The day after Christmas day is Boxing day and a holiday in England and Wales but not Scotland. Traditionally it was the first working day after Christmas day and was the day that the workers received gifts and bonuses from their bosses.
I'm here in the UK and with my subscription Sky (my sat company) doesn't charge extra for the PVR support. Plus, because in Europe we have SCART with it's RGB output it's about as good an analogue feed to a TV you can get. So basically a Mac Mini set up would have to compete with that and EyeTVs are expensive over here in Europe.
I really need to talk to the RF guys here where I work because I'm sure we could come up with a digital front end that plugs in to the firewire port of the Mac, then you just need software on the mac to demultiplex the transport stream and extract the MPEG.
People don't always use price as the purchasing argument. If they did no one would ever buy a new (BMW) Mini but would by a cheap Renault say instead.
Yes the Mac Mini isn't expandable. But I built my last PC. I built it to be as expandable as possible. Even so, if I were to upgrade it I would have to atleast buy a whole new motherboard, processor and memory because my current board wont take anything now available. Last time I upgraded I had to replace the power supply because it wasn't powerful enough for the new innards.
If I was buying a cheap pre built machine I would get some crap cheap and nasty monitor and probably keyboard. The build quality of PCs isn't good either, and they are noisy in operation. I would also be paying for Windows which I don't want anyway as I run Linux on PCs. You do get shed loads of software with the Mac.
Our local Apple store is right in the heart of the city by a major thoroughfare. There are always people in there and not just Apple fans. Admittedly many of them are looking at iPods but if the Mac Mini is on show there, I know they will look at it. Also, as far as I am aware, the UK's largest chain of PC wharehouse stores still sells Macs (although I would never buy there).
In the end I could update my PC which needs updating, or buy a Mac Mini to sit on top of my aged blue and white G3 (which I bought second hand just to have an OS-X machine). The latter sounds more appealing to me.
I help design and develop digital set top boxes for a living and EyeTV's products are far too expensive. I've been considering a Mac Mini as a front room media centre but the sad fact is that I can actually get hold of a DVR for my digital satelite service cheaper than an EyeTV box. What I want is a USB2 or preferably Firewire full screen capture device and haven't been able to find one.
When I flew to Los Angeles just before Christmas (to help prepare a demo for CES) I flew from Manchester (UK) to Philly and then on to LA. At Manchester it was slow getting through security and I was heavily questioned (this may have been because of my New Rocks) by a rent-a-cop. Then at Philly it took me an hour to get through imigration.
On the way back I had been pre-warned that the queues at LAX for security were horendous and they were. It came out of the door and went down the whole length of the terminal. It took something like an hour and a half to get through security. Admittedly on the way back I didn't have to go through the palarver of having to check my baggages back in at Philly (which I did have to do on the way out).
All flights were on Airbuses; 330s on the trans-atlantic flights and 320s on the ones across the States. I'm quite big but despite that I was generally comfortable except for the last flight home where I had a fidgetty five year old, who was sitting next to me, kicking me in the thigh as she tried to curl up and sleep and an old guy in front of me who insisted on reclining his seat and smacking it in to my kneecaps. So I ended up catching up with movies I'd missed using the neat personal video system (complete with trick play).
Is that tons or tonnes. The original story has metric the US units in brackets and yet it talks of tons which are US/Imperial and not tonnes which are the metric unit of weight. Is this a typo?
Firstly Linux isn't an ROTS (sic). It's not predictive and using pthreads say for thread control and IPC has much to be desired when compared to VxWorks. For example in pthreads you can't try and take a semaphore and then have it either return when it can take or when a specified time out is fulfilled. You have to sleep and poll.
Secondly, yes Tornado is rather dated, but I don't believe the debugging environment any worse than say ddd and gdb server. In fact I generally find it quicker to develop in Tornado than for linux on embedded devices.
We write software components that can plug together. Each component has a configuration file that an in-house developed make configuration system utility can use to configure a make system with. That utility will also generate Tornado project files. So pull the components you need out of CVS. Build a Tornado project. Fire up Tornado and develop downloading objects via an ICE/JTAG or ethernet to run and debug on the hardware.
Finally, Wind River are now moving with the times. The new tools are Eclipse based and they are improving their POSIX compatibility in the OS so that you can compile the same code for Linux or for VxWorks if you need hard real time.
As the company I work for uses several operating systems including VxWorks and Linux Wind River's embracement of open source is allowing us to standardise on tools and use the appropriate operating system for the appropriate device.
Actually that was a priority inversion issue which can happen with any operating system when the code isn't designed properly. It was because of the flexibility of VxWorks when a debug build is used that allowed them to patch the software and fix the problem.
Besides Great Britain, I believe the rest of Europe has evolved to the Metric system.
The UK is no different and uses celcius too. In fact officially we are metric except for some minor exceptions such as the pint of beer, and miles as a measurement of distance (giving the bizarre miles per litre unit of fuel consumption). Nearly everyone knows both though. But don't forget that American units aren't all the same as Imperial Units (our old system) either. We have 20 floz to a pint and 1760 yards to the mile for a start.
I have a land line with BT but it's really only there as a way of getting ADSL in to the house. I seem to remember that the actually cost of calls on that line last month were around a couple of dollars. In fact the usage of the land line has just increased a little as I recently invested in a set of cordless (DET) phones for the landline which means I can wander around the house (and the yard) and use the landline instead of my mobile.
But even then I have an free off-peak call quota bundled with my cellphone contract which means that if I'm calling another landline or someone else on the same cellphone provider it's still cheaper to use the cellphone. Also here in Europe texting is for more prevalent than the US and I have some many free texts bundled in my contract that I never use them up.
Basically I wonder how the phone companies make money. I pay a monthly cellphone contract. I got a free phone (Sony Ericsson T610), most of my calls fall in to the contract's bundled allowances and I pay a monthly land-line contract and hardly use it for calls. In fact both my cellphone and my land-line are used more for data than for speech and that's what I end up paying extra for whether that be a monthly ADSL cost or GPRS charges.
Of course not. We've decided to let you spend all your money laying the ground work so that we can pick it up quickly, and okay make mistakes, but less than we would had we been doing it from scratch. Hell it's only fair, the US was doing that for years. (Computers. Radar. Jet Engines. Fast than sound travel - the X1 was based mainly on a British design) We just turned the tables for a change.
I've always hated "OK" and "Cancel" because sometime s it's really not clear the right button to press actually is. I've always felt that in such cases you should have a definitive statement such as "Formatting this disk will erase all of the data!" with "Format" "Cancel" as the options.
There's this psychological effect called risk compensation. It's been shown that the safe people believe they are the less careful they will be. So if you have mechanisms in your car to stop you from being stupid you'll actually be even more stupid that you would normally be and so the whole thing balances out.
Here in the UK Volvo drivers have a bad name with motorcyclists. Why? Because they are very safe cars and so many Volvo drivers take less care than someone in a less safe car. But cars aren't the only thing on the road and it's all well and good you being safe in your car if you're involved in an accident but what about the other poor sod!
Actually the best thing to make everyone drive safely and wear seat belts and the like is to put a spike in the centre of the steering wheel!
There are already vehicles that allow the passengers to relax in peace. They are called trains!
The problem with this technology in cars is that it assumes that cars are the only vehicles on the road. What about the pedal and motorcyclists for example?
Not to mention that it's an interpreted language on an already somewhat slow mobile CPU (but this is the java problem, great if you have tons of spare cycles, not so good if you have to be efficient or rely on performance)...
Hmmm, my SonyEricsson T610 has a 180MIPs ARM in it with a core that supports Java byte code. It's not interpreted and it's not slow. That's why so many phones feature ARM processors. My Zaurus has the Jeode Personal Java KVM on it and it's not really a slouch either since all the graphics libraries are actually implemented natively on top of QT.
Most modern computer developers are spoilt for power and so get lazy with their coding. I work in digital settop box development and we generally have 200MIPs to play with and even including all the interactive stuff we tend to have, on average, 60% spare processing capacity. It's usually the memory usage we have to work on (to keep the cost down) rather than worrying about running out of beans.
Slashdot Mirror
The day after Christmas day is Boxing day and a holiday in England and Wales but not Scotland. Traditionally it was the first working day after Christmas day and was the day that the workers received gifts and bonuses from their bosses.
I'm here in the UK and with my subscription Sky (my sat company) doesn't charge extra for the PVR support. Plus, because in Europe we have SCART with it's RGB output it's about as good an analogue feed to a TV you can get. So basically a Mac Mini set up would have to compete with that and EyeTVs are expensive over here in Europe.
I really need to talk to the RF guys here where I work because I'm sure we could come up with a digital front end that plugs in to the firewire port of the Mac, then you just need software on the mac to demultiplex the transport stream and extract the MPEG.
People don't always use price as the purchasing argument. If they did no one would ever buy a new (BMW) Mini but would by a cheap Renault say instead.
Yes the Mac Mini isn't expandable. But I built my last PC. I built it to be as expandable as possible. Even so, if I were to upgrade it I would have to atleast buy a whole new motherboard, processor and memory because my current board wont take anything now available. Last time I upgraded I had to replace the power supply because it wasn't powerful enough for the new innards.
If I was buying a cheap pre built machine I would get some crap cheap and nasty monitor and probably keyboard. The build quality of PCs isn't good either, and they are noisy in operation. I would also be paying for Windows which I don't want anyway as I run Linux on PCs. You do get shed loads of software with the Mac.
Our local Apple store is right in the heart of the city by a major thoroughfare. There are always people in there and not just Apple fans. Admittedly many of them are looking at iPods but if the Mac Mini is on show there, I know they will look at it. Also, as far as I am aware, the UK's largest chain of PC wharehouse stores still sells Macs (although I would never buy there).
In the end I could update my PC which needs updating, or buy a Mac Mini to sit on top of my aged blue and white G3 (which I bought second hand just to have an OS-X machine). The latter sounds more appealing to me.
I help design and develop digital set top boxes for a living and EyeTV's products are far too expensive. I've been considering a Mac Mini as a front room media centre but the sad fact is that I can actually get hold of a DVR for my digital satelite service cheaper than an EyeTV box. What I want is a USB2 or preferably Firewire full screen capture device and haven't been able to find one.
I've read the story on the BBC News web site and now I've read it here. That means at least three sites are questioning my ability at math.
When I flew to Los Angeles just before Christmas (to help prepare a demo for CES) I flew from Manchester (UK) to Philly and then on to LA. At Manchester it was slow getting through security and I was heavily questioned (this may have been because of my New Rocks) by a rent-a-cop. Then at Philly it took me an hour to get through imigration.
On the way back I had been pre-warned that the queues at LAX for security were horendous and they were. It came out of the door and went down the whole length of the terminal. It took something like an hour and a half to get through security. Admittedly on the way back I didn't have to go through the palarver of having to check my baggages back in at Philly (which I did have to do on the way out).
All flights were on Airbuses; 330s on the trans-atlantic flights and 320s on the ones across the States. I'm quite big but despite that I was generally comfortable except for the last flight home where I had a fidgetty five year old, who was sitting next to me, kicking me in the thigh as she tried to curl up and sleep and an old guy in front of me who insisted on reclining his seat and smacking it in to my kneecaps. So I ended up catching up with movies I'd missed using the neat personal video system (complete with trick play).
Is that tons or tonnes. The original story has metric the US units in brackets and yet it talks of tons which are US/Imperial and not tonnes which are the metric unit of weight. Is this a typo?
Yes but what would you rather have, a BMW or a Ford?
The UK is so lazy that we couldn't even be bothered to submit our results.
Remind me, can I move throughout the EU with a single priceplan?
I can and have!
This is cross platform code being developed. Why should I have to resort to Linux wizardry just because it's not complete.
Firstly Linux isn't an ROTS (sic). It's not predictive and using pthreads say for thread control and IPC has much to be desired when compared to VxWorks. For example in pthreads you can't try and take a semaphore and then have it either return when it can take or when a specified time out is fulfilled. You have to sleep and poll.
Secondly, yes Tornado is rather dated, but I don't believe the debugging environment any worse than say ddd and gdb server. In fact I generally find it quicker to develop in Tornado than for linux on embedded devices.
We write software components that can plug together. Each component has a configuration file that an in-house developed make configuration system utility can use to configure a make system with. That utility will also generate Tornado project files. So pull the components you need out of CVS. Build a Tornado project. Fire up Tornado and develop downloading objects via an ICE/JTAG or ethernet to run and debug on the hardware.
Finally, Wind River are now moving with the times. The new tools are Eclipse based and they are improving their POSIX compatibility in the OS so that you can compile the same code for Linux or for VxWorks if you need hard real time.
As the company I work for uses several operating systems including VxWorks and Linux Wind River's embracement of open source is allowing us to standardise on tools and use the appropriate operating system for the appropriate device.
Actually that was a priority inversion issue which can happen with any operating system when the code isn't designed properly. It was because of the flexibility of VxWorks when a debug build is used that allowed them to patch the software and fix the problem.
Besides Great Britain, I believe the rest of Europe has evolved to the Metric system.
The UK is no different and uses celcius too. In fact officially we are metric except for some minor exceptions such as the pint of beer, and miles as a measurement of distance (giving the bizarre miles per litre unit of fuel consumption). Nearly everyone knows both though. But don't forget that American units aren't all the same as Imperial Units (our old system) either. We have 20 floz to a pint and 1760 yards to the mile for a start.
Hey I can't help it! I work with Americans and find myself using American rather than English when I'm around them.
Absolutely.
I have a land line with BT but it's really only there as a way of getting ADSL in to the house. I seem to remember that the actually cost of calls on that line last month were around a couple of dollars. In fact the usage of the land line has just increased a little as I recently invested in a set of cordless (DET) phones for the landline which means I can wander around the house (and the yard) and use the landline instead of my mobile.
But even then I have an free off-peak call quota bundled with my cellphone contract which means that if I'm calling another landline or someone else on the same cellphone provider it's still cheaper to use the cellphone. Also here in Europe texting is for more prevalent than the US and I have some many free texts bundled in my contract that I never use them up.
Basically I wonder how the phone companies make money. I pay a monthly cellphone contract. I got a free phone (Sony Ericsson T610), most of my calls fall in to the contract's bundled allowances and I pay a monthly land-line contract and hardly use it for calls. In fact both my cellphone and my land-line are used more for data than for speech and that's what I end up paying extra for whether that be a monthly ADSL cost or GPRS charges.
Of course not. We've decided to let you spend all your money laying the ground work so that we can pick it up quickly, and okay make mistakes, but less than we would had we been doing it from scratch. Hell it's only fair, the US was doing that for years. (Computers. Radar. Jet Engines. Fast than sound travel - the X1 was based mainly on a British design) We just turned the tables for a change.
I know for a fact that you really do speak a different language over there. Here in England we speak English!
I've always hated "OK" and "Cancel" because sometime s it's really not clear the right button to press actually is. I've always felt that in such cases you should have a definitive statement such as "Formatting this disk will erase all of the data!" with "Format" "Cancel" as the options.
Amusingly that's how I feel about many of the 'inventions' that come from the US.
...why there are a disproportionately higher number of transsexuals in the industry than in other industries.
What I mean is that if you introduce a 'road train' system using automatic navigation how do you make it take account of pedal and motorcycles?
As for falling a sleep, I find it easy to doze off when I'm a pillion on a motorcycle.
There's this psychological effect called risk compensation. It's been shown that the safe people believe they are the less careful they will be. So if you have mechanisms in your car to stop you from being stupid you'll actually be even more stupid that you would normally be and so the whole thing balances out.
Here in the UK Volvo drivers have a bad name with motorcyclists. Why? Because they are very safe cars and so many Volvo drivers take less care than someone in a less safe car. But cars aren't the only thing on the road and it's all well and good you being safe in your car if you're involved in an accident but what about the other poor sod!
Actually the best thing to make everyone drive safely and wear seat belts and the like is to put a spike in the centre of the steering wheel!
There are already vehicles that allow the passengers to relax in peace. They are called trains!
The problem with this technology in cars is that it assumes that cars are the only vehicles on the road. What about the pedal and motorcyclists for example?
Not to mention that it's an interpreted language on an already somewhat slow mobile CPU (but this is the java problem, great if you have tons of spare cycles, not so good if you have to be efficient or rely on performance)...
Hmmm, my SonyEricsson T610 has a 180MIPs ARM in it with a core that supports Java byte code. It's not interpreted and it's not slow. That's why so many phones feature ARM processors. My Zaurus has the Jeode Personal Java KVM on it and it's not really a slouch either since all the graphics libraries are actually implemented natively on top of QT.
Most modern computer developers are spoilt for power and so get lazy with their coding. I work in digital settop box development and we generally have 200MIPs to play with and even including all the interactive stuff we tend to have, on average, 60% spare processing capacity. It's usually the memory usage we have to work on (to keep the cost down) rather than worrying about running out of beans.