What this article never touches on (because it's Slashdot, and Slashdot hates Microsoft) is that the update adds serious functionality to the Live client. The changes are good. They updated the main dashboard as well, and that dashboard will ship with all new games.
They fixed the bugs because they were... get this... bugs. What allowed Linux to run on an unmodded xbox was a buffer overflow exploit. Why would you knowingly leave those in a code revision?
You want to run linux on a xbox? mod it. or just go buy a cheap Dell.
Of course, in my job, I manage about 150 servers and about 120 desktops, so the servers are the majority of the systems I had to patch anyway.
And I'd still leave RPC enabled on the workstations. I like being able to dip my hand into people's \\machinename\c$ every now and then to make sure they aren't doing Bad Things(tm)
My last vector of infection here was a consultant's laptop. Since I'm not allowed politically to tell those people "no" and I can't convince the upper management of the advisability of a real security policy, my hands are stuck with patching things asap.
refusing to allow DCOM to the local network means refusing to allow windows networking and domain level logins. Not to mention a whole rash of really useful administration tasks.
Now if you are arguing that MS's (actually DEC's) networking strategy is wrong, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
While it is embarassing for a system admin to have systems affected by the blaster worm, the real danger comes from machines that efectively have no admin watching them at all. (i.e. clueless home users) Control a couple hundred thousand zombie machines and you can take down pretty much any target at will.
This whole article should just get a -1 Troll moderation, as it's already well accepted that the only way slashdotters will be happy is if Microsoft says: "We suck" and quits.
Personally, I'm for it, as long as they can unify the patching implementation / detection code. Currently there's too many different ways to determine if you have or have not patched a system.
Sometimes I wonder if the novelty has worn off for the admins and they just really don't care anymore. Sad, because some people would give their left foot for a chance to run the show.
I'm now convinced this is the case. If Rob and crew don't even bother to read the headlines on their site, then maybe they should remove themselves from the day-to-day and focus on the backend. At one point in the distant past, Rob and Neal lent some personal flavor to slashdot, I'm not sure that's the case anymore.
I think I saw your post over in the other tivo thread, but I've still not figured out if that EyeTV thing can change the channel on a cable box, and you don't list that in the setup there.
How often do shows get shifted around to make it an inconvenience, though? It doesn't happen often enough to warrant spending four times the money -- if you think it does, you either watch too much TV or you're too sensitive.;-)
Pay attention to the Fox Sunday night schedule for an extreme version of what can happen with schedule shifts. Your new Simpsons episode doesn't always start at 8.
NBC on thursday nights played around with "super-sizing" their sitcoms. instead of 4 30 minute eps, they went to 3 40 minute eps. Those of us with TiVo found we recorded Friends and Scrubs with no problem, nicely avoiding Will and Grace, even though it started at 8:40 and ended at 9:20
Now if they could just find a way to deal with sports programs running long.
Hack around with a tivo and you can do just what you are looking for. And if you are tech savvy enough to try to build one of these boxes yourself, you can open the tivo, pop a 100mbps network card in it, and get a bash prompt to come up.
pulling the stream from the tivo itself takes about 20-30 minutes per hour, depending on recording quality.
Conversion to a more standard format is the really painful process, but I set up the machine I use as a firewall to do it... about 8 hours per hour of video to downmix to mpeg1 or 2, but most of the tools allow batch editing, so you spend an hour configuring the commercial ripping from 3 shows and let it run all day
Seems to me, though, that more people doing homebrew and using those services ought to help improve the quality a bit. I imagine it could work something like the CDDB
I keep seeing this suggestion thrown about and everyone seems to ignore the HUGE difference between tv schedule data and cd data.
CD's are mass produced and static. if I buy Britney's new cd it's going to have the same physical characteristics of every other cd produced at the same time, for the rest of it's existance. So my effort in entering the names of the tracks pays off for x million people over the life of the CD.
Now let's look at the TV schedule for the NBC affiliate in the town I live in. It's not going to be the same as ANY other NBC affiliate, so immediately the payoff is reduced to people who live within my broadcast range... about 30,000... of which maybe 100 will make use of the data. plus, the data expires extremely quickly, that UVA football game isn't going to repeat itself in the schedule.
Scheduling data for 300 channels is valuable. it's WORTH paying for. why do you think TV Guide sells subscriptions to it's magazine?
IIS 6 really is a big deal for Windows... IIS 5 is a steaming pile of crap compared to Apache, but IIS 6 seems really promising. I'll hold out my opinion until I actually use it though... but it can't get much worse than IIS 5.
Sure it can! IIS4:-)
As an admin, what's the most noticable improvement from IIS4 to IIS5?
you can sort the list of websites. What the hell were they thinking?
adsutil has some rather important limitations, however. The most major of which I discovered when trying to script the install of a website with 15 host headers. It only took 9 of them.
all the adsutil work I end up doing is always called from perl scripts anyway (I'm ever so much more comfortable with it than I am with wsh) so I'm looking forward to being able to simply not call adsutil and mkw3site any more.
How does it change channels on a cable box? the website doesn't mention that functionality... just that it has a 120 channel tuner.
And chipset shouldn't matter at all... the thing pumps it's information back to the computer over USB. Someone just needs to write software to make this work with a PC
Hey, can anyone tell me if TiVo charges *per* unit or per address for the standard services? Thanks..
Unfortunately, it's per unit. I wish they'd take a cue from XM radio on this one, who have recently rolled out a "family" pricing option. 1 tuner is $10 a month, up to five tuners billed to one address is $17, I think.
Re:Digital cable should not be a problem
on
Rabid TiVo Fanaticism
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Important note: With a single tuner Tivo (read: not one for satellite), you can watch one recorded program and record another; but you cannot watch live TV at the same time you're recording something. It's very much not a VCR.
Actually it's exactly like a vcr in this respect.
With a vcr, you can only watch a second program by bypassing the tuner of the vcr. So if you are recording something on HBO (for example) you patch the cable box into the vcr and set it for HBO's channel. Now you want to watch something else? fine, but you can't change the channel on the cable box. so you run a second cable feed directly into the TV and watch that. If you had another cable box, then you could watch HBO on it as well. TiVo is exactly the same way.
Re:I need just three things to replace my vcr
on
Rabid TiVo Fanaticism
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There's no reason to integrate a DVD recorder into a TiVo, and actually quite a number of reasons not to.
You can buy a standalone dvd recorded these days, just plug it into your tivo just like you would a regular vcr.
The cost of adding a DVD recorder to a TiVo would raise the price over the $600-700 mark which puts it out of the realm of most home buyers. Plus, a large number of us don't want that functionality, which makes it a niche product in an already niche market.
And they will soon have the HDTV tivo. though frankly, the investment across the board for HDTV is going to keep me out of the market for quite a bit.
Hard drives problems are no problem with the older (non-series 2) tivos. it's actually a great opportunity to go ahead and stick 120GB+ drive in there on the cheap these days.
and wait until you see the difference having a 90+hour (at medium quality) tivo makes. You'll actually save movies for months.
Slashdot Mirror
What this article never touches on (because it's Slashdot, and Slashdot hates Microsoft) is that the update adds serious functionality to the Live client. The changes are good. They updated the main dashboard as well, and that dashboard will ship with all new games.
They fixed the bugs because they were... get this... bugs. What allowed Linux to run on an unmodded xbox was a buffer overflow exploit. Why would you knowingly leave those in a code revision?
You want to run linux on a xbox? mod it. or just go buy a cheap Dell.
We're coming into agreement :-)
Of course, in my job, I manage about 150 servers and about 120 desktops, so the servers are the majority of the systems I had to patch anyway.
And I'd still leave RPC enabled on the workstations. I like being able to dip my hand into people's \\machinename\c$ every now and then to make sure they aren't doing Bad Things(tm)
My last vector of infection here was a consultant's laptop. Since I'm not allowed politically to tell those people "no" and I can't convince the upper management of the advisability of a real security policy, my hands are stuck with patching things asap.
refusing to allow DCOM to the local network means refusing to allow windows networking and domain level logins. Not to mention a whole rash of really useful administration tasks.
Now if you are arguing that MS's (actually DEC's) networking strategy is wrong, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
True. But the minute someone brings an infected laptop inside your firewall, it'll run rampant if you haven't patched the workstations and servers.
I know whereof I speak.
Google also replaced msn's search in my IE. (in other words, when I hit F3, I get a google branded page now.)
I don't remember how that happeneded, but I'm assuming it was during the installation of the toolbar. Which I love.
102 popups blocked so far. woot.
While it is embarassing for a system admin to have systems affected by the blaster worm, the real danger comes from machines that efectively have no admin watching them at all. (i.e. clueless home users) Control a couple hundred thousand zombie machines and you can take down pretty much any target at will.
This whole article should just get a -1 Troll moderation, as it's already well accepted that the only way slashdotters will be happy is if Microsoft says: "We suck" and quits.
Personally, I'm for it, as long as they can unify the patching implementation / detection code. Currently there's too many different ways to determine if you have or have not patched a system.
Actually, Windows XP Pro has IIS6, but it's limited to just one website.
Also, Windows 2003 Server is out now, and it is (for all intents and purposes) Windows XP Server
You're missing the best hack of all.
A pickup that you do nothing but drive to the pump with. With a few 30 gallon drums in the back.
blammo. cheap gas.
If you aren't vulnerable to those exploits, why scan for them? Just comment out the rules associated with them.
If you run a linux/unix/not windows server then install these programs and run them and actually pay attention to them
Snort runs just dandy on Windows 2000. So that's not an excuse to not run an IDS.
I do wish there was an open free tripwire version for windows. For that you need to shell out the bucks.
Sometimes I wonder if the novelty has worn off for the admins and they just really don't care anymore. Sad, because some people would give their left foot for a chance to run the show.
I'm now convinced this is the case. If Rob and crew don't even bother to read the headlines on their site, then maybe they should remove themselves from the day-to-day and focus on the backend. At one point in the distant past, Rob and Neal lent some personal flavor to slashdot, I'm not sure that's the case anymore.
thedbp:
I think I saw your post over in the other tivo thread, but I've still not figured out if that EyeTV thing can change the channel on a cable box, and you don't list that in the setup there.
How often do shows get shifted around to make it an inconvenience, though? It doesn't happen often enough to warrant spending four times the money -- if you think it does, you either watch too much TV or you're too sensitive. ;-)
Pay attention to the Fox Sunday night schedule for an extreme version of what can happen with schedule shifts. Your new Simpsons episode doesn't always start at 8.
NBC on thursday nights played around with "super-sizing" their sitcoms. instead of 4 30 minute eps, they went to 3 40 minute eps. Those of us with TiVo found we recorded Friends and Scrubs with no problem, nicely avoiding Will and Grace, even though it started at 8:40 and ended at 9:20
Now if they could just find a way to deal with sports programs running long.
Hack around with a tivo and you can do just what you are looking for. And if you are tech savvy enough to try to build one of these boxes yourself, you can open the tivo, pop a 100mbps network card in it, and get a bash prompt to come up.
pulling the stream from the tivo itself takes about 20-30 minutes per hour, depending on recording quality.
Conversion to a more standard format is the really painful process, but I set up the machine I use as a firewall to do it... about 8 hours per hour of video to downmix to mpeg1 or 2, but most of the tools allow batch editing, so you spend an hour configuring the commercial ripping from 3 shows and let it run all day
Seems to me, though, that more people doing homebrew and using those services ought to help improve the quality a bit. I imagine it could work something like the CDDB
I keep seeing this suggestion thrown about and everyone seems to ignore the HUGE difference between tv schedule data and cd data.
CD's are mass produced and static. if I buy Britney's new cd it's going to have the same physical characteristics of every other cd produced at the same time, for the rest of it's existance. So my effort in entering the names of the tracks pays off for x million people over the life of the CD.
Now let's look at the TV schedule for the NBC affiliate in the town I live in. It's not going to be the same as ANY other NBC affiliate, so immediately the payoff is reduced to people who live within my broadcast range... about 30,000... of which maybe 100 will make use of the data. plus, the data expires extremely quickly, that UVA football game isn't going to repeat itself in the schedule.
Scheduling data for 300 channels is valuable. it's WORTH paying for. why do you think TV Guide sells subscriptions to it's magazine?
IIS 6 really is a big deal for Windows... IIS 5 is a steaming pile of crap compared to Apache, but IIS 6 seems really promising. I'll hold out my opinion until I actually use it though... but it can't get much worse than IIS 5.
:-)
Sure it can! IIS4
As an admin, what's the most noticable improvement from IIS4 to IIS5?
you can sort the list of websites. What the hell were they thinking?
adsutil has some rather important limitations, however. The most major of which I discovered when trying to script the install of a website with 15 host headers. It only took 9 of them.
all the adsutil work I end up doing is always called from perl scripts anyway (I'm ever so much more comfortable with it than I am with wsh) so I'm looking forward to being able to simply not call adsutil and mkw3site any more.
Maybe you should just buy one of these instead:
Sony DVP-CX875P 300+1 DVD/CD mega changer with progressive scan
Why doesn't your Big Mac cost less when you order it from the drive-thru? after all, you aren't creating a mess inside the restaraunt...
Sometimes it costs more to bill at actual cost + margin than it does to just set a price.
Buy the lifetime subscription. It's worth it in the long run.
How does it change channels on a cable box? the website doesn't mention that functionality... just that it has a 120 channel tuner.
And chipset shouldn't matter at all... the thing pumps it's information back to the computer over USB. Someone just needs to write software to make this work with a PC
Hey, can anyone tell me if TiVo charges *per* unit or per address for the standard services? Thanks..
Unfortunately, it's per unit. I wish they'd take a cue from XM radio on this one, who have recently rolled out a "family" pricing option. 1 tuner is $10 a month, up to five tuners billed to one address is $17, I think.
Important note: With a single tuner Tivo (read: not one for satellite), you can watch one recorded program and record another; but you cannot watch live TV at the same time you're recording something. It's very much not a VCR.
Actually it's exactly like a vcr in this respect.
With a vcr, you can only watch a second program by bypassing the tuner of the vcr. So if you are recording something on HBO (for example) you patch the cable box into the vcr and set it for HBO's channel. Now you want to watch something else? fine, but you can't change the channel on the cable box. so you run a second cable feed directly into the TV and watch that. If you had another cable box, then you could watch HBO on it as well. TiVo is exactly the same way.
There's no reason to integrate a DVD recorder into a TiVo, and actually quite a number of reasons not to.
You can buy a standalone dvd recorded these days, just plug it into your tivo just like you would a regular vcr.
The cost of adding a DVD recorder to a TiVo would raise the price over the $600-700 mark which puts it out of the realm of most home buyers. Plus, a large number of us don't want that functionality, which makes it a niche product in an already niche market.
And they will soon have the HDTV tivo. though frankly, the investment across the board for HDTV is going to keep me out of the market for quite a bit.
Hard drives problems are no problem with the older (non-series 2) tivos. it's actually a great opportunity to go ahead and stick 120GB+ drive in there on the cheap these days.
and wait until you see the difference having a 90+hour (at medium quality) tivo makes. You'll actually save movies for months.
This is horrible. Taco, edit the hell out of the original listing or just remove it all together. The review is NOT about a tablet pc.