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This comes in handy with a lot of hacks and mods using Linux to drive it.

Tivo, struggling to keep customers and inch towards profitability as execs step down, has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence.

I'm not sure Digital Convergence is the model Tivo should follow. Although I suppose it'll be alright, eventually, now that their primary product has entered the realm of open-source tinkering.

Oh, you mean the failure to capitalize Digital Convergence wasn't an editorial accident? Oops.

There's already precedent for this in the postal system, at least here in the United States.

If you receive something unsolicited in the US Mail (which includes something addressed to you by accident, but not addressed to someone else and simply left in the wrong mailbox), you are free to do with it as you wish. The sender cannot compel you to obey any license agreement or follow any restrictions they might wish to place on its use, within the bounds of the law. (That is, you can't go out and beat someone up with a billy club someone sends you in the mail, because that would otherwise violate the law, but you're free to use it as a billy club even if the company who sent it to you says it's a sex toy for cows.)

There was a great deal of discussion about this back when DigitalConvergence (remember them?) was sending unsolicited CueCats to people and then suing them for taking them apart and hacking them.

Some info on that situation:

http://www.beau.lib.la.us/~jmorris/linux/cuecat/
http://air-soldier.com/~cuecat/
http://www.xmission.com/~rebling/pub/cuecat.html
http://www.logorrhea.com/cuecat/mirrors.html

More on Google; search for "CueCat."

p

A few years back we got some grant money together with some of ours and did this:

MEL

Don't blame me for the html on that page, the lady that drives it around and trains newbies to get online, move a mouse, etc. did it. ;)

Got eight Thinkpads for users, another for the instructor and a RedHat box in a cabinet for server stuff. Got a 6 1/2KW Generator to run everything, including the A/C or we can run an umbilical cord to either 120/240VAC and not worry about burning gas (The generator will cut out before running the gas dry though.)

We even have a TV/VCR in a popout cabinet for running instructional videos.

After playing with wireless we have sidelined that and use either a phone jack or ethernet tap to bring in net. All of our branch libraries and such have 240V outlets and ethernet jacks on the side now so it can tour the six tiny branches and do classes.

The size of the van was selected to be as large as a vehicle can be in Louisiana and not require the driver to have a CDL.

And even on the dismal concrete with ashpalt scabs that passes for roads in rural Louisiana, none of the hardware has crapped out in over three years of use.

p.s. the 240V power lets us run the AC full bore. On 120V it throws breakers when we crank it up to cope with the summer heat in Louisiana.

Does this mean massive international man-hunts for the infamous "Carlos the Hacker"?

Best encrypt with ScramDisk (Windows 95/98 version here) locally, and with GnuPG for transmission, all your CueCat code and use anonymous remailers for version releases to Freenet, or be prepared to live out your life in a shadowy realm of underground coders dwelling in the hidden spaces between the giants of the United Corporations of the World.

I found a copy of some C version of the software at http://www.beau.lib.la.us/~jmorris /linux/cuecat/. They're intended for Linux (duh!) but I would think one could modify it. All I want is to have the barcode decoded. Would be really useful for say, UPS tracking codes. Scan, copy, paste, oh that's where my package is.

Ok, this has gone far enough.

I hope I'm not the first to point this out, but one of the leading opponents to filtering software is the ALA - American Library Association (http://www.ala.org). Check their website for more information on why.

The local library that is acting as my ISP (2 hrs/ per day on 12 lines... No great bargain, even for free) is deep in the Bible Belt, so it's amazing that a filtering policy as enlightened as ours is is in place. All machines with exposed monitors are filtered, at all times. Adults can have an unfiltered account, that is only unfiltered on the in-desk machines. Parents can elect to deny their children access to the Internet, filtered-only access to the Internet, or unfiltered access to the Internet (of course, on those machines with submerged monitors). Personally, I say unfilter them all and let Bob sort them out, but I would like to keep the connectivity, so....

One of the other Slashdotters mentioned that we need to put out the anti-censorship message a little more forcefully. I have to agree. A couple of years ago, I posted a short essay against censorship, both as a celebration of National Banned Books Week (see the ALA homepage for more info on that) and as a some new content for the new website, since our system was just going online at the time. I dashed it off in 20 minutes or so, threw a couple of graphics on the page, and left it be... So, imagine my surprise when doing a vanity search, and up pops my name in a half-dozen places I wasn't expecting. People had quoted my little article. And started linking to it. And it was getting hits. Ok, so I expected 10 or 20 hits a month... No, 10 or 20 hits a day... Wow! A minor little page that doesn't say much of anything! There can't be too much out there about censorship, if I'm turning up that high on the search engines. So, I'm begging everyone: get your views out there. Post your ideas. Get my hitrate down where it belongs!