DVD Player recommendations
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DIVX is dead
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A few things to consider:
a) You don't specify your price range. I assume (we love projecting ourselves) that you're on a budget (e.g. money *is* an object). In that case, the panasonics are a good buy, but there are many such bargains as well. One good place to look is in the forum at dvdtalk.com, which has a discussion board about home components as well as about DVD-ROM drives.
b) Your OS. Why? Because Win98 and Mac let you watch DVD movies on your desktop but so far Linux and the BSDs do not. (I hope someone can correct me heartily!) So, if DVD-ROM is not a huge *current* priority, you might want to get a standalone player for now (it won't depreciate as quickly as a processor would, fortunately) and pick up a commodity DVD-ROM player when you need one. I've heard of them under a hundred bucks now.
c) Brand preference / legacy: I've only seen the Panasonics that are being recommended to you in stores, but so far I agree with the posters -- they seem to be nicely built, are quite full-featured, and have nice controls. The only players I've seen that I'd call truly ugly are the ones from Zenith and from RCA. I just bought a Pioneer DV414; I'm not a big fan of Pioneer industrial design, but I got the player at a good price (USD290 on ebay), and it's available for USD330 or so right now new. Besides aesthetics, you might consider your brand choice if you have linked components you intend to control as one unit; perhaps some of these systems already cooperate, but I am not familiar enough to say. JVC, Pioneer, Sony, Kenwood all have such linkages in order to encourage brand-unformity.
d) Your audio / video anality. If you have or plan to have a audio video system which will allow you to see a real difference, then things like component outs and DTS decoders are a big deal. I don't, so the fact that my player came with component outputs is just a nice novelty.
e) Your stomach. You might well be able to pick up a DIVX machine for cheap in the coming weeks, and plug raisins into the phone jack. Might even find one used, if that is OK with you. You'll still have to shop for the features you want (half a lifeboat isn't a bargain), but if you find one that works for you under $200, you can view it as a cool entry point to DVD and plan to get a better player sooner than you otherwise would with the money you save. Then you can equip another room, or your significant other's apt, or a starving elementary school, or... Going this route depends on your answer to the question, "This time next year, how close do I think a $300 player will be to today's $500-600 player?"
f) Whether you want to play Video CDs. My pioneer will play them, but I don't have any. Still, one day I might. I wonder if there is free software that would let me create Video CDs from videotapes... that would be great. I could send video to my family on Video CD.
g) Whether you care about code-freeness. There are some players available without regional coding restrictions, and as others have written, some that will play back both PAL and NTSC. If you're American, and not into obscure releases which would only be available in other regions, this is probably not a huge concern, but it depends on your interests.
I'm sure he meant it cruelly ...
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DIVX is dead
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I doubt the fearless commander meant to speak courteously of this beast.
For once, a dumb idea got killed sooner rather than later, but it should have been pretty obvious. I think whatever drawing board spawned this cdreature should be publicly burned at the end of a Frankenstein-style castle invasion of Circuit City and the involved lawyer scum.
Granted, thin clients are clients, and not stand-alone devices, but the first poster has a point: Why pay $800 for a box that is essentially a processor, memory, monitor and keyboard, when a fully-functional box with a CD drive and a massive hard drive can be had for far less?
Dell talked about selling something similar (though that was 2 / 2.5 yrs ago), but it would have run Windows, because Dell hadn't wised up to Linux at that point. I don't think they ever really got made, but the concept is the same as these WYSE terminals... diskless / floppy-less workstations, bootable over a network and designed for easy administration / uniformity in corporate environments.
I asked the same question then (working for an ad agency and thereby for Dell) and still have never gotten a really good answer why it would be better to pay more for fewer / lesser components. If I can get a PII with 64MB of RAM, an 8GB hard drive, a 15" monitor and a NIC for $600 (realistic? too conservative? too hopeful?) right now, I could use the hard drive, floppy drive and CD drive for target practice at a shooting range for far less than the privelege of having someone sell me a processor / memory / NIC / monitor combo. And that counts range time.
Is there some aspect to this that I just don't get? What justifies the cost of these things? Getting hundreds of computers custom built, these days, is no big deal -- and you don't have to specify any naughty security / administrative hassles you don't want, right?
This is the best idea I've seen (of many good ideas on Slashdot) in a while.
DVD is not perfect; outside of theology (including Deep Physics), nothing is. But DVD has incredible potential for data interchange, as well as its obvious / not-so-obvious capacity for music and video.
DVD-18 (double-sided, double-layer -- DSDL) discs can hold up to 8 hours of video with --from memory, corrections invited -- 17 GB of data.
DSDL discs are difficult to manufacture and are as yet very uncommon, so they're not the best examples, perhaps, but even single-sided discs hold Gigabytes on a neat little platter.
DVD-ROM drives play CD-ROMs fine (though with reputedly mixed results on CD-R and CD-RW, due to the interactions of dye-colors and laser wavelengths), so backward compatibility is not a problem.
The main difference is, with a full-capacity DVD, you could have as much data as on more than 25 CD-ROMs! You could try out slackware, red hat, debian, yellow dog, turbo linux and many more... on a disc that comes in one jewel case.
Commerical software houses are probably going to expand on the old idea of sending a disc and selectively unlocking individual pieces of it.
DVD will be around for a long time, and Linux will start to age prematurely if no Open DVD standard emerges. It may take cooperation from the companies who make DVD hardware (and their standards consortia), but as Linux becomes more and more of an Obvious Choice, it would be silly if they didn't recognize that they could be selling their hardware to millions of users, if only those users could use DVDs on their systems.
Just some thoughts,
timothy
p.s. And of course, you could try out that "scientifically interesting" multi-angle DVD video you borrowed from your roommate. (Hint: the scientific company with the most multi-angle titles is Vivid Video)...
NullGrey is correct: Meyer's grows on you! (At least on me.) Wayne's World never did much for me, but So I Married An Axe Murderer is sheer genius. It took a full watching to convince myself of that, so I would advocate anyone doubtful of its worth simply give it the 93-or-whatever minutes and then decide.
Hah! I never thought I would get a legitiamte chance to praise SIMAAM on slashdot. Oh but since I can, finally...
I borrowed this video from my co-worker, after I mentioned that I really liked Austin Powers.
I was reluctant to take it, though, because as I told him, I've seen the cover of the video a million times and it just looked awful. Maybe I only saw it previous to Austin Powers and hadn't associated MIke Myers with making me pee from laughing yet, since I wasn't a big SNL fan.
Result? I've had it for months and watched it many times. Will my coworker ever get it back? When I buy the DVD he will.
I mentioned this to a few friends, including my friend Liz Klodginski, in an attempt to turn her on to this incredible movie. To my surprize, someone had already beaten me to it, and made her watch it over her objections -- good move! It's the sort of thing that it takes someone else to convince you, and then BOOM.
Mike Myers' facial expressions are so funny the movie would be funny even without sound.
(Background: I've been through a number of Macintoshes and I'm on my fourth PC right now)
Like the other respondents to this point of view, I don't have an irate reply, but would agree with those other respondents as well that the total universe of Mac users is pretty broad.
Why would anyone want to run Linux / other Free OS on a Mac? That's not exactly the question here, but it seems to be lurking beneath the surface, and that same question was asked in a thread one level up from here.
I can't answer this for everyone, but here are the reasons I think that Linux and the Mac make a great combination, practically and normatively.
- Macs tend to have nice human engineering. The gulf is not as wide as it was 10 years or 5 years or maybe 2 years ago compared to the PC world, but well-labled parts, legible icons, attempts at friendlization still IMHO work better on Macs, but this comparison of course ignores that PC vendors vary tremendously in this respect.
- Macs use non-Intel chips... the fact that they use not just a diff. manu but a different architecture is good for everyone. Here's a whopper of an analogy: what if paper was somehow constructed so it could only be written on with one sort of pen? That would seem silly, since there are lots of other choices. But software tend to be written to OSes themselves entirely dependent on their host hardware. Linux helps buck this trend (not as much as the BSDs, maybe, but still) by providing an OS which runs on multiple platforms.
- They look cool. That factor sells a lot of PCs, however unsatisfying that fact may be.
- Ubiquity. Not as many macs in the world as PCs, but the lopsided numbers / market share I think are misleading, since it's hard to go ten minutes in any US city and avoid seeing either an ad or an actual iMac / G3, not to mention older and still humming Macs.
- The Mac OS begs for a replacement, or at least whines a little. I use one at work (an iMac) and am actually fairly happy with it (Most of my complaints I list on my web page and will skip here) but it crashes all the time! I would love to be running an underlying *nix, whether it still looked like the basically-well-conceived Mac OS or like my home linux machine.
I don't understand why Apple pulled the plug on clones -- how about because they were making Apple look slow by releasing faster, cheaper machines? -- but I wish they hadn't. Then we could perhaps be running on a G3 PowerComputing box with SCSI, firewire and USB by now...
anyhow. I don't have a home mac, but if I find a cheap one I'd like to run some free OS on it.
It's simple without being austere, it shows well in various color depths and sizes, it isn't a literal (which could be misconstrued just as many people are willfully misconstruing the swirl in this forum, if not even more badly), it's a little bit mysterious and intriguing.
That said, I should admit to liking the lucent ring and the sun diamond pretty well also. Coming up with a good logotype is hard work, and I think the Debian crew picked a good one.
All profiling requires a comfortable 'norm' to compare to. If certain activities are going to be suspicious, they must be sufficiently unusual to warrant closer examination. Even kiddie-porn-selling heroin dealers with ties to Libyan terrorists (aren't they all?) are going to use the definite article, punctuation, emoticons;) and other typical email ingredients. The answer, if you want to short-circuit automata deciding how worthy a citizen you are by keywords and avg. word counts, is to make everything suspicious.
Before "Know Your Customer" was tossed out the door (for those who don't know, this was a massively anti-privacy FDIC measure which would have not just authorized but required financial institutions to report to Big Brother large or "unusual" bank account transactions, based on financial profiling) I came up with the idea and promulgated it to the 30 or so fellow columnists I worked with at my school's newspaper.
If you have in your and some immediate friends' bank accounts a total of anything over 10,000 dollars, pool it and start making transactions. Lots of them. Make sudden cash infusions and withdrawals. Demand quarters. Ask for "Small, unmarked bills" three days in a row. Ask furtively about whether anyone could know how much money you put into an account, or how fast you took it back out.
If a huge number of transactions are suspicious (setting off *all* of their bells too, not just one or two) then surveillance in the hopes of catching some nefarious financial or drug-related misdeed becomes a losing proposition.
Same thought applies here. That's why for years I like to toss in some gratuitous mentions of 'bombs,' 'heroin' and 'secrets' into long distance communications of all kinds. Add some random 'danger words' to your email innocuously, and the gub'mint will have a harder time spying on everyone.
There are many thousands who read Slashdot. If some small percentage of them did the same, it might not take up more than a blink of computer time to scan their email ("Oh, we don't scan email, unless it's suspicious" catch 22 vicious circle), but it certainly would take a lot of man hours for the people who must look into computer-generated leads.
land of the free home of the brave indeed! And don't worry, non-American slashdotters: The NSA has not forgotten you, I promise.
timothy
p.s. The NSA does have a great little museum. My dad (retired NSA) took me there a few years ago. Anyone near Ft. Meade MD should check it out. Neat exhibits, a library full of computer and crypto stuff, Purple, Enigma and other code devices from ancient to newish... it's also a good place to get NSA t-shirts, mugs, etc. I think there are small signs for it right on Route 32 toward the south side of the complex.
pps If you have nothing to hide then you won't mind this anal probe...
Agreed! We need to see all moderation comments!
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Slashdot Tweaks
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Elflord points out that the comments that ordinary readers see do not reflect all of the moderation that's gone on.
I agree that this is misleading.
Maybe if each posting simply (sorry, may be the wrong word, I know) tallied the total it would be a more accurate picture.
e.g. "5 x insightful, 7 x interesting, 1 x flamebait" that would let me know that most moderators expressing a preference had strongly positive views of it.
This would work I think also with the adjective matrix idea that I suggested (the grandparent of this posting, I think) in that the adjectives could be tallied so preponderances and tendencies are evident.
timothy
Good suggestion for criteria!
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Slashdot Tweaks
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In a fit of agreement (with adamsc agreeing with me already;) ), I want to say thanks to adam for the criteria he suggests here - on-topic vs. useful as independent / separable rankings.
I think that would cover the most important bases well. Often, the threads get more and more interesting as they grow and iterate, I know -- sometimes it's wild what leaps the conversation can take as ideas are thrown together. But as they wander farther and farther from the original topic, the harder the original thread is to find.
And depending on your reading style / interest level, that could be annoying or it could be fun. Point is, choosing to read only ones that are relevant and worth reading (or at least not rated down on either of those counts) might cut 100 comments down to 50 or 60, which would mean more minutes to spend elsehow.
I think the moderation scheme worked pretty well already, but these new tweaks are welcome.
Since I've only had moderator power once (and I'm trying to not let the sense of absolute power corrupt me absolutely), I am not an expert at the system really, but one thing I'd like to see in future updates to moderation would be a greater range of optional adjectival choices coupled with the filering scheme.
In other words, moderators could have the ability to choose not just "normal," "flamebait," "informative" and the handful of others, but instead could choose more descriptive ones (maybe on a sort of emotional / descriptive matrix with informative / uninformative as one axis and (what else) on the other. There are a lot of great adjective which fit certain types of posts very well...
If there were choices like
- "vitriolic / negative / bilious" (just random mean-spitired spew)
- "contankerous" (good question or point, but with a bitter-old-man tone)
- indignant ("how can you say that's confusing, you cretin?! It's buried right there in plain sight 90 percent of the down the 10-page FAQ! Can't you even read?!)
- "intriguing" (someone suggests a wholly new way of looking at something that makes you realize "Hey, it's a face and a couple of cups!" or maybe just "Hey, that's a neat idea, we could do it X-way..."
- "honest question" (I have lots of dumb questions, and they're not trolls...)
A reader could go through a list of adjectives and select the type he'd like to read, and when logged in would remain blissfully ignorant of some hot flame wars or off-topic nonsense until he unchecked the boxes again...
This is not terribly different from the way it is now, and I know the current system is already sort of complex, so please don't take this as criticism so much as suggestion. I just think a richer adjective selection would trim the fat from people's reading, let them get the posts they'd like in a much shorter time and avoid the frustration of reading yet another harshly-worded diatribe in response to yet-another... etc. Especially since a matrix of adjectives would let people sort based on how each of those adjectives matters to *them* instead of assigning a single digit + or - to broad categories. There's even some flamebait, or possibly off-topic material that I'd like to see, if it is Intriguing or Laugh-Till-Snot Funny.
And it might improve the avg. Slashdotters vocabulary (already good! already good!) by forcing them to understand some obscure adjectives.
Thanks for the work, Rob and pals! Enjoy the Southpark shows!
timothy
p.s. Moderator ability is like jury duty, but less onerous.
To those who aren't around I can't say you are missing much and I don't know if I'd pay $20 for the exhibition badge... maybe... I guess I'm just spoiled by attending PC Expo many years.
Maybe not, but it'd be fun to see all those companies pushing Open / Free software and hardware in one place.
Despite claims to the contrary, I think a complete "typical user desktop" can be assembled right now - there are Free / commercial applications now for word processing, graphics, spreadsheets, etc. (When I say "typical", though, I do mean folks who use their computers as I observe *most* get used - as a typewriter, desk calculator, calander, e-mail and Web browser, doodle pad, etc.)... and the momentum is in the right direction even for those people who do use bigger, more specialized tools under Micosoft OSes, or who are tied for the moment to closed software like MS Word for document compatibility.
I bet the Expos for Linux will only get better (as in more luxurious, whether that means better for the avg consumer is a question I won't get into here!). It'd be interesting to chart the graphs of attendance, entry price, entry 'prestige', total money generated (tough to pin down), jobs gained, etc. at various Free OS expos now that so much is rolling in this area.
I wish there was a market for ticket futures to Linux Expos, because I'd buy a few hundred entries...
I regard starting a business based on politics or a gimmick technology, and not a core value proposition, as a losing proposition.
It just so happens that in todays market, any smuck can IPO with a dumb idea. The gravy train will eventually end however.
What about any schmucks with near-meaningless business jargon like "core value proposition"? What is source-code availability if not valuable? If I ran a company with specific and known troubles with a certain WP (for instance the problem with apostrophes when Word files are imported into other WPs), wouldn't it be valuable to have a WP which allowed such things to either dissappear totally or be coded around?
I don't feel that MS Word is a great application... it has a lot of features, it's true, but that itself is a fairly neutral quality - depends what you're using it for. But I know that Word crashes on my Mac (and on my last PC) frequently, and Linux Wordperfect (not to mention text-based editors) never have. AbiWord looks famililar to anyone who's used a GUI word processor, and is extensible to incorporate needed feature.
Yes, Neal Stephenson should have his own slashdot mugshot, as the esteemed landtuna suggests.
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
Yes, Neal Stephenson should have his own slashdot mugshot, as the esteemed landtuna suggests.
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
(My apologies if this is similar to one I posted earlier; I didn't see it post and I'm afraid I hit the wrong button.)
As many people have pointed out, Linus / Linux owe a debt to RSM for evangelizing all things Open and coding an inhuman number of important utilities. RSM and entire Open movement, though, are the recipient of a lot of current acclaim because Linuxs wrote a kernel which set the ball rolling.
GNU/Linux is awkward; I can't see people using it any more than I can see "Oh, I really like your new Daimler-Chrysler Mercedes-Benz!"
So as a boggle and scrabble player, I'd like to suggest the name "Gnulix" (pronounced "NOO-licks," "NYOO-licks", or even "GNOO-licks") for systems incorporating both the Linux kernel and GNU utilities.
It uses all of the letters of both "gnu" and "linux," with no overlap or waste. It also contains the letters for gin, gun, ix, nil, and lug (any others?).
Has this been said before? Seems I couldn't be the first to combine these words...
But if this gives you an idea and you make a new distribution, feel free to send me a copy!;)
(My apologies if this is similar to one I posted earlier; I didn't see it post and I'm afraid I hit the wrong button.)
As many people have pointed out, Linus / Linux owe a debt to RSM for evangelizing all things Open and coding an inhuman number of important utilities. RSM and entire Open movement, though, are the recipient of a lot of current acclaim because Linuxs wrote a kernel which set the ball rolling.
GNU/Linux is awkward; I can't see people using it any more than I can see "Oh, I really like your new Daimler-Chrysler Mercedes-Benz!"
So as a boggle and scrabble player, I'd like to suggest the name "Gnulix" (pronounced "NOO-licks," "NYOO-licks", or even "GNOO-licks") for systems incorporating both the Linux kernel and GNU utilities.
It uses all of the letters of both "gnu" and "linux," with no overlap or waste. It also contains the letters for gin, gun, ix, nil, and lug (any others?).
Has this been said before? Seems I couldn't be the first to combine these words...
But if this gives you an idea and you make a new distribution, feel free to send me a copy!;)
Yes, in-store demo machines would be a great idea!
Especially as the multi-head fad is upon us... set up a few otherwise forgettable last-year's PCs up with Linux / other Free OS (as X terminals), and one reasonable but well-equipped machine for those to run off of.
Think about the possibilities when people realize that they could buy off-the-shelf software and share computers at home without buying every Junior and Janior an expensive new box!
{Snidely) and set up an NT setup with similar functionality right next to it. Post the pricetags prominently.
Easy: ask a clerk where the Linux software is... by Anonymous Coward on 18/05/99 9:35 EDT
... even if you know already perfectly well where it is shelved. If the 100st person comes and ask the same question, maybe they will wisen up, and shelve it at a more prominent place.
Right on, Good call!
Many businesses seem to be managed by zombies, who don't care (much) what customers want, so long as the store generates enough custom to pay their bills. "Conservative" in the pejorative sense, rather than the positive sense. However, even smart / smarter managers don't know what you want unless asked.
In the past couple of years, I have grown increasingly bold about asking / suggesting / requesting products I'd like to see when visiting retail places (not just computer stuff), and it feels good because it puts the shoe on the other foot. Much better than whining that "They don't carry it!" even though I still do that occasionally too.
Same goes for on-line comments for any software house etc. Ask for Linux / other Free OS stuff, indicate your interest in seeing a good selection.
Ask, ask, ask! Since I not a coder, but I like the idea of free / Free software, this seems to be one thing that people like me can do. Join in!
If you make it a point each time you go into a software shop (esp. the giant national chains, where hopefully there is some central accounting) and asking for a specific piece of Linux or other Free OS software that you don't see on the shelf, filling out a request form if one is available, then soon the avalanche of software availability will grow stronger! Maybe also specifically thank the manager if you do find a piece of software you want, mention that you will refer some friends there.
Point is, the mindset that "Nobody uses / buys Free OS software" is circular... you can't purchase it from shops that don't carry it, and unfortunately or not, the burden of proof is on the potential users / purchasers.
Slashdot is unddeniably Linux-centric (is there a charter somewhere making it so?!) but this is a thought worth pursuing... the old "Can't we all just get along?"in regards to Linux and Free / Open / NetBSD and any other free OS.
FreeBSD, Linux, other free OS projects have far more in common with each other in comparison to most commercial OSes than they have differences amongst themselves.
I think the Linux devpt. process is neat (as a geek only in the old fashioned sense, with no likely code contributions unless my brain grows a bit), but then so is the FreeBSD model.
Set-top boxes / appliances running abstracted versions of any free OS are cool because of what they imply and the possibilities they open up.
Especially given that one implication is that MS operating systems are not the only choice. News to no one reading this, but to middle america -- still, I assert -- a personal computer is either a cute box with a Macintosh splashscreen or a more rectilinear box with the Windows splashscreen, and other operating systems are still experimental / 'out there.'
Lets hear it for differences!
Timothy
Agreed - firewire and USB connections everywhere!
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Firewire Harddrives
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Nodding my head in agreement - think about how much easier it would be if all interfaces had easy pass-through allowing simultanous connection of similarly wired devices...
SCSI has it, but only to a degree and with quite a few problems with termination, incompatibilities between devices, devices with hard-wired SCSI IDs...
A set-up with all USB (for small things) and FireWire (for the big guns) and maybe some sort of SuperDuper thing for those things to come which would exhaust firewire but which would share the pass-through trasnparency would be perfect.
I don't see how this product would "make computers unecessary"... if everyone had Emo-Engine based boxes on his desktops, he would still be using a computers.
If he wants to use a word processor, he needs software; if he needs to print they requires a means to communicate with the printer at least (and that's more software);)
This is not just semantics or a curmudgeonly gripe, but totally serious.
I think everyone reading this forum expects -- or at least would not be shocked by -- radical changes in computer use, computer appearance, computer ubiquity, etc, in the coming years, but (please correct me if this is off-base, someone!) computers will still have hardware / software and some form of OS, even if it's just applications cooperating to use the hardware. Even if the OS is hardwired, in fact - it'll still be there.
If these Sony chips become as popular as it sounds like they could / "ought", and are worked into extensible boxes, I certainly hope that there are multiple competing operating systems fighting for their users' mindshare. Linux (or other GPL'd, or BSD liscensed, or whatever, OSes) would make good contestants.
Gore is simply trying to distance himself from those staid (Internet is bad!Save the children! censor, censor, censor!) old GOP candidates.
Of course, Tipper's all in favor of censor, censor, censor, in the form, no doubt, of "completely voluntary" restrictions and labels. And see where it's gotten high schoolers who want to buy controversial albums. Hmmmmm.
I'm not the only one of course, but a big memory buffer to allow replays, commerical skipping, etc has been on my 'why don't they have' list for at least 5 years... the more things are genericized into bits, the less the price of the format per se matters... prices on hard drive storage fall nicely, but how much have video cassette prices changed in the last year?
Now, the question is: What hardware / software requirments would there have to be for this to work under Linux / other Free OS?
Here are the ones I see. Please correct my non-techy but sincere self!
Hardware: - Big, fast hard drive (a given), probably one dedicated to this task - Video card with appropriate ins (as many formats as possible) and lots of memory - Firewire input
Software: MPEG (some other acceptable) compression to turn incoming video into files on the hard drive MPEG (or whatever) playback to replay said files. Management software that lets you select time and date to record, or what to playback, or what to edit etc, with a nice graphical interface.
Again, please let me know if what I'm saying is obviously silly (it's happened before), but:
For the cost of the video systems described (around $700), wouldn't it be possible to outfit a PC with the above hardware and software?
Or better, couldn't some smart Linux entrepreneur package appropriate software and hardware (matching what's in those ready-made boxes) for people to install on their linux boxes?
Does Linux have no MPEG compressors right now, or are they not fast enough for this task? (head spins, confused.)
I would pay happily for a dedicated hard drive, CD-ROM full of appropriate software and maybe some games or something, too, and a new video card that was appropriate to the task, if it would let me watch Ally McBeal at my leisure and without interruptions.
If you have the know how to do what I'm saying, your market is out there.
asb asked why on earth anyone would want a phone directory incorporated into an MP3 player.
Here's my answer to that:
Though I normally don't like all-in-one devices (too often they are of the toaster-with-integrated- flashlight variety), this one seems a little more like a friendly, possibly useful bonus that some other silly additions.
Of course, it would be better if there was a good all-in-one device, smaller than a Palm Pilot and with a PS/2 port which had a full-featured MP3 player in addition to all the other things that such devices can do.
Slashdot Mirror
A few things to consider:
... Going this route depends on your answer to the question, "This time next year, how close do I think a $300 player will be to today's $500-600 player?"
... that would be great. I could send video to my family on Video CD.
a) You don't specify your price range. I assume (we love projecting ourselves) that you're on a budget (e.g. money *is* an object). In that case, the panasonics are a good buy, but there are many such bargains as well. One good place to look is in the forum at dvdtalk.com, which has a discussion board about home components as well as about DVD-ROM drives.
b) Your OS. Why? Because Win98 and Mac let you watch DVD movies on your desktop but so far Linux and the BSDs do not. (I hope someone can correct me heartily!) So, if DVD-ROM is not a huge *current* priority, you might want to get a standalone player for now (it won't depreciate as quickly as a processor would, fortunately) and pick up a commodity DVD-ROM player when you need one. I've heard of them under a hundred bucks now.
c) Brand preference / legacy: I've only seen the Panasonics that are being recommended to you in stores, but so far I agree with the posters -- they seem to be nicely built, are quite full-featured, and have nice controls. The only players I've seen that I'd call truly ugly are the ones from Zenith and from RCA. I just bought a Pioneer DV414; I'm not a big fan of Pioneer industrial design, but I got the player at a good price (USD290 on ebay), and it's available for USD330 or so right now new. Besides aesthetics, you might consider your brand choice if you have linked components you intend to control as one unit; perhaps some of these systems already cooperate, but I am not familiar enough to say. JVC, Pioneer, Sony, Kenwood all have such linkages in order to encourage brand-unformity.
d) Your audio / video anality. If you have or plan to have a audio video system which will allow you to see a real difference, then things like component outs and DTS decoders are a big deal. I don't, so the fact that my player came with component outputs is just a nice novelty.
e) Your stomach. You might well be able to pick up a DIVX machine for cheap in the coming weeks, and plug raisins into the phone jack. Might even find one used, if that is OK with you. You'll still have to shop for the features you want (half a lifeboat isn't a bargain), but if you find one that works for you under $200, you can view it as a cool entry point to DVD and plan to get a better player sooner than you otherwise would with the money you save. Then you can equip another room, or your significant other's apt, or a starving elementary school, or
f) Whether you want to play Video CDs. My pioneer will play them, but I don't have any. Still, one day I might. I wonder if there is free software that would let me create Video CDs from videotapes
g) Whether you care about code-freeness. There are some players available without regional coding restrictions, and as others have written, some that will play back both PAL and NTSC. If you're American, and not into obscure releases which would only be available in other regions, this is probably not a huge concern, but it depends on your interests.
I doubt the fearless commander meant to speak courteously of this beast.
For once, a dumb idea got killed sooner rather than later, but it should have been pretty obvious. I think whatever drawing board spawned this cdreature should be publicly burned at the end of a Frankenstein-style castle invasion of Circuit City and the involved lawyer scum.
timothy
Granted, thin clients are clients, and not stand-alone devices, but the first poster has a point: Why pay $800 for a box that is essentially a processor, memory, monitor and keyboard, when a fully-functional box with a CD drive and a massive hard drive can be had for far less?
... diskless / floppy-less workstations, bootable over a network and designed for easy administration / uniformity in corporate environments.
Dell talked about selling something similar (though that was 2 / 2.5 yrs ago), but it would have run Windows, because Dell hadn't wised up to Linux at that point. I don't think they ever really got made, but the concept is the same as these WYSE terminals
I asked the same question then (working for an ad agency and thereby for Dell) and still have never gotten a really good answer why it would be better to pay more for fewer / lesser components. If I can get a PII with 64MB of RAM, an 8GB hard drive, a 15" monitor and a NIC for $600 (realistic? too conservative? too hopeful?) right now, I could use the hard drive, floppy drive and CD drive for target practice at a shooting range for far less than the privelege of having someone sell me a processor / memory / NIC / monitor combo. And that counts range time.
Is there some aspect to this that I just don't get? What justifies the cost of these things? Getting hundreds of computers custom built, these days, is no big deal -- and you don't have to specify any naughty security / administrative hassles you don't want, right?
Corrections appreciated,
timothy
This is the best idea I've seen (of many good ideas on Slashdot) in a while.
... on a disc that comes in one jewel case.
...
DVD is not perfect; outside of theology (including Deep Physics), nothing is. But DVD has incredible potential for data interchange, as well as its obvious / not-so-obvious capacity for music and video.
DVD-18 (double-sided, double-layer -- DSDL) discs can hold up to 8 hours of video with --from memory, corrections invited -- 17 GB of data.
DSDL discs are difficult to manufacture and are as yet very uncommon, so they're not the best examples, perhaps, but even single-sided discs hold Gigabytes on a neat little platter.
DVD-ROM drives play CD-ROMs fine (though with reputedly mixed results on CD-R and CD-RW, due to the interactions of dye-colors and laser wavelengths), so backward compatibility is not a problem.
The main difference is, with a full-capacity DVD, you could have as much data as on more than 25 CD-ROMs! You could try out slackware, red hat, debian, yellow dog, turbo linux and many more
Commerical software houses are probably going to expand on the old idea of sending a disc and selectively unlocking individual pieces of it.
DVD will be around for a long time, and Linux will start to age prematurely if no Open DVD standard emerges. It may take cooperation from the companies who make DVD hardware (and their standards consortia), but as Linux becomes more and more of an Obvious Choice, it would be silly if they didn't recognize that they could be selling their hardware to millions of users, if only those users could use DVDs on their systems.
Just some thoughts,
timothy
p.s. And of course, you could try out that "scientifically interesting" multi-angle DVD video you borrowed from your roommate. (Hint: the scientific company with the most multi-angle titles is Vivid Video)
NullGrey is correct: Meyer's grows on you! (At least on me.) Wayne's World never did much for me, but So I Married An Axe Murderer is sheer genius. It took a full watching to convince myself of that, so I would advocate anyone doubtful of its worth simply give it the 93-or-whatever minutes and then decide.
...
Hah! I never thought I would get a legitiamte chance to praise SIMAAM on slashdot. Oh but since I can, finally
I borrowed this video from my co-worker, after I mentioned that I really liked Austin Powers.
I was reluctant to take it, though, because as I told him, I've seen the cover of the video a million times and it just looked awful. Maybe I only saw it previous to Austin Powers and hadn't associated MIke Myers with making me pee from laughing yet, since I wasn't a big SNL fan.
Result? I've had it for months and watched it many times. Will my coworker ever get it back? When I buy the DVD he will.
I mentioned this to a few friends, including my friend Liz Klodginski, in an attempt to turn her on to this incredible movie. To my surprize, someone had already beaten me to it, and made her watch it over her objections -- good move! It's the sort of thing that it takes someone else to convince you, and then BOOM.
Mike Myers' facial expressions are so funny the movie would be funny even without sound.
ok, ok, ok
timothy
(Background: I've been through a number of Macintoshes and I'm on my fourth PC right now)
... the fact that they use not just a diff. manu but a different architecture is good for everyone. Here's a whopper of an analogy: what if paper was somehow constructed so it could only be written on with one sort of pen? That would seem silly, since there are lots of other choices. But software tend to be written to OSes themselves entirely dependent on their host hardware. Linux helps buck this trend (not as much as the BSDs, maybe, but still) by providing an OS which runs on multiple platforms.
...
Like the other respondents to this point of view, I don't have an irate reply, but would agree with those other respondents as well that the total universe of Mac users is pretty broad.
Why would anyone want to run Linux / other Free OS on a Mac? That's not exactly the question here, but it seems to be lurking beneath the surface, and that same question was asked in a thread one level up from here.
I can't answer this for everyone, but here are the reasons I think that Linux and the Mac make a great combination, practically and normatively.
- Macs tend to have nice human engineering. The gulf is not as wide as it was 10 years or 5 years or maybe 2 years ago compared to the PC world, but well-labled parts, legible icons, attempts at friendlization still IMHO work better on Macs, but this comparison of course ignores that PC vendors vary tremendously in this respect.
- Macs use non-Intel chips
- They look cool. That factor sells a lot of PCs, however unsatisfying that fact may be.
- Ubiquity. Not as many macs in the world as PCs, but the lopsided numbers / market share I think are misleading, since it's hard to go ten minutes in any US city and avoid seeing either an ad or an actual iMac / G3, not to mention older and still humming Macs.
- The Mac OS begs for a replacement, or at least whines a little. I use one at work (an iMac) and am actually fairly happy with it (Most of my complaints I list on my web page and will skip here) but it crashes all the time! I would love to be running an underlying *nix, whether it still looked like the basically-well-conceived Mac OS or like my home linux machine.
I don't understand why Apple pulled the plug on clones -- how about because they were making Apple look slow by releasing faster, cheaper machines? -- but I wish they hadn't. Then we could perhaps be running on a G3 PowerComputing box with SCSI, firewire and USB by now
anyhow. I don't have a home mac, but if I find a cheap one I'd like to run some free OS on it.
timothy
It's simple without being austere, it shows well in various color depths and sizes, it isn't a literal (which could be misconstrued just as many people are willfully misconstruing the swirl in this forum, if not even more badly), it's a little bit mysterious and intriguing.
That said, I should admit to liking the lucent ring and the sun diamond pretty well also. Coming up with a good logotype is hard work, and I think the Debian crew picked a good one.
timothy
All profiling requires a comfortable 'norm' to compare to. If certain activities are going to be suspicious, they must be sufficiently unusual to warrant closer examination. Even kiddie-porn-selling heroin dealers with ties to Libyan terrorists (aren't they all?) are going to use the definite article, punctuation, emoticons;) and other typical email ingredients. The answer, if you want to short-circuit automata deciding how worthy a citizen you are by keywords and avg. word counts, is to make everything suspicious.
... it's also a good place to get NSA t-shirts, mugs, etc. I think there are small signs for it right on Route 32 toward the south side of the complex.
...
Before "Know Your Customer" was tossed out the door (for those who don't know, this was a massively anti-privacy FDIC measure which would have not just authorized but required financial institutions to report to Big Brother large or "unusual" bank account transactions, based on financial profiling) I came up with the idea and promulgated it to the 30 or so fellow columnists I worked with at my school's newspaper.
If you have in your and some immediate friends' bank accounts a total of anything over 10,000 dollars, pool it and start making transactions. Lots of them. Make sudden cash infusions and withdrawals. Demand quarters. Ask for "Small, unmarked bills" three days in a row. Ask furtively about whether anyone could know how much money you put into an account, or how fast you took it back out.
If a huge number of transactions are suspicious (setting off *all* of their bells too, not just one or two) then surveillance in the hopes of catching some nefarious financial or drug-related misdeed becomes a losing proposition.
Same thought applies here. That's why for years I like to toss in some gratuitous mentions of 'bombs,' 'heroin' and 'secrets' into long distance communications of all kinds. Add some random 'danger words' to your email innocuously, and the gub'mint will have a harder time spying on everyone.
There are many thousands who read Slashdot. If some small percentage of them did the same, it might not take up more than a blink of computer time to scan their email ("Oh, we don't scan email, unless it's suspicious" catch 22 vicious circle), but it certainly would take a lot of man hours for the people who must look into computer-generated leads.
land of the free home of the brave indeed! And don't worry, non-American slashdotters: The NSA has not forgotten you, I promise.
timothy
p.s. The NSA does have a great little museum. My dad (retired NSA) took me there a few years ago. Anyone near Ft. Meade MD should check it out. Neat exhibits, a library full of computer and crypto stuff, Purple, Enigma and other code devices from ancient to newish
pps If you have nothing to hide then you won't mind this anal probe
Elflord points out that the comments that ordinary readers see do not reflect all of the moderation that's gone on.
I agree that this is misleading.
Maybe if each posting simply (sorry, may be the wrong word, I know) tallied the total it would be a more accurate picture.
e.g. "5 x insightful, 7 x interesting, 1 x flamebait" that would let me know that most moderators expressing a preference had strongly positive views of it.
This would work I think also with the adjective matrix idea that I suggested (the grandparent of this posting, I think) in that the adjectives could be tallied so preponderances and tendencies are evident.
timothy
In a fit of agreement (with adamsc agreeing with me already;) ), I want to say thanks to adam for the criteria he suggests here - on-topic vs. useful as independent / separable rankings.
I think that would cover the most important bases well. Often, the threads get more and more interesting as they grow and iterate, I know -- sometimes it's wild what leaps the conversation can take as ideas are thrown together. But as they wander farther and farther from the original topic, the harder the original thread is to find.
And depending on your reading style / interest level, that could be annoying or it could be fun. Point is, choosing to read only ones that are relevant and worth reading (or at least not rated down on either of those counts) might cut 100 comments down to 50 or 60, which would mean more minutes to spend elsehow.
Just a thought,
timothy
I think the moderation scheme worked pretty well already, but these new tweaks are welcome.
...
..."
...)
...
... etc. Especially since a matrix of adjectives would let people sort based on how each of those adjectives matters to *them* instead of assigning a single digit + or - to broad categories. There's even some flamebait, or possibly off-topic material that I'd like to see, if it is Intriguing or Laugh-Till-Snot Funny.
Since I've only had moderator power once (and I'm trying to not let the sense of absolute power corrupt me absolutely), I am not an expert at the system really, but one thing I'd like to see in future updates to moderation would be a greater range of optional adjectival choices coupled with the filering scheme.
In other words, moderators could have the ability to choose not just "normal," "flamebait," "informative" and the handful of others, but instead could choose more descriptive ones (maybe on a sort of emotional / descriptive matrix with informative / uninformative as one axis and (what else) on the other. There are a lot of great adjective which fit certain types of posts very well
If there were choices like
- "vitriolic / negative / bilious" (just random mean-spitired spew)
- "contankerous" (good question or point, but with a bitter-old-man tone)
- indignant ("how can you say that's confusing, you cretin?! It's buried right there in plain sight 90 percent of the down the 10-page FAQ! Can't you even read?!)
- "intriguing" (someone suggests a wholly new way of looking at something that makes you realize "Hey, it's a face and a couple of cups!" or maybe just "Hey, that's a neat idea, we could do it X-way
- "honest question" (I have lots of dumb questions, and they're not trolls
A reader could go through a list of adjectives and select the type he'd like to read, and when logged in would remain blissfully ignorant of some hot flame wars or off-topic nonsense until he unchecked the boxes again
This is not terribly different from the way it is now, and I know the current system is already sort of complex, so please don't take this as criticism so much as suggestion. I just think a richer adjective selection would trim the fat from people's reading, let them get the posts they'd like in a much shorter time and avoid the frustration of reading yet another harshly-worded diatribe in response to yet-another
And it might improve the avg. Slashdotters vocabulary (already good! already good!) by forcing them to understand some obscure adjectives.
Thanks for the work, Rob and pals! Enjoy the Southpark shows!
timothy
p.s. Moderator ability is like jury duty, but less onerous.
Maybe not, but it'd be fun to see all those companies pushing Open / Free software and hardware in one place.
Despite claims to the contrary, I think a complete "typical user desktop" can be assembled right now - there are Free / commercial applications now for word processing, graphics, spreadsheets, etc. (When I say "typical", though, I do mean folks who use their computers as I observe *most* get used - as a typewriter, desk calculator, calander, e-mail and Web browser, doodle pad, etc.)
I bet the Expos for Linux will only get better (as in more luxurious, whether that means better for the avg consumer is a question I won't get into here!). It'd be interesting to chart the graphs of attendance, entry price, entry 'prestige', total money generated (tough to pin down), jobs gained, etc. at various Free OS expos now that so much is rolling in this area.
I wish there was a market for ticket futures to Linux Expos, because I'd buy a few hundred entries
timothy
What about any schmucks with near-meaningless business jargon like "core value proposition"? What is source-code availability if not valuable? If I ran a company with specific and known troubles with a certain WP (for instance the problem with apostrophes when Word files are imported into other WPs), wouldn't it be valuable to have a WP which allowed such things to either dissappear totally or be coded around?
I don't feel that MS Word is a great application
How's that for "core value"?
timothy
Yes, Neal Stephenson should have his own slashdot mugshot, as the esteemed landtuna suggests.
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
Go Neal!
timothy
Yes, Neal Stephenson should have his own slashdot mugshot, as the esteemed landtuna suggests.
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
Go Neal!
timothy
(My apologies if this is similar to one I posted earlier; I didn't see it post and I'm afraid I hit the wrong button.)
...
As many people have pointed out, Linus / Linux owe a debt to RSM for evangelizing all things Open and coding an inhuman number of important utilities. RSM and entire Open movement, though, are the recipient of a lot of current acclaim because Linuxs wrote a kernel which set the ball rolling.
GNU/Linux is awkward; I can't see people using it any more than I can see "Oh, I really like your new Daimler-Chrysler Mercedes-Benz!"
So as a boggle and scrabble player, I'd like to suggest the name "Gnulix" (pronounced "NOO-licks," "NYOO-licks", or even "GNOO-licks") for systems incorporating both the Linux kernel and GNU utilities.
It uses all of the letters of both "gnu" and "linux," with no overlap or waste. It also contains the letters for gin, gun, ix, nil, and lug (any others?).
Has this been said before? Seems I couldn't be the first to combine these words
But if this gives you an idea and you make a new distribution, feel free to send me a copy!;)
timothy
(My apologies if this is similar to one I posted earlier; I didn't see it post and I'm afraid I hit the wrong button.)
...
As many people have pointed out, Linus / Linux owe a debt to RSM for evangelizing all things Open and coding an inhuman number of important utilities. RSM and entire Open movement, though, are the recipient of a lot of current acclaim because Linuxs wrote a kernel which set the ball rolling.
GNU/Linux is awkward; I can't see people using it any more than I can see "Oh, I really like your new Daimler-Chrysler Mercedes-Benz!"
So as a boggle and scrabble player, I'd like to suggest the name "Gnulix" (pronounced "NOO-licks," "NYOO-licks", or even "GNOO-licks") for systems incorporating both the Linux kernel and GNU utilities.
It uses all of the letters of both "gnu" and "linux," with no overlap or waste. It also contains the letters for gin, gun, ix, nil, and lug (any others?).
Has this been said before? Seems I couldn't be the first to combine these words
But if this gives you an idea and you make a new distribution, feel free to send me a copy!;)
timothy
In agreement with Latrell Sprewell -
... set up a few otherwise forgettable last-year's PCs up with Linux / other Free OS (as X terminals), and one reasonable but well-equipped machine for those to run off of.
Yes, in-store demo machines would be a great idea!
Especially as the multi-head fad is upon us
Think about the possibilities when people realize that they could buy off-the-shelf software and share computers at home without buying every Junior and Janior an expensive new box!
{Snidely) and set up an NT setup with similar functionality right next to it. Post the pricetags prominently.
Just a thought -
timothy
by Anonymous Coward on 18/05/99 9:35 EDT
... even if you know already perfectly well where it is shelved. If the 100st person comes and ask the same question, maybe they will wisen up, and shelve it at a more prominent place.
Right on, Good call!
Many businesses seem to be managed by zombies, who don't care (much) what customers want, so long as the store generates enough custom to pay their bills. "Conservative" in the pejorative sense, rather than the positive sense. However, even smart / smarter managers don't know what you want unless asked.
In the past couple of years, I have grown increasingly bold about asking / suggesting / requesting products I'd like to see when visiting retail places (not just computer stuff), and it feels good because it puts the shoe on the other foot. Much better than whining that "They don't carry it!" even though I still do that occasionally too.
Same goes for on-line comments for any software house etc. Ask for Linux / other Free OS stuff, indicate your interest in seeing a good selection.
Ask, ask, ask! Since I not a coder, but I like the idea of free / Free software, this seems to be one thing that people like me can do. Join in!
If you make it a point each time you go into a software shop (esp. the giant national chains, where hopefully there is some central accounting) and asking for a specific piece of Linux or other Free OS software that you don't see on the shelf, filling out a request form if one is available, then soon the avalanche of software availability will grow stronger! Maybe also specifically thank the manager if you do find a piece of software you want, mention that you will refer some friends there.
Point is, the mindset that "Nobody uses / buys Free OS software" is circular
Tim
Slashdot is unddeniably Linux-centric (is there a charter somewhere making it so?!) but this is a thought worth pursuing ... the old "Can't we all just get along?"in regards to Linux and Free / Open / NetBSD and any other free OS.
FreeBSD, Linux, other free OS projects have far more in common with each other in comparison to most commercial OSes than they have differences amongst themselves.
I think the Linux devpt. process is neat (as a geek only in the old fashioned sense, with no likely code contributions unless my brain grows a bit), but then so is the FreeBSD model.
Set-top boxes / appliances running abstracted versions of any free OS are cool because of what they imply and the possibilities they open up.
Especially given that one implication is that MS operating systems are not the only choice. News to no one reading this, but to middle america -- still, I assert -- a personal computer is either a cute box with a Macintosh splashscreen or a more rectilinear box with the Windows splashscreen, and other operating systems are still experimental / 'out there.'
Lets hear it for differences!
Timothy
Nodding my head in agreement - think about how much easier it would be if all interfaces had easy pass-through allowing simultanous connection of similarly wired devices ...
...
SCSI has it, but only to a degree and with quite a few problems with termination, incompatibilities between devices, devices with hard-wired SCSI IDs
A set-up with all USB (for small things) and FireWire (for the big guns) and maybe some sort of SuperDuper thing for those things to come which would exhaust firewire but which would share the pass-through trasnparency would be perfect.
I don't see how this product would "make computers unecessary"
If he wants to use a word processor, he needs software; if he needs to print they requires a means to communicate with the printer at least (and that's more software) ;)
This is not just semantics or a curmudgeonly gripe, but totally serious.
I think everyone reading this forum expects -- or at least would not be shocked by -- radical changes in computer use, computer appearance, computer ubiquity, etc, in the coming years, but (please correct me if this is off-base, someone!) computers will still have hardware / software and some form of OS, even if it's just applications cooperating to use the hardware. Even if the OS is hardwired, in fact - it'll still be there.
If these Sony chips become as popular as it sounds like they could / "ought", and are worked into extensible boxes, I certainly hope that there are multiple competing operating systems fighting for their users' mindshare. Linux (or other GPL'd, or BSD liscensed, or whatever, OSes) would make good contestants.
Respectfully,
Timothy
Gore is simply trying to distance himself from those staid (Internet is bad!Save the children! censor, censor, censor!) old GOP candidates.
Of course, Tipper's all in favor of censor, censor, censor, in the form, no doubt, of "completely voluntary" restrictions and labels. And see where it's gotten high schoolers who want to buy controversial albums. Hmmmmm.
Hello all:
... the more things are genericized into bits, the less the price of the format per se matters ... prices on hard drive storage fall nicely, but how much have video cassette prices changed in the last year?
I'm not the only one of course, but a big memory buffer to allow replays, commerical skipping, etc has been on my 'why don't they have' list for at least 5 years
Now, the question is: What hardware / software requirments would there have to be for this to work under Linux / other Free OS?
Here are the ones I see. Please correct my non-techy but sincere self!
Hardware:
- Big, fast hard drive (a given), probably one dedicated to this task
- Video card with appropriate ins (as many formats as possible) and lots of memory
- Firewire input
Software:
MPEG (some other acceptable) compression to turn incoming video into files on the hard drive
MPEG (or whatever) playback to replay said files.
Management software that lets you select time and date to record, or what to playback, or what to edit etc, with a nice graphical interface.
Again, please let me know if what I'm saying is obviously silly (it's happened before), but:
For the cost of the video systems described (around $700), wouldn't it be possible to outfit a PC with the above hardware and software?
Or better, couldn't some smart Linux entrepreneur package appropriate software and hardware (matching what's in those ready-made boxes) for people to install on their linux boxes?
Does Linux have no MPEG compressors right now, or are they not fast enough for this task? (head spins, confused.)
I would pay happily for a dedicated hard drive, CD-ROM full of appropriate software and maybe some games or something, too, and a new video card that was appropriate to the task, if it would let me watch Ally McBeal at my leisure and without interruptions.
If you have the know how to do what I'm saying, your market is out there.
Timothy
asb asked why on earth anyone would want a phone directory incorporated into an MP3 player.
... ;)
Here's my answer to that:
Though I normally don't like all-in-one devices (too often they are of the toaster-with-integrated- flashlight variety), this one seems a little more like a friendly, possibly useful bonus that some other silly additions.
Of course, it would be better if there was a good all-in-one device, smaller than a Palm Pilot and with a PS/2 port which had a full-featured MP3 player in addition to all the other things that such devices can do.
5 years from now
timothy