I'm always amazed when public figures appear on this show and fed classic Daily Show lines like "Define zero again" or "You think I'm stupid?" and the person seems confused... when they agreed to the interview did they or their handlers if they have them, not research the show and note it is a comedy show? I could see the confusion if this was still the 1990s, but the show has been on since 1996, so I would think they would be wise to the format by now.

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

Some of the highlights:
• At one point, the show interviews one of Hugh Hefner‘s ex-girlfriends holding a Carl’s Jr. cheeseburger because the burger chain sponsored this hot steaming pile of disaster.

• Macy Gray (remember her?!?!?!) dropped by to give what seems like a completely stoned performance of that song that won her a Grammy 12 friggin’ years ago.

• On multiple occasions, Kennedy and/or the show’s producers ask on a hot mic whether the show is currently live (hint: it was) while liberally peppering in some profanity for the sake of it. The first few seconds of one return from commercial break began with Kennedy on-stage looking around confusedly while off-camera voices asked “Where’s my stage manager?” and declared: “Don’t fucking give me shit.”

• The control room couldn’t seem to figure out how to press the right buttons and so interviews were cut off mid-sentence, camera shots sometimes never changed, random Carl’s Jr. ads ran during the middle of broadcast, and a video of Jamie Kennedy at a comedy club took about 10 seconds to load.

• One random woman in the crowd figured out how to read teleprompter behind co-host Stu Stone and mimicked his read for an entire two minutes. Sheer brilliance.

• Some guy dropped a big ol’ “motherfucker” live on-air.

• Oh hey, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony (remember THEM?!?!?!?!) must’ve time-traveled from the 1990s to perform a few songs, seemingly missing the memo about “not cursing on air,” because… umm… they cursed. A lot.

• Kennedy channels the 2003 film that made him relevant for 10 whole minutes — Malibu’s Most Wanted — and tries his best at hitting on a drunk black woman: “You should go white, because it’ll keep your vagina very tight.”

• The show ends with a spontaneous fight on-stage behind the hosts… and then silence as the credits roll. Perfection.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/kdoc-los-angeles-had-the-most-spectacularly-disastrous-new-years-special-in-the-history-of-television/

My progression was.....
Commodore 64 (1983),
Atari520ST (1987),
Atari 1040ST (1987), (Hard drive!)
IBM PC/AT (1988),
Macintosh 2 (1990),
80486 66DX2, (1992),
Pentium overdrive for the 486DX2 (1995),
Dual Pentium MMX 166 (1996) ,
Pentium-2 333mhz (1998), (Dual voodoo-2)
Pentium-3 800mhz (2000),
Pentium D 2.8gz ( 2006),
Core i7-920 ( 2009),
Core i7-970 (2011).

Lesser machines along the way... a Macintosh SE I cant place on the timeline. My biggest regret was sticking with the Pentium-3 for so long. Wasn't so interested though.

If I've used it correctly, googletranslate says that if you put it in the Roman alphabet, it becomes:

Serduchka vs. PSY - Gangnam Chida-Hop!

Verka Serduchka is a Ukranian performer who represented the Ukraine in Eurovision 2007 and came 2nd. She is also the creation of Andriy Pokhvalit Danylko, who came up with the character around 1990.

I think it refers to this song:

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^RFlagg:
Problem is, they say the reason we were doing better was because we had God in schools, then we took him out of the schools and everything else... everything comes to how god was involved back then and less so now therefore we are paying the punishment of not having god in our lives... never mind how well many of the more atheist countries are doing (they think atheist countries are more like the old USSR)...
>> ^Fairbs:
Something most Republicans can't grasp is our country is better off when the rich are taxed more. 40 years ago, taxes on capital gains were 80%, but now Romney feels he's taxed too much at 15.


The argument isn't really about countries that are more atheist versus countries that aren't. It's that the United States has uniquely been a Christian nation since its founding. We are one nation, under God. Most people don't understand what that means; they think it is archaic when it is really the most important founding principle we have. The rapid decline in civil society has to do with the fact that, for the first time generations of Americans are growing up without the judeo-christian ethic being instilled in them from society, especially from their schools. And what we've seen since 1963 is a dramatic increase in the rate of violent crimes, teen pregnancy, STDs, the divorce rate, broken families, drug use, etc..the list goes on. There are the top 7 problems we had in our schools according to government records in 1940 vs 1990:
1940
1. Talking out of turn
2. Chewing Gum
3. Making noise
4. Running in the Halls
5. Cutting in Line
6. Dress-code violations
7. Littering
1990
1. Drug abuse
2. Alcohol abuse
3. Pregnancy
4. Suicide
5. Rape
6. Robbery
7. Assault
So, the argument is really that, we as a society have collectively turned our back on God, and therefore God has also turned His back on us. The principle is, you reap what you sow, and that's exactly what is going on right now. That's why this nation is facing calamity after calamity, because we have lost our way and we refuse to repent and turn back to our Creator.


You are picking and choosing your details man. I think you are also getting your 'facts' about the 40's and 50's from tv shows and movies and using them to spin your idea of 'how golden and free of crime America was before we turned out back on God.' And what about the decades before the 50's, certainly we hadn't 'turned away from god', so how do you explain the debauchery of the 20's, the turn of the century 'robber barons' that lived in luxury while their sweat-shops were worked by the masses of poor and children. The herione gangs and the waves of violence around 1910, 15.

It is really funny how some people (mostly white, older and male) see the 40's and 50's as this shining era of godly love, no crime and family harmony. It was all like 'leave it to beaver'. Dad made the big bucks, mom stayed at home and the most the kids ever got into trouble was when they broke a neighbors window. Yes, generally crime rates were low in the 40's and 50's but you cant attribute that to people 'having the fear of god' back then but skip over times that had just as much, if not even more religious fervor but also plenty of social upheaval and crime. Point of fact crime rates right now in most states are at historical lows, nearly to the levels of the 50's, but you still see murders every day. The information age has changed these things. In the 50's the only news you had was local. You might never have heard about some crime rave in another state.

Other things can attribute to the lower crime rates of those years. How many young men were serving in WWII during the 40's, that certainly would account for a drop in crime rates. And as to the 50's, the threat of nuclear war was constant. 'In God We Trust' wasn't added to money in the mid 50's because it was a particularly religious era, but rather because if the threat of communism. The term used to denote a healthy and proper family in the 50's wasn't coined the 'nuclear' family for nothing.

Last I'd like to point out that the US was 'never' designed as a Christian Nation and has only receive that monicker in the last number of years. I know bible-thumpers and hard-right politicians would have you think, hell have even changed school books, to wipe out ideas like the simple fact that many of the founding fathers wanted nothing to do with religion, though certainly not all. You can twist the words of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson all you want, but they above all abhorred the idea of religion influencing politics. This is not to say that they were all anti-religion, many advocated religion as a personal foundation of morality, but to hear modern republicans suggest they wanted Christianity to be the basis of the constitution and this country, they would be rolling over in their graves.

In the past era, we hit a communications Boom. The onset of media has both enslaved and set the people free in different aspects.

TV and the internet has allowed people to communicate all over the world in the snap of a finger and compare ideals. This has educated the people on their subjugation and people have started to stand up and gain a voice for themselves. This IS NOT that the people have turned their back from any divine entity so much as they see the truth of Control and Enslavement both to religious ideologies and to political dominance. People are just now starting to free themselves from the chains and shackles of being force fed how they should see, hear, talk and think.

This is just the beginning, and I expect it to get worse, as people stand up all over the world and demand their own personal rights and opinions be observed, instead of dictated like Kings, Queens and Religion have been doing for centuries. Those that seek to dominate and rule over others will start to feel the backlash of the free spirit.

The key export for religion has always been control. The goal of the church has always been to enslave the weak minded and control them; tell them how to think, tell them how to act and direct them on every aspect of their lives.

So if you want to sell us that as a society, we have turned our backs from religion, then you better look at why. It hasn't been on a whim. It's because people are opening their eyes and standing up against the lies and the bull that they have been fed for countless years. Now that people can successfully communicate en mass, they are learning, and knowledge is power. People are standing up against authority because they are realizing that their authority was forced and not earned. Forced through, lies, deceit, cheating and all the other things that come with power.

As the people revolt, the power tries to hold on tighter by trying to limit what we have, whether it's free speech, freedom of movement, gathering in large numbers or communicating and sharing ideas (see the pattern here?)

The decention of society is due to the power struggle of the population finally looking up and identifying his prison guard.

Good or bad for society is yet to be seen but that's what's going on. People can accept some rules when the rules are equal but those rules no longer serve the people but are used to keep the people down then they are no longer rules but edicts!

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^RFlagg:
Problem is, they say the reason we were doing better was because we had God in schools, then we took him out of the schools and everything else... everything comes to how god was involved back then and less so now therefore we are paying the punishment of not having god in our lives... never mind how well many of the more atheist countries are doing (they think atheist countries are more like the old USSR)...
>> ^Fairbs:
Something most Republicans can't grasp is our country is better off when the rich are taxed more. 40 years ago, taxes on capital gains were 80%, but now Romney feels he's taxed too much at 15.


The argument isn't really about countries that are more atheist versus countries that aren't. It's that the United States has uniquely been a Christian nation since its founding. We are one nation, under God. Most people don't understand what that means; they think it is archaic when it is really the most important founding principle we have. The rapid decline in civil society has to do with the fact that, for the first time generations of Americans are growing up without the judeo-christian ethic being instilled in them from society, especially from their schools. And what we've seen since 1963 is a dramatic increase in the rate of violent crimes, teen pregnancy, STDs, the divorce rate, broken families, drug use, etc..the list goes on. There are the top 7 problems we had in our schools according to government records in 1940 vs 1990:
1940
1. Talking out of turn
2. Chewing Gum
3. Making noise
4. Running in the Halls
5. Cutting in Line
6. Dress-code violations
7. Littering
1990
1. Drug abuse
2. Alcohol abuse
3. Pregnancy
4. Suicide
5. Rape
6. Robbery
7. Assault
So, the argument is really that, we as a society have collectively turned our back on God, and therefore God has also turned His back on us. The principle is, you reap what you sow, and that's exactly what is going on right now. That's why this nation is facing calamity after calamity, because we have lost our way and we refuse to repent and turn back to our Creator.

>> ^RFlagg:

Problem is, they say the reason we were doing better was because we had God in schools, then we took him out of the schools and everything else... everything comes to how god was involved back then and less so now therefore we are paying the punishment of not having god in our lives... never mind how well many of the more atheist countries are doing (they think atheist countries are more like the old USSR)...
>> ^Fairbs:
Something most Republicans can't grasp is our country is better off when the rich are taxed more. 40 years ago, taxes on capital gains were 80%, but now Romney feels he's taxed too much at 15.



The argument isn't really about countries that are more atheist versus countries that aren't. It's that the United States has uniquely been a Christian nation since its founding. We are one nation, under God. Most people don't understand what that means; they think it is archaic when it is really the most important founding principle we have. The rapid decline in civil society has to do with the fact that, for the first time generations of Americans are growing up without the judeo-christian ethic being instilled in them from society, especially from their schools. And what we've seen since 1963 is a dramatic increase in the rate of violent crimes, teen pregnancy, STDs, the divorce rate, broken families, drug use, etc..the list goes on. There are the top 7 problems we had in our schools according to government records in 1940 vs 1990:

1940

1. Talking out of turn
2. Chewing Gum
3. Making noise
4. Running in the Halls
5. Cutting in Line
6. Dress-code violations
7. Littering

1990

1. Drug abuse
2. Alcohol abuse
3. Pregnancy
4. Suicide
5. Rape
6. Robbery
7. Assault

So, the argument is really that, we as a society have collectively turned our back on God, and therefore God has also turned His back on us. The principle is, you reap what you sow, and that's exactly what is going on right now. That's why this nation is facing calamity after calamity, because we have lost our way and we refuse to repent and turn back to our Creator.

Well, this is interesting.

I agree with all of @dystopianfuturetoday's general guidelines. I also agree with @bareboards2's observation that we can't really know what the original video was for sure.

But, it looks to me as if @LadyBug put the original tags on the video and they only confuse me.
I didn't know this song--or band--so I looked up the wiki.
The tags "floppy" and "fish" seem to point to the original music video--also the thumbnail from @rasch187's fix is from the original music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERTT_sv8sV0 -- embedding disabled).
The tags "Chile" and "1991" seem to refer to this live recording (or a similar live recording).
The music video was recorded in 1990--not in Chile.

One thing I can say is that @chingalera really does care (no matter what he says) and wants to do the right thing. He didn't have to point out this possible wrong video fix--but he did.
What a mensch.

Interesting tribute... but sadly, I can't stand CN these days. It's drowning in shows with uninteresting art styles and nonsensical story, if any. I used to tune in to CN so I can watch things like The Boondocks and Teen Titans... but now... well... with their constant shuffling of airtimes and introductions of boring shows, I just basically stopped tuning in altogether. I'm sure many can easily testify that everything was fine and dandy back in the 1990s and 2000s.

#1 DVR's are always marked up higher then their raw components. It is the usual tax on having the convenience of the set top box.

#2 DVR with cable decoding hardware like this are generally constructed a bit better then off the shelf hardware thus adding to the cost. Also the cable decoder hardware itself is always expensive. The equipment is built to go through more then one customer in its life span.

#3 the dvr might have offered advanced features like whole house DVR (even in consumer Tivo boxs, this is big money) even if the user didn't pay for them.

The finance department doesn't go out of there way to gouge customers who have to pay for damaged hardware. Instead it is customers finding out that the finance departments are getting ripped off on the hardware they pay for.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^arekin:
>> ^Yogi:
I'm sorry but what HIGH Amazing Technology is in a Cable Box that makes it cost more than my last 3 top of the line PCs combined? That's utter BS.

Depends on the cable box really, DVR's have a replacement value of arround $500 each, an EMTA is $300-$600 (depends on the model). I'm assuming we are talking about 4-5 boxes and a modem, which could well be around the amount he was billed. There may also be cable cards in some of his boxes that are billed separately, but they would not be near the cost. Also despite the 5-6 years he owned them cable technology doesn't change that rapidly, so a standard 2way set top box from back in 2000-2002 may still be refurbished and used and may still be a well functioning box. Electronics values depreciate based on reduced function (or continued ability to do what is needed in the current cable television market), and cable boxes don't tend to lose function (as long as they are not 1990's analog equipment), thus they don't tend to lose value.

That's fucking bullshit. For $500 I can build a top of the line PC, how in the fuck is a box with a hard drive in it that much money? That doesn't make any sense...is it made out of gold!?

>> ^arekin:

>> ^Yogi:
I'm sorry but what HIGH Amazing Technology is in a Cable Box that makes it cost more than my last 3 top of the line PCs combined? That's utter BS.

Depends on the cable box really, DVR's have a replacement value of arround $500 each, an EMTA is $300-$600 (depends on the model). I'm assuming we are talking about 4-5 boxes and a modem, which could well be around the amount he was billed. There may also be cable cards in some of his boxes that are billed separately, but they would not be near the cost. Also despite the 5-6 years he owned them cable technology doesn't change that rapidly, so a standard 2way set top box from back in 2000-2002 may still be refurbished and used and may still be a well functioning box. Electronics values depreciate based on reduced function (or continued ability to do what is needed in the current cable television market), and cable boxes don't tend to lose function (as long as they are not 1990's analog equipment), thus they don't tend to lose value.


That's fucking bullshit. For $500 I can build a top of the line PC, how in the fuck is a box with a hard drive in it that much money? That doesn't make any sense...is it made out of gold!?

>> ^Yogi:

I'm sorry but what HIGH Amazing Technology is in a Cable Box that makes it cost more than my last 3 top of the line PCs combined? That's utter BS.


Depends on the cable box really, DVR's have a replacement value of arround $500 each, an EMTA is $300-$600 (depends on the model). I'm assuming we are talking about 4-5 boxes and a modem, which could well be around the amount he was billed. There may also be cable cards in some of his boxes that are billed separately, but they would not be near the cost. Also despite the 5-6 years he owned them cable technology doesn't change that rapidly, so a standard 2way set top box from back in 2000-2002 may still be refurbished and used and may still be a well functioning box. Electronics values depreciate based on reduced function (or continued ability to do what is needed in the current cable television market), and cable boxes don't tend to lose function (as long as they are not 1990's analog equipment), thus they don't tend to lose value.

Why '80s' when it says 'RECORDED IN 1990' at the beginning?

I don't understand why so many people are terrified of guns. They simply aren't scary. Up until the early 1900's, almost every family living in the US had a gun in the house. The United States wouldn't even exist if the colonials hadn't hidden and stockpiled their gun from the British as that was the first thing the British did when moving into a new town.....confiscating the guns. This emasculated the men, most volunteer "soldiers", and made revolt much less likely and population control much more manageable.

The 2nd amendment was created not for hunting or for sport, but for the civil defense of our citizens against tyranny and control. The authors of the constitution remembered how hard it was having weapons removed by government control and wanted to have measure in place to allow citizens to legally carry arms to defend themselves against similar actions in the future. It is a very empowering right.

In 2008, there were 75 deaths by firearm of children aged 1-15, 24 of which were actually suicides that were included in that gun death total. By contrast, 1,543 children of that same age group were killed in moving vehicle accidents and 735 by drowning. Therefore, we should be SIGNIFICANTLY more afraid of cars and pools than of guns by a wide margin, yet we don't have people calling the police because some kids are in a swimming pool or riding in a car.

Every male in Switzerland has a government issued semi-auto rifle. Literally every one (420,000+), yet they have some of the lowest crime rates in the entire world.

"Police statistics for the year 2006 records 34 killings or attempted killings involving firearms, compared to 69 cases involving bladed weapons and 16 cases of unarmed assault. Cases of assault resulting in bodily harm numbered 89 (firearms) and 526 (bladed weapons). As of 2007, Switzerland had a population of about 7,600,000. This would put the rate of killings or attempted killings with firearms at about one for every quarter million residents yearly. This represents a decline of aggravated assaults involving firearms since the early 1990s. The majority of gun crimes involving domestic violence are perpetrated with army ordnance weapons, while the majority of gun crime outside the domestic sphere involves illegally held firearms." - Wikipedia (of course)

My point is that guns are not inherently dangerous, significantly less in fact than a car or water statistically speaking. Having an armed society is a very good thing. Fearing people with guns only gives the gun power that it wouldn't have otherwise. Yes, there are shitty people out there doing bad things with guns, but I am more afraid of the distracted soccer mom in her minivan talking on the phone while beating her kids in the backseat while jugging a Starbucks latte driving 10 MPH over the limit (which I see all the time) than anyone carrying a gun. A good percentage of armed robberies aren't even committed with real guns, but the power that people without solid gun knowledge gives those guns, even fake, is what makes them dangerous.

Also, just an FYI, there are over 270,000,000 guns held by private citizens in this country yet 14,000 murders were committed by guns in 2010, and gun crime is down 11% since that time. That is a very low number of firearm murders considering how many guns are actually out there.

I am climbing off my soapbox now.