"The problem with that idea is that the foreign-fighters idea is a myth concocted by Bushie to distract people from the fact that the Iraqis fought us every step of the way like, well, like a people under occupation by a foreign power."
Uh....riiiiight. That's why the Iraqi Army divisions...disappeared?!?!
Did you even watch this on TV as it happened? Personally, I've got almost the entire first 4 weeks on tape. Most of it was a drive in the country.
Watch some film from WWII of the battle in Stalingrad. THAT is f"ighting every step of the way." Taking off your uniform and abandoning your weapons is not "fighting every step of the way."
The end of the cold war against the Soviet Union meant communism disappeared and all those people became productive citizens of the world?
The KGB, GRU, Bulgarian hit squads, the Chinese, Cubans, Stasi and all the others are all doing what, exactly?
Communism in Italy is different than communism in, say, Holland. Italy's communist party is quite large and...odd. The female head of Gucci is a member of the Italian communist party. I'm in Italy 3-4 months every year. Just driving between Verona and Venice I've seen more than one office with hammer and sickle on the door.
Take off your conspiracy theory hat and think for a bit.
Your comment that there's a "problem" because there were no "independent witnesses" is illogical. Information is only valid if it's from an "independent" source? What constitues "independent"? Just WHO would that be?
This is not a case of he-said/she-said. This is a case of he-said/she-said/overhead-imagery.
The satellite wasn't tracking a particular car. It was watching a geographic area.
Again, given 2 known period in which images were taken the car could most certainly be identified.
Oh, I dunno. Maybe the fact that the U.S. released satellite images showing the position of the car which where taken with a known time differential combined with basic algebra means the approximate speed of the car can easily be determined. Maybe it was about 10 seconds from impacting the soldiers and was speeding means the car was a reasonable threat. You'd trust the "opinion" of a rabid anti-American communist about the speed of the car and behavior fo the driver wrt the roadblock?
Facts are stubborn things but they don't matter if you start with a conclusion, huh?
There is no commercial TiVo schedule feed for Canada. There is a very active Canadian hacking community with filters to grab scheduling information from the web and use TiVo hardware on the Northern side of the border.
ho hum...another boring day at Slashdot, huh?
on
Build Your Own DVR
·
· Score: 0, Troll
First it was repetitive "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" posts.
Then the BYO DVR posts.
For a while, it appeared reposts of hackaday would take the top repetitive post topic.
Well, it sure looks like the BYO DVR/MythTV/My-time-is-worthless posts are back in the top slot.
Next up, make your own printer paper. It's "free" because your time is worthless.
Bah! Why does this junk keep getting posted? Make a BYO-DVR-MythTV-my-time-is-worthless section to Slashdot and keep these out of the main page.
The U.S. military has operated in 3 dimensions since the Civil War.
This might be useful in air combat control. There's got to be a limit to what can be conveyed on a flat computer screen or edge-lit piece of glass.
It might also be useful for detecting patterns in huge amounts of data. You've probably seen images where data is represented by a 3D projection. If you could manipulate the interpretation from inside, maybe you could see patterns more readily than from a fixed viewing point outside the system.
Besides, think of how fun it would be to play Populous with one of these and really "shoot" lightning bolts out of your fingers.
Pretty dangerous if you pick your nose or scratch your crotch, though, don't you think?
A buddy of mine used to defend Windows Solitaire while in the Navy by claiming it was a clever interface training aid. That worked on every senior officer who complained about "playing games."
What "training aid" will ship with these gloves? Virtual handball?
The timeshifting personal use provisions of the law don't include networked distribution of content to other people. ReplayTV actively encouraged and provided a means to obtain and distribute content illegaly.
"I'd really like to see TiVo go more in the direction of the media pc that everyone wants...the one that hooks into ethernet and plays mp3 and videos off a shared network drive."
Done, months ago.
http://javahmo.sourceforge.net
Also available, from the hacking community, multi-room viewing, video extraction, DVD creation, RSS readers, video overlay for stocks, sports, news, weather, etc., on-screen caller ID, the list goes on...
South of the shared border, you can use a DirecTV receiver with dual tuners which records the raw signal to hard drive. There are people on your side who use them. The risk, so I'm told, is your cops keep an eye out for the dishes. There are some very nice dish covers but I'm not sure spheres to cover 18" dishes exist.
DTiVos run around $50-$100 each. A USB2 NIC should run around $20 and you can always drop in a large hard drive if you want.
Your PVR records the actual data stream or is there an analog portion? The vast majority of so-called digital systems have an analog portion. It's very rare to find pure digital.
This has existed in the TiVo realm for quite a long time. The real issue isn't capability, it's legality. Bottom line, ReplayTV violated the law with that software. It's kind of irrlevant, anyhow. All you'd need to do to stream is extract the MPEG2 data and run something like VideoLAN on a PC. It's not a requirement. You could stream from a TiVo to another TiVo if you want. The advantage to streaming from a PC is the reduced system demands on a DVR, regardless of hardware type.
"TiVo" really has 2 accurate uses. One is the software which controls recording and playback, the other refers to a dedicated hardware unit running the TiVo software.
You get TiVo-compatible guide information in Australia: http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view
Guide data lets you set search criteria, the hits for which are used for auto-recording. Think of it as automated recording based on your interests. All major PVRs offer automatic recording based on show titles, the simplest form of guide data. TiVo also supports words in the titles or descriptions, genre, actor, director, etc. Most PVRs includes some form of tracking so you can prevent recording of repeat transmissions if you want, force recording of all, or some balance of the two extremes. TiVo has a user rating system where you can specify your interest in particular shows. Over time, this is used to record "suggestions" which might interest you. Paranoid people usually turn it off. I've found its a nice way to make sure there is plenty of storage space (if there are 20 automatic recordings, there's room...) and every few months I'm pleasantly surprised when it finds something of interest. I've been collecting shows about trains for my best friend's son. Two days ago one of the TiVos "automagically" started recording a series about steam trains on a satellite agriculture channel. I'd never known about that station and have no interest but that show is a great find. TiVo has quite a few patents covering the important technologies which make a PVR far more capable than a VCR. They're the major player and have weathered all the wannabes.
TiVo hardware has a dedicated MPEG2 chipset built into the motherboard. PC cards have to operate with more EMP issues and are slaved to the computer stability. TiVos are the size of a VCR, PCs...well...
It IS possible to use a TiVo as a "dumb" digital VCR but that defeats the purpose of a "genie" to record the stuff you want.
TiVos are nice if your interest is in having recordings made securely and reliably. Can that be done with a PC? Sure. However, what are the odds a person would want to do other things with the PC and how does that decrease the reliability of the recording?
People who use TiVos generally want to have the thing work because they're interested in the content. They sell for $50-$100 USD and take standard hard drives. There is a wealth of mode, instructions, and utilities to enhance use. If you want to buy a device and it works from the get-go, flawlessly, get a TiVo or similar device. TiVo has the best interface and the most support. If you want to play around building your own on a PC, for whatever reason, go with something else.
"MCE has better conflict resolution. The interface is clearer."
Aples and oranges? Clearer...how? There's only so much information which can fit on a TV screen. If you don't like the appearance created by the TiVo, load a custom skin.
"The to-do-list shows, at a glance, which shows "lose out" in a conflict."
Same issue. There's only so much text which will fit on a TV display. Displaying conflicts on a TV very quickly becomes overwhelmingly cumbersome.
If you want to do it via PC, use one of the flavors of DailyMail. DailyMail will let you manually tweak conflict resolution via email. If you want to do mass deletions, reorganize season passes, etc., use TivoWebPlus modules. It would be ludicrous to compare a handheld remote system to a PC interface.
"- MCE is faster. Even the Series 2 units are far too slow. Particularly when you upgrade the disk space. My 300GB MCE box is still quite nippy."
Too slow for what? I have 3 DTiVos, each has 2 160G drives and the only time I see any speed issues are when 2 recordings are being made on a DTiVo, a stream is being extracted across the NIC and I'm trying to do something data9intensive like reorganize season passes. Use TWP to do mass jobs or stream to a PC, no biggie.
"- MCE has a better skip back / skip forward feature. It's far faster, which actually makes it useful - unlike the:30 hack on TiVo."
It takes less than 2 minutes to edit all the ads from a 1-hour recording after extracting to my PC. Any remote control method of skipping around is going to take longer than that.
You know you can push the left or right-facing triangle keys on a TiVo remote more than once, don't you?
"- MCE handles failure better."
Uh...no. MCE runs on Windoze which is far less stable than the Linux running on a TiVo.
" If a show is interrupted during recording, MCE will automatically schedule a later showing if it's available and doesn't cause a conflict. This happens even if the recording was one-shot."
Let's unpack that sentence.
The first part describes a TiVo season pass or wishlist for which you've enbled the options to record more than one showing. That's been in TiVo software from the beginning.
The second part of your statement is impossible in linear time. If a show is on once and your recorder fails, be it MCE, Myth, TiVo, DVDR, VCR, whatever, it is impossible to recover the signal which is no longer available.
Did you really think that as you typed? It is impossible for any tuner to record more than one channel at a time. Padding extends the recording of a channel beyond the match in the schedule data. MCE most certainly is NOT capable of somehow recording multiple channels per tuner concurrently, nor can it record linearly temporal broadcasts in a non-linear manner.
"- MCE's interface is better. You can see the current program in most of the menus,"
Do you mean video overlay? It's not that difficult to inhibit playback of the looping backgrounds on a TiVo. That's been available for more than a year.
" and there is a clearly defined "back" button with unlimited history."
Why would that be useful? At some point, it's more efficient to re-enter from a top-level menu. If you're trying to do something which is inherently awkward with a remote control, use one of the web interfaces.
"Try MCE out before you go crapping all over it. You may be surprised."
I might be pleasantly surprised by a few interface aspects but it's not something I'd chose. The more non-critical functionality packed into what is essentially a timed recorder, the greater the chance that recorder will fail its primary function. TiVos run Linux and are stable unless you're using a primitive hack to disable encryption. Mine have been running for more than a year, in one case 3 years, without reboots except when there were power outages. The only thing which I would find to be a major advantage would be if the TiVos suported wireless keyboards so searching by show name could be done quicker.
Wrong. I did an FOIA task while stationed at the location in question. You're paranoid and don't know what you're talking about. FOIA doesn't automagically declassify things.
Close, but the more likely foaming-at-the-mouth reply is, "Bush is depleting the ozone layer."
Come to think of it, methane is considered a greenhouse gas, depending on where it is, right? Shouldn't there be big ozone holes over Hollywood, D.C., and a Kinko's in Texas?
Slashdot Mirror
Obscure? Try the total lack of support for video in Impress.
That's not Impress-ive at all.
I'd better expand on that comment so you understand. Actually, your comments show you're more predisposed than thoughtful.
In any event...
Who has overhead imagery capabilities that would meet your test for "independence?"
The Russians? Nope. The Chines? Nope. The French? Nope. Hezbollah? Nope. AL Jazeera? Nope.
Seriously, can you name one entity which has overhead imagery and has no interest in politics or world economics?
I didn't think so.
You're "requirement" cannot be met by any human entity.
That was a rhetorical question. It's impossible to have an "independent" source. Even so, "independent' doesn't mean "accurate and reliable."
You'd only be satisfied by surveillance imagery processed by...whom?
Again, take off the conspiracy hat.
If you've only seen one line of mention of Iraquis being shot, you've not been getting much news.
"The problem with that idea is that the foreign-fighters idea is a myth concocted by Bushie to distract people from the fact that the Iraqis fought us every step of the way like, well, like a people under occupation by a foreign power."
Uh....riiiiight. That's why the Iraqi Army divisions...disappeared?!?!
Did you even watch this on TV as it happened? Personally, I've got almost the entire first 4 weeks on tape. Most of it was a drive in the country.
Watch some film from WWII of the battle in Stalingrad. THAT is f"ighting every step of the way." Taking off your uniform and abandoning your weapons is not "fighting every step of the way."
The end of the cold war against the Soviet Union meant communism disappeared and all those people became productive citizens of the world?
The KGB, GRU, Bulgarian hit squads, the Chinese, Cubans, Stasi and all the others are all doing what, exactly?
Communism in Italy is different than communism in, say, Holland. Italy's communist party is quite large and...odd. The female head of Gucci is a member of the Italian communist party. I'm in Italy 3-4 months every year. Just driving between Verona and Venice I've seen more than one office with hammer and sickle on the door.
Take off your conspiracy theory hat and think for a bit.
Your comment that there's a "problem" because there were no "independent witnesses" is illogical. Information is only valid if it's from an "independent" source? What constitues "independent"? Just WHO would that be?
This is not a case of he-said/she-said. This is a case of he-said/she-said/overhead-imagery.
The satellite wasn't tracking a particular car. It was watching a geographic area.
Again, given 2 known period in which images were taken the car could most certainly be identified.
Oh, I dunno. Maybe the fact that the U.S. released satellite images showing the position of the car which where taken with a known time differential combined with basic algebra means the approximate speed of the car can easily be determined. Maybe it was about 10 seconds from impacting the soldiers and was speeding means the car was a reasonable threat. You'd trust the "opinion" of a rabid anti-American communist about the speed of the car and behavior fo the driver wrt the roadblock?
Facts are stubborn things but they don't matter if you start with a conclusion, huh?
There is no commercial TiVo schedule feed for Canada. There is a very active Canadian hacking community with filters to grab scheduling information from the web and use TiVo hardware on the Northern side of the border.
First it was repetitive "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" posts.
Then the BYO DVR posts.
For a while, it appeared reposts of hackaday would take the top repetitive post topic.
Well, it sure looks like the BYO DVR/MythTV/My-time-is-worthless posts are back in the top slot.
Next up, make your own printer paper. It's "free" because your time is worthless.
Bah! Why does this junk keep getting posted? Make a BYO-DVR-MythTV-my-time-is-worthless section to Slashdot and keep these out of the main page.
Girly-man! Pump iron!!! ...and eat your spinach.
Popeye wouldn't have a problem with this.
BORING is right. How original. At least you could have worked in a comment about "a Beowulf cluster of these"...
The U.S. military has operated in 3 dimensions since the Civil War.
This might be useful in air combat control. There's got to be a limit to what can be conveyed on a flat computer screen or edge-lit piece of glass.
It might also be useful for detecting patterns in huge amounts of data. You've probably seen images where data is represented by a 3D projection. If you could manipulate the interpretation from inside, maybe you could see patterns more readily than from a fixed viewing point outside the system.
Besides, think of how fun it would be to play Populous with one of these and really "shoot" lightning bolts out of your fingers.
Pretty dangerous if you pick your nose or scratch your crotch, though, don't you think?
A buddy of mine used to defend Windows Solitaire while in the Navy by claiming it was a clever interface training aid. That worked on every senior officer who complained about "playing games."
What "training aid" will ship with these gloves? Virtual handball?
Ooohhh...VirtualBoy on steroids!!
Audio and video aren't stored separately. Why was uninformed speculation modded "interesting"?
Tivo2Go speed is a combination of the added DRM and less-then-optimal use of the ports.
The timeshifting personal use provisions of the law don't include networked distribution of content to other people. ReplayTV actively encouraged and provided a means to obtain and distribute content illegaly.
You wish came true weeks ago.
"I'd really like to see TiVo go more in the direction of the media pc that everyone wants...the one that hooks into ethernet and plays mp3 and videos off a shared network drive."
Done, months ago.
http://javahmo.sourceforge.net
Also available, from the hacking community, multi-room viewing, video extraction, DVD creation, RSS readers, video overlay for stocks, sports, news, weather, etc., on-screen caller ID, the list goes on...
South of the shared border, you can use a DirecTV receiver with dual tuners which records the raw signal to hard drive. There are people on your side who use them. The risk, so I'm told, is your cops keep an eye out for the dishes. There are some very nice dish covers but I'm not sure spheres to cover 18" dishes exist.
DTiVos run around $50-$100 each. A USB2 NIC should run around $20 and you can always drop in a large hard drive if you want.
Your PVR records the actual data stream or is there an analog portion? The vast majority of so-called digital systems have an analog portion. It's very rare to find pure digital.
This has existed in the TiVo realm for quite a long time. The real issue isn't capability, it's legality. Bottom line, ReplayTV violated the law with that software. It's kind of irrlevant, anyhow. All you'd need to do to stream is extract the MPEG2 data and run something like VideoLAN on a PC. It's not a requirement. You could stream from a TiVo to another TiVo if you want. The advantage to streaming from a PC is the reduced system demands on a DVR, regardless of hardware type.
"TiVo" really has 2 accurate uses. One is the software which controls recording and playback, the other refers to a dedicated hardware unit running the TiVo software.
You get TiVo-compatible guide information in Australia: http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view
Guide data lets you set search criteria, the hits for which are used for auto-recording. Think of it as automated recording based on your interests. All major PVRs offer automatic recording based on show titles, the simplest form of guide data. TiVo also supports words in the titles or descriptions, genre, actor, director, etc. Most PVRs includes some form of tracking so you can prevent recording of repeat transmissions if you want, force recording of all, or some balance of the two extremes. TiVo has a user rating system where you can specify your interest in particular shows. Over time, this is used to record "suggestions" which might interest you. Paranoid people usually turn it off. I've found its a nice way to make sure there is plenty of storage space (if there are 20 automatic recordings, there's room...) and every few months I'm pleasantly surprised when it finds something of interest. I've been collecting shows about trains for my best friend's son. Two days ago one of the TiVos "automagically" started recording a series about steam trains on a satellite agriculture channel. I'd never known about that station and have no interest but that show is a great find. TiVo has quite a few patents covering the important technologies which make a PVR far more capable than a VCR. They're the major player and have weathered all the wannabes.
TiVo hardware has a dedicated MPEG2 chipset built into the motherboard. PC cards have to operate with more EMP issues and are slaved to the computer stability. TiVos are the size of a VCR, PCs...well...
It IS possible to use a TiVo as a "dumb" digital VCR but that defeats the purpose of a "genie" to record the stuff you want.
TiVos are nice if your interest is in having recordings made securely and reliably. Can that be done with a PC? Sure. However, what are the odds a person would want to do other things with the PC and how does that decrease the reliability of the recording?
People who use TiVos generally want to have the thing work because they're interested in the content. They sell for $50-$100 USD and take standard hard drives. There is a wealth of mode, instructions, and utilities to enhance use. If you want to buy a device and it works from the get-go, flawlessly, get a TiVo or similar device. TiVo has the best interface and the most support. If you want to play around building your own on a PC, for whatever reason, go with something else.
"MCE has better conflict resolution. The interface is clearer."
:30 hack on TiVo."
Aples and oranges? Clearer...how? There's only so much information which can fit on a TV screen. If you don't like the appearance created by the TiVo, load a custom skin.
"The to-do-list shows, at a glance, which shows "lose out" in a conflict."
Same issue. There's only so much text which will fit on a TV display. Displaying conflicts on a TV very quickly becomes overwhelmingly cumbersome.
If you want to do it via PC, use one of the flavors of DailyMail. DailyMail will let you manually tweak conflict resolution via email. If you want to do mass deletions, reorganize season passes, etc., use TivoWebPlus modules. It would be ludicrous to compare a handheld remote system to a PC interface.
"- MCE is faster. Even the Series 2 units are far too slow. Particularly when you upgrade the disk space. My 300GB MCE box is still quite nippy."
Too slow for what? I have 3 DTiVos, each has 2 160G drives and the only time I see any speed issues are when 2 recordings are being made on a DTiVo, a stream is being extracted across the NIC and I'm trying to do something data9intensive like reorganize season passes. Use TWP to do mass jobs or stream to a PC, no biggie.
"- MCE has a better skip back / skip forward feature. It's far faster, which actually makes it useful - unlike the
It takes less than 2 minutes to edit all the ads from a 1-hour recording after extracting to my PC. Any remote control method of skipping around is going to take longer than that.
You know you can push the left or right-facing triangle keys on a TiVo remote more than once, don't you?
"- MCE handles failure better."
Uh...no. MCE runs on Windoze which is far less stable than the Linux running on a TiVo.
" If a show is interrupted during recording, MCE will automatically schedule a later showing if it's available and doesn't cause a conflict. This happens even if the recording was one-shot."
Let's unpack that sentence.
The first part describes a TiVo season pass or wishlist for which you've enbled the options to record more than one showing. That's been in TiVo software from the beginning.
The second part of your statement is impossible in linear time. If a show is on once and your recorder fails, be it MCE, Myth, TiVo, DVDR, VCR, whatever, it is impossible to recover the signal which is no longer available.
"- MCE softpads automatically, and unlike TiVo's padding, softpadding doesn't create conflicts."
Did you really think that as you typed? It is impossible for any tuner to record more than one channel at a time. Padding extends the recording of a channel beyond the match in the schedule data. MCE most certainly is NOT capable of somehow recording multiple channels per tuner concurrently, nor can it record linearly temporal broadcasts in a non-linear manner.
"- MCE's interface is better. You can see the current program in most of the menus,"
Do you mean video overlay? It's not that difficult to inhibit playback of the looping backgrounds on a TiVo. That's been available for more than a year.
" and there is a clearly defined "back" button with unlimited history."
Why would that be useful? At some point, it's more efficient to re-enter from a top-level menu. If you're trying to do something which is inherently awkward with a remote control, use one of the web interfaces.
"Try MCE out before you go crapping all over it. You may be surprised."
I might be pleasantly surprised by a few interface aspects but it's not something I'd chose. The more non-critical functionality packed into what is essentially a timed recorder, the greater the chance that recorder will fail its primary function. TiVos run Linux and are stable unless you're using a primitive hack to disable encryption. Mine have been running for more than a year, in one case 3 years, without reboots except when there were power outages. The only thing which I would find to be a major advantage would be if the TiVos suported wireless keyboards so searching by show name could be done quicker.
Or...you could use free applications and not buy Microsoft Media Center. Duh!
TiVo's load balancing, season passes, key phrase searches, etc. kick the snot out of anything else. Quite a bit of what makes it so nice is patented.
If you haven't used one, you don't have the experience to know you don't know what you don't know.
Wrong. I did an FOIA task while stationed at the location in question. You're paranoid and don't know what you're talking about. FOIA doesn't automagically declassify things.
Close, but the more likely foaming-at-the-mouth reply is, "Bush is depleting the ozone layer."
Come to think of it, methane is considered a greenhouse gas, depending on where it is, right? Shouldn't there be big ozone holes over Hollywood, D.C., and a Kinko's in Texas?
Can you provide a video?
That sounds a lot like the FS oral sex scene.