I changed out a CD player in a car with an mp3 capable one. The GF wondered where her favorite CD was, and I realized it was still in the player I'd pulled out, in the closet. What to do? I looked around and found a power supply brick with 12v, slipped it over the power pin of the player, used a screwdriver to connect the ground, and the eject button popped it out. No dissassembling the dash again, or messing with alligator clip leads.
(It certainly counts as a quick fix for a botch -- i should have popped it when it was still in the car).
There are already third party applications that let you take TiVo "streams" and watch them on your PC or burn them to DVD - I'm on the verge of buying a TiVoNet card for this very purpose. Does anybody know if this new service is going to make TiVo lock out those free applications?
It's always been a possibility. No one has figured out how to get content off a series 2 DirecTivo yet, as far as I know. They know how to make it difficult, they just haven't yet. It's clear from their statements in many forums that they are not going to fight the content providers like Sonic Blue was. Tivo is going to cooperate, and consumers will either tolerate the restrictions on the service, or not.
are things that exhibit network effect, meaning increased utility that is non-linear with respect to connectivity. Ebay wins because of the network effect; the "virtuous circle" of the windows march to hegemony was a network effect.
Things that scale effectiveness by bodies or trucks or physical widgets are less clearcut -- they are extensions of the old models with new efficiency, e.g, Amazon.
This is why peer to peer is so seductive a technology. Everyone knows it offers the payback of the network effect. But it hasn't found a profitable usage model yet.
Yeah, but that is an unhelpful suggestion. People want to get at their existing installation w/o screwing with funny partitions. This scheme rocks; it gives you the migration path that is needed to let people try the Linux desktop w/o any downside to
ending up with data on the wrong system unreadable to the other.
I have done the FAT32 partition thing to make tivo backups, only because linux wouldn't let me write to the NTFS C drive. It's a silly thing to make users do.
As I said in a previous VOIP topic
posting,
there are reasons to regulate, and the point to do it will be a the voip to phone number gateway points. You can yell all you want that business models aren't guaranteed. But, in fact, we the people, through our duly authorized representative, did grant monopolies at regulated rates of return to phone companies. If was are going to break the monopopy by allowing unregulated voip, will will somehow need to figure out how the phone companies are going to amortize (eg: write off) depreciation on the physical plant that was scheduled over 25 years; then figure out how to have a viable ISP business that is not riding on the back of the non-existant regulated monopolies.
Expect prices for IP access to go up when this happens. Whatever the cause, the providers will always find a reason to raise the prices if they can.
Maybe we should've just called them the master and the apprentice?
That would be wrong, because in IDE, the apprentice can't ever take the role of the master. This is distinct from the re-elected master scenario common in distributed programs mentioned earlier in the thread.
Many people posting here about the silliness of the decree (which is silly) miss a point that the IDE term isn't all that well chosen at the start.
There was nothing necessary in the IDE standard obliging use of those terms. There are any number of other terms that could have been used that do not conflict with the channel identity primary and secondary. It could as well have been principal/follower, or alpha/beta. For fun, use "supplicant" for the 2nd one. Parasite? Sycophant? Symbiot?
Anyway, master/slave need not have been used.
Something that indicated necessity of the 1st one
and the optional nature of the other would have
sufficed.
In fact, "slave" is a bad term. There are
many times when the question why there can't be more than one slave is raised. One master, many slaves is a perfectly logical extension of the natural metaphor, and it's a wrong conclusion for the IDE space.
Stallman and Torvalds are unlikely to ever see the stand of a courtroom with a Judge moderating. They are likely to be deposed in a motel somewhere by a gang of SCO lawyers, a court reporter, and their own representation. IBMs attorneys might not even be present. Such a deposition can go on for days, and becomes a fishing expedition for potential inconsistencies. Aggressive deposition questioning can be very aggravating and scary to the person being deposed. It is a serious mistake to take a deposition lightly.
Just go look at the history of Scientology depositions for examples of aggressive litigation. Google for "deposition" and any of the following: "scientology", "moxon" "kobrin" or "henson".
Bill Gates didn't testify in court at the antitrust trial -- it was edited chunks of a video taped deposition.
The phone companies monopoly, while historically profitable, is a dual edged sword. They get the monopoly advantages, but have limited return on investment, caused by regulated rates. The investment model is based on really long depreciation times for the physical plant. They are obliged to serve areas that are probably not economically viable to support -- like all the places that don't have cable TV, but do have phone service. They are obliged to provide 411 services, and to be usable in the face of power outages.
VOIP isn't carrying those burdens, and is often parasitic on the phone company physical plant for wires. So there is a lot of good reason for the phone companies to be unhappy with interlopers that might mess up their regulated economic model - which they can't change by law.
It is one thing to say the RIAA/MPAA should die, because their economic model isn't guaranteed; but the phone company model IS guaranteed by the law that gives the monopoly.
I don't think I have any problems with VOIP provision that does not interconnect to the regular network. At the point there are gateways, it seems like those become perfectly appropriate points of regulation.
this page Says that 45 rpm sales finally passed the older format (78 rpm) in 1955.
If you assume that "hits" are always the bulk of sales, the RIAA Award database says that ther were 53 "gold" singles awarded in 1968, which I guess to be a representative near-peak sales year for singles. Since "gold" was 500,000 units, it says that top sellers were at least 25M units that year. If you guess that is 1/4 to 1/2 total unit sales, then likely there were 50-100M single sales a year around 1968 in the US, which was probably around 1/2 unit per person per year. So, by that measure, the current ~8m/month = 96M units over twice as many people is maybe 1/4 unit per person per year.
I am possibly off by factors of two or four, I'd guess, but maybe not by a factor of 10 I wouldn't think. On-line sales could reach equivalent to peak 45rpm single sales per-capita in not-very long.
I will observe that the kind of contracts artists got in the days of singles really, really sucked, and there was little money to be made until album sales kicked in. A healthy singles market is not necessarily healthy for artists, but it does have historic precedent.
This page suggests that 45 rpm singles were going out at a rate of 1 million/month from the single vendor (RCA) six months after the format was introduced. People needed to buy new players, and the population was lower than today; I don't have any volume figures for 78rpm single volume.
The question I'm wondering is: how many 45 rpm singles were being sold at the height of their popularity, into what population?
We are guessing that 7.7M + 4M/month is way low compared to the peak, which I might guess was 10-15 million/month for a smaller population.
Even if you need to flush multiple times when there is "solid waste" in the toilet, you are saving water each time you are disposing only "liquid waste". Even with bad low-flow toilets, you are saving water.
What I don't like is that they clog more easily, because they have narrower throats to get higher velocity. This obliges more plunger operation.
A profit center makes the business money. Like software development, or whatever it is that the business does: doing a good job will make the company money.
Oh, grasshopper, you mistake a point -- {software,product} development is a cost center, it does not make money, and is a cost center make cheaper.
Sales make money. This explains a lot, when you look around at places that do development.
Those who show up with money are an influential subset of those who show up. If you show up without money, you might get heard, but not as clearly as those with money.
Those who do neither, but carp on the sidelines
have no affect at all.
If you want to go ahead and try to change the funding structure, go ahead -- but (a) you'll have to do it within the current structure, which is set up to oppose that change; and (b) there's going to be a lot of bogus policy decisions and laws made in the interim.
So if you want rational IP policy and laws, you must play by the current rules. Whinging on slashdot does nothing useful.
A good, old-fashioned letter, with $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills paper clipped to it.
It's often hard to be sufficiently cynical, but this goes a little too far. Like, far enough to earn you a date with a court and a prosecutor for contribution irregularities.
Look, policy is made by the people who show up, and by those who show up with the money. If you really care, MAKE LEGAL CONTRIBUTIONS and PARTICIPATE. Go to fund raisers. Host some. Send your letters too, but SHOW UP.
When was the last time anyone here partitipated in a legitamate political event for someone who was actually likely to be in office and be able to exercise power in a direction you liked?
The only advantage USB has over ethernet is power over the wire eliminating a brick. Firewire vs. USB is a wash afaict, there's no knockout either way, so both survive.
Bluetooth seems to have nothing hardware wise that dirt cheap wifi doesn't. Which is not to say the software stacks are the same, but well, "ethernet always wins", and bluetooth ain't ethernet.
Batteries are the bane of wireless devices.
The only wireless technology that can win in the space occupied by wifi is one that transmits device power (like USB) in place of the existing commodity. I think Nikola Tesla tried this, and didn't exactly succeed. Or eyedropper replenshed fuel cells for earphones maybe? Dont' think so.
has questionable intellectual honesty. One of the best things you can do to validate your belief in something is to occasionally understand the criticism of it by people who really do question it, not the quibbles of fellow believers.
It's why Liberals need to listen to Rush now and then. It's why neo-cons should read Franken.
So anyone using XP who says "don't read this book" is probably delusioinal in several respects.
As another poster remarked, though, it's a bit annoying to read a review that does not include snips of key points and some analysis. This is endemic in/. reviews. Reviewers, please go look at the form of articles in the Sunday Book Review and follow it!
Slashdot Mirror
(It certainly counts as a quick fix for a botch -- i should have popped it when it was still in the car).
-dB
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don't you hate it when it's so wedged that even that doesn't work, and you need to pull the plug? -dB
Yes you can. There's a 'play to vcr' option that works just fine. This works even with the DirecTivo.
Tivo isn't going to be fighting the DRM war for us. They are hostages to the industry just like we are.
-dB
It's always been a possibility. No one has figured out how to get content off a series 2 DirecTivo yet, as far as I know. They know how to make it difficult, they just haven't yet. It's clear from their statements in many forums that they are not going to fight the content providers like Sonic Blue was. Tivo is going to cooperate, and consumers will either tolerate the restrictions on the service, or not.
-dB
Things that scale effectiveness by bodies or trucks or physical widgets are less clearcut -- they are extensions of the old models with new efficiency, e.g, Amazon.
This is why peer to peer is so seductive a technology. Everyone knows it offers the payback of the network effect. But it hasn't found a profitable usage model yet.
-dB
Letting the market rule is a neat idea, but laws regulation exists to keep people from being raped, literally and figuratively.
The voip lunch ain't gonna be free as in beer.
-dB
I have done the FAT32 partition thing to make tivo backups, only because linux wouldn't let me write to the NTFS C drive. It's a silly thing to make users do.
-dB
Expect prices for IP access to go up when this happens. Whatever the cause, the providers will always find a reason to raise the prices if they can.
-dB
That would be wrong, because in IDE, the apprentice can't ever take the role of the master. This is distinct from the re-elected master scenario common in distributed programs mentioned earlier in the thread.
-dB
There was nothing necessary in the IDE standard obliging use of those terms. There are any number of other terms that could have been used that do not conflict with the channel identity primary and secondary. It could as well have been principal/follower, or alpha/beta. For fun, use "supplicant" for the 2nd one. Parasite? Sycophant? Symbiot?
Anyway, master/slave need not have been used. Something that indicated necessity of the 1st one and the optional nature of the other would have sufficed.
In fact, "slave" is a bad term. There are many times when the question why there can't be more than one slave is raised. One master, many slaves is a perfectly logical extension of the natural metaphor, and it's a wrong conclusion for the IDE space.
"Names are hard."
-dB
Just go look at the history of Scientology depositions for examples of aggressive litigation. Google for "deposition" and any of the following: "scientology", "moxon" "kobrin" or "henson".
Bill Gates didn't testify in court at the antitrust trial -- it was edited chunks of a video taped deposition.
-dB
-dB
-dB
VOIP isn't carrying those burdens, and is often parasitic on the phone company physical plant for wires. So there is a lot of good reason for the phone companies to be unhappy with interlopers that might mess up their regulated economic model - which they can't change by law.
It is one thing to say the RIAA/MPAA should die, because their economic model isn't guaranteed; but the phone company model IS guaranteed by the law that gives the monopoly.
I don't think I have any problems with VOIP provision that does not interconnect to the regular network. At the point there are gateways, it seems like those become perfectly appropriate points of regulation.
-dB
If you assume that "hits" are always the bulk of sales, the RIAA Award database says that ther were 53 "gold" singles awarded in 1968, which I guess to be a representative near-peak sales year for singles. Since "gold" was 500,000 units, it says that top sellers were at least 25M units that year. If you guess that is 1/4 to 1/2 total unit sales, then likely there were 50-100M single sales a year around 1968 in the US, which was probably around 1/2 unit per person per year. So, by that measure, the current ~8m/month = 96M units over twice as many people is maybe 1/4 unit per person per year.
I am possibly off by factors of two or four, I'd guess, but maybe not by a factor of 10 I wouldn't think. On-line sales could reach equivalent to peak 45rpm single sales per-capita in not-very long.
I will observe that the kind of contracts artists got in the days of singles really, really sucked, and there was little money to be made until album sales kicked in. A healthy singles market is not necessarily healthy for artists, but it does have historic precedent.
-dB
The question I'm wondering is: how many 45 rpm singles were being sold at the height of their popularity, into what population?
We are guessing that 7.7M + 4M/month is way low compared to the peak, which I might guess was 10-15 million/month for a smaller population.
-dB
What I don't like is that they clog more easily, because they have narrower throats to get higher velocity. This obliges more plunger operation.
-dB
Oh, grasshopper, you mistake a point -- {software,product} development is a cost center, it does not make money, and is a cost center make cheaper.
Sales make money. This explains a lot, when you look around at places that do development.
-dB
Those who do neither, but carp on the sidelines have no affect at all.
If you want to go ahead and try to change the funding structure, go ahead -- but (a) you'll have to do it within the current structure, which is set up to oppose that change; and (b) there's going to be a lot of bogus policy decisions and laws made in the interim.
So if you want rational IP policy and laws, you must play by the current rules. Whinging on slashdot does nothing useful.
-dB
It's often hard to be sufficiently cynical, but this goes a little too far. Like, far enough to earn you a date with a court and a prosecutor for contribution irregularities.
Look, policy is made by the people who show up, and by those who show up with the money. If you really care, MAKE LEGAL CONTRIBUTIONS and PARTICIPATE. Go to fund raisers. Host some. Send your letters too, but SHOW UP.
When was the last time anyone here partitipated in a legitamate political event for someone who was actually likely to be in office and be able to exercise power in a direction you liked?
-dB
Bluetooth seems to have nothing hardware wise that dirt cheap wifi doesn't. Which is not to say the software stacks are the same, but well, "ethernet always wins", and bluetooth ain't ethernet.
Batteries are the bane of wireless devices. The only wireless technology that can win in the space occupied by wifi is one that transmits device power (like USB) in place of the existing commodity. I think Nikola Tesla tried this, and didn't exactly succeed. Or eyedropper replenshed fuel cells for earphones maybe? Dont' think so.
-dB
It's why Liberals need to listen to Rush now and then. It's why neo-cons should read Franken.
So anyone using XP who says "don't read this book" is probably delusioinal in several respects.
As another poster remarked, though, it's a bit annoying to read a review that does not include snips of key points and some analysis. This is endemic in /. reviews. Reviewers, please go look at the form of articles in the Sunday Book Review and follow it!
-dB
Consipiracists sense a Microsoft plot.
SCO sues someone involved.
-dB
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