Keep in mind folks, Gmail's Spam filtering is seperate from Postini.
From the article: "Google's Gmail antispam efforts are separate from those of Postini, which Google acquired two years ago, although it follows similar computerized operations and the teams have started to integrate the processes."
I've had email at an ISP that uses Postini, and I have email at Gmail. IMHO, Gmail > Postini.
They used to use BitTorrent, but they had two big problems with it.
1) They ended up having to seed the file themselves with their home cable modems. Apparantly they had trouble keeping seeds on the torrent.
2) A lot of people couldn't get it working, and they had to deal with a avalanche of BitTorrent tech support questions.
Those two things made it more trouble then it was worth to them. So, instead, they limit the number of connections to the download server. You'll have to wait a while to get the file to start downloading, but when it does you'll get it at a pretty good speed.
Overall I thought the article was pretty good, but I feel it was off on a few points. I'll admit I own a TiVo, so I am going to focus more on them since I am familiar with the device/service.
Microsoft
Point 2: The article suggests 4 tuners, but how many should be recordable at one time? The HDTV TiVo unit can only record from any two tuners at a time. Does anyone know if current hard disks could handle two HD streams and two analog streams? I think this is the reason why TiVo only allows recording on two of the 4 tuners in their HD model at any given time.
TiVo
Point 2: TiVo has already announced "TiVoToGo" which will implement what the article is requesting. It is scheduled for release this fall. The reason the ports are disabled on the Hughes model is because of DirecTV - not TiVo. TiVo has stated many times that if they had things their way, the DirecTV models would have all the features the standalone models do.
Point 3: I'm not really sold on needing a DVD burner in every unit if you can download the files to a PC to burn them to DVD like the author wants in the second point. If I have a DVD burner in my PC, I would rather not have to pay for another in my TiVo. I think the units should be available, but I don't think they should all be forced to have them.
Point 4: The HDTV unit from TiVo will almost surely have the Home Media Features and TiVoToGo. Again, the only reason the DirecTV HDTV unit does not is because DirecTV wants it that way for whatever reason.
Point 7: It might be a great idea to offer an external USB 2.0 add-on that you could use for simply holding media that has been already recorded. Meaning the TiVo still records to the internal hard disk, and manages everything like it always has, but you can copy a show to the external disk to free space on the internal disks. This saves TiVo from some tough questions (are the USB 2.0 ports fast enough for direct recording, how to handle if someone yanks the drive in the middle of a recording, which shows get stored where, etc), but still allows folks to get the additional space they need.
Point 9: I think TiVo's acquisition of Strangeberry will help implement features like these. Business 2.0 has an article right now that talks about what the Strangeberry purchase is bringing to the table for TiVo. Link to cut/paste of article (Business 2.0 is non-free/registration).
Well, as I see it, you had a good idea that you sort of touched on in your post.
Assuming you could overcome all the other limitations that folks have mentioned, you could use have the distributed clients work to create the trailers for the movie.
They are going to show the trailer all over the place for free anyway, so who would care if a few frames were leaked?
I happen to like Enterprise, but I can comment on why it matters to people if it is cancelled or not.
There are a variety of reasons I want a show cancelled:
1) I feel that the show is a mere shadow of its previously great self (see "West Wing, The"). 2) I feel the show doesn't live up to the quality of its predecesor. 3) I feel that the show plain sucks.
If I don't like a show I don't watch it, but I still want it cancelled. I want it cancelled because I want that show replaced with something better - something I might enjoy. How boring or stagnant would television be if we never cancelled poorly performing shows but instead let them run until something else brought things to an end?
I certainly feel for the people that lose their jobs when a show gets cancelled - that definately sucks. But the new show is going to need camera men, makeup artists, wardrobe personel, special effects, etc. My hope when a show gets canned is that these folks wind up on one of the new - hopefully better - shows.
Agreed. The "larger" Fox has gotten, the more impatient they have become.
They have bee trying to solve the "Friday Night Mystery" for a few years now. Last year they canned John Doe in favor of putting Boston Public in its timeslot.
Now I'll admit that Boston Public was on its last legs, but it had an established following. Regardless of that, the show managed to bring in lower ratings then John Doe did.
Ratings wise even the new TGIF lineup on ABC is a mere shadow of its previous incarnation. Networks just can't seem to get people to tune in on Fridays anymore.
My guess is that networks will start to use Friday nights as a testing ground. See how a series starts to play out and gauge how the public reacts to it. If it looks like it could really work (ala X-Files), then move it to a "real" timeslot.
I watch UPN on one of the three mentioned stations.
When they preempt a show for some reason they re-schedule the program for later in the week. Usually our local TV Guides and Sunday paper inserts reflect these moves, so they're not just sprung on us.
The rescheduled date/time varies, but Saturday nights tend to be the usual choice. I've never seen them just outright skip airing an episode of any show.
They have also been running Enterprise on Sundays at 8pm in addition to its usual Wednesday 8pm slot. I don't know if they will continue doing this, but they have been doing it for a while.
Between the two airings my TiVo has never missed an episode, even when they move it all over the place.
If they are using a simple program to scan and find people sharing stuff with BitTorrent then SafePeer might work. But remember, they can always just get your IP address from the tracker.
SafePeer is better then nothing at all, but its not going to keep them from getting to you if they really want to.
The main reason I don't even both to TRY something like MythTV is that they don't have the one feature I use non-stop on my TiVo - the Season's Pass.
I can set a Season's Pass to go out and record "Alias" on ABC, and do so only when the episode is new. Once I do that, the TiVo takes care of the rest.
Every other PVR I've seen either lets me record "Alias" all the time, or lets me record by timeslot. Either way, its not fire and forget like my TiVo is. I would end up with a ton of reruns to delete, or "specials" that preempted the show that night.
Re:I'm scared now
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 3, Informative
TiVo has what they call a "dead man switch" ready for if the company ever goes out of business. Its not anything new - its existed since day one.
The main idea is if something happens they throw this switch, the boxes update, and they avoid becoming totally useless boat anchors.
According to Tiger, who wrote the MFS Tools application that is used to add/expand drives, most of his handouts for the new version went to TiVo employees and engineers.
Speaking of MFS Tools 2.0, you can do all sorts of nifty adds and expansions with it - including adding and expanding the A Drive on Series2 units.
You can find the the best information on this subject on the TiVo Community forums thread called "3.0 will (UN-)Support Broadband Connections. Its linked below.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind folks, Gmail's Spam filtering is seperate from Postini.
From the article:
"Google's Gmail antispam efforts are separate from those of Postini, which Google acquired two years ago, although it follows similar computerized operations and the teams have started to integrate the processes."
I've had email at an ISP that uses Postini, and I have email at Gmail. IMHO, Gmail > Postini.
They used to use BitTorrent, but they had two big problems with it.
1) They ended up having to seed the file themselves with their home cable modems. Apparantly they had trouble keeping seeds on the torrent.
2) A lot of people couldn't get it working, and they had to deal with a avalanche of BitTorrent tech support questions.
Those two things made it more trouble then it was worth to them. So, instead, they limit the number of connections to the download server. You'll have to wait a while to get the file to start downloading, but when it does you'll get it at a pretty good speed.
Actually, now that you mention it...
Did you know that the ipod is louder then most other mp3 players because Steve Jobs is partly deaf?
Link to source
Overall I thought the article was pretty good, but I feel it was off on a few points. I'll admit I own a TiVo, so I am going to focus more on them since I am familiar with the device/service.
MicrosoftPoint 2: The article suggests 4 tuners, but how many should be recordable at one time? The HDTV TiVo unit can only record from any two tuners at a time. Does anyone know if current hard disks could handle two HD streams and two analog streams? I think this is the reason why TiVo only allows recording on two of the 4 tuners in their HD model at any given time.
TiVoPoint 2: TiVo has already announced "TiVoToGo" which will implement what the article is requesting. It is scheduled for release this fall. The reason the ports are disabled on the Hughes model is because of DirecTV - not TiVo. TiVo has stated many times that if they had things their way, the DirecTV models would have all the features the standalone models do.
Point 3: I'm not really sold on needing a DVD burner in every unit if you can download the files to a PC to burn them to DVD like the author wants in the second point. If I have a DVD burner in my PC, I would rather not have to pay for another in my TiVo. I think the units should be available, but I don't think they should all be forced to have them.
Point 4: The HDTV unit from TiVo will almost surely have the Home Media Features and TiVoToGo. Again, the only reason the DirecTV HDTV unit does not is because DirecTV wants it that way for whatever reason.
Point 7: It might be a great idea to offer an external USB 2.0 add-on that you could use for simply holding media that has been already recorded. Meaning the TiVo still records to the internal hard disk, and manages everything like it always has, but you can copy a show to the external disk to free space on the internal disks. This saves TiVo from some tough questions (are the USB 2.0 ports fast enough for direct recording, how to handle if someone yanks the drive in the middle of a recording, which shows get stored where, etc), but still allows folks to get the additional space they need.
Point 9: I think TiVo's acquisition of Strangeberry will help implement features like these. Business 2.0 has an article right now that talks about what the Strangeberry purchase is bringing to the table for TiVo. Link to cut/paste of article (Business 2.0 is non-free/registration).
I could be wrong, but these appear to be screen shots for Fedora Core 1's Test 3 release.
So these are NOT screenshots of what was released today (Fedora Core 3 Test 1).
Eraser actually uses Darik's Boot and Nuke when you use it to wipe an entire drive. See the features page.
Well, as I see it, you had a good idea that you sort of touched on in your post.
Assuming you could overcome all the other limitations that folks have mentioned, you could use have the distributed clients work to create the trailers for the movie.
They are going to show the trailer all over the place for free anyway, so who would care if a few frames were leaked?
I happen to like Enterprise, but I can comment on why it matters to people if it is cancelled or not.
There are a variety of reasons I want a show cancelled:
1) I feel that the show is a mere shadow of its previously great self (see "West Wing, The").
2) I feel the show doesn't live up to the quality of its predecesor.
3) I feel that the show plain sucks.
If I don't like a show I don't watch it, but I still want it cancelled. I want it cancelled because I want that show replaced with something better - something I might enjoy. How boring or stagnant would television be if we never cancelled poorly performing shows but instead let them run until something else brought things to an end?
I certainly feel for the people that lose their jobs when a show gets cancelled - that definately sucks. But the new show is going to need camera men, makeup artists, wardrobe personel, special effects, etc. My hope when a show gets canned is that these folks wind up on one of the new - hopefully better - shows.
Well, timeline wise Enterprise comes before all the other Star Treks, right?
:).
So that means that sometime between Enterprise and Star Trek we forgot to teach the new folks how to aim
Agreed. The "larger" Fox has gotten, the more impatient they have become.
They have bee trying to solve the "Friday Night Mystery" for a few years now. Last year they canned John Doe in favor of putting Boston Public in its timeslot.
Now I'll admit that Boston Public was on its last legs, but it had an established following. Regardless of that, the show managed to bring in lower ratings then John Doe did.
Ratings wise even the new TGIF lineup on ABC is a mere shadow of its previous incarnation. Networks just can't seem to get people to tune in on Fridays anymore.
My guess is that networks will start to use Friday nights as a testing ground. See how a series starts to play out and gauge how the public reacts to it. If it looks like it could really work (ala X-Files), then move it to a "real" timeslot.
I watch UPN on one of the three mentioned stations.
When they preempt a show for some reason they re-schedule the program for later in the week. Usually our local TV Guides and Sunday paper inserts reflect these moves, so they're not just sprung on us.
The rescheduled date/time varies, but Saturday nights tend to be the usual choice. I've never seen them just outright skip airing an episode of any show.
They have also been running Enterprise on Sundays at 8pm in addition to its usual Wednesday 8pm slot. I don't know if they will continue doing this, but they have been doing it for a while.
Between the two airings my TiVo has never missed an episode, even when they move it all over the place.
If they are using a simple program to scan and find people sharing stuff with BitTorrent then SafePeer might work. But remember, they can always just get your IP address from the tracker.
SafePeer is better then nothing at all, but its not going to keep them from getting to you if they really want to.
The main reason I don't even both to TRY something like MythTV is that they don't have the one feature I use non-stop on my TiVo - the Season's Pass.
I can set a Season's Pass to go out and record "Alias" on ABC, and do so only when the episode is new. Once I do that, the TiVo takes care of the rest.
Every other PVR I've seen either lets me record "Alias" all the time, or lets me record by timeslot. Either way, its not fire and forget like my TiVo is. I would end up with a ton of reruns to delete, or "specials" that preempted the show that night.
TiVo has what they call a "dead man switch" ready for if the company ever goes out of business. Its not anything new - its existed since day one.
The main idea is if something happens they throw this switch, the boxes update, and they avoid becoming totally useless boat anchors.
My audiophile side is certainly interested.
:).
Although this might not do much (or any) good in an audio archive, it is GREAT for streaming audio.
Instead of having to live with a 32kb and 56kb streams, I can get audio that is tailored to my bandwidth and get BETTER quality.
This might not always be the norm, or even the case at all, but the thought is nice
- Adam
My brother's eye doctor - one of the best in the state - said this to my brother when he inquired about LASIK.
"Have you ever looked at the doctors in those pictures? Ever notice that they all wear glasses?"
Sure as hell convinced me.
Check out Hydrogen Audio
Its pretty much the best audio discussion you can find on the 'net.
Too bad Halo 2 for the XBox is due out in 2003. They plan to start showing things from the game in August.
Although its a little nasty, its a nice marketing strategy for the XBox.
"Sure we'll give you Halo on the PC... right after we have Halo 2 on the XBox!"
You know, you can call up TiVo and "OptOut" of the reporting, right?
According to Tiger, who wrote the MFS Tools application that is used to add/expand drives, most of his handouts for the new version went to TiVo employees and engineers.
Speaking of MFS Tools 2.0, you can do all sorts of nifty adds and expansions with it - including adding and expanding the A Drive on Series2 units.
More on MFS Tools 2.0 here.
You can find the the best information on this subject on the TiVo Community forums thread called "3.0 will (UN-)Support Broadband Connections. Its linked below.
. ph p?s=&threadid=54620
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread
In 3.0 it works, and if you go the the TiVo forum, you can get help on it.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/
Oh yeah, the thread that has this information is on the excellent TiVo Community:
. ph p?s=&threadid=54620
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread
For those who didn't read the article and have Series2 units, this is from the article/thread.
List of supported USB adapters:
3Com USB Ethernet 3C460B
USB 10/100 Fast Ethernet
USB HPNA/Ethernet
Accton USB 10/100 Ethernet Adapter
SpeedStream USB 10/100 Ethernet
ADMtek ADM8511 Pegasus II USB Ethernet
ADMtek AN986 Pegasus USB Ethernet (eval. board)
Allied Telesyn Int. AT-USB100
Belkin F5D5050 USB Ethernet
Billionton USB-100
Billionton USBE-100
Billionton USBEL-100
Billionton USBLP-100
iPAQ Networking 10/100 USB
Corega FEter USB-TX
D-Link DSB-650
D-Link DSB-650TX
D-Link DSB-650TX(PNA)
Elsa Micolink USB2Ethernet
Hawking UF100 10/100 Ethernet
IO DATA USB ET/TX
IO DATA USB ET/TX-S
Kingston KNU101TX Ethernet
LANEED USB Ethernet LD-USB/T
LANEED USB Ethernet LD-USB/TX
Linksys USB100TX
Linksys USB10TX
Linksys USB Ethernet Adapter
Linksys USB USB10TX
MELCO/BUFFALO LUA2-TX
MELCO/BUFFALO LUA-TX
SpeedStream USB 10/100 Ethernet
SmartNIC 2 PnP Adapter
SMC 202 USB Ethernet
SOHOware NUB100 Ethernet
The new Series2 units from TiVo are just getting to Best Buy stores now. Be on the lookout.