I recommend getting a Whatbox. Their most expensive plan costs $18 per month and you're allowed to do pretty much anything you want with it. They even have instructions in their wiki on how to set it up as a proxy.
Finnish law is a bit outdated on this subject. The tax on blank media originates from the times when movies were bought on VHS and music on CD or cassettes. The purpose of the tax was that individuals could freely make personal copies of movies they'd bought and the movie and record industry could still have a piece of the cake. Today the problem is that even though you're allowed to make personal copies of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, you're not allowed to break the encryption, which is required if you want to make a copy, essentially defeating the whole purpose on the tax.
In related news the "blank media tax" has been widened to also include USB memory sticks and USB harddrives. The tax on external harddrives with capacity over 250GB is 20 € if I recall correctly, which of course is absurd. Luckily the tax doesn't seem to have affected retail prices (yet).
I wonder if this bug is related to an issue with my Galaxy S where as I recieve an SMS the sender name shown in the notification area is sometimes a completely different person than the real sender. Scares the shit out of you sometimes until you remember it's just a bug.
I feel sorry for all Canadians, seems like things over there aren't any better than in the US.
In comparison, I currently have a 200/10 Mbit/s cable connection (yes, 200) for 54,90 € per month. There are no transfer caps, no noticable speed fluctuations and practically no downtime at all.
That's just cable. I could easily get an unlimited 14.4 Mbit/s 3G connection for just 13,90€ per month. That includes two SIM cards (one for your phone) and a USB modem.
This doesn't really come as a surprise. In my opinion, SOHO network gear has always been of the same quality, now people think that's suddenly gonna change just because we have 802.11n?
I have a modem, a separate router (with 802.11n of course) and separate switch, and all I can say is the setup is way more reliable than any all-in-one solution I've tried so far. The modem and switch is from Cisco/Linksys and the router is a RouterBOARD 433 from Mikrotik, which I by the way recommend to anyone who wants a really good router.
I must say that this whole wave of operators suddenly getting rid of their unlimited plans makes me feel lucky for living in Finland. Over here we have at least three or four major providers (Sonera, Saunalahti/Elisa, DNA, Welho) who sell 3G plans, and the only option is and unlimited plan, and yes, they are really unlimited in the sense that there are no artificial bandwidth caps, no transfer caps and no fining of heavy users (just like all our land-line Internet connections).
An unlimited data plan costs about 15€/month, and the price difference between the providers is quite small. The only downside is that they each own their own cell towers which only their own customers can use (unlike GSM, which is available to everyone).
Heres a novel idea, spend the extra 0.0001% to put a sidewalk in right next to the automobile road for these people. Hell put one for bikes and another one for pedestrians if your concerned about safety, the cost of laying a sidewalk or two is nothing compared to the cost of laying a good road surface.
You mean like most other countries do?
I was actually surprised to see the lack of decent sidewalks (especially for bicycles only) when I went to Canada last year. In Finland, the sidewalks are wide, they are everywhere (even the smallest back alley in the middle of nowhere has a sidewalk on at least one side) and many sidewalks have two lanes; one for pedestrians and one for bicycles.
On a somewhat unrelated note, while Virgin is starting to offer "up to" 100Mbps connections in the UK and AT&T thinks 100Mbps in 10 years is somewhat unfeasible, Welho (Finland's biggest cable provider) announced a couple weeks back that they've started offering a new 200/10 Mbit/s option for all their cable customers. The cost was 59,90€ if I remember correctly.
That doesn't prove anything other than that people in North Carolina can't drive for shit. I'm always truly amazed when I see videos of U.S cars sliding down in ditches even after the slightest snowfall.
One can drive any car with summer tires even if the whole road is covered with snow. In Hanko, Finland (the southern-most city in the whole country), harbor workers drive brand new cars a few miles from the dock to a big parking lot all year round with summer tires, and there are very rarely any accidents. It's all just a matter of knowing how to drive given the circumstances.
On the other hand, with VMWare Server 2.x, you can connect to the host machine using VMWare Infrastructure Client. It looks and feels just like connecting to a ESX/ESXi server.
You're missing the point. What "Shadyman" really means is that he should think about whether he really works for Motorola, or if it indirectly is for the telephony carriers.
In Finland, you get a 110/5 Mbit (Euro)DOCSiS3.0 connection for a not-so-whopping 45,00 € a month. That includes a Cisco gigabit cable modem and free setup fee. Also, if you're a customer at Welho, you can get a 1Mbit 3G dongle for just 1€ for the first two months. You can cancel the contract after just one month so you basically get free 3G Internet access for two months.
Last time I checked my speed at http://www.speedtest.net/ I got 106.5Mbps down and about 4.4Mbps up, so you're not getting completely fooled.
Also, on the Netalyzr test, basically every single checkbox is green, so they're not doing any blocking of any kind (except the usual SMTP and SMB port blocks).
This connection is available to anyone who has cable TV in their home, which in the capital region amounts to almost everyone.
Also, in Finland, no ISP whatsoever blocks, caps or shapes any of your traffic. The speeds are the same whether it's at 5 P.M or 5 A.M. In fact, most people are not even aware of that this happens quite frequently in other countries around the globe.
Well, they could still be poorly encoded. I've seen horrific examples of this. Although, if it happens on *every* DVD you try, I'm afraid I don't have any more advice.
Either your rips are poorly encoded or you're trying to play the DVD directly by opening the first VOB file, which could be the reason why the aspect ratio is wrong. The IFO file (usually VTS_01_0.IFO or something like that) tells the player all the technical details about the video contained in the VOBs (like AR, sound codec etc.). If you don't use the "Open DVD" option, MPC won't automagically check the IFO file, which I suspect VLC does.
You don't have to wait that long, the RTM build has been floating around on all major torrent sites since this Tuesday. Just to clarify, I'm talking about the real RTM build, not the fake that's been floating around for weeks.
I've used Media Player Classic for many years and I guarantee you that it has always handled interlaced and/or anamorphic DVDs just fine, no matter if you have a widescreen monitor or if you play it in letterbox mode on a 4:3.
If Adobe Reader, the most full-featured and bloated PDF reader on the market misses some features you need, maybe you should consider using an alternative format for whatever it is you do? It's like complaining that Firefox doesn't have very good FTP support so you have to use FireFTP instead (when you infact should be using a proper FTP client).
Actually, after a while with a Logitech keyboard (I suppose you mean the $10 model) you get so used to the re-arrangement of the home/end/insert keys that you get really frustrated whenever you have to use a standard keyboard again. It's all just a matter of preference.
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I recommend getting a Whatbox. Their most expensive plan costs $18 per month and you're allowed to do pretty much anything you want with it. They even have instructions in their wiki on how to set it up as a proxy.
If Facebook doesn't know your e-mail address how exactly do you log in?
Finnish law is a bit outdated on this subject. The tax on blank media originates from the times when movies were bought on VHS and music on CD or cassettes. The purpose of the tax was that individuals could freely make personal copies of movies they'd bought and the movie and record industry could still have a piece of the cake. Today the problem is that even though you're allowed to make personal copies of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, you're not allowed to break the encryption, which is required if you want to make a copy, essentially defeating the whole purpose on the tax.
In related news the "blank media tax" has been widened to also include USB memory sticks and USB harddrives. The tax on external harddrives with capacity over 250GB is 20 € if I recall correctly, which of course is absurd. Luckily the tax doesn't seem to have affected retail prices (yet).
I wonder if this bug is related to an issue with my Galaxy S where as I recieve an SMS the sender name shown in the notification area is sometimes a completely different person than the real sender. Scares the shit out of you sometimes until you remember it's just a bug.
I feel sorry for all Canadians, seems like things over there aren't any better than in the US.
In comparison, I currently have a 200/10 Mbit/s cable connection (yes, 200) for 54,90 € per month. There are no transfer caps, no noticable speed fluctuations and practically no downtime at all.
That's just cable. I could easily get an unlimited 14.4 Mbit/s 3G connection for just 13,90€ per month. That includes two SIM cards (one for your phone) and a USB modem.
God bless Finland!
This doesn't really come as a surprise. In my opinion, SOHO network gear has always been of the same quality, now people think that's suddenly gonna change just because we have 802.11n?
I have a modem, a separate router (with 802.11n of course) and separate switch, and all I can say is the setup is way more reliable than any all-in-one solution I've tried so far. The modem and switch is from Cisco/Linksys and the router is a RouterBOARD 433 from Mikrotik, which I by the way recommend to anyone who wants a really good router.
I must say that this whole wave of operators suddenly getting rid of their unlimited plans makes me feel lucky for living in Finland. Over here we have at least three or four major providers (Sonera, Saunalahti/Elisa, DNA, Welho) who sell 3G plans, and the only option is and unlimited plan, and yes, they are really unlimited in the sense that there are no artificial bandwidth caps, no transfer caps and no fining of heavy users (just like all our land-line Internet connections).
An unlimited data plan costs about 15€/month, and the price difference between the providers is quite small. The only downside is that they each own their own cell towers which only their own customers can use (unlike GSM, which is available to everyone).
Heres a novel idea, spend the extra 0.0001% to put a sidewalk in right next to the automobile road for these people. Hell put one for bikes and another one for pedestrians if your concerned about safety, the cost of laying a sidewalk or two is nothing compared to the cost of laying a good road surface.
You mean like most other countries do?
I was actually surprised to see the lack of decent sidewalks (especially for bicycles only) when I went to Canada last year. In Finland, the sidewalks are wide, they are everywhere (even the smallest back alley in the middle of nowhere has a sidewalk on at least one side) and many sidewalks have two lanes; one for pedestrians and one for bicycles.
Any phone that does "nothing" at the moment does all the things you mentioned in the background, so your argument is moot.
On a somewhat unrelated note, while Virgin is starting to offer "up to" 100Mbps connections in the UK and AT&T thinks 100Mbps in 10 years is somewhat unfeasible, Welho (Finland's biggest cable provider) announced a couple weeks back that they've started offering a new 200/10 Mbit/s option for all their cable customers. The cost was 59,90€ if I remember correctly.
That doesn't prove anything other than that people in North Carolina can't drive for shit. I'm always truly amazed when I see videos of U.S cars sliding down in ditches even after the slightest snowfall.
One can drive any car with summer tires even if the whole road is covered with snow. In Hanko, Finland (the southern-most city in the whole country), harbor workers drive brand new cars a few miles from the dock to a big parking lot all year round with summer tires, and there are very rarely any accidents. It's all just a matter of knowing how to drive given the circumstances.
VMware Workstation has the "Virtual network editor" tool which does exactly that. It's been there since v6.0 if I remember correctly.
On the other hand, with VMWare Server 2.x, you can connect to the host machine using VMWare Infrastructure Client. It looks and feels just like connecting to a ESX/ESXi server.
You're missing the point. What "Shadyman" really means is that he should think about whether he really works for Motorola, or if it indirectly is for the telephony carriers.
In Finland, you get a 110/5 Mbit (Euro)DOCSiS3.0 connection for a not-so-whopping 45,00 € a month. That includes a Cisco gigabit cable modem and free setup fee. Also, if you're a customer at Welho, you can get a 1Mbit 3G dongle for just 1€ for the first two months. You can cancel the contract after just one month so you basically get free 3G Internet access for two months.
Last time I checked my speed at http://www.speedtest.net/ I got 106.5Mbps down and about 4.4Mbps up, so you're not getting completely fooled.
Also, on the Netalyzr test, basically every single checkbox is green, so they're not doing any blocking of any kind (except the usual SMTP and SMB port blocks).
This connection is available to anyone who has cable TV in their home, which in the capital region amounts to almost everyone.
Also, in Finland, no ISP whatsoever blocks, caps or shapes any of your traffic. The speeds are the same whether it's at 5 P.M or 5 A.M. In fact, most people are not even aware of that this happens quite frequently in other countries around the globe.
All in all,
God bless Finland
Well, they could still be poorly encoded. I've seen horrific examples of this. Although, if it happens on *every* DVD you try, I'm afraid I don't have any more advice.
Either your rips are poorly encoded or you're trying to play the DVD directly by opening the first VOB file, which could be the reason why the aspect ratio is wrong. The IFO file (usually VTS_01_0.IFO or something like that) tells the player all the technical details about the video contained in the VOBs (like AR, sound codec etc.). If you don't use the "Open DVD" option, MPC won't automagically check the IFO file, which I suspect VLC does.
You don't have to wait that long, the RTM build has been floating around on all major torrent sites since this Tuesday. Just to clarify, I'm talking about the real RTM build, not the fake that's been floating around for weeks.
I've used Media Player Classic for many years and I guarantee you that it has always handled interlaced and/or anamorphic DVDs just fine, no matter if you have a widescreen monitor or if you play it in letterbox mode on a 4:3.
If Adobe Reader, the most full-featured and bloated PDF reader on the market misses some features you need, maybe you should consider using an alternative format for whatever it is you do? It's like complaining that Firefox doesn't have very good FTP support so you have to use FireFTP instead (when you infact should be using a proper FTP client).
Why use a dump from early last year when you can have yesterdays (http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/)?
Actually, after a while with a Logitech keyboard (I suppose you mean the $10 model) you get so used to the re-arrangement of the home/end/insert keys that you get really frustrated whenever you have to use a standard keyboard again. It's all just a matter of preference.