The only reason radio stations can play nearly any song is because they pay a subscription fee to the RIAA allowing them this ability.
Not to mention radio stations only play songs off the newly release albums that have been authorized by the label as released singles. I don't think there is a coincidence there, I think they control what the radio stations do play because of their desire to effectively market albums.
But then you are going to cite this law which shows I'm dreadfully wrong.
I suppose. The WinTV card I have needs some refinement. When you switch channels there is a loud burst of noise through speakers which is annoying. Overall though the quality of video displayed is quite good, as is the video capture.
It would be nice if such functions became standard on the computer, which would allow for improved software.
As far as Tivo, I could care less about the TV listings. The piece of Tivo which excites me the most is the ability to pause TV while I'm watching it. This is technically challenging and required some signifigant amount of bandwidth available from the harddrive as you have to read and write video at the same time.
The program listing controlling recording is not technically challenging. A computer program to do that would be incredibly easy to write once you have the capability of capturing video to a file.
SELECT TIME, CHANNEL, LENGTH FROM LISTINGS WHERE NAME = "Simpsons"
Now I just trigger record events at said times.
Keeping the television listing database isn't even that hard, it just requires 12 trained monkeys. But monkey's cost a lot to feed, and I can't afford to keep them in my garage.:)
The only reason I mentioned Hauppage and WinTV products is that I bought a WinTV-Go card last year for only like $40 and I find it to be the most amazing piece of hardware I have ever owned.
Now granted, while I've been able to get it to record video I have had some problems capturing sound at the same time... But my main purpose is really just to watch TV in a window on my monitor.
As far as TiVo goes... The technically challenging part of TiVo is the video recording and playback system. Everything from then on is just controlling that subsystem.
Honestly, the only thing I would ever want out of Tivo is VCR like functionality. I want to tell some device to record Star Trek at 8pm on channel 38 on Saturday, and not have to worry about putting a tape in the machine.
As far as home automation goes. Ok, the software I was looking at is Homeseer. It is relatively trivial for me to activate software based on some triggered event.
The door opens, the system can trigger my televion to turn on, change to CNN. A web browser to open on my desktop and browse to the local weather, and oh I don't know maybe an MP3 player playing some music.
The options are rather endless considering the system is easily interfaceable, and there is a lot of home automation equipment out there. X10 is not the best way to go, the devices have slow response and are not realiable, there are others.
* Automatically catalogues media clips (BeOS does this to an extent, I've heard)
Do not understand... Please describer further as to why this is important.
* Replicates TiVO functionality to an acceptable degree
According to hauppage web site, WinVCR from Cinax is available for my WinTV card.
* Does a decent job at being a convenient radio tuner
WinTV-FM card
* Does a decent job at being an alarm clock
This has been easy with every computer with a built in clock.
* Streams decent-quality (visual and production) video from the Net on a channel-lookup system
Realplayer
* Plays HDTV signals
WinTV-HD
* Does a decent job of being a voicemail/phone answering/notification system for incoming calls - or for that matter, does any decent voice functionality over voice lines at all
This software has been available for years. I had a USR Voice modem back in 1995. One of my friends at work has a whole phone system attached via USB to his PC. He can retrieve email via his phone, etc. Unfortunately that vendor did go out of business, but there are some others.
* Triggers events via anything other than timers, keyboard taps, and mouse clicks
What do you want to trigger off of? There is plenty of home automation software out there to trigger events from a variety of sources.
* Displays information services in an acceptable format on a TV screen
Have not tried this.
* Crossfades or partitions anything via automatic windowing (yea I know you can drag titlebars and window boundaries to your heart's content, but your good old "tile windows" command is usually not good enough for practical usage)
Please provide more detail.
* Decently controls events on a PC via a remote control
Once again that home automation software is readily available that will do this.
Why limit yourself to remote? I would rather control my computer via voice commands, which I can do although not very far advanced.
I don't know, I'm pretty amazed at all the stuff I do with my computers at home. I have a WinTV card, so I watch TV in a window. My scanner photocopies to my laser printer at the touch of a button, etc.
I read the article, he claims that GAIM has a right to connect to AOL servers because AOL released something called TOC.
But then he says TOC doesn't work anyway, at least not well.
Maybe AOL isn't worried about trying to block TOC because they realize nobody is bothering to use it?
That has got to be one of the strangest justification articles I've seen in a long time. I can't help thinking "Buddy, get a hair cut and get a real job.":)
Redhat just released their annual report yesterday, and it does not show a company that is breaking even. It shows a company who is further and further in the red each year.
They show a net loss of 53 cents a share. This compared to the net loss of 41 cents a share they had last year, and 13, 8 and 3 of the years previous to that.
I'm curious where you get the idea that Redhat is breaking even?
The last quarterly they lost several million, but they claimed these were a result of one time charges and if you ignored them they actually broke even.
I can't see RedHat sticking around much past 2002, much less being profitable. Same with VA Linux which is in even worse shape financially.
As far as Loki goes... Been there done that, sold the Amiga back in 1991.
Ok, you obviously don't understand supply and demand and how it relates to revenues and profits.
Because of the lack of demand in the consulting business, in order to compete the consulting companies are having to lower their billable rates.
Profits are way down because of this.
Anyway, it seems clear that you've either not been a consultant, having worked with a consultant... Or are an Arthur Anderson employee who has been brainwashed.:)
What you described is what consultant companies say they are, not what they actually are.
I became familiar with Philip Greenspun several years ago when he posted a story to rec.autos.misc about his suing a Ford dealership over some purchase of his.
He's got an ego, he definately has an attitude. He strikes me as someone who enjoys getting attention on the Internet, but not as someone whom I would like to work for or with.
As far as Hacker, it's a negative word. In the computer world it refers to someone who is not particularly adept. To hack code means to work by trial and error until it works.
Then look up the definitions of 'hack writer', 'political hack', 'hacker' as in poor golf.
Otherwise I think the term you want is just plain Geek.
When Intel released the first generation Pentium it also got a very bad rap.
The Pentium 60 used a signifigant amount of power, generated a hell of a lot of heat, and the new 75 and 100 Mhz 486 chips from AMD ran just as fast in benchmarks at well under half the price.
I suppose you could say they released too early then as well.
Then even after the next generation 75/90 chips came out, they used less power and created less heat, but they had a floating point bug.
Heh. I have a two year old PIII-550 which I run Windows 2000 on and really have no complaints.
In fact my Win2k server at home is a PPro 200, and it operates perfectly as a file/print server, has my scanner and CD-RW on it and I use it as a development web server.
So I just gotta ask. What Microsoft bloat? I'm running the latest greatest software on computers that are 2 and 4 years old respectively.
Microsoft essentially will have two embedded OS systems to sell. Whistler/XP embedded, and WinCE.
WinCE is intended for small devices with a simple GUI interface. So your point #2 conflicts with your later claim that we're talking about CE.
This leaves Whistler/XP embedded, and there you are talking about situations where point #1 and #3 are quite relevant, whereas #2 is not.
I see anti-Microsoft people do this a lot, where they take all the negatives of six different products and combine them to prove Microsoft sucks. Yet obviously, Microsoft produces six different products to target six different needs. You have to look at them from an appropriate vantage point, which I don't feel you are doing.
Web servers, NAS, obviously consoles such as XBox, kiosks, etc. where Microsoft will be able to play.
It depends obviously on your application.
But still even though the subheading of this article says 99% of computers are embedded... only 1% of those need an OS.
Most embedded computers, such as those found in cars, airplanes, your toaster, etc. are nothing more than a lower power processor of some sort running some simple instructions that monitor for some event and then perform an action. They probably have only a few bytes of memory total and run at very low power.
Out of curiousity, do you even know what POSIX is?
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Please cite this law. I don't think you can.
The only reason radio stations can play nearly any song is because they pay a subscription fee to the RIAA allowing them this ability.
Not to mention radio stations only play songs off the newly release albums that have been authorized by the label as released singles. I don't think there is a coincidence there, I think they control what the radio stations do play because of their desire to effectively market albums.
But then you are going to cite this law which shows I'm dreadfully wrong.
Napster has no credibility...
The filename thing was a game on Napster's part. They knew it wouldn't work, which is why they suggested it.
It was simply technically informed legal trickery.
I suppose. The WinTV card I have needs some refinement. When you switch channels there is a loud burst of noise through speakers which is annoying. Overall though the quality of video displayed is quite good, as is the video capture.
:)
It would be nice if such functions became standard on the computer, which would allow for improved software.
As far as Tivo, I could care less about the TV listings. The piece of Tivo which excites me the most is the ability to pause TV while I'm watching it. This is technically challenging and required some signifigant amount of bandwidth available from the harddrive as you have to read and write video at the same time.
The program listing controlling recording is not technically challenging. A computer program to do that would be incredibly easy to write once you have the capability of capturing video to a file.
SELECT TIME, CHANNEL, LENGTH FROM LISTINGS WHERE NAME = "Simpsons"
Now I just trigger record events at said times.
Keeping the television listing database isn't even that hard, it just requires 12 trained monkeys. But monkey's cost a lot to feed, and I can't afford to keep them in my garage.
The only reason I mentioned Hauppage and WinTV products is that I bought a WinTV-Go card last year for only like $40 and I find it to be the most amazing piece of hardware I have ever owned.
Now granted, while I've been able to get it to record video I have had some problems capturing sound at the same time... But my main purpose is really just to watch TV in a window on my monitor.
As far as TiVo goes... The technically challenging part of TiVo is the video recording and playback system. Everything from then on is just controlling that subsystem.
Honestly, the only thing I would ever want out of Tivo is VCR like functionality. I want to tell some device to record Star Trek at 8pm on channel 38 on Saturday, and not have to worry about putting a tape in the machine.
As far as home automation goes. Ok, the software I was looking at is Homeseer. It is relatively trivial for me to activate software based on some triggered event.
The door opens, the system can trigger my televion to turn on, change to CNN. A web browser to open on my desktop and browse to the local weather, and oh I don't know maybe an MP3 player playing some music.
The options are rather endless considering the system is easily interfaceable, and there is a lot of home automation equipment out there. X10 is not the best way to go, the devices have slow response and are not realiable, there are others.
* Automatically catalogues media clips (BeOS does this to an extent, I've heard)
Do not understand... Please describer further as to why this is important.
* Replicates TiVO functionality to an acceptable degree
According to hauppage web site, WinVCR from Cinax is available for my WinTV card.
* Does a decent job at being a convenient radio tuner
WinTV-FM card
* Does a decent job at being an alarm clock
This has been easy with every computer with a built in clock.
* Streams decent-quality (visual and production) video from the Net on a channel-lookup system
Realplayer
* Plays HDTV signals
WinTV-HD
* Does a decent job of being a voicemail/phone answering/notification system for incoming calls - or for that matter, does any decent voice functionality over voice lines at all
This software has been available for years. I had a USR Voice modem back in 1995. One of my friends at work has a whole phone system attached via USB to his PC. He can retrieve email via his phone, etc. Unfortunately that vendor did go out of business, but there are some others.
* Triggers events via anything other than timers, keyboard taps, and mouse clicks
What do you want to trigger off of? There is plenty of home automation software out there to trigger events from a variety of sources.
* Displays information services in an acceptable format on a TV screen
Have not tried this.
* Crossfades or partitions anything via automatic windowing (yea I know you can drag titlebars and window boundaries to your heart's content, but your good old "tile windows" command is usually not good enough for practical usage)
Please provide more detail.
* Decently controls events on a PC via a remote control
Once again that home automation software is readily available that will do this.
Why limit yourself to remote? I would rather control my computer via voice commands, which I can do although not very far advanced.
I don't know, I'm pretty amazed at all the stuff I do with my computers at home. I have a WinTV card, so I watch TV in a window. My scanner photocopies to my laser printer at the touch of a button, etc.
It's improving. I don't think we are there yet.
Are these Russian Crackers related to the Saltine Crackers, or are they more like Graham Crackers?
But then Animal Crackers are my favorite.
I read the article, he claims that GAIM has a right to connect to AOL servers because AOL released something called TOC.
:)
But then he says TOC doesn't work anyway, at least not well.
Maybe AOL isn't worried about trying to block TOC because they realize nobody is bothering to use it?
That has got to be one of the strangest justification articles I've seen in a long time. I can't help thinking "Buddy, get a hair cut and get a real job."
Ahh, sorry. I am not as well versed in Communist propoganda as Linux guys are, I guess. :)
I was actually going to comment that... "So I was doing this on a DEC Alpha 3000/300L back in '95 running OSF/1".
Not even sure Linux ran on an Alpha back then.
I suppose it's time someone examined this more closely. Among my comrades we have always referred to GNU and Linux people as "Software Communists".
There are quite a few similarities really. It's also not surprising that the link was made considering Stallman called his paper the GNU Manifesto.
If you're not familiar, the work by Karl Marx which initiated the vision of Communism was called the Communist Manifesto.
Redhat just released their annual report yesterday, and it does not show a company that is breaking even. It shows a company who is further and further in the red each year.
They show a net loss of 53 cents a share. This compared to the net loss of 41 cents a share they had last year, and 13, 8 and 3 of the years previous to that.
I'm curious where you get the idea that Redhat is breaking even?
The last quarterly they lost several million, but they claimed these were a result of one time charges and if you ignored them they actually broke even.
I can't see RedHat sticking around much past 2002, much less being profitable. Same with VA Linux which is in even worse shape financially.
As far as Loki goes... Been there done that, sold the Amiga back in 1991.
Well Microsoft stock value is only half of it's previous high.
:)
That's quite a bit different from being worth only 1/20th of it's previous high.
As far as Communism, I suggest you read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. Communism has nothing to do with Central Planning.
You're thinking of the very poor implementations of Communism by Russia, China, et al.
They never became truly Communist, they got stuck in the "Dictator by the Proletariat" phase that Marx discusses.
But then that's because Marx ignored the old saying "Power corrupts".
Very good point.
As I recall my Linux indoctrination you're supposed to give money to Eazel so that they can afford to hire programmers.
But then when Bill Gates said the same thing 25 years ago, he get's ridiculed.
I don't think that Linux zealots really have a very mature set of beliefs. That they contradict one another is pretty much par for the course.
Ok, you obviously don't understand supply and demand and how it relates to revenues and profits.
:)
Because of the lack of demand in the consulting business, in order to compete the consulting companies are having to lower their billable rates.
Profits are way down because of this.
Anyway, it seems clear that you've either not been a consultant, having worked with a consultant... Or are an Arthur Anderson employee who has been brainwashed.
What you described is what consultant companies say they are, not what they actually are.
I became familiar with Philip Greenspun several years ago when he posted a story to rec.autos.misc about his suing a Ford dealership over some purchase of his.
He's got an ego, he definately has an attitude. He strikes me as someone who enjoys getting attention on the Internet, but not as someone whom I would like to work for or with.
"Consulting is a very profitable business"
Maybe you haven't noticed, but we are now in the New New Economy.
Consulting was profitable for Y2K, and it's scaled back considerably since then.
At least in my city, Minneapolis, every since consulting company has been laying off people. Norstan, Born, Ranier, etc. etc. etc.
Even the large global companies are laying off, the most recent I saw was Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Are those Saltine Crackers or Graham Crackers?
As far as Hacker, it's a negative word. In the computer world it refers to someone who is not particularly adept. To hack code means to work by trial and error until it works.
Then look up the definitions of 'hack writer', 'political hack', 'hacker' as in poor golf.
Otherwise I think the term you want is just plain Geek.
I'm a Geek. I'm also a Software Engineer.
I'm definately not a Hacker or a Cracker.
Well semantically speaking... Linux isn't even strictly POSIX-compliant. It makes a good attempt, but it's not 100% and never been certified.
Otherwise I agree that GNU/Linux is not UNIX.
Halliburton is the oil company Vice President Dick Cheney was appointed to represent, err... I mean used to work for... :)
We're both wrong.
I just verified, and the FDIV bug affected 60/66 and the 75/90/100 series of Pentium processors.
I had forgotten than the 100Mhz was released at the same time with the 75/90, had thought it was released along with the 120.
I never noticed this impacting us either, but it sure created a lot of bad press for Intel.
When Intel released the first generation Pentium it also got a very bad rap.
:)
The Pentium 60 used a signifigant amount of power, generated a hell of a lot of heat, and the new 75 and 100 Mhz 486 chips from AMD ran just as fast in benchmarks at well under half the price.
I suppose you could say they released too early then as well.
Then even after the next generation 75/90 chips came out, they used less power and created less heat, but they had a floating point bug.
But eventually Intel overcame the criticism.
Remember... "Release Early, Release Often"
Heh. I have a two year old PIII-550 which I run Windows 2000 on and really have no complaints.
In fact my Win2k server at home is a PPro 200, and it operates perfectly as a file/print server, has my scanner and CD-RW on it and I use it as a development web server.
So I just gotta ask. What Microsoft bloat? I'm running the latest greatest software on computers that are 2 and 4 years old respectively.
Heh... 700 Mhz computer to run Linux. *laugh*
DOS 5.0 has given new life to all of my old obsolete hardware.
I tried running Linux on my IBM PS/2 Model 70, and it was slow as a dog.
Even after upgrading it with a Cyrix 486 processor, 387 math coprocessor, boosting memory to 12 Megs and harddrive space to 200Megs.
It was still slow running Linux!
But now with DOS 5.0 I can run Lotus 123 and Wordperfect 5 slick as a whistle I tell you!
But on the positive side, I now have a top of the line computer for 1991!
Don't you think you are confusing some things?
Microsoft essentially will have two embedded OS systems to sell. Whistler/XP embedded, and WinCE.
WinCE is intended for small devices with a simple GUI interface. So your point #2 conflicts with your later claim that we're talking about CE.
This leaves Whistler/XP embedded, and there you are talking about situations where point #1 and #3 are quite relevant, whereas #2 is not.
I see anti-Microsoft people do this a lot, where they take all the negatives of six different products and combine them to prove Microsoft sucks. Yet obviously, Microsoft produces six different products to target six different needs. You have to look at them from an appropriate vantage point, which I don't feel you are doing.
Web servers, NAS, obviously consoles such as XBox, kiosks, etc. where Microsoft will be able to play.
It depends obviously on your application.
But still even though the subheading of this article says 99% of computers are embedded... only 1% of those need an OS.
Most embedded computers, such as those found in cars, airplanes, your toaster, etc. are nothing more than a lower power processor of some sort running some simple instructions that monitor for some event and then perform an action. They probably have only a few bytes of memory total and run at very low power.
Out of curiousity, do you even know what POSIX is?