That doesn't allow for streaming -- it does allow for digital video extraction. So you can take the content off of the tivo -- get it converted to standard MPEG2 and then do what you want with it later..
If you use MFS_FTP, you can download a stream from one tivo and send it to the now playing list of another. (I've never tried this though)
It sounds nice -- but I get much of this functionality + more via my Xbox.
I love my Tivo. I already have a web server for it -- and use tools such as Tystudio for video extraction.
I use the Xbox to watch archived movie content (MPEG,DIVX,etc), my music collection, and internet radio stations via the excellent Xbox Media Player.
It gives me more flexibility (i.e. I don't think that the Tivo will be playing DIVX content anytime soon) + there has been a constant stream of updates.
That said -- I'm rooting for Tivo. I love my DirecTivo...
But then again, I haven't spent much time at his community.
Slashdot is a very different type of community since there really aren't any persistent "boards" or discussion forums -- the forums are the articles and they last a very short period of time. This is fine -- slashdot is about "news for nerds" after all.
When I spend time at other forums, I want most of the features that were removed. I agree quoting can go too far, but most boards I've been on don't seem to fall prey to to this like email messages easily can.
I like threaded discussions, but not everyone does. I've noticed some systems (i.e. ubb.threads) have some nice technology that allows the user to switch between them.
Overall, this article wasn't too interesting. I'd rather see an article that reviewed a number of the different community systems out there (ahem -- how about looking at my story submission someone???)...
That was a boiler plate response that the ISP put up. You've already made up your mind. I know better. Why? Because the same company has gone after me.
Talk about the power of paradigms. Your paradigm = the only reason people are removed from an ISP is because of spam. READ THE CONTENT!!!
The submitter got kicked off of his old host for hosting the consumer advocacy site. One of the companies that is covered at his site (Wellington Burke) has been trying to eradicate the site and fires off threatening letters to every ISP that the site is hosted on.
This can depend on your ISP. They can just as easily request your ISP to shut down your DSL account (see my post later).
Also, hosting it yourself doesn't leave you well prepared for the "slashdot" effect of what can happen when their is media (online or offline) coverage.
That said -- I still host myself because:
1. I can
2. It is cheap
3. My ISP has more balls than most hosting providers
I speak from personal experience when I tell you that these guys are using every trick up their sleeves to try and silence consumer advocates. Wellington Burke has filed suit against me and recently contacted my ISP trying to get my service disconnected (I host my own site). Fortunately, my ISP (DSLextreme.com) after reviewing the contents of my site told them that nothing there violated their TOS and told them to go to hell.
It's amazing that your site can be featured in national news organization's reports (i.e. CBS national news, NY Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, etc), but that so many of these ISPs will shut you down in a second as soon as they receive a threatening letter.
I think that the Xboxmediaplayer (www.xboxmediaplayer.de) project for the Xbox is a much smarter implementation.
DivX is releasing new versions of their codecs that have new features. Unless a hardware player has some very easy way to update it's software (i.e. a network port and a TCP/IP stack, etc), it can easily become outdated.
While mod'ing an X-box may currently be too scary for most people (BTW -- it can now be done w/o having to make a single solder connection), for geeks at least (and lets face it -- who else wants a DivX DVD player), an Xbox (or for the very enterprising a home built computer in a small case) is probably the best bet.
My Xbox BTW will play almost all formats and stream them over the network from my SMB file shares.
VCDs like DivX are both based on MPEG compression. VCDs are fixed at a CBR of 1150kbs at 352x240. DivX is more flexible and you can see a variety of resolutions, bit rates, and audio codecs (and bit-rates) used. This means that there can be a wide range in the quality.
Assuming someone has done a decent job encoding, a DivX movie of the same size will look tremendously better than a VCD.
Is it surprising that a newer codec that represents who-knows-how-many man-months of effort has managed to improve on MPEG1? I hope not...
So helping out the poor = kharmically the same as helping out your old employer.. (you know -- the guys who used to pay you... then probably dropped you on your ass in order to save costs) for free?
There are a lot of good deeds to be done in this wicked wicked world... that's not one of them.
Unless there are deep bonds of friendship in place, if a former employer needs my help, I'm going to charge them for it. And.. I'm going to charge them a *lot* more for it then I would have made if I was still working there. That isn't mean, cruel, or greedy. It just makes sense.
I have one of the Sony DRU-500A drives back ordered at Dell (ughhh). I haven't had a had chance to R&D the specs on the new Pioneer drive. Does anyone have any opinions about the merits of one drive vs. the other??
I'm working on a contract at Warner Music Group. Everyone there (at least IT) uses IM... and you know what??? IT WORKS.
Being able to communicate with people spread across different floors or even 100 feet away is very convenient. Phone calls require 100% communication and can't be done in parallel.
Amen to that! I just watch the fights. My GF and I love the show. I watched that horrible rip-off once w/ the wrestling guys -- I doubt a single one of those robots would have survived a round in BattleBots...
I wish that they would have allowed more variety in the weapons... perhaps it is something they will think about in the future (if it survives)...
One thing I did after a particularly nasty launch that kept a lot of us till the wee hours was give the participants some staggered time off (i.e. you take monday, you tuesday, you wednesday, etc)... because you can't have the entire IT department disapppear..:)
Managers can't always give out additional raises, stock optiosn, and promotions.
Pizza and other perks are like saying "thank you" and "have a nice day." In my opinion they help to provide some lubrication to the rusty and somewhat run-down machine that is work.
Are pizza and perks a substitute for being compensated or promoted fairly? absolutely not.
Should you be pissy at someone (or an organization) that is attempting to exhibit some social graces? I don't think so.
I've managed a number of development teams over the years. Here are some of my thoughts. Flame away if you want.
Sometimes, there are days/weeks where it is neccessary for the team to put in some unreasonably long hours in order to get the project done. Especially during the time immediately before a release/launch.
That said, when I ask my staff to put in long hours, I'm there with them. If the team doesn't need "management", I roll up my sleeves and do whatever needs to be done whether that is coding, infrastructure work, or being an HTML monkey.
I don't think it is reasonable to ask for that sort of performance on an ongoing basis or for an extended period of time. It is very draining.
I also think it is very important for both myself and the organization to show it's appreciation for the people who make these sort of sacrifices for the company. This includes:
When people are running late, pay for the pizza. Look for other ways to be considerate.
Have some sort of launch festivities. Celebrate your success. Publicly acknowledge (preferably -- not just within IT) the people who made it happen.
I think that if management and the company treats its employees reasonably well, that the techies should be willing to work their assess off and burn the candle at both ends when needed.
Slashdot Mirror
You've got to be kidding.
VCR = terrible video and audio quality, poor scheduling, and limited capacity
That doesn't allow for streaming -- it does allow for digital video extraction. So you can take the content off of the tivo -- get it converted to standard MPEG2 and then do what you want with it later..
If you use MFS_FTP, you can download a stream from one tivo and send it to the now playing list of another. (I've never tried this though)
It sounds nice -- but I get much of this functionality + more via my Xbox.
I love my Tivo. I already have a web server for it -- and use tools such as Tystudio for video extraction.
I use the Xbox to watch archived movie content (MPEG,DIVX,etc), my music collection, and internet radio stations via the excellent Xbox Media Player.
It gives me more flexibility (i.e. I don't think that the Tivo will be playing DIVX content anytime soon) + there has been a constant stream of updates.
That said -- I'm rooting for Tivo. I love my DirecTivo...
But then again, I haven't spent much time at his community.
Slashdot is a very different type of community since there really aren't any persistent "boards" or discussion forums -- the forums are the articles and they last a very short period of time. This is fine -- slashdot is about "news for nerds" after all.
When I spend time at other forums, I want most of the features that were removed. I agree quoting can go too far, but most boards I've been on don't seem to fall prey to to this like email messages easily can.
I like threaded discussions, but not everyone does. I've noticed some systems (i.e. ubb.threads) have some nice technology that allows the user to switch between them.
Overall, this article wasn't too interesting. I'd rather see an article that reviewed a number of the different community systems out there (ahem -- how about looking at my story submission someone???)...
That was a boiler plate response that the ISP put up. You've already made up your mind. I know better. Why? Because the same company has gone after me.
Talk about the power of paradigms. Your paradigm = the only reason people are removed from an ISP is because of spam. READ THE CONTENT!!!
The submitter got kicked off of his old host for hosting the consumer advocacy site. One of the companies that is covered at his site (Wellington Burke) has been trying to eradicate the site and fires off threatening letters to every ISP that the site is hosted on.
There is no spamming going on here.
This can depend on your ISP. They can just as easily request your ISP to shut down your DSL account (see my post later).
Also, hosting it yourself doesn't leave you well prepared for the "slashdot" effect of what can happen when their is media (online or offline) coverage.
That said -- I still host myself because:
1. I can
2. It is cheap
3. My ISP has more balls than most hosting providers
I speak from personal experience when I tell you that these guys are using every trick up their sleeves to try and silence consumer advocates. Wellington Burke has filed suit against me and recently contacted my ISP trying to get my service disconnected (I host my own site). Fortunately, my ISP (DSLextreme.com) after reviewing the contents of my site told them that nothing there violated their TOS and told them to go to hell.
It's amazing that your site can be featured in national news organization's reports (i.e. CBS national news, NY Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, etc), but that so many of these ISPs will shut you down in a second as soon as they receive a threatening letter.
The author's site is about career marketing fraud. It has nothing to do with spam.
The articles at extremetech.com were very intersting.
I think that the Xboxmediaplayer (www.xboxmediaplayer.de) project for the Xbox is a much smarter implementation.
DivX is releasing new versions of their codecs that have new features. Unless a hardware player has some very easy way to update it's software (i.e. a network port and a TCP/IP stack, etc), it can easily become outdated.
While mod'ing an X-box may currently be too scary for most people (BTW -- it can now be done w/o having to make a single solder connection), for geeks at least (and lets face it -- who else wants a DivX DVD player), an Xbox (or for the very enterprising a home built computer in a small case) is probably the best bet.
My Xbox BTW will play almost all formats and stream them over the network from my SMB file shares.
That is not correct.
VCDs like DivX are both based on MPEG compression. VCDs are fixed at a CBR of 1150kbs at 352x240. DivX is more flexible and you can see a variety of resolutions, bit rates, and audio codecs (and bit-rates) used. This means that there can be a wide range in the quality.
Assuming someone has done a decent job encoding, a DivX movie of the same size will look tremendously better than a VCD.
Is it surprising that a newer codec that represents who-knows-how-many man-months of effort has managed to improve on MPEG1? I hope not...
Not that I'm knocking Tivo.. I absolutely love my DirecTivo... but these new features don't seem all that compelling.
So helping out the poor = kharmically the same as helping out your old employer.. (you know -- the guys who used to pay you... then probably dropped you on your ass in order to save costs) for free?
There are a lot of good deeds to be done in this wicked wicked world... that's not one of them.
Unless there are deep bonds of friendship in place, if a former employer needs my help, I'm going to charge them for it. And.. I'm going to charge them a *lot* more for it then I would have made if I was still working there. That isn't mean, cruel, or greedy. It just makes sense.
I have one of the Sony DRU-500A drives back ordered at Dell (ughhh). I haven't had a had chance to R&D the specs on the new Pioneer drive. Does anyone have any opinions about the merits of one drive vs. the other??
Agreed!!!
A Tivo is basically a small linux computer with a decent sized hard drive.
How could you consider *NOT* plugging it into a surge protector???
I'm working on a contract at Warner Music Group. Everyone there (at least IT) uses IM... and you know what??? IT WORKS.
Being able to communicate with people spread across different floors or even 100 feet away is very convenient. Phone calls require 100% communication and can't be done in parallel.
Amen to that! I just watch the fights. My GF and I love the show. I watched that horrible rip-off once w/ the wrestling guys -- I doubt a single one of those robots would have survived a round in BattleBots...
I wish that they would have allowed more variety in the weapons... perhaps it is something they will think about in the future (if it survives)...
Agreed.
:)
One thing I did after a particularly nasty launch that kept a lot of us till the wee hours was give the participants some staggered time off (i.e. you take monday, you tuesday, you wednesday, etc)... because you can't have the entire IT department disapppear..
Managers can't always give out additional raises, stock optiosn, and promotions.
Pizza and other perks are like saying "thank you" and "have a nice day." In my opinion they help to provide some lubrication to the rusty and somewhat run-down machine that is work.
Are pizza and perks a substitute for being compensated or promoted fairly? absolutely not.
Should you be pissy at someone (or an organization) that is attempting to exhibit some social graces? I don't think so.
I've managed a number of development teams over the years. Here are some of my thoughts. Flame away if you want.
Sometimes, there are days/weeks where it is neccessary for the team to put in some unreasonably long hours in order to get the project done. Especially during the time immediately before a release/launch.
That said, when I ask my staff to put in long hours, I'm there with them. If the team doesn't need "management", I roll up my sleeves and do whatever needs to be done whether that is coding, infrastructure work, or being an HTML monkey.
I don't think it is reasonable to ask for that sort of performance on an ongoing basis or for an extended period of time. It is very draining.
I also think it is very important for both myself and the organization to show it's appreciation for the people who make these sort of sacrifices for the company. This includes:
When people are running late, pay for the pizza. Look for other ways to be considerate.
Have some sort of launch festivities. Celebrate your success. Publicly acknowledge (preferably -- not just within IT) the people who made it happen.
I think that if management and the company treats its employees reasonably well, that the techies should be willing to work their assess off and burn the candle at both ends when needed.
I used to have a bar that went across the top of the browser that had check boxes for proxies, fonts, colors, javascript, popups, etc...
I can't figure out where this went and I desperately want it back... help???
I just sent their tech email address an inquiry. Somehow I doubt they will write me back.
Does this mean there is hope for those of us stuck with defective Elsa products under warranty???
BTW, that Elsa URL seems to be down..