The Comcast box also does have a favorite channels feature. I believe that list is also set up in the same place, and that there's a favorites button on the remote control that allows you to quickly scan through those favorites.
Oh, yeah. You can set a channel as being a favorite on the original digital box. You can't tell it to show you ONLY the favorites. All it does is let you skip favorite to favorite as it changes channels sequentially. That, along with how dead slow the guide flips pages (with the page up and page down button doing the opposite numerically) pretty much makes it a necessity to memorize channel numbers so you can enter them manually. I know an 8 year old girl who did just that.
I'll see if I can figure out getting the "Favorites Only" guide to work on the 6412.
Even though the TiVo's guide is also a bit laggy, my usual method is to page up and down quickly through my favorites to see what shows are on.
I'll be curious to see which channel display philosophy wins. Comcast, in its many brain-dead settop box versions, even the current Dual tuner 6412 HD DVR, WILL NOT LET YOU SKIP THE DISPLAY OF UNWANTED AND UNSUBSCRIBED CHANNELS while this is one of the best features of TiVo and DirecTiVo.
On a TiVo you can choose to display All Channels, Channels I Recieve, or (YESSS!) Favorite Channels. No such thing on Comcast boxes. You can't even mark a channel as to whether you get it or not. You change channels and get and "NOT AUTHORIZED" each time. I am convinced that Comcast thinks this subliminally makes you want to order more channels. It makes me want to toss the !@#$% box out the window and get a dish. I have the GF's brain dead box original Comcast box hooked up to my standanlone TiVo just to get a better channel guide. It mostly works. Where it doesn't is due to the brain damage on the Comcat side.
Which way is the new Comcast Tivo DVR going to work? Place yer bets!
The GF bought a Sony HDTV which of course, the resident geek BF set up. I was amused to see a full printed GPL license in the included paperwork. I gather it uses a GPL-derived photo viewer program to display the content from media inserted into the Sony-proprietary (irony!) Memory Stick slot on the front.
I wonder if should I ask Sony for the source code for the TV.
I searched for some kind of adapter that would plug in the Memory Stick slot and take a Compact Flash card with no joy. There is an adapter that goes the other way, fitting the Memory Stick into CF slot, but the BF hesitates to recommend buying a memory stick just to make the TV happy. *sigh*
Doesn't prove a thing. I went to the local Apple store, and they had two Minis running. So I checked the systems - both had the 1.25GHz CPU and 256MB RAM. They ran beautifully.
Point taken. It was an erroneous assumption on my part on partial evidence.
Maybe it proves the staff at the Woodfield (IL) Apple Store thought the base model Mac Mini wouldn't perform well enough to demonstrate. I guess I should have the checked the systems on other floor demo Mac Minis in that store to see if any were base configs.
I sincerely hope the Mac mini falls flat on its ass after people start realizing how slow it is with only 256 MB and a 42000 rpm disk for swap. Maybe then Apple will learn their lesson.
OS X is awesome, but not in 256 or less RAM. In that case, it is absolute hell.
I went to the Apple Store yesterday with the GF and bought her 20" iMac G5. We went for single 512MB DIMM. I decided the $75 was worth me not having to chase RAM from an outside source and opening the case right away to install it.
I wandered over to drive the Mac mini and thought it performed perfectly OK. Then I checked the system. It was the upscale 1.4GHz CPU version and had 512MB RAM. Even Apple doesn't want you to see how the base version performs on 256MB, which I think proves my instincts about the Mac Mini were right.
One correction: I went back and tried configuring a Mac mini again. It comes to $799 list for the wireless step up one without AppleCare and keyboard/mouse. The price hasn't dropped as far as I can tell. AppleCare is $149 more. I would pass on that as per my usual practice with extended service scams.
BTW, I'm not trashing Macs. Like I said I recommended the GF get a $2000 iMac G5. I have turned two different friends onto buying iBooks.
I didn't expect that telling about my actual experience above makes me an Apple basher merely because I said I don't have one yet* and I didn't buy a mini. The real reason is I just built a an AMD 64 screamer so I'm not in the market for another toy yet.
I think the iMac is a great value and I'll be getting a G5 PowerBook in spite of your *kind* words. You won't mind if I say that whether you think that's OK doesn't weigh on my decision, right?
* = not quite true. When I spent many hours rescueing my neighbor from Windows spyware hell and recommended HE get an iMac, he gave me his old Mac LC. I haven't messed with it yet. I think I'll put BSD on it.
IMO, the built-in Bluetooth ain't worth it. I've got a usb bt dongle from Linksys
It's worth it if you don't want ANY device hanging off the box which is the case particulary with the GF and her planned new iMac. It'll be with a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse so there are no cables simply for the cleanliness aspect.
I spent the weekend researching the 20" iMac G5 the GF is getting. In the process of trying to figure out what/when the new iLife 05 and iWork software would be bundled with it (at no $19.95 handling fee. Anybody know?)
I got caught up in the Mac Mini frenzy. To me $499 is impluse buy pricing. I figured it was worth it to let me have my first Mac to enjoy and learn on. I had been holding out for the next gen PowerBook. I went to the Apple Store and began an order.
$100 more for the SuperDrive and faster CPU. I'll buy my own RAM and deal with a putty knife to put it in. Yeah, I need Wi-Fi and Bluetooth because you can't add that afterwards. Applecare? Good idea. Now it was $800, even with my educational discount. It was no longer in impulse buy range. I left the site.
You think maybe that Apple saw that happening again and again and took this action to keep the buyer there until they completed the order?
Today's little "It's time to Rethink TV" email message from DirecTV seems to hint that the new "100 hour DirecTV DVR" is not going to be a TiVo. Too bad.
...From a new state-of-the-art DVR, to award-winning customer satisfaction, to unique customer programs designed to enhance your overall experience, DIRECTV's spirit of innovation is all about rethinking the possibilities and rethinking what's next.
New 100-hour DVR with more interactive capabilities, available mid-2005
I know the "new features" like the new 6 in 1 mix channels will not be worth giving up the TiVo user interface.
Note to DirecTV: I only subscribe to DirecTV FOR TIVO. If you dump Tivo, I'll dump DirecTV. Probably like Best Buy you figured in losing the "small amount" of geek business and you don't care. You should figure in how much business we brought by word of mouth and being tech mentors to our friends (yes, we DO have friends). We'll take THOSE with us, too.
If you subscribe to DirecTV join me and tell DirecTV not to dump TiVo.
If DirecTV screws it up, we'll get into the TiVo saving and Myth TV setup business.
Let's hope the new TiVo CEO sucks in his pride a makes a deal with Comcast and DirecTV to make the "new" DVRs TiVo DVRs.
Otherwise, it won't be the first time that a superior product disappeared due to market, business, and political pressures, - see BetaMax, CP/M 86, Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3,....
The access points could have been designed to be secure without anyone ever needing to RTFM. Print the serial number of the device on the case of the box, use it as the default password.
You'll be happy to know that the 2Wire DSL modem/firewall/AP "Home Networking Kit" that SBC now ships to new customers is setup exactly like that - WEP is on by default and the WEP key, based on the serial number, is on a sticker on the bottom of the case.
So when you see a fairly new SSID of "2Wire" in nieghborhood it shouldn't be open unless the owner went out the way to make it that way.
Alas, it's only 64 bit WEP and it doesn't have WPA or MAC address filtering that I could find. It'll do for the GF until she gets her new iMac and AirPort this week after which I'll disable WiFi on the 2Wire.
You sir, just made my friends list! I haven't laughed so hard and long in quite a while!
It did always seem that we had to always figure out a way to ADD MORE POWER! If it used 4 batteries, see what happens when you put 6 MORE in series! Plug it in the wall!
One year in MY youth the hot toy was the Marx Mystery Spaceship Gyro. It has considerable mass in the spinning metal disk inside, although like most things from my youth I probably wouldn't think it was so heavy today. It would twist your arm if you put in motion or changed the orientation while it was screaming away. Had we had today's high speed cordless drills we could have REALLY gotten that sucker spinning and might have done some damage!
Re:It does have some interesting stuff...
on
MSN Search Roundup
·
· Score: 1
I am interested in the ranking features, though. Click on "Search Builder" and you then on "Results ranking" and you get some sliders for adjsting the display of pages. That seems like it could be very useful at times, in particular for those searches where there seem to be no good results (in the first few pages out of ten thousand).
As I pointed out previously Google has a page of its beta concepts at http://labs.google.com including Google local which IS "Search Near Me", that works, another new MSN search "innovation."
"Search Near Me" stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on web pages and returns matches near you. Note how Google's long in beta Google Local http://local.google.com stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on pages and returns matches near you. The main difference is Google Local works better.
Maybe Google should add a line on the Google Labs web page: "A.K.A. MSN Search Preview"
I fail to see how they are stealing any of Google's technology. Data maybe.
Are are they stealing Google's innovations?
Lo! Note how the review articles of the last few days mention the innovative NEW FEATURE of MSN search called, "Search Near Me" which stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on web pages and returns matches near you.
Note how Google's long in beta Google Local (http://local.google.com) stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on pages and returns matches near you. Google Local works better.
Another Microsoft innovation! Let's hope WE remember who had it first!
The devices designed to operate on the 406 MHz System (and the system itself) support unique identifiers, and distress signal is more than just a tone as it is in the 121.5/243 system. This should remove 'invalid' (erroneous) broadcasts from the system.
To add: 406MHz ELT owners are required by law to register ownership and contact informatioon with the NOAA. At a minimum the emergency responders will have a name and a list of contact phone numbers to call to see if the owner is really out and about and possibly in trouble and not sitting comfortably at home.
What also can be encoded on the signal is the lat/lon coordinates from a GPS. That information allows the initial search location to be pinpointed down to the size of a football field. Without GPS, it's 25 square nautical miles. With the old 121.5 MHZ system the initial search area is 500 square nautical miles.
What I'm curious about is how the CAP and the Air Force got so exicited about a signal that wouldn't have been the whooop-whooop of real 121.5 MHZ ELT. They must have been hearing this TV for quite a while before they got down to locating it. It can take a day or more to locate a REAL 121.5 ELT.
The one that was ahead of time was the VideOcart which was a way pre-Internet-boom 1980s startup company where I worked. They used the monochrome LCD displays that the laptops of time had. Ahead of its time? It had a text/graphics display pre WWW! It had wireless connectivity pre WiFi!
The system had infrared sensors in the aisles so the cart knew where it was in the store. You could search for an item and it would give you directions to the shelf it was on and guide you on the map. It would offer recipes. As you walked it would show you an electronic coupon for an item in that aisle. Imagine the technical problem of the cart having to see what checkout aisle you were using so it could tell the POS system to give you the coupon discount IF you bought the item. It worked well.
It recorded where the cart went through the store. We could look at the playback of the track and guess which customer had a shopping list and which (men!) wandered around looking for stuff.
One of the things the supermarket owner customers insisted that it NOT have was a calculator that allowed the customer to know how much they were buying. They don't want the customer to stop throwing stuff in the basket.
The problem was the major advertisers didn't want to pay for it and the supermarkets didn'tt want to pay for it, so they went bankrupt.
You may still run into the VideOcarts on golf carts. One company bought the inventory and made it so you could see the golf course layout and order drinks.
Last weekend the American Science Channel was doing a classic Science shows marathon, with "The Secret Life of Machines," "The Ascent of Man", "The Day the Universe Changed," and Walter Cronkite's "The 21st Century" from the 1960s.
I put in a season pass for for the first three on the TiVo.
"The Day the Universe Changed" is current enough that I had already watched most of it on my TiVo.
It occurred to me that I actually have the complete "Ascent of Man" buried somewhere on VHS tapes that I made when it was first broadcast in the 1980s. I had no life.
They say in the modern commentary that some things we know now contradict what we thought the but that doesn't hurt the enjoyment of the show.
"The Secret Life of Machines" is great mostly because they pull off amazing demonstrations of how the components inside work. The host Roy Hunkin said he amazed himself that were able to make an electrostatic copy like a Xerox machine. In almost every episode, even though I have decent knowledge I learned some new aspect of how things work.
The most amazing is "The 21st Century" which I remember watching when it was originally on in the 1960s. I remember it was the first time I heard that Raytheon had a prototype oven that cooked with microwave radio waves. They called it a RadarRange.
In one they absolutely torture some poor volunteers with Gs, heat and cold to check aspects of putting men in space. One guy was put into a 400 degree oven for 6 minutes.
I heard several times that we are scheduled to put men on Mars by 1986.
By the year 2000 we will have much more leisure time because we will work only a 30 hour work week.
They showed the home of the future. One cutting edge California engineer had a computer terminal (a LOUD clanky TeleType) in his own kitchen that connected by phone line to a computer all the way in New York. The kids could even do math homework on it.
The home would have a TEN FOOT 3D Television with a HIGH FIDELITY STEREOPHONIC SOUND system. There was a control panel about 8 feet wide that had huge knobs to control it all. There was desk where the homeowner could work. One screen had the weather and stock quotes. The one next to it was a video telephone. The next one could do the finances. (It never occurred then that we would have one screen that did all that and more..)
I went to a presentation at the Chicago Consumer Electronics show about 15 years ago where it was predicted there would be 10 foot flat screen "hang it on the wall" TVs in ten years time, and a panel member said "I've been hearing that we'd have them in ten years for 20 years."
We still don't have em.
It occurs to me now that the QUADRAPHONIC SOUND we thought was white elephant fad in the 80s was actually ahead of it's time. It was only one or two speakers from modern surround sound systems.
Guests to your house will bring their own inflatable furniture, inflate it to use in your house, and then deflate it and take it home. (only until the end of the 1970s. |-{)
I felt like I was a visitor from the future looking in to see what they got right.
Mostly they couldn't imagine the drag that politics and other interests would be on progress in space and elsewhere. They didn't note that things got smaller as they got newer. I think at that time the miniaturization of electronics was just at its birth so they had no way to note what it would mean to things in the future.
It was very cool. I'm saving the "Home of the Future" episode permanently.
I suspect this problem is mechanical, not electronic. The cruise control connection to the throttle or the throttle linkage itself can bind and stick the throttle wide open.
I just had the accelerator get jammed to the floor on my Mustang when it got held down by the floor mat. Luckily I have a manual transmission and could just put int he clutch and let it the engine get cut off at red line. After trying pushing on the accelerator to get it to bounce back, I unstuck the throttle by pulling the floor mat back. I could have killed the engine with the key and coasted to the shoulder.
This guy might have freed it up by pushing on the gas.
Just like with the "unintended accelleration" stories, I think we're not hearing the whole story. One Audi dealer offered $10,000 to anyone who could make the car take off while he had his foot on the brake. There were no takers. Every car made has better brakes that overpower the engine. The engine will die. The car will stop.
Actually, they're not doing much more than the Air Force did with the X-15 [af.mil] program in the fifties and sixties
That's not a coincidence. As a young man, Burt Rutan actually worked as an civilian engineer and designer for the Air Force and worked on the X-15 program.
The general wisdom was the X-15 was a better bet for getting into space vs. missiles but it lost out to the rocket boys in the politics at NASA.
In USA are you allowed to keep the knife in your 'checked in' baggage?
Yeah, but practically nothing for carry-on. There's even some stuff that's theoretically allowed (like small blunt scissors or nail clippers without a nail file) that poorly trained security folk confiscate.
It looks like the USB Knife is on the same pattern of the executive line, so that's just about a two-inch blade, but most Swiss Army knives have bigger blades; around three or four inches....But I've since replaced it with a Leatherman because of the pliers. Unfortunately, it looks like the only part of the Leatherman line that has blades of two inches or less are the Squirt, Micra and Mini-tool [leatherman.com].
Don't count on getting ANY blade through security. Just last week I was escorting my elderly mother to her plane at Midway airport in Chicago. I had my laptop backpack, which I *thought* I had sanitized. As I passed through the security gate the TSA X-ray attendant flagged my bag for a hand search and they found that I left my mini-Leatherman in a pocket. Since it was only about $5 and fairly useless anyway, I gave it up. The blades it had are smaller than 2".
TSA's policy is the call is entirely up to the person at the gate. They can make arbitrary decisions and of course, you have no recourse. There was the famous story where they decided the girl couldn't have her pet goldfish.
You bought a brand new and (I assume) expensive video card, intending to use it on an OS that's not a current version of Windows, and you didn't check to make sure the drivers worked well? I'm sorry, you get what you deserve.
I DID check. I googled "Linux video card" and spent a while reading forum comments and such. I read that ATI and Nivia cards are supported. I guess didn't spend enough time at it and I didn't check the current iterations and 3D performance. I chose the card after that - after reading User Reviews that said the card "rocked" in both Windows and Linux.
No matter. I'm sure I can return the ATI Card box unopened and exchange it for an equivalent NVidia card. It's lucky I found this out before I got the card.
How often are you actually using 3D in Linux? Be honest.
I've only TRIED to use 3D when I checked out TuxRacer. It has crashed X every time shortly after the start on my old hardware.
ATI makes some nice cards, but only for Windows users. Their Linux drivers are infamous for a reason.
If you are using Linux and want properly designed drivers, you really have no choice except to use an nVidia card.
Gee, *thanks* for the great timing. I ordered an ATI Radeon card just last night intending to use it with Fedora.
I thought we hated nVidia because THEY wouldn't open up their drivers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll see if I can figure out getting the "Favorites Only" guide to work on the 6412.
Even though the TiVo's guide is also a bit laggy, my usual method is to page up and down quickly through my favorites to see what shows are on.
I'll be curious to see which channel display philosophy wins. Comcast, in its many brain-dead settop box versions, even the current Dual tuner 6412 HD DVR, WILL NOT LET YOU SKIP THE DISPLAY OF UNWANTED AND UNSUBSCRIBED CHANNELS while this is one of the best features of TiVo and DirecTiVo.
On a TiVo you can choose to display All Channels, Channels I Recieve, or (YESSS!) Favorite Channels. No such thing on Comcast boxes. You can't even mark a channel as to whether you get it or not. You change channels and get and "NOT AUTHORIZED" each time. I am convinced that Comcast thinks this subliminally makes you want to order more channels. It makes me want to toss the !@#$% box out the window and get a dish. I have the GF's brain dead box original Comcast box hooked up to my standanlone TiVo just to get a better channel guide. It mostly works. Where it doesn't is due to the brain damage on the Comcat side.
Which way is the new Comcast Tivo DVR going to work? Place yer bets!
This does require you to believe a Slashdotter has a GF.
The GF bought a Sony HDTV which of course, the resident geek BF set up. I was amused to see a full printed GPL license in the included paperwork. I gather it uses a GPL-derived photo viewer program to display the content from media inserted into the Sony-proprietary (irony!) Memory Stick slot on the front.
I wonder if should I ask Sony for the source code for the TV.
I searched for some kind of adapter that would plug in the Memory Stick slot and take a Compact Flash card with no joy. There is an adapter that goes the other way, fitting the Memory Stick into CF slot, but the BF hesitates to recommend buying a memory stick just to make the TV happy. *sigh*
Maybe it proves the staff at the Woodfield (IL) Apple Store thought the base model Mac Mini wouldn't perform well enough to demonstrate. I guess I should have the checked the systems on other floor demo Mac Minis in that store to see if any were base configs.
I wandered over to drive the Mac mini and thought it performed perfectly OK. Then I checked the system. It was the upscale 1.4GHz CPU version and had 512MB RAM. Even Apple doesn't want you to see how the base version performs on 256MB, which I think proves my instincts about the Mac Mini were right.
One correction: I went back and tried configuring a Mac mini again. It comes to $799 list for the wireless step up one without AppleCare and keyboard/mouse. The price hasn't dropped as far as I can tell. AppleCare is $149 more. I would pass on that as per my usual practice with extended service scams.
BTW, I'm not trashing Macs. Like I said I recommended the GF get a $2000 iMac G5. I have turned two different friends onto buying iBooks.
I didn't expect that telling about my actual experience above makes me an Apple basher merely because I said I don't have one yet* and I didn't buy a mini. The real reason is I just built a an AMD 64 screamer so I'm not in the market for another toy yet.
I think the iMac is a great value and I'll be getting a G5 PowerBook in spite of your *kind* words. You won't mind if I say that whether you think that's OK doesn't weigh on my decision, right?
* = not quite true. When I spent many hours rescueing my neighbor from Windows spyware hell and recommended HE get an iMac, he gave me his old Mac LC. I haven't messed with it yet. I think I'll put BSD on it.
I spent the weekend researching the 20" iMac G5 the GF is getting. In the process of trying to figure out what/when the new iLife 05 and iWork software would be bundled with it (at no $19.95 handling fee. Anybody know?)
I got caught up in the Mac Mini frenzy. To me $499 is impluse buy pricing. I figured it was worth it to let me have my first Mac to enjoy and learn on. I had been holding out for the next gen PowerBook. I went to the Apple Store and began an order.
$100 more for the SuperDrive and faster CPU. I'll buy my own RAM and deal with a putty knife to put it in. Yeah, I need Wi-Fi and Bluetooth because you can't add that afterwards. Applecare? Good idea. Now it was $800, even with my educational discount. It was no longer in impulse buy range. I left the site.
You think maybe that Apple saw that happening again and again and took this action to keep the buyer there until they completed the order?
Note to DirecTV: I only subscribe to DirecTV FOR TIVO. If you dump Tivo, I'll dump DirecTV. Probably like Best Buy you figured in losing the "small amount" of geek business and you don't care. You should figure in how much business we brought by word of mouth and being tech mentors to our friends (yes, we DO have friends). We'll take THOSE with us, too.
If you subscribe to DirecTV join me and tell DirecTV not to dump TiVo.
If DirecTV screws it up, we'll get into the TiVo saving and Myth TV setup business.
Let's hope the new TiVo CEO sucks in his pride a makes a deal with Comcast and DirecTV to make the "new" DVRs TiVo DVRs.
Otherwise, it won't be the first time that a superior product disappeared due to market, business, and political pressures, - see BetaMax, CP/M 86, Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3,
So when you see a fairly new SSID of "2Wire" in nieghborhood it shouldn't be open unless the owner went out the way to make it that way.
Alas, it's only 64 bit WEP and it doesn't have WPA or MAC address filtering that I could find. It'll do for the GF until she gets her new iMac and AirPort this week after which I'll disable WiFi on the 2Wire.
You sir, just made my friends list! I haven't laughed so hard and long in quite a while!
It did always seem that we had to always figure out a way to ADD MORE POWER! If it used 4 batteries, see what happens when you put 6 MORE in series! Plug it in the wall!
One year in MY youth the hot toy was the Marx Mystery Spaceship Gyro. It has considerable mass in the spinning metal disk inside, although like most things from my youth I probably wouldn't think it was so heavy today. It would twist your arm if you put in motion or changed the orientation while it was screaming away. Had we had today's high speed cordless drills we could have REALLY gotten that sucker spinning and might have done some damage!
As I pointed out previously Google has a page of its beta concepts at http://labs.google.com including Google local which IS "Search Near Me", that works, another new MSN search "innovation."
"Search Near Me" stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on web pages and returns matches near you. Note how Google's long in beta Google Local http://local.google.com stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on pages and returns matches near you. The main difference is Google Local works better.
Maybe Google should add a line on the Google Labs web page: "A.K.A. MSN Search Preview"
Lo! Note how the review articles of the last few days mention the innovative NEW FEATURE of MSN search called, "Search Near Me" which stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on web pages and returns matches near you.
Note how Google's long in beta Google Local (http://local.google.com) stores the calculated lat/long of addresses on pages and returns matches near you. Google Local works better.
Another Microsoft innovation! Let's hope WE remember who had it first!
What also can be encoded on the signal is the lat/lon coordinates from a GPS. That information allows the initial search location to be pinpointed down to the size of a football field. Without GPS, it's 25 square nautical miles. With the old 121.5 MHZ system the initial search area is 500 square nautical miles.
What I'm curious about is how the CAP and the Air Force got so exicited about a signal that wouldn't have been the whooop-whooop of real 121.5 MHZ ELT. They must have been hearing this TV for quite a while before they got down to locating it. It can take a day or more to locate a REAL 121.5 ELT.
The one that was ahead of time was the VideOcart which was a way pre-Internet-boom 1980s startup company where I worked. They used the monochrome LCD displays that the laptops of time had. Ahead of its time? It had a text/graphics display pre WWW! It had wireless connectivity pre WiFi!
The system had infrared sensors in the aisles so the cart knew where it was in the store. You could search for an item and it would give you directions to the shelf it was on and guide you on the map. It would offer recipes. As you walked it would show you an electronic coupon for an item in that aisle. Imagine the technical problem of the cart having to see what checkout aisle you were using so it could tell the POS system to give you the coupon discount IF you bought the item. It worked well.
It recorded where the cart went through the store. We could look at the playback of the track and guess which customer had a shopping list and which (men!) wandered around looking for stuff.
One of the things the supermarket owner customers insisted that it NOT have was a calculator that allowed the customer to know how much they were buying. They don't want the customer to stop throwing stuff in the basket.
The problem was the major advertisers didn't want to pay for it and the supermarkets didn'tt want to pay for it, so they went bankrupt.
You may still run into the VideOcarts on golf carts. One company bought the inventory and made it so you could see the golf course layout and order drinks.
Last weekend the American Science Channel was doing a classic Science shows marathon, with "The Secret Life of Machines," "The Ascent of Man", "The Day the Universe Changed," and Walter Cronkite's "The 21st Century" from the 1960s.
I put in a season pass for for the first three on the TiVo.
"The Day the Universe Changed" is current enough that I had already watched most of it on my TiVo.
It occurred to me that I actually have the complete "Ascent of Man" buried somewhere on VHS tapes that I made when it was first broadcast in the 1980s. I had no life.
They say in the modern commentary that some things we know now contradict what we thought the but that doesn't hurt the enjoyment of the show.
"The Secret Life of Machines" is great mostly because they pull off amazing demonstrations of how the components inside work. The host Roy Hunkin said he amazed himself that were able to make an electrostatic copy like a Xerox machine. In almost every episode, even though I have decent knowledge I learned some new aspect of how things work.
The most amazing is "The 21st Century" which I remember watching when it was originally on in the 1960s. I remember it was the first time I heard that Raytheon had a prototype oven that cooked with microwave radio waves. They called it a RadarRange.
In one they absolutely torture some poor volunteers with Gs, heat and cold to check aspects of putting men in space. One guy was put into a 400 degree oven for 6 minutes.
I heard several times that we are scheduled to put men on Mars by 1986.
By the year 2000 we will have much more leisure time because we will work only a 30 hour work week.
They showed the home of the future. One cutting edge California engineer had a computer terminal (a LOUD clanky TeleType) in his own kitchen that connected by phone line to a computer all the way in New York. The kids could even do math homework on it.
The home would have a TEN FOOT 3D Television with a HIGH FIDELITY STEREOPHONIC SOUND system. There was a control panel about 8 feet wide that had huge knobs to control it all. There was desk where the homeowner could work. One screen had the weather and stock quotes. The one next to it was a video telephone. The next one could do the finances. (It never occurred then that we would have one screen that did all that and more..)
I went to a presentation at the Chicago Consumer Electronics show about 15 years ago where it was predicted there would be 10 foot flat screen "hang it on the wall" TVs in ten years time, and a panel member said "I've been hearing that we'd have them in ten years for 20 years." We still don't have em.
It occurs to me now that the QUADRAPHONIC SOUND we thought was white elephant fad in the 80s was actually ahead of it's time. It was only one or two speakers from modern surround sound systems.
Guests to your house will bring their own inflatable furniture, inflate it to use in your house, and then deflate it and take it home. (only until the end of the 1970s. |-{)
I felt like I was a visitor from the future looking in to see what they got right.
Mostly they couldn't imagine the drag that politics and other interests would be on progress in space and elsewhere. They didn't note that things got smaller as they got newer. I think at that time the miniaturization of electronics was just at its birth so they had no way to note what it would mean to things in the future.
It was very cool. I'm saving the "Home of the Future" episode permanently.
I suspect this problem is mechanical, not electronic. The cruise control connection to the throttle or the throttle linkage itself can bind and stick the throttle wide open.
I just had the accelerator get jammed to the floor on my Mustang when it got held down by the floor mat. Luckily I have a manual transmission and could just put int he clutch and let it the engine get cut off at red line. After trying pushing on the accelerator to get it to bounce back, I unstuck the throttle by pulling the floor mat back. I could have killed the engine with the key and coasted to the shoulder.
This guy might have freed it up by pushing on the gas.
Just like with the "unintended accelleration" stories, I think we're not hearing the whole story. One Audi dealer offered $10,000 to anyone who could make the car take off while he had his foot on the brake. There were no takers. Every car made has better brakes that overpower the engine. The engine will die. The car will stop.
The general wisdom was the X-15 was a better bet for getting into space vs. missiles but it lost out to the rocket boys in the politics at NASA.
TSA's policy is the call is entirely up to the person at the gate. They can make arbitrary decisions and of course, you have no recourse. There was the famous story where they decided the girl couldn't have her pet goldfish.
No matter. I'm sure I can return the ATI Card box unopened and exchange it for an equivalent NVidia card. It's lucky I found this out before I got the card.
How often are you actually using 3D in Linux? Be honest. I've only TRIED to use 3D when I checked out TuxRacer. It has crashed X every time shortly after the start on my old hardware.
I thought we hated nVidia because THEY wouldn't open up their drivers.
Posting again because the first time it ended up as a reply to the wrong parent. Sorry.
Yeah, but you didn't mention the Osborne 1 boots to CP/M from the floppy in about 4 seconds.
Click, clickity, click-click
A:\>
No modern PC can do that.
Oh, you wanted to run an application?....that takes a minute or so more if clicking.
Yeah, but you din't mention it boots in about 4 seconds. No modern PC can do that. Oh, you wanted an application?....that takes a minute or so.