Very kewl but last year I wrote the control software for something similar. Unfortunately the poor beastie is currently cages in a museum in South Florida.
Here, in the UK, we have free terrestrial digital television [1]. I get about 30 channels of TV (DVB-T PAL resolution) and 40 of audio through my antenna. In a year or so analogue will be turned off so all new TVs come with digital receivers. There are also unencrypted free channels on satellite (DVB-S PAL and HD). I'm not sure how many right now but it must be nearing 100 odd [2]
So yes this isn't useful for premium services and pay per view where the broadcaster insists on a secure path but there is an awful lot of programming out there which is free and can be recorded.
You can get Yorkshire Tea in the US. It's my cuppa of choice and when I'm based in El Segundo, LA County, I buy it from the local Ralphs. I can even get marmite! The interesting thing is trying to make a decent cuppa once you have proper tea and milk but you only have a coffee machine...
Is there a reason that Apple won't release OSX for generic X86 Platforms?
Yes! Scalability. M$ is somewhat bigger than Apple. At the moment Apple write everything OS, drivers, Apps and have a limited subset of hardware to test it on. That means they can exhaustively test. The moment you have generic hardware where Joe Public can stick any old thing in to the machine you have to support drivers for those things. Either Apple has to write them or the hardware vendor has to write them. Many of the issues with Windows come from badly written drivers from third party hardware suppliers. It's just easier to keep the quality by ensuring you're only targeting a limited selection of hardware...
I keep in contact with my friends mainly by texting, MMSes or LiveJournal. E-mail is used mostly for business. The only friends I e-mail, are my American ones (who for some reason can't text me back or can't handle MMSes) and I e-mail them from my phone.
What a load of old bollocks. Firstly the software will have been written months ago. Secondly the licence isn't being applied retrospectively and so what if a piece of code is GPL-3 now and wouldn't have been a week ago and so who gives a shit. Finally watch for all the branched projects as they get forked so that the GPL-2 variants stick around.
The rules say that the source has to be made available including any changes. There is nothing to stop me say modifying a 1.x kernel and making the changes available. It might not be advantageous but I can do it. I don't have to use the latest revision. This is typical scare mongering of that hippy, sandal sporting, rose tinted spectacle wearing, head in the cloud, idiot, RMS.
What a stupid move. I receive all of the BBC's broadcasting in MPEG2 or MPEG4, including HD, un-encrypted digital through DVB-T broadcasts receivable through an antenna or DVB-S broadcasts receivable via satellite. What's the point of using DRMed material from their web site when I can just record the program.
Intelligent Design is not a theory, it's a conjecture. So not only do you not know science you also don't know English.
Theory - "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."
Conjecture - "The formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof."
Note that a theory explains facts and is repeatable and/or can be used to make predictions. A conjecture is just a guess...
Only in the US. My network provider lets me run what I want on my phones and currently I have google maps, opera and salling clicker running nicely on my phone together with a couple of small apps I wrote.
Don't forget that the BBC doesn't always have the rights for some of the programming, or only has rights to broadcast within certain geographic boundaries. For example football (soccer) matches are sold in other markets as PPV whilst being free in the UK. Those broadcasters abroad will not be happy if everyone can watch those matches off of the BBC web site for free.
When the BBC channels were broadcast on the old satellite the satellite foot print meant that many european countries could also pick up the channels. In order to have some control the channels were encrypted. You could watch them for free with an appropriate access card which required you to have a UK address. Now the channels are not encrypted because they've moved to a satellite with a far smaller foot print which covers basically the UK and the Republic of Ireland plus the periphery of the European mainland.
The DRM is used to fulfil the licencing requirements of programs or content used in programs. If you download some of the podcasts there are bits missing because the BBC isn't allowed to put them in the podcast. The same must be true for other programs...
Nice analogy actually. Does a Carpenter actually have to waste time Googling for how to use a power saw or do they expect it to come with instructions and be able to pick up in a few minutes? I don't expect to have to build my tools before using them. Time spent on such things costs me and my client. I should not be spending time trying to fix tools when I can be spending time trying to fix someone else's kernel driver running in their product.
My Dad taught me how to service a car because he didn't let having daughters get in the way of teaching us. Do I service my car now? No! Because its more value to me to pay someone else to do it for me as that gives me time to earn or to do something of value to me such as a private project or playing my guitar or out with my camera or even painting. I expect the same of my software tools. Its far better for me just to pay for a working product than to spend my time trying to get a cheap or free one to work. So lets say a new Mac Book Pro costs $500 more than the opposition. That's a morning's work. If I save a morning's worth of time I'm quids in.
And it was a Nortel VPN and yes I did extensively Google and yes all the discussion forums describe how to get it to work and yes it does require modification to kernel files.
That's exactly what I did with my works Dell Inspiron Dual Core (well I shrunk the XP Pro partition). I made space and put Ubuntu on it. Wifi has never worked on it neither has the built in modem. If I need either I have to reboot in to XP. I had to install a utility to get the integrated graphics to work with any kind of acceleration. Other people with the machine ended running a VM to run Linux within XP. I had to rebuild and patch the kernel to get my client's VPN to work. All very user friendly. Not!
I have the machine because I was given it for work and because I have a *N*X project which has scripts in it that are not BSD friendly. The battery lasts about a couple of hours. Tomorrow I fly from the UK to La La Land on one of my regular jaunts there. The works Dell is being wrapped in clothing and put in my case and going through the hold. My 2 year old iBook is going in my hand luggage because the battery lasts long enough for what I need over the 18 hour trip, it's small, it's light and I can run everything I need on it (except that build).
Towards the end of the year I will upgrade to a Mac Book Pro and run both XP and Linux in VMs. 95% of work will be done in OS-X.
Sorry but when Linux is consumer friendly I'll use it full time but that's not the case now and I cost far too much to spend development and consultancy time googling for fixes, patching kernels and recompiling on my development machine.
Is pollution per land mass a more fair measurement?
Not really. Land has absolutely no relationship to CO2 emissions (although it may have an affect on CO2 absorbtion). The best measurement would be pollution per person. It is individuals who drive cars, heat or cool their homes, need food, want consumer goods, and so on...
Ah but even the pre-expansion EU has a higher population and so this makes the statistics even worse...
" I just spoke with an artist who doesn't have a home not five hours ago. I bought a copy of her CD. She almost begged me to copy it and send it as far and wide as I could. She ranted about DRM and iTunes."
That's probably why she doesn't have a home. She keeps giving away her music. Now that's perfectly fine if either (a) she doesn't mind living on the streets; or (b) she has many friends and family who will pay for her to live. But for everyone else who has to pay their own way, buy their own musical instruments, tour, and so on. The money is sorely needed.
I think the idiot here is the one who thinks that the software and/or device manufacturer has any control over the DRM on the content. Many companies who make money from producing proprietary code also produce open source code as skunk works or because they support their developers who do it. Without the profits they make that code wouldn't exist.
If I have GPLed code and proprietary code, I have to follow the rules of the proprietary code developer. I have no choice other than to use that proprietary code since it is a security system which is required for a product to work on a specific network. I cannot combine them because the GPL would infect the proprietary code and I don't own the proprietary code.
So the only flexibility is in the non proprietary code. If I can use open source code I may improve it which benefits the community. If I can't it doesn't. Sometimes you have to compromise and its not easy.
"So how exactly does the community lose out? Since you are developing proprietary software, you are not releasing anything so how does it benefit the community?'
Some software is proprietary some is not. Software in a device is not all one or the other. The trick is trying to keep the proprietary stuff at a minimum. The changes to the non proprietary stuff could be useful to the open source community and are therefore available.
Now why doesn't this surprise me. Slashdot isn't a discussion forum where people with differing opinions. Its a forum where boys can all agree with one another except when comparing OS-X/Linux/Windows or Macs and PCs.
DRM is restrictive and that is a problem. Generally I disagree with DRM. But all those people who upload stuff on to peer to peer or copy their mate's CD collections are stealing. When not coding I help run a night club and have a lot to do with live bands. Many of them are small bands who have to have day jobs to support them and selling CDs is a much needed income. I get so pissed when I find ripped off copies of their music on line.
Now people are complaining that the non DRMed music available on iTunes has their personal details in. Well you're buying the music for you. Your complaints were that DRM restricted the devices you could play the music on. That is no longer the case but still you complain. Now its because should you then upload that music for people to copy it can be traced to you. Well too bloody right. Its theft!
To be honest I am unaffected by DRM. I can record movies off of my satellite tv box and archive them. I can play tunes I have downloaded from iTunes on my laptop, works laptop, my desktop machine, my ipod and so on. Where I need to strip DRM its not difficult and the DRM means that music is available that wouldn't otherwise be available.
I can't wait for the day we are DRM free but until then if we have to live with it, lets come up with best compromise we can.
I'm not a thief. I do not try to keep modifications secret. As for disclosure that's up to my employer. I advise where disclosure is required or advisable. I am not averse to disclosure where I have modified a GPLed piece of code in fact I encourage it.
But when I have piece of software A, which is open source, that has to work with piece of software B, which is priorietary and I cannot publish as I do not have the rights, I will work in a way that allows me to publish the changes to A and still have it work with B.
Slashdot Mirror
Rubbish! It runs OS-X which means it runs a professional UNIX, why would you want to put a toy one on?
Very kewl but last year I wrote the control software for something similar. Unfortunately the poor beastie is currently cages in a museum in South Florida.
He? Erm, I'm a she! The nick is hopefully a bit of a give-a-way.
Here, in the UK, we have free terrestrial digital television [1]. I get about 30 channels of TV (DVB-T PAL resolution) and 40 of audio through my antenna. In a year or so analogue will be turned off so all new TVs come with digital receivers. There are also unencrypted free channels on satellite (DVB-S PAL and HD). I'm not sure how many right now but it must be nearing 100 odd [2]
So yes this isn't useful for premium services and pay per view where the broadcaster insists on a secure path but there is an awful lot of programming out there which is free and can be recorded.
[1] http://www.freeview.co.uk/home
[2] http://www.astra2d.com/freesat-epg.htm
You can get Yorkshire Tea in the US. It's my cuppa of choice and when I'm based in El Segundo, LA County, I buy it from the local Ralphs. I can even get marmite! The interesting thing is trying to make a decent cuppa once you have proper tea and milk but you only have a coffee machine...
Er that would be because the Irish were predominantly Catholic and the English Protestant!
Is there a reason that Apple won't release OSX for generic X86 Platforms?
Yes! Scalability. M$ is somewhat bigger than Apple. At the moment Apple write everything OS, drivers, Apps and have a limited subset of hardware to test it on. That means they can exhaustively test. The moment you have generic hardware where Joe Public can stick any old thing in to the machine you have to support drivers for those things. Either Apple has to write them or the hardware vendor has to write them. Many of the issues with Windows come from badly written drivers from third party hardware suppliers. It's just easier to keep the quality by ensuring you're only targeting a limited selection of hardware...
I keep in contact with my friends mainly by texting, MMSes or LiveJournal. E-mail is used mostly for business. The only friends I e-mail, are my American ones (who for some reason can't text me back or can't handle MMSes) and I e-mail them from my phone.
If there's wi-fi available I'll use my iBook thank you very much (it's always in my purse). If there's not wi-fi I want a cell phone with 3G.
What a load of old bollocks. Firstly the software will have been written months ago. Secondly the licence isn't being applied retrospectively and so what if a piece of code is GPL-3 now and wouldn't have been a week ago and so who gives a shit. Finally watch for all the branched projects as they get forked so that the GPL-2 variants stick around.
The rules say that the source has to be made available including any changes. There is nothing to stop me say modifying a 1.x kernel and making the changes available. It might not be advantageous but I can do it. I don't have to use the latest revision. This is typical scare mongering of that hippy, sandal sporting, rose tinted spectacle wearing, head in the cloud, idiot, RMS.
What a stupid move. I receive all of the BBC's broadcasting in MPEG2 or MPEG4, including HD, un-encrypted digital through DVB-T broadcasts receivable through an antenna or DVB-S broadcasts receivable via satellite. What's the point of using DRMed material from their web site when I can just record the program.
Intelligent Design is not a theory, it's a conjecture. So not only do you not know science you also don't know English.
Theory - "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."
Conjecture - "The formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof."
Note that a theory explains facts and is repeatable and/or can be used to make predictions. A conjecture is just a guess...
Don't be surprised if the next major revision of X-Code supports iPhone development.
Only in the US. My network provider lets me run what I want on my phones and currently I have google maps, opera and salling clicker running nicely on my phone together with a couple of small apps I wrote.
Don't forget that the BBC doesn't always have the rights for some of the programming, or only has rights to broadcast within certain geographic boundaries. For example football (soccer) matches are sold in other markets as PPV whilst being free in the UK. Those broadcasters abroad will not be happy if everyone can watch those matches off of the BBC web site for free.
When the BBC channels were broadcast on the old satellite the satellite foot print meant that many european countries could also pick up the channels. In order to have some control the channels were encrypted. You could watch them for free with an appropriate access card which required you to have a UK address. Now the channels are not encrypted because they've moved to a satellite with a far smaller foot print which covers basically the UK and the Republic of Ireland plus the periphery of the European mainland.
The DRM is used to fulfil the licencing requirements of programs or content used in programs. If you download some of the podcasts there are bits missing because the BBC isn't allowed to put them in the podcast. The same must be true for other programs...
Nice analogy actually. Does a Carpenter actually have to waste time Googling for how to use a power saw or do they expect it to come with instructions and be able to pick up in a few minutes? I don't expect to have to build my tools before using them. Time spent on such things costs me and my client. I should not be spending time trying to fix tools when I can be spending time trying to fix someone else's kernel driver running in their product.
My Dad taught me how to service a car because he didn't let having daughters get in the way of teaching us. Do I service my car now? No! Because its more value to me to pay someone else to do it for me as that gives me time to earn or to do something of value to me such as a private project or playing my guitar or out with my camera or even painting. I expect the same of my software tools. Its far better for me just to pay for a working product than to spend my time trying to get a cheap or free one to work. So lets say a new Mac Book Pro costs $500 more than the opposition. That's a morning's work. If I save a morning's worth of time I'm quids in.
And it was a Nortel VPN and yes I did extensively Google and yes all the discussion forums describe how to get it to work and yes it does require modification to kernel files.
That's exactly what I did with my works Dell Inspiron Dual Core (well I shrunk the XP Pro partition). I made space and put Ubuntu on it. Wifi has never worked on it neither has the built in modem. If I need either I have to reboot in to XP. I had to install a utility to get the integrated graphics to work with any kind of acceleration. Other people with the machine ended running a VM to run Linux within XP. I had to rebuild and patch the kernel to get my client's VPN to work. All very user friendly. Not!
I have the machine because I was given it for work and because I have a *N*X project which has scripts in it that are not BSD friendly. The battery lasts about a couple of hours. Tomorrow I fly from the UK to La La Land on one of my regular jaunts there. The works Dell is being wrapped in clothing and put in my case and going through the hold. My 2 year old iBook is going in my hand luggage because the battery lasts long enough for what I need over the 18 hour trip, it's small, it's light and I can run everything I need on it (except that build).
Towards the end of the year I will upgrade to a Mac Book Pro and run both XP and Linux in VMs. 95% of work will be done in OS-X.
Sorry but when Linux is consumer friendly I'll use it full time but that's not the case now and I cost far too much to spend development and consultancy time googling for fixes, patching kernels and recompiling on my development machine.
Is pollution per land mass a more fair measurement?
Not really. Land has absolutely no relationship to CO2 emissions (although it may have an affect on CO2 absorbtion). The best measurement would be pollution per person. It is individuals who drive cars, heat or cool their homes, need food, want consumer goods, and so on...
Ah but even the pre-expansion EU has a higher population and so this makes the statistics even worse...
" I just spoke with an artist who doesn't have a home not five hours ago. I bought a copy of her CD. She almost begged me to copy it and send it as far and wide as I could. She ranted about DRM and iTunes."
That's probably why she doesn't have a home. She keeps giving away her music. Now that's perfectly fine if either (a) she doesn't mind living on the streets; or (b) she has many friends and family who will pay for her to live. But for everyone else who has to pay their own way, buy their own musical instruments, tour, and so on. The money is sorely needed.
I think the idiot here is the one who thinks that the software and/or device manufacturer has any control over the DRM on the content. Many companies who make money from producing proprietary code also produce open source code as skunk works or because they support their developers who do it. Without the profits they make that code wouldn't exist.
Yes I am not willing to accept the GPL. I am not willing because it can infect software that I do not have the rights to.
If I have GPLed code and proprietary code, I have to follow the rules of the proprietary code developer. I have no choice other than to use that proprietary code since it is a security system which is required for a product to work on a specific network. I cannot combine them because the GPL would infect the proprietary code and I don't own the proprietary code.
So the only flexibility is in the non proprietary code. If I can use open source code I may improve it which benefits the community. If I can't it doesn't. Sometimes you have to compromise and its not easy.
"So how exactly does the community lose out? Since you are developing proprietary software, you are not releasing anything so how does it benefit the community?'
Some software is proprietary some is not. Software in a device is not all one or the other. The trick is trying to keep the proprietary stuff at a minimum. The changes to the non proprietary stuff could be useful to the open source community and are therefore available.
Now why doesn't this surprise me. Slashdot isn't a discussion forum where people with differing opinions. Its a forum where boys can all agree with one another except when comparing OS-X/Linux/Windows or Macs and PCs.
DRM is restrictive and that is a problem. Generally I disagree with DRM. But all those people who upload stuff on to peer to peer or copy their mate's CD collections are stealing. When not coding I help run a night club and have a lot to do with live bands. Many of them are small bands who have to have day jobs to support them and selling CDs is a much needed income. I get so pissed when I find ripped off copies of their music on line.
Now people are complaining that the non DRMed music available on iTunes has their personal details in. Well you're buying the music for you. Your complaints were that DRM restricted the devices you could play the music on. That is no longer the case but still you complain. Now its because should you then upload that music for people to copy it can be traced to you. Well too bloody right. Its theft!
To be honest I am unaffected by DRM. I can record movies off of my satellite tv box and archive them. I can play tunes I have downloaded from iTunes on my laptop, works laptop, my desktop machine, my ipod and so on. Where I need to strip DRM its not difficult and the DRM means that music is available that wouldn't otherwise be available.
I can't wait for the day we are DRM free but until then if we have to live with it, lets come up with best compromise we can.
I'm not a thief. I do not try to keep modifications secret. As for disclosure that's up to my employer. I advise where disclosure is required or advisable. I am not averse to disclosure where I have modified a GPLed piece of code in fact I encourage it.
But when I have piece of software A, which is open source, that has to work with piece of software B, which is priorietary and I cannot publish as I do not have the rights, I will work in a way that allows me to publish the changes to A and still have it work with B.
You really didn't read my original post did you.