🚀 go-pugleaf

In sci.electronics, johna@psdcae1.gvg.tek.com (John Abt) writes:

> The bottom line is this: The broadcast TV industry makes its
> money from commercials. If there were any reliable way of 
> defeating that process, you can rest assured that it would be
> fixed in rather short order.

> Actually, something that would prove more useful, especially
> given the upcomming presidential mud fest, is the bullshit filter.

> John Abt

Actually, now that all new TV sets will be closed-caption ready
and commercials are starting to be captioned, you should be able
to build a system that monitors the ASCII in the captions and
looks for keywords (such as tradenames) to eliminate commercials.
You could also eliminate "bullshit" by adding keywords relating
to what you define as such.  I wish I could search for keywords
relating to abortion and gun control and filter talk shows so
I wouldn't have to hear the same old arguments on those topics
rehashed for the nth time.

It will be interesting to see what the TV industry does to 
prevent this scheme from working.  They can't stop captioning the
commercials because then you would simply search for absense of
captioning.

BTW, I think this may be the reason that "electronic newspapers"
have never caught on, because you could filter out advertisements
with software.

Rick Karlquist
rkarlqu@scd.hp.com