Is TiVo a company that I should support with my dollars?
A lot of people have answered in this thread regarding the value you get for the price, the usability, and similar. I'd like to chime in briefly with some kudos for their support people.
I got my Tivo a few months ago, and the one I got worked for about two days, then began locking. It would boot, work for about 30 seconds, and then crash.
So, I called the support number, sat on the line for about 20 minutes, and got someone. He seemed genuinely interested in my problem (I know you've all heard support folks going through a script in a monotone), had me try a few things, and when the box locked up almost immediately, gave me an RMA number without any prompting. I sent the box back to them, got a new one in a couple of days, and when I called to try to transfer my lifetime programming service (which I thought might be problematic, as they're very clear that the lifetime service is for the lifetime of the machine, not the user), I found that they had already transferred it when they sent out my new box.
I've had limitless grief with other companies when trying to get a defective item replaced, and as more companies try to reduce costs by thinning out their customer service, I expect the grief to get worse. Dealing with Tivo was a pleasure.
Virginia government officials need to keep reading this until they get it:
THE 9/11 HIJACKERS HAD VALID DRIVERS LICENSES.
I'm not sure how "has a known identity" became conflated with "is known to be sane." What the lawmakers are really looking for is an identification card which is linked to a psychological examination.
Give them a break... Rightous patents should be defended rigorously or there is no incentive to do core research. Don't let the flood of worthless patents or the incompetence of the patent examiners destroy the legitimate use of the patent system.
In general, I agree with you. However, in this instance, Honeywell sat on a patent for something close to a decade, waited for the tech to become ubiquitous, and then sued everyone in sight. If they had jumped on the first company to infringe on their patent as soon as it was infringed upon, I would agree with you (unless there are obviousness problems; I'm not in the field, so I'm not qualified to offer an opinion on that).
But stay quiet for 10 years, offer no licensing options, and then file suit? No -- this isn't a defense, this is an attempt to torpedo their competitors.
"Honeywell invests millions of dollars in research and development every year, and we aggressively defend our intellectual property to protect that substantial investment," said John Donofrio, Vice President of Intellectual Property at Honeywell.
Surely an aggressive defense doesn't entail sitting on a patent for 10 years before trying to stop anyone from using your technology. This sounds more like an aggressive offensive use of intellectual property, meant primarily to inconvenience companies that compete with you.
I believe this is generally referred to as a "submarine patent," and the use thereof means that you are what is generally referred to as an "asshat."
Exactly what military threat do they envision where they need a bigger "boom" than what they have now?
Actually, as others have posted, it seems to be more that it's a different kind of boom -- one which doesn't throw lots of radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere, for one. It just, you know, kills everybody nearby with X-rays (I believe).
I can't help but assume that half the impetus behind this research are the Trek geeks in the Air Force wanting to be the first one to say "We've got an antimatter containment breach." They know they'll be dead shortly afterwards, but they're okay with that. Kind of like the geek equivalent of dying for the glory of God.
I bet your dealer would be happy to install a different set of tires if you asked him to.
More importantly, if he wanted to sell the car with Atlas tires on it, he probably wouldn't have to pay Goodyear for every car he sold, regardless of whose tires he put on them.
I have to wonder: Will my kids be able to see the real version of the films, or are they going to be stuck with these inferior versions?
That's one of the larger complaints I have about the refurbished Star Wars movies: in some sense, they're historical documents. They were revolutionary when they came out, and spawned a whole new direction in what a science fiction movie could look like.
I of course have my own stylistic objections to Han not shooting first, and I might even be willing to float an argument that Lucas, by receiving a copyright on the movies, has likewise agreed to allow it to pass into the public domain some day (some day long after I'm dead by the look of things, but that's a whole 'nuther argument), and he shouldn't be doing his level best to make sure that the original movies are not available to anyone ever. But further, how about historians in the future? Film and art students? Anthropologists from the year 2525? Isn't it kind of sad that they'll never be able to see the actual film that caused a revolution in filmmaking?
When I'm told that the difference between two wines is that one is "fruitier" than the other, I've got something to look for. The nebulous and complex experience of tasting wine is brought into my understanding a little because I can now use a word to identify a part of what I'm sensing.
The interesting thing in the study is that, without words for the numbers, members of the tribe could not distinguish between 4 items and 5 items. The specialized vocabulary of (in your example) wine tasting surely aids in your ability to describe your experience (at least, to those also familiar with the vocabulary), but I don't think you're claiming that you couldn't tell the difference between how two wines tasted before learning that vocabulary.
How long before "disposable" becomes "free" with a simple hardware/software hack?
It seems to me (and this is admittedly off the top of my head, and I apologize if it can be trivially proven to be stupid) that, if you set the camera up so the camera encrypted the JPEG in hardware before it landed on the memory card using a public key, you'd need a private key to get to the JPEG, and the private key would only be on the developing station.
So, sure, someone could hack the developing station, but those are going to be a lot harder to lay hands on than the cameras are. And if the only thing you can ever get from the camera is the public key, and you can't work around the hardware to intercept the image data before encryption, I would think you're pretty well stuck.
...they're failure to keep up with global geopolitical madness.
At my last job, we had up some weather sites based on feeds from Accuweather, including weather for lots of world cities. It almost drove the technical coordinator of the site insane, and he's a very calm kind of guy.
Y'see, he was getting calls every day, wherein someone would demand to know why City X was being called City X, when it should clearly be called City Y, based on thus-and-so political/religious text and/or the sovereign will of the people. Or why City X was listed as being in Country Z, when it was obviously supposed to be in Country Aleph if not for the running dogs of whatever-ist oppression.
I'd suggest googling for Henry VI, but without having read the play in its entirety, you'll not understand the context (and hence, meaning) of the phrase you quoted.
Would it kill you to at least try to give a sketch of the context? On the other hand, that would possibly give you less opportunity to feel superior.
Here: this guy seems to be up to the task. Exceedingly brief summary: Shakespeare seemed to feel that a strong state (hence, laws and lawyers) was necessary to keep the essentially low nature of mankind under control. The character who suggested killing all the lawyers was a member of the aforementioned unwashed masses, and an obvious nit besides.
Some of us use Ogg (note that it is not an acronym) Vorbis for our music collections on our computer and don't want to re-encode everything for our portables (especially when you start getting into the 300+ disc range as I have).
With current hard drive prices, I've taken to ripping everything to FLAC and, if I need it in some other format, convert it on the fly. I prefer Ogg, but my current player doesn't support it. So, for now, I convert to MP3. When I get a new player, I can convert to Ogg. All without ever having to dig around in my physical CD collection.
Of course, I've only got something like 250 CDs, so I can see how this plan isn't really feasible for everyone.
I just took a quick look at eBay to confirm what I already knew: any working iPod can be sold for well over $99.
I suspect that Dell was really hoping that nobody would notice this. That way, they could sell the iPods that people sent in for (estimates suggest) $200, while only giving said people a $100 rebate. Though one hopes there's a special circle of Hell reserved for people who fleece the stupid in this manner. Preferably, the same circle where the stupid people go.
So if his "proof" isn't obviously wrong, it'll likely take quite a while for the experts to verify.
This is a recurring source of amazement to me. I went the CS route in college, and as a result took some math courses. At that basic level, proofs were kind of like trapdoor algorithms -- hard to produce, trivial to check. The time it took to check a proof was directly proportional to the length of the proof, and the difficulty no more than checking if step 5 really did follow obviously from steps 3 and 4 or not.
The fact that it can take years to confirm the validity of any proof (even one over a hundred pages long) gives me a very clear picture of just how little math I learned.
Nothing makes me madder than discovering that along the way, one of my teachers drilled the wrong thing into me.
Amen. I, myself, was terribly confused when my teacher insisted that there were seven colors in the spectrum (ye olde ROY G BIV) when I could only see six (ROY G BV).
I looked for indigo for years, and just couldn't find it. It was only much later that I learned that Newton had felt the need for the spectrum to have seven colors, and so had made one up.
As a sidenote, I wonder if I can moderate myself "Offtopic."
But, they fail to mention that it is of such size as to have sufficient gravity that when it passes, it will rip the oceans from the face of the earth and carry them off into space.
A copy isn't merely being brought into the country, but rather due to the way computers work (see the infamous MAI v. Peak case, which while wrong is commonly relied upon), a new copy is being made on the downloader's end that did not originate in Russia, and thus wasn't imported as 602 requires.
If this is the reasoning that is eventually followed by US courts, I'm wondering who in this instance is breaking the law. If I'm making a copy on my end, as you say, but that copy is for my personal use and I don't distribute it, haven't I stayed within the bounds of US copyright law? If it's a local copy, I couldn't have run afoul of restrictions on importing, either, so that should also be okay.
So, could the RIAA come after a US downloader under current laws? Well, yes, obviously they can, but would the case have legal merit?
Interesting note - some writer said the Nietzscheans were going to be called the Dawkinites (or something similar) initially, because they strongly echoed parts of Dawkins' thought, but that was abandoned because it didn't have enough of a ring to it. But I loved the Nietzschean attitudes, they seemed like one of the all-time best misreadings of Nietzsche...
Actually, I thought they made some heavy hints a couple of times that the Nietzscheans were actually Objectivists. Most glaring was the fact that the Nietzschean homeworld was "Fountainhead," and there was one episode early on (first season, I think) where a scene opens with Tyr lounging in the captain's chair reading _Atlas Shrugged_.
Three major factors have kept searchers from looking on Mt. Ararat-- #1. The frigid weather, #2. The Turkish Government (security concerns, blah blah blah) #3.Kurdish people who have the nasty habit of killing people who want to go up the mountain...
Personally, and go ahead and mod me down for this, but I believe God has kept people from checking out the location.
Actually, it appears that it has been not so much God as the frigid weather, the Turkish government, and the Kurds. Do you even read all of your own posts?
And elementary school chemistry suggests that electrons are basically tiny little billiard balls in orbit around an atom's nucleus. Consider the possibility that the climate/biosphere interactions are similarly more involved than ``hey, plankton eat C02, so we can never have too much of it.''
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Is TiVo a company that I should support with my dollars?
A lot of people have answered in this thread regarding the value you get for the price, the usability, and similar. I'd like to chime in briefly with some kudos for their support people.
I got my Tivo a few months ago, and the one I got worked for about two days, then began locking. It would boot, work for about 30 seconds, and then crash.
So, I called the support number, sat on the line for about 20 minutes, and got someone. He seemed genuinely interested in my problem (I know you've all heard support folks going through a script in a monotone), had me try a few things, and when the box locked up almost immediately, gave me an RMA number without any prompting. I sent the box back to them, got a new one in a couple of days, and when I called to try to transfer my lifetime programming service (which I thought might be problematic, as they're very clear that the lifetime service is for the lifetime of the machine, not the user), I found that they had already transferred it when they sent out my new box.
I've had limitless grief with other companies when trying to get a defective item replaced, and as more companies try to reduce costs by thinning out their customer service, I expect the grief to get worse. Dealing with Tivo was a pleasure.
Virginia government officials need to keep reading this until they get it:
THE 9/11 HIJACKERS HAD VALID DRIVERS LICENSES.
I'm not sure how "has a known identity" became conflated with "is known to be sane." What the lawmakers are really looking for is an identification card which is linked to a psychological examination.
Oh, I really shouldn't have said that out loud.
Give them a break... Rightous patents should be defended rigorously or there is no incentive to do core research. Don't let the flood of worthless patents or the incompetence of the patent examiners destroy the legitimate use of the patent system.
In general, I agree with you. However, in this instance, Honeywell sat on a patent for something close to a decade, waited for the tech to become ubiquitous, and then sued everyone in sight. If they had jumped on the first company to infringe on their patent as soon as it was infringed upon, I would agree with you (unless there are obviousness problems; I'm not in the field, so I'm not qualified to offer an opinion on that).
But stay quiet for 10 years, offer no licensing options, and then file suit? No -- this isn't a defense, this is an attempt to torpedo their competitors.
"Honeywell invests millions of dollars in research and development every year, and we aggressively defend our intellectual property to protect that substantial investment," said John Donofrio, Vice President of Intellectual Property at Honeywell.
Surely an aggressive defense doesn't entail sitting on a patent for 10 years before trying to stop anyone from using your technology. This sounds more like an aggressive offensive use of intellectual property, meant primarily to inconvenience companies that compete with you.
I believe this is generally referred to as a "submarine patent," and the use thereof means that you are what is generally referred to as an "asshat."
Exactly what military threat do they envision where they need a bigger "boom" than what they have now?
Actually, as others have posted, it seems to be more that it's a different kind of boom -- one which doesn't throw lots of radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere, for one. It just, you know, kills everybody nearby with X-rays (I believe).
I can't help but assume that half the impetus behind this research are the Trek geeks in the Air Force wanting to be the first one to say "We've got an antimatter containment breach." They know they'll be dead shortly afterwards, but they're okay with that. Kind of like the geek equivalent of dying for the glory of God.
Me needer. I tink it's me sheety meecrofun.
I bet your dealer would be happy to install a different set of tires if you asked him to.
More importantly, if he wanted to sell the car with Atlas tires on it, he probably wouldn't have to pay Goodyear for every car he sold, regardless of whose tires he put on them.
I have to wonder: Will my kids be able to see the real version of the films, or are they going to be stuck with these inferior versions?
That's one of the larger complaints I have about the refurbished Star Wars movies: in some sense, they're historical documents. They were revolutionary when they came out, and spawned a whole new direction in what a science fiction movie could look like.
I of course have my own stylistic objections to Han not shooting first, and I might even be willing to float an argument that Lucas, by receiving a copyright on the movies, has likewise agreed to allow it to pass into the public domain some day (some day long after I'm dead by the look of things, but that's a whole 'nuther argument), and he shouldn't be doing his level best to make sure that the original movies are not available to anyone ever. But further, how about historians in the future? Film and art students? Anthropologists from the year 2525? Isn't it kind of sad that they'll never be able to see the actual film that caused a revolution in filmmaking?
"Maybe it's just the idea of an inflatable rubber starship that bothers me."
Anyone else getting How Much For Just The Planet? flashbacks?
When I'm told that the difference between two wines is that one is "fruitier" than the other, I've got something to look for. The nebulous and complex experience of tasting wine is brought into my understanding a little because I can now use a word to identify a part of what I'm sensing.
The interesting thing in the study is that, without words for the numbers, members of the tribe could not distinguish between 4 items and 5 items. The specialized vocabulary of (in your example) wine tasting surely aids in your ability to describe your experience (at least, to those also familiar with the vocabulary), but I don't think you're claiming that you couldn't tell the difference between how two wines tasted before learning that vocabulary.
How long before "disposable" becomes "free" with a simple hardware/software hack?
It seems to me (and this is admittedly off the top of my head, and I apologize if it can be trivially proven to be stupid) that, if you set the camera up so the camera encrypted the JPEG in hardware before it landed on the memory card using a public key, you'd need a private key to get to the JPEG, and the private key would only be on the developing station.
So, sure, someone could hack the developing station, but those are going to be a lot harder to lay hands on than the cameras are. And if the only thing you can ever get from the camera is the public key, and you can't work around the hardware to intercept the image data before encryption, I would think you're pretty well stuck.
At my last job, we had up some weather sites based on feeds from Accuweather, including weather for lots of world cities. It almost drove the technical coordinator of the site insane, and he's a very calm kind of guy.
Y'see, he was getting calls every day, wherein someone would demand to know why City X was being called City X, when it should clearly be called City Y, based on thus-and-so political/religious text and/or the sovereign will of the people. Or why City X was listed as being in Country Z, when it was obviously supposed to be in Country Aleph if not for the running dogs of whatever-ist oppression.
Drove the poor guy batty.
I'd suggest googling for Henry VI, but without having read the play in its entirety, you'll not understand the context (and hence, meaning) of the phrase you quoted.
Would it kill you to at least try to give a sketch of the context? On the other hand, that would possibly give you less opportunity to feel superior.
Here: this guy seems to be up to the task. Exceedingly brief summary: Shakespeare seemed to feel that a strong state (hence, laws and lawyers) was necessary to keep the essentially low nature of mankind under control. The character who suggested killing all the lawyers was a member of the aforementioned unwashed masses, and an obvious nit besides.
Some of us use Ogg (note that it is not an acronym) Vorbis for our music collections on our computer and don't want to re-encode everything for our portables (especially when you start getting into the 300+ disc range as I have).
With current hard drive prices, I've taken to ripping everything to FLAC and, if I need it in some other format, convert it on the fly. I prefer Ogg, but my current player doesn't support it. So, for now, I convert to MP3. When I get a new player, I can convert to Ogg. All without ever having to dig around in my physical CD collection.
Of course, I've only got something like 250 CDs, so I can see how this plan isn't really feasible for everyone.
I just took a quick look at eBay to confirm what I already knew: any working iPod can be sold for well over $99.
I suspect that Dell was really hoping that nobody would notice this. That way, they could sell the iPods that people sent in for (estimates suggest) $200, while only giving said people a $100 rebate. Though one hopes there's a special circle of Hell reserved for people who fleece the stupid in this manner. Preferably, the same circle where the stupid people go.
as British as apple pi
Isn't that a highly irrational comment?
Who cares? All I know is that I've been looking far and wide for English food that won't repeat on me.
So if his "proof" isn't obviously wrong, it'll likely take quite a while for the experts to verify.
This is a recurring source of amazement to me. I went the CS route in college, and as a result took some math courses. At that basic level, proofs were kind of like trapdoor algorithms -- hard to produce, trivial to check. The time it took to check a proof was directly proportional to the length of the proof, and the difficulty no more than checking if step 5 really did follow obviously from steps 3 and 4 or not.
The fact that it can take years to confirm the validity of any proof (even one over a hundred pages long) gives me a very clear picture of just how little math I learned.
Nothing makes me madder than discovering that along the way, one of my teachers drilled the wrong thing into me.
Amen. I, myself, was terribly confused when my teacher insisted that there were seven colors in the spectrum (ye olde ROY G BIV) when I could only see six (ROY G BV).
I looked for indigo for years, and just couldn't find it. It was only much later that I learned that Newton had felt the need for the spectrum to have seven colors, and so had made one up.
As a sidenote, I wonder if I can moderate myself "Offtopic."
Toutatis, a name frequently invoked by those indomitable Gauls, is in fact the ancient French god of war...
... many ... jokes ... brain ... melting ...
The French have a god of war? Too
But, they fail to mention that it is of such size as to have sufficient gravity that when it passes, it will rip the oceans from the face of the earth and carry them off into space.
Oooh! Oooh! I get to be Thundarr!
Nope, Vagina dentata are real, although exremely rare...
Vagina dentata
What a wonderful phrase
Vagina dentata
Ain't no passing craze
It means no weiner
for the rest of your days
It's a penis-free
girl cavity
Vagina dentata
(Originally found here.
A copy isn't merely being brought into the country, but rather due to the way computers work (see the infamous MAI v. Peak case, which while wrong is commonly relied upon), a new copy is being made on the downloader's end that did not originate in Russia, and thus wasn't imported as 602 requires.
If this is the reasoning that is eventually followed by US courts, I'm wondering who in this instance is breaking the law. If I'm making a copy on my end, as you say, but that copy is for my personal use and I don't distribute it, haven't I stayed within the bounds of US copyright law? If it's a local copy, I couldn't have run afoul of restrictions on importing, either, so that should also be okay.
So, could the RIAA come after a US downloader under current laws? Well, yes, obviously they can, but would the case have legal merit?
Interesting note - some writer said the Nietzscheans were going to be called the Dawkinites (or something similar) initially, because they strongly echoed parts of Dawkins' thought, but that was abandoned because it didn't have enough of a ring to it. But I loved the Nietzschean attitudes, they seemed like one of the all-time best misreadings of Nietzsche...
Actually, I thought they made some heavy hints a couple of times that the Nietzscheans were actually Objectivists. Most glaring was the fact that the Nietzschean homeworld was "Fountainhead," and there was one episode early on (first season, I think) where a scene opens with Tyr lounging in the captain's chair reading _Atlas Shrugged_.
Three major factors have kept searchers from looking on Mt. Ararat-- #1. The frigid weather, #2. The Turkish Government (security concerns, blah blah blah) #3.Kurdish people who have the nasty habit of killing people who want to go up the mountain...
Personally, and go ahead and mod me down for this, but I believe God has kept people from checking out the location.
Actually, it appears that it has been not so much God as the frigid weather, the Turkish government, and the Kurds. Do you even read all of your own posts?
This is elementary school biology, folks.
And elementary school chemistry suggests that electrons are basically tiny little billiard balls in orbit around an atom's nucleus. Consider the possibility that the climate/biosphere interactions are similarly more involved than ``hey, plankton eat C02, so we can never have too much of it.''