FWIW, my vote has to go for the TiVo. Of course that's because I own one.
Anyway, what I've always thought would be a cool feature is an option for slightly faster video playback - maybe around 10 percent. That would trim 6 minutes off of every hour of programming. It surely wouldn't be very hard for TiVo (et al) to implement. And it probably wouldn't even be that noticable.
I pay for 128k upstream bandwidth and goddamit I expect it.
Wrong - use your head man. If all of AT&T's customers used 100% their cable modem's capacity 24 hours a day, you would not be getting broadband for $40 a month.
A full T1 is (1.544 Mbps) usually comes in somewhere at about $1500/month. My cable modem from @Home (2.2 Mbps downstream / 128k upstream) costs $40/month. Is this starting to make sense to you?
Unless you want to pay $500/month for your cable modem, quit bitching that AT&T doesn't want you to saturate it with traffic 24 hours a day.
Anyways, recently, Radio shack posted my home phone number as one of their local stores. I emailed them a couple weeks to change it and got no response.
You need to tell Radio Shack that you're going to start playing practical jokes on their potential customers - that will get their attention.
When you get a call for Radio Shack, just bullshit the caller and act like you don't know anything about electronics. Oh wait - that won't work, that's what happens when you call the real Radio Shack.
Besides that, there's the evil factor, considering Rambus believed more in the policy of suing for royalties as a revenue model instead of producing and selling a decent product.
The thing that nobody ever understood about Rambus is that they are not actually in the business of producing RAM. All along, they're business model was to come up with good ideas and license them out. There is nothing wrong with that.
The only thing that bothered me about Rambus is that they didn't disclose the patents they held while they participated in developing memory standards. That was crappy business.
I've been warezing for a while now, and always for the same reason. "Try before you buy."
That argument barely flies for MP3s, but if you think that even 1% of warez users are on the "try before you buy" program you're nuts.
It's like breaking into car lots and test-driving cars in the middle of the night because you want to get a feel for the car before you make the purchase. I don't think the cops are going to buy that one.
There's nothing more pathetic than watching Napster and warez users try to rationalize their habit. Just admit it, you don't want to pay the exorbitant prices for this stuff.
At least charge them for cable modem usage. And charge them for backups, but back it up to your own server.
Oh yeah, his cable company is going to be thrilled that he is reselling his bandwidth. If there is anything that has a potential for getting him sued, it is what you suggested.
Hmmm, so maybe you are a little too small to be breaking into the movie biz.
I've got an idea!! Why don't you invent something new and patent it. Then you don't have to worry about being squashed by the big guys for at least 17 years.
Company A has a small amount of capital. They spend a large portion of it developing their product.
Company B develops their version of the product at a much lower cost than Company A because they can utilize Company A's trial and errors.
Now upon entering the market Company A is almost broke and Company B is loaded - which puts B at an extreme marketing advantage. Doesn't sound very fair does it.
Basically, patents prevent big-ass monopolies like Microsoft from destroying you the instant you enter the market.
So we can expect that for the forseeable future we will only have Tivo, ReplayTV, and any other big players who can afford to pay the licenses (Microsoft, etc).
So why do we have patents again?
Patents serve the purpose of rewarding research and creativeness. They allow you to bust your ass doing research and in return you are guarenteed that for a few years nobody is going to steal your idea. After your time is up, everybody else gets a shot at it.
You are correct about the CPUs. Historically, AMD has been excellent about acheiving instruction set compatibility with Intel processors.
However, there is more to a system than the CPU. And chipsets for AMD processors are generally far below Intel chipsets with regard to stability - at least initially.
My beef with AMD setups is that VIA and SiS and friends generally turn out pretty shitty chipsets. Performance is usually fine, but it can take them several months before their drivers are up to par with Intel's on stability.
Maybe things have changed recently, but that has been my experience in the last few years.
I wonder if the rapid domination of the planet by humans started with a mutation, just like the way cancers start? & you know how cancers end? With the destruction of their own host, unless they are halted in time.
It will be a little more expensive, but you might want to think about stringing "STP" CAT5, instead of UTP... that's Shielded Twisted Pair instead of Unshielded.
I'm by no means an expert on the matter, but a few years ago I did a lot of reading about comparisons between different cabling methodologies (UTP, STP, coax, etc).
The interesting thing about STP is that you'd think that the shielding could only help. However, unless you ground it, the long stretches of shielding can actually make interference worse by acting like a giant antenna.
Okay, that works well for Exchange but what about 80% of the mail servers out there, which are not Exchange servers?
That's why I wrote batemail. It does exactly what you describe only it works on *nix based hosts. Any attachment that has one of the "taboo" extensions is automagically removed from the email and a notice put in its place.
You'd be amazed how many of these attachments we're stripping out on a daily basis where I work.
The white man is still sticking it to 'em. It is an extreme disgrace.
Is this a joke?
Listen, you bigot dickhead, I don't make broad generalizations about other ethnicities. I would appreciate it if you would afford me (a "white man") the same courtesy.
Here is the email that I received from Insight regarding their Insight@Home service (provided by Excite@Home):
Early this evening, Insight, along with other cable operators (including Cox, Comcast, Mediacom, and Rogers) signed an interim agreement with Excite@Home and the official unsecured bondholders' committee. This settlement agreement provides for continued service for three months, during which time we can accomplish an orderly transition to another high-speed provider.
The specific terms of the deal include a lump payment by the cable operators of $355 million, $10 million of which is Insight's portion. We agreed to pay this fee in order to extend the time required to ensure an orderly transition. This payment will not result in a price increase to you.
We're also actively continuing our discussions with other high-speed broadband providers. The offering of new providers will be the first step in opening up our network to bring more choices to our customers in the selection of their Internet Service Providers, fulfilling our vision of our broadband platform.
While today's settlement agreement is subject to court approval, we expect this approval shortly.
We have worked hard to ensure continued, uninterrupted broadband service for you and we're pleased it appears that effort has been successful. We appreciate your ongoing support of Insight.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Chief Operating Officer
Insight Communications
Hmmm, with Excite pulling the plug on a large portion of its subscribers (AT&T), shouldn't that free up quite a bit of bandwith for the rest of the @Home customers (Insight, Comcast, Cox)?
Maybe now I can return to the days of 50ms CounterStrike ping that I had in back January. Suhweet!
Of course, that is until Excite pulls this shit again in 2 months.
Insight Communications has released the following statement today to their customers:
Insight, along with other cable operators, is currently in the tail end of positive negotiations with @Home. At this time, we fully expect to maintain connectivity for our Insight@Home customer base.
We recognize that certain communities in our Central Illinois service areas have seen an interruption in service this morning due to an @Home error. We are working diligently to correct this issue and expect full service to be restored today. We apologize to these customers for any inconvenience this has caused.
Thank you for your continued patience as we work through this issue.
The following letter is being e-mailed to all Insight@Home customers this evening, November 30, 2001:
Dear customer,
We at Insight would like to provide you with an update regarding the status of your Insight@Home service, based on today's hearing.
This afternoon, the US Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of California, issued the decision that enabled Excite@Home to cancel their contracts with their affiliated cable operators. It is important to note that this does not equate to the network shutting down; it simply means that @Home has the option to do so.
Based on the nature of the ongoing negotiations, we are still optimistic that this ruling will not result in a loss of service for our customers and that an agreement will be reached.
We are working hard to avoid any inconvenience to our customers. In mid-October, we, together with other @Home affiliates (including Cox, Comcast, and Mediacom), increased our payments by over 50% to ensure uninterrupted service until an agreement among the Creditors could be reached; this was done at no additional cost to our customers. @Home affiliates including Insight are supporting AT&T in its bid to buy the @Home network. If the network were to go dark, there would be no cash coming in nor would there be any bids for @Home's assets. Therefore, it makes no sense for @Home to "pull the plug."
If the unlikely occurs, we will cover your cost of a dial-up service until we can transition you back to our broadband service. As I mentioned in our earlier note, we are talking with AOL Broadband and Road Runner, and believe we can expedite a transition.
For now, service remains intact and we encourage you to visit the special page we have on our website for further updates: www.Insight-com.com/net/UPDATES. In addition, we'd like to remind you that our customer service centers are operating with expanded staffing and hours this weekend to accommodate your inquiries.
Please know that we, too, are frustrated by this victimization of our customers and ask you to bear with us through this process. We know this service is important to you and we are working hard to meet your needs. We truly appreciate your business and patience as we make every attempt to resolve this situation to your benefit.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Chief Operating & Financial Officer
Insight Communications
If you weren't patriotic before why would a terrorist [...] killing thousands of people [...] make you patriotic.
Uh, what did I say that had anything to do with September 11th? The Afghanistan reference was intentionally topical, but you could substitute dozens of other countries and my point is just as valid.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW, my vote has to go for the TiVo. Of course that's because I own one.
Anyway, what I've always thought would be a cool feature is an option for slightly faster video playback - maybe around 10 percent. That would trim 6 minutes off of every hour of programming. It surely wouldn't be very hard for TiVo (et al) to implement. And it probably wouldn't even be that noticable.
Are you listening TiVo?
Was this the business plan?
Phase 1 - Develop new video codec
Phase 2 - Do some, uh, business stuff
Phase 3 - Make LOTS of money!
I pay for 128k upstream bandwidth and goddamit I expect it.
Wrong - use your head man. If all of AT&T's customers used 100% their cable modem's capacity 24 hours a day, you would not be getting broadband for $40 a month.
A full T1 is (1.544 Mbps) usually comes in somewhere at about $1500/month. My cable modem from @Home (2.2 Mbps downstream / 128k upstream) costs $40/month. Is this starting to make sense to you?
Unless you want to pay $500/month for your cable modem, quit bitching that AT&T doesn't want you to saturate it with traffic 24 hours a day.
I'd hate to be one of the sorry bastards that has to live near the receiving dish.
On the bright side, at least you'd never have to worry about heating bills for your home.
Anyways, recently, Radio shack posted my home phone number as one of their local stores. I emailed them a couple weeks to change it and got no response.
You need to tell Radio Shack that you're going to start playing practical jokes on their potential customers - that will get their attention.
When you get a call for Radio Shack, just bullshit the caller and act like you don't know anything about electronics. Oh wait - that won't work, that's what happens when you call the real Radio Shack.
Besides that, there's the evil factor, considering Rambus believed more in the policy of suing for royalties as a revenue model instead of producing and selling a decent product.
The thing that nobody ever understood about Rambus is that they are not actually in the business of producing RAM. All along, they're business model was to come up with good ideas and license them out. There is nothing wrong with that.
The only thing that bothered me about Rambus is that they didn't disclose the patents they held while they participated in developing memory standards. That was crappy business.
I've been warezing for a while now, and always for the same reason. "Try before you buy."
That argument barely flies for MP3s, but if you think that even 1% of warez users are on the "try before you buy" program you're nuts.
It's like breaking into car lots and test-driving cars in the middle of the night because you want to get a feel for the car before you make the purchase. I don't think the cops are going to buy that one.
There's nothing more pathetic than watching Napster and warez users try to rationalize their habit. Just admit it, you don't want to pay the exorbitant prices for this stuff.
At least charge them for cable modem usage. And charge them for backups, but back it up to your own server.
Oh yeah, his cable company is going to be thrilled that he is reselling his bandwidth. If there is anything that has a potential for getting him sued, it is what you suggested.
Hmmm, so maybe you are a little too small to be breaking into the movie biz.
I've got an idea!! Why don't you invent something new and patent it. Then you don't have to worry about being squashed by the big guys for at least 17 years.
Yay patents!!!
How about simply doing a better job?
Do the math.
Company A has a small amount of capital. They spend a large portion of it developing their product.
Company B develops their version of the product at a much lower cost than Company A because they can utilize Company A's trial and errors.
Now upon entering the market Company A is almost broke and Company B is loaded - which puts B at an extreme marketing advantage. Doesn't sound very fair does it.
Basically, patents prevent big-ass monopolies like Microsoft from destroying you the instant you enter the market.
So we can expect that for the forseeable future we will only have Tivo, ReplayTV, and any other big players who can afford to pay the licenses (Microsoft, etc).
So why do we have patents again?
Patents serve the purpose of rewarding research and creativeness. They allow you to bust your ass doing research and in return you are guarenteed that for a few years nobody is going to steal your idea. After your time is up, everybody else gets a shot at it.
Do you have a better plan?
For PINE users [...]
;-).
Both of them
You are correct about the CPUs. Historically, AMD has been excellent about acheiving instruction set compatibility with Intel processors.
However, there is more to a system than the CPU. And chipsets for AMD processors are generally far below Intel chipsets with regard to stability - at least initially.
My beef with AMD setups is that VIA and SiS and friends generally turn out pretty shitty chipsets. Performance is usually fine, but it can take them several months before their drivers are up to par with Intel's on stability.
Maybe things have changed recently, but that has been my experience in the last few years.
I wonder if the rapid domination of the planet by humans started with a mutation, just like the way cancers start? & you know how cancers end? With the destruction of their own host, unless they are halted in time.
So why don't you do your part and off yourself?
It will be a little more expensive, but you might want to think about stringing "STP" CAT5, instead of UTP... that's Shielded Twisted Pair instead of Unshielded.
I'm by no means an expert on the matter, but a few years ago I did a lot of reading about comparisons between different cabling methodologies (UTP, STP, coax, etc).
The interesting thing about STP is that you'd think that the shielding could only help. However, unless you ground it, the long stretches of shielding can actually make interference worse by acting like a giant antenna.
That's why I wrote batemail. It does exactly what you describe only it works on *nix based hosts. Any attachment that has one of the "taboo" extensions is automagically removed from the email and a notice put in its place.
You'd be amazed how many of these attachments we're stripping out on a daily basis where I work.
The white man is still sticking it to 'em. It is an extreme disgrace.
Is this a joke?
Listen, you bigot dickhead, I don't make broad generalizations about other ethnicities. I would appreciate it if you would afford me (a "white man") the same courtesy.
Thanks.
You are the same guy who can't bring himself to remove the tags on his mattress, aren't you?
Here is the email that I received from Insight regarding their Insight@Home service (provided by Excite@Home):
Early this evening, Insight, along with other cable operators (including Cox, Comcast, Mediacom, and Rogers) signed an interim agreement with Excite@Home and the official unsecured bondholders' committee. This settlement agreement provides for continued service for three months, during which time we can accomplish an orderly transition to another high-speed provider.
The specific terms of the deal include a lump payment by the cable operators of $355 million, $10 million of which is Insight's portion. We agreed to pay this fee in order to extend the time required to ensure an orderly transition. This payment will not result in a price increase to you.
We're also actively continuing our discussions with other high-speed broadband providers. The offering of new providers will be the first step in opening up our network to bring more choices to our customers in the selection of their Internet Service Providers, fulfilling our vision of our broadband platform.
While today's settlement agreement is subject to court approval, we expect this approval shortly.
We have worked hard to ensure continued, uninterrupted broadband service for you and we're pleased it appears that effort has been successful. We appreciate your ongoing support of Insight.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Chief Operating Officer
Insight Communications
Hmmm, with Excite pulling the plug on a large portion of its subscribers (AT&T), shouldn't that free up quite a bit of bandwith for the rest of the @Home customers (Insight, Comcast, Cox)?
Maybe now I can return to the days of 50ms CounterStrike ping that I had in back January. Suhweet!
Of course, that is until Excite pulls this shit again in 2 months.
Insight Communications has released the following statement today to their customers:
Insight, along with other cable operators, is currently in the tail end of positive negotiations with @Home. At this time, we fully expect to maintain connectivity for our Insight@Home customer base.
We recognize that certain communities in our Central Illinois service areas have seen an interruption in service this morning due to an @Home error. We are working diligently to correct this issue and expect full service to be restored today. We apologize to these customers for any inconvenience this has caused.
Thank you for your continued patience as we work through this issue.
Gawd - even as my cable modem sputters its last remaining packets, I waste them whoring Karma on Slashdot.
Ugh. I feel sick.
The following letter is being e-mailed to all Insight@Home customers this evening, November 30, 2001:
Dear customer,
We at Insight would like to provide you with an update regarding the status of your Insight@Home service, based on today's hearing.
This afternoon, the US Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of California, issued the decision that enabled Excite@Home to cancel their contracts with their affiliated cable operators. It is important to note that this does not equate to the network shutting down; it simply means that @Home has the option to do so.
Based on the nature of the ongoing negotiations, we are still optimistic that this ruling will not result in a loss of service for our customers and that an agreement will be reached.
We are working hard to avoid any inconvenience to our customers. In mid-October, we, together with other @Home affiliates (including Cox, Comcast, and Mediacom), increased our payments by over 50% to ensure uninterrupted service until an agreement among the Creditors could be reached; this was done at no additional cost to our customers. @Home affiliates including Insight are supporting AT&T in its bid to buy the @Home network. If the network were to go dark, there would be no cash coming in nor would there be any bids for @Home's assets. Therefore, it makes no sense for @Home to "pull the plug."
If the unlikely occurs, we will cover your cost of a dial-up service until we can transition you back to our broadband service. As I mentioned in our earlier note, we are talking with AOL Broadband and Road Runner, and believe we can expedite a transition.
For now, service remains intact and we encourage you to visit the special page we have on our website for further updates: www.Insight-com.com/net/UPDATES. In addition, we'd like to remind you that our customer service centers are operating with expanded staffing and hours this weekend to accommodate your inquiries.
Please know that we, too, are frustrated by this victimization of our customers and ask you to bear with us through this process. We know this service is important to you and we are working hard to meet your needs. We truly appreciate your business and patience as we make every attempt to resolve this situation to your benefit.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Chief Operating & Financial Officer
Insight Communications
Not 1/4,000,000th of it.
Uh, what did I say that had anything to do with September 11th? The Afghanistan reference was intentionally topical, but you could substitute dozens of other countries and my point is just as valid.