And what would I use if I'm also looking for wireless? Something in an N flavor that has two radios? I'd like to be able to load custom firmware (I run Tomato on a 54GS), get N performance, and be able to also run G devices without knocking down N performance. So far as I know this doesn't exist although I've seen mention of a small number of N devices that can run 3rd party firmware.
Honestly, I need this sooner rather than later as my WRT54GS has been locking up under heavy(ish) torrent loads. The wireless dies and then not too long after so does the wired out to the 'net but it routes inside just fine.:-( I would be up for building out say an ATOM based small computer running Linux to do this if I could get one with dual NICs and support for G and N wireless cards. Price is less the issue than performance...
Tankless would the "right" kind. Tank water heaters must turn on and off simply to maintain the heat in the tank. I went from an efficient tank water heater to a tankless. In looking at the Energy rating stickers I found my tank heater was in the middle. My tankless sticker had the price point way to the left - I then noticed that the far RIGHT number didn't even overlap with the number on the far LEFT of the tank heater. It was THAT much more efficient - and it showed on my gas bill too! If you've got a big jacuzzi tub you either get one of these or you buy a GIANT tank heater and pay through the nose to keep it heated. Buy tankless! Just make sure you have a softener if the water is hard...
If you really want to do it better use evacuated tube solar. The payback on solar hot water is much faster than any of the other solar technologies and the evac tube stuff is VERY very good.
Okay seems like everyone and their brother has a different idea and since this interests me I tried to roll up as many of the interesting looking ones as possible into one posting:-) Did I miss any?
I didn't say I was annoyed much, just that I CAN smell it and it IS nasty. I can't help it if they've managed to kill off their senses so badly they don't know how much they stink or what the smoke smells like. Yes, I CAN smell it and yes it's nasty. Do I bang on their window and bitch? Nope! That's their business and fine by me, they sure as hell won't do it in MY car though. It's sure nice to walk into an office and not be assaulted by the stench or be assigned to an office that a smoker used to use that's covered in brown ick. There's a reason why cars that have been smoked in sell for less and are not as desirable - they stink!
My state's about to pass a law banning smoking in most bars, I can hardly wait! I went out to a bar for the first time in ages last night - first thing I had to do upon entering my home was strip and toss my clothes in the dryer and take a shower. My hair reeked, my clothes smelled too, and I couldn't stay long because the whole place stunk. I've seen what this does to computers and it's pretty obvious what it does to lungs. When you blow your nose after being someplace like that and the snot is BROWN then duh it's not good. If folks want to kill themselves fine but don't try to force me to join them and don't act like it's a God given right to do something so offensive to others.
Say what? So if I created a device that emitted a smell so nasty it made you wretch you'd be okay with me waving it around you while you were trying to enjoy a meal, walk down the street, or sit on a park bench? Because hey after all you "assume the risk" of every moron around you doing something disgusting when you venture outside of your home right? Sounds to me like "the rest of us" is quickly becoming a minority and you don't like being one of them.
I'm all for personal freedom so long as it doesn't impinge too greatly on others. I don't blast my music, I don't let my dog poop on other people's lawns, and I try to be considerate of others. Cigarette smoke, frankly, makes me ill. If a person in the car ahead of me at a light is smoking I can often smell it and it can make me gag. When smokers come in from outside and share an elevator with me I'm forced to get off at the next floor because the stench is overpowering. I'm not alone in this, other coworkers have expressed similar issues. Sorry smokers but your habit effects others and there are finally enough of us speaking up about it to make some changes, it's not going to stop.
I used to live with smokers, my parents and grandparents all smoked. The film covered everything and every car ride was misery as I was forced to endure the smoke. I used to work in an environment where smoking was allowed in offices and I repaired the computers. I had to empty the keyboards of ashes, I had to clean the gunk off of the screens - inside and out, and I had to clean the crap from inside the boxes. The offices were often just nasty to be around, it was like a film covered everything. Like it or not smoking DOES cause damage to computers. In my experience the damage usually wasn't so bad it couldn't be fixed. No worse than dog or cat hair except that you can't use canned air to remove it. I recently inherited some clocks from my Grandfather, my Uncle smoked around them for a few years. When I wiped them down the brown gunk was disgusting. I had to clean and oil them inside to get them running again, these were mechanical clocks with little to no airflow inside of them and yet they were filthy. The evidence is pretty overwhelming really - smoking damages everything around it.
As much as I detest the effects surrounding smoking I'm not sure I support Apple's not fixing these computers. I guess I'd have to see just how bad these computers looked inside and it would have helped if Apple had made this a known policy. I CAN understand why they might want to have such a policy but before they begin instituting it they need to be a little more open about it. IF they had done that then sure, I can understand them rejecting claims like this if upon popping open a computer they found it contaminated with tar and crap...
Okay property taxes... but what about income tax? Taxes paid on utilities? Taxes paid by employees of the school? Many towns would LOVE to host a prestigious school. The numbers of people they employ, the increase in residency, the money from parents coming to visit... all of these are GOOD reasons to want a school in the community. Certainly there are some burdens like utilities (taxed) that come into play and the need to police the kids but overall I'd think having a school in most towns would be a blessing. It's pretty sad that some cities don't see this and instead seem jealous and greedy about it. Heaven forbid residents get a shot at some quality education locally and I'd imagine that at least some students like the area enough to stay - that's got to increase the educated population some. Seems pretty short sighted of these communities. What's such a burden exactly? Is it simply they have a tax shortfall and this is an easy target? Sure seems like it...
99c isn't completely throwaway money to me. However I pay something like $100 a month for my phone, it's my only phone so I can justify it but it's still not peanuts. I also paid a pretty penny for this phone - it's a 3GS with maxxed out onboard storage. If 99c were something hard for me to come by then I wouldn't be using such an expensive phone. There are MANY phones out there that cost far far less to own and operate. If money were THAT tight I'd be using one of them - and I did for the longest time simply because I had no use for phone like this at that time.
My point is - people who claim they cannot afford the 99c most apps cost shouldn't attempt to justify copying them because they are "poor" when they have already spent so much on a phone. If money is THAT tight the claim rings hollow when they own such an expensive phone to begin with. Certainly situations vary but for someone to go through the hoops and own the hardware to jailbreak - and add apps - while claiming they simply can't afford 99c well that's just a bit of a stretch!
As for the collectors and hoarders of this world, hey if you simply must collect and hoard - as I do MP3 - then consider paying for them. Just because your desire is sky high doesn't mean you should simply be entitled to take what you want because you can't afford to buy it. I can better understand someone claiming they want to trial something before buying than I can this except that many if not most apps in the app store have trial versions already. I will admit this rings a little hollow considering my penchant for collecting MP3 but I've at least tried to reform and the RIAA is certainly much easier to hate on than a bunch of iPhone app developers.
Really, I have owned an iPhone since the first 3G and I've got piles of apps on my phone. I and my friends will sit around and discuss cool new ones pretty often. But past a certain point it's just silly to add still more apps to the phone unless you're REALLY going to use them - I have 4 pages of them now! I have a handful that I use regularly and it's things like Shazam, my Navigon app (come on Google!), some shopping apps, an app to track gas mileage, and a game or two which changes as I get bored. I have loaded and discarded or ignored many apps. Catching my eye to try new ones is tough - someone above mentioned SeaGlass that a friend of theirs had done and I thought I'd try it to help him out... until I saw it was yet another puzzle game similar to a few others. Argh! Maybe the guys who have to load and try everything simply want to brag or have ADD?
I guess the thrust of this is that while interesting I don't feel that your ideas justify why folks would do this. Explain perhaps but certainly not justify. That rings a little hollow since I've hoarded so many MP3 but at least these days I buy them all and almost completely because I can finally get them at reasonable cost, in a format I want. The app store has always done that for apps that they have approved and the other "app stores" have the things Apple refuses to sell...
Look, I and almost ALL of my friends have iPhones. We're all geeks and I think almost all of us have jailbroken our phones at least once and I for one have kept up and stayed jailbroken since the very beginning. We're not the sort who wouldn't pirate an app or two, if nothing just to try it out, but so far as I know NONE of us have. Apparently it's not very hard, I've heard there are torrents out there full of them, but come on - for.99 why bother? Hell I even bought the Navigon mapping app for full price and THAT stung! But pirating never crossed my mind and I know that the two other friends of mine that have it have paid for it too. If the rate of pirating were really as high as 60% then I'm pretty sure my friends would be chattering about it quite a bit or at least asking me about it. I will admit that with all of this talk about it I'm tempted to go learn more about how to do it and maybe try an app or two but most games these days have a trial version and that has satisfied me. This isn't like PC games that often turn out to be crap and if you watch the store you can often find apps on sale - wish there was an app to tell me about THAT! It's like MP3s, I used to pirate the heck out of them and had ripped ALL of my friends CDs and vice versa. I refused to buy anything DRM'd! Now I use Shazam to pickup on any songs I like and then about once every couple of weeks I sit down and download all the ones I like from Amazon at a buck apiece. At THAT price with no DRM it's simply not worth my while to ask around to find out who has the song and it feels good to not download it from some cheezy torrent. I might even buy a used CD once in awhile too but sorry no new ones RIAA.
So, I'm sort of the demographic that would consider this and frankly I've just not been tempted and I don't think any of the ten+ iPhone owners I know have been either. I think these guys may be pushing an agenda here, maybe next week they will release an app designed to halt this. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that's what this was about....
I own a TIVO HD and it's setup to grab all of my favorite shows. I use KMTTG to pull the video off, VideoRedo to to strip commercials, and I am working on figuring out ways to best compress this down from HD to a good looking SD. Trying for the 350meg an hour size I can get from torrents.
Here's the killer. Video comes off my TIVO at about 1meg a second and 8Gig files take time. Then I get to encode, this takes a little while but I'm using an overclocked I7 @4.2ghz - it FLIES. I haven't quite automated this but it's not faroff - I just need to get the encoding profile nailed down. Sounds good right? Last night while I was tinkering with encoding profiles and getitng pretty frustrated I had managed to get the RSS feed for uTorrent working and it had pulled up the SAME shows I was recording as being available for download. After spending HOURS frustrated playing with this I downloaded the torrents. They took about 6-15mins apiece! Talk about frustrating! If I can better automate my processing off the TIVO I'll be pretty happy but it sure is way easier downloading! I'd like to be a little more legit but damn it's much more work. The DVD and BD files I've got nailed down, I don't ever download movies.
So what do I store and watch this with? I use unRAID for storage. ALL of my DVD\BDs are ripped and stored as well as my MP3 on a server that holds a bit over 8TB and growing. My second server holds my backups, misc files, and my TV shows - it's about 8TB too. With the latest software upgrade to unRAID it's WAAAY faster too. That's the storage end..
Viewing is even easier. I use an ASROCK 330 dual core ATOM box. It supports VDPAU under Ubuntu and I use XBMC to view the content. Streaming audio stations, pictures, and all of my stored video. I've not really tried BOXEE much, it's a fork of XBMC. So is Plex. All of them work well I'm sure, XBMC updates their code in SVN constantly and it just keeps getting better. I get 5.1 surround sound via HDMI and I can play high bitrate video without dropped frames thanks to the VDPAU code.
The ASROCK consumes little power, the unRAID storage spins down drives when they aren't being used, my desktop probably uses more power than all of them combined!
For 8 years they have relied upon you to solve their issues and apparently not learned anything! they are "non-technical" but have been using computers this entire time? I'm sorry but after that many years of using the damned thing if they haven't learned anything it's because you're always there to help them - stop helping. The excuse that they're non-technical doesn't fly after that length of time IMO. If they are so disinterested in the device but rely on it so heavily then there's a serious disconnect.
They aren't learning anything because they don't have to. If you always had someone to wipe your ass you probably would never have learned but somewhere along the way your parents decided it was time you did it yourself and TaDah YOU learned. Think of it as AA for computers - they have to hit rock bottom before they will get off their butts and bother to learn anything. A once in awhile help session is one thing but not to the extent that has been laid out here. Do they even bother to sit and watch while you fix their stuff? Or do they get to go off and do other things all the while whining that they want their computer fixed? Make them feel pain, make them sit and watch silently if you work on the computer for them and answer questions if you want. You're being taken advantage of and it;s not helping anyone except maybe you a little as you find out ever more innovative ways to solve their issues.
Here's another thought - stop trying to fix their computer. Simply reformat the thing, patch it, and walk away. Let them have to go through the pain of fixing it up the way they like it - maybe with some ramifications they will begin to get a clue and understand the cause\effect that's going on here....
Did you just say the energy sector runs well? Our infrastructure is decaying and dying because no one wants to pay to keep it up. Our power grid needs modernization badly but no one wants to spend for it. We've had how many scandals over cmopanies pulling dirty tricks? You sure this is an example of running well?
Well, I'll be grabbing Mythbuntu tonight and tinkering. I managed to retrieve my HDHR today from my coworker. He too is going to be interested to see how I fare. Mythbuntu has the RC in their code now so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully the release version will follow shortly. If I run into issues I'll go straight Ubuntu and then load Myth as a package - I don't mind burning some time if the result works and I learn something.
Hrm, I have Win7 here too. Might be interesting to explore it's capabilities with the HDHR as well!
Those guys beat me to it but what they said is correct. The tracker I use has RSS feeds for various categories. What I find interesting is that when I use VUZE to add torrents it says there are RSS feeds that FireFox doesn't see! I think Vuze does some interesting things to create these streams but I'm not sure. Frankly I'm not overly fond of Vuze. I have also used Transmission which I believe also supports RSS but sadly that one's WEB interface left much to be desired - not that Vuze worked better.
I organize my files so a WEB interface needs to allow me to add torrents and then SPECIFY where to put the files not dump them all in one folder. uTorrent's RSS stuff actually seems to allow this natively but it's WEB interface I've also had issues with.
What I'd like is to run something slim but user friendly on Linux so I can use my ION box and little power to pull torrents behind XBMC. It makes no sense to run uTorrent on an overclocked I7 just to run torrents and even my C2D is massive overkill. the I7 was a 10X speedup compressing BluRay however:-D
Anyway, yes RSS can be used to automate the feeding of a torrent client in order to have more automated downloads. Neat huh?
Yes, I think part of the issue with Myth is that it tries to do so much. That said, I am betting that most casual users and family would find it more friendly than your bash script;-)
The tracker site I'm using has shows within about an hour or two of showing although it's often a day or three before I'm downloading it - I have a life too;-) Download speeds are pretty fast, measured in minutes - I generally grab SD video but it's downsampled from HD and as a result looks damned good.
The files don't have to go through any sort of joining process requiring PAR and aren't compressed - there's no point in compression for single files with a compressed format. If I can get the RSS feeds working properly the shows could even be queued up without my having to do anything - we'll see how that goes as that will be a slow process. Right now an hour show in SD is about 350megs, 720P HD is 1.1Gigs and honestly the "SD" looks great.
As for the MPAA no for TV shows I'm not terribly concerned. I do have a TIVO but honestly this ends up being as easy although I may look into automating some things with that as well (kmttg). I will point out that I do NOT download movies nor pirate piles of software etc. I also throttle my connection to fairly pedestrian speeds for uploads so as not to stomp on neighbors and only open it up slightly in the evenings off-peak. I don't go crazy with this stuff but I do find it convenient. IF the studios made it this convenient, like music has finally become with Amazon, I'd be willing to consider buying it and dropping my video cable sub
Well, there are rolled up packages to install it and then there's a dedicated distro called Mythbuntu that I've found mostly easier back when I was trying to get this working. Those would be the "easier" ways but in my past experience easier didn't equal easy so we'll see how it goes this time around...
Well, I think what was actually posted was something along the lines of "does anyone still use it - I use XBMC". I agree that the statement was misleading and I tried to clarify. I myself use XBMC over any PVR software. How? I torrent much of my content. I almost never watch anything live, I suspect you're much the same. I have a TIVO HD that acts pretty much the way I'd like Myth to act - as an appliance. So far my solution isn't perfect but it's working. Seldom can I not find what I'm looking for but often that's because I want mainstream stuff. I'm not going to find say a football game or auto race as a torrent. My TIVO can handle that but I use it less and less, I may be looking into a solution to pull content from it actually and make it available to XBMC. I will also check into the new Myth stuff but honestly I'll be shocked if it works so much better that I give up other paths.
Anyway, sorry but if a DVR is what you must have then XBMC isn't a better solution. If what you want is a media front end for pictures, ripped movies, torrented content, and music then yeah XBMC is pretty awesome IMO.
I suppose the problem is that even previously there were all sorts of supporters willing to tell me it worked GREAT for them, except it didn't for me or for many others. I promise you I'm not the only one feeling burned by past promises - look around.
Mind you I'd LOVE to be proven wrong. I'd love to load it up and have it just work with my hardware, we'll see. I may wait for MythBuntu to rev and incorporate this new code or I might fire up Ubuntu and load it as a package - maybe both. I have spare hardware, I have an HDHR tuner loaned out I can get back, I'm willing to try it once again. But having been burned multiple times before - just like everyone else - I'm not exactly going in with really high expectations.
We'll see. Right now I simply torrent shows but I'm willing to try Myth again and maybe even KMTTG to pull stuff off my TIVO HD PVR too. If nothing this will give me something to tinker with, I just would like it to eventually be an appliance I don't have to care and feed for endlessly...
So upgrades and updates are smooth? OS updates don't break things? Scrapers don't break? Scheduling just works? Come on now, tell the truth!;-)
What people want is an appliance. What a TIVO is to the average consumer is what people would like Myth to be. tinkering is fun but when you're tinkering on something pretty central to the family's entertainment you can draw a lynch mob with torches and pitchforks pretty quickly. This is why so many people put up with crap cable DVRs - they mostly just work and don't require a geek in the house to craft scripts. When Myth becomes THAT easy people will flock to it. And we'll be ice skating in hell I fear. I'm willing to put in time, and I will try this new release, but I have little doubt that it won't present "challenges"...
Exactly the way I feel. I have also discovered shows in other countries that I would NEVER have been able to watch on this side of the world were it not for being able to get them this way. My TIVO is fat as a tick with content but frankly I am perfectly happy not having to go through hoops to pull it.
That said, thanks for the tip on http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/:-) I have been out of the TIVO hacking realm for awhile since I moved to an HD TIVO and this looks like a VERY interesting new project. While I'm certainly happy to grab stuff off the WEB via Torrent this looks like it might also be interesting. I'm only just now playing around with RSS feeding my Torrent client, might as well learn about this stuff too!
Hey, I'm the messenger here not the message - calling it like I see it.
XBMC isn't a replacement for Myth if what you want is a DVR - I didn't claim that it was. XBMC works fine with say an HDHR for viewing of live content but I do not think it can pause rewind etc. of said content. I've not tried doing this integration so I might be off on that. As for integrating with Myth, that is work in progress and obviously relies on Myth getting it's act together - hopefully that's occurring. Myth isn't intended to be the only backend that integration can occur with either so if something else comes along then game on.
Basically, the XBMC guys have their hands full trying to build a damned nice front-end that runs on multiple platforms. They have decided to avoid the minefield that is DVR functionality by not reinventing the wheel which I think is smart considering the quagmire that Myth has been in the past.
As for solutions - I find Bitorrent to be MOST handy when it comes to getting my favorite TV shows. I'll try out the new Myth as soon as I'm able but frankly unless it's a major improvement in setup over previous revisions I won't be changing my habits much if at all.
You were doing great up until that "it works on everything" part. Plenty of folks have pulled their hair out with Myth in the past and you make it sound like a breeze. Look at the numbers of folks posting here that have given up on it and you can plainly see it's far from easy. I for one hope that this version is VERY good but please, the rah rah it works great stuff can be saved - most of us know better having tried it already.
I lent out my HDHR to someone having given up on Myth previously. I have spare hardware though so maybe I'll try it again but if it's half as bad as the last time I'll put it down again. The Myth guys really have an uphill climb convincing people IMO. Myth seems like the epitome of what people have issues with when they talk about Linux. Funky config scripts, hair pulling, things that don't make sense, things that just don't work, picky hardware, painful broken upgrades, the list is long. A new version is great news, lets see if it flies. Call me cautious having been bitten about 5 times previously by this software!
Re:after two YEARS trying to get MythTV working...
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MythTV 0.22 Released
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Rip the kid's DVD to a NAS in ISO format, something like unRAID will work fine or whatever SMB thing you're willing to roll. Hell NFS might work too. Anyway, get the kid's stuff onto spinning storage. The load up XBMC on something small and cheap like an ASROCK ION 330 - run Ubuntu with VDPAU. Slap an MCE remote on it, plug it into the TV and stereo, be happy. I have done this and can access ALL of my DVDs. Instead of having racks lining my hallway the DVD are now in boxes and no one is the wiser as to the extensive collection. I can pull up any of hundreds of DVD just fine. My BD have been ripped and converted to MKV files, takes less than 2 hours a movie on my I7, longer on slower boxes but worth it.
XBMC may not be a DVR but if you have many disks around and you worry about theft or damage it's a godsend. I just wish the Linux version played games like the old XBOX version did:-D
XBMC is a media front-end, it has NO recording capabilities nor will it apparently. Rather than reinventing the wheel the developers intend to make it easy to interface with other back-ends, including Myth. As front-ends go though it ROCKS and I am able to access all of my MP3, DVD\BD rips (MKV), and many streaming audio stations. I look forward to XBMC getting some MAME support (pretty please), and for there being some sort of back-end PVR thing for it to interface with...
Slashdot Mirror
And what would I use if I'm also looking for wireless? Something in an N flavor that has two radios? I'd like to be able to load custom firmware (I run Tomato on a 54GS), get N performance, and be able to also run G devices without knocking down N performance. So far as I know this doesn't exist although I've seen mention of a small number of N devices that can run 3rd party firmware.
Honestly, I need this sooner rather than later as my WRT54GS has been locking up under heavy(ish) torrent loads. The wireless dies and then not too long after so does the wired out to the 'net but it routes inside just fine. :-( I would be up for building out say an ATOM based small computer running Linux to do this if I could get one with dual NICs and support for G and N wireless cards. Price is less the issue than performance...
Neither is pineapple pizza!
Tankless would the "right" kind. Tank water heaters must turn on and off simply to maintain the heat in the tank. I went from an efficient tank water heater to a tankless. In looking at the Energy rating stickers I found my tank heater was in the middle. My tankless sticker had the price point way to the left - I then noticed that the far RIGHT number didn't even overlap with the number on the far LEFT of the tank heater. It was THAT much more efficient - and it showed on my gas bill too! If you've got a big jacuzzi tub you either get one of these or you buy a GIANT tank heater and pay through the nose to keep it heated. Buy tankless! Just make sure you have a softener if the water is hard...
If you really want to do it better use evacuated tube solar. The payback on solar hot water is much faster than any of the other solar technologies and the evac tube stuff is VERY very good.
Okay seems like everyone and their brother has a different idea and since this interests me I tried to roll up as many of the interesting looking ones as possible into one posting :-) Did I miss any?
http://www.teamviewer.com/
https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/
http://www.copilot.com/
http://skype.com/
http://www.uvnc.com/addons/singleclick.html (reverse VNC)
http://www.crossloop.com/
http://www.mikogo.com/en/
http://showmypc.com/
https://www.ntrconnect.com/
http://www.zolved.com/remote_control
http://www.wippien.com/ (VPN)
http://code.google.com/p/gitso/ (reverse VNC)
I didn't say I was annoyed much, just that I CAN smell it and it IS nasty. I can't help it if they've managed to kill off their senses so badly they don't know how much they stink or what the smoke smells like. Yes, I CAN smell it and yes it's nasty. Do I bang on their window and bitch? Nope! That's their business and fine by me, they sure as hell won't do it in MY car though. It's sure nice to walk into an office and not be assaulted by the stench or be assigned to an office that a smoker used to use that's covered in brown ick. There's a reason why cars that have been smoked in sell for less and are not as desirable - they stink!
My state's about to pass a law banning smoking in most bars, I can hardly wait! I went out to a bar for the first time in ages last night - first thing I had to do upon entering my home was strip and toss my clothes in the dryer and take a shower. My hair reeked, my clothes smelled too, and I couldn't stay long because the whole place stunk. I've seen what this does to computers and it's pretty obvious what it does to lungs. When you blow your nose after being someplace like that and the snot is BROWN then duh it's not good. If folks want to kill themselves fine but don't try to force me to join them and don't act like it's a God given right to do something so offensive to others.
So - get off my lawn! :-P
Say what? So if I created a device that emitted a smell so nasty it made you wretch you'd be okay with me waving it around you while you were trying to enjoy a meal, walk down the street, or sit on a park bench? Because hey after all you "assume the risk" of every moron around you doing something disgusting when you venture outside of your home right? Sounds to me like "the rest of us" is quickly becoming a minority and you don't like being one of them.
I'm all for personal freedom so long as it doesn't impinge too greatly on others. I don't blast my music, I don't let my dog poop on other people's lawns, and I try to be considerate of others. Cigarette smoke, frankly, makes me ill. If a person in the car ahead of me at a light is smoking I can often smell it and it can make me gag. When smokers come in from outside and share an elevator with me I'm forced to get off at the next floor because the stench is overpowering. I'm not alone in this, other coworkers have expressed similar issues. Sorry smokers but your habit effects others and there are finally enough of us speaking up about it to make some changes, it's not going to stop.
I used to live with smokers, my parents and grandparents all smoked. The film covered everything and every car ride was misery as I was forced to endure the smoke. I used to work in an environment where smoking was allowed in offices and I repaired the computers. I had to empty the keyboards of ashes, I had to clean the gunk off of the screens - inside and out, and I had to clean the crap from inside the boxes. The offices were often just nasty to be around, it was like a film covered everything. Like it or not smoking DOES cause damage to computers. In my experience the damage usually wasn't so bad it couldn't be fixed. No worse than dog or cat hair except that you can't use canned air to remove it. I recently inherited some clocks from my Grandfather, my Uncle smoked around them for a few years. When I wiped them down the brown gunk was disgusting. I had to clean and oil them inside to get them running again, these were mechanical clocks with little to no airflow inside of them and yet they were filthy. The evidence is pretty overwhelming really - smoking damages everything around it.
As much as I detest the effects surrounding smoking I'm not sure I support Apple's not fixing these computers. I guess I'd have to see just how bad these computers looked inside and it would have helped if Apple had made this a known policy. I CAN understand why they might want to have such a policy but before they begin instituting it they need to be a little more open about it. IF they had done that then sure, I can understand them rejecting claims like this if upon popping open a computer they found it contaminated with tar and crap...
Some interesting reading http://www.squidoo.com/cigarette-smoke-computer-damage and http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=176542 If you do some Googling on cigarette smoke damage you will find thread after thread of evidence of smoke damaging computers, guitars, stereo speakers, and on and on. Close enough to evil for you?
Okay property taxes... but what about income tax? Taxes paid on utilities? Taxes paid by employees of the school? Many towns would LOVE to host a prestigious school. The numbers of people they employ, the increase in residency, the money from parents coming to visit... all of these are GOOD reasons to want a school in the community. Certainly there are some burdens like utilities (taxed) that come into play and the need to police the kids but overall I'd think having a school in most towns would be a blessing. It's pretty sad that some cities don't see this and instead seem jealous and greedy about it. Heaven forbid residents get a shot at some quality education locally and I'd imagine that at least some students like the area enough to stay - that's got to increase the educated population some. Seems pretty short sighted of these communities. What's such a burden exactly? Is it simply they have a tax shortfall and this is an easy target? Sure seems like it...
99c isn't completely throwaway money to me. However I pay something like $100 a month for my phone, it's my only phone so I can justify it but it's still not peanuts. I also paid a pretty penny for this phone - it's a 3GS with maxxed out onboard storage. If 99c were something hard for me to come by then I wouldn't be using such an expensive phone. There are MANY phones out there that cost far far less to own and operate. If money were THAT tight I'd be using one of them - and I did for the longest time simply because I had no use for phone like this at that time.
My point is - people who claim they cannot afford the 99c most apps cost shouldn't attempt to justify copying them because they are "poor" when they have already spent so much on a phone. If money is THAT tight the claim rings hollow when they own such an expensive phone to begin with. Certainly situations vary but for someone to go through the hoops and own the hardware to jailbreak - and add apps - while claiming they simply can't afford 99c well that's just a bit of a stretch!
As for the collectors and hoarders of this world, hey if you simply must collect and hoard - as I do MP3 - then consider paying for them. Just because your desire is sky high doesn't mean you should simply be entitled to take what you want because you can't afford to buy it. I can better understand someone claiming they want to trial something before buying than I can this except that many if not most apps in the app store have trial versions already. I will admit this rings a little hollow considering my penchant for collecting MP3 but I've at least tried to reform and the RIAA is certainly much easier to hate on than a bunch of iPhone app developers.
Really, I have owned an iPhone since the first 3G and I've got piles of apps on my phone. I and my friends will sit around and discuss cool new ones pretty often. But past a certain point it's just silly to add still more apps to the phone unless you're REALLY going to use them - I have 4 pages of them now! I have a handful that I use regularly and it's things like Shazam, my Navigon app (come on Google!), some shopping apps, an app to track gas mileage, and a game or two which changes as I get bored. I have loaded and discarded or ignored many apps. Catching my eye to try new ones is tough - someone above mentioned SeaGlass that a friend of theirs had done and I thought I'd try it to help him out... until I saw it was yet another puzzle game similar to a few others. Argh! Maybe the guys who have to load and try everything simply want to brag or have ADD?
I guess the thrust of this is that while interesting I don't feel that your ideas justify why folks would do this. Explain perhaps but certainly not justify. That rings a little hollow since I've hoarded so many MP3 but at least these days I buy them all and almost completely because I can finally get them at reasonable cost, in a format I want. The app store has always done that for apps that they have approved and the other "app stores" have the things Apple refuses to sell...
Look, I and almost ALL of my friends have iPhones. We're all geeks and I think almost all of us have jailbroken our phones at least once and I for one have kept up and stayed jailbroken since the very beginning. We're not the sort who wouldn't pirate an app or two, if nothing just to try it out, but so far as I know NONE of us have. Apparently it's not very hard, I've heard there are torrents out there full of them, but come on - for .99 why bother? Hell I even bought the Navigon mapping app for full price and THAT stung! But pirating never crossed my mind and I know that the two other friends of mine that have it have paid for it too. If the rate of pirating were really as high as 60% then I'm pretty sure my friends would be chattering about it quite a bit or at least asking me about it. I will admit that with all of this talk about it I'm tempted to go learn more about how to do it and maybe try an app or two but most games these days have a trial version and that has satisfied me. This isn't like PC games that often turn out to be crap and if you watch the store you can often find apps on sale - wish there was an app to tell me about THAT! It's like MP3s, I used to pirate the heck out of them and had ripped ALL of my friends CDs and vice versa. I refused to buy anything DRM'd! Now I use Shazam to pickup on any songs I like and then about once every couple of weeks I sit down and download all the ones I like from Amazon at a buck apiece. At THAT price with no DRM it's simply not worth my while to ask around to find out who has the song and it feels good to not download it from some cheezy torrent. I might even buy a used CD once in awhile too but sorry no new ones RIAA.
So, I'm sort of the demographic that would consider this and frankly I've just not been tempted and I don't think any of the ten+ iPhone owners I know have been either. I think these guys may be pushing an agenda here, maybe next week they will release an app designed to halt this. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that's what this was about....
I own a TIVO HD and it's setup to grab all of my favorite shows. I use KMTTG to pull the video off, VideoRedo to to strip commercials, and I am working on figuring out ways to best compress this down from HD to a good looking SD. Trying for the 350meg an hour size I can get from torrents.
Here's the killer. Video comes off my TIVO at about 1meg a second and 8Gig files take time. Then I get to encode, this takes a little while but I'm using an overclocked I7 @4.2ghz - it FLIES. I haven't quite automated this but it's not faroff - I just need to get the encoding profile nailed down. Sounds good right? Last night while I was tinkering with encoding profiles and getitng pretty frustrated I had managed to get the RSS feed for uTorrent working and it had pulled up the SAME shows I was recording as being available for download. After spending HOURS frustrated playing with this I downloaded the torrents. They took about 6-15mins apiece! Talk about frustrating! If I can better automate my processing off the TIVO I'll be pretty happy but it sure is way easier downloading! I'd like to be a little more legit but damn it's much more work. The DVD and BD files I've got nailed down, I don't ever download movies.
So what do I store and watch this with? I use unRAID for storage. ALL of my DVD\BDs are ripped and stored as well as my MP3 on a server that holds a bit over 8TB and growing. My second server holds my backups, misc files, and my TV shows - it's about 8TB too. With the latest software upgrade to unRAID it's WAAAY faster too. That's the storage end..
Viewing is even easier. I use an ASROCK 330 dual core ATOM box. It supports VDPAU under Ubuntu and I use XBMC to view the content. Streaming audio stations, pictures, and all of my stored video. I've not really tried BOXEE much, it's a fork of XBMC. So is Plex. All of them work well I'm sure, XBMC updates their code in SVN constantly and it just keeps getting better. I get 5.1 surround sound via HDMI and I can play high bitrate video without dropped frames thanks to the VDPAU code.
The ASROCK consumes little power, the unRAID storage spins down drives when they aren't being used, my desktop probably uses more power than all of them combined!
For 8 years they have relied upon you to solve their issues and apparently not learned anything! they are "non-technical" but have been using computers this entire time? I'm sorry but after that many years of using the damned thing if they haven't learned anything it's because you're always there to help them - stop helping. The excuse that they're non-technical doesn't fly after that length of time IMO. If they are so disinterested in the device but rely on it so heavily then there's a serious disconnect.
They aren't learning anything because they don't have to. If you always had someone to wipe your ass you probably would never have learned but somewhere along the way your parents decided it was time you did it yourself and TaDah YOU learned. Think of it as AA for computers - they have to hit rock bottom before they will get off their butts and bother to learn anything. A once in awhile help session is one thing but not to the extent that has been laid out here. Do they even bother to sit and watch while you fix their stuff? Or do they get to go off and do other things all the while whining that they want their computer fixed? Make them feel pain, make them sit and watch silently if you work on the computer for them and answer questions if you want. You're being taken advantage of and it;s not helping anyone except maybe you a little as you find out ever more innovative ways to solve their issues.
Here's another thought - stop trying to fix their computer. Simply reformat the thing, patch it, and walk away. Let them have to go through the pain of fixing it up the way they like it - maybe with some ramifications they will begin to get a clue and understand the cause\effect that's going on here....
Did you just say the energy sector runs well? Our infrastructure is decaying and dying because no one wants to pay to keep it up. Our power grid needs modernization badly but no one wants to spend for it. We've had how many scandals over cmopanies pulling dirty tricks? You sure this is an example of running well?
Well, I'll be grabbing Mythbuntu tonight and tinkering. I managed to retrieve my HDHR today from my coworker. He too is going to be interested to see how I fare. Mythbuntu has the RC in their code now so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully the release version will follow shortly. If I run into issues I'll go straight Ubuntu and then load Myth as a package - I don't mind burning some time if the result works and I learn something.
Hrm, I have Win7 here too. Might be interesting to explore it's capabilities with the HDHR as well!
Those guys beat me to it but what they said is correct. The tracker I use has RSS feeds for various categories. What I find interesting is that when I use VUZE to add torrents it says there are RSS feeds that FireFox doesn't see! I think Vuze does some interesting things to create these streams but I'm not sure. Frankly I'm not overly fond of Vuze. I have also used Transmission which I believe also supports RSS but sadly that one's WEB interface left much to be desired - not that Vuze worked better.
I organize my files so a WEB interface needs to allow me to add torrents and then SPECIFY where to put the files not dump them all in one folder. uTorrent's RSS stuff actually seems to allow this natively but it's WEB interface I've also had issues with.
What I'd like is to run something slim but user friendly on Linux so I can use my ION box and little power to pull torrents behind XBMC. It makes no sense to run uTorrent on an overclocked I7 just to run torrents and even my C2D is massive overkill. the I7 was a 10X speedup compressing BluRay however :-D
Anyway, yes RSS can be used to automate the feeding of a torrent client in order to have more automated downloads. Neat huh?
Yes, I think part of the issue with Myth is that it tries to do so much. That said, I am betting that most casual users and family would find it more friendly than your bash script ;-)
The tracker site I'm using has shows within about an hour or two of showing although it's often a day or three before I'm downloading it - I have a life too ;-) Download speeds are pretty fast, measured in minutes - I generally grab SD video but it's downsampled from HD and as a result looks damned good.
The files don't have to go through any sort of joining process requiring PAR and aren't compressed - there's no point in compression for single files with a compressed format. If I can get the RSS feeds working properly the shows could even be queued up without my having to do anything - we'll see how that goes as that will be a slow process. Right now an hour show in SD is about 350megs, 720P HD is 1.1Gigs and honestly the "SD" looks great.
As for the MPAA no for TV shows I'm not terribly concerned. I do have a TIVO but honestly this ends up being as easy although I may look into automating some things with that as well (kmttg). I will point out that I do NOT download movies nor pirate piles of software etc. I also throttle my connection to fairly pedestrian speeds for uploads so as not to stomp on neighbors and only open it up slightly in the evenings off-peak. I don't go crazy with this stuff but I do find it convenient. IF the studios made it this convenient, like music has finally become with Amazon, I'd be willing to consider buying it and dropping my video cable sub
Well, there are rolled up packages to install it and then there's a dedicated distro called Mythbuntu that I've found mostly easier back when I was trying to get this working. Those would be the "easier" ways but in my past experience easier didn't equal easy so we'll see how it goes this time around...
Well, I think what was actually posted was something along the lines of "does anyone still use it - I use XBMC". I agree that the statement was misleading and I tried to clarify. I myself use XBMC over any PVR software. How? I torrent much of my content. I almost never watch anything live, I suspect you're much the same. I have a TIVO HD that acts pretty much the way I'd like Myth to act - as an appliance. So far my solution isn't perfect but it's working. Seldom can I not find what I'm looking for but often that's because I want mainstream stuff. I'm not going to find say a football game or auto race as a torrent. My TIVO can handle that but I use it less and less, I may be looking into a solution to pull content from it actually and make it available to XBMC. I will also check into the new Myth stuff but honestly I'll be shocked if it works so much better that I give up other paths.
Anyway, sorry but if a DVR is what you must have then XBMC isn't a better solution. If what you want is a media front end for pictures, ripped movies, torrented content, and music then yeah XBMC is pretty awesome IMO.
I suppose the problem is that even previously there were all sorts of supporters willing to tell me it worked GREAT for them, except it didn't for me or for many others. I promise you I'm not the only one feeling burned by past promises - look around.
Mind you I'd LOVE to be proven wrong. I'd love to load it up and have it just work with my hardware, we'll see. I may wait for MythBuntu to rev and incorporate this new code or I might fire up Ubuntu and load it as a package - maybe both. I have spare hardware, I have an HDHR tuner loaned out I can get back, I'm willing to try it once again. But having been burned multiple times before - just like everyone else - I'm not exactly going in with really high expectations.
We'll see. Right now I simply torrent shows but I'm willing to try Myth again and maybe even KMTTG to pull stuff off my TIVO HD PVR too. If nothing this will give me something to tinker with, I just would like it to eventually be an appliance I don't have to care and feed for endlessly...
So upgrades and updates are smooth? OS updates don't break things? Scrapers don't break? Scheduling just works? Come on now, tell the truth! ;-)
What people want is an appliance. What a TIVO is to the average consumer is what people would like Myth to be. tinkering is fun but when you're tinkering on something pretty central to the family's entertainment you can draw a lynch mob with torches and pitchforks pretty quickly. This is why so many people put up with crap cable DVRs - they mostly just work and don't require a geek in the house to craft scripts. When Myth becomes THAT easy people will flock to it. And we'll be ice skating in hell I fear. I'm willing to put in time, and I will try this new release, but I have little doubt that it won't present "challenges"...
Ding ding!!! Winnah!
Exactly the way I feel. I have also discovered shows in other countries that I would NEVER have been able to watch on this side of the world were it not for being able to get them this way. My TIVO is fat as a tick with content but frankly I am perfectly happy not having to go through hoops to pull it.
That said, thanks for the tip on http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/ :-) I have been out of the TIVO hacking realm for awhile since I moved to an HD TIVO and this looks like a VERY interesting new project. While I'm certainly happy to grab stuff off the WEB via Torrent this looks like it might also be interesting. I'm only just now playing around with RSS feeding my Torrent client, might as well learn about this stuff too!
Hey, I'm the messenger here not the message - calling it like I see it.
XBMC isn't a replacement for Myth if what you want is a DVR - I didn't claim that it was. XBMC works fine with say an HDHR for viewing of live content but I do not think it can pause rewind etc. of said content. I've not tried doing this integration so I might be off on that. As for integrating with Myth, that is work in progress and obviously relies on Myth getting it's act together - hopefully that's occurring. Myth isn't intended to be the only backend that integration can occur with either so if something else comes along then game on.
Basically, the XBMC guys have their hands full trying to build a damned nice front-end that runs on multiple platforms. They have decided to avoid the minefield that is DVR functionality by not reinventing the wheel which I think is smart considering the quagmire that Myth has been in the past.
As for solutions - I find Bitorrent to be MOST handy when it comes to getting my favorite TV shows. I'll try out the new Myth as soon as I'm able but frankly unless it's a major improvement in setup over previous revisions I won't be changing my habits much if at all.
You were doing great up until that "it works on everything" part. Plenty of folks have pulled their hair out with Myth in the past and you make it sound like a breeze. Look at the numbers of folks posting here that have given up on it and you can plainly see it's far from easy. I for one hope that this version is VERY good but please, the rah rah it works great stuff can be saved - most of us know better having tried it already.
I lent out my HDHR to someone having given up on Myth previously. I have spare hardware though so maybe I'll try it again but if it's half as bad as the last time I'll put it down again. The Myth guys really have an uphill climb convincing people IMO. Myth seems like the epitome of what people have issues with when they talk about Linux. Funky config scripts, hair pulling, things that don't make sense, things that just don't work, picky hardware, painful broken upgrades, the list is long. A new version is great news, lets see if it flies. Call me cautious having been bitten about 5 times previously by this software!
Rip the kid's DVD to a NAS in ISO format, something like unRAID will work fine or whatever SMB thing you're willing to roll. Hell NFS might work too. Anyway, get the kid's stuff onto spinning storage. The load up XBMC on something small and cheap like an ASROCK ION 330 - run Ubuntu with VDPAU. Slap an MCE remote on it, plug it into the TV and stereo, be happy. I have done this and can access ALL of my DVDs. Instead of having racks lining my hallway the DVD are now in boxes and no one is the wiser as to the extensive collection. I can pull up any of hundreds of DVD just fine. My BD have been ripped and converted to MKV files, takes less than 2 hours a movie on my I7, longer on slower boxes but worth it.
XBMC may not be a DVR but if you have many disks around and you worry about theft or damage it's a godsend. I just wish the Linux version played games like the old XBOX version did :-D
XBMC is a media front-end, it has NO recording capabilities nor will it apparently. Rather than reinventing the wheel the developers intend to make it easy to interface with other back-ends, including Myth. As front-ends go though it ROCKS and I am able to access all of my MP3, DVD\BD rips (MKV), and many streaming audio stations. I look forward to XBMC getting some MAME support (pretty please), and for there being some sort of back-end PVR thing for it to interface with...