I’m going to add these to the TV Tab up top, but just thought I’d put a few notes here about them so folks would know what I’ve found lately.
First off, PBS Public Broadcasting Service. Their site asks you to confirm their guess as to your ‘local station’. I think since it depends on nagging folks for ‘donations’ and needs to know who PBS ought to share with at the station level. For me, I live in an area where my satellite feed has at least 4 “local” PBS affiliates AND I can get PBS directly (IFF I pay extra…) At any rate, it also lets you enter a zip code to search for your ‘local’ station, so you can pick anyone anywhere if you like. I let it default to the San Francisco giant one for now (since I’m not donating anything at the moment it doesn’t really matter, but they do show you that station’s schedule). I may swap it to a Florida station later when I’m on the other coast (or, heck, pick some place in Alaska and give them a few nickles ;-) As I use several browsers on several systems, I’ll likely choose a different “local station” for each one.
In addition to news programs, they seem to have many other shows up. The Nightly News was from one day before… so they were talking about the ‘coming’ Presidential Debate… Unclear on the concept of “news” and confusing it with “history” it would seem… Still, lets you pick up the Overly Constrained Polite Left POV.
When you chose the “video” tab up top, you go to this page:
Which presently has a scrolling banner of photos of the shows available at the top, with left and right arrows at each edge to rotate it faster… Scrolling down the page gives a Netflix like roster of dozens of shows to watch. It looks like just individual recent episodes, not whole series like Netflix. At the moment I’m watching this short about “Is an Ice Age coming?”
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365862030/
I’m putting this link in partly just to see how long individual shows stay available… so I’ll check the link from time to time. It seems to be doing an OK job of explaining Ice Ages and things like obliquity and sediment cores. At the end, it does put in the obligatory genuflect to Global Warming…
Also up is DW Deutsche Welle. It had occasional pauses in the feed earlier on the tablet, but is now smooth on the ChromeBox, but that might just be my particular network behaviour or time of day. For them, you get to ‘click around’ to find the live feed and hope it is something you want. They also let you do the hunt and peck through recorded things. OK, first off, you click on the “TV” tab up top (that is faded out as you land on a different tab by default). That gives this odd looking URL at the moment. Now my normal behaviour when given odd looking formula URLs is to try shortening them to see if it still works (i.e. is the number tagging me). This one didn’t work, so we’ll see if it changed over time:
http://www.dw.com/en/tv/s-1452
There’s a language selector at the top where you can choose German, English, Spanish, or a squiggle that I think says Arabic in Arabic… This page also has that sideways scrolling banner approach to show selection and auto-changes the displayed picture, so may be ‘chatty’ if left open in a browser. Scrolling down also gives many more shows than just news that you can choose to watch.
In Conclusion
I’ve also found that I really like France24 English news. They cover a lot of real news from Europe not to be found on US news outlets. Things like a police ‘demonstration’ while in uniform in a few cities to protest a group of malcontents who firebombed a police car and burned a couple of officers very badly. Causing a bit of a stir as it is not allowed to ‘protest’ in uniform, yet they did. I’ll be putting up some stories based on news I saw there. (Such as one about Egypt destabilizing again on inflation and food issues…)
DW News is a bit harder to work out. It isn’t just “click and let run” in quite the same way as France24 (where you just hit the ‘news’ tab and play it). I found a ‘story’ headed ‘news’ and clicked it and got this long URL:
http://www.dw.com/en/media-center/all-media-content/s-100826?type=18&programs=262267
Which does seem to give a nice big panel of news stories I can pick through. Yet what I really want is not an ongoing ‘click relationship’ with my tablet. When doing things like canning soup in the kitchen, a ‘click’ requires stopping work, washing and DRYING hands (water drops seem to confuse the capacitive touch surface) fooling around with the tablet, then going back to work… What I really want is the “Value Added” by the Editor and Director. A “turn it on and let it run” news program for an hour to occupy the mind while the hands are dirty in the food prep or dishes… Maybe I’ll find it yet… There is a “Live TV” heading on the left of that page that claims to be live TV:
http://www.dw.com/en/media-center/live-tv/s-100825
Yet when you click that, you get to right-click to make Flash or some such run, and THEN click the ‘watch live TV’ statement in the lower right to make it actually go… it seems to be live “news” though, even though several segments are “happy talk” (like one about some food making machine for the kitchen) or sports-soap-opera about who likes / doesn’t like / is pissed at whom in soccer… Oh, and it seems to be repeating in a loop the same stories I saw a couple of hours ago, so maybe “canned show live on tape”?…
In any case, I’ve now got a very good selection of online news programs to watch, from all around the globe, though the things you need to click are a bit variable per site, and not all browsers and systems work with all sites.
Oh, and Sky News has again decided they don’t like my country. Seems they have flaky geolocation blocking, as my IP and location have not changed and we’ve oscillated a couple of times now. Oh Well! VPN when you must, or just watch France24 instead ;-)
Musings from the Chiefio 
I am really getting to like France24. Finally a French thing I can be proud of that does not have to do with food! ;-)
Phil, Don’t forget the caves in France.
We (two English Blokes and I) added 33 meters to the world depth record in ~1975 when I was there. We found the new entrance but an American Glory Hound dashed ahead to made sure HE made the connection and claimed the record on subsequent trips to survey the new find. He was not at all liked by either the Americans or the English who were patiently surveying the new cave as they approached the connection.
The area was absolutely wonderful. I could stand on a mountain ridge and see Spain.
Also don’t forget the Louvre Museum, the world’s largest museum in Paris, France.
I am really really worried it will be bombed by the feral barbarians let loose on France and irreplacable history and Art will be lost. The muslems have a long history of burning anything Not muslem.
The Annihilation of Civilizations
BILL WARNER WHY ISLAM DESTROYS HISTORY OF OTHER CULTURES
Here Are the Ancient Sites ISIS Has Damaged and Destroyed
These are the savages that Hillary wants to import into our country.
Syrian ambassador to India says that over 20% of refugees to Europe may have links to the Islamic State
The Wikileaks emails shows that Hillary KNOWS there is no way to vet the 550% increase of refugees she wants but to please her Islamic/Globaist masters she will bring them in any way. She will also completely opening the US boarders to the Drug Cabals running many of the countries south of us.
Expanding on foreign sources of news, Kiosko.net presents a wide selection of front pages from around the world.
Some examples below.
Trump TV under consideration.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/17/trump-son-in-law-holds-talks-over-post-election-tv-network.html
@Gail – yea, but the French did not really create much that is in the Louvre, or the cave. French24 is, while not unique, refreshingly informative.
@Gail interesting article on possible Trump TV. Time Warner is in Discussions to merge with AT&T. With the Shift of Fox News, hard left, there is a great demand for the right wing view point. As soon as the leftists took over Radio there was a great demand for talk radio as the rightist view drove the liberals from the air. The Social Progressives think that they are in the majority because they are organised, LOUD and pushy. Real people are none of these, but do outnumber the leftists 2 to 1. The silent majority just need one of their own to speak for them…pg
Aside from the internet, consider FREE broadcast TV if one is in a major metropolitan market. Visit:
http://www.gomohu.com
Dan Kurt
For android
https://www.mobdro.com/index
For others
http://mobdrodownloadapp.com/
Free 7 day trial (great for BBC channels including iPlayer)
https://mediahint.com/
@Chiefio,
Thanks for that link to ““Is an Ice Age coming?””
As you noted it was an excellent discussion of ice cores and Milankovic cycles but it went off the rails when it introduced David Archer’s loony notion that current concentrations of CO2 are capable of postponing the next glaciation indefinitely:
Click to access archer.2005.trigger.pdf
There are examples of ice ages occurring when CO2 concentrations were ten times higher than today:
http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html
Seems that many commercial providers also have Youtube Channels. For those I sampled in the dead of night, last night, they were in the low hundreds to couple of thousands of viewers at one time (for the ‘live’ feeds) so not exactly a threat to their commercial cable access via fees. Others are State Sponsored so don’t really care about such things. In any case, I’ve added a YouTube Channels heading to the TV tab and populated it with a few more:
BBC Not Live: https://www.youtube.com/user/bbcnews
DW News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNosnzCaS4I
Fox (Not live): https://www.youtube.com/user/FoxNewsChannel/
(there was a live Fox feed, but it evaporated. Perhaps it was clandestine? Who knows…)
France24: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHI7hP90ze0
Newsmax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INDQmzbHhI8
RT – Russia Today (not live): https://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday
SKY News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60wDzZt8yg
As I identify more interesting channels, direct or Youtube or both, I’ll add them as appropriate.
@Gail:
You’ve had some interesting adventures!
I once went poking about underground… but I’m not sure the statute of limitations has run out yet so no story at this time ;-)
@G.C.:
Your Welcome!
@LG:
Thanks! More to explore and add to the TV Tab. ( It makes it real easy to just click a link to ‘change the channel’… which is why I’m building that list. Don’t need to keep moving bookmarks around that way ;-)
@Dan Kurt:
I’ll look into it… In California at least, with the move to ‘Digital TV’, whole suburbs took down their giant antennas… and didn’t realize that Digital TV runs on the Same Frequencies… so those antennas were great for Digital… Sigh. The dinky antennas are not as good as those old large ones, just that the digital method lets it work on a weaker signal… I kept my TV antenna, so all I need now is a Digital Tuner and a new downlead (as the old one has weathered out…)
@PhilJourdan:
There’s lots of French things not having to do with food of which one can be proud! The American Revolution, for example, funded by France. And, of course, that most important cultural influence on the entire world (outside of Islamic Beaches)… from the wiki:
Who, but the French, would have swimwear designed by an Engineer! (All that structural training in how to hold up a ‘structure’ with the minimum of load elements finally paying off for the rest of us!)
Then, of course, Chemistry as just one example has a history littered with French Names I had to learn in High School. Just one of dozens:
There’s a rather large body of Things French we live by and use every single day… (especially a nice Bordeaux paired with a decent Camembert and baguette… and a beach towel… and…)
Oh, and don’t forget that canning was a French invention. Every Single Can of preserved food on the planet is thanks to the French. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning
How many millions of lives have been saved by the ability to preserve food via canning… how much faster the expansion of civilization once freed from the annual cycle of grubbing for food… Just look at the shelves of every grocery store and ask how many $Billions or €Billions each year are made from that one French invention… Oh, and do note it was a Frenchman who figured out why it worked, and in the process changed all of food science and medicine and saved millions more lives…
Every person getting a vaccination or with a carton of milk in the fridge or being saved from rabies owes it all to the French.
For those thinking “But that’s all old, the French have done just what lately?” I’d only point out they are the only country that has been able to make a national sized nuclear power fleet and run it with very low count of problems and economically, and of course they have led Europe into space…
From their Space Port in the French “departement” of Guiana… (Yes, despite being in South America, it is legally a part of France…) Everything European that goes to space, does so because of the French.
That’s all I can think of just ‘off the top’, but there’s a whole lot more… But hey, if The Modern Libertarian Republic, curing disease, building the foundations of science, making the nuclear economy work, going to space regularly and reliably, and totally changing for the better medicine and food preservation while saving countless millions of lives and keeping the world immensely happy with the best wines in the world, best enjoyed on a beach in French swimwear isn’t enough for you… just remember what one language teacher said: “English is just German after the French got through with it”… So you owe the English language to The French as well… (along with much of the British Legal System that America semi-adopted) so pretty much all English literature and much of global law has a French root as well…
Oh, what the heck, one more…
There’s a reason I learned French to the point where the next class was French Lit. It is just a very functional AND aesthetically pleasing language. In comparison, other languages I’ve learned or explored are just not not… ‘complete’… Some are very functional and easy to learn, others can be very pretty in use, English lets you do anything relatively short and terse while being either very accurate or vague to the desired degree. But most of them fail on the aesthetics of the language… some on the function…
Russian has ONE past tense. My God how that makes ordering things in the past difficult. Many languages lack a ‘progressive’ tense. How do you give that sense of motion through time without lumpy circumlocutions? German lost some of the original Indo-European grammar when it collided with another and merged (most likely Phoenician along the coast), as a result, it must overload ‘der de das’ with too many functions and makes phrases into words – it is a finely tuned pidgin… English is a bastard mix of French, German, and just about anything else that wandered by. Simpler (it, too, is a pidgin, but grown up…) and highly functional, but the soul is dead compared to French… Italian is in some ways just Latin in the ablative case (so grammatically a bit broken) likely as a result of so many non-Latin speakers moving to the core of the Roman Empire. Japanese has great handling for apologetics and guilt, but is poor in other grammar and has the most complicated ‘spelling’ and writing system I’ve ever tried to learn. The Hamitic / Semitic languages all lack vowel markings and are a PITA to read – some have occasional scripts with vowel markings, but not universally used (and Arabic has dialects where the same vowel means different things…) It wouldn’t be a big problem were it not for the fact that the vowel variation changes what word it is… The “three consonants” of most words gives the family (like ‘things doing with writing’) but the vowels tell you magazine vs book vs bookstore vs library vs… Spanish is “Latin mixed with Celtic after the Germans and Arabs got through with it”… hard and angry in sound, but with a functional grammar (and 10,000 gender inflections to memorize…). I’ve looked at a couple of dozen more. The conclusion:
Of all of the European (and most of the Asian) languages, I’d rather speak French.
The only fault I find in it is that it depends on subtle sounds for understanding and my hearing has degraded to where I can’t understand it from the TV. Too many sibilants that I no longer hear well. Written is fine, but the spoken form is now too muddied for me to properly error correct it. (For English, I do a lot of automatic ECC on sounds and it’s mostly fine, but that’s with a LOT of processing going on to reconstruct the original… I don’t notice it, but I know it happens when it fails…) The only language I’d rank higher would be Latin, but I’ve yet to get good at it. I can see the advantages of it, though. It is possible that Greek might beat even Latin, and my brief look at it made that case, but as there are at least 3 major eras of Greek and they are not cleanly mutually intelligible, I settled on Latin as more standard (though even it has change over time issues…) More on old languages here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/the-trouble-with-old-languages/
In many ways, French is a mix of old Gaulish (that some authorities say was nearly mutually intelligible with old Latin) and Latin, then with a grammar simplification to the present (loss of case inflection). A Pan-European base, with an ancient root in old cultures. Polished for thousands of years. Oh, and with the Frankish (Germanic) influence as well. IMHO that shows up in the use of auxiliary verbs… A wonderfully functional and beautiful fusion of three main language roots in Europe. Celtic, Latin, and German. A real “Linqua Franca” … think about it… So one might also say that the French Language itself is one of the great achievements of The French. I would. (then you get to layer on all the things written in French…)
So please don’t despair, just ‘dig here’ a little bit on the history of The French…
The missing word is “recent”. I am well aware of their contributions in the past. It is just recent contributions that are lacking.
Didn’t you notice the point about France as a nuclear and aerospace hub?
That is merely taking what others have done. We do not celebrate Amerigo Vespucci day, even though he was first to recognize this was a new continent. Because he was not the “discoverer” (and we can debate Columbus was at another time).
Or if the 1970s are too old, here’s a recent French accomplishment:
;-)
Uncle! I concede the point to you! Just leave me alone to soak this one in. :-)
Oh my! There’s a wiki for that!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_inventions_and_discoveries
Chopping to only recent things (where recent is my opinion…)
These aren’t particularly new, but I find them interesting:
I can’t imagine modern life without ball bearing and staplers, nor policing without criminology…
At any rate, hopefully you can find something in that list to satisfy the dual set of ‘recent’ and an ‘accomplishment’ of some merit…
I found having a passing acquaintance of French, German and of course English quite useful when doing lit searches in chemistry and while wandering around Europe. French was even useful in Mexico when no one spoke Spanish and we were 3 days mule packing from the nearest road.
(With 14 guys along why did I end up as translator? I am really rotten at languages having no ‘ear’ at all..)
@Gail:
In my experience, folks learning things, even languages they may pronouce badly, has more to do with curiousity and willingness to risk for adventure than to any innate skill at the thing… I learned to ice skate and rollerblade (very badly) just so I could skate around the block with the kid (who went on to play hockey, roller and ice, and leave me in the dirt…).
BTW, I must thank you for pushing me to look at Right Side TV for Trump rallies. Fox started to show some of the N.H. one, then cut to talking head announcer… I grabbed the tablet and http://rsbn.tv and quickly picked up where they left off…
Nice, this cord cutting and “alternative” tv.
I’ve found it very convenient to move the tablet from room to room as I do things, unlike the TV where I get anchored to a chair or couch… no more listening to TV News from down the hall, while in my office…
I was downloading an operating system (Berryboot Pi) while watching the Trump rally. RSBN stayed fine while the OS download slowed from 3.0 MBit/ sec to 2.0 (as I would prefer). This means I have a bit of a tradeoff of I.T. work speed vs TV, but well inside acceptable limits.
Slowly but surely the Tablet is becoming my main entertainment and news station. The Chomebox sometimes in the office when not using the Pi (that needs the same monitor). And RSBN now getting more eyeball time than any news but Fox. (Though catching up… as today showed.)