One of Tivo's problems, to me, is that they really don't have any clue how to market themselves. Most people I know have heard of Tivo, but think its just a VCR with a hard disk. Once people see what Tivo can really do, theyre floored. Obviously, Tivo needs to do a better job of showing people what they can do.
They don't need commercials that say "Tivo will change the way you watch TV", they need commercials that show the thing in action.
I just ordered a Tivo-capable DirecTV receiver yesterday. I got the receiver for $197 through DirecTV, and the installation and dual-LNB dish are free.
I bought my parents a Directv/Tivo combo unit last christmas, and they fall into the "could never do without it" category now.
I'll be getting a Tivo as soon as the Series 2 unix are out for DirecTV -- and they will be soon. You can already pre-order the Hughes model at many Circuit City stores for around $189 with a $50 rebate for new subscribers.
DirecTV and Tivo have a good thing going apparently. DirecTV will handle all the Tivo billing, and if you purchase DirecTV's best "premium choice"
This is NOT a planet, its a Kuiper Belt object. Most likely, it will be referred to as a planetoid.
Alot of people also argue that Pluto is actually part of the Kuiper Belt and not a true planet. If anything, this discovery hurts Pluto's bid for planet-dom. Also, Pluto has a crumby elliptical orbit that swings near Neptune.
This can be said of any game, especially a popular one that has a large player base. I've seen people get mad playing basketball. I've seen people get violent over the result of a football game.
Competition and violence aren't separated by much, if at all.
Funny how we look for life that fits into the parameters of our own planet's environment. Obviously if life exists elsewhere, it evolved to live within the parameters of its own environment.
If you put a dry sponge in water and wring it out, you get water. However, put the same dry sponge in a bucket of paint and wring it out, and you wont get water.;)
Every time I turn on Comedy Central, there's either a crappy 80's movie starring a Wayans brother or that annoying news spoof (aka Dennis Miller rip) on.
I think Comedy Central kills alot of shows due to bad scheduling. I used to watch Ben Stein and then they shuffled it around. I watched Battle Bots when I was home and it was on (rarely). I certainly try with all my might to watch the Man Show, but its just on at a bad time.
When I started my job two years ago, our data center was 100% NT-based. Little by little I've convinced management to migrate various tasks off of Windows and onto Linux. My single 2U RedHat server handles our corporate website, Intranet, FTP, DNS caching, and more. This eliminated several other systems and their associated licensing fees. The machine has been powered up stable since day one, and at 240 days, my uptime is the best in the room.
Linux has also proven itself at our company as a great free network monitoring tool, thanks to snort and MRTG, etc.
One of the biggest wins with the management here was that I was able to prove that Linux can play nicely in an NT domain. People are always surprised that it authenticates domain users and that sort of thing.
We still have alot of NT servers on the rack, but so far my one Linux box runs so well, I don't think we'll ever need another!
People very much overlook IRC as a source for MP3 downloads. Everything you want is there, you just have to know how to find and get it, and you have to be patient about it.
First, grab a copy of mIRC. After installing that, download a copy of AutoGet. AutoGet is a set of scripts that facilitates finding and downloading files from IRC channels. As users advertise their MP3 list triggers, AutoGet downloads them. You can then search or browse all the lists you've collected and add songs from them to a download manager. AutoGet handles requesting and downloading the songs.
If you are patient, you will get just about everything you put in your queue. Trust me.
And don't forget to share what you download! The author of AutoGet also has a serving system called OmenServe that works very well.
I'm not sure if similar systems exist for clients other than mIRC. If anyone knows of any, I'd love to hear about them.
Here's another good example of political commentary ala Flash. This one is about gaming community politics (before watching, know that the UT2003 demo has been due out in "two more weeks" for several weeks now):
This was made by Fragmaster, who is quite possibly the only entertaining figure left in the gaming community.
My Mozilla advertising campaign at the office...
on
Netscape 7.0 is Out
·
· Score: 2
In an effort to "do my part", I managed to persuade about a dozen people to install and use Mozilla here at work. Half them instantly declared themselves too lazy to learn a new browser. IE is good enough, they say. The other half doezen loved what I showed them, and installed and used it for about a week. Unfortunately, they went back to IE one by one. Why? There were always one or two sites they visit regularly that didn't work quite right in Mozilla. Of course, in all cases it is the website's fault, but that doesn't change things. For most people, IE is still the path of least resistance. Quality doesnt mean much to them.
Since windows ships with IE, people are going to use IE and people are going to develop for IE. As long as IE is built into Windows, it will be the dominant browser. The fact that IE is so standards non-compliant is no mistake... its keeping the competition in a corner. Some of us don't mind lurking in that corner, but the vast majority won't even find it.
Personally, I can say I am finally attached to Mozilla 1.1 (largely because of OptiMoz). I was a big skeptic of Mozilla until 1.0, but now Mozilla is my browser. Still, there are a few sites out there that I must visit which I have to downshift to IE for.
Forget music and videogames. All you need to justify developing this is an application that cycles through images in a directory whenever the glove moves or and down. The online porn industry will love you for it.
If it really bothers you that much, maybe she would be happy with an imitation diamond. She still gets the ring to show to her friends and to stand as... a symbol of commitment or what have you.
With the money you save, spring for a really great honeymoon, or figure out some other way to spend the money that's memorable and perhaps more genuine then the ring.
Then again, women are irrational and none of the above is likely to work.:)
The majority of IT jobs are bad, but not all of them.
My last job was at GameSpy, and I can honestly say it was a total horror story. We started out with a horde of great people who, over time, became undervalued, underpaid, and overworked. Remember: arcade machines and free coke do not a good job make.
I'm grateful for the things I learned while I was at GameSpy, though. I picked up alot of skills and more importantly, I learned what to look for in my next job.
With everything I picked up, I immediately landed what turned out to be a fantastic job webmastering for a software company right down the street. Why is it great? I have the best boss in the world. He makes sure I have just enough work, but not too much. He sticks up for me and my work. He makes everyone in the company aware of what I do. He's like the IT Godfather.
On top of that, everyone at the company appreciates my work. Last week, I had an important project with tight deadlines and alot of money and revenue on the line. I had to work over the weekend. When I came in monday, a bottle of wine was on my desk with two tickets to the jazz festival. I also got time off to compensate for the weekend, AND a manager of another department involved with the project spoke to my boss and insisted on adding a note of my good performance to my record for consideration at my next review. I also got nominated for the quarterly employee award. I love my job.
All that being said, I find it hard to believe I can ever match or best this position. I would not be surprised if I were lured away from IT in the future if my current job came to an end for some reason.
Anyway, my advice is interview your potential employer just as closely as he interviews you. Its likely the deciding factor in your happiness at work.
The trouble with arcades these days is they are generally just not much fun. The games are too expensive and/or too complex. I miss the days when I could drop a single quarter in a machine and get a decent ten minutes out of it.
Pinball machines got more complex then they needed to be in order to be fun. The cost of developing them went up, and so did the amount of custom parts, rate of failure, and cost of maintenance. I think the pinball manufacturers really went awry here. If they had stuck with affordable, sturdy machines that focused on what makes pinball great, maybe they'd still be making them.
Every pinball machine seems to have to have a licensed franchise plastered on the front of it. What's up with that?!
Of the more modern machines, the ST:TNG machine was one of my favorites. I used to love Pinbot too.:)
Maybe some day some pinball-building vets will get together and realize that pinball machines could be profitable if they trim the fat.
I used to run a Half-life map review site, and a TFC map review site called "radium". I took my sites down a couple of years ago, and recently some friends pointed out that they showed up on one of these archival sites. I took my sites down for a reason, and didn't appreciate them hovering about on someone else's server without my permission. Say what you will, but I just don't like it. I emailed them and had my property removed from their servers. It took a bit of badgering, but it finally got done.
Its fairly common to buy computer software that is unusable due to bugs or copy-protection or miscellaneous conflicts or a number of other reasons. I think the reason people are making a stand against this CD protection is that this is the start of it, and now is the best time to curtail it before it becomes the de facto way to publish a CD. It will be alot harder (ie, impossible) to stop this once its commonplace.
If I rent a car, the car comes with locks and possibly a security system that deters theft and vandalism. This system does not inhibit the functionality of the car. The car doesn't go any slower, the car doesn't malfunction on certain highways.
This CD protection changes the CD in a way that makes it perform differently than the specification intends and differently than consumers would expect. It seems, then, that these CDs should not be labeled as CDs, but as a derivative, the way CDR, CDRW, and all those other similar formats are labeled. Call it CDP (CD Protected) or whatever, as long as its labeled. Then, I know when I see this symbol that I require a player that supports this format, the same way I know not to expect my eleven year old CD player (Well, I don't use it much, ok?!) to recognize a CDRW.
I agree totally. I started classical piano when I was nine, and I gave it up after a few years because I hated the concept of trying to reproduce everyone else's performances. Jazz has been a much more creative and rewarding endeavor for me.
I am also an (aspiring) jazz pianist. I have a Disklavier (the MPX1Z to be exact) and agree its playback cannot capture the nuances of a live performance.
I never bought my Disklavier for playback, however. One reason I bought it was as a learning tool... I find its very helpful to record things when I practice and then listen to them afterwards. It gives me a third-person perspective of my playing.
I also have the silent model, where I can mute the keyboard and play with headphones on. I live in an apartment, and this feature allows me to do alot of late-night practicing, which I tend to do. The tone is of course not that of a real acoustic piano, but the ACTION is, and that's what's important to me while I'm practicing.
At 24, I'm starting jazz later than I'd like, but my Disklavier is helping me play catch-up just a tad. I plan to sell it and buy a nice shiny C7 several years from now.:)
PS: Bill's my absolute favorite - great choice as an example. I thought his piano was a Kawai if I remember right.;)
I installed an afterburner last week. They are quite impressive. The installation is not difficult, if you TAKE YOUR TIME and RESEARCH the process in advance. You really have to plan out several of the steps beyond what the directions tell you. In fact, after reviewing the instructions and the info on the web, I went with a totally different approach to installation then the directions suggested.
The best tips are to use scotch tape to peel off the backing on the AR film and light surface. You don't want ANY fingerprints. Also be sure to use canned air to blow dust off everything prior to mounting it.
Applying the AR film was easy with a trick I found. Do NOT remove the backing yet. Use tape to peel off a very small part of the backing on the sticky side. Position it right on the edge. Use a long piece of tape and stick it to the remaining part of the backing. Then slide the black card along the surface while pulling the tape to peel the backing. Do that in one quick motion and you get a perfect, dust/bubble free application.
Sounds similar to Star Wars Galaxies. There is supposedly alot of emphasis on players assuming more non-combat roles, such as merchants and manufacturers. From what I've read, they are trying not to rely on NPC characters very much.
Slashdot Mirror
One of Tivo's problems, to me, is that they really don't have any clue how to market themselves. Most people I know have heard of Tivo, but think its just a VCR with a hard disk. Once people see what Tivo can really do, theyre floored. Obviously, Tivo needs to do a better job of showing people what they can do.
They don't need commercials that say "Tivo will change the way you watch TV", they need commercials that show the thing in action.
I just ordered a Tivo-capable DirecTV receiver yesterday. I got the receiver for $197 through DirecTV, and the installation and dual-LNB dish are free.
Loose lips sink ships.
I bought my parents a Directv/Tivo combo unit last christmas, and they fall into the "could never do without it" category now.
I'll be getting a Tivo as soon as the Series 2 unix are out for DirecTV -- and they will be soon. You can already pre-order the Hughes model at many Circuit City stores for around $189 with a $50 rebate for new subscribers.
DirecTV and Tivo have a good thing going apparently. DirecTV will handle all the Tivo billing, and if you purchase DirecTV's best "premium choice"
This is NOT a planet, its a Kuiper Belt object. Most likely, it will be referred to as a planetoid.
Alot of people also argue that Pluto is actually part of the Kuiper Belt and not a true planet. If anything, this discovery hurts Pluto's bid for planet-dom. Also, Pluto has a crumby elliptical orbit that swings near Neptune.
Maybe the hurricane last night snapped that major backbone that goes through coastal Louisiana. ;)
Bon Jovi album delayed!?? Now I'm mad!
This can be said of any game, especially a popular one that has a large player base. I've seen people get mad playing basketball. I've seen people get violent over the result of a football game.
Competition and violence aren't separated by much, if at all.
Funny how we look for life that fits into the parameters of our own planet's environment. Obviously if life exists elsewhere, it evolved to live within the parameters of its own environment.
;)
If you put a dry sponge in water and wring it out, you get water. However, put the same dry sponge in a bucket of paint and wring it out, and you wont get water.
Every time I turn on Comedy Central, there's either a crappy 80's movie starring a Wayans brother or that annoying news spoof (aka Dennis Miller rip) on.
I think Comedy Central kills alot of shows due to bad scheduling. I used to watch Ben Stein and then they shuffled it around. I watched Battle Bots when I was home and it was on (rarely). I certainly try with all my might to watch the Man Show, but its just on at a bad time.
When I started my job two years ago, our data center was 100% NT-based. Little by little I've convinced management to migrate various tasks off of Windows and onto Linux. My single 2U RedHat server handles our corporate website, Intranet, FTP, DNS caching, and more. This eliminated several other systems and their associated licensing fees. The machine has been powered up stable since day one, and at 240 days, my uptime is the best in the room.
Linux has also proven itself at our company as a great free network monitoring tool, thanks to snort and MRTG, etc.
One of the biggest wins with the management here was that I was able to prove that Linux can play nicely in an NT domain. People are always surprised that it authenticates domain users and that sort of thing.
We still have alot of NT servers on the rack, but so far my one Linux box runs so well, I don't think we'll ever need another!
First, grab a copy of mIRC. After installing that, download a copy of AutoGet. AutoGet is a set of scripts that facilitates finding and downloading files from IRC channels. As users advertise their MP3 list triggers, AutoGet downloads them. You can then search or browse all the lists you've collected and add songs from them to a download manager. AutoGet handles requesting and downloading the songs.
If you are patient, you will get just about everything you put in your queue. Trust me.
And don't forget to share what you download! The author of AutoGet also has a serving system called OmenServe that works very well.
I'm not sure if similar systems exist for clients other than mIRC. If anyone knows of any, I'd love to hear about them.
Here's another good example of political commentary ala Flash. This one is about gaming community politics (before watching, know that the UT2003 demo has been due out in "two more weeks" for several weeks now):
h /
http://www.planetunreal.com/features/ut2003flas
This was made by Fragmaster, who is quite possibly the only entertaining figure left in the gaming community.
In an effort to "do my part", I managed to persuade about a dozen people to install and use Mozilla here at work. Half them instantly declared themselves too lazy to learn a new browser. IE is good enough, they say. The other half doezen loved what I showed them, and installed and used it for about a week. Unfortunately, they went back to IE one by one. Why? There were always one or two sites they visit regularly that didn't work quite right in Mozilla. Of course, in all cases it is the website's fault, but that doesn't change things. For most people, IE is still the path of least resistance. Quality doesnt mean much to them.
Since windows ships with IE, people are going to use IE and people are going to develop for IE. As long as IE is built into Windows, it will be the dominant browser. The fact that IE is so standards non-compliant is no mistake... its keeping the competition in a corner. Some of us don't mind lurking in that corner, but the vast majority won't even find it.
Personally, I can say I am finally attached to Mozilla 1.1 (largely because of OptiMoz). I was a big skeptic of Mozilla until 1.0, but now Mozilla is my browser. Still, there are a few sites out there that I must visit which I have to downshift to IE for.
Forget music and videogames. All you need to justify developing this is an application that cycles through images in a directory whenever the glove moves or and down. The online porn industry will love you for it.
If it really bothers you that much, maybe she would be happy with an imitation diamond. She still gets the ring to show to her friends and to stand as... a symbol of commitment or what have you. With the money you save, spring for a really great honeymoon, or figure out some other way to spend the money that's memorable and perhaps more genuine then the ring. Then again, women are irrational and none of the above is likely to work. :)
The majority of IT jobs are bad, but not all of them.
My last job was at GameSpy, and I can honestly say it was a total horror story. We started out with a horde of great people who, over time, became undervalued, underpaid, and overworked. Remember: arcade machines and free coke do not a good job make.
I'm grateful for the things I learned while I was at GameSpy, though. I picked up alot of skills and more importantly, I learned what to look for in my next job.
With everything I picked up, I immediately landed what turned out to be a fantastic job webmastering for a software company right down the street. Why is it great? I have the best boss in the world. He makes sure I have just enough work, but not too much. He sticks up for me and my work. He makes everyone in the company aware of what I do. He's like the IT Godfather.
On top of that, everyone at the company appreciates my work. Last week, I had an important project with tight deadlines and alot of money and revenue on the line. I had to work over the weekend. When I came in monday, a bottle of wine was on my desk with two tickets to the jazz festival. I also got time off to compensate for the weekend, AND a manager of another department involved with the project spoke to my boss and insisted on adding a note of my good performance to my record for consideration at my next review. I also got nominated for the quarterly employee award. I love my job.
All that being said, I find it hard to believe I can ever match or best this position. I would not be surprised if I were lured away from IT in the future if my current job came to an end for some reason.
Anyway, my advice is interview your potential employer just as closely as he interviews you. Its likely the deciding factor in your happiness at work.
The trouble with arcades these days is they are generally just not much fun. The games are too expensive and/or too complex. I miss the days when I could drop a single quarter in a machine and get a decent ten minutes out of it.
:)
Pinball machines got more complex then they needed to be in order to be fun. The cost of developing them went up, and so did the amount of custom parts, rate of failure, and cost of maintenance. I think the pinball manufacturers really went awry here. If they had stuck with affordable, sturdy machines that focused on what makes pinball great, maybe they'd still be making them.
Every pinball machine seems to have to have a licensed franchise plastered on the front of it. What's up with that?!
Of the more modern machines, the ST:TNG machine was one of my favorites. I used to love Pinbot too.
Maybe some day some pinball-building vets will get together and realize that pinball machines could be profitable if they trim the fat.
I used to run a Half-life map review site, and a TFC map review site called "radium". I took my sites down a couple of years ago, and recently some friends pointed out that they showed up on one of these archival sites. I took my sites down for a reason, and didn't appreciate them hovering about on someone else's server without my permission. Say what you will, but I just don't like it. I emailed them and had my property removed from their servers. It took a bit of badgering, but it finally got done.
Its fairly common to buy computer software that is unusable due to bugs or copy-protection or miscellaneous conflicts or a number of other reasons. I think the reason people are making a stand against this CD protection is that this is the start of it, and now is the best time to curtail it before it becomes the de facto way to publish a CD. It will be alot harder (ie, impossible) to stop this once its commonplace.
If I rent a car, the car comes with locks and possibly a security system that deters theft and vandalism. This system does not inhibit the functionality of the car. The car doesn't go any slower, the car doesn't malfunction on certain highways.
This CD protection changes the CD in a way that makes it perform differently than the specification intends and differently than consumers would expect. It seems, then, that these CDs should not be labeled as CDs, but as a derivative, the way CDR, CDRW, and all those other similar formats are labeled. Call it CDP (CD Protected) or whatever, as long as its labeled. Then, I know when I see this symbol that I require a player that supports this format, the same way I know not to expect my eleven year old CD player (Well, I don't use it much, ok?!) to recognize a CDRW.
I agree totally. I started classical piano when I was nine, and I gave it up after a few years because I hated the concept of trying to reproduce everyone else's performances. Jazz has been a much more creative and rewarding endeavor for me.
I am also an (aspiring) jazz pianist. I have a Disklavier (the MPX1Z to be exact) and agree its playback cannot capture the nuances of a live performance.
:)
;)
I never bought my Disklavier for playback, however. One reason I bought it was as a learning tool... I find its very helpful to record things when I practice and then listen to them afterwards. It gives me a third-person perspective of my playing.
I also have the silent model, where I can mute the keyboard and play with headphones on. I live in an apartment, and this feature allows me to do alot of late-night practicing, which I tend to do. The tone is of course not that of a real acoustic piano, but the ACTION is, and that's what's important to me while I'm practicing.
At 24, I'm starting jazz later than I'd like, but my Disklavier is helping me play catch-up just a tad. I plan to sell it and buy a nice shiny C7 several years from now.
PS: Bill's my absolute favorite - great choice as an example. I thought his piano was a Kawai if I remember right.
I installed an afterburner last week. They are quite impressive. The installation is not difficult, if you TAKE YOUR TIME and RESEARCH the process in advance. You really have to plan out several of the steps beyond what the directions tell you. In fact, after reviewing the instructions and the info on the web, I went with a totally different approach to installation then the directions suggested.
The best tips are to use scotch tape to peel off the backing on the AR film and light surface. You don't want ANY fingerprints. Also be sure to use canned air to blow dust off everything prior to mounting it.
Applying the AR film was easy with a trick I found. Do NOT remove the backing yet. Use tape to peel off a very small part of the backing on the sticky side. Position it right on the edge. Use a long piece of tape and stick it to the remaining part of the backing. Then slide the black card along the surface while pulling the tape to peel the backing. Do that in one quick motion and you get a perfect, dust/bubble free application.
Sounds similar to Star Wars Galaxies. There is supposedly alot of emphasis on players assuming more non-combat roles, such as merchants and manufacturers. From what I've read, they are trying not to rely on NPC characters very much.
e atures/ faq.jsp
Read this:
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/f
Yesterday a guy at work asked me how to setup his Linux box for DHCP. I really hated having to tell him to type "man pump".