There are also apparently upgradeable SSD for the Air, I think I linked one in a different post in this thread. I wasn't aware of these and they aren't standard form factor but they are out there. Looks like the same SSD may not work in every Air however. The Zen is nice enough to use a standard drive albeit just 5400RPM, it has a 24Gig SSD "cache" that's supposed to help. I think I'd swap to a full on SSD though as prices are dropping nicely on them. My current laptop has 60Gig and runs XP, it's barely enough. My desktop running Win7 has a 90 and it too is running out and I don't load software to the boot drive. I think about 240Gig would be enough in a laptop, I could probably get by with 128Gig for awhile. I'd like to be able to have some virtualized machines...
I have no idea why you posted this as a reply to me, I simply stated the reasoning - which is pretty obvious - for why they don't have humans in the loop. If you think having humans in the loop is feasible then you have NO idea as to the volume of stuff being processed. I wasn't defending the practice simply pointing out the obvious....
It was my understanding that Apple had begun to glue the batteries down, looks like iFixit says this isn't the case. I see at least one company that appears to be selling SSD upgrades so that's good although pricey. Memory however is soldered...
I want something I can upgrade, so far the Asus Zenbook looks about as good as the Air but I can add memory or swap the drive. For the kind of money Apple wants I'd like to be able to at least swap the battery when it wears out like every other laptop battery I've ever had. I wish the Thinkpad Ultra didn't cost so much too, the little rubber pointer is a plus for me but it's bang for the buck doesn't add up for me I don't think.
So sure, bring us some GOOD hardware in the $700 range and I'll jump...
I had been told it wasn't being done for "security reasons" although I've yet to find that actually stated but this was relayed to me by an XBMC dev so I put some weight to it. The XBMC guys won't touch this until the ffmpeg guys do it. I note that the message you linked was from 2008 - 4 years ago! This has obviously been an issue for awhile and honestly it sucks. I understand the Anime community wants this because they like to slice off the start and endings of shows and only store them once, I want it because I like to be able to watch multiple versions of BD rips. I was working with a guy who was making tools to help build files to be played back like this, it was storing the extra pieces on the ends of the movies so the main path played fine but it's still a bit of a PITA to build them and with no player available to me I stopped doing it:-(
I'd also like to see work done to create menus for MKV files. The format is apparently able and since so far no one seems able to handle the BD menus it would be nice to have an alternative - especially if it could be used to choose playback paths! This won't be ffmpeg's job I don't think but it's sorely needed IMO.
XBMC can now sort of playback BD images, I guess at some point we'll just rip them as images unencrypted. I'd still like to compress the damn things though, BD is huge!
There's no human because of the sheer volume of work that would be involved. It would be a huge effort to actually valdidate all of the things their bits think are in violation..
This would make my day, I understand they refuse to do it though. Really sucks when you want to have both Theater AND Director's cut releases of BluRay...
Emergency vehicles won't be a problem, they already emit signals - generally using light - to allow red lights to change in their favor. Having a self driving car detect these same signals and properly react should be no problem. Likewise the moving over for a police car situation, it will detect it and take action as needed. As busy as VA roads are - think 66 - moving over for every cop car on the side of the road isn't always possible anyway. BTDT...
Odds actually are that the car sensed someone passing and actually SLOWED DOWN like humans are supposed to do in order to assist the passing vehicle. In fact the computer might have even sensed the oncoming car in the other lane and slowed even more to assist the idiot driver. Why the straw-man concludes that the car will never choose to strike another 100% of the time or that it won't see the situation coming and avoid it better than a human escapes me. He didn't write the code but has an extreme knee jerk reaction and a pretty tenuous imagined situation to try and support his ideas. It's actually pretty funny...:-)
I'm betting that like 99% of the idiots on the road - including myself - that you rank your driving skills FAR higher than they actually are... Your's is a pretty emotional reaction and while I'm not sure I'm thrilled about having a self driving car - I enjoy driving - I'm certainly open to the idea and willing to consider it. Considering the traffic situations in some areas having cars drive themselves and coordinate among themselves makes a great deal of sense. At this point you have NO idea how well this car drives or doesn't but are jumping up and down screaming NO. It's kind of amusing actually.
I'm amazed that with so little insight into how this car reacts in any scenario, much less the straw man you've proposed, that you've been able to come to a conclusion as to it's safety or lack thereof. Please provide some citations as to why you think the car would turn and go off the cliff - you're imagination doesn't count. Where did this imaginary "avoid hitting all cars" rule come from exactly? If it were up to folks like yourself we'd still be riding horses!
For the one thousandth time - they did NOT issue a "ban" - stop drinking the FUD! The Govt. simply legislated efficiency standards after FIRST having worked with industry to create them. The result is that inefficient bulbs are being phased out.
Okay took a eek at Plex. Looks interesting in that it can run as an app under unRaid for the server portion but there's no Linux client. Now I'm no snob when it comes to Linux but paying for Win7 or better on my front-ends and then apparently needing a much beefier computer for each of them strikes me as foolish. The IOS client looks great although $5 in the app store. I have no Intel Mac hardware that I could use, none of the MAC stuff I have meets their specs either.
A neat idea and I may yet try their IOS app and unRaid app but for my watching shows on my TV this is a no-go. Seems odd too since I'm pretty sure their roots lie with XBMC...
I'm not running Plex although I may look at it out of curiosity. I'm running multiple XBMC boxes on my home network on ION/Atom hardware with unRaid NAS supporting them. Overall I've had excellent service from this with no special server although for streaming to my iPhone I use PlayOn. I've got spare hardware so maybe this will be the next thing I play with. Working on a firewall upgrade presently - ClearOS - and it's being a pita lol.
In my case I'm working on setting up an Open VPN connection between myself and another so that my media library is accessible remotely. I'm already able to stream to my phone. Lots of potential!
Limitations aside, cheap hardware lets people get their hands dirty and understand the software. I am pretty ignorant of this stuff but interested in it. $20 is peanuts and having software explained for it is helpful. Perhaps users playing with the cheap stuff will become interested in it enough to spring for more expensive gear? As it stands now I wouldn't spend hundreds (I want to build other things too!) on an SDR I might not get much use out of but $20 is certainly doable.
What seems strange to me is that these TV tuners are out there cheap with all of this bandwidth but no one seems to build more dedicated tuners just for hacking around using the same stuff. Surely if someone knew what they were doing they could design something from these and sell it cheap for people to play with? Could they perhaps make some cheap design decisions that would make them more useful without breaking the bank?
Completely correct and is exactly the experience I enjoy! However on a darker side I cannot help but think that Amazon now knows all of my reading habits and just exactly how fast I read any particular book....
I own a Kindle, an iPad, and an iPhone. I haven't turned on my Kindle in months and instead mostly use my iPhone and to a lesser extent my iPad to read content. I swore this would NEVER be the case because epaper was SO good and that a backlit screen would be difficult to use in many situations. Turns out that's not true and since I have my phone with me ALL the time and the Kindle almost never the phone turns out to be the predominant device I use.
Kindle supports PDF, Mobi, and other formats. Calibre will convert between them and easily allow you to email them to your Kindle. I have no issues sideloading books to my Kindle or my Kindle app on 3 different devices...
I attended this year with two female friends. One of them had some young kid try to pick her up in the hardware hacking area - he was smooth and polite about it. The other had no such proposals. Both of them would have smacked anyone trying some of the shit in that article without hesitation.
Neither of them were groped, neither of them had anything lewd said to them. I've gone to every DEFCON for about 8+ years often with female friends along and none have ever told me about things like this. Yeah, there have been strippers at some of the parties, yes folks have gotten drunk and made proposals, but nothing like what that article claims - sorry.
From the sounds of it much of this is happening at parties and not during the con itself. If that's so then it's conduct at parties full of drunken guys that's an issue not DEFCON. Priest and other Goons would toss someone out caught grabbing a woman like that, probably after beating them, and I'd applaud....
I'd also argue that any homeowner with a properly installed and specced out system is doing FAR more than providing a fraction of their home energy needs. A friend of mine just did a setup on his home - his out of pocket was $8500 - and his power meter spins backwards all day long. During the evenings it obviously spins forwards but he isn't using near the power that he would during the day and I expect that when his first bill comes in he will find that he produced nearly ALL of his own power. If my state would subsidize a part of the cost of a system as his did I'd be having it installed within the month! As it stands I expect it would cost me near double and I'm still seriously considering it....
Inefficient? Compared to what? solar panels produce quite a bit more power than was used to produce them in their lifespan, I'd say that's pretty efficient. While it would be lovely for a panel to convert 80% or more of the energy hitting it I don't think there's ANYTHING out there that is doing that. A panel might not break the 15% mark but considering they require nothing but sun and produce for many years I'd say they are still doing pretty well.
Panels are primarily produced from silica aka sand. I think we have plenty of that and the materials that are doped into it are pretty abundant too. How is this resource dependent? What's so rare and difficult to find?
Expensive? Yeah, it's not cheap in that a system can take 15 years to pay itself back but once paid off the energy is "free". A solar panel pays back the enrgy used to build it way quicker than that too.
We already have a power grid, why would we want to spend tons on batteries for various sites? A homeowner doing anything off-grid who's too far to connect would need this but most consumers can go grid-tie and take loads off the grid now. Most homes with a decent site can do this for under $30K. That's a pile I'll admit and is why I've not done it but it's getting within striking range for anyone who intends to stay in their home for reasonable lengths of time vs moving every few years. If the cost comes down a bit and if my state would assist I'd be all over this.
If you want to spend billions by all means launch a power sat and start beaming microwaves or somesuch down. I really don't see that as being more feasible than build up terrestrial systems. I wonder exactly how many years THAT would take to payback - especially with all of the junk floating around in orbit these days it would have to dodge!
Really, your post doesn't make much sense to me...
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No, that's not completely true. The Zen has both soldered and upgradeable RAM. It also apparently maxxes out at 10gig.
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Asus-Zenbook-UX32VD-Teardown/10120/2
http://www.crucial.com/upgrade/ASUS-memory/ASUS+Notebooks/ZENBOOK+UX32VD-upgrades.html
There are also apparently upgradeable SSD for the Air, I think I linked one in a different post in this thread. I wasn't aware of these and they aren't standard form factor but they are out there. Looks like the same SSD may not work in every Air however. The Zen is nice enough to use a standard drive albeit just 5400RPM, it has a 24Gig SSD "cache" that's supposed to help. I think I'd swap to a full on SSD though as prices are dropping nicely on them. My current laptop has 60Gig and runs XP, it's barely enough. My desktop running Win7 has a 90 and it too is running out and I don't load software to the boot drive. I think about 240Gig would be enough in a laptop, I could probably get by with 128Gig for awhile. I'd like to be able to have some virtualized machines...
I have no idea why you posted this as a reply to me, I simply stated the reasoning - which is pretty obvious - for why they don't have humans in the loop. If you think having humans in the loop is feasible then you have NO idea as to the volume of stuff being processed. I wasn't defending the practice simply pointing out the obvious....
It was my understanding that Apple had begun to glue the batteries down, looks like iFixit says this isn't the case. I see at least one company that appears to be selling SSD upgrades so that's good although pricey. Memory however is soldered...
I want something I can upgrade, so far the Asus Zenbook looks about as good as the Air but I can add memory or swap the drive. For the kind of money Apple wants I'd like to be able to at least swap the battery when it wears out like every other laptop battery I've ever had. I wish the Thinkpad Ultra didn't cost so much too, the little rubber pointer is a plus for me but it's bang for the buck doesn't add up for me I don't think.
So sure, bring us some GOOD hardware in the $700 range and I'll jump...
I had been told it wasn't being done for "security reasons" although I've yet to find that actually stated but this was relayed to me by an XBMC dev so I put some weight to it. The XBMC guys won't touch this until the ffmpeg guys do it. I note that the message you linked was from 2008 - 4 years ago! This has obviously been an issue for awhile and honestly it sucks. I understand the Anime community wants this because they like to slice off the start and endings of shows and only store them once, I want it because I like to be able to watch multiple versions of BD rips. I was working with a guy who was making tools to help build files to be played back like this, it was storing the extra pieces on the ends of the movies so the main path played fine but it's still a bit of a PITA to build them and with no player available to me I stopped doing it :-(
I'd also like to see work done to create menus for MKV files. The format is apparently able and since so far no one seems able to handle the BD menus it would be nice to have an alternative - especially if it could be used to choose playback paths! This won't be ffmpeg's job I don't think but it's sorely needed IMO.
XBMC can now sort of playback BD images, I guess at some point we'll just rip them as images unencrypted. I'd still like to compress the damn things though, BD is huge!
There's no human because of the sheer volume of work that would be involved. It would be a huge effort to actually valdidate all of the things their bits think are in violation..
This would make my day, I understand they refuse to do it though. Really sucks when you want to have both Theater AND Director's cut releases of BluRay...
Emergency vehicles won't be a problem, they already emit signals - generally using light - to allow red lights to change in their favor. Having a self driving car detect these same signals and properly react should be no problem. Likewise the moving over for a police car situation, it will detect it and take action as needed. As busy as VA roads are - think 66 - moving over for every cop car on the side of the road isn't always possible anyway. BTDT...
Odds actually are that the car sensed someone passing and actually SLOWED DOWN like humans are supposed to do in order to assist the passing vehicle. In fact the computer might have even sensed the oncoming car in the other lane and slowed even more to assist the idiot driver. Why the straw-man concludes that the car will never choose to strike another 100% of the time or that it won't see the situation coming and avoid it better than a human escapes me. He didn't write the code but has an extreme knee jerk reaction and a pretty tenuous imagined situation to try and support his ideas. It's actually pretty funny... :-)
I'm betting that like 99% of the idiots on the road - including myself - that you rank your driving skills FAR higher than they actually are... Your's is a pretty emotional reaction and while I'm not sure I'm thrilled about having a self driving car - I enjoy driving - I'm certainly open to the idea and willing to consider it. Considering the traffic situations in some areas having cars drive themselves and coordinate among themselves makes a great deal of sense. At this point you have NO idea how well this car drives or doesn't but are jumping up and down screaming NO. It's kind of amusing actually.
I'm amazed that with so little insight into how this car reacts in any scenario, much less the straw man you've proposed, that you've been able to come to a conclusion as to it's safety or lack thereof. Please provide some citations as to why you think the car would turn and go off the cliff - you're imagination doesn't count. Where did this imaginary "avoid hitting all cars" rule come from exactly? If it were up to folks like yourself we'd still be riding horses!
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/20/ameripac/conservative-pac-claims-democrats-banned-incandesc/
For the one thousandth time - they did NOT issue a "ban" - stop drinking the FUD! The Govt. simply legislated efficiency standards after FIRST having worked with industry to create them. The result is that inefficient bulbs are being phased out.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/20/ameripac/conservative-pac-claims-democrats-banned-incandesc/
Halogen incandescent bulbs in addition to LED and CFL are applicable under the new regulations.
Okay took a eek at Plex. Looks interesting in that it can run as an app under unRaid for the server portion but there's no Linux client. Now I'm no snob when it comes to Linux but paying for Win7 or better on my front-ends and then apparently needing a much beefier computer for each of them strikes me as foolish. The IOS client looks great although $5 in the app store. I have no Intel Mac hardware that I could use, none of the MAC stuff I have meets their specs either.
A neat idea and I may yet try their IOS app and unRaid app but for my watching shows on my TV this is a no-go. Seems odd too since I'm pretty sure their roots lie with XBMC...
I'm not running Plex although I may look at it out of curiosity. I'm running multiple XBMC boxes on my home network on ION/Atom hardware with unRaid NAS supporting them. Overall I've had excellent service from this with no special server although for streaming to my iPhone I use PlayOn. I've got spare hardware so maybe this will be the next thing I play with. Working on a firewall upgrade presently - ClearOS - and it's being a pita lol.
In my case I'm working on setting up an Open VPN connection between myself and another so that my media library is accessible remotely. I'm already able to stream to my phone. Lots of potential!
Limitations aside, cheap hardware lets people get their hands dirty and understand the software. I am pretty ignorant of this stuff but interested in it. $20 is peanuts and having software explained for it is helpful. Perhaps users playing with the cheap stuff will become interested in it enough to spring for more expensive gear? As it stands now I wouldn't spend hundreds (I want to build other things too!) on an SDR I might not get much use out of but $20 is certainly doable.
What seems strange to me is that these TV tuners are out there cheap with all of this bandwidth but no one seems to build more dedicated tuners just for hacking around using the same stuff. Surely if someone knew what they were doing they could design something from these and sell it cheap for people to play with? Could they perhaps make some cheap design decisions that would make them more useful without breaking the bank?
Completely correct and is exactly the experience I enjoy! However on a darker side I cannot help but think that Amazon now knows all of my reading habits and just exactly how fast I read any particular book....
I own a Kindle, an iPad, and an iPhone. I haven't turned on my Kindle in months and instead mostly use my iPhone and to a lesser extent my iPad to read content. I swore this would NEVER be the case because epaper was SO good and that a backlit screen would be difficult to use in many situations. Turns out that's not true and since I have my phone with me ALL the time and the Kindle almost never the phone turns out to be the predominant device I use.
Kindle supports PDF, Mobi, and other formats. Calibre will convert between them and easily allow you to email them to your Kindle. I have no issues sideloading books to my Kindle or my Kindle app on 3 different devices...
They even provide an email address for users to send content to their device. I use it for Mobi books all the time!
I think you've just made his point...
I attended this year with two female friends. One of them had some young kid try to pick her up in the hardware hacking area - he was smooth and polite about it. The other had no such proposals. Both of them would have smacked anyone trying some of the shit in that article without hesitation.
Neither of them were groped, neither of them had anything lewd said to them. I've gone to every DEFCON for about 8+ years often with female friends along and none have ever told me about things like this. Yeah, there have been strippers at some of the parties, yes folks have gotten drunk and made proposals, but nothing like what that article claims - sorry.
From the sounds of it much of this is happening at parties and not during the con itself. If that's so then it's conduct at parties full of drunken guys that's an issue not DEFCON. Priest and other Goons would toss someone out caught grabbing a woman like that, probably after beating them, and I'd applaud....
I'd also argue that any homeowner with a properly installed and specced out system is doing FAR more than providing a fraction of their home energy needs. A friend of mine just did a setup on his home - his out of pocket was $8500 - and his power meter spins backwards all day long. During the evenings it obviously spins forwards but he isn't using near the power that he would during the day and I expect that when his first bill comes in he will find that he produced nearly ALL of his own power. If my state would subsidize a part of the cost of a system as his did I'd be having it installed within the month! As it stands I expect it would cost me near double and I'm still seriously considering it....
Inefficient? Compared to what? solar panels produce quite a bit more power than was used to produce them in their lifespan, I'd say that's pretty efficient. While it would be lovely for a panel to convert 80% or more of the energy hitting it I don't think there's ANYTHING out there that is doing that. A panel might not break the 15% mark but considering they require nothing but sun and produce for many years I'd say they are still doing pretty well.
Panels are primarily produced from silica aka sand. I think we have plenty of that and the materials that are doped into it are pretty abundant too. How is this resource dependent? What's so rare and difficult to find?
Expensive? Yeah, it's not cheap in that a system can take 15 years to pay itself back but once paid off the energy is "free". A solar panel pays back the enrgy used to build it way quicker than that too.
We already have a power grid, why would we want to spend tons on batteries for various sites? A homeowner doing anything off-grid who's too far to connect would need this but most consumers can go grid-tie and take loads off the grid now. Most homes with a decent site can do this for under $30K. That's a pile I'll admit and is why I've not done it but it's getting within striking range for anyone who intends to stay in their home for reasonable lengths of time vs moving every few years. If the cost comes down a bit and if my state would assist I'd be all over this.
If you want to spend billions by all means launch a power sat and start beaming microwaves or somesuch down. I really don't see that as being more feasible than build up terrestrial systems. I wonder exactly how many years THAT would take to payback - especially with all of the junk floating around in orbit these days it would have to dodge!
Really, your post doesn't make much sense to me...