Bullshit. You must misunderstand how much 100MB/sec is. Most harddrives can't even sustain that. The WD Raptor only goes up to about 84MB/sec. And that is the max possible. Good luck sustaining that with filesystem overhead and all. A tape drive with a specified transfer rate can actually reliably sustain that rate.
Upgraded YOUR tape drive lately? DDS has to be the slowest "modern" tape formats in existence. I'll never touch one of those drives again. Worthless. Try VXA-2 or M2.
That's just it. I didn't see spots because I skipped them along with commercials and I don't read about entertainment.
That was just my tivo-lution (actually, myth-olution), anyway. I was actually serious about the the "Profit!" part because now I save $80 a month on a cable bill. It is amazing how much cable costs these days. I just can't justify that kind of dough.
I don't think that at all. I know that advertisment is far more insidious than that. I don't subject myself to any ads (if I can help it) for that very reason. But i don't see what that has to do with slashdot and news.
That's fair; personally I find many commercials funny, or striking in some way. I don't use a commercial to tell me what to buy or how to live; it's a 30 second clip which might amuse or entertain. And those, I like to see and share with friends.
If there was ever any application for the label "tool," I'm pretty sure this is it. But I guess maybe I am a little anti-social that way. You may not think that advertisements are telling you what to buy or how to live, but they affect you. Advertisers aren't naive, you know. They don't believe that their ads will automatically get people to buy something. It is about getting in your head. It is about getting your attention so that when you DO get around to buying something, their product is near the top of your list of choices. That is what "branding" is all about. And you are playing right into their hands. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you just care about the entertainment value of it. Thats your right, but don't be so naive as to think that you are immune to the intended effect of advertisement. They only care about entertaining you insofar as it sells more crap.
The article links back to a story where there's a better description of what's been launched... Sure, anything can change in the unknown future, but I'd say there is some pudding. And to me it looks delicious.
That is one way to describe it. "Inane" comes to mind as well. But hey, at least it is optional.
6a. Realize that your friend was right about Stargate and start recording all ten years of it.
Can't you get the DVDs through Netflix?
6b. Wife reads Entertainment Weekly and adds new stuff all the time.
My wife doesn't read that kind of trash.:-)
6c. PBS does a fine job of self-promotion.
I'll give you that.
7b. Bittorrent not worth my time to download to pc, transfer to cd/dvd, get a new card and so on. I get enough computer problem crap at work. Plus I have 10 years of stargate to catch up on (see 6a).
Advanage #7 of MythTV (once it is built) over Tivo.;-)
7c. Teaching wife to use bittorrent, and associated stuff to watch a show -- not worth her or my time.
Download, "connect to server" (Mac), drag, drop, play. She does more downloading than I do.
All I really know is that I save like $80 per month on a cable bill now that I don't watch TV anymore and the cost of Netflix is the same as it was before. I am just better about putting the movies in their return envelope and sticking htem in the mail.
Why do you read Slashdot, then? Slashdot merely aggregates news from other sources and sends it to you regardless of whether you want it or not.
news != advertisement (ideally)
Do you really research every product you buy? When you need a bottle of shampoo, do you have a chemistry book and a copy of Consumer Reports handy?
Most shampoos are pretty much the same anyway, so it doesn't really matter (to me). Either i just stick with a single, randomly selected type or I use whatever the wife picks up. Either way, I don't sit around watching TV waiting for the most eye catching advertisement to make the decision for me. That would just be pathetic.
My impression is that the DVR's you get from cable companies are crap and they offer less freedom when it comes to skipping ads and whatnot. TiVo can still survive as a niche player as long as they don't just end up selling out to broadcasters like cable companies do.
4. Stop hearing about new shows except for word of mouth and watch your list dwindle over time 5. Start researching things to watch 6. Give up on that and just watch reruns of the shows you used to watch week by week but have since been canceled and gone into syndication. 7. Stop watching TV altogether and rely on Bittorrent and Netflix. 8. ??? 9. Profit!
'"The consumer is in charge and we need to respect that," said Kent. "Our consumer satisfaction rate is very high and if you respect that and remember that they're the ones who decide, not the networks, not the advertiser and not us, TiVo, then they actually will interact with your advertising on their own time."
Meaningless PR babble as far as I am concerned. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. We'll see how it works out in the long run. Although, really, I don't give a crap what Tivo does because I will continue to use open source solutions such as MythTV which are not beholden in any way to the whims of advertisers and broadcasters (barring draconian legislation and enforcement, of course). MythTV is free to implement anything that users want, including autoskipping of ads. Let's see TiVo implement that.
With that out of the way, I personally would like to subscribe, or somehow express interest in, regular commercials. I would like them saved in the same way as the longer ads, ie in the Tivo menu. So when I see a high-quality commercial that I want to show my friends, I don't have to record several shows hoping to catch it, I can just request it.
And I find that attitude very strange. I find advertisements almost universally offensive. If I want to buy something, I will do my own research.. preferably from unbiased sources.
Also, I have found that I don't know about new shows either. I only heard about 'Lost' by word of mouth and decided to rent the DVD to catch up on it before adding it to my record list. Of course, I had to use Bittorrent to catch up on the second season, but it is easy enough to copy to the MythTV box and watch it from the Myth Video player.
Between MythTV and AdBlock Plus in Firefox, my life is nearly ad free and I think I like it. If I feel like seeing a movie in the theater, there are plenty of sites where you can get a list of what's showing and get trailers so I don't really miss not seeing the ads for the shows/movies on live TV. I really value being able to get the information on my own time. Same idea with other advertisements. If I need to buy something, I will do my own research. I resent having information force fed to me.. even if it is information that I will eventually want.
I'm no sports fan, and I wonder how you feel that skipping the breaks and timeshifting affects the impact of a game. Does it go by "too quickly?" Does it still feel like you are watching it live? Does it hold the same excitement value?
But yeah, football is absolutely ridiculous about breaks. It is as if the game is designed for broadcast TV.
At the risk of being reduntant, I'd like to put in my vote of "I never watch live TV." (or ads for that matter). Granted, I have MythTV and not Tivo, but the idea is the same. The real power of a PVR is that you can easy have all of your favorite shows prerecorded across many channels. Before you know it, you can have a nearly complete catalog of a program if it reruns a lot. I remember one time I "accidentally" recorded an entire 48 hour (or something like that) Month Python's Flying Circus marathon from the BBC America channel. I didn't even know it was showing. I just had MythTV set up to record the program whenever it aired on any channel. I almost ran out of disk space! Who has time to watch live TV when there is so much good stuff prerecorded?
And when it comes to ads, well, MythTV not only allows you to skip ads, but you can have it do so automatically (with few mistakes). So I NEVER watch ads unless some idiot sends one as an attachment in email.;-P
Seriously, who thought that a company the size of TiVo could take on the entire broadcast entertainment industry? Eventually they had to play ball. They only needed to keep the "ad zapping" functionality long enough to get their foot in the door with consumers. Now they have a Brand and can start to screw customers and still manage to turn a profit because they're backed by the Big Boys.
I wouldn't consider your average Java developer to be part of the Java community (as far as the source code for the VM and compiler is concerned). The vast majority of Java developers don't give a crap about the source code to the JDK. To say that all Java developers are part of the JDK community is like saying all open source C programmers are part of the gcc community.
Blu-Ray? They were doomed to fail when the abandoned the much cooler acronym style of naming such as... HD-DVD. Didn't they learn their lesson with Betamax vs. VHS? What video store is going to advertise, "Rent Blu-Rays Here!"
You people keep talking about "being chained to the computer" and there being some advantage to having to use a separate device to talk on than you do all your other communicating on. Why would I want to track down where I left my phone to make a call? I haven't had a landline for years, and when I did, had a cordless handset, so I've dealt with years of "where the heck is my phone?" and if I'm already in front of my computer (which would be most of the time), why would I want to start hunting for a phone?
Apparently you aren't in front of your computer most the time if you had trouble finding your phone. Instead of just learning to hang the darn thing up at the base station when you were done with the phone, you chained yourself to a computer. That's one way to solve the problem, I guess. Sorry, but I, like many people, like to walk around with a phone. Maybe go outside. Or just sit on the couch.
Let me guess, you're one of those people who actually sits in front of your computer to watch a movie too. Wierd.
It's gotten where I dread receiving phone calls, since they're startling,
Try a new ringer setting and get a prescription for some downers.
start a mad scramble for tracking down where the phone is by listening for the ring, cut off when my battery dies, which seems like every fourth call...
So apparently all your problems with regular phones stem from your unwillingness to put the phone back on the base station when you are done with it.
Similarly, making a phone call has been a chore as well; you can't just compose what you want to say and fire it off. Instead, you have to (after finding the phone and making sure it has minutes and it's charged, and if not, hunching over unnaturally during the call to make sure you stay close to the wall plug) wait, doing effectively nothing else, hoping they're there. If not (and usually that's the case, because who sits by the phone waiting for a call?), you have to leave a message, and hope they get back to you.
Holy cow, you sound like one of those people in infomercials trying to sell some new type of vaccuum cleaner by totally exagerating the "hassles" of the "old" way. "Taking a phone call is such a chore..." Yeah, maybe if you are a quadrapalegic! The days of being teathered to a 3 foot cord in front a telephone device died about 60 years ago. I actually have an old antique telephone seat if you want to buy it. Doesn't come with a crank powered telephone, but you could easily sit a laptop on it.
All this takes way longer than just firing off an email, and part of the email's convenience is that you're at your computer for the email, so if an important IM (from your server watch, for example) comes in, you can instantly handle it.
You waste that much time in front of a computer and you are worried about the 15 seconds it takes to wait for someone to answer the your phone call!? You're fuckin' with me, aren't you?
VOIP offers the chance to combine another separate thing to keep track of into the same unit. I'm sure I don't have to explain on/. that one's computer handles nearly *everything* in life, right? Work, reading, socializing, gaming, shopping... VOIP is just one more thing I can do at the computer, without having to suffer the inconveniences of getting up and finding and working with some tool that operates some other way.
You have trouble operating fax and photo copy machines, don't you? It mean, if it doesn't have a mouse or windows you can open/close, how the hell do you work it!?
Anyway, i thought your post was pretty amusing whether that was your intenet or not. Cheers.
Or another option is to not piss off contributors by rejecting suggestions and otherwise being resistent to change. Nobody is going to bother forking if Sun remains responsive to the community.
Network cabling really needs to be planned and implemented as if it were power or phones. When you move into an office, you spend a little extra money to have all offices wired with 2 or more CAT5 connections right next to the phone jack and you never have to worry about it again. PUt a hub under the conference table if you need network access at meetings. Wireless is convenient and all, but hardly essential for a business which thinks ahead to have proper wiring done in the first place. Heck, where I used to work, they even put CAT5 in the bathrooms!
Not in every single case, but the effects of nurture are well-documented.
Human behavior is "documented" as being a rather complex interaction of nature, culture, environment, and individual psychology. There is no reason to believe that spending hours a day in front of a TV or computer screen interacting with violent games and other entertainment wouldn't contribute to one of those factors. The question isn't "Do violent games affect children?" The question is, "How does it affect children?" What might these children be doing instead of playing viiolent games? Maybe it is what they are NOT doign that has an effect. Sure, these are questions without definitive answers, but that doesn't mean you get to dismiss them because of some personal bias you have towards gaming.
I use Skype only for times when I am wandering down the street in some random city and country and need to make a quick international call; I can just stumble a hotspot, sit down on a stoop, and Skype away. Otherwise, when I'm in the hotel, etc., I set up the ATA properly and get better call quality, lower rates, and a proper handset.
Heh, although I have found myself wandering down the street in some random city/country, I can't say that I have ever had a computer on me at the same time. It would be cool though if internet cafes had Skype installed. I'd definitely use that.
SkypeOut is free and SkypeIn is 30euros a year, so about $3(USD) a month.
For now.
My Speakeasy VoIP service has unlimited time and the ATA was free. I don't know why YOU would want to spend extra money for real VoIP, but I think most people would appreciate not being chained to the computer to use the phone and have to keep it running to recieve calls. But if guess if you are just that desparate to save a buck (or euro), you'll put up with about any inconvenience.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course your pupil is only 1.5 mm
Some LSD will take care of that right quick and your "vision" will easily outperform any camera.
-matthew
Bullshit. You must misunderstand how much 100MB/sec is. Most harddrives can't even sustain that. The WD Raptor only goes up to about 84MB/sec. And that is the max possible. Good luck sustaining that with filesystem overhead and all. A tape drive with a specified transfer rate can actually reliably sustain that rate.
-matthew
Upgraded YOUR tape drive lately? DDS has to be the slowest "modern" tape formats in existence. I'll never touch one of those drives again. Worthless. Try VXA-2 or M2.
-matthew
That's just it. I didn't see spots because I skipped them along with commercials and I don't read about entertainment.
That was just my tivo-lution (actually, myth-olution), anyway. I was actually serious about the the "Profit!" part because now I save $80 a month on a cable bill. It is amazing how much cable costs these days. I just can't justify that kind of dough.
-matthew
I don't think that at all. I know that advertisment is far more insidious than that. I don't subject myself to any ads (if I can help it) for that very reason. But i don't see what that has to do with slashdot and news.
-matthew
That's fair; personally I find many commercials funny, or striking in some way. I don't use a commercial to tell me what to buy or how to live; it's a 30 second clip which might amuse or entertain. And those, I like to see and share with friends.
If there was ever any application for the label "tool," I'm pretty sure this is it. But I guess maybe I am a little anti-social that way. You may not think that advertisements are telling you what to buy or how to live, but they affect you. Advertisers aren't naive, you know. They don't believe that their ads will automatically get people to buy something. It is about getting in your head. It is about getting your attention so that when you DO get around to buying something, their product is near the top of your list of choices. That is what "branding" is all about. And you are playing right into their hands. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you just care about the entertainment value of it. Thats your right, but don't be so naive as to think that you are immune to the intended effect of advertisement. They only care about entertaining you insofar as it sells more crap.
The article links back to a story where there's a better description of what's been launched... Sure, anything can change in the unknown future, but I'd say there is some pudding. And to me it looks delicious.
That is one way to describe it. "Inane" comes to mind as well. But hey, at least it is optional.
-matthew
6a. Realize that your friend was right about Stargate and start recording all ten years of it.
:-)
;-)
Can't you get the DVDs through Netflix?
6b. Wife reads Entertainment Weekly and adds new stuff all the time.
My wife doesn't read that kind of trash.
6c. PBS does a fine job of self-promotion.
I'll give you that.
7b. Bittorrent not worth my time to download to pc, transfer to cd/dvd, get a new card and so on. I get enough computer problem crap at work. Plus I have 10 years of stargate to catch up on (see 6a).
Advanage #7 of MythTV (once it is built) over Tivo.
7c. Teaching wife to use bittorrent, and associated stuff to watch a show -- not worth her or my time.
Download, "connect to server" (Mac), drag, drop, play. She does more downloading than I do.
All I really know is that I save like $80 per month on a cable bill now that I don't watch TV anymore and the cost of Netflix is the same as it was before. I am just better about putting the movies in their return envelope and sticking htem in the mail.
-matthew
Why do you read Slashdot, then? Slashdot merely aggregates news from other sources and sends it to you regardless of whether you want it or not.
news != advertisement (ideally)
Do you really research every product you buy? When you need a bottle of shampoo, do you have a chemistry book and a copy of Consumer Reports handy?
Most shampoos are pretty much the same anyway, so it doesn't really matter (to me). Either i just stick with a single, randomly selected type or I use whatever the wife picks up. Either way, I don't sit around watching TV waiting for the most eye catching advertisement to make the decision for me. That would just be pathetic.
-matthew
My impression is that the DVR's you get from cable companies are crap and they offer less freedom when it comes to skipping ads and whatnot. TiVo can still survive as a niche player as long as they don't just end up selling out to broadcasters like cable companies do.
-matthew
4. Stop hearing about new shows except for word of mouth and watch your list dwindle over time
5. Start researching things to watch
6. Give up on that and just watch reruns of the shows you used to watch week by week but have since been canceled and gone into syndication.
7. Stop watching TV altogether and rely on Bittorrent and Netflix.
8. ???
9. Profit!
-matthew
From the article:
'"The consumer is in charge and we need to respect that," said Kent. "Our consumer satisfaction rate is very high and if you respect that and remember that they're the ones who decide, not the networks, not the advertiser and not us, TiVo, then they actually will interact with your advertising on their own time."
Meaningless PR babble as far as I am concerned. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. We'll see how it works out in the long run. Although, really, I don't give a crap what Tivo does because I will continue to use open source solutions such as MythTV which are not beholden in any way to the whims of advertisers and broadcasters (barring draconian legislation and enforcement, of course). MythTV is free to implement anything that users want, including autoskipping of ads. Let's see TiVo implement that.
With that out of the way, I personally would like to subscribe, or somehow express interest in, regular commercials. I would like them saved in the same way as the longer ads, ie in the Tivo menu. So when I see a high-quality commercial that I want to show my friends, I don't have to record several shows hoping to catch it, I can just request it.
And I find that attitude very strange. I find advertisements almost universally offensive. If I want to buy something, I will do my own research.. preferably from unbiased sources.
-matthew
Also, I have found that I don't know about new shows either. I only heard about 'Lost' by word of mouth and decided to rent the DVD to catch up on it before adding it to my record list. Of course, I had to use Bittorrent to catch up on the second season, but it is easy enough to copy to the MythTV box and watch it from the Myth Video player.
Between MythTV and AdBlock Plus in Firefox, my life is nearly ad free and I think I like it. If I feel like seeing a movie in the theater, there are plenty of sites where you can get a list of what's showing and get trailers so I don't really miss not seeing the ads for the shows/movies on live TV. I really value being able to get the information on my own time. Same idea with other advertisements. If I need to buy something, I will do my own research. I resent having information force fed to me.. even if it is information that I will eventually want.
-matthew
I'm no sports fan, and I wonder how you feel that skipping the breaks and timeshifting affects the impact of a game. Does it go by "too quickly?" Does it still feel like you are watching it live? Does it hold the same excitement value?
But yeah, football is absolutely ridiculous about breaks. It is as if the game is designed for broadcast TV.
-matthew
At the risk of being reduntant, I'd like to put in my vote of "I never watch live TV." (or ads for that matter). Granted, I have MythTV and not Tivo, but the idea is the same. The real power of a PVR is that you can easy have all of your favorite shows prerecorded across many channels. Before you know it, you can have a nearly complete catalog of a program if it reruns a lot. I remember one time I "accidentally" recorded an entire 48 hour (or something like that) Month Python's Flying Circus marathon from the BBC America channel. I didn't even know it was showing. I just had MythTV set up to record the program whenever it aired on any channel. I almost ran out of disk space! Who has time to watch live TV when there is so much good stuff prerecorded?
;-P
And when it comes to ads, well, MythTV not only allows you to skip ads, but you can have it do so automatically (with few mistakes). So I NEVER watch ads unless some idiot sends one as an attachment in email.
-matthew
Seriously, who thought that a company the size of TiVo could take on the entire broadcast entertainment industry? Eventually they had to play ball. They only needed to keep the "ad zapping" functionality long enough to get their foot in the door with consumers. Now they have a Brand and can start to screw customers and still manage to turn a profit because they're backed by the Big Boys.
-matthew
I wouldn't consider your average Java developer to be part of the Java community (as far as the source code for the VM and compiler is concerned). The vast majority of Java developers don't give a crap about the source code to the JDK. To say that all Java developers are part of the JDK community is like saying all open source C programmers are part of the gcc community.
-matthew
Blu-Ray? They were doomed to fail when the abandoned the much cooler acronym style of naming such as... HD-DVD. Didn't they learn their lesson with Betamax vs. VHS? What video store is going to advertise, "Rent Blu-Rays Here!"
-matthew
You people keep talking about "being chained to the computer" and there being some advantage to having to use a separate device to talk on than you do all your other communicating on. Why would I want to track down where I left my phone to make a call? I haven't had a landline for years, and when I did, had a cordless handset, so I've dealt with years of "where the heck is my phone?" and if I'm already in front of my computer (which would be most of the time), why would I want to start hunting for a phone?
/. that one's computer handles nearly *everything* in life, right? Work, reading, socializing, gaming, shopping... VOIP is just one more thing I can do at the computer, without having to suffer the inconveniences of getting up and finding and working with some tool that operates some other way.
Apparently you aren't in front of your computer most the time if you had trouble finding your phone. Instead of just learning to hang the darn thing up at the base station when you were done with the phone, you chained yourself to a computer. That's one way to solve the problem, I guess. Sorry, but I, like many people, like to walk around with a phone. Maybe go outside. Or just sit on the couch.
Let me guess, you're one of those people who actually sits in front of your computer to watch a movie too. Wierd.
It's gotten where I dread receiving phone calls, since they're startling,
Try a new ringer setting and get a prescription for some downers.
start a mad scramble for tracking down where the phone is by listening for the ring, cut off when my battery dies, which seems like every fourth call...
So apparently all your problems with regular phones stem from your unwillingness to put the phone back on the base station when you are done with it.
Similarly, making a phone call has been a chore as well; you can't just compose what you want to say and fire it off. Instead, you have to (after finding the phone and making sure it has minutes and it's charged, and if not, hunching over unnaturally during the call to make sure you stay close to the wall plug) wait, doing effectively nothing else, hoping they're there. If not (and usually that's the case, because who sits by the phone waiting for a call?), you have to leave a message, and hope they get back to you.
Holy cow, you sound like one of those people in infomercials trying to sell some new type of vaccuum cleaner by totally exagerating the "hassles" of the "old" way. "Taking a phone call is such a chore..." Yeah, maybe if you are a quadrapalegic! The days of being teathered to a 3 foot cord in front a telephone device died about 60 years ago. I actually have an old antique telephone seat if you want to buy it. Doesn't come with a crank powered telephone, but you could easily sit a laptop on it.
All this takes way longer than just firing off an email, and part of the email's convenience is that you're at your computer for the email, so if an important IM (from your server watch, for example) comes in, you can instantly handle it.
You waste that much time in front of a computer and you are worried about the 15 seconds it takes to wait for someone to answer the your phone call!? You're fuckin' with me, aren't you?
VOIP offers the chance to combine another separate thing to keep track of into the same unit. I'm sure I don't have to explain on
You have trouble operating fax and photo copy machines, don't you? It mean, if it doesn't have a mouse or windows you can open/close, how the hell do you work it!?
Anyway, i thought your post was pretty amusing whether that was your intenet or not. Cheers.
-matthew
Don't release the source code.
Or another option is to not piss off contributors by rejecting suggestions and otherwise being resistent to change. Nobody is going to bother forking if Sun remains responsive to the community.
-matthew
Ya know, one of these days I am going to learn to be a little quicker to the punchline. Congrats.
-matthew
Network cabling really needs to be planned and implemented as if it were power or phones. When you move into an office, you spend a little extra money to have all offices wired with 2 or more CAT5 connections right next to the phone jack and you never have to worry about it again. PUt a hub under the conference table if you need network access at meetings. Wireless is convenient and all, but hardly essential for a business which thinks ahead to have proper wiring done in the first place. Heck, where I used to work, they even put CAT5 in the bathrooms!
-matthew
Not in every single case, but the effects of nurture are well-documented.
Human behavior is "documented" as being a rather complex interaction of nature, culture, environment, and individual psychology. There is no reason to believe that spending hours a day in front of a TV or computer screen interacting with violent games and other entertainment wouldn't contribute to one of those factors. The question isn't "Do violent games affect children?" The question is, "How does it affect children?" What might these children be doing instead of playing viiolent games? Maybe it is what they are NOT doign that has an effect. Sure, these are questions without definitive answers, but that doesn't mean you get to dismiss them because of some personal bias you have towards gaming.
-matthew
I use Skype only for times when I am wandering down the street in some random city and country and need to make a quick international call; I can just stumble a hotspot, sit down on a stoop, and Skype away. Otherwise, when I'm in the hotel, etc., I set up the ATA properly and get better call quality, lower rates, and a proper handset.
Heh, although I have found myself wandering down the street in some random city/country, I can't say that I have ever had a computer on me at the same time. It would be cool though if internet cafes had Skype installed. I'd definitely use that.
-matthew
SkypeOut is free and SkypeIn is 30euros a year, so about $3(USD) a month.
For now.
My Speakeasy VoIP service has unlimited time and the ATA was free. I don't know why YOU would want to spend extra money for real VoIP, but I think most people would appreciate not being chained to the computer to use the phone and have to keep it running to recieve calls. But if guess if you are just that desparate to save a buck (or euro), you'll put up with about any inconvenience.
-matthew
Nobody has proven that assholes raise asshole children either. So I guess we can't say anything about the subject with any confidence.
-matthew