{"id":215,"date":"2004-12-20T06:39:53","date_gmt":"2004-12-20T11:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=215"},"modified":"2004-12-20T07:00:53","modified_gmt":"2004-12-20T12:00:53","slug":"censorship-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"Censorship DENIED. Gadget review? DENIED."},"content":{"rendered":"

Satellite radio will not be censored<\/a> in the same heavy handed manner as traditional broadcast radio. Thank God for that.<\/p>\n

The threat came when a killjoy in the form of a traditional radio broadcaster decided that if they (being publicly available for free) were subject to decency standards, then satellite radio (which is not<\/em> publicly available, and must be subscribed to by consenting adults with credit cards) should be subject to the same standards. A petition was filed to that effect<\/a>, but the FCC thankfully disagreed.<\/p>\n

That said, I must say that if you’re still looking for a gift to get a tech-gadget-enamored friend or relative, I would recommend AGAINST getting satellite radio as a gift this late in the game. The reason being that satellite providers are evidently swamped with new radio activation requests, and what should normally take 10 minutes or so to get a newly opened radio working is currently taking hours, possibly days due to a massive backlog. If you’re an audiophile who is tired of listening to the crap on FM, then satellite IS for you… but you might want to wait until after New Year’s Eve, to save yourself some frustration. Oh, and if you’ve chosen XM as your provider and are activating your radio on new Year’s Eve, use promo code NEWSPRFA4<\/strong> to get free activation and waive that initial startup fee. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

As a sidenote: this article was supposed<\/em> to be a last-minute-gift review of the XM MyFi<\/a>, but although I have the hardware in-hand, I can’t review it because despite several hours of waiting, the much-needed satellite “hit<\/a>” to activate the radio and enable it to receive content has not been broadcast yet.<\/p>\n

What I will say is that the MyFi shows promise, with lots of nice enticing buttons and features that I’d love to play with, if only I could get past this confounded screen that thwarts all my efforts…<\/p>\n

\"activate\"<\/p>\n

I’m trying, little enticing silver-buttony-thing, I’m trying…<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong> 13 hours after the “hit” was overdue (why do I sound like a heroin addict?), a call was placed to XM customer care and it was determined that the friendly rep who handled the activation last time was also clueless, and didn’t set the account up properly. I was assured the “fix” was in (there’s that heroin addict talking again), and sent on my merry way.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, 5 minutes later the radio started showing signs of life… but only on half of the channels one is supposed to get. Another call to XM, and more apologies, as the configuration was STILL not right. Another “hit,” I am assured, is forthcoming.<\/p>\n

Gotta love seasonal untrained hired help. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The petition requesting that the FCC regulate decency standards on satellite radio is struck down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}