If you really thought this episode sucked I'll respect your opinion. I think it is probably the second best episode of Buffy ever. Of course last seasons "The Body" takes top honors there.
I think you misspelled "Hush", and it was two seasons ago:-)
"Once More, With Feeling" was probably the most untevision like show I've ever seen on TV. It was ballsy and quite cool.
A musical is more untelevision then a show that goes without dialog (or spoken/sung words at least) for 40+ minutes?
I think Buffy has jumped the shark in that very few of the post-HS episodes have been as good as the pre-HS episodes, but that isn't really fair to the show...I mean it is still far better then most other TV shows. It earned it's #1 spot on my TiVo's Season Pass Manager... (oh, and thanks to TiVo I didn't have to know it would run 10 minutes long...sort of...if I had left it alone I would have gotten the extra 10 minutes, but it wouldn't have quite managed to make the most of the repeat airings; it needs a non-greedy algo to do that, but the simple didn't do too bad, and I got to tweak it)
Now, I know have the hype comes from the readership here, but I just keep wondering why AMD and a few other companies like Transmeta get covered here so lovingly. Is it because Slashdot readers don't like frontrunners ?
There is some of that. Any news-like coverage likes to see things get shaken up a bit. There may also be some Intel specific hate though. Like hate for trying to suppress documents (see undocumented intel, and also the original Appendix H or which ever the hidden one was). Oh, don't forget hate for them insisting Randall Schwartz was prosecuted...
Oh, and I rather hate the x86 instruction set. Which makes me rather torn about the x86-64 vs. iTanic thing...
few other companies like Transmeta get covered here so lovingly
Well, doesn't Linus work there? Plus it is a neat idea, even if it doesn't seem to be working so well.
Well, you give it the "list of files" of the old installations, and make it delete all files from those old installations that do not contain any user-data. (e.g. leave out the "initial database" that is distributed with the program).
That still doesn't have zero chance. Your linked list might be damaged by another part of the program, either overwriting the link part, or a name part. You can complain that that would be due to a bug, but so is the shell script problem.
Zero is a hard goal to reach. Impossable even given the chance of DRAM errors.
You can get a little closer if you try this:
for (tp = file_list; cnt = N; tp;tp=tp->next) { assert(cnt--); unlink(tp->fname); }
Of corse we both left off finding the package install location (i.e. translating Foo.app/MacOS/Foo into "/Volume/Name of Volume/Applications/Foo.app/MacOS/Foo"), which is where the script went wrong, so we have a few more chances for error...
There is also a problems with the resource fork, in OSX it has been replaced. Resource Bar in program Foo is stored as Foo.app/Resources/Bar, so knowing all the files that Foo has requires knowing all the resources it creates, which may be hard to know ahead of time.
It also can be a problem because one may not know all the files in the iTunes package, it is clearly known for past versions, but not future versions.
I won't mention dumb-ass users replacing iTunes files with their own:-)
See the missing check if the unlink works? That's intentional. We're not interested if the remove of the file worked. If for example the user decided to write-protect some of the files (actually directories) we don't want them deleted.
I see it, it might be a bad idea if the file is a kext, or some random incompatable shared lib or kernel module. It is still a valid design choice though. It would be better if you told the user which files you wanted to delete but didn't because the user had protected them.
I still like to solution of moving the things to the trash. It also doesn't have zero chance of not deleting things, but it probbably won't. It definitly doesn't have no chance of moving the wrong stuff to the trash, but if it does it is not so hard to move them out, definitly simpler then undoing an rm.
perhaps some lunitic will come up with a nice OS 9.2.1 theme and theme manager to run it over aqua for you
If you look over on MacNN someone has one fairly far along. I think the only big chunk o' work they have left is the scroll bars. I think it was a Friday headline.
Check the man page on rsync. When you rsync a directory with another directory, you're not running a risk of deleting anything outside that directory.
Yes, but rsync uses unlink (or it did in 1995, which is the last time I looked at it's source). It might manage to destroy everything, like if you accidentally specify the target wrong (great...my whole disk has been replaced with a single copy of iTunes and nothing else).
I'm not saying nothing is better then what Apple uses (an installer that runs a shell script), but that nothing that aims to do the same thing will have zero chance of deleting the wrong thing. In passing I'll also mention that it isn't obviously worse then many other Unix installers (you know, the ones that just run random shell scripts!), but Apple has the misfortune of having a user base that tends to use spaces (and punctuation) in their file names...
Rather than having the script delete iTunes.app, have it move it to the appropriate.Trashes folder.
Ok, that's a good idea. There are a few problems with it, but I think they are smaller the the problems with real removal.
I think iTunes (the old one) is probbably owned by root, so I'm not sure it would go to the current users trash, or work well there unless chown'ed. If it gets chown'ed just dragging it back where it was might not be a good idea (if nothing else it means an attack on user Foo can overwrite itunes and if someone elses runs it sneak in...; not a big deal since user Foo had to be an admin to install iTunes2 anyway). However untangling that kind of mess is better then dealing with half (or all) your files being rm'ed
There may not be enough space to install unless the old iTunes is deleted first, which would frustrate people.
More crap in my trash can? Have you seen how full the thing is already?
There is no easy way to invoke the Finders "move to trash" from a shell script. It would be a fine idea to fix this problem.
From a UI point of view I'm not sure people would expect upgrading some software to leave the old version on the trash. Of corse two years after we start doing it that way everyone will expect it, and think it would be dump not too...
Very good idea. Someone tell Apple:-)
P.S. it is owned by root: drwxrwxr-x 3 root admin 58 Nov 3 17:30/Applications/iTunes.app/.
Easy. require apps to declare their contents to the system and provide an interface to manage these apps and their versions. Then require that apps use that interface exclusively to manage them.
Already does, you put them in a direcory named Foo.app where Foo is the name of the application, then users can move it around without things getting out of sync...
It's really hard to wipe an entire drive with uninstallComponent("iTunes", VERSION_ALL);
That depends on how "uninstallComponent" is implmented. If it is written in a shell like language it can be pretty easy...
Wrong, mind you, but not so hard to do wrong. I would guess some Linux and other generic Unix installers have problems with spaces in file names... I know for sure they have problems with display numbers other then zero, and this mistake is about as basic.
With Open Source software at least you have the ability to read the source code.
In this case the bug was in the installer, which is a shell script and quite readable. It was a novice shell script error, which is understandable since Apple is a novice Unix OEM...
Having an installer that is even capable of such is a sign of faulty design.
How do you make an installer that can remove the old version of a program, and yet have zero chance that it never removes the wrong thing?
(yes, it was a bad bug, very bad, but I'm not sure how you design a drool proof installer that has zero chance of deleting the wrong thing -- I know how to do a not drool proof one though. Put iTunes2 on a disk image along with a README that says "delete the old one before installing the new one").
Anyway, Jobs talked about "Apple did what Apple does best, the user interface".
Well I kind of assumed Apple at least designed the UI, and probbably coded it up, but I'm not sure Jobs saying that would be proof since he may well be refering to things Apple payed others to do as "Apple".
Of corse before someone said Pixo did the OS I had assumed Apple had done that as well since there isn't that much to an embeded OS. Apparently someone decided that on a eight month timeframe buying an OS was a good idea (and it probbably was). I would have tryed Cygness' little embeded OS, but that's just me.
Wonderful to see this. And again it's so simple that I marvel that nobody else has been suggesting it- I thought I had sort of invented this concept for myself out of necessity and it's reassuring to see that people have actually tried it and it works.
Well ghostscript is vaguely similar. The MPL is designed for this sort of thing (it does give a specific entity the right to release under a different license, in that respect it is even better then the GPL for this business model).
I don't know of anyone doing it a successfully as Sleepycat though...of corse the sleepycat software is also damn fine. I have written some very big projects that used it.
Poring over the ruling, I have to ask some questions that didn't seem to get raised
Why isn't Johansen's status as a minor the key factor in his inability to agree to the Xing EULA?
Easy enough. The court only needs to find one reason to overturn the ruling, not all of them. Why do all the work to determine that the click wrap was invalid (if it was) when one can skip it all and just declare that the 1st amendment trumps all? (well, almost all -- and all that matters here)
Besides it is more important in the long run that prior restraint on source code is just as hard to get as prior constraint on speech... since prior restraint on speech is almost impossible, requiring not just national security grounds, but pressing ones.
O.B. disclaimer, free legal advice is worth no more then you pay for it, sometimes even less. Plus I ain't even graduated from a University, let alone passed the bar.
Yes, many multi-level filesystems use them. Recently accessed files tend to live in RAM and a hard drive. Not so recently ones on a hard drive. Really not so recently used ones are off on mag tape (or WORM media) in a jukebox.
AFS also use to use local disk to cache files from the network, I think CODA can do the same.
Oh, and many web browsers cache files on local disk (or at least in the filesystem, which is normally local disk, but could be solid state, or across the network...). Netscape, and MSIE for example:-)
So the question is, why is an entry level 600MHz iMac *so* expensive if the screen, hard drive, memory, video, etc, are all commodity parts?
Part could be they tend to use high quality parts (e.g. the monitor on the iMac may be small but it has far less edge distortion then the small monitors I see at CompUSA, and better color then most of them). They could get away from that by making a "craptastic" Mac, but would it help them to convince people that Mac's are better by selling them something bad? (Note: many people already think this about the iMac, or about leaving SCSI for IDE, or...still one has to admit that many parts of the iMacs are not the cheap parts that the "value" PCs use)
Part of it may be they have to spread the design costs over a smaller number of sales. It costs X dollars to make a new motherboard chipset. If you take Apple's claim of 5% market share as fact, then a PC part has the potential of having 20 times as many people to spread the design costs and other NREs over then a Mac part. So the "northbridge" is going to have a lot more cost charged to each buyer then one from SiS. They can combat that a little by only having a few different parts there (say one for the whole iMac line, maybe shared with the iBook, one for the 1st gen TiBook, one for the 2nd gen TiBook and the G4's...), the PC market's five or so chip makers still have more people to spread the NREs over... There are also NREs for each machine. Again Apple can make that hurt a little less by only having four lines of machine and only 2, 3, or 4 in each line vs. the N bizzilian PCs, it still hurts a bit.
Apple also has to pay more for quality control. They make a fairly wide array of products, and they all have to work together because they can't point their fingers at as many other people. If you buy an HP PC and it sucks, when you call they can point their finger at the maker of the app (most bundled Apps on a PC are not made by the PC maker, Apple tends to ship largely their own software, or software branded as theirs), failing that they can point their finger at Microsoft (or wash their hands of you if you have Linux), Apple can only blame themselves for the OS...
Apple also seems to do more research then most places, and that costs. It also pays though.
Lastly, Apple has higher profit margins then PC makers (except in the server market). It makes sense to me for them to trim those to the bone on the low end iMac, but who knows if they do.
Firewire support was still in early development and not considered stable in Linux, and HFS+ was also getting close to working, but still had the tendancy to trash filesystems.
Well, the good news is if you use it to "sync" music like Apple does trashing the filesystem isn't a big deal since all the data is still on the Linux box. Flakey FireWire could be a bigger deal though since that may make the system lock up (depending on how it flakes). Since I have a OSX box, Linux, and FreeBSD, I figure I'm covered on iPod use:-)
I still havn't decided if I want one. I did look at the demo unit the Tyson's VA Apple store has, and it was cool. I just don't know if I'm away from my normal sources of music enough to want to bother with this.
P.S. the headphones they include are pretty nice. Not as nice as the Etymotic Research ones, but a lot better then what most CD players include! They are also removable so one could use quality headphines, or try to drive a line-in if you want.
One would assume that if you can write a HFS+ filesystem onto a FireWire hard disk that you can get your music into the iPod no matter what OS you are using.
At least I assume it is an HFS+ filesystem, it could be FAT32, I mean it is a 3rd party OS in the iPod, the big limit is it will have to be something that both OS9 and OSX support writing, and a "little" OS can support reading.
The iPod copying limitations are not really restrictions, but rather just hiding the actual MP3 files.
Just in case anyone is too lazy to follow the links...the hidden files are unhidable by using ls in the terminal window, or by setting the "show hidden files in finder" thing in TinkerTool.
My theory is they did it just so iTunes' sync function can't accidentally delete user files just because they end in ".mp3".
The Tivo unit is evil, it is yet another of those clueless dotcom scams where you buy something and then have to pay a monthly fee to make it work. Like AOL the designers look for sneaky opportunities to bombard you with ads.
No, you have the option of paying a single fee for a lifetime (of the box) service.
They have not been using any sneaky opportunities to bomb you with ads (ReplayTV does though, when you hit pause, unless they took that out), unless you count the network showcases which are "just" a spot in the menu where networks can (pay to) put their shows, and it is pretty weak, just a slot in the main menu. Oh, and the "TiVoMatics" which let advertisers link a commercial with a show, and if that show is on a channel you receive, and isn't over yet, when the commercial comes on it puts "Press select to record" in the corner of the commercial (even if you are FFing, you only get about a second to notice it an hit select at that speed though). Personally I like TiVomatics, it means if I see a commercial for an interesting TV show I don't have to look it up, I can just hit select...
Plus unlike, say, the I-Opener they have not been hostile to the hackers. They have given tacit approval to adding larger disks, and turned a blind eye towards people adding Ethernets. The most they have said about people ripping mpegs off their boxes is "that's not cool", no lawsuit threats.
If you don't think TiVo is worth the money, that's fine, don't buy one. They are not evil though. Really.
Here are my requirements[...]Record shows, NOT time slots!
Some sort of "season pass" deal like the TiVO.
There are three more things that TiVo does here that are useful, and you might want to think about adding to your list.
The ability to tell the box which shows are more important (and if possable to treat reruns, and recent reruns diffrently). That way you can tell it in advance that a new episode of Buffy is more important then a repeat of the Simpsons (or the reverse if that suits you). TiVo added this in the 2.0 release, and it made the box about 20 times more useful to me.
The ability to see what the box thinks it is going to record (so you can make sure Important Show will be recorded...), this is mostly useful in setting your priorities right, sometimes for "dealing" with special broadcasts.
The ability to see why a show wasn't/will not be recorded.
The box should support multiple tuners so I can watch and record
Or better yet allow you to slap multiple boxes together and have them decide which ones will record what, and which drives will hold the shows, making a totally transparent uber box... That way you won't be "stuck" with "only" two tuners while there are at least three networks trying to schedule all their best stuff at the exact same time! Plus once you discover that you are recording way more then you will watch you can slap a few more boxes onto it for more storage:-)
TiVO is nearly there! If the hackers manage to get it to the point where the shows can be pulled off easily I'll buy one and mod the crap out of it to get what I want.
I thought they hacked in a ethernet, and had managed to make a program (StreamExtract) to yank out mpeg streams, and even a little web server to drive it. Totally unsupported though.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with my TiVo even though there are a few things I really want it to do. I still think I'm getting (more!) then my moneys worth from it.
Re:This reminds me of the one Simpsons' scene...
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TV Networks Sue ReplayTV
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· Score: 3, Interesting
When a show is good enough, most people won't record and watch later.
Heh, sure they will. You miss the main point of hte PVR (ReplayTV, TiVo, UTV, DISHPlayer). If I start watching a 8:00 show at 8:15 I can skip all the commercials and finish up right about 9:00. I can choose to read a book, debug some code, or watch a half hour TV show (skipping the half that is commercials) and finish up at the same time you do.
Why would I possibly want to start watching at 8:00?
The only way to get me watch commercials is to make more good ones. I watch those. If I'm not in a hurry. And I notice them at 60x (or they start the block).
Actually, I think that it's pretty difficult to do valid research on that kind of thing.
I think it is easy, but expensive. Create a new product. Make two brands for it. Advertise one brand, don't advertise the other. If both brands fail you have learned little. If the advertised one sells far more then the other then advertising is effective. If both sell about the same advertising is not effective. I'm not quite sure what you learn if the advertised one sells less. It would probably be a good idea to adjust the numbers to reflect for the cost of advertising .
Like most experiments doing it multiple times to reduce the chance of experimental error would be a good idea.
Unfortunitly things like Dr. Pepper vs. Dr Smooth I think don't work as an experiment because I think Dr. Pepper has been around a lot longer. Similar for the no-name perfumes because they come out later...
Anyone coding windows software needs to know about the API. System calls, library calls, etc. This is, mostly, freely available information.
It doesn't have to be. For example MS may implement a new OS feature, and use it in Office without telling others how to use it. They may later decide to do it in a slightly different way (either because after experience the first way wasn't so good, or because they want the new way to be worse so their rivals are at a disadvantage), but they will probably keep to old one so older versions of Office keep working. The Office team may decide they like the old API better, or that they don't have time to move to the new one.
Or they may share "undocumented" APIs with some software developers (say ones that don't compete with their own products), and not others (say ones that make Quicken...).
They could also decide to put some APIs under NDA just to make WINE's life hard (and maybe Virtual PC at some future point).
Slashdot Mirror
I think you misspelled "Hush", and it was two seasons ago :-)
A musical is more untelevision then a show that goes without dialog (or spoken/sung words at least) for 40+ minutes?
I think Buffy has jumped the shark in that very few of the post-HS episodes have been as good as the pre-HS episodes, but that isn't really fair to the show...I mean it is still far better then most other TV shows. It earned it's #1 spot on my TiVo's Season Pass Manager... (oh, and thanks to TiVo I didn't have to know it would run 10 minutes long...sort of...if I had left it alone I would have gotten the extra 10 minutes, but it wouldn't have quite managed to make the most of the repeat airings; it needs a non-greedy algo to do that, but the simple didn't do too bad, and I got to tweak it)
There is some of that. Any news-like coverage likes to see things get shaken up a bit. There may also be some Intel specific hate though. Like hate for trying to suppress documents (see undocumented intel, and also the original Appendix H or which ever the hidden one was). Oh, don't forget hate for them insisting Randall Schwartz was prosecuted...
Oh, and I rather hate the x86 instruction set. Which makes me rather torn about the x86-64 vs. iTanic thing...
Well, doesn't Linus work there? Plus it is a neat idea, even if it doesn't seem to be working so well.
That still doesn't have zero chance. Your linked list might be damaged by another part of the program, either overwriting the link part, or a name part. You can complain that that would be due to a bug, but so is the shell script problem.
Zero is a hard goal to reach. Impossable even given the chance of DRAM errors.
You can get a little closer if you try this:
for (tp = file_list; cnt = N; tp;tp=tp->next) { assert(cnt--); unlink(tp->fname); }
Of corse we both left off finding the package install location (i.e. translating Foo.app/MacOS/Foo into "/Volume/Name of Volume/Applications/Foo.app/MacOS/Foo"), which is where the script went wrong, so we have a few more chances for error...
There is also a problems with the resource fork, in OSX it has been replaced. Resource Bar in program Foo is stored as Foo.app/Resources/Bar, so knowing all the files that Foo has requires knowing all the resources it creates, which may be hard to know ahead of time.
It also can be a problem because one may not know all the files in the iTunes package, it is clearly known for past versions, but not future versions.
I won't mention dumb-ass users replacing iTunes files with their own :-)
I see it, it might be a bad idea if the file is a kext, or some random incompatable shared lib or kernel module. It is still a valid design choice though. It would be better if you told the user which files you wanted to delete but didn't because the user had protected them.
I still like to solution of moving the things to the trash. It also doesn't have zero chance of not deleting things, but it probbably won't. It definitly doesn't have no chance of moving the wrong stuff to the trash, but if it does it is not so hard to move them out, definitly simpler then undoing an rm.
If you look over on MacNN someone has one fairly far along. I think the only big chunk o' work they have left is the scroll bars. I think it was a Friday headline.
Yes, but rsync uses unlink (or it did in 1995, which is the last time I looked at it's source). It might manage to destroy everything, like if you accidentally specify the target wrong (great...my whole disk has been replaced with a single copy of iTunes and nothing else).
I'm not saying nothing is better then what Apple uses (an installer that runs a shell script), but that nothing that aims to do the same thing will have zero chance of deleting the wrong thing. In passing I'll also mention that it isn't obviously worse then many other Unix installers (you know, the ones that just run random shell scripts!), but Apple has the misfortune of having a user base that tends to use spaces (and punctuation) in their file names...
That still deletes files, merely saying "resync" does not magically fix that. I liked the "move the old one to the Trash" suggestion better.
Ok, that's a good idea. There are a few problems with it, but I think they are smaller the the problems with real removal.
Very good idea. Someone tell Apple :-)
P.S. it is owned by root: drwxrwxr-x 3 root admin 58 Nov 3 17:30 /Applications/iTunes.app/.
Already does, you put them in a direcory named Foo.app where Foo is the name of the application, then users can move it around without things getting out of sync...
That depends on how "uninstallComponent" is implmented. If it is written in a shell like language it can be pretty easy...
Wrong, mind you, but not so hard to do wrong. I would guess some Linux and other generic Unix installers have problems with spaces in file names... I know for sure they have problems with display numbers other then zero, and this mistake is about as basic.
In this case the bug was in the installer, which is a shell script and quite readable. It was a novice shell script error, which is understandable since Apple is a novice Unix OEM...
Anyway, you can read that part, and even fix it.
Still sucks though.
How do you make an installer that can remove the old version of a program, and yet have zero chance that it never removes the wrong thing?
(yes, it was a bad bug, very bad, but I'm not sure how you design a drool proof installer that has zero chance of deleting the wrong thing -- I know how to do a not drool proof one though. Put iTunes2 on a disk image along with a README that says "delete the old one before installing the new one").
Well I kind of assumed Apple at least designed the UI, and probbably coded it up, but I'm not sure Jobs saying that would be proof since he may well be refering to things Apple payed others to do as "Apple".
Of corse before someone said Pixo did the OS I had assumed Apple had done that as well since there isn't that much to an embeded OS. Apparently someone decided that on a eight month timeframe buying an OS was a good idea (and it probbably was). I would have tryed Cygness' little embeded OS, but that's just me.
I didn't see anything that mentioned Pixo at all, or who did the UI (or even OS) in there.
Well ghostscript is vaguely similar. The MPL is designed for this sort of thing (it does give a specific entity the right to release under a different license, in that respect it is even better then the GPL for this business model).
I don't know of anyone doing it a successfully as Sleepycat though...of corse the sleepycat software is also damn fine. I have written some very big projects that used it.
Easy enough. The court only needs to find one reason to overturn the ruling, not all of them. Why do all the work to determine that the click wrap was invalid (if it was) when one can skip it all and just declare that the 1st amendment trumps all? (well, almost all -- and all that matters here)
Besides it is more important in the long run that prior restraint on source code is just as hard to get as prior constraint on speech... since prior restraint on speech is almost impossible, requiring not just national security grounds, but pressing ones.
O.B. disclaimer, free legal advice is worth no more then you pay for it, sometimes even less. Plus I ain't even graduated from a University, let alone passed the bar.
Yes, many multi-level filesystems use them. Recently accessed files tend to live in RAM and a hard drive. Not so recently ones on a hard drive. Really not so recently used ones are off on mag tape (or WORM media) in a jukebox.
AFS also use to use local disk to cache files from the network, I think CODA can do the same.
Oh, and many web browsers cache files on local disk (or at least in the filesystem, which is normally local disk, but could be solid state, or across the network...). Netscape, and MSIE for example :-)
Part could be they tend to use high quality parts (e.g. the monitor on the iMac may be small but it has far less edge distortion then the small monitors I see at CompUSA, and better color then most of them). They could get away from that by making a "craptastic" Mac, but would it help them to convince people that Mac's are better by selling them something bad? (Note: many people already think this about the iMac, or about leaving SCSI for IDE, or...still one has to admit that many parts of the iMacs are not the cheap parts that the "value" PCs use)
Part of it may be they have to spread the design costs over a smaller number of sales. It costs X dollars to make a new motherboard chipset. If you take Apple's claim of 5% market share as fact, then a PC part has the potential of having 20 times as many people to spread the design costs and other NREs over then a Mac part. So the "northbridge" is going to have a lot more cost charged to each buyer then one from SiS. They can combat that a little by only having a few different parts there (say one for the whole iMac line, maybe shared with the iBook, one for the 1st gen TiBook, one for the 2nd gen TiBook and the G4's...), the PC market's five or so chip makers still have more people to spread the NREs over... There are also NREs for each machine. Again Apple can make that hurt a little less by only having four lines of machine and only 2, 3, or 4 in each line vs. the N bizzilian PCs, it still hurts a bit.
Apple also has to pay more for quality control. They make a fairly wide array of products, and they all have to work together because they can't point their fingers at as many other people. If you buy an HP PC and it sucks, when you call they can point their finger at the maker of the app (most bundled Apps on a PC are not made by the PC maker, Apple tends to ship largely their own software, or software branded as theirs), failing that they can point their finger at Microsoft (or wash their hands of you if you have Linux), Apple can only blame themselves for the OS...
Apple also seems to do more research then most places, and that costs. It also pays though.
Lastly, Apple has higher profit margins then PC makers (except in the server market). It makes sense to me for them to trim those to the bone on the low end iMac, but who knows if they do.
Well, the good news is if you use it to "sync" music like Apple does trashing the filesystem isn't a big deal since all the data is still on the Linux box. Flakey FireWire could be a bigger deal though since that may make the system lock up (depending on how it flakes). Since I have a OSX box, Linux, and FreeBSD, I figure I'm covered on iPod use :-)
I still havn't decided if I want one. I did look at the demo unit the Tyson's VA Apple store has, and it was cool. I just don't know if I'm away from my normal sources of music enough to want to bother with this.
P.S. the headphones they include are pretty nice. Not as nice as the Etymotic Research ones, but a lot better then what most CD players include! They are also removable so one could use quality headphines, or try to drive a line-in if you want.
The OS is Pixo's, we don't know if the UI is Pixo's or Apple's.
One would assume that if you can write a HFS+ filesystem onto a FireWire hard disk that you can get your music into the iPod no matter what OS you are using.
At least I assume it is an HFS+ filesystem, it could be FAT32, I mean it is a 3rd party OS in the iPod, the big limit is it will have to be something that both OS9 and OSX support writing, and a "little" OS can support reading.
Just in case anyone is too lazy to follow the links...the hidden files are unhidable by using ls in the terminal window, or by setting the "show hidden files in finder" thing in TinkerTool.
My theory is they did it just so iTunes' sync function can't accidentally delete user files just because they end in ".mp3".
No, you have the option of paying a single fee for a lifetime (of the box) service.
They have not been using any sneaky opportunities to bomb you with ads (ReplayTV does though, when you hit pause, unless they took that out), unless you count the network showcases which are "just" a spot in the menu where networks can (pay to) put their shows, and it is pretty weak, just a slot in the main menu. Oh, and the "TiVoMatics" which let advertisers link a commercial with a show, and if that show is on a channel you receive, and isn't over yet, when the commercial comes on it puts "Press select to record" in the corner of the commercial (even if you are FFing, you only get about a second to notice it an hit select at that speed though). Personally I like TiVomatics, it means if I see a commercial for an interesting TV show I don't have to look it up, I can just hit select...
Plus unlike, say, the I-Opener they have not been hostile to the hackers. They have given tacit approval to adding larger disks, and turned a blind eye towards people adding Ethernets. The most they have said about people ripping mpegs off their boxes is "that's not cool", no lawsuit threats.
If you don't think TiVo is worth the money, that's fine, don't buy one. They are not evil though. Really.
There are three more things that TiVo does here that are useful, and you might want to think about adding to your list.
Or better yet allow you to slap multiple boxes together and have them decide which ones will record what, and which drives will hold the shows, making a totally transparent uber box... That way you won't be "stuck" with "only" two tuners while there are at least three networks trying to schedule all their best stuff at the exact same time! Plus once you discover that you are recording way more then you will watch you can slap a few more boxes onto it for more storage :-)
I thought they hacked in a ethernet, and had managed to make a program (StreamExtract) to yank out mpeg streams, and even a little web server to drive it. Totally unsupported though.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with my TiVo even though there are a few things I really want it to do. I still think I'm getting (more!) then my moneys worth from it.
Heh, sure they will. You miss the main point of hte PVR (ReplayTV, TiVo, UTV, DISHPlayer). If I start watching a 8:00 show at 8:15 I can skip all the commercials and finish up right about 9:00. I can choose to read a book, debug some code, or watch a half hour TV show (skipping the half that is commercials) and finish up at the same time you do.
Why would I possibly want to start watching at 8:00?
The only way to get me watch commercials is to make more good ones. I watch those. If I'm not in a hurry. And I notice them at 60x (or they start the block).
I think it is easy, but expensive. Create a new product. Make two brands for it. Advertise one brand, don't advertise the other. If both brands fail you have learned little. If the advertised one sells far more then the other then advertising is effective. If both sell about the same advertising is not effective. I'm not quite sure what you learn if the advertised one sells less. It would probably be a good idea to adjust the numbers to reflect for the cost of advertising .
Like most experiments doing it multiple times to reduce the chance of experimental error would be a good idea.
Unfortunitly things like Dr. Pepper vs. Dr Smooth I think don't work as an experiment because I think Dr. Pepper has been around a lot longer. Similar for the no-name perfumes because they come out later...
It doesn't have to be. For example MS may implement a new OS feature, and use it in Office without telling others how to use it. They may later decide to do it in a slightly different way (either because after experience the first way wasn't so good, or because they want the new way to be worse so their rivals are at a disadvantage), but they will probably keep to old one so older versions of Office keep working. The Office team may decide they like the old API better, or that they don't have time to move to the new one.
Or they may share "undocumented" APIs with some software developers (say ones that don't compete with their own products), and not others (say ones that make Quicken...).
They could also decide to put some APIs under NDA just to make WINE's life hard (and maybe Virtual PC at some future point).