Why, back in my day, nobody on/. every made a typo when spelling "perl" - everyone could grok every programming language known, and never made errors. Oh, yeah. Once we hit 100,000 users, it all went downhill.
A Knoppmyth upgrade is actually more of a wipe-and-install system. The scripts maintain your database and media files, but the OS and its various settings are reset to defaults as determined by the Knoppmyth maintainers. This is by design, since it allows them to upgrade from many disparate earlier versions to the latest. It is a drag to re-initialize my SMB and Webmin settings, and reset the password for MythWeb, and re-initialize my LVM volumes... You know, I'm probably not making this sound better for you, am I?
Yes, absolutely. I've seen a number of shows get recorded at 1 am instead of their first showing in order to ensure that I get everything I have scheduled to record, even if it's not the earliest showing of each episode.
I've been using my MythTV box for six months now, and I love it. With the latest update (.19), I've not had to reboot or restart or kill a process yet.
The networks need to figure out that making new technology LESS useful than the previous generation of technology is stupid and makes enemies of their own customers. If I could use the fast-forward button on a VCR in 1985, I damned sure want one in a digital recorder in 2006. And, with a MythTV machine, nobody can tell me what it does.
As an Army veteran, I've got to set you straight on this one. The U.S. Generals who are complaining about the government policies today would have been in violation of military orders and subject to disciplinary action, to include courts martial, if they said anything that was not approved by their superiors while they were active duty. Once they left the service, they resumed their status as normal U.S. citizens, and could say anything that was not covered by an NDA (like classified material, which is always covered by an NDA that is kept on file for 75 years).
Rosen is a more clear case of personal ambition over ethics and logic.
I completely agree, but some folks may get the impression that a MythTV box (no subscription fee) is as cheap as a TiVo (subsidized by subscription fees).
Personally, I bought hardware that was known to work well with MythTV (research time - days?). Then, I assembled all the hardware (assembly time, 2 hours or so). I had to download and burn Knoppmyth (an hour on broadband). Then I installed Knoppmyth (another hour, after configuration time).
Once it's all installed an operational, it doesn't take any more time or effort than a TiVo, but unless a major manufacturer starts shipping a MythTV box, rather than Windows Media Center PCs, the average nongeek is not likely to play with MythTV.
Could you imagine if Dell or HP started selling two lines of media machines - one with WinMCE and the other with MythTV? Yeah, me neither.
All hardware PVRs are computers. I presume you are looking for something with custom hardware and software that will not allow you to use the machine as a general-purpose computer easily. I don't know of any machines like that other than the TiVo variants, although there are a few companies (Myth.ic is one) that sell pre-configured MythTV boxes. No subscription, hardware and software pre-installed for you, and more capacity than any TiVo on the market. Also over a grand, though.
Not horse pucky. Of course I include the cost of the PC - I'm not using my MythTV box to do anything other than hook up to the television. Sure, I'm doing more than a TiVo can do, but it's still not my general-purpose computer. You can't remove the cost of all the hardware you need.
You are right, though - a machine comparable to a TiVo can be built for money comparable to what you'd spend on a TiVo. I don't know too many folks who build MythTV machines that are comparable to a TiVo though. The 80 gigabyte harddrive is never enough, the single tuner is rather paltry, etc. So, I suppose I should have been more clear - most MythTV users will spend more on their machine than if they bought a TiVo, but they also have about five times the capacity and much more expandability and more features and no DRM. Better?
A MythTV box will cost more than a TiVo, based on their new three-year plan. It will work on your television, not just your computer - the MythTV software is intended to be used on a standalone computer that is dedicated to DVR functions.
The benefit over TiVo for most users is that MythTV doesn't lock you into someone else's content control system. The stories about abuses from the makers of the devices or from the studios, abetted by the makers, are not hard to find. As Cory Doctorow says, nobody woke up this morning wanting their DVR to do less than it did yesterday. Yet, that's exactly what you are agreeing to allow when you buy a TiVo or use a Windows Media PC - someone else has more rights on your machine than you do.
Now, outside the DRM realm, another important issue that makes MythTV attractive is expandability. Yes, TiVo is hackable, but it's not meant to be hackable easily. My particular MythTV box has two tuners, and room for at least two more (I could actually have eight if I went with dual-tuner cards). TiVo has one tuner. A settop DVR from a cable or satellite company usually has two tuners, but you can't add more.
And if you're reading Slashdot, you're probably willing to play with your toys anyway, right? MythTV is fun.:-)
I think you're confusing sarcasm and satire. Satire is often a reductio ad absurdum argument, showing the silliness of a particular hidebound point of view. Sarcasm is just being snarky.
During my time in the service, we would on very rare ultra-honest occasions refer to the military as having some very basic functions: find and destroy people and things our government tells us are bad guys. Anything we did which did not aid us in those goals was wasted effort.
For example, sensitivity training leaps to mind as being something which trained killers don't really need too much. But, that's just my opinion.
The reasoning used was that, since the system as a whole had not started (or even considered) using CSS, the web administrators didn't want to (claim to not be able to) ensure it was compliant. The very use of CSS does not make a page compliant with Section 508, but it sure does make it easier to debug. I would have been thrilled to have a site-wide CSS implementation to base my pages on, since the site has a billion different looks and feels through the various subprojects.
Basically, since the main web admins didn't understand CSS well enough to implement it, nobody else was allowed to either.
This is the site I worked on. I was once in charge of DCGS pages. They are no longer mine, so don't blame me.:-)
I tried to put CSS into my pages at my previous employer, thereby making them Section 508-compliant (the previous incarnation was a mess of kludgy non-compliant code) and satisfying the requirements of the government that I was working for at the time. The side benefit of making every single page in a rather large site load in a tenth the time due to more efficient code was nice also.
I was ordered to remove the CSS and replace it with the mess of inline font tags and other such nonsense. I was able to stealthily leave in some acronym tags, but who knows what my idiot successors may be doing to the site by now.
Except that the military satellite system doesn't really use normal file types. Check out this tutorial on the image format that is used by NIMA (sat imagery folks).
Now, I knew Major Weed a number of years ago, and he is really in MI but he was a journalist when he was enlisted. He may be doing some work in Photoshop just because it's not an imagery analyst's task but is useful and he knows the program. Imagery analysts, by the way, are never officers.
Except that the military satellite system doesn't really use normal file types. Check out this tutorial on the image format that is used by NIMA (sat imagery folks).
Now, I knew Major Weed a number of years ago, and he is really in MI but he was a journalist when he was enlisted. He may be doing some work in Photoshop just because it's not an imagery analyst's task but is useful and he knows the program. Imagery analysts, by the way, are never officers.
Yeah, and he's a really good guy too. I worked for him back in 1994/5 for a while. Surprised he's only a Major but maybe he'll get LtCol after the war.
I wonder if those CSS rendering inconsistencies have been ironed out in Opera 7. Since it's only been out a few days, I'm sure the page you listed was using a different version to test.
Nope, sure doesn't. One any OS, IE6 will render that page just fine, until you scroll a bit or play with the buttons on the left side. Then you'll see that IE is doing something that violates the web standards. The spiral should NEVER move, and should not repeat. Yet, it does funny things with the buttons and slides up the page on the center div.
They obviously do something wrong. Check out the spiral demo in various browsers. The ones that actually follow the CSS standards can render it perfectly. Want to guess which ones render it well? Mozilla-based browsers, and Opera 7 are the only Windows browsers to work correctly. That means the only major browser that does not follow the standards is the most popular one.
Extend and enhance (also known as extend and extinguish) is not the way to go about making a standards-based system. There are standards. They are not mutable, they are not extensible (except where stated).
In this particular case, they purposely serve a messed-up CSS stylesheet to Opera. If you browse with CSS turned off, the site looks fine. So, regardless of their adherence to standards (which is not very good), they purposely try to monkeywrench Opera. That's the point of this story, really. Every page should render identically on every browser. All information should be visible on every browser. Purposely hiding your text under a graphic is unacceptable behavior.
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Hey! I'm a Mensa member and ... Oh, never mind, it's acutely accurate. *sigh*
Why, back in my day, nobody on /. every made a typo when spelling "perl" - everyone could grok every programming language known, and never made errors. Oh, yeah. Once we hit 100,000 users, it all went downhill.
A Knoppmyth upgrade is actually more of a wipe-and-install system. The scripts maintain your database and media files, but the OS and its various settings are reset to defaults as determined by the Knoppmyth maintainers. This is by design, since it allows them to upgrade from many disparate earlier versions to the latest. It is a drag to re-initialize my SMB and Webmin settings, and reset the password for MythWeb, and re-initialize my LVM volumes... You know, I'm probably not making this sound better for you, am I?
SO, how about, "I feel your pain?"
Yes, absolutely. I've seen a number of shows get recorded at 1 am instead of their first showing in order to ensure that I get everything I have scheduled to record, even if it's not the earliest showing of each episode.
I've been using my MythTV box for six months now, and I love it. With the latest update (.19), I've not had to reboot or restart or kill a process yet.
The networks need to figure out that making new technology LESS useful than the previous generation of technology is stupid and makes enemies of their own customers. If I could use the fast-forward button on a VCR in 1985, I damned sure want one in a digital recorder in 2006. And, with a MythTV machine, nobody can tell me what it does.
As an Army veteran, I've got to set you straight on this one. The U.S. Generals who are complaining about the government policies today would have been in violation of military orders and subject to disciplinary action, to include courts martial, if they said anything that was not approved by their superiors while they were active duty. Once they left the service, they resumed their status as normal U.S. citizens, and could say anything that was not covered by an NDA (like classified material, which is always covered by an NDA that is kept on file for 75 years).
Rosen is a more clear case of personal ambition over ethics and logic.
Yes. There are.
I completely agree, but some folks may get the impression that a MythTV box (no subscription fee) is as cheap as a TiVo (subsidized by subscription fees).
Personally, I bought hardware that was known to work well with MythTV (research time - days?). Then, I assembled all the hardware (assembly time, 2 hours or so). I had to download and burn Knoppmyth (an hour on broadband). Then I installed Knoppmyth (another hour, after configuration time).
Once it's all installed an operational, it doesn't take any more time or effort than a TiVo, but unless a major manufacturer starts shipping a MythTV box, rather than Windows Media Center PCs, the average nongeek is not likely to play with MythTV.
Could you imagine if Dell or HP started selling two lines of media machines - one with WinMCE and the other with MythTV? Yeah, me neither.
All hardware PVRs are computers. I presume you are looking for something with custom hardware and software that will not allow you to use the machine as a general-purpose computer easily. I don't know of any machines like that other than the TiVo variants, although there are a few companies (Myth.ic is one) that sell pre-configured MythTV boxes. No subscription, hardware and software pre-installed for you, and more capacity than any TiVo on the market. Also over a grand, though.
Not horse pucky. Of course I include the cost of the PC - I'm not using my MythTV box to do anything other than hook up to the television. Sure, I'm doing more than a TiVo can do, but it's still not my general-purpose computer. You can't remove the cost of all the hardware you need.
You are right, though - a machine comparable to a TiVo can be built for money comparable to what you'd spend on a TiVo. I don't know too many folks who build MythTV machines that are comparable to a TiVo though. The 80 gigabyte harddrive is never enough, the single tuner is rather paltry, etc. So, I suppose I should have been more clear - most MythTV users will spend more on their machine than if they bought a TiVo, but they also have about five times the capacity and much more expandability and more features and no DRM. Better?
A MythTV box will cost more than a TiVo, based on their new three-year plan. It will work on your television, not just your computer - the MythTV software is intended to be used on a standalone computer that is dedicated to DVR functions.
The benefit over TiVo for most users is that MythTV doesn't lock you into someone else's content control system. The stories about abuses from the makers of the devices or from the studios, abetted by the makers, are not hard to find. As Cory Doctorow says, nobody woke up this morning wanting their DVR to do less than it did yesterday. Yet, that's exactly what you are agreeing to allow when you buy a TiVo or use a Windows Media PC - someone else has more rights on your machine than you do.
Now, outside the DRM realm, another important issue that makes MythTV attractive is expandability. Yes, TiVo is hackable, but it's not meant to be hackable easily. My particular MythTV box has two tuners, and room for at least two more (I could actually have eight if I went with dual-tuner cards). TiVo has one tuner. A settop DVR from a cable or satellite company usually has two tuners, but you can't add more.
And if you're reading Slashdot, you're probably willing to play with your toys anyway, right? MythTV is fun. :-)
Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
I think you're confusing sarcasm and satire. Satire is often a reductio ad absurdum argument, showing the silliness of a particular hidebound point of view. Sarcasm is just being snarky.
During my time in the service, we would on very rare ultra-honest occasions refer to the military as having some very basic functions: find and destroy people and things our government tells us are bad guys. Anything we did which did not aid us in those goals was wasted effort.
For example, sensitivity training leaps to mind as being something which trained killers don't really need too much. But, that's just my opinion.
The reasoning used was that, since the system as a whole had not started (or even considered) using CSS, the web administrators didn't want to (claim to not be able to) ensure it was compliant. The very use of CSS does not make a page compliant with Section 508, but it sure does make it easier to debug. I would have been thrilled to have a site-wide CSS implementation to base my pages on, since the site has a billion different looks and feels through the various subprojects.
Basically, since the main web admins didn't understand CSS well enough to implement it, nobody else was allowed to either.
This is the site I worked on. I was once in charge of DCGS pages. They are no longer mine, so don't blame me. :-)
I tried to put CSS into my pages at my previous employer, thereby making them Section 508-compliant (the previous incarnation was a mess of kludgy non-compliant code) and satisfying the requirements of the government that I was working for at the time. The side benefit of making every single page in a rather large site load in a tenth the time due to more efficient code was nice also.
I was ordered to remove the CSS and replace it with the mess of inline font tags and other such nonsense. I was able to stealthily leave in some acronym tags, but who knows what my idiot successors may be doing to the site by now.
The Imagery Product Library can serve JPEG images via a Java-capable web browser to any machine on the network that is granted access. Cross-platform.
The actual analysis is done on Sun workstations, of course. Real mission-critical work is never trusted to anything but real machines.
Except that the military satellite system doesn't really use normal file types. Check out this tutorial on the image format that is used by NIMA (sat imagery folks).
Now, I knew Major Weed a number of years ago, and he is really in MI but he was a journalist when he was enlisted. He may be doing some work in Photoshop just because it's not an imagery analyst's task but is useful and he knows the program. Imagery analysts, by the way, are never officers.
Except that the military satellite system doesn't really use normal file types. Check out this tutorial on the image format that is used by NIMA (sat imagery folks).
Now, I knew Major Weed a number of years ago, and he is really in MI but he was a journalist when he was enlisted. He may be doing some work in Photoshop just because it's not an imagery analyst's task but is useful and he knows the program. Imagery analysts, by the way, are never officers.
Yeah, and he's a really good guy too. I worked for him back in 1994/5 for a while. Surprised he's only a Major but maybe he'll get LtCol after the war.
I wonder if those CSS rendering inconsistencies have been ironed out in Opera 7. Since it's only been out a few days, I'm sure the page you listed was using a different version to test.
Nope, sure doesn't. One any OS, IE6 will render that page just fine, until you scroll a bit or play with the buttons on the left side. Then you'll see that IE is doing something that violates the web standards. The spiral should NEVER move, and should not repeat. Yet, it does funny things with the buttons and slides up the page on the center div.
Extend and enhance (also known as extend and extinguish) is not the way to go about making a standards-based system. There are standards. They are not mutable, they are not extensible (except where stated).
In this particular case, they purposely serve a messed-up CSS stylesheet to Opera. If you browse with CSS turned off, the site looks fine. So, regardless of their adherence to standards (which is not very good), they purposely try to monkeywrench Opera. That's the point of this story, really. Every page should render identically on every browser. All information should be visible on every browser. Purposely hiding your text under a graphic is unacceptable behavior.
The problem is that MSN does a "grep" of the user agent string, which contains "Opera" even when set to identify as MSIE or Mozilla.