I never used a TiVo and had no interest in one as I have had 2 VCR's for a long time. Recording programming to a hard drive was a nifty concept but not something I would be willing to sink time or money into.
I signed up for Comcast DVR so I could time shift HD and dolby digital sound encoded programming. Now some people may be in over the air range of network HD stations but I am not. Additionally I have HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Starz in HD and all of that is only available through my cable box. Since any TiVo type solution will receive the analog video/audio signal from the box that was not an acceptable solution.
This is why (in my opinion anyhow) the Comcast-Tivo thing will be a disaster for Tivo. The Motorolla box I use is OK, but it has some issues. However... I don't mind since this is the only way I can record HD/DD5.1 content.
All those listed are console exclusives!! Metal Gear Solid is PS2 and Halo2 is X-Box (at least for 2 years if the past carries to the future) If it won't play on the PC and it doesn't have a linux dedicated server I ain't interested.
Personally I am waiting for
UT2004 Half Life 2 Doom3 (no linux dedicated but I'll let that slide for this one)
Last and only console I owned (and still have) was a Telstar pong console. That was bought only because loading a game off of tape onto a TRS80 just took to long!
I am a NT sysadmin and have an XP and 2000 box of my own (and a i386 and Alpha Linux but that is besides the point) that I use regularly so I am in no way biased against Microsoft. However! I have been beta testing XP and in RC1 I tried to install the Novell Client (as we have a large Novell network) and it told me it wouldn't work and to pound sand (more or less). There was no way to bypass the block (it did let blackice slide in RC1 as it allowed me to overide the block). Anyhow, with this particular product I knew how to manually bypass the installer and after I did so it worked fine. Unfortunately it seems some of Microsoft's App and driver blocking could be political and not stability related.
I have used Alpha-Linux for many years now and have constantly had problems getting software. It has gotten far worse lately as more and more binary only software is coming out for Linux. Not only are vendors who claim to support Linux only supporting Linux/i386 but an awfull lot of code out there is sloppily i386 or at least 32 bit specific.
It is not a big deal to provide binaries for simple things like plug-ins for multiple platforms under Linux so I don't understand why the vendors don't. At the very least, if they don't intend to provide anything but Lintel software than they should not say they have Linux support but Linux/i386 support.
I think unless a push is made to force vendors to support the major alternative Linux platforms (Alpha,Sparc,Mips,Arm,PowerPC) then there soon will be little to no support for them. Remember what happened with Mips and Alpha Windows NT!
I was watching what it was doing and it seemed to be just another progressive download using a propietary file type. The video was good but you would expect that for the size of the downloads and the short time they played.
Once again I compiled it on my Alpha with high hopes. As always, a flawless compile with a non working executable. I haven't been able to run this on alpha since around m5. I lose more and more faith in mozilla every iteration.
What I find even more annoying is that I have a Alpha 233 and A PII 233 running exactly the same software (Redhat 5.2, EGCS 1.1.1 etc.) and with essentially the same memory and disk space and the PII can usually compile something in half the time of the Alpha.
If Intel is funding Cygnus to optimize for KNI and Merced why can't Compaq do the same for Alpha?
Slashdot Mirror
I currently subscribe to the Comcast DVR service.
... I don't mind since this is the only way I can record HD/DD5.1 content.
Why?
I never used a TiVo and had no interest in one as I have had 2 VCR's for a long time. Recording programming to a hard drive was a nifty concept but not something I would be willing to sink time or money into.
I signed up for Comcast DVR so I could time shift HD and dolby digital sound encoded programming. Now some people may be in over the air range of network HD stations but I am not. Additionally I have HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Starz in HD and all of that is only available through my cable box. Since any TiVo type solution will receive the analog video/audio signal from the box that was not an acceptable solution.
This is why (in my opinion anyhow) the Comcast-Tivo thing will be a disaster for Tivo. The Motorolla box I use is OK, but it has some issues. However
All those listed are console exclusives!! Metal Gear Solid is PS2 and Halo2 is X-Box (at least for 2 years if the past carries to the future) If it won't play on the PC and it doesn't have a linux dedicated server I ain't interested.
Personally I am waiting for
UT2004
Half Life 2
Doom3 (no linux dedicated but I'll let that slide for this one)
Last and only console I owned (and still have) was a Telstar pong console. That was bought only because loading a game off of tape onto a TRS80 just took to long!
I am a NT sysadmin and have an XP and 2000 box of my own (and a i386 and Alpha Linux but that is besides the point) that I use regularly so I am in no way biased against Microsoft. However! I have been beta testing XP and in RC1 I tried to install the Novell Client (as we have a large Novell network) and it told me it wouldn't work and to pound sand (more or less). There was no way to bypass the block (it did let blackice slide in RC1 as it allowed me to overide the block). Anyhow, with this particular product I knew how to manually bypass the installer and after I did so it worked fine. Unfortunately it seems some of Microsoft's App and driver blocking could be political and not stability related.
I have used Alpha-Linux for many years now and have constantly had problems getting software. It has gotten far worse lately as more and more binary only software is coming out for Linux. Not only are vendors who claim to support Linux only supporting Linux/i386 but an awfull lot of code out there is sloppily i386 or at least 32 bit specific.
It is not a big deal to provide binaries for simple things like plug-ins for multiple platforms under Linux so I don't understand why the vendors don't. At the very least, if they don't intend to provide anything but Lintel software than they should not say they have Linux support but Linux/i386 support.
I think unless a push is made to force vendors to support the major alternative Linux platforms (Alpha,Sparc,Mips,Arm,PowerPC) then there soon will be little to no support for them. Remember what happened with Mips and Alpha Windows NT!
I was watching what it was doing and it seemed to be just another progressive download using a propietary file type. The video was good but you would expect that for the size of the downloads and the short time they played.
Once again I compiled it on my Alpha with high hopes. As always, a flawless compile with a
non working executable. I haven't been able
to run this on alpha since around m5. I lose more and more faith in mozilla every iteration.
What I find even more annoying is that I have a Alpha 233 and A PII 233 running exactly the same
software (Redhat 5.2, EGCS 1.1.1 etc.) and with essentially the same memory and disk space and the PII can usually compile something in half the time of the Alpha.
If Intel is funding Cygnus to optimize for KNI and Merced why can't Compaq do the same for Alpha?