Big Brother SuperPass - is it Worth It?

Over the past few summers, I have really been getting into Big Brother.  I didn't see the show until Season 11 and that summer it was about half over by the time I started watching it.  So this is only the second season I have watched it from beginning to end. Or 13 will end in a few weeks anyway.  For this season (13) I actually sprung for the live feeds (called "SuperPass").  You pay $14.99 per month for the privilege of watching the Big Brother House Guests 24 x 7 on 4 different cameras.

I only paid for one month because I wanted to see what it was like.  For most of that month, the $10 music credit was 'broken'. It wasn't until just a few days before my subscription lapsed that I was able to redeem my $10 music credit.  Now that almost made me want to keep the SuperPass.  But spending $15 per month to get $10 worth of music made no sense unless the Superpass offered some sort of other value.  Big Brother itself is very short term (only runs through mid September), so I had to look at what value other than BB it had and it was pretty sparse.  I could watch full episodes of 'Ochocinco' and 'Famous Food' neither of which has anything like the BB live feeds. In fact both of those shows appear on my "On Demand" choices in my cable.

So I could find no value in it after Big Brother ran out.  Was it worth it for the month?  Well yes it was. One thing though, it's a tremendous time eater. In the beginning it was strangely voyeuristic feeling. The houseguests know they're on camera and mics, so they act a certain way most of the time.  However, if you really want to get to know the house guests better, the live feeds are the best way to do it. You hear many different varieties of conversations that you'll never hear on the scaled down 1 hour TV presentations.  And you see an occasional "nip slip" and even a "peen slip" if you're into that. Yes Bendon's half erect peen showed in the shower cam once.  Why they had a camera in the shower, I can only shake my head and wonder.  Words are not censored out either so you hear everything; every F word, B words, C words, etc. Things that get BLEEP'd out (and the house guest's mouth gets pixeled out) on the broadcast show.

All in all I highly recommend the live feeds if you're a Big Brother fan.  Big Brother is the only reality show that I know that requires their contestants to stay inside a house for the entire run of the show. Other house based reality shows (Jersey Shore, Bad Girls Club, Real World) don't require that so live feeds would not work very well.  Other reality game shows like Survivor and Amazing Race are aired after they're finished and obviously live feeds wouldn't work there. So Big Brother is amazing in that regard and probably very profitable for CBS. If you are concerned about putting a credit card on something and not being able to cancel it, don't worry. I had no problem with that.  Although they did try to talk me out of canceling of course.

But the bottom line for me is that the Superpass was worth it, but I can't see much value in it after Big Brother ends.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify suspects in criminal investigations. Those identifications are wrong about a third of the time, a pile of studies suggest. In November, the Supreme Court will return to the question of what the Constitution has to say about the use of eyewitness evidence. The last time the court took a hard look at the question was in 1977. Since then, the scientific understanding of human memory has been transformed.

34 Years Later, Supreme Court Will Revisit Eyewitness IDs
This story really hit home for me. Just recently I was "misidentified" by the police. One day back in May, I was out for my usual walk after work along my usual route. When I reached a certain point I was greeting by a 'friendly' cop. Yes he really was friendly and he engaged me in conversation. I had a sinking feeling this was not a friendly conversation when he asked for my ID which I gladly handed over. He explained that I fit the 'general description' of a perv whom a lady nearby had complained of stalking her little girl. I was wearing a blue jacket and apparently this person was too and was in my age group. And this occurred in a place that was in the general area I had been walking from.

It took about 15 minutes for them to round up the woman to have a look at me from afar (they had her in a police car parked across the street and due to the tinted glass, I could not see in but she could see me). The officers were in communications with their radios and immediately told me I could go once she got a look at me and knew right away that I was not the perv stalking her daughter.

I was free to go, but was a very long 15 minutes for me. Seemed like hours and it was very upsetting. All kinds of things were going through my mind during that 15 minutes. I knew I was not who they were looking for; I could take comfort in that. But what if this perv looked very similar to me? Similar enough for a mistaken identification by the woman reporting it. I was alone and could not prove that I was not where this took place because it was in the close vicinity. What if they hauled me in based on this woman's identification? What if I had to spend the night in jail? What if what if....My fate rested in this woman's ability to properly identify the perv.

During the 15 minute ordeal I did learn a bit more about this perv by listening to the radio chatter on the police radio and also from a passer-by who also saw the guy. The perv in question sounds like a dirty homeless man; probably drunk and/or mentally ill. And very dirty with a full beard. I only had a goatee. So just like that, it was over. But it could have gone the other way too.

And that's why I took notice of this article when it appeared in the news. It really hit home and I hope the Supremes take a good hard look at eyewitness evidence and how it is used. Particularly with respect to identifying someone by looks and memory. It was a happy ending for me and I parted ways with the cops with smiles and good wishes. But for people who are arrested and even convicted based on a mistaken identification, I hope this is explored more.

PS: I couldn't help but think to myself that the cops frittered away a good 15 minutes on me -- 15 minutes that the real perv probably used to get away.

When Businesses Get Too Big For their Britches

Ordinarily, I like government to stay out of private business.  And they should to keep free enterprise working in our country. But what about when a company gets too big?  For more than 100 years the government has been stepping in on certain industries when the companies get too big and now it's AT&T turn - again.

This is not the first time AT&T has had anti-trust trouble and probably won't be the last.  But this time I believe the Government is acting along with the will of the court of public opinion.  Does anyone like AT&T other than AT&T stockholders?  I had their service for about 1 year when I bought one of those pre-paid cell phones.  At the time, AT&T had the best prepaid phone choices. That has of course changed.  During that year or so, I noticed just what a lousy job they did of providing any kind of customer service.  Even the most basic things like navigating their web site to get to your account. You had to type in your phone number and pass code twice on two different screens!  How annoying is that?  And every time I tried to call AT&T customer support, English was the second language of the person I was speaking to.  How annoying was that?

Well eventually I handed off that cell phone to someone else who needed a phone and he since dumped it in favor of a TracFone. So the main reason AT&T is successful is their relationship with Apple.  And the reason this take-over rubbed so many people the wrong way, is that T-Mobile is a good company with a good customer service experience.  I don't use either one (I have Verizon now) but it's good to see them throwing water on this deal.

Justice Department sues to block AT&T takeover of T-Mobile