1. Comment #355816 by Gnuatheist on March 26, 2009 at 9:44 am

OK, I plead ignorance.

Hulu'

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2. Comment #355822 by mcornwell on March 26, 2009 at 9:46 am

Hulu is a free video streaming site. Also lots of TV shows and a few movies with minimal advertising. I watched the first few again and it's as good now as it was a little more than 28 years ago. It also has current comments by Ann Druyan and some updates by Carl Sagan where some of the science knowledge has been updated.

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3. Comment #355827 by Gnuatheist on March 26, 2009 at 9:48 am

Someone tell me why my question marks appear as apostrophes on these threads.

(My previous comment was a question.) I'll test it again here. When I type it in the box, it's a question mark. When it appears in the thread it's an apostrophe.

Test -----> '

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

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4. Comment #355832 by Gnuatheist on March 26, 2009 at 9:51 am

Right, third comment in a row... this one more salient. I loved every minute of Cosmos. I watched it with my Dad as it originally aired.

I'm told that Ann Druyan was behind an update of the program with some improved graphics and such. Does anyone know if that is true' I wonder if the Hulu version (and I'll find out what Hulu is) is the updated one, assuming it exists.

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5. Comment #355834 by Jack Rawlinson on March 26, 2009 at 9:52 am

Well damn. It's things like this that add to my already huge list of reasons why I wish I still lived in NYC.

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6. Comment #355835 by Gnuatheist on March 26, 2009 at 9:52 am

mcornwell,

Just saw your response. Thanks!

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7. Comment #355847 by heafnerj on March 26, 2009 at 9:56 am

The entire series is also available from the iTunes Store for $25.87, a bargain. I bought an iPod nano specifically for carrying Cosmos around! Believe it or not, I never saw the original series when it aired on PBS. The series for sale now is the revised one with new graphics (e.g. Hubble images). If anyone knows where I can get a copy of the series as it originally aired, I'd appreciate knowing.

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8. Comment #355856 by glenister_m on March 26, 2009 at 10:04 am

I'm a high school science teacher. I have the series on video, and often show it (and other science videos) in my classroom at lunchtimes. Unfortunately there just isn't time to show a series like Cosmos during class time, and since most would not have heard of it, it gives them some exposure to what is out there.

On a side note, you have to be very careful what "science" shows you watch in North America. Usually PBS (Nova) and the Discovery channel have some good programs, Unfortunately TLC (The Learning Channel...with some irony) often shows sensationalized and unbalanced "documentaries". One of the more infamous was about the Shroud of Turin, in which they had 5 or 6 "experts" explain why the shroud had to be authentic, followed by 1 scientist who had a few seconds to argue that it was a fake. I still find it amusing that I saw the Shroud at the British Museum when they had a special exhibit on fakes, and a couple of years later it was exhibited in Italy to thousands of believers... We won't discuss the FOX network aside from saying that the 'Did we land on the moon?' is actually good to teach critical thinking when you point out all the logical and scientific mistakes they make to your class...

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9. Comment #355860 by admin on March 26, 2009 at 10:06 am

Gnuatheist, what country are you in (what keyboard), and what operating system you're using? As you can see, this only seems to affect a few people. - Josh

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10. Comment #355887 by rod-the-farmer on March 26, 2009 at 10:23 am

Doesn't work in Canada either. Josh, the question mark business MAY be related to how people enter their comments. I think I deciphered that some do it in a separate word processor tool, to make use of the spell check etc. This rather than directly in the comment panel at the bottom. Once you use a WP tool, the punctuation goes berserk.

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11. Comment #355900 by NewEnglandBob on March 26, 2009 at 10:32 am

?

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12. Comment #355906 by Casa Addams on March 26, 2009 at 10:36 am

May I suggest the Hotspot Shield Internet Security Add-on? It has the benefit of hiding your IP address so hulu and such can't spot your location. It’s free. I tried it a couple of months ago and it worked well here in Germany with hulu... Hope it helps. (I don't think this can be considerate as illegal...).

Update: Yup... It works!

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13. Comment #355975 by rod-the-farmer on March 26, 2009 at 11:25 am

Thanks, Casa Addams it now works for me too.

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14. Comment #355992 by The Architect on March 26, 2009 at 11:37 am

If you haven't seen this series yet, please see it as soon as humanly possible. This series will change the way you think.

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15. Comment #356012 by Lucas on March 26, 2009 at 12:01 pm

I noticed this some time ago and watched a few. Made me feel like a little kid again and I realized that at some point Carl Sagan and Mr. Rogers merged in my young mind.

As a guy without a TV but with highspeed internet, I'm a big fan of Hulu, even if most of what is there is unwatchably bad. IMDb links right to it.

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16. Comment #356102 by DaysOfClark on March 26, 2009 at 1:38 pm

1 For HotSpot Shield

How exciting!

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17. Comment #356141 by aquilacane on March 26, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Love that HotSpot Shield, never new of it until now. Good one!

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18. Comment #356145 by aquilacane on March 26, 2009 at 2:26 pm

Ah... the ads have started, now I get it. Can I get Ad shield to get rid of my HotSpot Shield ads? Or is that the price you pay for privacy? Look who's talking, an ad man. My own bloody fault. I quit. Oh that's right, I've already been fired.

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19. Comment #356281 by Alternative Carpark on March 26, 2009 at 5:34 pm

Having had fond memories of staying up late to watch this with my dad, way back when, I didn't hesitate to purchase the DVD set.

Though some parts inevitably look a little dated, it is still essential viewing.
One thing that struck me in particular, watching it again as an adult, was that Cosmos is a fantastic lesson in the history of science.

Carl Sagan was such a charismatic teacher with, a unique ability to communicate science to the masses. He also showed that he was great with children too.

All the time I was watching I was thinking to myself "if only he were alive today, what a great asset he would be in our fight against irrationality."

If ever my nose gets cut off in a fencing accident, I want to get a gold nose like Tycho Brahe.

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20. Comment #356298 by steve02169 on March 26, 2009 at 6:09 pm

Wow, I'm very happy about this. Cosmos is one of my favorite books and hulu is my favorite way to stream video. I hope I don't try to watch it all tonight...Ignore my question mark?

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21. Comment #356308 by itopal63 on March 26, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Another extremely good TV series on the History of Science and thought in Science is James Burke's Connections.

Some of it might be on youtube?

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22. Comment #356313 by Guel on March 26, 2009 at 6:52 pm

12. Comment #355906 by Casa Addams


Holy Crap. I have access...

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23. Comment #356321 by JFHalsey on March 26, 2009 at 7:14 pm

This is exceedingly awesome. I've posted it to my Facebook and I've been telling everybody: GO WATCH THIS!

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24. Comment #356345 by babel76 on March 26, 2009 at 8:16 pm

The HotSpot shield doesn't seem to be working for me. As soon as I turn it on, the connection drops. Any ideas?

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25. Comment #356346 by TheLordHumungus on March 26, 2009 at 8:18 pm

Amazing news! I really love this site to report this stuff to us. I literally go to sleep to Cosmos, usually episodes 9 and 10, every night. Now I can have them all nicely stored on one website. RIP Carl.

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26. Comment #356350 by Guel on March 26, 2009 at 8:47 pm

24. Comment #356345 by babel76

It worked for me by i noticed my connection is a little slower. Are you using wireless?

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27. Comment #356371 by meatlike product on March 26, 2009 at 9:34 pm

I really hope hulu isn't banned at work...

I know some of the series is on youtube but I'm not sure how much.

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28. Comment #356373 by RightWingAtheist on March 26, 2009 at 9:35 pm

1. Hulu is the primary reason why I canceled my cable TV service. I still need to use "other" sources sometimes, but Hulu is the future.

2. Question marks like this£ For some reason this comment board system is not designed for human input. Some characters need a fancy HTML code. See the website below. "?" can be entered as "&-#-63-;" (without hyphens or quotes).

http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm

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29. Comment #356375 by RightWingAtheist on March 26, 2009 at 9:40 pm

Note: I am just using Internet Explorer. I think it happens with Google Chrome as well. Also, posting URLs doesn't work well either (it tries, and fails, to converts URLs to links on its own), even if I manually use href tags.

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30. Comment #356389 by Rodger T on March 26, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Hotspot Shield rocks......thanks for that Casa .


Cheers.

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31. Comment #356401 by Bacchus on March 26, 2009 at 11:10 pm

Comment #356308 by itopal63

Another extremely good TV series on the History of Science and thought in Science is James Burke's Connections.

Ah, yes! I remember that series. It must have been in the early 80s when it was shown in the UK. It showed how some ideas or inventions developed from previous ones.

A type of evolution I suppose.

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32. Comment #356407 by Eshto on March 26, 2009 at 11:51 pm

Gnuatheist you need to update your avatar, PS2 is so three years ago.

And thank you so much for pointing this out, I'm already addicted to Hulu, and now I'll have something informative to watch (other than House which is the best show ever).

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33. Comment #356429 by elbuho on March 27, 2009 at 1:13 am

Thanks for the tip on Hotspot Shield, but the ads are a nightmare - they are even getting past Adblock Plus. Anyone know how to stop them? (Using Firefox)

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34. Comment #356444 by Zap Brannigan on March 27, 2009 at 1:56 am

Sadly Hotspot Shield does not seem to work on 64-bit systems. Damn you, Vista!

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35. Comment #356458 by elbuho on March 27, 2009 at 2:16 am

I've managed to get NoScript to block the huge pop-ups and the banners, although the white banner space is still appearing at the top of each page. Any ideas?

How does anyone still think stuffing freeware with adware and popups is a viable proposition in 2009??? Argh!

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36. Comment #356460 by Ramases on March 27, 2009 at 2:18 am

Hotspot does not work for me either.

But what is worse, it somehow did an awful thing to me while I was installing it.

Without my permission it installed that piece of spyware crap, the Google Toolbar (for Firefox)!

I have always done all I can to avoid that piece of rubbish and now I seem to be stuck with it. I uninstalled Firefox and installed it again, thinking that would get rid of it, but when I opened the newly installed version it was still there!

How can that have happened?

Anyone know how I can get rid of that piece of Google spyware garbage?

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37. Comment #356509 by mixmastergaz on March 27, 2009 at 4:15 am

(Periodic off-topic moan)

Gnuatheist:

You're not the only one afflicted with the question mark>transubstantiation>apostrophe problem.

I've been moaning about this for a while but there appears to be no urgency on the part of the moderators to fix this particular bug.

Moderators, if you're reading this, is anyone actually trying to repair this problem?

Edit: Aha! I see that you have in my case. About time too!

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38. Comment #356554 by Drool on March 27, 2009 at 6:17 am

@Ramases - Try Firefox > Tools menu > Add-ons.

Edit: Re the question mark problem - if using Firefox, try View menu > Character Encoding > Auto-Detect > select Universal. See if that helps.

? < (test)

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39. Comment #356561 by InfuriatedSciTeacher on March 27, 2009 at 6:36 am

Gnuatheist and others> If you're running IE on Windows, all you need to do to have ? work is select Western European (windows) in encoding, under the view menu.

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40. Comment #356584 by OfHuman on March 27, 2009 at 7:45 am

"The Universe" on the history channel, some of the best TV I've ever seen. I Can't comment on "Cosmos" except to say that Carl Sagan is one of my heroes. Demon Haunted World and Pale Blue Dot are genius.

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41. Comment #356657 by Gnuatheist on March 27, 2009 at 10:13 am

Testing 1, 2, 3, ?????

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42. Comment #356663 by Gnuatheist on March 27, 2009 at 10:18 am

Woohoo!

Thanks to InfuriatedSciTeacher. The Western European encoding option fixed the bug!

BTW, mixmastergaz, I'm still LMAO! Transubstantiation... Ha!

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43. Comment #356690 by ANTIcarrot on March 27, 2009 at 11:46 am

Reguarding hotspot...

You people have a funny interpretation of the term 'work'. Yes the video will actually start, but it is in no way watchable, stuttering every half syllable or so, even on 4MB broadband.

Edit: Site's rubbish as far as I can see. I'm barely getting 30kilobytes per second! Even after downloading it can't play smoothly. Hope it works better for others.

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44. Comment #356701 by bluebird on March 27, 2009 at 12:14 pm

@ 40, thanks for mentioning 'The Universe'; I forget that it's on!
http://www.history.com/minisites/universe

I remember 'Connections' from the late 70's; it's available on Netflix .

*We miss Carl......*

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45. Comment #356758 by comet halley on March 27, 2009 at 3:33 pm

COSMOS started my whole interest in science and led to Richard's books.

I am forever in gratitude to Carl.

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46. Comment #356784 by Steven Mading on March 27, 2009 at 5:02 pm

Reguarding hotspot...

You people have a funny interpretation of the term 'work'. Yes the video will actually start, but it is in no way watchable, stuttering every half syllable or so, even on 4MB broadband.

Edit: Site's rubbish as far as I can see. I'm barely getting 30kilobytes per second! Even after downloading it can't play smoothly. Hope it works better for others.

Hotspot uses a proxy server. The slowness you experience is because we're all trying to funnel through their proxy server at once now. I say that it is a proxy server with confidence even though I have never used it. The reason is that it is impossible to do what it does unless it is a proxy server. Even though it has you download software and put it on your own computer, that is not, and CAN not be enough to accomplish what it does. This has nothing to do with Windows and everything to do with how TCP/IP works on the internet. If the packets you send to the remote side have the wrong spoofed IP address on them, then the remote site can't figure out how to get the response back to you. The return packets will not reach you (so you'd be able to "hit" the Hulu site, but not get an answer back from it.) That means this cannot be how it works. It must be the case that there is a proxy server used by hotspot that the downloaded software is configured to try to funnel the traffic through, and it's the proxy server that is talking to Hulu, not your own machine.

So the reason for the slowness could be that the proxy server at hotspot is overloaded (maybe from us in RD.net) or that the Hulu site is throttling back on purpose because it thinks someone is being a jerk and trying to watch a bunch of videos at the same time on the "same computer". (As far as it knows, the proxy is the machine that is displaying the video, not your own machine.)

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47. Comment #356841 by Ramases on March 27, 2009 at 11:03 pm

Drool,

You are a sweetie! Thanks for that, it worked.

Steven,

I am thinking that if Hotspot uses a proxy server, and the proxy is not in the US, than that, perhaps, is why the video will still not play? It still doesn't for me.

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48. Comment #356859 by PERSON on March 28, 2009 at 2:11 am

I suppose the reason it's not been put on YouTube or otherwise made generally available is because the US TV networks that helped fund and produce it still have (partial?) ownership of it. Or perhaps someone else who was involved in the production, distribution, etc, has a legal claim that blocks general release.

I wonder if they could be persuaded to release it fully, given they've put it out on Hulu. Or perhaps they're relying on the DMCA in the states and aren't convinced that they'll have as much legal power in other countries as they'd like to prosecute people doing things they don't want them to.

I think it'd be useful to work out who authorised it to be put on Hulu and for one or two people to ask them about it and report back.

Looking on youtube for "carl sagan cosmos"
"NOTE: "Koch Entertainment" has just filed a copiright claim against this clip."
Apparently they're now called E1 entertainment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E1_Entertainment

I found that it's seemingly all on Google video in full (though low-def) hour-long chunks as "carl sagan cosmos episode 1", etc So I don't think I'll pursue this (I may just buy from iTunes or get the DVD boxed set)

As a commenter over at the blog post mentioned, it's worth watching "The Ascent of Man" as well. I find DVD rental services a good way to watch a lot of documentary boxed sets like this: TAoM, "Civilisation" and others. I wasn't aware that Sagan was influenced by this (I suppose it may not be true).

I wonder if it was recorded on film. If so, perhaps there could be a Bluray version or even a small cinema release (to art cinemas, etc) as four 3hr15min films, or perhaps two or three cut down versions (I don't know if it would be suitable for cutting down this way: this worked fairly well with the "Guns, Germs and Steel" series, though the result did feel a bit odd at times).

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49. Comment #356862 by rod-the-farmer on March 28, 2009 at 2:59 am

Re #43. Comment #356690 by ANTIcarrot

I am with you, and subsequent posters. It was sort of OK at first, for a minute or so, then lapsed into un-watchable, due to the many stutters/hesitations. Perhaps the proxy server thing. Anyway, I am not happy with what happened to my PC after I installed that HotSpot Shield, and will now remove it. I too remember Connections, a great program. What I was able to see of Cosmos did not quite live up to my fond memories, I regret to say.

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50. Comment #356937 by babel76 on March 28, 2009 at 11:22 am

Hi all,
I gave up on Hotspot after a few tries, but you can find pretty much the entire series on Google video, too. It streams fine, plus there are no ads or connection problems to deal with. Search by 'Cosmos' or individual episode names.
Cheers!

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