Not to rain on their parade, I like saving shows as much as the next packgeek and it is nice to just let the TIVO record what it will and then delete what you aren't interested in.
The problem is, when you get up to only 100+ gig of storage space on it, even with the memory modifications, the TIVO takes a while to bring the recording lists up (~1-2 minutes on my full 120 single drive unit). Having all that space isn't really going to do much if it takes 5-10 minutes everytime you want to look through your recording list. On the bright side, the guys at 9th tee know this already so I have high hopes for a solution when the drive expansion unit becomes available:)
Big drives are great and all, but it gives a single place to lose a lot of data at once if you aren't doing some sort of raid/mirroring (backups? errr, no habla).
While stuffing my favorite all purpose Enlight 7237 with drives the other day (I made a plexiglass drive bay unit that would allow me to fit (5) 3.5 HDDs in (3) 5.25 bays) so I could consolidate some of my data, I ran into major heat issues.
The plexiglass got so hot it started to slowly bend and the drives were so hot I could not hold them. They were a mix of older ata66 and ata100 western digitals and ibm deskstars. Not too old, not cutting edge. I've played with a few of the new maxtors that have the ata133 fluid dynamic drives and they do seem quieter, but even those got pretty warm.
I don't need 100 gig of space on a light usage workstation, I'll have a hard time filling 40. I also don't want to add extra fans (the less moving parts the better in my book). How about more conetration on heat output?
I own a digisette and have been using it off an on in my 'high quality' '85 chevy wagon for a couple years. (I bought the wagon for 500 bucks and it had a hole in the dash where the stereo should have been. 18 bucks later and I had a cheap tape deck radio that no one in their right mind would steal . ..or suspect there was a 150 buck mp3 player in . . . )
The old digisette worked fairly well as both a headphone mp3 player and a player that worked in the console. It had all the fast foward and rewind features that this new one has, but the biggest difference is you could not record audio onto it in a tape deck.
The biggest disappointment I had with the old one (and will have with this one) is the low memory expansion. The original came with 64 meg onboard, and a single MMC slot (which my original docs said was limited to 64 meg). It was enough to hold a cd and a half. This new one has a bit more (an extra 32 on board, but still the 64 meg mmc card limit).
So, other stuff about this device . . . transferring data to it from the pc took a USB cable. I didn't find a way to get it work under Linux (I did not try hard). The connector on the cable was really touchy and it doesn't stay in that well anymore; they may have fixed it in the new model.
To sum up, the old one was a pretty good design and perfect for those of us with old cars. It doesn't have the memory you'd like in some of the newer players, but the specialized tape adaptation you can forgive it. It is unlikely you'd want to buy this device if you are just going to use it with a pair of headsets, there are better products out there for this purpose. This new product is probably ideal if you plan on doing analog transfers or hour and half long recordings (the college class application someone mentioned was great), but if you aren't going to record analog, go for the older version.
I am 100% for this method of data collection. Tivo has always been very supportive of the technical community. They do not try to block modifications to their systems and even build in features to assist (the new Tivo 3 software allows you to enter a certain area code in the dialing software to enable dhcp support if you happened to have put in a tivonet type card). They are supportive of me, I will be supportive of them.
As for the ratings systems, I'm all for them using my usage data as long as they keep it in an opt-in format. For those of you not familiar with Tivo, you can rate shows with up to three 'thumbs-up' or three down. The Tivo will use this data to pick out 'suggestions' on what you might want to see. You can also set priorities on your set recordings (season passes) so that say, Every Futurama episode is recorded, even though there is an anime showing on another channel at that time. In the event you don't have anything pre-set to record and the Tivo thinks you might like something, it'll record something else on if you've got the space. (after I watched the mining rescue on MSNBC one night, my tivo thought I might like to watch some other news type channels so it recorded an hour of the weather channel's 10 minute updates . ..thumbs down)
So, not only could the data be used on what I watched, but it could show how many times I watched it and whether or not I'm giving it anywhere from +3 to -3 on my viewing scale. I may end up watching Ricki Lake at Tivo's suggestion, but it doesn't mean I wish I had.
I haven't looked up other providers other than RR-Austin, but I would guess that most allow the resale of their services. A quick look on Roadrunner's site in Austin found something related in their business class of circuits. Though the writer isn't technically a developer or MDU it is sort of the same thing that he/she is wanting to accomplish. The drawback is the price; the business class circuits are always going to be much steeper in price (though this may be balanced out if enough people were interested). There are probably other more specific TOS's out there for other providers.
Reselling high capacity commercial circuits is extremely common. I don't see the difference between what the author suggests and the regular ole' mom&pop local isp and their modem banks.
LVSP is one I hadn't run across, I definitely appreciate the references. These how-to's are going to make some great weekend reading (ie, I haven't read them yet), did you run across anything in them that had something that actually inspected the request coming in? (this is not the most important aspect, but I would love to be able to redirect either servers looking for robots.txt or a known set of spider IP's to a specific box).
Both of these claim to have extreme battery life times and since they are marketed more towards military applications, they are pretty rugged. I mean, come on, check out Itronix's quote: We have teamed with select systems integrators to enable you to deploy a solution right now for border security, first responder teams, bio-terrorism response teams, and network infrastructure. . ..if that doesn't just scream gimmegimmegimme, I don't know what does. Your nation might *need* you while you are on that train. You could be ready. The FieldPac looks pretty tough, too. . . think about it, you are on that train and some thug demands your money and you can reach down, pat the case and say "Don't make me use this . .."
Seriously though, the app type stuff you mentioned could probably be done on most any semi-recent laptop (P2-233 would probably suffice) and most of the consumer laptops are going to have fluff (like *sound* who needs *that*?) that could dimish your battery run time (somewhat). If you really want long battery life, hunt around in the gear aimed towards outdoors work (again though, they are probably outside the 1400 buck price range).
$.95 per disc + shipping in lots of 540. There might be better prices out there, but I don't think I'll ever fill 540 (at least not before the next big thing in storage media is cheap) of them so I haven't looked.
I should have done a little more searching before the initial post. The Powerfiles are nifty devices and they actually have a 200 disc single drive solution one for only a grand. It just seems like the idea solution for things like financial docs from previous years that are never going to change again. When the drives aren't in use, there aren't moving parts which should (hopefully) keep downtime from failed drives less likely. At 1000 bucks, even the added cost of the blank dvdrs (which is dropping) you'd have to use makes it a viable solution compared to a raid 5 of big eide drives.
For data that has to be online but is not accessed by anyone and needs to be read only, a dvd drive *is* the cheaper solution. The cost of a 200 disc dual drive firewire dvd changer sits around $1500 (and they could be cheaper, this was the first price I found . . I don't remember the exact size of a dvd, but its somewhere around 4gig. 4*200=800. To get 800 gig out of hard drives, you'd need at least 6 160gig eide drives which would cost you about $225 each. This is $1300, and you'd have to get one of those 3 channel eide raid controllers ...thats another 100 bucks. So, I either have fast access for lots of files I don't need fast access for, or for the same price I get something that I can make very cheap duplicates of to keep off site.
Organic, then silicone then saline back to silicon
on
Future Computers
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I thought saline was the newest thing? But hey, if they can get 'em to run quake, I'm all for it. Oh the wonders of technology!
. . . Maybe I missed the point . . .
James Rogan is the Under Secretary of Commerce.
A whore gets money for doing their master's bidding.
A slut does stuff without monetary compensation.
I propose his title be changed to Slutty UnderSecretary of Commerce or 'SUC' (ok, I'm reaching here) for short. Seeing as he is also the Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, I'd also suggest his title to be extended to 'SUC US PTO'.
I hope there is a feature to 'Prevent all Grad Students who speak unintelligible English from teaching'. I just don't see why this happens. Many colleges seem to think it's ok to let the profs get by letting their grad students teach for them, but I don't see how this is what the student is paying for. They are there to learn a subject from a professional educator, not learn how to interpret thickly accented versions of their own language from another student. If a grad student wants to go into teaching the subject, it is reasonable, but in order to teach they have to be understood first.
"The most unusual time-saving feature of the new registers is a fingerprint scanner that lets managers make returns and exchanges more swiftly because the computer instantly recognizes them."
I see. Mens Warehouse discriminates against the fingerless in managerial roles! Can this boy work for them and hope for advancement? I personally don't like the idea of passwords that can be stolen with a regular pair of tin snips.
Concordia University @ Austin distributes laptops to any full time student that wants one. They are nice enough systems (466 celeron dell cpt's) for most student's purposes. Students do have to return them every spring (100 dollars rent for summertime) but get their use when they really need 'em. This is a phenomenal deal for students. They get a nice laptop when they need it and don't have to eat Ramen like I did (I'm craving a dry brick of the stuff now . ..) I personally like the trend.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to rain on their parade, I like saving shows as much as the next packgeek and it is nice to just let the TIVO record what it will and then delete what you aren't interested in.
:)
The problem is, when you get up to only 100+ gig of storage space on it, even with the memory modifications, the TIVO takes a while to bring the recording lists up (~1-2 minutes on my full 120 single drive unit). Having all that space isn't really going to do much if it takes 5-10 minutes everytime you want to look through your recording list. On the bright side, the guys at 9th tee know this already so I have high hopes for a solution when the drive expansion unit becomes available
Big drives are great and all, but it gives a single place to lose a lot of data at once if you aren't doing some sort of raid/mirroring (backups? errr, no habla).
While stuffing my favorite all purpose Enlight 7237 with drives the other day (I made a plexiglass drive bay unit that would allow me to fit (5) 3.5 HDDs in (3) 5.25 bays) so I could consolidate some of my data, I ran into major heat issues.
The plexiglass got so hot it started to slowly bend and the drives were so hot I could not hold them. They were a mix of older ata66 and ata100 western digitals and ibm deskstars. Not too old, not cutting edge. I've played with a few of the new maxtors that have the ata133 fluid dynamic drives and they do seem quieter, but even those got pretty warm.
I don't need 100 gig of space on a light usage workstation, I'll have a hard time filling 40. I also don't want to add extra fans (the less moving parts the better in my book). How about more conetration on heat output?
I own a digisette and have been using it off an on in my 'high quality' '85 chevy wagon for a couple years. (I bought the wagon for 500 bucks and it had a hole in the dash where the stereo should have been. 18 bucks later and I had a cheap tape deck radio that no one in their right mind would steal . . .or suspect there was a 150 buck mp3 player in . . . )
The old digisette worked fairly well as both a headphone mp3 player and a player that worked in the console. It had all the fast foward and rewind features that this new one has, but the biggest difference is you could not record audio onto it in a tape deck.
The biggest disappointment I had with the old one (and will have with this one) is the low memory expansion. The original came with 64 meg onboard, and a single MMC slot (which my original docs said was limited to 64 meg). It was enough to hold a cd and a half. This new one has a bit more (an extra 32 on board, but still the 64 meg mmc card limit).
So, other stuff about this device . . . transferring data to it from the pc took a USB cable. I didn't find a way to get it work under Linux (I did not try hard). The connector on the cable was really touchy and it doesn't stay in that well anymore; they may have fixed it in the new model.
To sum up, the old one was a pretty good design and perfect for those of us with old cars. It doesn't have the memory you'd like in some of the newer players, but the specialized tape adaptation you can forgive it. It is unlikely you'd want to buy this device if you are just going to use it with a pair of headsets, there are better products out there for this purpose. This new product is probably ideal if you plan on doing analog transfers or hour and half long recordings (the college class application someone mentioned was great), but if you aren't going to record analog, go for the older version.
I am 100% for this method of data collection. Tivo has always been very supportive of the technical community. They do not try to block modifications to their systems and even build in features to assist (the new Tivo 3 software allows you to enter a certain area code in the dialing software to enable dhcp support if you happened to have put in a tivonet type card). They are supportive of me, I will be supportive of them.
.thumbs down)
As for the ratings systems, I'm all for them using my usage data as long as they keep it in an opt-in format. For those of you not familiar with Tivo, you can rate shows with up to three 'thumbs-up' or three down. The Tivo will use this data to pick out 'suggestions' on what you might want to see. You can also set priorities on your set recordings (season passes) so that say, Every Futurama episode is recorded, even though there is an anime showing on another channel at that time. In the event you don't have anything pre-set to record and the Tivo thinks you might like something, it'll record something else on if you've got the space. (after I watched the mining rescue on MSNBC one night, my tivo thought I might like to watch some other news type channels so it recorded an hour of the weather channel's 10 minute updates . .
So, not only could the data be used on what I watched, but it could show how many times I watched it and whether or not I'm giving it anywhere from +3 to -3 on my viewing scale. I may end up watching Ricki Lake at Tivo's suggestion, but it doesn't mean I wish I had.
I haven't looked up other providers other than RR-Austin, but I would guess that most allow the resale of their services. A quick look on Roadrunner's site in Austin found something related in their business class of circuits. Though the writer isn't technically a developer or MDU it is sort of the same thing that he/she is wanting to accomplish. The drawback is the price; the business class circuits are always going to be much steeper in price (though this may be balanced out if enough people were interested). There are probably other more specific TOS's out there for other providers.
Reselling high capacity commercial circuits is extremely common. I don't see the difference between what the author suggests and the regular ole' mom&pop local isp and their modem banks.
LVSP is one I hadn't run across, I definitely appreciate the references. These how-to's are going to make some great weekend reading (ie, I haven't read them yet), did you run across anything in them that had something that actually inspected the request coming in? (this is not the most important aspect, but I would love to be able to redirect either servers looking for robots.txt or a known set of spider IP's to a specific box).
Itronix GoBook Max
.if that doesn't just scream gimmegimmegimme, I don't know what does. Your nation might *need* you while you are on that train. You could be ready. ."
Field Pack
Both of these claim to have extreme battery life times and since they are marketed more towards military applications, they are pretty rugged. I mean, come on, check out Itronix's quote:
We have teamed with select systems integrators to enable you to deploy a solution right now for border security, first responder teams, bio-terrorism response teams, and network infrastructure.
. .
The FieldPac looks pretty tough, too. . . think about it, you are on that train and some thug demands your money and you can reach down, pat the case and say "Don't make me use this . .
Seriously though, the app type stuff you mentioned could probably be done on most any semi-recent laptop (P2-233 would probably suffice) and most of the consumer laptops are going to have fluff (like *sound* who needs *that*?) that could dimish your battery run time (somewhat). If you really want long battery life, hunt around in the gear aimed towards outdoors work (again though, they are probably outside the 1400 buck price range).
$.95 per disc + shipping in lots of 540. There might be better prices out there, but I don't think I'll ever fill 540 (at least not before the next big thing in storage media is cheap) of them so I haven't looked.
I should have done a little more searching before the initial post. The Powerfiles are nifty devices and they actually have a 200 disc single drive solution one for only a grand. It just seems like the idea solution for things like financial docs from previous years that are never going to change again. When the drives aren't in use, there aren't moving parts which should (hopefully) keep downtime from failed drives less likely. At 1000 bucks, even the added cost of the blank dvdrs (which is dropping) you'd have to use makes it a viable solution compared to a raid 5 of big eide drives.
For data that has to be online but is not accessed by anyone and needs to be read only, a dvd drive *is* the cheaper solution. The cost of a 200 disc dual drive firewire dvd changer sits around $1500 (and they could be cheaper, this was the first price I found . . I don't remember the exact size of a dvd, but its somewhere around 4gig. 4*200=800. To get 800 gig out of hard drives, you'd need at least 6 160gig eide drives which would cost you about $225 each. This is $1300, and you'd have to get one of those 3 channel eide raid controllers . ..thats another 100 bucks. So, I either have fast access for lots of files I don't need fast access for, or for the same price I get something that I can make very cheap duplicates of to keep off site.
Up and coming silicon replacements? But they've been around for decades!
I thought saline was the newest thing? But hey, if they can get 'em to run quake, I'm all for it. Oh the wonders of technology! . . . Maybe I missed the point . . .
James Rogan is the Under Secretary of Commerce.
A whore gets money for doing their master's bidding.
A slut does stuff without monetary compensation.
I propose his title be changed to Slutty UnderSecretary of Commerce or 'SUC' (ok, I'm reaching here) for short.
Seeing as he is also the Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, I'd also suggest his title to be extended to 'SUC US PTO'.
I'm sure the games will be vastly entertaining (especially for the price) if they use some of his lines from old movies. Some of my favorites:
"It'll make you a sexual tyrannosaurus . . . Like ME!"
"Ain't nothin' but a bunch of slackjawed faggots"
I'm all for more wrestlers going into Politics, it will improve the overall intelligence and will make c-span more interesting.
I hope there is a feature to 'Prevent all Grad Students who speak unintelligible English from teaching'. I just don't see why this happens. Many colleges seem to think it's ok to let the profs get by letting their grad students teach for them, but I don't see how this is what the student is paying for. They are there to learn a subject from a professional educator, not learn how to interpret thickly accented versions of their own language from another student. If a grad student wants to go into teaching the subject, it is reasonable, but in order to teach they have to be understood first.
"I need wireless so I can work while on the 'tank". One TV-tray, a pcmcia card, and a WAP later I have the most, er, fragrant work area on the planet.
"The most unusual time-saving feature of the new registers is a fingerprint scanner that lets managers make returns and exchanges more swiftly because the computer instantly recognizes them."
I see. Mens Warehouse discriminates against the fingerless in managerial roles! Can this boy work for them and hope for advancement? I personally don't like the idea of passwords that can be stolen with a regular pair of tin snips.
Especially if AOL finds some way to put media on them. I want new free stuff to put in the microwave . . .
Concordia University @ Austin distributes laptops to any full time student that wants one. They are nice enough systems (466 celeron dell cpt's) for most student's purposes. Students do have to return them every spring (100 dollars rent for summertime) but get their use when they really need 'em. This is a phenomenal deal for students. They get a nice laptop when they need it and don't have to eat Ramen like I did (I'm craving a dry brick of the stuff now . . .) I personally like the trend.