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Domain: mobydisk.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mobydisk.com.
Comments · 14
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Streaming only here!
This isn't for everyone, but if you fit the demographic it is truly sweet.
I have never really watched television much. BBSs followed by the Internet have been my entertainment for a long time. When I got married we got cable but never really used it. Then came Dattebayo, then Netflix, then redbox, then hulu and crunchyroll and Windows Media Center... I can't think of anything I want to watch that I can't get online cheaper and more easily.
So just last week I bought an ASRock HTPC to replace my aging silent pc build and it is better than any HTPC I could have made myself. Oddly enough I am finally watching TV again. There is more content, available any time I want, in better quality, for less money. I am thinking of buying one for my semi-computer-illiterate mother-in-law because it is so easy to use, and it will pay for itself in about a year of cable TV. I just need to see if she can stream Jeopardy.
Buy one:
ASRock Core 100HT-BD2
ASRock ION330 HT-BD
ASRock HTPC list @ newegg -
Re:Doesn't anyone remember when this started?
You are not alone. I can say it was before 2006, when I wrote my Myths about Network Neutrality article because already the idea was getting screwed-up.
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Re:Open it, and make it a phone
I didn't say that, or anything like it. You put words in my mouth then argued against them. It would be silly of me to say that since I am 33 and I own a Nintendo DS and I write software for it. I have one because my immediate circle of friends own them.
What I said is that the next generation of devices won't appeal to the older crowd unless they have PDA capabilities.
I used to know a dozen 30-somethings with DSs -- every one had a mod chip. That was about 3 years ago. Now, at least half of those same people have iPhones, and don't touch their DSs. I'm predicting that this trend will continue.
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doesn't sound too secure yet
This is not a good thing: by definition x86 code is not portable across platforms.
Secure or not, it goes against the main founding principle of the web, which is portability. There are other ways to solve the performance issue, I thought just-in-time compilers were getting pretty close anyway (50% according to http://www.mobydisk.com/softdev/techinfo/speedtest/index.html).
On the security side, I'll just quote Google's description: "modules may not contain certain instruction sequences". That doesn't sound like a robust way to detect malicious code.
http://fairsoftware.net/ where software developers share revenue from the apps they create together
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Re:make that 4
Then it sounds like you've heard about the phony thing that the lobbyists are calling network neutrality. I find this to happen so often I wrote an article about the Myths of network neutrality.
Your second paragraph sums-up most of the myths quite well. AT&T etc. say that network neutrality proponents want a system where everyone pays the exact same amount, and nobody can pay for higher levels of service. That's not true at all. They are trying to redefine network neutrality to make it look bad. What they are basing that on is the fact that network neutrality propoonents want to make it illegal to artificially delay one person's network packets in favor of someone else's. Allow me to give a specific example:
Scenario 1:
I want 1MBps down/1MBps up. So I pay $10/month.
My neighbor wants 10Mbps down/1MBps per month. So he pays $40/month.
Google wants 1000MBps down/1000MBps up. So they pay $10,000/month.
This is totally fine and network neutral. Nobody has a problem with that. AT&T/Verizon/etc. want to make it out that network neutrality prevents that. It does not.
Scenario 2:
The pipe for my street is a 10MBps up/down pipe.
My neighbor wants 10 MBps down.
I want 10MBps down.
I call the phone company and say I'm only getting 5MBps most of the time. So they offer to make my packets higher priority over my neighbor. So my neighbor now gets 1MBps if I'm downloading a file at 9MBps. So he calls and complains, and gets the level 2 priority as well. So now we are both back to 5MBps. So I call and get level 3 priority, and so on and so forth. This is not network neutral. IF the phone company wants to change their TOS to say that the "PEAK" is 10MBps, and the total shared is 10MBPS that's fine. And if I call and say I want more bandwidth, they can say "oh, we can do that, but we have to upgrade the trunk like so that will cost you." That's totally fair and neutral.
This game isn't new. When caller ID came-out, they charged for a code that disabled caller id on outgoing calls. Then they charged for special caller-id units that displayed the caller information even if it was blocked. So then they sold stuff that blocks calls from non-caller-id phones. Then they sold codes that get around the blocks. etc. etc. They never provided any new services ever -- they just pitted their customers against each other and sld phony pseudo-services.
IMHO, the FTC should ban such a practice. All it will do is make the phone companies richer, and they won't have to upgrade their trunk service anymore, they can just re-sell the same bandwidth over and over again. -
Turion-based PC
Here is my article on my low-power, quiet HTPC. I used an AMD Turion, but a Pentium-M works just as well. My goal was to make a PC that would not overheat even when it was enclosed in my home theater with my DVD player, PS2, etc.
The other option is a Mac Mini, Apple TV, or a laptop. -
Re:Along these lines...I can answer some of those questions for you: why do we need a law like this? We already have a net neutrality law, which is why very little is currently happening. But the current neutrality law is really just an FCC statute called the "common carrier" law, and the statute was weakened a few years ago. One particular ISP announced that they think neutrality is unfair, and they plan on violating it. (It was a quote about how Google doesn't pay that ISP when Google traffic went to their customers, which isn't true. I would have to dig to find the quote.) What is currently happening that needs to be fixed by this law? A recent Slashdot article had a tale to tell. Personally, my ISP is redirecting misspelled web site traffic to their own advertising-filled phony search page. It messes-up some spam filters that thing invalid web sites are valid. Forcing websites to cough up to be given a high bandwidth access to end users would be bad Net Neutrality has nothing to do with bandwidth to end users. I'm not sure where that one came from. Could you elaborate? It sounds like one of the things I might need to add to my Myths about Network Neutrality. The only thing Network Neutrality requires is that ISPs do not alter or re-prioritize the network stream to/from endpoints on their network.
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Same old same old...The arguments made by the legislators are the same arguments we always hear, with the same misunderstandings on how this stuff works. It's like a broken record. All of the following is from a US-centric viewpoint, so please correct me for any differences that apply in Canada: The Internet is not regulated in Canada. There is no regulation of the relationship between Internet service providers and the providers of Internet content. I don't know about Canada. But in the US, this is not true - there are common carrier laws and FCC's weakened neutrality rules. Is there really nothing equivalent at all in Canada? First, the Internet has never been truly neutral or equitable with respect to data transmission...preferential content arrangements, filtering and blocking to control network abuse, as well as 'traffic shaping' in order to ensure an acceptable service level for all subscribers, despite the bandwidth-demanding activities of some users. I know of no preferential content arrangements done by any ISP. Is this happening somewhere and I don't know it? This guy implies that it is common. Traffic shaping is done on local networks by businesses, but it is currently not done by ISPs. When it is (Trying to throttle P2P, for example) it is met with outrage. And it certainly isn't necessary to ensure acceptable service. The only reason the service might not be sufficient is if the ISP advertised more bandwidth than they really have.
... impeding competitive market outcomes....rigid net neutrality legislation may prevent such innovation. Except that user's don't have choices in ISPs. There are usually only 2: the local telecom and the local cable company. That's not enough to allow market forces to kick-in. Hence the need for regulation.
...previous business models that attempted to limit consumer access to content (e.g., AOL, Compuserve, otherwise known as 'walled gardens'), have failed... This is completely different. AOL and CompuServe were not ISPs, and they didn't advertise that they were ISPs. That was pre-internet and doesn't apply. Besides, we are talking about subtyle slowing-down internet traffic, not walling it off.
...without differentiated treatment, there may be no incentive to pay for the actual costs, resulting in under investment. The usual FUD about how Google gets a free ride, which isn't true. People think it makes sense if they don't know about peering.
I wrote a quick-and-dirty anti-FUD article in an attempt to correct these misunderstandings. If anyone is fooled by the above arguemnts, point them there. -
Re:Overrated
I found pair programming to be very efficient. But it depends on how you pair people.
(Summary of my best practices article)
Junior developer alone: Can complete the project but with errors a senior developer could have fixed. Code reviews fix this, but are tedious.
Senior developer alone: Good code, but this tends to breed "cowboy coders" and doesn't pass on knowledge.
Senior + Junior: Highly effective, but only if the Junior developer is the one at the keyboard.
Other combinations can help, but aren't superb. I recommend pair programming (1) on tedious code, (2) to spread knowledge, and (3) when refactoring something crucial. -
Industry killing themThey are being killed by the industry and the techno-fetishists. The Slashdot reviews all talk about $3000 machines with 4-way processors, RAID drives, multiple tuners, and big 3D cards. Those are not media PCs, they are high-end gaming and video desktop.
I built a media PC that IMHO does the job:- Low power so you can put it in your entertainment center without it overheating
- Nearly silent
- Software optimized for browsing (Opera with 180% magnification)
- Good quality wireless keyboard, mouse, and remote control
- Uses HDMI outputs so text is readable
- Inexpensive
The industry needs to change in two fundamental ways:
1) Accessibility - software needs to work in a greater variety of environments. That means high-DPI and low-DPI displays, and low-resolution displays, multiple aspect-ratios.
2) TVs and Video Cards: non-interlaced, DVI/HDMI, no overscanning, >60hz, standard aspect-ratios.
P.S. Also, I have yet to see a media PC with surround sound. That's because sound cards use 3 stereo cables, while receivers use Dolby encoding over one pair of cables. This is just one of those cases where computers do it differently than all other consumer devices (although they do it better). -
Turion HTPC
It seems to me that all the HTPC systems posted to Slashdot recently are suped-up hot-rod systems that are completely inappropriate for home theater purposes. I built my own desktop Turion HTPC recently, and it worked out very well. If anyone is considering a desktop Turion, I highly recommend it.
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Re:This is my surprised face.
No problems at all.
http://www.mobydisk.com/mobydisk/hanggliding/big/h ang_glider.jpg
More fun than should be legal! -
Re:maybe it's me ...
However, I've never heard much about updates breaking Linux apps.
Hmm, "apt-get" or "emerge" are good candidates; also, I recall difficulties (e.g.) moving from 2.4 to 2.6. Or is this just me?
CC. -
Variety Of "Java Robots" out there...
