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User: Otto

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  1. "Support" is an iffy term.. on Tivo 3.0 'Firebolt' Hits the Wild · · Score: 2

    It's (un)supported.. Which basically means it works, but don't call Tivo's customer service about it. It supports TivoNet and TurboNet cards on series 1 boxes, USB->Ethernet devices on series 2 boxes (that have the Pegasus chipset), and serial over PPP if you can get it working.

  2. Of course there's the most obvious way to benefit: on Sharing Doesn't Hurt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Series.

    Most books I (and others I've spoken with) really enjoy tend to be parts of a series of novels. Trilogies, etc.

    If you really want to avoid obscurity, make your first book as free as possible, sell it on the cheap, give the text away freely on the internet in every conceivable format, etc. Then sell the rest of the books via traditional sales methods.

    Get 'em addicted, then jack up the cost. Hey, it works. Ask your local drug dealer. (What, you don't think books are addictive??!?)

  3. Fermi's Paradox is bunk. on Rare Earth · · Score: 2

    Hey, why haven't WE colonized the galaxy yet? Since we haven't given any indicator that we exist (outside of a 90 light year radius or so, and then only weak ass radio signals), we must therefore not exist.

    Fermi was super intelligent in some areas, and dumb as a brick in others (like everyone else). Saying that it ain't there because you haven't found it is silly.

  4. Welcome to "ClickThrough" agreements. on Slashback: Brilliance, Delay, Simputer · · Score: 2

    Sorry, you gave "explicit permission" for all of the above, including the BDE client as well when you clicked "agree" on the Kazaa Installer. Read it sometime, despite that it's several pages long and in a small scroller box.

  5. Oops, my mistake on EchoStar Asks Supreme Court to Let Unlock Local Channels · · Score: 2

    Echostar sent up their spot beam satellite on Feb. 21st and hope to have it running by May. I was not aware they jumped their schedule up so much from the last time I'd read about it. My bad.

  6. I can see a lot of people don't know the laws on EchoStar Asks Supreme Court to Let Unlock Local Channels · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the gist:

    Originally, they just gave network stations to anyone who asked for them. Mostly New York/LA feeds. Naturally, the local stations were ticked off about this, as they have exclusive copyright over their network's programming for their area (so they argued). They tried to get it prohibited outright. But a lot of people don't get all the networks. My parents have no CBS channel over the antenna, for example.

    So, in the Satellite Home Viewer Act (SHVA) (1996? 97?), Congress granted a limited exception to the exclusive programming copyrights enjoyed by TV networks and their affiliated stations because it recognized that limited numbers of households are unable to receive network signals over the air. The exception is a very narrow compulsory copyright license that direct-to-home satellite video providers may use for retransmitting signals of a defined class of television network stations to "persons who reside in unserved households." If defines "unserved household" as someone who:

    "cannot receive, through the use of a conventional outdoor rooftop antenna, an over-the-air signal of grade B intensity (as defined by the Federal Communications Commission) of a primary network station affiliated with that network, and has not, with 90 days before the date on which that household subscribes, either initially or on renewal, to receive secondary transmissions by a satellite carrier of a network station affiliated with that network, subscribed to a cable system that provides the signal of a primary network station affiliated with that network."

    So my parents would be able to buy CBS, but nobody else. It did provide for waivers as well, which allows my parents to obtain waivers from, say, the local NBC station, and get New York's NBC over the dish.

    In 1999, the SHVA was amended by Congress, resulting in the passage of the Satellite Home Viewing Improvement Act (SHVIA). The SHVIA also amends both the 1988 copyright laws and the Communications Act of 1934. One of the key elements of the SHVIA is that it, for the first time, permits satellite carriers to transmit local television broadcast signals into local markets, also known as "local-into-local." This Act also authorizes satellite carriers to provide distant or national broadcast programming to subscribers. "Local-into-local" means that if a satellite customer lives in an area where the satellite company has decided to provide the service, the customer can receive local TV channels.

    In short, the satellite company can decide to carry a local markets channels on their feed and offer those channels to that local market without getting waivers or anything. Obviously, they have to work out carry rights with the local stations involved, but that pretty well covers it.

    More recently, cable companies have gotten "must-carry" approved into satellite feeds. The principle here basically says "if you carry any local stations in a market, then you have to carry all local stations in that market" in somewhat more complex terms. There's a few catches, such as they don't have to pay to carry a station if the station invokes their must-carry privilege, and so on, but the upshot is that even pointless locals like religious channels nobody watches can get satellite coverage for their area.

    DirecTV responded by launching their spot beam satellite. This lets them broadcast to a single spot on the ground, covering one market. The upshot of this is that it vastly increases their total bandwidth, as they can reuse the same frequencies for locals in a bunch of different spots. St. Louis can only see St. Louis, for example. Actually, the spots are quite large, and St. Louis can probably see Chicago stations too, but the principle is basically that. Thus, by reusing all this bandwidth, they have a very simple way to put locals down all over the country without having to waste half their total bandwidth on 300+ "local" channels.

    Echostar hasn't got spot beams. And they are subject to must carry too. So they're getting screwed right now. They're looking for any way out they can find. They're trying to eliminate local restrictions, they're trying to get must carry suspended, they're trying to buy DirecTV to have more bandwidth, anything. Because if they don't, they're going to go out of business. Unless they can get some spot beams up real fast. And they can't, for at least a year.

    Which is the state of satellite TV. :D

  7. "Technical" change on Is MOXI Toast? · · Score: 2

    2.One who opposes technical or technological change.

    Language is not technology. Being a Luddite is not fear of all sorts of change. Heck, even the definition above (from dictionary.com) shows an original meaning and one from latter day usage.


    Perhaps it's not technological, but it sure is technical. ;)

  8. Thus the problem: on Battle Creek, Michigan Settles Dispute with ORBZ · · Score: 2

    Think for a second: you're a government agency, and you notice someone sending bits to your server that make it crash. What's your first response? What's anyone's first response? Find out who did it, and search warrants are very good at that.

    Think for a second: You're anybody on the face of the planet who is actually sane and rational. Your first response in the same situation: Block the bits, figure out why those bits crashed your shit, and then fix the fucking problem.

    If your box explodes, then you are at fault. Period. Unless you are running M$ products. ;-)

  9. One or the other on 802.11b on your Tivo · · Score: 2

    To be sure, you can configure quite a lot of access point devices as bridges (including the WAP11), but not as both bridges and access points at the same time. Just clarifying.

  10. Anonymous? Who exactly are you trying to kid? on iWarez · · Score: 2

    Oh, and I'd like to mention in this anonymous forum that I steal bandwidth from the Apple store all the time.

    Clue time: When you post using your ID, which matches your DOMAIN NAME of all things, which is displayed right next to your post, then you are no longer anonymous. Ever heard of "whois", Mr. Matthew Miller?

    Want your address and phone number as well?

  11. The "real-stuff sales" model. on Piro On Why .Coms Don't Work · · Score: 2

    If you want to support MegaTokyo, buy some stuff from the MegaTokyo store. You get cool swag, Piro and Largo get some cash to help run MegaTokyo, and we're all happy!

    And this is the model that I think will pay off solid in the long run. Forget donations, people aren't that generous. You offer the content for free, and then sell real hard items based on that content. It's kinda like popular TV shows.. They're popular because a lot of people watch them, but once it becomes popular enough, people want to pay to advertise for you. They want t-shirts with "the truth is out there" on them.. Things like that.

    The problem with this model is that currently, you have to be an uber-geek to walk around with a t-shirt advertising a website on it. So the content has to be *extremely* popular to hit critical mass on this type of operation. As the web becomes more of a mainstream medium (it's still not as pervasive as TV, say) this will start to occur more and more.

    The real big winners out of this model: sites that make custom swag and perhaps offer storefronts to sell that swag at.

  12. Majority? Big deal! on Still More Evidence for Evolution · · Score: 3

    Not only that, but Creationist are also the majority. (Creationist != Christian, there are many more religions which believe in creation.)

    You don't determine the truth by majority vote.

  13. In the end, it's about trust. on TiVo Watches the Super Bowl · · Score: 2

    > until it sends another update

    In which case you turn on the backdoors, look at the System Information screen, check the "Opt Status:" line to see either OptedOut, OptedNeutral, or OptedIn.

    In the end, it always comes down to trust. Either you trust them, or you don't. They've gone a hell of a long way to gain my trust, with the most comprehesive privacy policy I've ever seen, the underlying code actually sticking to that policy (and taking it to extremes in some bits to do so), and by notifying their users of changes to that policy via Tivo messages, emails, and even snail mail.

    More to the point, they have posted specifically WHY they've had to make changes to their policy. The first time, it was so they could share certain types of data with DirecTV in order to make the DirecTivo. That sort of thing. They're very open about it, and frankly, I trust 'em. But you have to make that call on your own.

  14. Re:Are you mentally ill? on TiVo Watches the Super Bowl · · Score: 2

    > If you let them show what the average person likes to watch, then more programs of what the average person likes to watch will become more common, and the programs that the average person hates will start to disappear.

    Unlike now, you mean, where the majority of TV shows are aimed at the lowest common denominator?

    Any improvement, no matter how small, is still *improvement*. :-P

  15. Re:You "found" backdoors? on TiVo Watches the Super Bowl · · Score: 2

    > And of course they know who you are--the TiVo serial is sent as part of the authentication when the daily calls are made.

    Yes and no. It's made as the authentication, but it is not sent with the data. It's as if I filled in a web form saying who I am and then filled in a different form saying something else, and hit submit on those at or around the same time. The only real way to sync those two up is by the fact that I sent them around the same time. And with 300k+ units sending data once a day, that generally comes out to 4 hits a second or so. So there's no real way to correlate those two bits of data with any degree of precision.

  16. Re:Whoa whoa whoa... on TiVo Watches the Super Bowl · · Score: 2

    > And hey, if they say that you can opt out, I believe them.

    Good thing the rest of us aren't as trusting as you. Instead, we actually went and verified that opting out causes Tivo to send an update to your box which causes it to stop sending information. :-P

  17. Yeah, it records that data. So? on TiVo Watches the Super Bowl · · Score: 2

    It's not like it can be tied to you or anything. Get a shell on the Tivo. Then read the scripts that send the data. Then get a clue.

  18. Here's how to do exactly the above: on Borking Outlook Express · · Score: 2
    rather than blocking totally Microsoft's client, why not make it display "This message would be readable if you used any other email client than Microsoft's. For a list of good clients, some of which are free, visit *url to Download.com or something*.

    To do this, start the message like this:


    This message would be readable if you used any other email client than Microsoft's. For a list of good clients, some of which are free, visit *url to Download.com or something*.

    begin DeathToMicrosoft (note there's two spaces between begin and whatever you want the attachment name to be)

    The rest of your message here


    And this will do exactly what you want. Everything above the "begin" bug will be displayed just fine. Everything below will be interpreted as a bad uuencode attachment. That's the bug.
  19. How to view the message: on Borking Outlook Express · · Score: 2

    I reproduced it under OE6. If you're not able to reproduce it, make sure you don't have any other attachments to the mail you send to yourself (like a vCard or some such). These use mime-like headers in the message and thus the mime stuff makes the text into text and the attachment into the attachment.

    To view the bad message anyway:
    1. Right click the message line and select Properties
    2. Click the Details Tab
    3. Click "View message source"

    There's the unadulterated source. Works fine.

  20. Re:Change your MAC then... on Comcast Gunning for NAT Users · · Score: 2

    Dunno about what router you're using, but on the Linksys Cable Modem Router you simply type the MAC address you want into the web interface, hit save, and reboot the box. Voila. It doesn't have to be connected to the network card with the same MAC that you type in.

    If you want to connect two computers to a cable modem without using a router, then you need a hub and to buy an extra IP from the cable company. Or use your computer that is connected to the internet to route traffic from the other. Bit annoying, that is.

    Short answer: just buy a cheap 1 port router, plug a hub into that one port. Hell, they're under $50 nowadays, and hubs go for $10-20.

  21. Change your MAC then... on Comcast Gunning for NAT Users · · Score: 3

    Most consumer level NAT boxes, like, say, the Linksys Cable Modem Router thingy, have the ability to change the MAC on the external connection.

    Why? Well, a lot of cable modem setups use DHCP or some similar system to assign an IP address to the computer hooked to the cable modem. When they install the thing, they put it on the computer. Then the customer comes in later, tries to hook up the NAT box, and finds that they can't get an IP because the server is giving out IP's by checking the MAC address of the requesting computer. So you change the MAC that the NAT box sends to the world to be the same as the computer they originally set it up on, the NAT box can then get the IP and forward all the data needed to the internal network. So checking the MAC won't get them anywhere because the MAC they get can be whatever the heck you want it to be.

  22. Re:Got energy? on Black Holes Disputed · · Score: 2

    All correct, of course, and nicely demonstrating my point that "you can't get out because you can't go faster than light" has little to do with it. Basically, the escape velocity being greater or equal to lightspeed is a consequence of why you can't get out, not a cause.

    You could argue that since the equation for escape velocity is directly dependent on the mass of the object you're trying to escape from, that they are essentially saying the same thing. Either way...

    However, it's important to understand that no matter how you argue it, the mathematics is all the same. I can figure the event horizon by any method I choose, via escape velocity, via relativity equations, via the acceleration method I described a bit above, whatever. The answer is the same because in reality there's no difference between any of the explanations, they're all mathematically equivalent. A=B, B=C, thus A=C. That sort of thing. The only real difference is one of semantics, because the only proper way to describe most phenomenons is mathematically, English and most other languages are too multi-valued.

  23. Got energy? on Black Holes Disputed · · Score: 2

    >What this demonstrates: you don't need to reach escape velocity to get out of a gravity well.

    Well, of course not, if you assume infinite energy, which you have done by "Keep supplying enough force to keep the object moving away from earth at 10 miles/hour". In that sentence, you are really saying "provide enough power to counter gravity, whatever the hell it may be".

    Escape velocity refers to a ballistic track, that is, one that doesn't have any acceleration other than the initial one. If you want to stop being ballistic, fine. Let's try it without assuming infinite energy, shall we?

    A object cannot pass the speed of light because as it gets close to that speed, it takes more and more energy to do the pushing. Look, mass is energy, right? Well, when you accelerate an object, you pump a lot of energy into it. Therefore when you try to accelerate it some more, you're pushing not just the mass, but that energy you've pumped into it as well. This gives an obvious upper limit on how fast you can push it without having infinite energy. Do the math, and you get C in a vaccum. Thus, if we don't assume infinite energy, then we can't go any faster than light in a vaccum. And here's a neat trick: an upper limit on acceleration _also_ exists, because if we get it to a point where we can't push it any faster due to lack of power, then we're not really accelerating it, now are we?

    Now, escape velocity of a black hole is higher than the speed of light. Since we don't have infinite energy, we ain't gonna get out ballistically. We also can't provide acceleration to counter gravity forever due to lack of infinite power to do so once we're inside the event horizon. Thus, you're stuck. QED.

    In point of fact, you can't provide enough power to counter gravity at all, once you're below the event horizon. Gravity now has a pull that's higher than you can counter without infinite energy. Acceleration has an upper limit too, remember. So you can't even go away from the singularity, much less out. The only possible direction you can move becomes "towards the singularity". In some solutions, this is expressed by eventually solving out as -radius = +time. That is, forward in time becomes equivalent to going towards the singularity. It's a weird solution, but this is a natural consequence of not assuming the impossible. :P

  24. Re:Built-in support on TiVo Introduces Series2 · · Score: 2

    Actually, it can be either/or. But in any case, this is irrelevant, their kernel is customized and they probably need to add support for various devices themselves. Their new model looks like it might be a pay for cooler features type of thing, so if it's something along the lines of hooking up a USB CD-ROM to rip cd's, then you'd have to pay some fee to get that software (which would then download and include the cd-rom modules and so on). Myself, I'll give MP3 playback on my Tivo a miss. :P

  25. Re:Built-in support on TiVo Introduces Series2 · · Score: 2

    It's only the ATT boxes with the new kernel. Older boxes still currently have the spooged up 2.1.