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Under Linux, you can use the kernel bttv driver, the current CVS of lirc, and MythTV to make a PVR that works better than the software bundled with the card. If all you want is simple TV playback, tvtime will do that. (tvtime's useful to keep around for TV-card debugging anyway, and it's more polished than xawtv.)

(If you buy the NTSC version of this card and want to use it under Linux, you'll need to edit drivers/media/video/bttv-cards.c so that the tuner will be set up properly. Search for "Leadtek WinFast 2000/ WinFast 2000 XP", scroll down to the .tuner_type= line, and change it from 5 to TUNER_PHILIPS_NTSC. If you don't do this, the tuner and the remote control won't work properly.)

Under Linux, you can use the kernel bttv driver, the current CVS of lirc, and MythTV to make a PVR that works better than the software bundled with the card. If all you want is simple TV playback, tvtime will do that. (tvtime's useful to keep around for TV-card debugging anyway, and it's more polished than xawtv.)

(If you buy the NTSC version of this card and want to use it under Linux, you'll need to edit drivers/media/video/bttv-cards.c so that the tuner will be set up properly. Search for "Leadtek WinFast 2000/ WinFast 2000 XP", scroll down to the .tuner_type= line, and change it from 5 to TUNER_PHILIPS_NTSC. If you don't do this, the tuner and the remote control won't work properly.)

BTTV for Solaris! It has drivers for Solaris x86 and Solaris UltraSPARC.

or for most other cards (bt878 or bt848) BTTV (included in the linux kernel)

Dude... there's not one, but TWO shift keys on your keyboard. And then there's a third shifter -- Caps Lock. TRY THEM OUT! :-)

That being said, I'd rather watch TV on my computer for the convenience of it. Also, it's cheaper on electricity if you're already using the computer.

>i have a tv tuner card with my playstatiojn hooked up to it and it really isnt that great.

You really just need to try dscaler.

There's other software as well, but it just doesn't come to mind right now.

Get a Brooktree chipset card, and download dScaler and be knocked out at the quality. I've been through half a dozen different cards, and I'm currently using a I/O Magic PC-PVR card. Virtually every one of these cards uses the same reference design, and the only variation is how well they handle the signal path and grounding. I know how clean this card is because I'm using it to capture at 720 x 480 and scale up to 1280 x 720 using dScaler's amazing deinterlacing. Then I show it on my 90" wide screen.

The AIW 9700 Pro card should be significantly cheaper than the 9800 Pro since it's about 1.5 generations behind ATI's current product set. Last I remember, ATI was providing Linux binary-only divers for the 9700 Pro which enabled accelerated video. The Gatos project enables the TV tuner on these ATI cards.

I'm currently on my third AIW card, the AIW 9800 Pro, and I'm not sure I'd want to use anything else.

BTW, you don't need a TV tuner card to use your PS2 with your computer monitor. You can get a PS2 to VGA cable and plug it directly into your monitor.

(0) Card with Bt8xx chipset
(1) If you're using windoze, load the open-source WDM drivers found on the Bt8xx WDM Video Aquisition Driver website (you can use these drivers with any Bt8xx based card). Most *nix distributions have built-in support for the chipset.
(2) Use another open-souce marvel, DScaler, for TV-viewing. They've added some really nice filters that increase the quality beyond what you typically find with the in-box software that comes with most cards.
(3) A nice Windoze-only solution is the AverTV card (comes with a remote)!

(0) Card with Bt8xx chipset
(1) If you're using windoze, load the open-source WDM drivers found on the Bt8xx WDM Video Aquisition Driver website (you can use these drivers with any Bt8xx based card). Most *nix distributions have built-in support for the chipset.
(2) Use another open-souce marvel, DScaler, for TV-viewing. They've added some really nice filters that increase the quality beyond what you typically find with the in-box software that comes with most cards.
(3) A nice Windoze-only solution is the AverTV card (comes with a remote)!

These cards are good. I'm using a PVR-250 myself with Linux. The quality is the best I have seen in any analog consumer card (they totaly kick bt878 cards butt). It is very good. Linux drivers are good to.

The newest avidemux make this card 100% easy for cutting unwanted commersial from what I record. Higly recommended.

Linux drivers

For people trying to get a strange video card working with a later Windows OS such as 2000 and XP, these generic drivers are life savers.

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/
http://www.iulabs.com/drv/index.shtml

• Go to the site
• download the testing tools yourself
• read the test paper
• use the test methodologies as documented
• do your best to verify their test results yourself
• go back to the site
• post your results for everyone else to see

So you mean Flare?

I was wondering, have you had any experience with third party OBD-II interface ICs, such as the one sold by these guys?

Seems there's some free software for them, too.

Just wondering, since I was thinking about giving it a shot. Might be fun to see just what I can find out about my car. :-)

Open Text Summarizer may be your friend.

How is my older hardware (or even pretty recent hardware on a huge ISP, with lots of SMTP activity) supposed to be able to handle this? Bah. It seems to me that adding computational difficulty is not such a great way to combat spam. Do you have any idea how effective IP blocklists and statistical filters alone are? (Or, you could combine them as this project is doings).

I'm going to be harsh here and tell you that failing to download a song you purchased strikes me as akin to flunking high school. I mean, how the...?

At the very LEAST, I would have considered it appropriate for emusic to have sent an e-mail saying "due to contractual obligations, our access to the following music will be ending in 30 days. Please download now or forever hold your peace." There was no warning.

I can understand that the music might go away, and if they were actually sorry, I might even be willing to forgive them for failing to notify me of that fact. But my big issue right now is the fact that they've "lost" their records of what I have and have not downloaded. So, while they're not calling me a liar, they are refusing to even let me exchange the missing music for something else in their catalog.

They were nice while they lasted, but I won't be going back.

unless a superior cost-competive online independent music distributor that provides unrestricted files happens to pop up, I'm sticking with emusic.

My God you are a useless troll.

You say:

a step by step procedure for stealing the Microsoft fonts and installing them on Linux....

Then you link to http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/

Which has a copy of the microsoft licesne the fonts were obtained under:

Reproduction and Distribution. You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT; provided that each copy shall be a true and complete copy, including all copyright and trademark notices.....

Please mod the parent post up. You bring up a very interesting point, although it may be a bit off-topic. Is it a requirement of Sourceforge projects to be open-source if they are hosted by sf.net? Yes, sf.net project implies that they are open-source, but is it mandatory for hosting? I looked through DVArchive's docs and no mention of whether or not it's an open-source project. There is full license document, and it says it's "free" software. But free software doesn't mean open-source. I guess I got caught up in the usefulness of the program that I just didn't care whether or not it was open-source. If you happen to be a stickler to the "spirit of the law" then perhaps we have to revert back to using the commandline software ReplayPC.

Lunix

Read and learn, please. Actually, looks like a good OS for low cost space probes, seems to me.

It's a great basic concept, but if you take a look at the bug list, you'll see that there are many many basic problems that haven't been fixed in 3 months or so. I hope that the people behind irate get the right message: It's a nice idea, but it could need some more motivation in the bug fixing / optimization / expansions department.

Just use irate. All the free (beer) music you can listen to, computer-selected to be music you will like. The user interface could use a great deal of polishing, but I'm sure that is happening. And it's quite usable in its current state. I see no reason to support RIAA music for any reason anymore. (And sharing their music is supporting them, as it builds popularity).

No subscription means your VCR becomes a paperweight--you don't truly own the equipment; you rent it (and modify it to operate without paying under the pain of the DMCA). It truly amazes me that people buy into this when there are alternatives that don't require becoming a lifetime corporate cash cow.

But in May 2000, the last remnants of the ISO source code were replaced, and now LAME is the source code for a fully LGPL'd MP3 encoder...

That doesn't mean they can't support other formats. They implemented AAC without any insurmountable problems. And the iPodLinux project got an ogg decoder running on it (albiet not quite in realtime, but close enough that it's pretty obvious it could be done with some optimisation work).

HMO is NOT an option for any DirecTV based Tivo. It says so right in Tivo's FAQ.

Clearly you haven't heard of HMODirecTiVo, an open-source project designed to duplicate the Home Media Option's functionality for 100% less money.

The 921 DOES run on Linux you idiot. In fact the baby brother PVR, the 721 also runs on Linux. Dish network serves the Linux PVR GNU codebase off an internet attached DVR 721. It's even got the lame X Window screen savers and 6 or so GNU games.

Then I assume you can download the source code, like TiVo lets you do. Oh, wait. Companies other than TiVo consider the GPL unconstitutional and deny your right to download.

The DVR-921 has "Dishwire" aka, Firewire, which, when enabled, and connected to a JVC DVHS recorder will allow you to archive your time shifted progams.

I might as well plug it into an 8-track tape recorder. Who uses VHS any more? Can you plug the DVR-921 into a real computer where I can use real software like CinePaint and avidemux to re-encode it into the codec of my choice?

Thanks.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Troll Impostor

..software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.

I'm glad we got that out of the way, especially since my baby mulching machine is nearing readiness for beta testing. Any beta testers out there? http://babymulch.sourceforge.net

• Mozilla, for firebird and thunderbird
• Gaim
• OO.o

Actually User Mode Linux is probably the better choice for what you're thinking of. And though I've got no data to back this up, conceptually it seems more secure than a chroot (though honestly both seem pretty good).

The jukebox is killer, but the main reason I did all this was to permanently archive my CD collection. In the event it was destroyed or stolen, I would still have the master digital copies.

I don't think you need to use all that fancy database-driven jukebox software that he suggests in the article. I use plain old XMMS in random/repeat mode, usually with every song from every CD in the playlist (this is guaranteed to impress the guests). If you structure your directory tree by music category (rock, jazz, new age, etc) then you can easily select playlists by category.

Of course, you will need a large hard disk in order to do this. I have one 120GB main disk, and another one for backup (yes I know it's not the most reliable backup solution), but large disks are getting so cheap that I'll probably buy another one for redundancy.

Anyone want to buy a 5-disc CD changer?

[threading] is a simplistic view towards a conversation, which more often than not is not linear and between multiple persons

For handling the interconnectedness of online conversations (mailing list, usenet, etc.), this conversation map looks rather interesting, at least conceptually. It's nothing I've really played with, but it's been on my "list of things to look at more closely, eventually".

Why has this taken so long?

it hasn't. we used to call it "usenet".

Uhm, no. As I understand the article, it's talking about user interface design--a way of displaying threaded conversations. Usenet is a communications medium and is thus orthogonal to the display of messages transported via that medium. And I'm not aware of any NNTP reader that works in a similar manner to that proposed here. (For email, Lurker is pretty close, but doesn't have both threading and content in the same display.)

Freevo

MythTV

Good Luck!

Damn this article for coming out AFTER my families' Christmas. Maybe I'll stock up for next year.

The last video card I bought was a Matrox G550. I don't play OpenGL based games, where high FPS mostly seems to matter, so this card is fine for "normal" 3d stuff, and provides great visual quality, which Matrox have a reputation for.

However, since that time, they've released the Parhelia, with binary only drivers (at least that is what I last found - I'm not looking for a video card at the moment, so I'm not following this sort of information all the time.). Although not ideal, at least these binary drivers are only XFree86 ones, and don't have to be installed inside the kernel, risking system stablity.

Have a browse around Direct Rendering Open Source Project as well as XFree86 for open source X Windows support

I still can't understand why people are thinking about big music sites when there are perfectly good small sites. dmusic This is the best free download music site I've seen. Irate Radio , a music discovery program. gods of music music review site . sharethemusicday.com My essay on more ways to share music legally. Don't forget to tip your favorite musicians! Musician's Guide to Online Tipping

My linux box is back in my dorm room, but I think the nvidia drivers are mostly closed source. They use an opensource wrapper just to comply with the GPL.

I just had a run-in with a driver that demonstrates why an open-source driver is much preferred. Until now, I've not had reason to tweak driver source to get something working.

Over the past few days, I've been setting up a MythTV box on a spare machine. This machine is equipped with a Radeon VE clone (built by FIC, IIRC) with S-video/composite output. I grabbed the GATOS driver source, built that, and got the TV-out jack working great...

...until I moved the computer from the bedroom to the living room and tried firing it up with just the TV plugged in.

The X server detected that nothing was plugged into the VGA port and said "no video for you!" Isolating the offending code and fixing it so it'll work with just the TV-out jack in use was just a few minutes' work. (The patch was posted to the gatos-devel mailing list, if anybody's interested.)

If the driver supplied by nVidia for its cards exhibited the same behavior (since I don't have any of their cards at home, I can't say if they do), what would you do? Lash up some sort of dongle to fool the card into thinking a monitor is plugged in, and hope you don't blow up your card? That doesn't sound like much of a plan.

Direct Rendering Open Source Project, it will save you a lot of grief.

Well, there is one major feature that none of them have yet: Collaborative filtering.

I've been using iRATE radio, despite its shitty interface, not because the music is FREE, but because I've fallen in love with the convenience of this adaptive filter. I really doubt that the majors will implement it though, because it subverts their ability to PROMOTE the titty-pop music THEY want to push on the masses, ClearChannel-style. If good music can simply bubble to the top, relative to each persons tastes, then the relevance of the RIAA shrinks even further.

--

Sylpheed or Sylpheed-Claws.

Sylpheed has had threaded email views for quite a while.

Although I do have a CD player in my car, I like to hear new things that I haven't heard before, and it gets expensive buying new CD's all the time

Notice what Trolltech has done with their QT widgets with the signal/slot pre-compilation process (they had to work around a limitation of the language),

Sigslot is a pure C++ implementation of the same idea, suggesting that the language isn't so deficient you _have_ to use a preprocessor (although it may have been back in the 1990s when Qt was developed).

• You're 2u stUpId
• You're not l33t
• Winbloz suX0rZ
• You just need to RTFM, bitch!
• RT-motherfuckin-FM. Linux is easy if you just RTFM (of course, poorly formated man-files filled with useless information help matters a lot)
  
• just learn how to "man command" (never-mind the fact that they might not even know what command they need to use and that many manuals from websites are poor...)
• Etc

There are some exceptions. The entire Gentoo community seems to be friendly to newbies, with clear documentation and a well-organized website. When I first installed GNU/Linux, I found Gentoo to be easier to install than Debian, despite the fact that Gentoo's install process is more archaic. Good step-by-step manuals and helpful users who are willing to say something more helpful than "man 'command'" do make a difference.

The biggest problem is the common attitude that help in IRC rooms should only be sought after the manuals have been exhausted and exhaustive search efforts on Google have failed. People don't want to read hundreds of pages of documentation. Quite frankly, I don't give a shit about the details of emerge or dpkg commands. I just want to get a program installed and get to work. For example, a while ago, I wanted to install Free Mind. This program requires Java SDK 1.4. Unfortunately, my stable release of Debian (it's actually LibraNet, but who cares) doesn't allow me to apt-get that.

So, I had to get it from Sun's official site, go through the install process. I did matters backwards and downloaded the rpm. So, I had to use alien to convert it to a deb and then figure out how to install a deb locally. Up until then, I'd simply always installed thing from apt-get, which installs over the the net and had never used alien. So I went in a #Debian room to find out how, and I got "RTFM, 'man alien' 'man dpkg'". Now, anyone who said that would know that what I had to type 'alien -d -i j2re.rpm'...would it really have been that much extra work to type that? Instead, I had to waste time going through the alien man-pages to figure that out. As it happens, it was relatively quick, but it just adds to annoyance. This is the same type of response you get for everything, which results in individuals wasting lots of time sifting through information which they will never use. Of course, what I didn't tell these dimwits is that I was doing that to avoid having to regularly boot into Windows to use FreeMind to take notes on Think and Grow Rich.

they'd have the sense not to override the default behaviour of the damn language, which would be to go to bignum if necessary. It would take effort to write a declaration to actually deliberately override the behaviour, and would be A Seriously Stupid Thing To Do. Doesn't mean that somebody, somewhere wouldn't do it, of course

"... and of course, CL transparently uses bignums when a numeric quantity exceeds the range of machine words, so we don't get overflow problems"

* (decode-universal-time (+ (* 86400 365 50) (get-universal-time)))
debugger invoked on condition of type TYPE-ERROR:
The value 2635786389 is not of type (SIGNED-BYTE 32).

This is because I didn't specify a timezone, so it asks unix for the default timezone and DST settings, and unix needs a time_t, which is 32 bits on this box.
Dan Barlow, SBCL and the Y2038 problem

1. there is no DOS anymore. If you mean CMD, then it does suck badly for scripting, but if you want to do anything serious, JScript (or *shudder*, VBScript) is a very strong and powerfull alternative. I've done tons of scripting in it, and it has alot of enterprise capabalities. Many of the AD (google ADSI), and WMI stuff is scriptable.

2. Well, that's a philosophy thing, but many programs can be called as objects, you can call word this way, and print out stuff, and other dark voodoo (well, I never tried it, so I think of it as dark voodoo). It's program dependent though. Not something to blame MS for.

In short, Windows has strong scripting, JScript and VBScript are capable languages. That Windows as a whole doesn't follow the Unix way, with tons of small tools is not really related. You can always download win32 versions of most Unix tools anyway. The rest is a nice list though.

That's what frosts my ass! I have teh VX4400B, and it proudly has a big "GPS" logo on it. Even in a diagnostic mode, I cannot get it to give me my location.

That space on surface of the phone could have been used for a button that answer/terminate calls without opening the thing up.

People have hacked the phone's directory structure:
http://bitpim.sourceforge.net/, but I'll be thrilled when someone has hacked the actual OS to re-program buttons, enable GPS for my use, or disable it all-together.

Yes, Renderman is the main rendererereerer of choice for many things. The latest version of Photorealistic Renderman (Pixar's actual product that they sell) supports true raytracing now.

There are even open source Renderman renderererer called Pixie that is very powerfull in it's own right.

But Finding Nemo is considered total animation and not special effects per-se. Special Effects are for live action movies where there is something needed to be added that only special effects could solve. Expect to see Finding Nemo up for Best Animated Movie though.

It's interesting to note though that Pixar got the very first Oscar for an animated short that was completely computer animated. Tin Toy!

I don't know what the current situation is, but I feel the replacement for the Amiga is Linux.

Or Syllable.

I'm not sure whether TeX can be considered officially supported.

An even older piece of software that is still maintained and developed (although it has changed hands several times) is Maxima (originally Macsyma), which is similar to the situation with Unix if it could be considered a single product, except perhaps that Unix variants have changed more over the past decades...

You'd be correct if you limit yourself to just text, but copy and paste shouldn't be limited to just text. X can't handle anything that isn't plain text.

X has been able to handle lots of different types for a long time. See here for a list. In addition to the older Atom-based mechanisms, you can now also indicate the type of a selection as a MIME type.