[Beowulf] Sidebar: Vista Rant

[Brian D. Ropers-Huilman]

On 7/18/07, Joe Landman <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:
> Jim Lux wrote:
> > Here's the breakdown... hours per person per year
> > for year 2004
> > Filmed Entertainment:
> > Cable and Satellite TV  1010
>
> Whoa... 1010 hours?
>
> Thats 11.5% of a day, every day, watching cable tv ...  3 hours.

My family didn't qualify for a health study here at the University
because (and this is serious) we didn't watch more than 20 hours of
television in a week. Part of their study was to determine the effects
of cutting in half the amount of TV watched. They had data that
indicated the average American family watched 20 hours per week, which
is close to this 3 hours (but for a family, not an individual).

For those interested, my family "views" our television around 5-8
hours total (for all four of us) in a week (this includes broadcast
T.V. [we don't have cable] or rented movies [VHS or DVD]). This is
accounting for a movie once a week for the kids and one for my partner
and I plus some random half hour shows for the kids and the occasional
NOVA on PBS.

-- 
Brian D. Ropers-Huilman, Director
Systems Administration and Technical Operations
Minnesota Supercomputing Institute                 <bropers at msi.umn.edu>
599 Walter Library                                   +1 612-626-5948 (V)
117 Pleasant Street S.E.                             +1 612-624-8861 (F)
University of Minnesota                               Twin Cities Campus
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0255                       http://www.msi.umn.edu/