That's a fair question. The board I bought on ebay for $30 is actually a board + processor + fan + shipping, with an nforce chipset. It's well supported in Linux (my desktop has something very similar). Yes, of course there's always that risk with Linux, but I've dealt with so much hardware under Linux, that I'm not real concerned.
The other part of the question is cooling - the Aria case my mythtv box is in doesn't have the best circulation, and it allows me to remove a discrete PCI card (ironically the firewire is taking its place, but that's much smaller).
Yes, there are lots of other things I could do (itx, different case, etc, etc) but I felt that this was the best compromise given my budget. The final part of the equation is that I'll very soon need to replace the 80GB IDE (too small for HD really) with a much larger SATA (current board is 2002 and has no onboard SATA) drive - but that's next month.
As a final note of interest, I'll add that I've retained my PVR-150 in the system using a $1.99 cable splitter, which lets me record in parallel the existing analog feed (i.e, exactly what I had before I got digital service)
> So your firewire card magically connects to cable boxes and satellite receivers that DO NOT HAVE firewire?
Nope, just ones which do. i.e, what FCC have mandated since 2004. If you have an older STB, then get it replaced.
> also they magically decrypt the signal?
No, it comes out unencrypted here. As I said, YMMV.
> because every Cable box that had a working firewire out
You mean every one _you've_ tried (and you don't say how many, or which ones). Clearly this is working for many people if you'd bothered to read the link. I don't pretend this is a silver bullet, or that TWC won't change the rules any time they please, _but_ it does work for now, and for me and answered the question about how to record HD under Linux. Quit your crying.
My guess is that they're trying to do just that now: To release movies to pay-per-view HD before bringing them into the rental stores. Could be. TimeWarnerCable claim to have movies as soon as the DVD is released.
Ya know, those clerks there don't get a lot, but a penny earned more is a penny earned more. People will probably pay to watch a fairly recent movie at home for 5 bucks rather than paying 10 bucks (plus again about as much for junk food) in a cinema. Well, indeed. Personally, I'll stick to my $10/month Netflix, and wait a few days if I really want the latest release (which I probably don't)
Well, I do agree, but it's not always easy. I just upgraded to Digital Cable (getoffmylawn) mainly to save money, but chose not to get their DVR - mainly because I already had my MythTV box, which is likely a whole lot more flexible.
The main problem is that I spent two days pissing about trying to get it all to work (does now, more or less), including $30 on firewire parts, with stuff that'd frustrate anyone but the typical slashdotter.
But yes, Firewire is the best way at the moment to get HD out of a cable box. IIRC there's some federal requirement (until they change it) that such functionality exists. Alas, the GeForce4 in the machine is not really up to it (so another $30 to replace the motherboard with faster graphics).
> Now, I'd never use such an array for critical data storage,
Why not - Google do for GFS. Indeed, I worked for a search engine company and wrote something that had significant similarities to GFS - that is, a distributed high-performance redundant file system. Of course, you still need a machine for every 4 drives, but it can be done. Still requires manual maintenance however - the chance of individual drive failure if you run lots of them becomes quite high (your data is safe due to redundancy). Look around the net for references to GFS and Google data centers.
Yes, I have a Ford Freestyle (now called a Taurus X). Well, ok I have a bicycle and dodge SUVs, my wife drives it. It's a good idea, but the mileage is hardly great (20mpg or so) and it's not exactly a light car.
Here in Southern California, driving is an obsession that needs to change real soon. At least I only have one car.
Netflix doesn't rent anything I can't buy. Sometimes they rent it for what I can buy "real cheap". If it's not "real cheap" then I can get it for "not quite real cheap" based on my interest in "renting again". I think I have a different definition of "cheap" to you. I don't have money to burn on old DVDs, even if it's really cheap, or spend the time buying them. I'd rather be able to choose stuff to watch right now, rather than order it or go out and buy it. I think this is a pretty good deal for $9.60/month - or would be, were it not for DRM. This is addition to the 7 or so snail mail DVDs they send me each month.
Between a fat PVR and a fat media center DRM isn't as much as it's cracked up to be. I guess I missed whatever point you're making here. I have a DVR - and guess what, it's a Linux MythTV system on which I'd like to view Netflix content, and indeed have done in the past.
I understand what you're saying, and you haven't fallen into the trap of trying to generalize your case for everyone. But in _my_ specific case, I want to play Netflix content on Linux - stuff I've already paid for as part of my subscription and isn't time limited (at least, not right now).
Until very recently, it was possible to strip DRM from such files under Windows (and then indeed play with mplayer on Linux), but recent changes mean this is no longer true (at least until a better hack exists)
No, I'm not at all interested in buying time limited content either.
What's killer for me is that mplayer is on there in full working order.
I've found that I can throw ANY format I want at it, and it can always create OGM's, MPG's, or AVI's. No if's and's or but's from it. It just works. You mean apart from DRMed content.
I played a considerable role in the UI design that's in our aggregating router. Very broadly speaking, I'm the company's "hardware lead" - I'm actually a software engineer, with considerable low-level expertise, and did considerable parts of architecture design on our product from the kernel up.
I didn't design the of the overall look and layout (colors, fonts, layout) - that was done by a traditional Ajax web developer, but I did make many many adjustments to what he did in order to ensure consistency, make the backend CGI work, make the UI update in a reasonable fashion, and above all, make it _easy_.
If you've looked at the UI of some of the cheap wireless routers out there - linksys, Netgear and especially Buffalo, you'll know they tend to be dire. Some of the other more expensive products like SonicWall, PEPlink etc are better, but tend to be overwhelmed because the options they have are so over the top comprehensive, and there are endless submenus to find everything (reminds me of certain MS products).
Our product feature set isn't comprehensive by any means (but it does stuff others don't do), but we've been told by several customers how easy it is to use and configured. I like to think that's down to the considerable thought we've put into it the UI.
And yes, I deliberately didn't name the product in question; don't need anyone digging up dirt on me;-)
Thanks for pointing out how important it is not to rush into your comments.
Just because something is GPL doesn't automatically mean that GNU made it.
As I said, many embedded Linux systems contain _no_ GNU tools or libraries. This is nothing to do with BSD, but it _is_ a common misconception, even if it's not what you meant to say.
Skipping for the moment the fact that the Linux kernel is developed using the GNU toolchain and that no Linux system can even boot without a whole core set of GNU libraries and tools
Whoa, let's hold back the rant there. There are quite a number of embedded Linux systems (generally busybox based) which run with no GNU libraries or tools whatsoever, and plenty which run with only a few.
Sure, they were almost certainly _created_ using them, but the resulting system does not require them to run,
Except that, ARM unlike all the other companies named, doesn't actually _make_ chips. It designs cores, which it licenses to other companies - many other companies in fact.
Apple changing architecture I suppose is possible (not like they haven't before), but it seems like an odd step when there are many ARM-based manufacturers to choose from. ARM themselves wins no matter what.
Fact is, most of the things that people use computers to do are best implemented in 2D space - and things that 3D holographic rendering would be useful for - protein analysis, genetic mapping, etc, need something a little more substantial. Ah, you mean like in Jurassic Park.
"This is UNIX, I know this!" (cue 3D file system flyover)
Unfortunately, the article itself is a work of fiction. The guy has lots of bad reasoning, poor memory and is desperately lacking in technical understanding.
For once, I'd say just read the article summary;-)
I wasn't listening 100% carefully, but I think something very close to this pronunciation was used in "Treasure Planet" to give it a "spacey" feel. Yes, blame Disney.
I do remember a colleague of ours at Glasgow University Dept of Computing Science, bought the last ever high end model (the Archimedes A400) of with all of his inheritance windfall because it would run Linux or possibly even Unix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISCiX
Later machines indeed ran ARM Linux with the Acorn A5000 serving as the basis for its development. ARM Linux is now found on an insane number of embedded devices. It's possible to run full blown Debian on the more powerful machines, although you probably don't want to (the 'powerful' is purely relative compared to x86).
Chick "Shug, yoo are a bawheidet clown. Huv you naw goan an stolen an effin Archimedes A400."
I seem to have misplaced my copy of "The Patter", although you're doing a good impression of Ian Banks' writing style.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a fair question. The board I bought on ebay for $30 is actually a board + processor + fan + shipping, with an nforce chipset. It's well supported in Linux (my desktop has something very similar). Yes, of course there's always that risk with Linux, but I've dealt with so much hardware under Linux, that I'm not real concerned.
The other part of the question is cooling - the Aria case my mythtv box is in doesn't have the best circulation, and it allows me to remove a discrete PCI card (ironically the firewire is taking its place, but that's much smaller).
Yes, there are lots of other things I could do (itx, different case, etc, etc) but I felt that this was the best compromise given my budget. The final part of the equation is that I'll very soon need to replace the 80GB IDE (too small for HD really) with a much larger SATA (current board is 2002 and has no onboard SATA) drive - but that's next month.
As a final note of interest, I'll add that I've retained my PVR-150 in the system using a $1.99 cable splitter, which lets me record in parallel the existing analog feed (i.e, exactly what I had before I got digital service)
-1 Shouting fool
> So your firewire card magically connects to cable boxes and satellite receivers that DO NOT HAVE firewire?
Nope, just ones which do. i.e, what FCC have mandated since 2004. If you have an older STB, then get it replaced.
> also they magically decrypt the signal?
No, it comes out unencrypted here. As I said, YMMV.
> because every Cable box that had a working firewire out
You mean every one _you've_ tried (and you don't say how many, or which ones). Clearly this is working for many people if you'd bothered to read the link. I don't pretend this is a silver bullet, or that TWC won't change the rules any time they please, _but_ it does work for now, and for me and answered the question about how to record HD under Linux. Quit your crying.
It's called a Firewire card as I mentioned elsewhere:
http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Recording_Digital_Cable#Option_2:_FireWire_via_Set_Top_Box
Of course, depending upon your STB and Provider, YMMV.
Well, I do agree, but it's not always easy. I just upgraded to Digital Cable (getoffmylawn) mainly to save money, but chose not to get their DVR - mainly because I already had my MythTV box, which is likely a whole lot more flexible.
The main problem is that I spent two days pissing about trying to get it all to work (does now, more or less), including $30 on firewire parts, with stuff that'd frustrate anyone but the typical slashdotter.
But yes, Firewire is the best way at the moment to get HD out of a cable box. IIRC there's some federal requirement (until they change it) that such functionality exists. Alas, the GeForce4 in the machine is not really up to it (so another $30 to replace the motherboard with faster graphics).
> Now, I'd never use such an array for critical data storage,
Why not - Google do for GFS. Indeed, I worked for a search engine company and wrote something that had significant similarities to GFS - that is, a distributed high-performance redundant file system. Of course, you still need a machine for every 4 drives, but it can be done. Still requires manual maintenance however - the chance of individual drive failure if you run lots of them becomes quite high (your data is safe due to redundancy). Look around the net for references to GFS and Google data centers.
No one seems to have made the obligatory mention of the Freerunner yet:
http://www.openmoko.com/
About as open as it could be.
They don't; they insist upon Word format (sic), even if it's for a Linux position. Allegedly recruitment databases only understand such formats.
Yes, I have a Ford Freestyle (now called a Taurus X). Well, ok I have a bicycle and dodge SUVs, my wife drives it. It's a good idea, but the mileage is hardly great (20mpg or so) and it's not exactly a light car.
Here in Southern California, driving is an obsession that needs to change real soon. At least I only have one car.
it for what I can buy "real cheap". If it's not "real cheap"
then I can get it for "not quite real cheap" based on my interest
in "renting again". I think I have a different definition of "cheap" to you. I don't have money to burn on old DVDs, even if it's really cheap, or spend the time buying them. I'd rather be able to choose stuff to watch right now, rather than order it or go out and buy it. I think this is a pretty good deal for $9.60/month - or would be, were it not for DRM. This is addition to the 7 or so snail mail DVDs they send me each month. Between a fat PVR and a fat media center DRM isn't as much as it's
cracked up to be. I guess I missed whatever point you're making here. I have a DVR - and guess what, it's a Linux MythTV system on which I'd like to view Netflix content, and indeed have done in the past.
I understand what you're saying, and you haven't fallen into the trap of trying to generalize your case for everyone. But in _my_ specific case, I want to play Netflix content on Linux - stuff I've already paid for as part of my subscription and isn't time limited (at least, not right now).
Until very recently, it was possible to strip DRM from such files under Windows (and then indeed play with mplayer on Linux), but recent changes mean this is no longer true (at least until a better hack exists)
No, I'm not at all interested in buying time limited content either.
I've found that I can throw ANY format I want at it, and it can always create OGM's, MPG's, or AVI's. No if's and's or but's from it. It just works. You mean apart from DRMed content.
I played a considerable role in the UI design that's in our aggregating router. Very broadly speaking, I'm the company's "hardware lead" - I'm actually a software engineer, with considerable low-level expertise, and did considerable parts of architecture design on our product from the kernel up.
;-)
I didn't design the of the overall look and layout (colors, fonts, layout) - that was done by a traditional Ajax web developer, but I did make many many adjustments to what he did in order to ensure consistency, make the backend CGI work, make the UI update in a reasonable fashion, and above all, make it _easy_.
If you've looked at the UI of some of the cheap wireless routers out there - linksys, Netgear and especially Buffalo, you'll know they tend to be dire. Some of the other more expensive products like SonicWall, PEPlink etc are better, but tend to be overwhelmed because the options they have are so over the top comprehensive, and there are endless submenus to find everything (reminds me of certain MS products).
Our product feature set isn't comprehensive by any means (but it does stuff others don't do), but we've been told by several customers how easy it is to use and configured. I like to think that's down to the considerable thought we've put into it the UI.
And yes, I deliberately didn't name the product in question; don't need anyone digging up dirt on me
Guess you haven't seen this ;-)
http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
hth.
Yeah, damn Scientologists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elron
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7412417.stm
Thanks for pointing out how important it is not to rush into your comments.
Just because something is GPL doesn't automatically mean that GNU made it.
As I said, many embedded Linux systems contain _no_ GNU tools or libraries. This is nothing to do with BSD, but it _is_ a common misconception, even if it's not what you meant to say.
Skipping for the moment the fact that the Linux kernel is developed using the GNU toolchain and that no Linux system can even boot without a whole core set of GNU libraries and tools
Whoa, let's hold back the rant there. There are quite a number of embedded Linux systems (generally busybox based) which run with no GNU libraries or tools whatsoever, and plenty which run with only a few.Sure, they were almost certainly _created_ using them, but the resulting system does not require them to run,
Yeah, why would you use RPM in a production OS?
I just love how failed post-installation scripts still result in a "successfully" installed package.
At which point they'd be licensing an ARM core - from guess who - As I said, ARM wins, unless there's a complete change of architecture.
Except that, ARM unlike all the other companies named, doesn't actually _make_ chips. It designs cores, which it licenses to other companies - many other companies in fact.
Apple changing architecture I suppose is possible (not like they haven't before), but it seems like an odd step when there are many ARM-based manufacturers to choose from. ARM themselves wins no matter what.
"This is UNIX, I know this!" (cue 3D file system flyover)
Unfortunately, the article itself is a work of fiction. The guy has lots of bad reasoning, poor memory and is desperately lacking in technical understanding.
;-)
For once, I'd say just read the article summary
"gold dablooms"
I wasn't listening 100% carefully, but I think something very close to this pronunciation was used in "Treasure Planet" to give it a "spacey" feel. Yes, blame Disney.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISCiX
Later machines indeed ran ARM Linux with the Acorn A5000 serving as the basis for its development. ARM Linux is now found on an insane number of embedded devices. It's possible to run full blown Debian on the more powerful machines, although you probably don't want to (the 'powerful' is purely relative compared to x86).
Chick "Shug, yoo are a bawheidet clown. Huv you naw goan an stolen an effin Archimedes A400."I seem to have misplaced my copy of "The Patter", although you're doing a good impression of Ian Banks' writing style.