You can download your listings and updates over the net (if you're a subscriber of course), if you're not afraid to open up your box and are passingly familiar with any *nix based system (a safe assumption on slashdot). The TiVoNet package($99 from 9thtee.com) puts an Ethernet card in your TiVo and a software change tells TiVo to grab its updates over that rather than dialing up.
You could buy a DirecTiVo, no? There's TiVo dialups available for Canadian numbers (since the use UUNet POPs), although there's no guide data for Canadian broadcasting. With a DirecTiVo that's not a problem since the guide data for the DirecTV feed comes off the sat feed. And it's perfectly legal to hack DirecTV in Canada, didn't a fairy high court there rule that not long ago? Not a perfect solution, since you wouldn't get local channels, but that's a chronic DirecTV problem anyway.
Re:Are lifetime subscriptions transferable?
on
TiVo Introduces Series2
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Like many, I paid for a lifetime subscription to TiVo's services
No you didn't. You paid for a lifetime subscription for that box, not for yourself. That's an important distinction. If you give away or sell that box, that box is still subscribed. You've effectively added value to your unit. TiVo has always been upfront about selling subscriptions for boxes, not people/households.
If I upgrade to a new TiVo, am I screwed out of my lifetime subscription?
Of course not, that value never goes away, although it depreciates over time, as the box gets older and its value decreases. If you ever decide you no longer want your box you can sell it with the added value of a lifetime sub.
That won't happen with a standalone TiVo unit, sure you can technically buy your own cable equipment and use it legally, but the only people who do it in practice are those stealing service. TiVo would have to strike deals with each cable company and sell a combined box that the cable companies would install. They did this with DirectTV, but their only deal with a cable company, resulting in the AT&TiVo, is still standalone and requires a separate cable box.
People with the third party TiVoNet Ethernet adapter can already do this using a program called ExtractStream. Considering there are an awful lot of "near-perfect" copies of TV programs floating around Usenet already, obtained with a video capture card, the same way the were pre-TiVo, it hardly makes a bit of a difference.
As a Computer/PC fan/freak/geek/. I've never bothered to take a closer look to things like the TiVo-thing nor do I belive I will.
Now there's a contradiction. You're such a fan/freak/geek that you won't bother to check out some new technology? Especially when it's computer based (it's a PowerPC running Linux inside that box you know). Most "geeks" I know check out the latest technology and gadgets simply for the sake of playing with them. You sound more like a Luddite to me, "What I have works, why would I new some newfangled gadget to do it for me?" Nevermind the fact that it offers other features and convenience your PC simply can't offer. "Sure, cars are faster and easier to use, but my good old horse gets me anywhee I need to go." But then again, you've never even bothered to look up anything about them, so you wouldn't know that.
I'm just wondering what advantages such a device has got over a computer.
The software, of course. Not to mention it's a piece of self contained A/V equipment rather than a desktop computer system. Sure you could put together a video capture device in your PC, I have one, in fact, but would it be anything like a TiVo? No. Would it get guide data, figure out when and where what you've asked it to record is on, resolve conflicts if those things overlap and suggest (and automatically record) new shows you might like based on what else you watch and how you rate them (with the 1,2 or 3 thumbs up/down system)? Would it sit nicely in your A/V rack with all your other equipment? No, you would have to run cables across your house/room to where ever your computer is, or put another computer in your living room next to your TV.
If your compression/decompression time exceeds the amount of time it would take to transfer the file uncompressed, you're really not gaining anything.
Of course you are! You're seriously reducing the amount of bandwidth you use. If you're paying per byte (how bandwidth is normally sold), or paying for time online (dialup in many countries), or somehow paying for data transferred (Usenet providers, for example) you'd much rather get as little data as possible as quickly as possible and not care so much about the time it takes locally.
Airnews' claims of a drop in bandwidth just don't hold water. Supernews
denies it in this message: slrna1prr7.jgf.andrew+nonews@trinity.supernews.net , Giganews denies it, 44fT7.35599$Zd.3333344@bin1.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com , and a major poster himself denies it: uqtq1us4rs471vgmd672m78fqceta7ujnt@4ax.com. Google doesn't archive alt.binaries.news-server-comparison but the messages are only a few days old so any decent news server should still have them.
Where RedHat will lose update subscribers if there is the 'perception' that people aren't getting value for the money spent.
Sounds like MS and RedHat have the exact same incentive to me. MS doesn't charge for patches and updates, so they're not inclined to push them out too urgently. MS does want you to upgrade to their latest OS where they can make money, so they put all their "fixes" in the latest Windows to give it the appearance of value.
RedHat is simply the exact opposite. They make a little bit of money from selling boxed distros, but they make the majority of their money with their updates, so they push you to subscribe to that by putting that appearance of value there. It's the same strategy, simply aimed at a different outlet.
why would anyone whack parchment or stone tablets into "packets"?
Not stone, of course, but to carry long and/or secret messages by carrier pigeon. It was common for pigeons to get lost, fall prey to predators or even be captured/netted/shot before making it home with their message. Redundancy ensured the message got through and diminished the value of a single "compromised" pigeon.
You have to go into it twice and take a cookie. The first time you'll get the AP Wire page, choose a paper at random. Then back out to Slashdot, and click the link back in. This time you'll get to the story.
Except the ones that aren't exactly 30 seconds long. Every commercial break now has at least one station blurb, half length commercial, or over length commercial. There are no commercial breaks any more that are exact multiples of 30 seconds. So you're still fummbling around with rewind if you skipped too far, or you're watching that last 15 seconds of ads (or fumbling with FF past them). 30 second skip is the most overrated and useless "feature" a PVR could give you. The TiVo's 3 FF speeds make commercial passing much more convenient. And besides, a lot of us like watching the ads at 3x FF. They're over in just a few seconds, and you still get to see if you're missing any funny ones or ads for interesting shows/movies.
There's been a UK TiVo available for quite a while now. One big reason it doesn't exit in other countries is lack of a centralized source or program data.
however, looking at the text, you can see that you would have to interpret the wording pretty loosely to arrive at that conclusion. it merely prohibits Congress from making a law restricting your free association.
I can't see anything of the sort, and neither did the Supreme Court just this year. Restricting "freedom of association" doesn't mean restricting who you can associate with, it means restricting your choice in the matter either way. The Boy Scouts choose not to associate with homosexuals (prohibiting them as Scoutmasters). Several gay Scoutmasters sued the BSA to force them to be allowed in. The Supreme Court upheld the BSA's right to associate, or not associate, with whomever they choose.
No, it would not be. The OpenBSD CD layout is not a "trademark" of any kind.
From the OpenBSD FAQ itself:
3.1.2 - Does OpenBSD provide an ISO image available for download?
You can't. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de Raadt, as an incentive for people to buy the CD set. Note that only the layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else to just grab OpenBSD and make their own CD.
Windows: No easy solution available, you can't have two versions of DLLs at the same time
Yes, you can. At least with Win2k you can have multiple version of the same DLL loading simultaneously. Try doing a little research.
It's embarassing how you Microsofties try to show Linux' disadvatages just to reveal even more advantages.
You mean as embarrassing how you 'Linux zealots' need to lie to promote your agenda. Get real, look in the mirror, and lose the inflammatory rhetoric. Those with their own agendas tend to see opposition in everyone else's.
many DVDs will not allow you to skip past the usual FBI warning and Liscensing agreements.
From what I understand from the DVD newsgroups the DVD spec requires there to be a section in which the remote is disabled. It doesn't specify what this section has to be, merely that one exist. This is just a software command though, and some recorders don't accept the disable command.
Not the sort of thing one can feasibly verify though, as you have to shell out a few thousand dollars and sign an agreement to get a copy of the spec.
How does a TIVO interface with either ONDigital or a sky digi-box ?
While I'm not familiar with those exact two models, it doesn't really matter. If it's a satellite box it will most likely work with the serial cable. Worst case sat, or for a cable box, you use the IR blaster. I don't think there's a box made it doesn't work with for at least channel changing (which is all it needs to do).
And a Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.
Who says you have to give up your VCR for archiving? You can dump from your TiVo to your VCR easily, there's even a menu choice to do it "clean" (without the TiVo splash bar).
For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one.
Like everyone who owns one says, it will change the way you watch TV. Mainly, you'll never watch Live TV again. It's not the digital VCR capability that makes TiVo great, it's the software. Unfortunately that's where TiVo fails (the marketing, not the unit). I've never been able to explain to someone why a TiVo is so great, but just about everyone who comes over and sees it wants one.
Can it get to the 100+ digital channels I have now?
Of course it can. It goes inline after your cable box and before anything else (receiver, TV, whatever). It controls your cable box with an IR blaster, or your DirectTV box with a serial cable.
They most certainly did, it was just undocumented. You enabled backdoors and used a remote code to reassign one button to be 30 second skip. It only worked with the 1.3 software, it was removed in 2.0 (at least, no one has figured out how to reenable it).
Ummm, no I don't think that's terror. You are confusing the word "terrorist" with "terror."
No, I'm really not. You're just operating under the mistaken assumption that terrorism must cause physical harm. It needn't. Terrorism is defined as commiting violence for the purpose of coercion. Violence need not be physical, that's why the term "acts of physical violence" even exists.
If your "life" depends on your internet run business, you'd better have the technological know-how to deal with any and all potential problems that come up, including script-kiddies.
Oh that's just utter bull. There are any number of events that could ruin your life no matter how well you prepare for them. You cannot prepare for all eventualities. It's the ultimate in either arrogance or naivete to believe you're invulnerable.
Oh, and your example is rather heavy on the side of exaggeration
Of course it is. I don't consider it a likely scenario, but it is a possible one. Dismissing any event that doesn't cause physical harm is just ignorant and sad.
Please explain how a person with a bankrupt company is unable to get a temp job somewhere in order to pay for food.
Have you ever declared bankruptcy? Sure you can get a job, so what? Could you support a family working at the local grocery store? My uncle was forced to declare bankruptcy after a divorce several years ago. He was reasonably well off, a successful real estate agent who lived in a "luxury village" condominium, bought a new car every few years, etc. After the divorce and bankrupty he was nearly penniless. Luckily they had no kids. He stayed in a friend's den for a few weeks before moving in with his sister (my mother) and was working at the mall selling cell phones and having to work his way back up life's ladder. If he didn't have that support network or if he'd had to be responsible for more than just himself he'd be living below the poverty level at least, if not worse.
I'm not saying people who have been subject to events like that deserve special treatment or privilege, I'm saying that your dismissing them as morons who got what they deserve is disgusting.
Re:Can't they look at their own experience?
on
Killing Video Games
·
· Score: 2
Yes, it is a fact that school shootings are occurring on an unprecedented scale
Really? That's a fact? Got a source for that? Or is it just one of those things that "everyone knows"? "Everyone" is usually wrong, as they are in this case. School shootings are not "occuring on an unprecedented scale." They've been on the decline since early last decade. Here's a few real facts that actually cite sources:
The Centers for Disease Control reports a 20% drop in students being injured in a physical confrontation since 1993.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports there has been 34% decline in school violence since 1993.
The National School Safety Center reports a 53% decline in deaths associated with school violence between 1993 and 1999, from 55 to 26.
And finally, from a table also published by the National Center for Education Statistics there were more school shooting deaths in the 1992-93 and 93-94 school years than there have been in any year since then.
Slashdot Mirror
You can download your listings and updates over the net (if you're a subscriber of course), if you're not afraid to open up your box and are passingly familiar with any *nix based system (a safe assumption on slashdot). The TiVoNet package($99 from 9thtee.com) puts an Ethernet card in your TiVo and a software change tells TiVo to grab its updates over that rather than dialing up.
You could buy a DirecTiVo, no? There's TiVo dialups available for Canadian numbers (since the use UUNet POPs), although there's no guide data for Canadian broadcasting. With a DirecTiVo that's not a problem since the guide data for the DirecTV feed comes off the sat feed. And it's perfectly legal to hack DirecTV in Canada, didn't a fairy high court there rule that not long ago? Not a perfect solution, since you wouldn't get local channels, but that's a chronic DirecTV problem anyway.
No you didn't. You paid for a lifetime subscription for that box, not for yourself. That's an important distinction. If you give away or sell that box, that box is still subscribed. You've effectively added value to your unit. TiVo has always been upfront about selling subscriptions for boxes, not people/households.
If I upgrade to a new TiVo, am I screwed out of my lifetime subscription?
Of course not, that value never goes away, although it depreciates over time, as the box gets older and its value decreases. If you ever decide you no longer want your box you can sell it with the added value of a lifetime sub.
That won't happen with a standalone TiVo unit, sure you can technically buy your own cable equipment and use it legally, but the only people who do it in practice are those stealing service. TiVo would have to strike deals with each cable company and sell a combined box that the cable companies would install. They did this with DirectTV, but their only deal with a cable company, resulting in the AT&TiVo, is still standalone and requires a separate cable box.
People with the third party TiVoNet Ethernet adapter can already do this using a program called ExtractStream. Considering there are an awful lot of "near-perfect" copies of TV programs floating around Usenet already, obtained with a video capture card, the same way the were pre-TiVo, it hardly makes a bit of a difference.
Now there's a contradiction. You're such a fan/freak/geek that you won't bother to check out some new technology? Especially when it's computer based (it's a PowerPC running Linux inside that box you know). Most "geeks" I know check out the latest technology and gadgets simply for the sake of playing with them. You sound more like a Luddite to me, "What I have works, why would I new some newfangled gadget to do it for me?" Nevermind the fact that it offers other features and convenience your PC simply can't offer. "Sure, cars are faster and easier to use, but my good old horse gets me anywhee I need to go." But then again, you've never even bothered to look up anything about them, so you wouldn't know that.
I'm just wondering what advantages such a device has got over a computer.
The software, of course. Not to mention it's a piece of self contained A/V equipment rather than a desktop computer system. Sure you could put together a video capture device in your PC, I have one, in fact, but would it be anything like a TiVo? No. Would it get guide data, figure out when and where what you've asked it to record is on, resolve conflicts if those things overlap and suggest (and automatically record) new shows you might like based on what else you watch and how you rate them (with the 1,2 or 3 thumbs up/down system)? Would it sit nicely in your A/V rack with all your other equipment? No, you would have to run cables across your house/room to where ever your computer is, or put another computer in your living room next to your TV.
Of course you are! You're seriously reducing the amount of bandwidth you use. If you're paying per byte (how bandwidth is normally sold), or paying for time online (dialup in many countries), or somehow paying for data transferred (Usenet providers, for example) you'd much rather get as little data as possible as quickly as possible and not care so much about the time it takes locally.
Airnews' claims of a drop in bandwidth just don't hold water. Supernewst , Giganews denies it, 44fT7.35599$Zd.3333344@bin1.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com , and a major poster himself denies it: uqtq1us4rs471vgmd672m78fqceta7ujnt@4ax.com. Google doesn't archive alt.binaries.news-server-comparison but the messages are only a few days old so any decent news server should still have them.
denies it in this message: slrna1prr7.jgf.andrew+nonews@trinity.supernews.ne
Sounds like MS and RedHat have the exact same incentive to me. MS doesn't charge for patches and updates, so they're not inclined to push them out too urgently. MS does want you to upgrade to their latest OS where they can make money, so they put all their "fixes" in the latest Windows to give it the appearance of value.
RedHat is simply the exact opposite. They make a little bit of money from selling boxed distros, but they make the majority of their money with their updates, so they push you to subscribe to that by putting that appearance of value there. It's the same strategy, simply aimed at a different outlet.
Not stone, of course, but to carry long and/or secret messages by carrier pigeon. It was common for pigeons to get lost, fall prey to predators or even be captured/netted/shot before making it home with their message. Redundancy ensured the message got through and diminished the value of a single "compromised" pigeon.
Maybe what you really needed was a heating solution, not a networking one.
You have to go into it twice and take a cookie. The first time you'll get the AP Wire page, choose a paper at random. Then back out to Slashdot, and click the link back in. This time you'll get to the story.
Except the ones that aren't exactly 30 seconds long. Every commercial break now has at least one station blurb, half length commercial, or over length commercial. There are no commercial breaks any more that are exact multiples of 30 seconds. So you're still fummbling around with rewind if you skipped too far, or you're watching that last 15 seconds of ads (or fumbling with FF past them). 30 second skip is the most overrated and useless "feature" a PVR could give you. The TiVo's 3 FF speeds make commercial passing much more convenient. And besides, a lot of us like watching the ads at 3x FF. They're over in just a few seconds, and you still get to see if you're missing any funny ones or ads for interesting shows/movies.
There's been a UK TiVo available for quite a while now. One big reason it doesn't exit in other countries is lack of a centralized source or program data.
I can't see anything of the sort, and neither did the Supreme Court just this year. Restricting "freedom of association" doesn't mean restricting who you can associate with, it means restricting your choice in the matter either way. The Boy Scouts choose not to associate with homosexuals (prohibiting them as Scoutmasters). Several gay Scoutmasters sued the BSA to force them to be allowed in. The Supreme Court upheld the BSA's right to associate, or not associate, with whomever they choose.
I think they are connected. I use Morpheus and I see users "@Kazaa" all the time.
No, it would not be. The OpenBSD CD layout is not a "trademark" of any kind.
From the OpenBSD FAQ itself:
3.1.2 - Does OpenBSD provide an ISO image available for download?
You can't. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de Raadt, as an incentive for people to buy the CD set. Note that only the layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else to just grab OpenBSD and make their own CD.
Yes, you can. At least with Win2k you can have multiple version of the same DLL loading simultaneously. Try doing a little research.
It's embarassing how you Microsofties try to show Linux' disadvatages just to reveal even more advantages.
You mean as embarrassing how you 'Linux zealots' need to lie to promote your agenda. Get real, look in the mirror, and lose the inflammatory rhetoric. Those with their own agendas tend to see opposition in everyone else's.
From what I understand from the DVD newsgroups the DVD spec requires there to be a section in which the remote is disabled. It doesn't specify what this section has to be, merely that one exist. This is just a software command though, and some recorders don't accept the disable command.
Not the sort of thing one can feasibly verify though, as you have to shell out a few thousand dollars and sign an agreement to get a copy of the spec.
While I'm not familiar with those exact two models, it doesn't really matter. If it's a satellite box it will most likely work with the serial cable. Worst case sat, or for a cable box, you use the IR blaster. I don't think there's a box made it doesn't work with for at least channel changing (which is all it needs to do).
They don't. I get those same ads even though already I subscribe to Cox@Home and a fairly expansive digital cable package.
Who says you have to give up your VCR for archiving? You can dump from your TiVo to your VCR easily, there's even a menu choice to do it "clean" (without the TiVo splash bar).
For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one.
Like everyone who owns one says, it will change the way you watch TV. Mainly, you'll never watch Live TV again. It's not the digital VCR capability that makes TiVo great, it's the software. Unfortunately that's where TiVo fails (the marketing, not the unit). I've never been able to explain to someone why a TiVo is so great, but just about everyone who comes over and sees it wants one.
Can it get to the 100+ digital channels I have now?
Of course it can. It goes inline after your cable box and before anything else (receiver, TV, whatever). It controls your cable box with an IR blaster, or your DirectTV box with a serial cable.
They most certainly did, it was just undocumented. You enabled backdoors and used a remote code to reassign one button to be 30 second skip. It only worked with the 1.3 software, it was removed in 2.0 (at least, no one has figured out how to reenable it).
No, I'm really not. You're just operating under the mistaken assumption that terrorism must cause physical harm. It needn't. Terrorism is defined as commiting violence for the purpose of coercion. Violence need not be physical, that's why the term "acts of physical violence" even exists.
If your "life" depends on your internet run business, you'd better have the technological know-how to deal with any and all potential problems that come up, including script-kiddies.
Oh that's just utter bull. There are any number of events that could ruin your life no matter how well you prepare for them. You cannot prepare for all eventualities. It's the ultimate in either arrogance or naivete to believe you're invulnerable.
Oh, and your example is rather heavy on the side of exaggeration
Of course it is. I don't consider it a likely scenario, but it is a possible one. Dismissing any event that doesn't cause physical harm is just ignorant and sad.
Please explain how a person with a bankrupt company is unable to get a temp job somewhere in order to pay for food.
Have you ever declared bankruptcy? Sure you can get a job, so what? Could you support a family working at the local grocery store? My uncle was forced to declare bankruptcy after a divorce several years ago. He was reasonably well off, a successful real estate agent who lived in a "luxury village" condominium, bought a new car every few years, etc. After the divorce and bankrupty he was nearly penniless. Luckily they had no kids. He stayed in a friend's den for a few weeks before moving in with his sister (my mother) and was working at the mall selling cell phones and having to work his way back up life's ladder. If he didn't have that support network or if he'd had to be responsible for more than just himself he'd be living below the poverty level at least, if not worse.
I'm not saying people who have been subject to events like that deserve special treatment or privilege, I'm saying that your dismissing them as morons who got what they deserve is disgusting.
Really? That's a fact? Got a source for that? Or is it just one of those things that "everyone knows"? "Everyone" is usually wrong, as they are in this case. School shootings are not "occuring on an unprecedented scale." They've been on the decline since early last decade. Here's a few real facts that actually cite sources:
The Centers for Disease Control reports a 20% drop in students being injured in a physical confrontation since 1993.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports there has been 34% decline in school violence since 1993.
The National School Safety Center reports a 53% decline in deaths associated with school violence between 1993 and 1999, from 55 to 26.
And finally, from a table also published by the National Center for Education Statistics there were more school shooting deaths in the 1992-93 and 93-94 school years than there have been in any year since then.