You'll be able to stream music and videos from your Zune and display photos on your Xbox 360. They announced this pretty early on. It was fairly obvious this would be the case because:
1) Both the Zune and the Xbox were developed by the same group, and by many of the same people. A lot of the 360 team was moved to Zune after the 360 launch, and it's been J Allard's pet project for a while.
2) Songs will be purchased from the Zune store using Microsoft points, the same currency used to buy Xbox Live content (XBLA games, themes, expansion packs, etc). This makes it a pretty easy and obvious choice for integration, especially the possibility of a Zune Store embed in the Xbox 360 dashboard.
I wouldn't be particularly shocked to see the ability to purchase songs from the Zune store via your 360 in the future, maybe by the spring dashboard update. You'd then either be able to play them on the 360 directly (if you have a hard drive) or transfer them to your Zune.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft. I use OS X and Linux exclusively in my life. But, after the PS3 announcements/fiasco at E3 and the launch of some good games on the 360, I picked one up. It's very much unlike any other Microsoft product I've worked with, with a slick and (mostly) intuitive interface. I think J Allard can do great things with the Zune and Xbox platforms, so I'm looking at seeing the state of the state in a year.
At ExxonSecrets.org, if you go to "Organizations" and you click on "Tech Central Science Foundation", it explains all of Exxon Mobil's dealings with TCSF.
I suppose asking a reader to go one click further is asking too much.
TechCentralStation is a publication of DCI, a PR firm based in DC. It is essentially an astroturf site, publishing articles and blog posts that support the views and desires of its clients, without readily disclosing their ties.
Shortly thereafter, Bob Carter and others began writing articles for TCS like the ones linked from Exxon Secrets.
TCS has also run a lot of articles attacking generic medicines, especially in third world countries, as unsafe. TCSF, unsurprisingly, has received funding from PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying organization.
Obviously it's difficult to prove a direct payoff from Exxon to TCSF to Carter. I think for most people, though, the circumstantial evidence is convincing enough.
Re:Different mirrors for different directories
on
Apache 2.2.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Yes, Squid 3.0 can handle that easily using built in config options, and squid 2.5 can handle it with an external redirector script.
Re:Combining mod_proxy with mod_cache
on
Apache 2.2.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I'd suggest going with Squid 3.0 (beta, but very stable in my experience) acting as a caching reverse proxy instead of Apache.
use cache_peer to setup multiple debian mirrors as parents and it'll share the load between them.
In my testing with squid 3.0 vs squid 2.5 vs apache 2.1.9 (the last beta version before 2.2.0), squid vastly outperformed apache when it came to this type of application.
I'm sure someone will explain to me that apache 2.2 is actually far faster than squid, but in my experience, it's not.
If you want to provide the mirror as a subdirectory of your current site, instead of giving it its own IP and domain, just set up squid to reverse proxy your entire site. You can configure different paths in the url to go to different parent servers, so/debian/ will be your debian mirror parent servers but everything else will be localhost:81, or whatever.
>>Look, it's not sushi, if you RTFA you'll see it's a novelty item printed with sushi designs on the outside -- it's not supposed to even look like sushi.
Not true, it's in the shape of maki and has pictures of maki on the paper, and is wrapped around maki. That's how it was served to some friends on tuesday. It's also flavored to taste like sushi.
about a dozen people dined as a group at moto on tuesday evening with a menu prepared especially for them. 18 courses, plus an amuse, plus a special course, plus an edible menu.
the amuse was cornstarch packing peanuts flavored like buttered popcorn
the paper maki was on there, as was a spur of the moment "raccoon roadkill" dish made up of leftover raccoon meat one of the diners brought in.
you really need to see the pictures for some of them.
>>For the record... I'm quick, I'm smart, I fit into the 18-25 age bracket *and* I have only a cell phone.
>>I just happen to be using my quickness and smarts to make money. Enough money for me to be irritated by high taxes. (Enough money for me to be conservative I guess...)
>>Perhaps the fact that poor people are more likely to have land lines only and are also more likely to vote Democrat pushes the polls in favor of Kerry??
>>I'm all for better methods of gathering statistics... web surveys... mail surveys... mind reading... but bitching about a potential bias and then revealing your own undermines your point.
is it a fact that poor people are more likely to have land lines only?
i'm 18-25, have only a cell phone, am smart, but apparently not smart enough to know what you mean by "quick".
i make enough money and was raised in a family that made enough money that we should "logically" be pro-bush, if you believe that the tax cuts bush supports and that kerry does not support would help households with an income below $200,000/year. I don't believe that, though.
the idea of a web survey being a better method than a phone survey is laughable, also..
breslin is a columnist, not a reporter. he is a pundit. his bias is well known by those familiar with him, and the mere tone of the piece (conversational rather than reportorial) should make you realize he doesn't pretend to be unbiased.
sheesh.
but seriously, i think cell-phone-only bias is minor. i think the greater biases are conducting polls on the weekends (especially labor day weekend) and weighting your subsamples (e.g. likely voters) based on unsupported predictions about voter turnout, like gallup does (predicting a 13-14% change in voter turnout, in favor of republicans, in 2004 versus 2000).
I don't have a landline and I'm very politically active and informed. And I vote.
And many of my friends only have cell phones, and they also all vote.
The real flaw with Gallup's polls and the Time and Newsweek polls is that they normalize heavily in favor of republicans.
That is, gallup assumes that 40% of the turnout in November will be republicans, and 33% will be democrats, and weights the responses of the republicans commensurately.
The problem is, that bears no resemblance to reality.
Says John Zogby:
"If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000."
In other words, gallup thinks there's a 10% difference in who will turn out in 2004 vs 2000, and I haven't heard a convincing reason why they think this.
My suspicion is that they normalize it this way based on their 8 questions, which they use to determine a likely voter, rather than just saying "How likely, on a scale of 1 to 5, are you to vote in November?" like many other pollsters.
If you re-normalize the gallup results based on 2000 voter turnout, you get either a tie or a statistically insignificant lead for either party.
Gallup also failed miserably in 2000: In late october they had bush leading by more than 10 points among likely voters nationwide. On election day, bush lost the popular vote by about.5%, or about 560,000 voters.
It's also absurd to look at national polls. They tell you nothing about how the electoral college will break. It's possible for a candidate to get a vast majority of the popular votes by winning by massive margins in California, New York, Illinois, etc, but still lose the electoral vote because they didn't pick up enough states around the country.
So pfft to nationwide polls, and pfft to Gallup for normalizing so heavily in favor of republicans, without saying why.
Here's what the original blogger gives us as proof that this was rare, courtesy of the ever-accurate freerepublic.com (where "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerry Corsi conflated islam, catholicism, and "boy buggery"):
"Every single one of the memos to file regarding Bush's failure to attend a physical and meet other requirements is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatine or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing (especially in the military), and typewriters used mono-spaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction high-end word processing systems from Xerox and Wang, and later of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's.
Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang and other systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used mono-spaced fonts. I doubt the TANG had typesetting or high-end 1st generation word processing systems."
That's absurd, and demonstrably false. You mentioned the selectrics. IBM's electric typewriters had proportional fonts as far back as 1945. Even if the base had a typewriter that was nearly 30 years old, it would still be capable of creating proportional fonts.
Doubters should also remember that today's most popular proportional fonts have been used in typesetting (and on selectrics) since well before TrueType.
Furthermore, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, mentioned in the memos and involved in the back-and-forth, has confirmed that Killian expressed to him the same sentiments contained in the memos.
Regarding the superscripted 'th' argument, this document from Bush's official records also contains a superscripted 'th': http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/9-Miscellane ous.pdf. The superscripted th is on page three, in the second line of the log.
The White House even admits the authenticity of the documents, so why is this even an issue?
Because people don't want to realize that Bush disobeyed a DIRECT ORDER from his superior officers.
Because people don't want to think that the plane Bush flew continued to be used regularly through 1975, despite Bush and Bartlett's claims that it was "being phased out" and that Bush didn't need to take the physical because the planes wouldn't be used.
The best line I've heard lately, courtesy of Kevin Drum:
This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy.
Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day.
In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying.
Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true.
Jewel grocery stores in the chicago area will allow you to get $50 over your purchase price on discover (credit) cards for any purchase.
If you buy $11 worth of goods you can ask for $50 over and you'll get the $50 cash. As far as discover is concerned it's just a $61 charge. Plus you then get 1% cashback on the $50 extra, so you're really getting $0.50 for nothing:)
Of course, shopping at Jewel means you're paying through the nose anyway, since they're vastly overpriced compared to the local ethnic groceries, cub foods, or aldi. But still. Buy a pack of gum, get $50 over, walk out.
From September 1985 to June 1995, so I'm not eligible to become a member of the class. Not that I would anyway.
I still live a block away from a district 97 school, and many of my neighbors send their kids to the school.
The school installed wireless links between the district 97 offices and each school in the summer of 1995 (I believe) because the overall cost was significantly less than using a leased line. A few years later they rolled out wifi throughout the interior of the building, and now have carts of laptops available to classrooms.
More than anyone else I've seen post here, I have a personal financial interest in this lawsuit -- my tax dollars fund the school district, and thus my tax dollars will likely be spent defending against this suit. I'm disgusted.
Hell, we're even a town with a few bright people. Bruce Schneier of Blowfish fame used to live and work in Oak Park, and Oak Park is a haven for professors from many of Chicago's schools. Heck, Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson's voice) grew up here too.
And yet we have these people.
There's a statement mistakenly attributed to Ernest Hemingingway (who also grew up in Oak Park): "Oak Park is a town of broad lawns and narrow minds." It's likely he never spoke it, but it seems no more true than today.
Regards, Ed
Lincoln Elementary School, 1985-1993 Emerson Junior High, 1993-1995
I have one of the first-gen Archos Jukebox 6000s, and I love it too. They're pretty cheap now as well. They're not nearly as sexy or small as an ipod, but to my mind they're quite a bit nicer.
A side note: there is an open-source firmware available for the Archos jukeboxes/studios/recorders called "Rockbox". It's very good, very usable, and VERY fast. It does not currently support the multimedia jukebox.
If I remember correctly some newer archos's are being shipped with rockbox preinstalled now, but that might have been something I imagined. If they aren't shipping it, they should.
http://rockbox.haxx.se
My one big beef with the multimedia jukebox from archos is the forced scaling to properly playback divx. That is, if you want to play a divx on your archos, it needs to be a certain version of divx and a certain resolution. I'd much rather it support any resolution and any mpeg4-based codec. Oh well.
One of my profs, a security consultant when he's not making diddly squat teaching us brats, does a lot of security consulting for hospitals, and talks a lot about how difficult it is to make passwords strong enough and yet prevent that kind of human error (writing down your password).
His solution, although it's an expensive one, is to require two means of authentication. For him, it's a PIN# and an RSA SecurID card. 4 digits of memorized PIN plus a device that spits out a new pseudorandom number every minute solves the problem pretty well. Most people have no problems memorizing a four digit number or letter combination.
It works pretty well, I gather. I'm thinking about getting one myself.
divx 3 is divx 3.11, the modified version of microsoft's beta codec ms-mpeg4v2 (or maybe it's 4v3). It was the first one to take off, and in the hands of an experienced encoder, it offers better quality video (in most peoples' opinions) than divx4 or divx5.
I did see that the player is xvid capable, and that 3.11 support was added recently. I also noticed that the shipped version of the 450 (according to the FAQ) will not include any subtitle support. I also noticed that there is no mention of plans to support VobSub subtitles, which is far and away the best format for subs--no OCR is required.
In short, until either the divx/xvid scene calms down or the players get a bit smarter, I'll stick with my super-quiet linux box hooked up to the TV.
except that the "scene" releases are now almost 95% of the time (or more) in xvid, not divx3. So, even though they can now do divx3, they're still behind the times. Unless they can come out with a quick firmware flash that will let it do xvid also, I'm not planning on touching it.
I'm also curious as to how many types of subtitles it supports. If it's just a linux box running mplayer, that'll be fine. Especially if I can ssh into it and muck with the config files.
Bonus points if I can play divx/xvid from a self-burnt dvd (burnt as iso9660, not udf).
Slashdot Mirror
You'll be able to stream music and videos from your Zune and display photos on your Xbox 360. They announced this pretty early on. It was fairly obvious this would be the case because:
1) Both the Zune and the Xbox were developed by the same group, and by many of the same people. A lot of the 360 team was moved to Zune after the 360 launch, and it's been J Allard's pet project for a while.
2) Songs will be purchased from the Zune store using Microsoft points, the same currency used to buy Xbox Live content (XBLA games, themes, expansion packs, etc). This makes it a pretty easy and obvious choice for integration, especially the possibility of a Zune Store embed in the Xbox 360 dashboard.
I wouldn't be particularly shocked to see the ability to purchase songs from the Zune store via your 360 in the future, maybe by the spring dashboard update. You'd then either be able to play them on the 360 directly (if you have a hard drive) or transfer them to your Zune.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft. I use OS X and Linux exclusively in my life. But, after the PS3 announcements/fiasco at E3 and the launch of some good games on the 360, I picked one up. It's very much unlike any other Microsoft product I've worked with, with a slick and (mostly) intuitive interface. I think J Allard can do great things with the Zune and Xbox platforms, so I'm looking at seeing the state of the state in a year.
At ExxonSecrets.org, if you go to "Organizations" and you click on "Tech Central Science Foundation", it explains all of Exxon Mobil's dealings with TCSF.
I suppose asking a reader to go one click further is asking too much.
TechCentralStation is a publication of DCI, a PR firm based in DC. It is essentially an astroturf site, publishing articles and blog posts that support the views and desires of its clients, without readily disclosing their ties.
t e/giving_report.pdf
In 2003 Exxon Mobil gave TCS's nonprofit "Tech Central Science Foundation" $95,000 for "Climate Change Support". Here's Exxon Mobil's corporate giving report, detailing the "donation" (page 44): http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/corpora
Shortly thereafter, Bob Carter and others began writing articles for TCS like the ones linked from Exxon Secrets.
TCS has also run a lot of articles attacking generic medicines, especially in third world countries, as unsafe. TCSF, unsurprisingly, has received funding from PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying organization.
Obviously it's difficult to prove a direct payoff from Exxon to TCSF to Carter. I think for most people, though, the circumstantial evidence is convincing enough.
Page with details about Oreskes' original claim, Peiser's attempt at replication, and some Googler's attempt at replication:
http://www.norvig.com/oreskes.html
Judge for yourself.
Yes, Squid 3.0 can handle that easily using built in config options, and squid 2.5 can handle it with an external redirector script.
I'd suggest going with Squid 3.0 (beta, but very stable in my experience) acting as a caching reverse proxy instead of Apache.
/debian/ will be your debian mirror parent servers but everything else will be localhost:81, or whatever.
use cache_peer to setup multiple debian mirrors as parents and it'll share the load between them.
In my testing with squid 3.0 vs squid 2.5 vs apache 2.1.9 (the last beta version before 2.2.0), squid vastly outperformed apache when it came to this type of application.
I'm sure someone will explain to me that apache 2.2 is actually far faster than squid, but in my experience, it's not.
If you want to provide the mirror as a subdirectory of your current site, instead of giving it its own IP and domain, just set up squid to reverse proxy your entire site. You can configure different paths in the url to go to different parent servers, so
YMMV etc etc, but that's what I'd do.
Ditto.
2002 blurb
US Patent No. 5,717,235
US Patent No. 5,707,887
US Patent No. 5,602,791
US Patent No. 5,390,142
In their case they're claiming 5.0 is "beta" not alpha.. 5.0.0/1/2 were all alpha, 3 and 4 are beta. At least that's my memory.
It was a good conference. Very nice to see the number of attendees double in just a year.
It's translucent. It may even be clear, but the steam from the cooking fish fogs up the panes. I've seen multiple pictures, and it always looks foggy.
>>Look, it's not sushi, if you RTFA you'll see it's a novelty item printed with sushi designs on the outside -- it's not supposed to even look like sushi.
Not true, it's in the shape of maki and has pictures of maki on the paper, and is wrapped around maki. That's how it was served to some friends on tuesday. It's also flavored to taste like sushi.
-ed
about a dozen people dined as a group at moto on tuesday evening with a menu prepared especially for them. 18 courses, plus an amuse, plus a special course, plus an edible menu.
the amuse was cornstarch packing peanuts flavored like buttered popcorn
the paper maki was on there, as was a spur of the moment "raccoon roadkill" dish made up of leftover raccoon meat one of the diners brought in.
you really need to see the pictures for some of them.
moto review + pics
>>For the record... I'm quick, I'm smart, I fit into the 18-25 age bracket *and* I have only a cell phone.
>>I just happen to be using my quickness and smarts to make money. Enough money for me to be irritated by high taxes. (Enough money for me to be conservative I guess...)
>>Perhaps the fact that poor people are more likely to have land lines only and are also more likely to vote Democrat pushes the polls in favor of Kerry??
>>I'm all for better methods of gathering statistics... web surveys... mail surveys... mind reading... but bitching about a potential bias and then revealing your own undermines your point.
is it a fact that poor people are more likely to have land lines only?
i'm 18-25, have only a cell phone, am smart, but apparently not smart enough to know what you mean by "quick".
i make enough money and was raised in a family that made enough money that we should "logically" be pro-bush, if you believe that the tax cuts bush supports and that kerry does not support would help households with an income below $200,000/year. I don't believe that, though.
the idea of a web survey being a better method than a phone survey is laughable, also..
breslin is a columnist, not a reporter. he is a pundit. his bias is well known by those familiar with him, and the mere tone of the piece (conversational rather than reportorial) should make you realize he doesn't pretend to be unbiased.
sheesh.
but seriously, i think cell-phone-only bias is minor. i think the greater biases are conducting polls on the weekends (especially labor day weekend) and weighting your subsamples (e.g. likely voters) based on unsupported predictions about voter turnout, like gallup does (predicting a 13-14% change in voter turnout, in favor of republicans, in 2004 versus 2000).
-ed
I don't have a landline and I'm very politically active and informed. And I vote.
.5%, or about 560,000 voters.
And many of my friends only have cell phones, and they also all vote.
The real flaw with Gallup's polls and the Time and Newsweek polls is that they normalize heavily in favor of republicans.
That is, gallup assumes that 40% of the turnout in November will be republicans, and 33% will be democrats, and weights the responses of the republicans commensurately.
The problem is, that bears no resemblance to reality.
Says John Zogby:
"If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000."
In other words, gallup thinks there's a 10% difference in who will turn out in 2004 vs 2000, and I haven't heard a convincing reason why they think this.
My suspicion is that they normalize it this way based on their 8 questions, which they use to determine a likely voter, rather than just saying "How likely, on a scale of 1 to 5, are you to vote in November?" like many other pollsters.
If you re-normalize the gallup results based on 2000 voter turnout, you get either a tie or a statistically insignificant lead for either party.
Gallup also failed miserably in 2000: In late october they had bush leading by more than 10 points among likely voters nationwide. On election day, bush lost the popular vote by about
It's also absurd to look at national polls. They tell you nothing about how the electoral college will break. It's possible for a candidate to get a vast majority of the popular votes by winning by massive margins in California, New York, Illinois, etc, but still lose the electoral vote because they didn't pick up enough states around the country.
So pfft to nationwide polls, and pfft to Gallup for normalizing so heavily in favor of republicans, without saying why.
-ed
supplemental: see http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941 .html, where IBM mentions proportional spacing as becoming "a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters" starting in 1941.
There were Executives released throughout the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.
-ed
Here's what the original blogger gives us as proof that this was rare, courtesy of the ever-accurate freerepublic.com (where "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerry Corsi conflated islam, catholicism, and "boy buggery"):
That's absurd, and demonstrably false. You mentioned the selectrics. IBM's electric typewriters had proportional fonts as far back as 1945. Even if the base had a typewriter that was nearly 30 years old, it would still be capable of creating proportional fonts.
Doubters should also remember that today's most popular proportional fonts have been used in typesetting (and on selectrics) since well before TrueType.
Furthermore, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, mentioned in the memos and involved in the back-and-forth, has confirmed that Killian expressed to him the same sentiments contained in the memos.
Regarding the superscripted 'th' argument, this document from Bush's official records also contains a superscripted 'th': http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/9-Miscellane ous.pdf. The superscripted th is on page three, in the second line of the log.
The White House even admits the authenticity of the documents, so why is this even an issue?
Because people don't want to realize that Bush disobeyed a DIRECT ORDER from his superior officers.
Because people don't want to think that the plane Bush flew continued to be used regularly through 1975, despite Bush and Bartlett's claims that it was "being phased out" and that Bush didn't need to take the physical because the planes wouldn't be used.
The best line I've heard lately, courtesy of Kevin Drum:
regards, edActually, not all states have faithless elector laws. West Virginia is one of those that does not have one.
In fact, 24 states have no repercussions for an elector voting against the winning ticket.
There's also some discussion about whether faithless elector laws are even constitutional.
-gleam
Google services just works and are not famous for their bugs and instability
Been to www.orkut.com, lately?
Jewel grocery stores in the chicago area will allow you to get $50 over your purchase price on discover (credit) cards for any purchase.
:)
If you buy $11 worth of goods you can ask for $50 over and you'll get the $50 cash. As far as discover is concerned it's just a $61 charge. Plus you then get 1% cashback on the $50 extra, so you're really getting $0.50 for nothing
Of course, shopping at Jewel means you're paying through the nose anyway, since they're vastly overpriced compared to the local ethnic groceries, cub foods, or aldi. But still. Buy a pack of gum, get $50 over, walk out.
-Ed
From September 1985 to June 1995, so I'm not eligible to become a member of the class. Not that I would anyway.
I still live a block away from a district 97 school, and many of my neighbors send their kids to the school.
The school installed wireless links between the district 97 offices and each school in the summer of 1995 (I believe) because the overall cost was significantly less than using a leased line. A few years later they rolled out wifi throughout the interior of the building, and now have carts of laptops available to classrooms.
More than anyone else I've seen post here, I have a personal financial interest in this lawsuit -- my tax dollars fund the school district, and thus my tax dollars will likely be spent defending against this suit. I'm disgusted.
Hell, we're even a town with a few bright people. Bruce Schneier of Blowfish fame used to live and work in Oak Park, and Oak Park is a haven for professors from many of Chicago's schools. Heck, Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson's voice) grew up here too.
And yet we have these people.
There's a statement mistakenly attributed to Ernest Hemingingway (who also grew up in Oak Park): "Oak Park is a town of broad lawns and narrow minds." It's likely he never spoke it, but it seems no more true than today.
Regards,
Ed
Lincoln Elementary School, 1985-1993
Emerson Junior High, 1993-1995
Erm, aren't they already getting a constant source of income in the way of, say, phone bills?
Maybe it'll be like safety razors -- the phones themselves won't cost much, but the fuel will cost tons.
-gleam
I have one of the first-gen Archos Jukebox 6000s, and I love it too. They're pretty cheap now as well. They're not nearly as sexy or small as an ipod, but to my mind they're quite a bit nicer.
A side note: there is an open-source firmware available for the Archos jukeboxes/studios/recorders called "Rockbox". It's very good, very usable, and VERY fast. It does not currently support the multimedia jukebox.
If I remember correctly some newer archos's are being shipped with rockbox preinstalled now, but that might have been something I imagined. If they aren't shipping it, they should.
http://rockbox.haxx.se
My one big beef with the multimedia jukebox from archos is the forced scaling to properly playback divx. That is, if you want to play a divx on your archos, it needs to be a certain version of divx and a certain resolution. I'd much rather it support any resolution and any mpeg4-based codec. Oh well.
-gleam
They do.
One of my profs, a security consultant when he's not making diddly squat teaching us brats, does a lot of security consulting for hospitals, and talks a lot about how difficult it is to make passwords strong enough and yet prevent that kind of human error (writing down your password).
His solution, although it's an expensive one, is to require two means of authentication. For him, it's a PIN# and an RSA SecurID card. 4 digits of memorized PIN plus a device that spits out a new pseudorandom number every minute solves the problem pretty well. Most people have no problems memorizing a four digit number or letter combination.
It works pretty well, I gather. I'm thinking about getting one myself.
-gleam
divx 3 is divx 3.11, the modified version of microsoft's beta codec ms-mpeg4v2 (or maybe it's 4v3). It was the first one to take off, and in the hands of an experienced encoder, it offers better quality video (in most peoples' opinions) than divx4 or divx5.
I did see that the player is xvid capable, and that 3.11 support was added recently. I also noticed that the shipped version of the 450 (according to the FAQ) will not include any subtitle support. I also noticed that there is no mention of plans to support VobSub subtitles, which is far and away the best format for subs--no OCR is required.
In short, until either the divx/xvid scene calms down or the players get a bit smarter, I'll stick with my super-quiet linux box hooked up to the TV.
except that the "scene" releases are now almost 95% of the time (or more) in xvid, not divx3. So, even though they can now do divx3, they're still behind the times. Unless they can come out with a quick firmware flash that will let it do xvid also, I'm not planning on touching it.
I'm also curious as to how many types of subtitles it supports. If it's just a linux box running mplayer, that'll be fine. Especially if I can ssh into it and muck with the config files.
Bonus points if I can play divx/xvid from a self-burnt dvd (burnt as iso9660, not udf).
-gleam