Use the player "Media Player Classic" - it supports Quicktime, Real, Shockwave, etc., all through their web browser plug ins. I haven't had a problem with it, and it lets me fullscreen nearly everything.
It requires a modchipped xbox to run (relatively easy to do, with the 007 hack that has gotten press on/. lately), but it supports many more formats (DivX, Xvid, WMP9, with quicktime and real coming soon - basically everything mplayer supports is being worked on) and at better resolutions than the Qcast can support. It's got audio visualization for MP3 and OGG, an IMDB interface, DVD navigation, VCD and SVCD playback, and can stream video, audio and pictures from SMB/Samba shares.
I put my occupation as "Computer Guy" on my tax forms. Since I do EVERYTHING (purchasing, system integration, server maintainence, writing software, helping users), I figure it was the only thing that was appropriate.
FYI - I graduated with a BS in Computer Science 2 years ago, and am now working a job doing system administration on Unix/MS systems. I find this more enjoyable and social than a straight programming job, which makes it more rewarding for me than banging out code.
Figuring out if you want to be a sysadmin or a programmer is probably a good way to start out.
As for your questions:
1. People with MIS degrees make less than CS degrees, and people without a degree make less than MIS degrees. I'd go with CS, and keep up a sysadmin job on the side. Anyway, being a sysadmin lets you play with hardware, whereas programmers don't get to do this a lot on the whole.
2. EE degrees are good, but they tend to be very single track, and harder to get than CS (at least at the school I went to). They also are more practical and less theoretical, which means building stuff, instead of doing math problems (for example). However, there are many people hiring for EE positions, especially defense contractors, and other embedded systems people.
3. College is better from a social standpoint (no being forced into the social format of the school), and a class standpoint (You have more choice to take what you want).
Check out the www.xboxmediaplayer.de . It does everything that Qcast does, and more - you can play homebrew games, emulators, etc. as well. It also supports more codecs (it uses the mplayer engine), and is updated regularly with new features and bugfixes.
The total cost of a modchip for xbox is less than that of the ethernet adapter and Qcast for PS2.
Last time I checked, linux was a homebrew project by Linus. He gets to do what he wants with it - he's not even paid to write it. His time is valuable, and wasting it debugging binary modules isn't productive.
Corporations that write binary modules are only allowed to write them by Linus' good graces - normally, the GPL doesn't allow for non-source availible binaries to be linked into GPL code in the manner that kernel modules are added.
Corporations should be happy they are allowed the level of integration that linux gives them, as they get an exemption (no-GPL) from the rules. They are also free to switch to the BSD's any time they want, which lacks many of the GPL's problems.
I've always heard it stated as a debugging issue - if a bunch of people send in bug reports saying "Kernel 2.x.x is broken", and they're using a binary only module, how do the linux developers know the problem is with the kernel, and not with the binary module? To aid in debugging, they put limits on what binary only drivers can do, which narrows the range of problems.
I think it makes a good deal of sense, from a linux developer standpoint - they all have their own reasons to work on linux, and answering bogus bug reports caused by faulty binary modules cuts time from other development tasks.
BBK
Some other owner comments
on
Review: EyeTV
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"Sun risks becoming the Apple of corporate computing, cool but less relevant," reckons Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich (via CRN).
Merrill Lynch's previous public recommendations have included eToys, Pets.com and host of other stocks it privately described as "junk," "crap," "dog", "disaster" and "POS", or "piece of shit". Merrill Lynch was fined $100 million for deception under the Martin Act, a New York state consumer fraud law.
I wonder why this hasn't happened earlier - I think someone evil is finally going to notice that Usenet is 95% warez/moviez, and go after the big companies that run Usenet servers. This will probably happen after someone makes a tool that allows for easy use of Usenet, ie, a "download, unpar, unrar" tool, that keeps track of binary groups.
Using plug in deoderizers is generally a bad idea. How they work is by spreading a chemical agent that overloads certain neurreceptors in your brain, the ones that sense the "bad smell", so you can't smell it. Using these can really mess up your brain chemistry over the long term, and cause headaches, etc, over the short term.
Some companiese have plans to release USB analog modems for the XBox, that hook into the controller ports, for those people without broadband.
I agree that most of this is marketdroidspeak...
AFAIK, the "graphics" portion of the chipset is how most consoles are measured... The chipset in the dreamcast was a 128bit memory interface PowerVR chip, for example. The PS2/Xbox/GC all have equivalent or better graphics chips.
The whole "xx-bittedness" of a console really means nothing. It's the games - I play more of my Sega Saturn library now that anything else, just because the games are damn fun.
Squid is a proxy cache server, for HTTP, FTP and some other protocols. http://www.squid-cache.org/ . It's quite flexible, and is great for reducing outgoing web traffic on a network, which speeds up web browsing - I've seen a 40% reduction in bandwidth used for web surfing at my work by using squid.
And for the other buzzwords, wingate is a windows based proxy program, and cygwin is a unix environment for windows, which allows unix programs to run unchanged on NT kernel based versions of windows.
It's a jewish tradition to show reverence to God. According to some interpretations of the bible, you are not to speak God's name, so in writing, this is expressed as G-d. It also corresponds to the vowel-lessness of the Hebrew language.
Part of the project includes what has been described as a "Multiplane camera", wbich emulates a stack of cels, which can be defined by XML data, and the individual cels can be programatically defined in C++, ie a cell that shows falling snow/rain/etc. It was originally intended for 2d cel animation, but may be workable for your purposes.
The other part is a MJPEG software encoder/decoder for the zoran MJPEG chipset.
BBK
what's with the "raise the price" attitude?
on
Touchscreen Watch
·
· Score: 2
Who in their right mind would argue for 3 (!) paragraphs that it needs to be more expensive?
Try and find a Voodoo 4 or 5. They've got decent (Geforce 2ish) 3d capabilities, will work at 66Mhz in a PCI slot that supports it, and have quite decent linux drivers.
They're also dirt cheap on ebay, as WinXP and MacOSX don't support Voodoo cards, and people are selling them off for better cards.
You may also look for Mac cards - for the longest time, there was no AGP slot on the Mac, and I think you can get a Radeon PCI with mac roms. Flash it to be x86 compatible, and there you.
I feel that the point is that there were too many one sided characters, in the "good" sense. For example, there is little bad that Mary does. She's basically a soapbox for the authors own opinions, which basically are "religion thinks sex is bad, and it isn't". He treats his inter-sex relationships with little care as well, which is a failing of many male writers. (I, being male, prefer women writers on the whole for this reason).
You're right that there are no "evil" characters. It's just that the good people are portrayed as being TOO good. The "evil" characters in the books don't have their "evilness" backed up with anything beyond sexual or power lust.
The first book was great though. It just went downhill from there.
I've been involved with a WAN project, based on in ground fiber. At the time, people started with Cisco based fiber routers, because of networkability - these cost $30k on both ends for a T3 line worth of bandwidth. I personally think it was a horrible idea and would far prefer 100Base-FX on both ends - 1/20th the price (I estimate), and greater functionality for our situation, which is mainly data traffic.
Phone companies simply can't use ethernet - it doesn't have QOS, or guaranteed packet delivery times, dedicated channels, etc... These are what telcoms want/need, and the technology that does it costs a ton. For your joe blow data network, ethenet makes sense - telcom is a different issue entirely.
BBK
Decent movies stand alone
on
Resident Evil
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Even if you've never played an RE game, the movie turns out to be a decent horror flick. Producers finally figured out that you don't just have to retell a game - you just have to get the feel of the game - the RE movie does this well. Even without the Resident Evil name, it's a decent movie.
In terms of production, the special effects were so-so (and erred on the side of cheese a couple times), and the audio was a bit badly mixed (might have been the theatre). The acting was great, as were the costumes. It doesn't go for cheap scares like most horror flicks, which is a welcome change.
Worth going to, if you don't mind gore, or just want to see a lot of zombie killing
A good description of (psx) mod chipping can be found here:
http://www.vguys.com/modchip.htm
Basically, modchips allow the console to boot discs from another region, by changing CD subcodes to a universal format. It makes it so that other region disks boot, with the side effect of allowing CD-R copies to be played. So it's a region and copy protection go around.
Other consoles (Gamecube, Saturn) have simple switch mods that allow region changing, and some (Xbox, Gameboy color/advance) have no region checking.
Slashdot Mirror
Use the player "Media Player Classic" - it supports Quicktime, Real, Shockwave, etc., all through their web browser plug ins. I haven't had a problem with it, and it lets me fullscreen nearly everything.
You can get it here:
http://www.gabest.org/mpc.php
Good luck!
BBK
Qcast's main competition is this: Xbox Media Player
/. lately), but it supports many more formats (DivX, Xvid, WMP9, with quicktime and real coming soon - basically everything mplayer supports is being worked on) and at better resolutions than the Qcast can support. It's got audio visualization for MP3 and OGG, an IMDB interface, DVD navigation, VCD and SVCD playback, and can stream video, audio and pictures from SMB/Samba shares.
It requires a modchipped xbox to run (relatively easy to do, with the 007 hack that has gotten press on
It's also free software, and actively developed.
BBK
I put my occupation as "Computer Guy" on my tax forms. Since I do EVERYTHING (purchasing, system integration, server maintainence, writing software, helping users), I figure it was the only thing that was appropriate.
I know it's really general, but it does fit.
FYI - I graduated with a BS in Computer Science 2 years ago, and am now working a job doing system administration on Unix/MS systems. I find this more enjoyable and social than a straight programming job, which makes it more rewarding for me than banging out code.
Figuring out if you want to be a sysadmin or a programmer is probably a good way to start out.
As for your questions:
1. People with MIS degrees make less than CS degrees, and people without a degree make less than MIS degrees. I'd go with CS, and keep up a sysadmin job on the side. Anyway, being a sysadmin lets you play with hardware, whereas programmers don't get to do this a lot on the whole.
2. EE degrees are good, but they tend to be very single track, and harder to get than CS (at least at the school I went to). They also are more practical and less theoretical, which means building stuff, instead of doing math problems (for example). However, there are many people hiring for EE positions, especially defense contractors, and other embedded systems people.
3. College is better from a social standpoint (no being forced into the social format of the school), and a class standpoint (You have more choice to take what you want).
4. It can't hurt.
5. I'd do it the same way - I love my job.
6. You're on your own - good luck!
Hope this helps!
BBK
... someone posts a bunch of messages with the phone number of someone they don't like.
Or of a police station. That would be great - "Sir, the system we implemented to get rid of those illegal adds is flooding our 911 call center".
Needs work.
BBK
I've used zoom player (aka zplayer) a lot. It plays anything I throw at it, even weird stuff like SVCD's that WMP won't play.
It also lets you at the codec settins during playback, which is very useful.
- BBK
Check out the www.xboxmediaplayer.de . It does everything that Qcast does, and more - you can play homebrew games, emulators, etc. as well. It also supports more codecs (it uses the mplayer engine), and is updated regularly with new features and bugfixes.
The total cost of a modchip for xbox is less than that of the ethernet adapter and Qcast for PS2.
BBK
Last time I checked, linux was a homebrew project by Linus. He gets to do what he wants with it - he's not even paid to write it. His time is valuable, and wasting it debugging binary modules isn't productive.
Corporations that write binary modules are only allowed to write them by Linus' good graces - normally, the GPL doesn't allow for non-source availible binaries to be linked into GPL code in the manner that kernel modules are added.
Corporations should be happy they are allowed the level of integration that linux gives them, as they get an exemption (no-GPL) from the rules. They are also free to switch to the BSD's any time they want, which lacks many of the GPL's problems.
BBK
I've always heard it stated as a debugging issue - if a bunch of people send in bug reports saying "Kernel 2.x.x is broken", and they're using a binary only module, how do the linux developers know the problem is with the kernel, and not with the binary module? To aid in debugging, they put limits on what binary only drivers can do, which narrows the range of problems.
I think it makes a good deal of sense, from a linux developer standpoint - they all have their own reasons to work on linux, and answering bogus bug reports caused by faulty binary modules cuts time from other development tasks.
BBK
The general feeing is that the drivers aren't up to snuff yet, but it's a neat idea and a relatively nice to work with.
BBK
"Sun risks becoming the Apple of corporate computing, cool but less relevant," reckons Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich (via CRN).
Merrill Lynch's previous public recommendations have included eToys, Pets.com and host of other stocks it privately described as "junk," "crap," "dog", "disaster" and "POS", or "piece of shit". Merrill Lynch was fined $100 million for deception under the Martin Act, a New York state consumer fraud law.
Wow, bitter, are they...
BBK
I wonder why this hasn't happened earlier - I think someone evil is finally going to notice that Usenet is 95% warez/moviez, and go after the big companies that run Usenet servers. This will probably happen after someone makes a tool that allows for easy use of Usenet, ie, a "download, unpar, unrar" tool, that keeps track of binary groups.
BBK
(I know, offtopic)
Using plug in deoderizers is generally a bad idea. How they work is by spreading a chemical agent that overloads certain neurreceptors in your brain, the ones that sense the "bad smell", so you can't smell it. Using these can really mess up your brain chemistry over the long term, and cause headaches, etc, over the short term.
BBK
While a worthy idea, there are simply to many frail/handicapped/uncoordinated people who would make a system like this a nightmare...
BBK
Some companiese have plans to release USB analog modems for the XBox, that hook into the controller ports, for those people without broadband.
I agree that most of this is marketdroidspeak...
AFAIK, the "graphics" portion of the chipset is how most consoles are measured... The chipset in the dreamcast was a 128bit memory interface PowerVR chip, for example. The PS2/Xbox/GC all have equivalent or better graphics chips.
The whole "xx-bittedness" of a console really means nothing. It's the games - I play more of my Sega Saturn library now that anything else, just because the games are damn fun.
BBK
"Our culture should not be locked away from us and sold back to us."
I think the RIAA and MPAA's entire scheme is making what they produce "our culture". The worst thing you can do is not want what they produce...
I haven't been able to talk with friends re: TV for the last 2 years, because I haven't bothered to hook it up. And, IMHO, I haven't missed anything.
BBK
althought the parent is most likely a troll...
Starband is a satellite ISP.
Squid is a proxy cache server, for HTTP, FTP and some other protocols. http://www.squid-cache.org/ . It's quite flexible, and is great for reducing outgoing web traffic on a network, which speeds up web browsing - I've seen a 40% reduction in bandwidth used for web surfing at my work by using squid.
And for the other buzzwords, wingate is a windows based proxy program, and cygwin is a unix environment for windows, which allows unix programs to run unchanged on NT kernel based versions of windows.
BBK
It's a jewish tradition to show reverence to God. According to some interpretations of the bible, you are not to speak God's name, so in writing, this is expressed as G-d. It also corresponds to the vowel-lessness of the Hebrew language.
See, you learn something new every day!
BBK
I know a guy working on this project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lmljpeg/
Part of the project includes what has been described as a "Multiplane camera", wbich emulates a stack of cels, which can be defined by XML data, and the individual cels can be programatically defined in C++, ie a cell that shows falling snow/rain/etc. It was originally intended for 2d cel animation, but may be workable for your purposes.
The other part is a MJPEG software encoder/decoder for the zoran MJPEG chipset.
BBK
Who in their right mind would argue for 3 (!) paragraphs that it needs to be more expensive?
Some people and their fsking money trees...
BBK
Try and find a Voodoo 4 or 5. They've got decent (Geforce 2ish) 3d capabilities, will work at 66Mhz in a PCI slot that supports it, and have quite decent linux drivers.
They're also dirt cheap on ebay, as WinXP and MacOSX don't support Voodoo cards, and people are selling them off for better cards.
You may also look for Mac cards - for the longest time, there was no AGP slot on the Mac, and I think you can get a Radeon PCI with mac roms. Flash it to be x86 compatible, and there you.
BBK
I feel that the point is that there were too many one sided characters, in the "good" sense. For example, there is little bad that Mary does. She's basically a soapbox for the authors own opinions, which basically are "religion thinks sex is bad, and it isn't". He treats his inter-sex relationships with little care as well, which is a failing of many male writers. (I, being male, prefer women writers on the whole for this reason).
You're right that there are no "evil" characters. It's just that the good people are portrayed as being TOO good. The "evil" characters in the books don't have their "evilness" backed up with anything beyond sexual or power lust.
The first book was great though. It just went downhill from there.
BBK
I've been involved with a WAN project, based on in ground fiber. At the time, people started with Cisco based fiber routers, because of networkability - these cost $30k on both ends for a T3 line worth of bandwidth. I personally think it was a horrible idea and would far prefer 100Base-FX on both ends - 1/20th the price (I estimate), and greater functionality for our situation, which is mainly data traffic.
Phone companies simply can't use ethernet - it doesn't have QOS, or guaranteed packet delivery times, dedicated channels, etc... These are what telcoms want/need, and the technology that does it costs a ton. For your joe blow data network, ethenet makes sense - telcom is a different issue entirely.
BBK
Even if you've never played an RE game, the movie turns out to be a decent horror flick. Producers finally figured out that you don't just have to retell a game - you just have to get the feel of the game - the RE movie does this well. Even without the Resident Evil name, it's a decent movie.
In terms of production, the special effects were so-so (and erred on the side of cheese a couple times), and the audio was a bit badly mixed (might have been the theatre). The acting was great, as were the costumes. It doesn't go for cheap scares like most horror flicks, which is a welcome change.
Worth going to, if you don't mind gore, or just want to see a lot of zombie killing
BBK
A good description of (psx) mod chipping can be found here:
http://www.vguys.com/modchip.htm
Basically, modchips allow the console to boot discs from another region, by changing CD subcodes to a universal format. It makes it so that other region disks boot, with the side effect of allowing CD-R copies to be played. So it's a region and copy protection go around.
Other consoles (Gamecube, Saturn) have simple switch mods that allow region changing, and some (Xbox, Gameboy color/advance) have no region checking.
BBK