickstarter project does not reach its funding goal, they don't get any money at all. So it seems stupid to set such an unrealistic target. Big funding on Kickstarter (a brilliant idea in itself) has been known to happen for a outstanding hardware idea (like the Glif) which people really wanted, but 100k for an entertainment app? I really doubt it.

Egypt Activist Poses Naked, Sparks Outrage

Egypt Activist, Poses Naked, Sparks Outrage, article.

A supporter, who identified himself as Emad Nasr Zikri, wrote in a comment on Elmahdy's blog, "We need to learn how to separate between nudity and sex." He said that before fundamentalist influence in Egypt, "there were nude models in art school for students to draw."
Some 100 people liked his comment, while thousands flooded the site with insults. Some denounced Elmahdy as a "prostitute" and "mentally sick" or urged police to arrest her.

Its shocking to see such extreme and irrational rage, particularly to somebody who grew up in Denmark, which was the first country in the world in 1968 to legalize pornography, and where the worst you'll see in case of nudity is somebody going "harumph!" and turning their back.

Writer Jed McKenna said that "sanity is a numbers game". Meaning that if enough people have an idea, it is no longer considered insane.

Elmahdy's blog post is unbelievably brave.

Update: Pascal wrote to me:
It's probably a good thing you don't understand Arabic. The Facebook comments on her blog page are mostly a furious hailstorm of religious anathema and highly crude insults.

Update: cross-border support.

3D?

Sometimes I'm an Early Adopter, sometimes not. I've not seen any 3D technology/movies which really worked for me, so I'm not overly eager for that. On the other hand, it might be great for some movies.
So I've made this decision: I will get a 3D TV when My Dinner With André is released in that format.

Flying fists Panda Too

I just watched Kung Fu Panda II. I recommend it. Of course the comic surprise of a martial arts panda has worn off a little since the first one, but I think the new elements, the story, and the technical fireworks they've brought into it more than makes up for it. Just for one example, they have a whole big city created as a whole in CGI with all kinds of things happening in it, including a car chase with little carts.

Like another crew did with Madagascar 2 and a third with Ratatouille (both of which are also mega-rich visually), this crew physically went to the home of the story to research the look and feel for the place, and they got amazing amounts of details and looks and atmosphere out of it. It's actually so deep and rich (for example in how dark it gets in the dark parts of a set) that it can be difficult to follow. Of course this goes doubly for the fighting scenes where they apparently use genuine kung fu fighting techniques, and where everything goes so fast and often has so many characters fighting at once, that you don't have a dumpling's chance in a panda kindergarten of taking it all in the first time.

All the characters are fun. And I'm amazed that they have managed to make a snake look pretty and sort of sexy. In contrast, I wonder why they made Tigress so masculine-looking. I feel she could easily be as tough as she is, and yet have a hint of a feminine figure, particularly hips. She has no hips at all, and there's just no way that's a woman.

But of course that's just detail. It's well worth seeing for the aforementioned, plus the humor and the grand new villain, a weapons-of-mass-destruction assembling peacock of all things, and the grand scenes of action.

Thandie Newton: Embracing otherness, embracing my self

Square Provides Easy Alternative to Cash and Checks

Square Provides Easy Alternative to Cash and Checks, TidBITS article.
Square opens up to individuals the option of accepting the third major payment method we use today — credit/debit cards. The payment side is far from new — we’ve all been paying for things with credit cards for decades — but until Square, receiving money via credit or debit cards was far beyond many small companies, much less individuals, due to the effort of setting up the necessary “merchant account” and dealing with the fuss of processing cards.

A very nice improvement in personal/small commerce and money exchange.

It doesn't seem to be for web merchants though, only for when you have the customer and his card in front of you, or at least on the phone. I asked Engst about it:

It's not clear to me if you can use square over the Internet. Take payments from your web site for example?
He said:
Technically speaking, yes, but people would have to send you their credit card numbers for you to enter by hand. It's really made for in-person transactions.

A selection of 3D characters

A selection of 3D characters.

(BTW, it's confusing that now "3D" both means computer-made, realistic, rounded images, and actual 3D, which gives the illusion of space by different images to the two eyes.)

Yes or Yes?

Here's a neat little sales trick: when somebody is halfway on board, you give them a choice, but not between Yes and No. Between two different yeses.
"This car is great for you, would you like it in blue or red?"
"You and I will go out, would you prefer lunch or dinner?"

For one thing it's difficult to tell somebody that their question is wrong, it's much easier to just pick one. For another thing it takes away the responsibility of making the actual decision, one can pretend that has happened, when the seller is pretending it has. For a third thing it saves face for those who have a hard time letting the seller "win" by saying yes, if they perceive it as a contest.

Of course this gimmick is also good to know about on the receiving end, so one is aware of when it happens.     :-)


Update: Timo said:

This is called the Alternative Close. It is one of the best known of all sales closing techniques. Sales literature knows tens of others, some very clever.
The more interesting discussion is where to draw the line of ethical and unethical salesmanship. Personally, I'm leaning towards the opinion that most active sales is unethical.

Yes, I agree that real "selling" is ethically questionable at best, since it assumes to know what's best for the customer.

And of course since it often embraces basic fakeness, you "put on" anything which will make the potential customer like you and trust you.

Interestingly, one of the best sales people I know, a lovely woman named Eva, who is always ahead of the pack in her large organization, doesn't seem to use any sales techniques. My guess is that her 100% belief and her inner and outer beauty does all the sales for her.


Update: Bruce points to this comprehensive list of sales techniques. Or to be more precise, closing techniques. The "close" is how to end the sales pitch with a Yes decision.

Country barriers

It's a bit astonishing to me how strong country- and language-barriers still are, this far into the 21st century. If I'm mentioning Paypal to my friends in Denmark, for example, the answer is often "what's that?".
OK, so probably Paypal doesn't have a Danish operation, but to not even have heard of the biggest online payment system in the world is to me, amazing. I first heard of Paypal about 11 years ago, and I've heard about it in various ways probably once a week since then on average.
I even heard from a modern, educated, Danish woman: "Amazon, what's that?" Same comments apply. The biggest, most famous, most successful online allround store in the world.

I guess one of the differences is that for me personally, there's a strong drive to be involved with the Internet, as a creator and a user. The instant global communication is absolutely fascinating to me, has been since I first heard of it in 1994, and is still.  But for most people, if they can get all they need from TV and the stores they've always used, well, they're satisfied.

Magic Window

I been sighing for years to get a live wallpaper for my Mac. Just a slowly changing scene on my desktop. I didn't get why it didn't exist, given the supposed great power of the processors and sophistication of the system. But it seems it's finally here, at least the first attempt I know of.
I've long enjoyed Magic Window for the iPad, which shows long, beautiful time-lapse videos, where you can adjust the speed yourself. And now there's a Mac version too, use the App Store for Mac and search for Magic Window. I haven't heard of any Windows version.
It is pretty powerful, it runs in real HD, and can run two different shows on two different monitors at once.
It's nice, if you set it slow it does not distract from work, yet still presents you with a changed scene next time you notice, as the sun has gone lower or the weather has changed. And despite running two big monitors, it's not a huge resource hog, 5-10% processor use on my Mac Pro.
The first two scenes I tried, below. Notice I took the screenshot as the desktop was changing between two pics taken as the bridge was being pulled in.

(As I write now, the foreground plane has gone, but planes are passing by, being towed in the background. Fun.)


Most scenes are picturesque like the sunset. One of my faves is a sunset filmed from a mountain in Hawaii, during it you have clouds forming and disappearing *under* the camera viewpoint. This one seems to only be on the iPad though, and they have made it a for-pay scene (a buck). But most are real purty anyway, and a bunch are included.

Church photo, processed

(click for big pic.)


See the young red beech in another photo here: 

And a nearby scene: 

A deliberate life

"Total Restoration", a short post on my spirit blog about living deliberately.

Lee Friedlander

I have a weird fondness for "exploded" compositions, without an obvious focal point, and Lee Friedlander is one of the masters. A book which features this side of his work is Sticks And Stones. Another one is Factory Valleys. (The latter is much weaker and thinner, and out of print, thus over-priced, so I recommend the former. I couldn't find decent-sized pics from the former though. See some small samples here though.)

The Hokey Pokey

from wikipedia:

There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars[who?] attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).


" A song rendered ("with appropriate gestures") by two Canterbury sisters while on a visit to Bridgewater, N.H. in 1857 starts thus:
I put my right hand in,
I put my right hand out,
In out, in out.
shake it all about.
As the song continues, the "left hand" is put in, then the "right foot," then the "left foot," then "my whole head."
...Newell gave it the title, "Right Elbow In", and said that it was danced " deliberately and decorously...with slow rhythmical motion."


"Decorously"... gotta love it. Those Victorians had a far-out sense of humor.

We did this song when I was a kid in Denmark. Funny enough in Danish it has an added chorus fitting nicely with the melody and the lyrics "ooh, boogie-woogie-woogie". Not great poetry, but I find that the song without it gets monotonous. I wonder if that chorus is a Danish invention.

Cars pinups

(custom)

Tips from Amazon reviews

One of the brilliant things about Amazon is the customer reviews. For example, twice today I've been pointed towards Amazon.de (Germany) as a better alternative. Firstly I was looking into the new Samsung Galaxy Note big-screen phone, and it's not exactly a cheap thing. But then a few reviews down I saw a note which said that it was cheaper from Amazon.de. No kidding, like 120 Sterling less, not far from $200 cheaper!
Secondly, Kungfu Panda 2 is out in UK, but only on DVD, for lord knows what reason. A reviewer pointed out you can already get it from Germany on blu-ray. Boom, it's ordered.
And another great thing is that you don't have to create a new account for an Amazon store in a different country, you just log in, and you can buy with one-click and all. Kewl. I once bought People Like Us Series 2 from Amazon Australia, it was only released there. (Which I found out about from Wikipedia, another stellar modern blessing.)

The tablecloth trick

[Thanks to Mark]

Tablecloth trick, video, pretty funny.

A $20 twin-lens camera

The DIY Twin Lens Camera Kit, sales page.

An anti-dote to high-quality, automatic, digital cameras.

From the same site, the Camera Table Dolly.

Not sure how much it's worth for the videos, but it is sure very cute!

Boom Boom Ba - Metisse , Dead Like Me

Ran into this again, big fan me.
More here.
What you don't see is that the show is actually very humorous.

Dice art by Tony Cragg

Dice sculptures by Tony Cragg.

How To Publish A Book In 2 Weeks (For Less Than $250)

How To Publish A Book In 2 Weeks (For Less Than $250), article.

This is written from from a business viewpoint, not a high-literary one. But it's good to sometimes get an impression of how simple, cheap, and fast something can be done if one wants. And for somebody with the right mind and experience, fast does not mean sloppy. (Dickens was an amazingly fast writer.)

By the way, it sounds to me like the article says that print-on-demand books cost at least $10 per copy, but I asked the author and he says he gets them for $2.50.

The article does not talk much about fulfilment, meaning taking payment and shipping books. This is far from trivial, so an alternative is to focus solely on ebooks, which is successful for many authors already.

Abandoned theme park

This is such a place where post-modern writers like to take Batman and the Joker for the big showdown.

Six years after Hurricane Katrina. Apparently too expensive either to rebuild or tear down. Bet the Japanese would have a different approach to it. The land is not earning anything in this state, and you still have to pay land tax on it. 

BTW, it must have been insured? Is it too expensive to insure against hurricanes? Or do the insurance companies go bust when this happens? (If so, that makes the contract worth little more than the toner on it, ya?)

It's interesting how such places/pictures evokes mixed feelings. Sadness and desolation, mixed with Schadenfreude and smugness.

Stewie on writing

"What?... Writing is the only thing which gives your alcoholism any credibility!" 

- Stewie to Brian, Family Guy

Female Robot S*x Toys

This is the "please don't touch me" variant.



There is this wonderful comment on the YouTube page:
Earth to Kert- IT IS NOT A SEX ROBOT! It even STOPS you from touching her. I find it sad that people have warped it to seem that way. I think it's a wonderful & interesting invention, and the inventors are geniuses, but it was made for different reasons other than sex. Chill your damn boners, people! XD

I rewatched Lost in Translation recently, and it's a very eccentric movie, but sorta poignant, and often funny, for example in the scene where Bob Harris's Tokyo hosts have gifted him with a call girl and she is trying to get him started, and it seems her default mode is a rape scenario... "Oh no, misser Harris, no, please misser Harris!", throwing herself back from imaginary attacks. And he is sitting there trying to say no politely, hugely embarrassed by the whole thing, it's hilarious.

二足歩行ロボットを自転車に乗せてみた

[Thanks to Neeraj]

RED Scarlet-X

Some of us suspected RED was falling by the wayside since they announced a lot more things than they actually delivered (for example their fabled DSLR-killer camera). But it seems they are kicking still, they have announced they are coming out with the Scarlet-X camera, a 5k (5,000 pixels horisontal resolution) film and still camera, highly modular like their other cameras.

This is well outside my expertise, but as I understand it, RED's aim is to make top-professional digital video cameras for real film making, but at prices well below what other Hollywood-class video systems cost. And from what I hear, they are largely succeeding, several A-movies have already been made with their cameras.

Full Blown Rose - Somebody Help me

(A repost for long-time readers, but I like it.)

Alicia Witt music video, 'Anyway'

Greg Capullo Batman (and digital comic reading)

"There are times when I have closed a Marvel comic, and then I've opened the bible and read the Book of Job, and I've thought: "Job, you really have nothing on the Marvel reader." - Andy Ihnatko.

Andy Ihnatko talks about DC Comics' big "52" reset in his inaugural episode of his new podcast Ihnatko's Almanac (recommended. Ihnatko is bright and funny, and talks fast but thinks twice as fast). So I decided to check out a couple more of the titles. (I bought a couple of titles last month but they didn't stick with me.)  What I decided on was Batman and Superman, which were the two biggest superheroes when I was a kid in the sixties. Isn't it interesting how that really has not changed? There's something about a really iconic character which makes it stick, I guess. Everything about Batman and Superman screams "the yin and yang of superheroes". The dark avenger, and the shining power-hero.

So far I like Batman, it's written well by Scott Snyder, and drawn by Greg Capullo, who did a good job on Spawn many years ago, and it doing a great job now on Batman. It is clearly "comic booky" art, it doesn't try to be photo-realistic (a big mistake in my book) but yet it is advanced and dynamic, with a controlled complexity which I'm sure is not easy to achieve. (Many early Image artists for example drew complexly, but the result was usually messy, like much complex art tends to be.)

Here's a panel from issue one. Quite Frank Miller-inspired, I think (The Dark Knight Returns), but evolved and independent.

Ihnatko points out that the whole idea behind the "52" reset was to get new readers, and re-acquire the readers which have fell off the wagon years ago. I've been agin' it, thinking it stupid and reckless to just ditch 60 years of history, but... I must admit that it got me back for now. The regular titles had simply become so dragged down with supplots and history that a new reader had a very hard time getting into it, and for years I hadn't even tried.

It is not a "year zero" reset as it were, for example all three (or four, I can't keep up) young men who are or have been Robin in the past are still around. But they will apparently try to do it at a level where new readers won't just throw the book (or their iPad) into the fireplace in confused frustration. I hope they can keep it up, but I ain't holding my breath, knowing human nature and the nature of writers, publishers, and editors. Once they have new readers, they will probably try to keep them around by building up fresh layers of never-ending subplots (god, X-men, sigh) and history. We'll see.

... Re Batman (2011-), I really like the new logo too. That's also not an easy job, making something fresh with something with such a history.

(See the detail in the texture, click for bigger.) 

Above, a really well designed page from issue two. I like that they have not ruined the overall look of the page with white text fields. It has long been a pet peeve of mine that text and speech ballons are almost never designed into a comic page, they usually just sh*t all over it.

It is funny, by the way: I never intended to stop buying and reading comics, and I'm not totally sure how it happened because until about... 2006? I had been to the comics shop every durn week for 25 years or so. But after that my stack on my bedstand was gathering dust. So after a while I put it into the top drawer instead. And three years later I finally realized: frig, I'm probably never gonna get around to reading these issues, lets put them in the stack in the closet.

If there are really good new comics in the future, the iPad may keep me around them again. Though like Ihnatko points out and like I've been saying: the screen on the iPad 1 and 2 is juuuust two small (and relatively low-res) to be really comfortable reading comics on. If you have the whole page on the screen, most comics are hard to read, both regarding the text and the art. What I want is a 12-inch iPad with twice the pixel pitch.

What I do, currently, by the way, is reading the comics with the iPad in landscape orientation, and then first read the top half of the page and then the bottom half. The auto-panel-navigation that they have seems clever at first, but then it starts to suck. In comics, the relationship between the panels is as important as the single panels. I don't know why, but it is. (Thanks to the book/comic Understanding Comics for this insight.)

Gervais slapstick

I don't watch stuff like Golden Globes, but I looked it up because I was about to watch a talkshow with Johnny Depp on, and Ricky Gervais was on there too, and this was brought up.
I always felt Ricky was a slimy character, almost creepy, and this didn't change my mind.       :-)



Really, like Robert Downey Jr says here about the tone of Gervais' presentation: "hugely mean-spirited with mildly sinister undertones". You can't help but laugh sometimes, but he really is revoltingly venomous and hateful under his slick, handsome smile.
(That RDJ is pretty revolting too here is another matter.)

Hedgehogs are neato

More hogs.

Tivo

I had Tivo a decade ago, and really liked it. But it was pushed off the market here in the UK. But now it's back, and I got mine today. I can't believe just how much superior the box and service is to the standard virgin cable box (even on + service). It's awesome. Just the Search functionality alone is worth it, and then comes how it learns your taste, etc.

(Even if the cable box had worked as intended, it would still be way inferior, but it was so incredibly buggy and unstable that I was really happy to get rid of it.)