What's wrong with you people? For years, everyone whined that Linux was being ignored in the server market, in the embedded market, etc.
Suddenly, a few years ago, TiVo produced a Linux-based PVR. They even (*GASP!*) encouraged hacking it!
Now, you want to "avoid the service cost?"
Brilliant. Take one of the few companies that stands to actually make a successful business based on Linux, and attempt to put them out of business because you're too cheap to pay $12 a month for the service, to support a company that has supported the Linux community over the years.
What, exactly, is the reason for not wanting to support TiVo? Besides being complete skinflints, that is...if you can't afford $12/mo., you shouldn't be spending $300-500 for a luxury item like a PVR in the first place.
Markov models have been used extensively in cognitive science, particularly the
field of text comprehension, for the purpose of studying text comprehension and
retension.
Spreading acitivation models are mathematically similar to Markov chains, and ha
ve also been used for similar purposes, trained and/or designed with both positi
ve and negative exemplars.
Further, concept categorization and discovery research in cognitive science has
used Markov chains for automated categorization, once again using positive and n
egative examples.
If you're serious about this, I'd check the literature in this area, particularl
y journals like Discoure Processes and similar. Also check the Proceedings of t
he Cognitive Psychology conference.
All of this is published, peer-reviewed work well before 2000. Your best bet is
to hit a decent university library and start searching.
Heck, my dissertation work didn't use negative examples, but the spreading activ
ation models were originally Markov chains.
Markov chains and their use in AI, cognitive psychology, speech/text recognition
, categorization, and text comprehension have been in use for decades. With the
interdisciplinary approach common in the 80's and 90's, there were many efforts
that adapted things like Markov chains and neural network learning algorithms,
simulated annealing techniques, and so forth. It shouldn't be hard to dig some
up. Worst case, find a cognitive psychology professor specializing in text proc
essing and ask. UCSD has a strong showing, as UC Boulder, Manitoba, U Memphis,
U Chicago, and many, many others.
vi should never be the default editor? Apparently someone needs to research the reasons why it is. hint: small, statically-linked binary runnable in init 0, init 1, and init [ Ss ].
SETI already uses this approach -- multiple radio telescopes in multiple locations, coordinated analysis of simultaneous observations -- in their systems. They just don't do it in real-time.
You might want to check out the Unix module to the SAGE certification. The cert was put together by sysadmins, and the junior level test is a good overview of the skills you'd need.
It's only confusion if you think all the exams are similar. They're not.
the RHCE is Red-Hat-centric.
LPI was designed to be comprehensive and distribution-neutral.
Linux+ is positioned as more junior than the other two exams.
They're each different, and each was designed with different goals. Take the one that meets yours. There can't be a "standard" yet, because each of the certs you list exists as the only member of its class. Once there's competition within the classes, a standard can emerge. Until then, they're each unique examples of different types of certs.
I'd recommend studying instead for an exam that focuses on systems administration ability rather than memorization of command switches. Look at programs like the SAGE Certification program, which are designed to test a candidate's ability to run systems, rather than their ability to pass tests.
The current thinking on this is that it will obsolete all existing tuners and equipment. Thus, anyone with an investment in HDTV gear (like myself) will be screwed. Many, many HDTV-equipment owners are upset about this, as it's tantamount to the industry screwing the early-adopters.
When you say "digital tv", are you sure you're referring to high-definition TV, which is what the article is alluding to when discussing the PVRs?
Tivos and RePlays and all other PVRs handle "digital" signals just fine, as long as there's a device in-line converting to analog. It's important to distinguish the type of signal, however: I have "digital" cable, and you're absolutely right: the cable co takes the extra bandwidth, uses it for more channels, then compresses the hell out of the 480i signal you get, reducing the quality greatly.
But you're wrong about OTA "digital", in the form of high-def: at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, the compression's at a minimum, and both 720p and 1080i look beautiful. Any artifacting you're seeing is likely due to the line doubler either in your set or decoder, or both. Live OTA HDTV does occasionally show compression artifacts, typically with fast pans and zooms. That's more an effect of the equipment in use and the manner of use rather than the level of compression in use.
The reason homogenous environments are easier to manage than heterogenous environments is due to complexity.
Simply put, if every server and workstation is identical, interoperability is not an issue, and the work associated with tracking, testing, and applying changes to that one, homogenous OS image is minimal.
The moment you branch out into different configuations of the same OS version, different OS versions, or different OS platforms, you've increased the complexity of the system, and thus increased your workload. Suddenly, interoperability is a factor in every decision, and issues with multiple versions and/or vendors must be tracked.
I've been meaning to write a short paper on this for some time, and attempt to relate it to Christopher Langton's Lamba parameter for the measurement of complexity (in the 3rd Annual Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference). I've studied the identification of single points of failure for some time, as well as the question of "how many sysadmins do I need?". Both answers are directly related to the complexity of the system being managed (here, defining "system" as the collection of applications, OSes, hardware, and networks that comprise the scope of a sysadmin's responsibility). There are indeed identifiable factors that define the heterogeneity of an environment, and the ways in which these dimensions impact such things as the number of SA's required to manage them can be defined.
Where did you get the idea that a Tivo is useless if the company goes under? You "control the hardware" just as much with a Tivo as you would with a PC-based PVR. The only reason there's a subscription is to provide the box with accurate, regularly-updated program guide information.
The box functions just fine without it. You just lose the ability to schedule recordings based on that program guide data.
And just like you would with a PC-based PVR, you have the ability to roll your own aftermarket program data solution and feed it to the PVR for use, should Tivo go under. However, it's the program guide data that keeps Tivo in business. And as one of, if not the most successful embedded Linux product ever to make it to market, it's in the community's best interest to support Tivo. That includes paying for the subscription that keeps the company alive.
Unlike vendor/product certifications, this cert is designed to assess your ability to perform in an IT role -- namely, systems administrator -- rather than your ability to memorize features and functions of a particular product. It tests troubleshooting skill, background knowledge of process and procedure, and general junior-to-mid-level sysadmin proficiency, both in general and specific to Unix (they're working on a Windows module and several other, higher-level "merit badge" modules).
Careful; HD is not digital, and digital is not HD. The two reference separate aspects of delivery. One deals with resolution and presentation, the other deals with encoding and delivery.
This already causes problems in the HD space, with cable companies and home entertainment vendors using the two interchangeably, and it's dangerous. "Digital" can be whatever resolution you want, and can be presented just as (if not more) crappily than analog (just look at digital cable, where the cable co's have used the "higher quality" to instead lower the resolution in order to squeeze more bandwidth out of the available pipes).
What Lucas is on about is digital encoding and delivery. One only has to walk into a DLP cinema and watch the dreck that is the poorly-presented AotC to see that it's NOT high-definition by any stretch of the imagination.
DLP will NOT look better than normal film stock. The reason is simple: DLP uses thousands of tiny, independent mirrors to project the image. On a screen the size of a public movie theater, you're going to see all sorts of aliasing, because you'll be able to discern each individual mirror that makes up the image.
This is normal for DLP; it always has been. Go back and research home theater discussion groups for the past two years or so, and read all the complaints about DLP.
I saw AotC at the AMC1000 also. It was fuzzy. It was blurry. IT WAS ALIASED. And it was all because of DLP, not because something wasn't "set up properly". That's the way DLP looks. It's aliased. It's pixellated. It does NOT look better than good quality film stock.
If you can find a copy, "Bebop Bytes Back" (found here) is a wonderful book. Despite the childish title, the book will walk you through designing a computer, from scratch. An included CD-ROM provides you with all sorts of routers, simulators, and so forth, including a few IMSAI simulators.
Even if you don't actually build a computer, you'll feel like you've done when you make it through this book. Bebop To The Boolean Boogie and Designus Maximus Unleashed are also very good tutorials.
These books aren't going to teach you how to build with off-the-shelf components. They're going to help you understand bus-level logic and so forth.
From there, you may want to look into the How to Write Your Own Operating System page, which will help you get something running on the ahrdware you put together.
Definitely go to college and get a bachelor's. The subject doesn't matter. The important thing is that you learn how to think critically, and that you learn how to learn. THAT is the true purpose of a college education.
Beyond that, find a senior-level admin who will mentor you (the SAGE organization has a mentoring program). Get a professional, not a vendor, certification (SAGE also offers a professional certification program).
How can this article ignore two of the most important certifications on the market right now, LPI and cSAGE??
They're both platform-independent, they're both psychometrically valid, and they're both of paramount importance to anyone looking to run computer infrastructures that include *nix systems.
cSAGE is an entry-level exam designed to certify competence in the practice of systems administration, and it was developed by the community, just like LPI (in cSAGE's case, it was developed by the community of systems administrators and the folks at USENIX and SAGE - The Systems Administrators Guild.
Isn't everyone tired of taking exams designed to test your ability to memorize trivia about a vendor's products? Why would you want yet another certification just because vendor $FOO has cranked out a new version of their widget? Wouldn't you rather have certifications that are designed to qualify your ability to do your job, rather than your ability to memorize?
All the proof we really need that ICANN is irrelevant, defunct, incompetent, and dangerous lies in the fact that example.com, example.net, and example.org now resolve, thanks to ICANN and Kent Crispin, directly contradicting their definition in RFC2606.
These are the people who want MORE control? They should be kept as far away from name and IP-space as possible.
Personally, I'm just waiting for them to blunder big enough that someone in the USG will be forced to consider the incident a terrorist act (and I think a brief conversation with the Office of Homeland Security about the importance of DNS and the danger to the US infrastructure if it's destabilized by non-technical demagogues should take care of that.)
It's NEVER crashed. Ever. It's a bit slow to respond to some keys, as if it's waiting for some bitstreamed data off the satellite for the next guide page, but it's rock-stable. This is no surprise - after all, if you never install anything except Windows9x, your computer will never need rebooting. It's when you install all the other cruft that things get flaky. And you can't do that to a UTV.
Tivo doesn't crash either.
It's almost perfectly integrated with DirecTV. That's something that Tivo lacks, and most Tivo owners don't know they're missing.
Wrong. There are DirecTivos, which are Tivos with DirecTV tuners built in. You get all the features you mentioned.
Dual stream capability means I can record or watch two shows at the same time (yes, watch two - see the next topic about picture-in-picture). In fact I can record two and watch a third off the hard drive.
Again, DirecTivos do this also.
It's completely changed our paradigm of TV watching.
I also have the Zaurus SL5000D and two iPaqs (a 3650 and 3850). While I agree with your comments, there is one small error: The iPaq can indeed run Linux. The Familiar distribution runs nicely on the iPaq, and includes a full X11 environment. If you'd rather not run X, the same Trolltech Qt/e that's running on the Zaurus will run on the iPaq as well.
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What's wrong with you people? For years, everyone whined that Linux was being ignored in the server market, in the embedded market, etc.
Suddenly, a few years ago, TiVo produced a Linux-based PVR. They even (*GASP!*) encouraged hacking it!
Now, you want to "avoid the service cost?"
Brilliant. Take one of the few companies that stands to actually make a successful business based on Linux, and attempt to put them out of business because you're too cheap to pay $12 a month for the service, to support a company that has supported the Linux community over the years.
What, exactly, is the reason for not wanting to support TiVo? Besides being complete skinflints, that is...if you can't afford $12/mo., you shouldn't be spending $300-500 for a luxury item like a PVR in the first place.
Markov models have been used extensively in cognitive science, particularly the field of text comprehension, for the purpose of studying text comprehension and retension.
Spreading acitivation models are mathematically similar to Markov chains, and ha ve also been used for similar purposes, trained and/or designed with both positi ve and negative exemplars.
Further, concept categorization and discovery research in cognitive science has used Markov chains for automated categorization, once again using positive and n egative examples.
If you're serious about this, I'd check the literature in this area, particularl y journals like Discoure Processes and similar. Also check the Proceedings of t he Cognitive Psychology conference.
All of this is published, peer-reviewed work well before 2000. Your best bet is to hit a decent university library and start searching.
Heck, my dissertation work didn't use negative examples, but the spreading activ ation models were originally Markov chains.
Markov chains and their use in AI, cognitive psychology, speech/text recognition , categorization, and text comprehension have been in use for decades. With the interdisciplinary approach common in the 80's and 90's, there were many efforts that adapted things like Markov chains and neural network learning algorithms, simulated annealing techniques, and so forth. It shouldn't be hard to dig some up. Worst case, find a cognitive psychology professor specializing in text proc essing and ask. UCSD has a strong showing, as UC Boulder, Manitoba, U Memphis, U Chicago, and many, many others.
vi should never be the default editor? Apparently someone needs to research the reasons why it is. hint: small, statically-linked binary runnable in init 0, init 1, and init [ Ss ].
Calligrapher is in fact the technology that was used in the Newton. Though the Newton died, the handwriting recognition lives on.
SETI already uses this approach -- multiple radio telescopes in multiple locations, coordinated analysis of simultaneous observations -- in their systems. They just don't do it in real-time.
Minor nitpick: "SETI" is a different project than "SETI@Home". The best source for information about SETI is, of course, SETI's website.
You might want to check out the Unix module to the SAGE certification. The cert was put together by sysadmins, and the junior level test is a good overview of the skills you'd need.
It's only confusion if you think all the exams are similar. They're not.
the RHCE is Red-Hat-centric.
LPI was designed to be comprehensive and distribution-neutral.
Linux+ is positioned as more junior than the other two exams.
They're each different, and each was designed with different goals. Take the one that meets yours. There can't be a "standard" yet, because each of the certs you list exists as the only member of its class. Once there's competition within the classes, a standard can emerge. Until then, they're each unique examples of different types of certs.
I'd recommend studying instead for an exam that focuses on systems administration ability rather than memorization of command switches. Look at programs like the SAGE Certification program, which are designed to test a candidate's ability to run systems, rather than their ability to pass tests.
The current thinking on this is that it will obsolete all existing tuners and equipment. Thus, anyone with an investment in HDTV gear (like myself) will be screwed. Many, many HDTV-equipment owners are upset about this, as it's tantamount to the industry screwing the early-adopters.
When you say "digital tv", are you sure you're referring to high-definition TV, which is what the article is alluding to when discussing the PVRs?
Tivos and RePlays and all other PVRs handle "digital" signals just fine, as long as there's a device in-line converting to analog. It's important to distinguish the type of signal, however: I have "digital" cable, and you're absolutely right: the cable co takes the extra bandwidth, uses it for more channels, then compresses the hell out of the 480i signal you get, reducing the quality greatly.
But you're wrong about OTA "digital", in the form of high-def: at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, the compression's at a minimum, and both 720p and 1080i look beautiful. Any artifacting you're seeing is likely due to the line doubler either in your set or decoder, or both. Live OTA HDTV does occasionally show compression artifacts, typically with fast pans and zooms. That's more an effect of the equipment in use and the manner of use rather than the level of compression in use.
The reason homogenous environments are easier to manage than heterogenous environments is due to complexity.
Simply put, if every server and workstation is identical, interoperability is not an issue, and the work associated with tracking, testing, and applying changes to that one, homogenous OS image is minimal.
The moment you branch out into different configuations of the same OS version, different OS versions, or different OS platforms, you've increased the complexity of the system, and thus increased your workload. Suddenly, interoperability is a factor in every decision, and issues with multiple versions and/or vendors must be tracked.
I've been meaning to write a short paper on this for some time, and attempt to relate it to Christopher Langton's Lamba parameter for the measurement of complexity (in the 3rd Annual Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference). I've studied the identification of single points of failure for some time, as well as the question of "how many sysadmins do I need?". Both answers are directly related to the complexity of the system being managed (here, defining "system" as the collection of applications, OSes, hardware, and networks that comprise the scope of a sysadmin's responsibility). There are indeed identifiable factors that define the heterogeneity of an environment, and the ways in which these dimensions impact such things as the number of SA's required to manage them can be defined.
For good reason: that's the resolution of broadcast TV. TV and cable don't do 720p, unless you're paying for high-def content.
Where did you get the idea that a Tivo is useless if the company goes under? You "control the hardware" just as much with a Tivo as you would with a PC-based PVR. The only reason there's a subscription is to provide the box with accurate, regularly-updated program guide information.
The box functions just fine without it. You just lose the ability to schedule recordings based on that program guide data.
And just like you would with a PC-based PVR, you have the ability to roll your own aftermarket program data solution and feed it to the PVR for use, should Tivo go under. However, it's the program guide data that keeps Tivo in business. And as one of, if not the most successful embedded Linux product ever to make it to market, it's in the community's best interest to support Tivo. That includes paying for the subscription that keeps the company alive.
the SAGE junior-to-mid-level systems administrator cert, cSAGE.
SAGE, the Systems Administrators Guild has a junior-to-mid-level professional certification for systems administrators now, called cSAGE.
Unlike vendor/product certifications, this cert is designed to assess your ability to perform in an IT role -- namely, systems administrator -- rather than your ability to memorize features and functions of a particular product. It tests troubleshooting skill, background knowledge of process and procedure, and general junior-to-mid-level sysadmin proficiency, both in general and specific to Unix (they're working on a Windows module and several other, higher-level "merit badge" modules).
Careful; HD is not digital, and digital is not HD. The two reference separate aspects of delivery. One deals with resolution and presentation, the other deals with encoding and delivery.
This already causes problems in the HD space, with cable companies and home entertainment vendors using the two interchangeably, and it's dangerous. "Digital" can be whatever resolution you want, and can be presented just as (if not more) crappily than analog (just look at digital cable, where the cable co's have used the "higher quality" to instead lower the resolution in order to squeeze more bandwidth out of the available pipes).
What Lucas is on about is digital encoding and delivery. One only has to walk into a DLP cinema and watch the dreck that is the poorly-presented AotC to see that it's NOT high-definition by any stretch of the imagination.
DLP will NOT look better than normal film stock. The reason is simple: DLP uses thousands of tiny, independent mirrors to project the image. On a screen the size of a public movie theater, you're going to see all sorts of aliasing, because you'll be able to discern each individual mirror that makes up the image.
This is normal for DLP; it always has been. Go back and research home theater discussion groups for the past two years or so, and read all the complaints about DLP.
I saw AotC at the AMC1000 also. It was fuzzy. It was blurry. IT WAS ALIASED. And it was all because of DLP, not because something wasn't "set up properly". That's the way DLP looks. It's aliased. It's pixellated. It does NOT look better than good quality film stock.
If you can find a copy, "Bebop Bytes Back" (found here) is a wonderful book. Despite the childish title, the book will walk you through designing a computer, from scratch. An included CD-ROM provides you with all sorts of routers, simulators, and so forth, including a few IMSAI simulators.
Even if you don't actually build a computer, you'll feel like you've done when you make it through this book. Bebop To The Boolean Boogie and Designus Maximus Unleashed are also very good tutorials.
These books aren't going to teach you how to build with off-the-shelf components. They're going to help you understand bus-level logic and so forth.
From there, you may want to look into the How to Write Your Own Operating System page, which will help you get something running on the ahrdware you put together.
Definitely go to college and get a bachelor's. The subject doesn't matter. The important thing is that you learn how to think critically, and that you learn how to learn. THAT is the true purpose of a college education.
Beyond that, find a senior-level admin who will mentor you (the SAGE organization has a mentoring program). Get a professional, not a vendor, certification (SAGE also offers a professional certification program).
How can this article ignore two of the most important certifications on the market right now, LPI and cSAGE??
They're both platform-independent, they're both psychometrically valid, and they're both of paramount importance to anyone looking to run computer infrastructures that include *nix systems.
cSAGE is an entry-level exam designed to certify competence in the practice of systems administration, and it was developed by the community, just like LPI (in cSAGE's case, it was developed by the community of systems administrators and the folks at USENIX and SAGE - The Systems Administrators Guild.
Isn't everyone tired of taking exams designed to test your ability to memorize trivia about a vendor's products? Why would you want yet another certification just because vendor $FOO has cranked out a new version of their widget? Wouldn't you rather have certifications that are designed to qualify your ability to do your job, rather than your ability to memorize?
That's exactly what cSAGE is all about.
All the proof we really need that ICANN is irrelevant, defunct, incompetent, and dangerous lies in the fact that example.com, example.net, and example.org now resolve, thanks to ICANN and Kent Crispin, directly contradicting their definition in RFC2606.
These are the people who want MORE control? They should be kept as far away from name and IP-space as possible.
Personally, I'm just waiting for them to blunder big enough that someone in the USG will be forced to consider the incident a terrorist act (and I think a brief conversation with the Office of Homeland Security about the importance of DNS and the danger to the US infrastructure if it's destabilized by non-technical demagogues should take care of that.)
It's NEVER crashed. Ever. It's a bit slow to respond to some keys, as if it's waiting for some bitstreamed data off the satellite for the next guide page, but it's rock-stable. This is no surprise - after all, if you never install anything except Windows9x, your computer will never need rebooting. It's when you install all the other cruft that things get flaky. And you can't do that to a UTV.
Tivo doesn't crash either.
It's almost perfectly integrated with DirecTV. That's something that Tivo lacks, and most Tivo owners don't know they're missing.
Wrong. There are DirecTivos, which are Tivos with DirecTV tuners built in. You get all the features you mentioned.
Dual stream capability means I can record or watch two shows at the same time (yes, watch two - see the next topic about picture-in-picture). In fact I can record two and watch a third off the hard drive.
Again, DirecTivos do this also.
It's completely changed our paradigm of TV watching.
Once more, Tivos do this as well.
There's already a ROM available for the Zaurus that replaces the Linux/QTe environment with AmigaDE.
I also have the Zaurus SL5000D and two iPaqs (a 3650 and 3850). While I agree with your comments, there is one small error: The iPaq can indeed run Linux. The Familiar distribution runs nicely on the iPaq, and includes a full X11 environment. If you'd rather not run X, the same Trolltech Qt/e that's running on the Zaurus will run on the iPaq as well.