Right now I'm just concerning myself with the server itself, data storage, some kind of RAID maybe, and wiring the house.
What I need at the entertainment center end is A) a way to control the server by remote, B) sound output and C) video. I'm not sure if I need a small PC at the entertainment center site, on the network, or if I could simply run the audio and video lines ~20 ft. to my server. The problem is the remote control, I think. I've seen a few gadgets that would sit at the entertainment center and communicate with the server, but only one or two of them; I haven't done a survey or anything. And they seem a bit pricey.
I just found out about this tool and use it in the past week. It works great. You do have to run it in DOS, so non-DOS based Windows versions like NT, 2000, and XP won't run it. Give it a try!
Well, it won't do C64 disks, but in the past week, I've found this awesome software tool to help me get access to my old Amiga disks on my PC. It's called DISK2FDI, and uses a neat floppy controller trick to read Amiga disks using regular PC floppy drives, all through software. You do need 2 drives for it to work, though, but it works great making.ADF files that UAE can use.
We've seen it again and again- government regulators/lawmakers/busybodies get tricked into thinking that activities are somehow inherently different when computers and internet are involved.
That sounds like a good description for the software patent problem, too!
I've figured out why Joe-consumer does not use GPG for email, and probably a good reason why Apple is avoiding DRM: consumers don't understand security keys and encryption and such. It saves Apple money when customers aren't calling wondering why their MP3s suddenly stopped working, just because they put them on a different disk or had to reinstall part of the OS.
So we, as developers, need to figure out a way for the public to understand encryption for email security purposes, but keep digital media-reletated encryption confusing as hell!
This site has some info and javascript code to detect spyware and warn users browsing your website that they have spyware on their systems. This might help if you are trying to get affiliate links from your site.
I've been interested in GPG and encryption for a couple of years, but I can't convince any of my friends to be interested. So all my communications with them must be unencrypted.
I know you can get it as easy as typing in a password when an email gets sent, but that's too much effort for my parents and most of my friends.:(
In fact, because they are tied to btrieve applications like Arcserve and Peachtree Accounting and a dozen other specialty apps also SUCK!!!!
This is true! I'm writing an app right now that has to programmatically add invoices into Peachtree's 'database', and it is a complete pain in the ass, all because it's based on Btrieve and not a nice, documented SQL database.
It's only possible because a guy reverse-engineered the database layout (and sells a $379 COM component), but even then there's no error checking...you can easily insert data that will corrupt the whole data file.
I've been using Mozilla almost exclusively for a couple months now.
The only thing I miss from IE is the auto fill-in when entering data in a form. That saved me a lot of typing. Mozilla's fill-in seems to only work on some pages, and then it only remembers one answer. IE lets remembers all of my answers to a single field.
That I could deal with. I just want to avoid a future where everything I buy has a monthly fee. There are so many 'subscriptions' out there already...home phone, cell phone, water (mine has a monthly minimum no matter how much I use), cable, internet. They're going to keep adding stuff until your montly recurring costs are sky high.:(
I hate the concept of subscription models. All of these services want to rope you into month after month of fees. Everyone from Microsoft to music wants the luxury of a constant income stream.
I don't buy CDs every month, why would I pay to download songs every month? Same goes for software.
Let me come in, buy one or two songs for a buck (and give me my fair use rights to them), and maybe I'll be back in a couple months to spend more.
Re:People need to read the FAQ...
on
Going Up?
·
· Score: 2
This was an interesting FAQ. Now I think we should make predictions as to its location, based on what they described:
Unaffected by hurricanes
Receives little or no lightning
If it breaks, the lower portion falls into the ocean
The anchor station will be an unlikely target to terrorists due to its isolation
How are you going to explain to people that this was reality, public record, proven, and that the anthrax/researcher killings you're talking about are not proven to that level of confidence?
You could just wait 20+ years for all the current conspiracies to be declassified and all the little black-marker censoring of FOIA papers to be removed.
It seems that by the time that stuff is admitted to the public, nobody cares. They assume it was just the fault of the last generation's government.
As I wrote in my last journal, Verisign's tactics with their own customers seem to have become more suspect. I especially like how they tried to get me to renew for 2 years @$70 when elsewhere on their site I got 3 years for $69.99. I'd really like to jump ship but it seems transferring registrars has been problematic for so many.
I remeber a couple years ago there was a chain-type email going around warning people that congress was going to start charging $ to send email or something like that. It was pretty inflamatory, but looked somewhat legitimate by naming people and bill numbers (even though they were fake if I remember). I believe congress got tons of calls and mail about this issue.
So someone needs to write up an inflamatory email about not being able to listen to your CDs anymore, due to Senator Smith and his bill S.9876. Then we just start forwarding it to everybody, and let them get on their congresscritters.
I live in South Carolina, though I'm a transplant from up-north. Down here, Strom Thurmond is almost universally revered by the locals. At least he is not proposing technology bills we don't need. However, he is not running for re-election this year, so somebody new will be in there soon.
Hollings has been in the Senate since 1966! He's next up for re-election in 2004. I did write him about the SSSCA weeks ago, but haven't heard from him.
Most people in South Carolina (and any other state for that matter) don't know about the CBDTPA. So it will be difficult to convince the locals that someone should not be re-elected on account of one bill. And maybe his alternative will want to introduce a bill on a completely different but equally objectionable idea. No one politician will be able to please everybody.
I am in favor of term limits, but I've heard an argument that small states need to be able to get high-seniority (read: lots of terms) congressmen/senators in order to not be overrun by the bigger states.
maps are going to have to be updated much more frequently.
Probably a good idea. I was doing some recent work with plotting GPS tracks on USGS topo maps. These maps, which I downloaded from the web, stated that they had been made in 1964 and last updated in 1976!
I guess you get used to what you hear first. I heard Dexter in Spanish first, and the voice seems to fit better. It's got a sharp edge to it that I prefer over his weird English accent. I really have no idea what other voices Ms. Cavanaugh does.
On the other hand, Fred and Barney (Pedro y Pablo) sound weird, as do Shaggy and Scooby, in Spanish.
Here's something to try if you're bored. Cartoon Network is the only channel on my DirecTV lineup (besides the PPV movies) which I can get in Spanish. You go to the menu and change the Audio Language settings.
Not all the shows come in Spanish, but a bunch do. It's a good way to learn. I actually prefer Dexter's voice in Spanish than in English. Johnny Bravo, Scooby Doo, and lots of the old Warner Bros. cartoons work too.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now I'm just concerning myself with the server itself, data storage, some kind of RAID maybe, and wiring the house.
What I need at the entertainment center end is A) a way to control the server by remote, B) sound output and C) video. I'm not sure if I need a small PC at the entertainment center site, on the network, or if I could simply run the audio and video lines ~20 ft. to my server. The problem is the remote control, I think. I've seen a few gadgets that would sit at the entertainment center and communicate with the server, but only one or two of them; I haven't done a survey or anything. And they seem a bit pricey.
A media server would be sweet. I'm starting to plan my server and network to do some of that sort of thing, probably just with music at first.
But you probably won't see a commercial product soon, and when it does, it'll probably be "Designed for Microsoft Palladium(R)(TM)(c)."
But fortunately the Senator from Disney is a Republican...
If you're referring to Fritz Hollings of the SSSCA fame, he's actually a Democrat. But I'm not sure there's really a difference anyway.
I just found out about this tool and use it in the past week. It works great. You do have to run it in DOS, so non-DOS based Windows versions like NT, 2000, and XP won't run it. Give it a try!
Well, it won't do C64 disks, but in the past week, I've found this awesome software tool to help me get access to my old Amiga disks on my PC. It's called DISK2FDI, and uses a neat floppy controller trick to read Amiga disks using regular PC floppy drives, all through software. You do need 2 drives for it to work, though, but it works great making .ADF files that UAE can use.
http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/
We've seen it again and again- government regulators/lawmakers/busybodies get tricked into thinking that activities are somehow inherently different when computers and internet are involved.
That sounds like a good description for the software patent problem, too!
I've figured out why Joe-consumer does not use GPG for email, and probably a good reason why Apple is avoiding DRM: consumers don't understand security keys and encryption and such. It saves Apple money when customers aren't calling wondering why their MP3s suddenly stopped working, just because they put them on a different disk or had to reinstall part of the OS.
So we, as developers, need to figure out a way for the public to understand encryption for email security purposes, but keep digital media-reletated encryption confusing as hell!
This site has some info and javascript code to detect spyware and warn users browsing your website that they have spyware on their systems. This might help if you are trying to get affiliate links from your site.
I've been interested in GPG and encryption for a couple of years, but I can't convince any of my friends to be interested. So all my communications with them must be unencrypted.
:(
I know you can get it as easy as typing in a password when an email gets sent, but that's too much effort for my parents and most of my friends.
In fact, because they are tied to btrieve applications like Arcserve and Peachtree Accounting and a dozen other specialty apps also SUCK!!!!
This is true! I'm writing an app right now that has to programmatically add invoices into Peachtree's 'database', and it is a complete pain in the ass, all because it's based on Btrieve and not a nice, documented SQL database.
It's only possible because a guy reverse-engineered the database layout (and sells a $379 COM component), but even then there's no error checking...you can easily insert data that will corrupt the whole data file.
From that ancient movie shown to Lisa Simpson:
:)
"The moon belongs to America."
I've been using Mozilla almost exclusively for a couple months now.
The only thing I miss from IE is the auto fill-in when entering data in a form. That saved me a lot of typing. Mozilla's fill-in seems to only work on some pages, and then it only remembers one answer. IE lets remembers all of my answers to a single field.
Other than that, I love Mozilla.
Maybe they could give a choice.
That I could deal with. I just want to avoid a future where everything I buy has a monthly fee. There are so many 'subscriptions' out there already...home phone, cell phone, water (mine has a monthly minimum no matter how much I use), cable, internet. They're going to keep adding stuff until your montly recurring costs are sky high. :(
I hate the concept of subscription models. All of these services want to rope you into month after month of fees. Everyone from Microsoft to music wants the luxury of a constant income stream.
I don't buy CDs every month, why would I pay to download songs every month? Same goes for software.
Let me come in, buy one or two songs for a buck (and give me my fair use rights to them), and maybe I'll be back in a couple months to spend more.
This was an interesting FAQ. Now I think we should make predictions as to its location, based on what they described:
How are you going to explain to people that this was reality, public record, proven, and that the anthrax/researcher killings you're talking about are not proven to that level of confidence?
You could just wait 20+ years for all the current conspiracies to be declassified and all the little black-marker censoring of FOIA papers to be removed.
It seems that by the time that stuff is admitted to the public, nobody cares. They assume it was just the fault of the last generation's government.
Cool, we can use this to bug Klink's office and hear the result using Voice over IP!
I've found it easy enough to compile from source when there's no RPM or I need to set lots of parameters (i.e., PHP).
But what about uninstalling? Is there a command I'm unaware of to remove software compiled and installed from source? It's easy with RPM.
As I wrote in my last journal, Verisign's tactics with their own customers seem to have become more suspect. I especially like how they tried to get me to renew for 2 years @$70 when elsewhere on their site I got 3 years for $69.99. I'd really like to jump ship but it seems transferring registrars has been problematic for so many.
I remeber a couple years ago there was a chain-type email going around warning people that congress was going to start charging $ to send email or something like that. It was pretty inflamatory, but looked somewhat legitimate by naming people and bill numbers (even though they were fake if I remember). I believe congress got tons of calls and mail about this issue.
So someone needs to write up an inflamatory email about not being able to listen to your CDs anymore, due to Senator Smith and his bill S.9876. Then we just start forwarding it to everybody, and let them get on their congresscritters.
I live in South Carolina, though I'm a transplant from up-north. Down here, Strom Thurmond is almost universally revered by the locals. At least he is not proposing technology bills we don't need. However, he is not running for re-election this year, so somebody new will be in there soon.
Hollings has been in the Senate since 1966! He's next up for re-election in 2004. I did write him about the SSSCA weeks ago, but haven't heard from him.
Most people in South Carolina (and any other state for that matter) don't know about the CBDTPA. So it will be difficult to convince the locals that someone should not be re-elected on account of one bill. And maybe his alternative will want to introduce a bill on a completely different but equally objectionable idea. No one politician will be able to please everybody.
I am in favor of term limits, but I've heard an argument that small states need to be able to get high-seniority (read: lots of terms) congressmen/senators in order to not be overrun by the bigger states.
While there is a lot of "open source" map data out there, there aren't a whole lot of free tools that will help you use it.
The tools and data fall under the GIS heading. Check out these sites to get started:
I've used these tools to build maps of GPS tracks on my website. A couple examples:
I've done most of these maps with a lot of manual labor...if anyone knows of open source/free ways to improve the process, I'd appreciate it!
maps are going to have to be updated much more frequently.
Probably a good idea. I was doing some recent work with plotting GPS tracks on USGS topo maps. These maps, which I downloaded from the web, stated that they had been made in 1964 and last updated in 1976!
I guess you get used to what you hear first. I heard Dexter in Spanish first, and the voice seems to fit better. It's got a sharp edge to it that I prefer over his weird English accent. I really have no idea what other voices Ms. Cavanaugh does.
On the other hand, Fred and Barney (Pedro y Pablo) sound weird, as do Shaggy and Scooby, in Spanish.
Here's something to try if you're bored. Cartoon Network is the only channel on my DirecTV lineup (besides the PPV movies) which I can get in Spanish. You go to the menu and change the Audio Language settings.
Not all the shows come in Spanish, but a bunch do. It's a good way to learn. I actually prefer Dexter's voice in Spanish than in English. Johnny Bravo, Scooby Doo, and lots of the old Warner Bros. cartoons work too.