I agree, everybody (with the exception of the really clueless moron) is as smart as the Linux developer, many people are just lazy.
Every generation has had things progressively easier for them, due to the increases in technology. As such, people tend to become a bit lazy. People nowadays are used to having things handed to them on a silver platter, with no effort at all.
(A bit off-topic here) That's not to say that using a computer should not be easy. But at the same time, when you drive a car, you need to know to change the oil every so often, and fill up the gas tank, why shouldn't you have to know how to update your anti-virus software or secure your PC?
Like I said, with the other things, there's money involved. If the gas pump or scale are tampered with, that's measurable losses (or gains) for the tamperer, or tamperee (probably not a word, but hey, the context makes sense).
Maybe the problem here is that there doesn't seem to be any measurable effect to the voting machines not being secure (well, you and I know that there is, but maybe the mass public doesn't). I get the feeling that until there's something that costs a lot of people something (maybe money), people won't really care about how secure the voting machines are.
Voter apathy is at an all-time high right now, nobody cares about voting. Because of that, I suspect that most people, even if they hear of this, figure, "Well, I'm not voting, why do I care?"
I agree that the model used by the Nevada Gaming Commision would be perfect. Additionally, the Gaming Commission will from time to time, do random audits of machines to make sure that they're up to snuff, and there's big fines for those that don't meet the requirements.
Of course, there's a lot of money to be made or lost, and that's why they're so anal about it. Given that there's apparently discussion of suspending the November elections in the event of a terrorist attack, hey, what's this voting thing, and why is it so important?;)
Going back someways, GEOS (on the Commodore 64 and 128, I don't know about other versions) had a version of this that they called VLIR (Variable Length Index Record) files.
A VLIR file would have one sector, and that one sector pointed to multiple other sectors. One of the sectors was used for the "information sector" (info on the file), and simple VLIR files would then have the data in one of the other pointers.
More complex applications, like geoWrite, would use one pointer per page of the document, this limiting you to a page/graphics count.
VLIR files were nice, but they caused problems for almost every non-GEOS program, since files were expected to be a series of raw bytes (sectors), not segments. Even in GEOS, I had problems with VLIR files, when writing applications (I tried writing a DeskTop replacement, eventually I succeeded with a geoWrite word counter Desk Accessory).
If Comcast were to NAT all of their customers, they'd lose a lot of customers. It's not just people who want to run servers who need a routeable IP address.
There's a few programs out there that just won't work with NAT (or are a major pain). H.323 (Microsoft Netmeeting/GnomeMeeting, maybe the new MSN Messenger video chat?) won't work for one, most of the common Voice over IP implementations also won't work, among other things.
I wouldn't say screw the PVR-350 quite yet. If you don't have any plans to use the TV-Out part of it (which is somewhat limited right now), the PVR-250 is an excellent card.
The picture quality on the PVR-250 is much better than a WinTV (bttv card), and it's hardware encoding does take a lot of strain off of the CPU (if you want to use a slower CPU).
But, for me, the best part is the native MPEG-2 encoding. If I decide to save something that I recorded, I can load it into any MPEG-2 editor, cut out the commercials, and then I have a perfect MPEG-2 file, ready for putting on a DVD.
Remember hardware vendors don't keep you in mind. They just do what they think is best.
And that's why the "developers on Linux kernel for desktop" don't worry about printers, video cards, network cards and audio cards. They ask the companies for the programming details on the cards, and either don't get an answer, or are refused access to the specifications. Therefore, the developers tend to focus on things that they actually have documentation on.
Perhaps if hardware vendors actually opened up to the idea of providing drivers, or taking advantage of those who want to write the drivers for them, but lack the specifications, then Linux would be better.
At least in terms of cable modem networks, the equipment is already there. In the last few years, there's been some steady advances in the silicon (Broadcom's cable modem and CMTS chips have added quite a few new features, which frees up software processing) of both cable modems and the CMTS. And, to top it off, most of the filtering is done on the individual cable modem side, which puts less load on the head-ends.
Most configuration files for DOCSIS cable modems block at least a dozen ports nowadays (including some of the common server ports, depending on the operator).
I think for the moment, the only reason why the ISPs aren't buying these new products is because they're still paying off the previous generation of products that they bought.
A CMTS is at least $30,000, depending on the features, up to $50,000 (including a support package). Many cable operators are going straight from DOCSIS 1.0 to DOCSIS 2.0, without the DOCSIS 1.1 step because of the cost of migration.
I'm very well aware of that (I'm still pissed that the Rage Theater 200 on my card isn't supported). I was (in a trollish manner) trying to get my parent poster to either: 1. Give me the name of a high-end consumer 3D card for which there was open source drivers available for all of the features, or, 2. Show me somehow that the 3D card companies actually care about Linux users (enough to provide us open source drivers)
Now, I don't really do any gaming that much, although that might change in the future. Because of some other annoyances, I'm switching back to Windows for now. I admit that I'll miss KDevelop (it's a great IDE), but I just can't handle my USB/Firewire drive working sporadically under Linux (random lockups), and my LiteOn 812s DVD+/-R drive won't work at anything higher than 2x because the 2.6 kernel won't let me turn DMA on for it (but my Pioneer DVR-A04 worked fine with DMA).
Despite this, I really like UNIX/Linux more than Windows, I really do. I was using UNIX-variants before Windows, and I've always found the command line a very fast way to do certain things.
ATI and nVidia don't care about Linux users at all. Linux users don't make up enough of a marketshare for them to care. The binary drivers are provided merely as a dangling carrot to appease people.
The only way that nVidia and/or ATI would open up their drivers is if: 1. Linux was documented to be installed on at least 25% of all machines, with that number increasing, or, 2. Somebody paid them a ton of money.
The rumor that I heard is that the driver for the Promise TX2 SATA-150 cards/chips was opened because some people bought tons of Promise cards, to leverage Promise to release the driver GPL'd (as seen on the Linux-Kernel Archive.
Until the Open Source community can do this, I just don't see open source drivers available for video cards, or even other hardware.
Not really meaning to be an off-topic troll (or, maybe I am, I'm not really sure yet), but which video card do you suggest that I buy then?
I think that my ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 is crapping out (something with the DVI output, I need to do some troubleshooting). What should I replace it with?
I want something that will do fast 3D (with only open source accelerated drivers), and give me decent 2D as well. Since I'm buying a new card, it has to be at least as powerful as the 9700. Oh, and I'd much rather buy it retail than have to search eBay for it.
Any suggestions?
(Okay, that came off as trollish... But seriously, I think that there might be something with my video card, and I want a replacement that will work nicely with Linux).
-- Joe
Re:Blame it on Linksys
on
The 3Com Saga
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· Score: 1
I've found overall, that they're all crap.
Disclaimer: I work for a Taiwanese manufacturer, who OEMs for some smaller customers, but we use the same code/board designs as some of the bigger names, depending on the product. At our American office, I've had the pleasure of running QA tests on our own products, and some of the competitors' products.
They're all designed by one of a few companies, they're all assembled by one of a few companies, and they all use cheap, crappy parts, and (mostly) poor code.
I've had bad experiences with both Linksys and Netgear, but I haven't tried D-Link. Nowadays, you can't go based on a company's name, but rather the actual product itself.
I tried a Linksys WRT54G, and it dropped my connection every now and then. I really liked the Netgear WGR614, but it would just randomly drop all traffic over both the wireless and the Ethernet ports. I recently replaced my older Linksys 802.11b with a Netgear FWG114P that I got on sale ($60 off retail price, plus another $50 mail-in-rebate), and I'm pretty happy. The FWG114P seems to be a pretty good product, having gotten pretty good reviews as dslreports.com
Perhaps the reason it's half-decent is because it's billed as an office router, and as such, costs nearly double what a regular "home" router costs. Heck, it's in the old-school Netgear blue metal case, not the newer silver plastic.
Actually, analog is going out for another (and probably more important) reason. Using analog to contain the channels puts a lot of bandwidth restrictions on the cable operators. I read somewhere that in removing one analog channel, they free enough space for six digital channels (the numbers might be slightly wrong, but the idea is correct).
Once the cable operators get rid of the analog TV stations, they can redeploy that extra bandwidth for data (cable modems use the analog channel space), and dedicate streams for VoIP, among other things.
That is not "fair use". While I share your grief that some classic older shows stand little chance of getting on DVD (Get Smart series, anyone?) Time shifting on a VCR is not the same as archiving entire seasons of television programs though many people see no problem with it.
To me, it's timeshifting. It comes on at 4AM (CHiPs does come on at strange hours on TBS here, sometimes I get the Emergency Broadcast Test in the middle of the episode), so I'm going to have to record it anyway (I have to work during the day, I can't stay up until 6AM to watch TV). The only difference is that I'm not deleting the file after I have watched it - much like I might do with a real videotape.
Would it be any different if I just left the unmodified episodes on the PVR hard drive, as if it were a VHS tape (with commercials still there), and skip the commercials every time (FF/REW)? Or is the editing/archiving the episodes to TV that makes this non-legal?
As for the TV card... If it comes to the point where I have to insert a card into the TV (currently, with analog cable, I don't have to do this), or my existing recording equipment is disabled, I just might have to give up TV for good. Currently, it plays a very small role in my life, I'd rather fire up an editor and write some software, with the exception of the few shows I record.
The media needs to learn that not everybody wants things pushed into their brain - a lot of people want choice, and they want to exercise those choices.
Putting technological barriers (DRM) in place will not stop people from stealing. The people who intend to steal will just find other ways to do it. If I can view the content, I can find a way to reproduce it.
You can't fix a social problem (theft) with a technological solution. You need to get to the root is the social problem and make the change there. Assuming that we're all criminals because of the acts of a few is a bad thing (and that's basically what they're doing here).
To me, the problem isn't only with one copy, but as the article states, "Because programs that have been copied once cannot be duplicated or edited digitally, editing the programs via a personal computer has become impossible."
This poses a bit of a problem for me. At the moment, I have made it my goal to record all six seasons of CHiPs (yes, I have a thing for cheesy police shows), and put them on DVDs for my personal viewing pleasure (as it is highly unlikely to come out on DVD). Part of that involves removing the commercials from the recorded episodes.
Using MythTV with a PVR-250, I can do that (the resulting stream is just MPEG-2, I can edit it in any MPEG-2 editor), and then throw it into a DVD authoring program, add a menu and maybe some special effects, and there I go. I can't do that with this new setup.
Plus, what's up with having to insert a card into your TV? Why the heck should I have to identify myself to a TV? (The article doesn't say what the identification is used for.)
Yes, that is the same problem that I have. Then again, I didn't even get a CD with the keyboard. But, since I'm using it on my MythTV machine, it wasn't really necessary.
I find that XFree86 4.3 (that comes with Fedora Core 1) won't work properly with the extra keys - it seems that the keyboard uses double-byte values, and most of them map out to be the same thing, which is strange.
But, despite that, the keyboard works great for what I need it for - entering in commands every now and then.
The DSL router is not running NAT. NAT was turned off in the router explicitly for two reasons: 1. We have five static IPs (we're using business class DSL), and the MTA is configured with one of those static IPs. 2. If I was using NAT with the MTA (a Motorola device), then I'd have to forward a few ports (the manual for the Motorola MTA mentions this).
NAT is running on the firewall, which has one of the five static IP addresses. The corporate LAN uses this. Although the MTA supports a LAN behind it (using NAT), there is nothing connected to the MTA (there is no need).
The firewall (which is not attached to the MTA in any way) is a Linux PC using IPCop.
We have Vonage at our office, and while it saves a lot of money on calls (especially to Taiwan, which we call a lot, but we use it for our long distance U.S. calls too), we don't feel that it's good enough to drop out landline.
Don't get me wrong, I think Vonage is great, and I really like the service - just that sometimes it will break up, or give us strange echos, or other things.
The Vonage MTA is connected straight to our DSL router (I don't remember the brand), on our SBC DSL line. There's no firewalls or NAT that it's going through.
Despite the glitches (which don't happen very often, but always seem to happen at the wrong times), it's a pretty good service. But not good enough to replace a primary landline.
According to the website, they're sold out, but it might be available somewhere else. It works great (across the room for me, although my living room isn't that large), and it doesn't conflict with the Hauppauge IR receiver either (though it definitely will conflict with an irman, and maybe others, so be forewarned). It doesn't require direct line of sight, it will work on up to a 70 degree angle (if I remember the manufacturer's specs correctly). And, it was only $20 at the time.
Otherwise, I've heard that the Gyration products are great, but again, they're not Bluetooth, they're RF.
Yeah, depending on the CMTS, it can take some time for your modem to register as being offline, depending on what the modem is doing. Technically there's a bunch of "online" states, and if you don't know the display of the CMTS, you might get confused . For example, on the Cisco at the office, there's "online" (you're online), "online(d)" (your modem has registered, but you've been administratively disabled), "online(pk)" (online with BPI, KEK is assigned), and "online(pt)" (online with BPI, TEK assigned).
Then again, that's assuming that they actually have access to the CMTS, I would imagine that the call support staff don't, they're probably relying on some database software that likely presents a cached image, since asking the CMTS the status on a given modem can bog down the network, if done often enough.
I remember once, I called Pacific Bell (DSL) about a problem I was having, my modem couldn't sync. The operator told me that they could detect when my modem was powered on or off, and they told me that at the moment it was on. However, they forgot that they told me to unplug it from the wall, and I hadn't powered it on yet.:) Turned out to be a problem with a DSLAM in the neighborhood.
I think it was last summer, I was unemployed at that time, so I had nothing better to do than surf the web to try to find a job, and work on some personal coding projects.
Anyway, for some reason, my cable modem would sync to the CMTS, but any PC (or my router) that I had attached to the modem couldn't receive a DHCP lease. I tried removing the router, power cycling the PCs and modems, changing CAT-5 cables, to no avail.
I call Comcast, and I'm told to power off the modem and the PC, unplug the CAT-5 cable, and reverse it (that is, put the end that is in the PC into the modem, and vice-versa). After I powered everything up (which took a couple of minutes, it easily gave them a chance to purge the stale leases in the DHCP server), I can get a DHCP address again.
I ended up relaying the story to the hardware engineer who designed the cable modem, and he was laughing. He couldn't believe that Comcast would lie to me that badly.
Perfect Game: No batter makes it on base at all. No hits, no walks, no errors. The pitcher does not have to strike everybody out, put-outs (by fielders) are acceptable.
Perfect games are still pretty rare, because a lot of pitchers tend to walk a batter or two, leading us to...
No Hitter: No batter is credited with a hit (but there may be be base runners due to walks or errors). Runs can also score in a no-hitter (again, via walks and/or errors)
The idea is that the Telezapper (and devices like it) send out an SIT tone (the beeps that you get when you call a number and get the recording, "This number is not in service"). The telemarketing machines are supposed to recognize that and assume that the phone number isn't in service anymore (and thus, to avoid calling you again, which wastes time and money, remove you from the list).
At the telemarketing company I worked for about six years ago (*hangs my head in shame*), even though the computer did the dialing, we'd get to listen once the connection was made, no matter what is was. It was then up to me to determine whether to add that number to the bit bucket (for that list) or not.
So, depending on the setup the telemarketer has, it's easy enough to listen to the tone, and then wait for the person to answer the phone. Heck, I think that they have it automated by the dialing machines now.
I'm well aware of the hacked firmwares, I used a few of them on my DVR-A04 (and a good link is here). While those firmwares are pretty good, what you're forgetting is that the way that they manage the overburn (because that's really what it is, in the case of the DVR-A04, you were basically overclocking the burn, it's just that Pioneer did some testing and found that certain media didn't have any problems with it), they use a "default" write strategy for the overburn. This doesn't necessarily work very well (especially for some 4x discs, it seems). Luckily 2x wasn't a part of the official standard, so how 2x is done doesn't matter, but 8x is part of the standard, so it does matter.
And yes, I have your strategy, buy a few blanks of a type, and then see how well they overburn. Of course, I'm now running into some problems on some of my media, because it wasn't designed to overburn, but that's my fault. Also, don't forget that some manufacturers change who makes their discs, so it's possible to get one batch that works great, and one batch that doesn't.
What I'm sick of is these drive manufacturer's coming out with a drive, saying it's "8x", but then when you read the fine print, it says that 8x isn't approved by the standards body yet. So, if the standard changes and the drive can't be patched to meet it, then you're SOL when it takes effect, and it becomes difficult to buy your special media.
At this point, I refuse to buy an 8x (-R) burner, until there is an announcement stating that 8x (-R) is an official standard and that there is firmware for the drive that supports it. I got burned on the 2x thing before (that burner cost me $500), I'm not getting burned again.
Also, let's not forget that companies like Pioneer that do this are keeping the cost of the higher speed media high. The reason for this is that all of that testing for a media to get (specifically Pioneer) 8x certified costs money to the media manufacturer, and that cost gets passed on to the consumer. But, from Pioneer's take, if they didn't do it, they wouldn't be able to sell drives (because their speed would be less than +R).
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I agree, everybody (with the exception of the really clueless moron) is as smart as the Linux developer, many people are just lazy.
Every generation has had things progressively easier for them, due to the increases in technology. As such, people tend to become a bit lazy. People nowadays are used to having things handed to them on a silver platter, with no effort at all.
(A bit off-topic here)
That's not to say that using a computer should not be easy. But at the same time, when you drive a car, you need to know to change the oil every so often, and fill up the gas tank, why shouldn't you have to know how to update your anti-virus software or secure your PC?
-- Joe
Like I said, with the other things, there's money involved. If the gas pump or scale are tampered with, that's measurable losses (or gains) for the tamperer, or tamperee (probably not a word, but hey, the context makes sense).
Maybe the problem here is that there doesn't seem to be any measurable effect to the voting machines not being secure (well, you and I know that there is, but maybe the mass public doesn't). I get the feeling that until there's something that costs a lot of people something (maybe money), people won't really care about how secure the voting machines are.
Voter apathy is at an all-time high right now, nobody cares about voting. Because of that, I suspect that most people, even if they hear of this, figure, "Well, I'm not voting, why do I care?"
-- Joe
I agree that the model used by the Nevada Gaming Commision would be perfect. Additionally, the Gaming Commission will from time to time, do random audits of machines to make sure that they're up to snuff, and there's big fines for those that don't meet the requirements.
;)
Of course, there's a lot of money to be made or lost, and that's why they're so anal about it. Given that there's apparently discussion of suspending the November elections in the event of a terrorist attack, hey, what's this voting thing, and why is it so important?
-- Joe
Going back someways, GEOS (on the Commodore 64 and 128, I don't know about other versions) had a version of this that they called VLIR (Variable Length Index Record) files.
A VLIR file would have one sector, and that one sector pointed to multiple other sectors. One of the sectors was used for the "information sector" (info on the file), and simple VLIR files would then have the data in one of the other pointers.
More complex applications, like geoWrite, would use one pointer per page of the document, this limiting you to a page/graphics count.
VLIR files were nice, but they caused problems for almost every non-GEOS program, since files were expected to be a series of raw bytes (sectors), not segments. Even in GEOS, I had problems with VLIR files, when writing applications (I tried writing a DeskTop replacement, eventually I succeeded with a geoWrite word counter Desk Accessory).
GEOS VLIR Information
-- Joe
If Comcast were to NAT all of their customers, they'd lose a lot of customers. It's not just people who want to run servers who need a routeable IP address.
There's a few programs out there that just won't work with NAT (or are a major pain). H.323 (Microsoft Netmeeting/GnomeMeeting, maybe the new MSN Messenger video chat?) won't work for one, most of the common Voice over IP implementations also won't work, among other things.
So, no, this is not a solution.
-- Joe
I wouldn't say screw the PVR-350 quite yet. If you don't have any plans to use the TV-Out part of it (which is somewhat limited right now), the PVR-250 is an excellent card.
The picture quality on the PVR-250 is much better than a WinTV (bttv card), and it's hardware encoding does take a lot of strain off of the CPU (if you want to use a slower CPU).
But, for me, the best part is the native MPEG-2 encoding. If I decide to save something that I recorded, I can load it into any MPEG-2 editor, cut out the commercials, and then I have a perfect MPEG-2 file, ready for putting on a DVD.
-- Joe
Remember hardware vendors don't keep you in mind. They just do what they think is best.
And that's why the "developers on Linux kernel for desktop" don't worry about printers, video cards, network cards and audio cards. They ask the companies for the programming details on the cards, and either don't get an answer, or are refused access to the specifications. Therefore, the developers tend to focus on things that they actually have documentation on.
Perhaps if hardware vendors actually opened up to the idea of providing drivers, or taking advantage of those who want to write the drivers for them, but lack the specifications, then Linux would be better.
-- Joe
At least in terms of cable modem networks, the equipment is already there. In the last few years, there's been some steady advances in the silicon (Broadcom's cable modem and CMTS chips have added quite a few new features, which frees up software processing) of both cable modems and the CMTS. And, to top it off, most of the filtering is done on the individual cable modem side, which puts less load on the head-ends.
Most configuration files for DOCSIS cable modems block at least a dozen ports nowadays (including some of the common server ports, depending on the operator).
I think for the moment, the only reason why the ISPs aren't buying these new products is because they're still paying off the previous generation of products that they bought.
A CMTS is at least $30,000, depending on the features, up to $50,000 (including a support package). Many cable operators are going straight from DOCSIS 1.0 to DOCSIS 2.0, without the DOCSIS 1.1 step because of the cost of migration.
-- Joe
I'm very well aware of that (I'm still pissed that the Rage Theater 200 on my card isn't supported). I was (in a trollish manner) trying to get my parent poster to either:
1. Give me the name of a high-end consumer 3D card for which there was open source drivers available for all of the features, or,
2. Show me somehow that the 3D card companies actually care about Linux users (enough to provide us open source drivers)
Now, I don't really do any gaming that much, although that might change in the future. Because of some other annoyances, I'm switching back to Windows for now. I admit that I'll miss KDevelop (it's a great IDE), but I just can't handle my USB/Firewire drive working sporadically under Linux (random lockups), and my LiteOn 812s DVD+/-R drive won't work at anything higher than 2x because the 2.6 kernel won't let me turn DMA on for it (but my Pioneer DVR-A04 worked fine with DMA).
Despite this, I really like UNIX/Linux more than Windows, I really do. I was using UNIX-variants before Windows, and I've always found the command line a very fast way to do certain things.
-- Joe
ATI and nVidia don't care about Linux users at all. Linux users don't make up enough of a marketshare for them to care. The binary drivers are provided merely as a dangling carrot to appease people.
The only way that nVidia and/or ATI would open up their drivers is if:
1. Linux was documented to be installed on at least 25% of all machines, with that number increasing, or,
2. Somebody paid them a ton of money.
The rumor that I heard is that the driver for the Promise TX2 SATA-150 cards/chips was opened because some people bought tons of Promise cards, to leverage Promise to release the driver GPL'd (as seen on the Linux-Kernel Archive.
Until the Open Source community can do this, I just don't see open source drivers available for video cards, or even other hardware.
-- Joe
Not really meaning to be an off-topic troll (or, maybe I am, I'm not really sure yet), but which video card do you suggest that I buy then?
I think that my ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 is crapping out (something with the DVI output, I need to do some troubleshooting). What should I replace it with?
I want something that will do fast 3D (with only open source accelerated drivers), and give me decent 2D as well. Since I'm buying a new card, it has to be at least as powerful as the 9700. Oh, and I'd much rather buy it retail than have to search eBay for it.
Any suggestions?
(Okay, that came off as trollish... But seriously, I think that there might be something with my video card, and I want a replacement that will work nicely with Linux).
-- Joe
I've found overall, that they're all crap.
Disclaimer: I work for a Taiwanese manufacturer, who OEMs for some smaller customers, but we use the same code/board designs as some of the bigger names, depending on the product. At our American office, I've had the pleasure of running QA tests on our own products, and some of the competitors' products.
They're all designed by one of a few companies, they're all assembled by one of a few companies, and they all use cheap, crappy parts, and (mostly) poor code.
I've had bad experiences with both Linksys and Netgear, but I haven't tried D-Link. Nowadays, you can't go based on a company's name, but rather the actual product itself.
I tried a Linksys WRT54G, and it dropped my connection every now and then. I really liked the Netgear WGR614, but it would just randomly drop all traffic over both the wireless and the Ethernet ports. I recently replaced my older Linksys 802.11b with a Netgear FWG114P that I got on sale ($60 off retail price, plus another $50 mail-in-rebate), and I'm pretty happy. The FWG114P seems to be a pretty good product, having gotten pretty good reviews as dslreports.com
Perhaps the reason it's half-decent is because it's billed as an office router, and as such, costs nearly double what a regular "home" router costs. Heck, it's in the old-school Netgear blue metal case, not the newer silver plastic.
-- Joe
Actually, analog is going out for another (and probably more important) reason. Using analog to contain the channels puts a lot of bandwidth restrictions on the cable operators. I read somewhere that in removing one analog channel, they free enough space for six digital channels (the numbers might be slightly wrong, but the idea is correct).
Once the cable operators get rid of the analog TV stations, they can redeploy that extra bandwidth for data (cable modems use the analog channel space), and dedicate streams for VoIP, among other things.
-- Joe
That is not "fair use". While I share your grief that some classic older shows stand little chance of getting on DVD (Get Smart series, anyone?) Time shifting on a VCR is not the same as archiving entire seasons of television programs though many people see no problem with it.
To me, it's timeshifting. It comes on at 4AM (CHiPs does come on at strange hours on TBS here, sometimes I get the Emergency Broadcast Test in the middle of the episode), so I'm going to have to record it anyway (I have to work during the day, I can't stay up until 6AM to watch TV). The only difference is that I'm not deleting the file after I have watched it - much like I might do with a real videotape.
Would it be any different if I just left the unmodified episodes on the PVR hard drive, as if it were a VHS tape (with commercials still there), and skip the commercials every time (FF/REW)? Or is the editing/archiving the episodes to TV that makes this non-legal?
As for the TV card... If it comes to the point where I have to insert a card into the TV (currently, with analog cable, I don't have to do this), or my existing recording equipment is disabled, I just might have to give up TV for good. Currently, it plays a very small role in my life, I'd rather fire up an editor and write some software, with the exception of the few shows I record.
The media needs to learn that not everybody wants things pushed into their brain - a lot of people want choice, and they want to exercise those choices.
-- Joe
Putting technological barriers (DRM) in place will not stop people from stealing. The people who intend to steal will just find other ways to do it. If I can view the content, I can find a way to reproduce it.
You can't fix a social problem (theft) with a technological solution. You need to get to the root is the social problem and make the change there. Assuming that we're all criminals because of the acts of a few is a bad thing (and that's basically what they're doing here).
-- Joe
To me, the problem isn't only with one copy, but as the article states, "Because programs that have been copied once cannot be duplicated or edited digitally, editing the programs via a personal computer has become impossible."
This poses a bit of a problem for me. At the moment, I have made it my goal to record all six seasons of CHiPs (yes, I have a thing for cheesy police shows), and put them on DVDs for my personal viewing pleasure (as it is highly unlikely to come out on DVD). Part of that involves removing the commercials from the recorded episodes.
Using MythTV with a PVR-250, I can do that (the resulting stream is just MPEG-2, I can edit it in any MPEG-2 editor), and then throw it into a DVD authoring program, add a menu and maybe some special effects, and there I go. I can't do that with this new setup.
Plus, what's up with having to insert a card into your TV? Why the heck should I have to identify myself to a TV? (The article doesn't say what the identification is used for.)
-- Joe
Yes, that is the same problem that I have. Then again, I didn't even get a CD with the keyboard. But, since I'm using it on my MythTV machine, it wasn't really necessary.
I find that XFree86 4.3 (that comes with Fedora Core 1) won't work properly with the extra keys - it seems that the keyboard uses double-byte values, and most of them map out to be the same thing, which is strange.
But, despite that, the keyboard works great for what I need it for - entering in commands every now and then.
-- Joe
The DSL router is not running NAT. NAT was turned off in the router explicitly for two reasons:
1. We have five static IPs (we're using business class DSL), and the MTA is configured with one of those static IPs.
2. If I was using NAT with the MTA (a Motorola device), then I'd have to forward a few ports (the manual for the Motorola MTA mentions this).
NAT is running on the firewall, which has one of the five static IP addresses. The corporate LAN uses this. Although the MTA supports a LAN behind it (using NAT), there is nothing connected to the MTA (there is no need).
The firewall (which is not attached to the MTA in any way) is a Linux PC using IPCop.
-- Joe
We have Vonage at our office, and while it saves a lot of money on calls (especially to Taiwan, which we call a lot, but we use it for our long distance U.S. calls too), we don't feel that it's good enough to drop out landline.
Don't get me wrong, I think Vonage is great, and I really like the service - just that sometimes it will break up, or give us strange echos, or other things.
The Vonage MTA is connected straight to our DSL router (I don't remember the brand), on our SBC DSL line. There's no firewalls or NAT that it's going through.
Despite the glitches (which don't happen very often, but always seem to happen at the wrong times), it's a pretty good service. But not good enough to replace a primary landline.
-- Joe
It doesn't have Bluetooth (it uses IR instead), but this is the keyboard I use with my HTPC (MythTV):
Parex Wireless Multimedia Keyboard w/ Intellipoint Mouse
According to the website, they're sold out, but it might be available somewhere else. It works great (across the room for me, although my living room isn't that large), and it doesn't conflict with the Hauppauge IR receiver either (though it definitely will conflict with an irman, and maybe others, so be forewarned). It doesn't require direct line of sight, it will work on up to a 70 degree angle (if I remember the manufacturer's specs correctly). And, it was only $20 at the time.
Otherwise, I've heard that the Gyration products are great, but again, they're not Bluetooth, they're RF.
-- Joe
Yeah, depending on the CMTS, it can take some time for your modem to register as being offline, depending on what the modem is doing. Technically there's a bunch of "online" states, and if you don't know the display of the CMTS, you might get confused . For example, on the Cisco at the office, there's "online" (you're online), "online(d)" (your modem has registered, but you've been administratively disabled), "online(pk)" (online with BPI, KEK is assigned), and "online(pt)" (online with BPI, TEK assigned).
:) Turned out to be a problem with a DSLAM in the neighborhood.
Then again, that's assuming that they actually have access to the CMTS, I would imagine that the call support staff don't, they're probably relying on some database software that likely presents a cached image, since asking the CMTS the status on a given modem can bog down the network, if done often enough.
I remember once, I called Pacific Bell (DSL) about a problem I was having, my modem couldn't sync. The operator told me that they could detect when my modem was powered on or off, and they told me that at the moment it was on. However, they forgot that they told me to unplug it from the wall, and I hadn't powered it on yet.
-- Joe
Comcast... Gotta love 'em.
I think it was last summer, I was unemployed at that time, so I had nothing better to do than surf the web to try to find a job, and work on some personal coding projects.
Anyway, for some reason, my cable modem would sync to the CMTS, but any PC (or my router) that I had attached to the modem couldn't receive a DHCP lease. I tried removing the router, power cycling the PCs and modems, changing CAT-5 cables, to no avail.
I call Comcast, and I'm told to power off the modem and the PC, unplug the CAT-5 cable, and reverse it (that is, put the end that is in the PC into the modem, and vice-versa). After I powered everything up (which took a couple of minutes, it easily gave them a chance to purge the stale leases in the DHCP server), I can get a DHCP address again.
I ended up relaying the story to the hardware engineer who designed the cable modem, and he was laughing. He couldn't believe that Comcast would lie to me that badly.
-- Joe
Not quite.
Perfect Game: No batter makes it on base at all. No hits, no walks, no errors. The pitcher does not have to strike everybody out, put-outs (by fielders) are acceptable.
Perfect games are still pretty rare, because a lot of pitchers tend to walk a batter or two, leading us to...
No Hitter: No batter is credited with a hit (but there may be be base runners due to walks or errors). Runs can also score in a no-hitter (again, via walks and/or errors)
-- Joe
It doesn't work that easily.
The idea is that the Telezapper (and devices like it) send out an SIT tone (the beeps that you get when you call a number and get the recording, "This number is not in service"). The telemarketing machines are supposed to recognize that and assume that the phone number isn't in service anymore (and thus, to avoid calling you again, which wastes time and money, remove you from the list).
At the telemarketing company I worked for about six years ago (*hangs my head in shame*), even though the computer did the dialing, we'd get to listen once the connection was made, no matter what is was. It was then up to me to determine whether to add that number to the bit bucket (for that list) or not.
So, depending on the setup the telemarketer has, it's easy enough to listen to the tone, and then wait for the person to answer the phone. Heck, I think that they have it automated by the dialing machines now.
-- Joe
I'm well aware of the hacked firmwares, I used a few of them on my DVR-A04 (and a good link is here). While those firmwares are pretty good, what you're forgetting is that the way that they manage the overburn (because that's really what it is, in the case of the DVR-A04, you were basically overclocking the burn, it's just that Pioneer did some testing and found that certain media didn't have any problems with it), they use a "default" write strategy for the overburn. This doesn't necessarily work very well (especially for some 4x discs, it seems). Luckily 2x wasn't a part of the official standard, so how 2x is done doesn't matter, but 8x is part of the standard, so it does matter.
And yes, I have your strategy, buy a few blanks of a type, and then see how well they overburn. Of course, I'm now running into some problems on some of my media, because it wasn't designed to overburn, but that's my fault. Also, don't forget that some manufacturers change who makes their discs, so it's possible to get one batch that works great, and one batch that doesn't.
What I'm sick of is these drive manufacturer's coming out with a drive, saying it's "8x", but then when you read the fine print, it says that 8x isn't approved by the standards body yet. So, if the standard changes and the drive can't be patched to meet it, then you're SOL when it takes effect, and it becomes difficult to buy your special media.
At this point, I refuse to buy an 8x (-R) burner, until there is an announcement stating that 8x (-R) is an official standard and that there is firmware for the drive that supports it. I got burned on the 2x thing before (that burner cost me $500), I'm not getting burned again.
Also, let's not forget that companies like Pioneer that do this are keeping the cost of the higher speed media high. The reason for this is that all of that testing for a media to get (specifically Pioneer) 8x certified costs money to the media manufacturer, and that cost gets passed on to the consumer. But, from Pioneer's take, if they didn't do it, they wouldn't be able to sell drives (because their speed would be less than +R).
-- Joe