I wrote to Dole & Edwards (the two NC senators) when Slashdot had the first INDUCE article.
While I've yet to hear back form Edwards's office (not suprising considering his current campaign), I did hear back from Dole's.
I was expecting the standard "but this is good for technology, live with it..." response, but instead got a short response that essentially said that she agreed that INDUCE might have some potential bad consequences for technology and innovation and that she'd investigate it.
Now, obviously it was just a form letter response, but it's perhaps the first time I've had a senator actually respond with potentially encouraging news.
Well, not really though, because the market for players would still be there.
For instance, let's say this bill were passed. The next day, Hollywood, in conjunction with Sony, and Phillips and whoever else could announce a new DVD2 standard that offered better picture quality, sound, and interactive features or whatever. Oh, and they won't play on your old DVD players of course.
There'd still be a hardware market, but no one would be allowed to make DVD2 recorders, and the DVD2 players wouldn't have outputs to analog devices. Problem solved (from the media point of view).
Yes, you, and I would balk at this, but the public would see shiny, new, and better. The media companies could also keep the price around the $20 magic number, and there'd be a mass conversion.
Your DVD example is interesting, but is really an economic impact, not a a legal one. There's nothing preventing people from creating legal DVD players for Linux (or whatever other OS) so long as they license the appropriate technologies. It's just not feasible to sell such a product.
Everytime this bill (or others like it) come up, people suggest that it'd make VCRs, cameras, etc. illegal.
Hatch (and the other senators) may be shortsighted, but they're not stupid. Obviously the final bill will/would have a provision that exempted existing technology. They wouldn't ask people to turn in their VCRs to their local police dept.
Instead, it'd just outlaw new technology. And it'd give "content providers" the ability to create media that's essentially uncopyable (yes there are loopholes always, but uncopyable for the average person). And that's the goal here.
MS's strategy is not Thick Client. In fact, if you go to their development seminars, they talk about how Thick Clients are 1992 technology. Their current strategy focuses on so-called "Smart Clients" which are basically a combination of think and thick clients (ie. the UI of thick clients, and the real-time-updates of thin clients). IE is of course a big part of this not because of the standalone app, but because its engine is used to drive just about any web request made from Windows (and certainly all web requests made with the.Net framework).
Re:Don't use Promise...
on
SATA vs ATA?
·
· Score: 1
I'll second/third the vote for 3ware. Not only is their stuff fast (I'm using RAID 1+0 on a 7506-4LP card now) but it's also very reliable. On an older 2-drive card/w a RAID-1 mirror, I had both drives fail (not at the same time of course) over the course of about 3 years. Both were easily replaced w/o any data loss, and eventually the RAID was running on 2 drives that weren't originally part of the array...the 3ware card made the replacement a breeze.
Pale Moonlight is an interesting DS9 story. To me, it's DS9 and TV at its best. The fact that it's Sci-fi is incidental as the story is just a "what's an acceptable cost" type of story, extremely well written.
Pale Moonlight is also the most un-Trek like DS9 episode there is. And that's saying something since DS9 is the most un-Trek like Trek series. That's not a bad thing, but it's not a good example of what Trek was supposed to be about.
You're right, exploring the universe in a ship is probably done (at least for the next 20 years anyway), but that doesn't mean the concept of Star Trek or more generally, a sci-fi series set in space has to be boring or unoriginal.
I'm going to sound like a real geek here, but bear with me.
For nearly five years, a bunch of us played a Star Trek RPG two to three times a month (actually two separate games, but that's besides the point). Though I started out as a player, I eventually ended up doing a lot of the GM work since our "real" GM ended up busy.
We liked to treat our RPG sessions as TV "episodes" in that they took two or three sessions and had a start, a middle and an end, each one being somewhat self contained. As such, I had the opportunity to write what amounted to a great deal of interactive fiction.
The "episodes" I wrote that had supernatural twists or god forbid time travel went well, but now a few years later are not the ones that stick out in my mind as being "wow, that was fun". The ones that do stick in my mind are those that were driven by character-driven drama. For instance, let's really explore Character X and shove her in situation Y and then spend a few sessions playing how she'd react to that situation.
Now, to get back on topic...I really think the same thing could be done with Star Trek. The big problem in my mind is that 90% of Star Trek's conflict comes between "the ship's crew" and "some external problem". If instead, 50-75% of the episodes and plot were based on character interaction and conflict, you'd end up with a decent show.
This might sound boring, but it'd been done well before. JMS's B5 world had large overwhelming events (Shadow War, Independence, etc.), but when you boil down most of the individual episodes (though not all), they revolved around character interaction (Sheridan with Delenn, Garibaldi with Franklin, etc).
Anyway, long geeky rant, but that summarizes my problems with Trek as it currently is.
Roddenberry's vision was a novel, neat idea in the 1960's that worked pretty well.
It worked again in the 1980's with TNG's first few seasons because it had been 20 years since the last time.
However, by the end of TNG and certainly the beginning of DS9, and now with Voyager & Enterprise, Roddenberry's vision is boring. There's only so many times you can rehash the same old morality plays.
Berman suffers from a similar problem. When he and Braga first started writing DS9, they wrote the Dominion storylines to compete with B5, and frankly that's when DS9 became good. The reason it was good was not just because of continuity, but because the characters started to have non-Starfleet and non-Startrek personalities. Sisko was perhaps the best written and acted Starfleet captain of all time, but he doesn't fit in with the utopian view that Roddenberry had.
Now with Voyager and Enterprise, Berman is throwing continuity on to the screen for continuity's sake. And frankly it sucks. I feel as if this year's Enterprise should have had a shot of Berman in the corner saying "SEE I CAN GIVE YOU CONTINUITY!!!!". The only redeeming parts of this season have been when Archer (and others) have turned darker, and hence less like Roddenberry wanted.
What needs to happen is for Star Trek to get some new blood from people who appreciate not just Star Trek for the sake of Trek or continuity for the sake of continuity, but who can actually tell good stories whether they fit in with utopia or not.
Yes, that's fine, and your "automobile" will cost $100,000 while everyone else's "appliance" will cost $20,000. If you're ok with this, that's fine since that's the way supply and demand works (and you're in the minority here so you have to pay).
This really seems to be believed by the MS folks. I went to a DevDays conference recently, and they emphasized this point many times. It'll be interesting to see what MS does to "cure" this problem they believe in.
I didn't mean to say it was impossible to create the device, but let's look at the docs, shall we? Just snipping out one of the most important pieces:
Video Capture Device
In order to capture video, MythTV will need one or more video capture devices with Linux drivers. There are a number of classes of hardware available for capturing video.
The docs then do admittedly do a nice job explaining differnet types of video capture devices, but only specify which devices absolutely don't work (AIW cards). There's no attempt to provide a "cookbook" of workable hardware. There is a link to a supposed hardware DB, but the site requires further browsing to find it.
I do know how to assemble PCs and have installed/used Linux for about 10 years now. I am *not* an expert in video capture hardware or the latest video drivers available for Linux. I could do all the research, but it'd be a more successful project if people had posted known working configurations right on the main site.
And please don't try to drag price into it. My TiVo cost me $99 a few years back (when CC closed out the 12 hour line), and the 120GB drive that I later installed cost about $100. A MythTV is not going to be cheaper than that.
You're right, because by the time you acquire all the parts, assemble them, download the 18 different driver versions, compile the right kernel with the right support and get it all working and have a functioning MythTV, TV will be long dead.
Yes, this is meant as sarcastic humor. I own a TiVo, but was interested in putting together a MythTV. However, like many great ideas, the MythTV is poorly implemented from an assembly instruction. What I wanted was documentation saying "buy these components (and optionally these others)", "download this software" and "it works". What I found instead was a discussion of what hardware might happen to work with a particular driver version under a particular kernel. Ugh.
Though I doubt that XP "Reloaded" will have 64-bit support merged in, if it did, why couldn't the installer just detect your CPU type and install 64-bit if appropriate and 32-bit if not?
As for binaries, the x86-64 can run 32-bit binaries when it's in 64-bit mode, so no worries.
The problem is that a lot of times, read the FAQ is not merely stated "Read the FAQ". Instead, some people seem to have a powertrip over embedding "Read the FAQ" in personal insults or putdowns.
No, this doesn't mean you specifically, or even 90% of the community. However, for whatever reason, there's a sizable section of Linux users that like to tout their superiority. It's great that these people know so much about their OS of choice, and it's great they're taking the time to answer a question, but if they're going to do all that anyway, there's no reason for them to try to prove how great they are.
Basically, if someone wanders into a forum and asks a question, they're likely going to be appreciative of an informative response. Live for that reward instead of the powertrip.
Personally, I've been using Linux for nearly 10 years as a server platform. It's not my desktop of choice, and I don't spend 90% of my time reading up on the latest distros, kernels or apps. Consequently, I'm not always up on all the latest and greates Linux info. I do search for answers before pestering groups, but I've still seen the elitest attitude.
Two years ago I was given Civ III as a gift. Unfortunately there was no CD in the box. It was shrink wrapped and everything and had the manual, but just no CD.
You get around vote-buying by requiring people to turn in the paper receipt before leaving. This way they can check the receipt after e-voting and then turn in a paper record in case a recount is needed.
Slightly offtopic, but funny and certainly applicable to this message board...
Last night when I went to see Matrix Revolutions, they aired the typical "please don't pirate movies" ad, but it was upside down and played in reverse (including the sound). All the rest of the ads were normal, so it's obvious that someone that worked at the theater was making a point.
The audience was about 1/2 full and just about everyone was high school senior (or maybe college) crowd excepting a few of us 30-somethings. But everyone was laughing and found it highly amusing (perhaps more so than the movie itself).
The law pops up from time to time and has various critics for various reasons.
I do understand where you're coming from and it seems to make some sense, but consider this perspective. In college, you're obviously well educated and at least somewhat financially stable. A large percentage of today's immigrants are neither so they might not be as able to pick up a new language, or at least not immediately. Is it fair to them to force them to have to learn the language before they can fill out government forms, or get directions somewhere?
As with many political things, this issue has a lot more to it than one would think at first glance.
Well, assuming you're not trolling...unlike many countries, the US does not have a national language. So providing multiple languages on a voting screen seems to make sense.
Here in North Carolina (at least in Durham anyway), you go to your designated polling place, find the line that contains your last name and then tell them who you are. For "verification" they make you tell them your address (which is typically plainly visible on the paper in their book if you wanted to cheat). Upon being verified, they put a sticker that has your name/address on a piece of paper that you had to another person who in turn gives you the ballot.
This does prevent any name from voting twice of course, but it doesn't require that you be correctly identified.
Now admittedly, even in a "big" election, my polling place will only get maybe 1000 voters, so in theory it's possible someone would notice you if you tried to vote a few times under neighbors' names or some such, but I'm sure it could be pulled off if you really tried...or if you had an organized group go do it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wrote to Dole & Edwards (the two NC senators) when Slashdot had the first INDUCE article.
While I've yet to hear back form Edwards's office (not suprising considering his current campaign), I did hear back from Dole's.
I was expecting the standard "but this is good for technology, live with it..." response, but instead got a short response that essentially said that she agreed that INDUCE might have some potential bad consequences for technology and innovation and that she'd investigate it.
Now, obviously it was just a form letter response, but it's perhaps the first time I've had a senator actually respond with potentially encouraging news.
Well, not really though, because the market for players would still be there.
For instance, let's say this bill were passed. The next day, Hollywood, in conjunction with Sony, and Phillips and whoever else could announce a new DVD2 standard that offered better picture quality, sound, and interactive features or whatever. Oh, and they won't play on your old DVD players of course.
There'd still be a hardware market, but no one would be allowed to make DVD2 recorders, and the DVD2 players wouldn't have outputs to analog devices. Problem solved (from the media point of view).
Yes, you, and I would balk at this, but the public would see shiny, new, and better. The media companies could also keep the price around the $20 magic number, and there'd be a mass conversion.
Your DVD example is interesting, but is really an economic impact, not a a legal one. There's nothing preventing people from creating legal DVD players for Linux (or whatever other OS) so long as they license the appropriate technologies. It's just not feasible to sell such a product.
Everytime this bill (or others like it) come up, people suggest that it'd make VCRs, cameras, etc. illegal.
Hatch (and the other senators) may be shortsighted, but they're not stupid. Obviously the final bill will/would have a provision that exempted existing technology. They wouldn't ask people to turn in their VCRs to their local police dept.
Instead, it'd just outlaw new technology. And it'd give "content providers" the ability to create media that's essentially uncopyable (yes there are loopholes always, but uncopyable for the average person). And that's the goal here.
MS's strategy is not Thick Client. In fact, if you go to their development seminars, they talk about how Thick Clients are 1992 technology. Their current strategy focuses on so-called "Smart Clients" which are basically a combination of think and thick clients (ie. the UI of thick clients, and the real-time-updates of thin clients). IE is of course a big part of this not because of the standalone app, but because its engine is used to drive just about any web request made from Windows (and certainly all web requests made with the .Net framework).
I'll second/third the vote for 3ware. Not only is their stuff fast (I'm using RAID 1+0 on a 7506-4LP card now) but it's also very reliable. On an older 2-drive card /w a RAID-1 mirror, I had both drives fail (not at the same time of course) over the course of about 3 years. Both were easily replaced w/o any data loss, and eventually the RAID was running on 2 drives that weren't originally part of the array...the 3ware card made the replacement a breeze.
Pale Moonlight is an interesting DS9 story. To me, it's DS9 and TV at its best. The fact that it's Sci-fi is incidental as the story is just a "what's an acceptable cost" type of story, extremely well written.
Pale Moonlight is also the most un-Trek like DS9 episode there is. And that's saying something since DS9 is the most un-Trek like Trek series. That's not a bad thing, but it's not a good example of what Trek was supposed to be about.
And FYI, there are IRS inspectors that check for this.
You're right, exploring the universe in a ship is probably done (at least for the next 20 years anyway), but that doesn't mean the concept of Star Trek or more generally, a sci-fi series set in space has to be boring or unoriginal.
I'm going to sound like a real geek here, but bear with me.
For nearly five years, a bunch of us played a Star Trek RPG two to three times a month (actually two separate games, but that's besides the point). Though I started out as a player, I eventually ended up doing a lot of the GM work since our "real" GM ended up busy.
We liked to treat our RPG sessions as TV "episodes" in that they took two or three sessions and had a start, a middle and an end, each one being somewhat self contained. As such, I had the opportunity to write what amounted to a great deal of interactive fiction.
The "episodes" I wrote that had supernatural twists or god forbid time travel went well, but now a few years later are not the ones that stick out in my mind as being "wow, that was fun". The ones that do stick in my mind are those that were driven by character-driven drama. For instance, let's really explore Character X and shove her in situation Y and then spend a few sessions playing how she'd react to that situation.
Now, to get back on topic...I really think the same thing could be done with Star Trek. The big problem in my mind is that 90% of Star Trek's conflict comes between "the ship's crew" and "some external problem". If instead, 50-75% of the episodes and plot were based on character interaction and conflict, you'd end up with a decent show.
This might sound boring, but it'd been done well before. JMS's B5 world had large overwhelming events (Shadow War, Independence, etc.), but when you boil down most of the individual episodes (though not all), they revolved around character interaction (Sheridan with Delenn, Garibaldi with Franklin, etc).
Anyway, long geeky rant, but that summarizes my problems with Trek as it currently is.
Roddenberry's vision was a novel, neat idea in the 1960's that worked pretty well.
It worked again in the 1980's with TNG's first few seasons because it had been 20 years since the last time.
However, by the end of TNG and certainly the beginning of DS9, and now with Voyager & Enterprise, Roddenberry's vision is boring. There's only so many times you can rehash the same old morality plays.
Berman suffers from a similar problem. When he and Braga first started writing DS9, they wrote the Dominion storylines to compete with B5, and frankly that's when DS9 became good. The reason it was good was not just because of continuity, but because the characters started to have non-Starfleet and non-Startrek personalities. Sisko was perhaps the best written and acted Starfleet captain of all time, but he doesn't fit in with the utopian view that Roddenberry had.
Now with Voyager and Enterprise, Berman is throwing continuity on to the screen for continuity's sake. And frankly it sucks. I feel as if this year's Enterprise should have had a shot of Berman in the corner saying "SEE I CAN GIVE YOU CONTINUITY!!!!". The only redeeming parts of this season have been when Archer (and others) have turned darker, and hence less like Roddenberry wanted.
What needs to happen is for Star Trek to get some new blood from people who appreciate not just Star Trek for the sake of Trek or continuity for the sake of continuity, but who can actually tell good stories whether they fit in with utopia or not.
Yes, that's fine, and your "automobile" will cost $100,000 while everyone else's "appliance" will cost $20,000. If you're ok with this, that's fine since that's the way supply and demand works (and you're in the minority here so you have to pay).
This really seems to be believed by the MS folks. I went to a DevDays conference recently, and they emphasized this point many times. It'll be interesting to see what MS does to "cure" this problem they believe in.
The docs then do admittedly do a nice job explaining differnet types of video capture devices, but only specify which devices absolutely don't work (AIW cards). There's no attempt to provide a "cookbook" of workable hardware. There is a link to a supposed hardware DB, but the site requires further browsing to find it.
I do know how to assemble PCs and have installed/used Linux for about 10 years now. I am *not* an expert in video capture hardware or the latest video drivers available for Linux. I could do all the research, but it'd be a more successful project if people had posted known working configurations right on the main site.
And please don't try to drag price into it. My TiVo cost me $99 a few years back (when CC closed out the 12 hour line), and the 120GB drive that I later installed cost about $100. A MythTV is not going to be cheaper than that.
You're right, because by the time you acquire all the parts, assemble them, download the 18 different driver versions, compile the right kernel with the right support and get it all working and have a functioning MythTV, TV will be long dead.
Yes, this is meant as sarcastic humor. I own a TiVo, but was interested in putting together a MythTV. However, like many great ideas, the MythTV is poorly implemented from an assembly instruction. What I wanted was documentation saying "buy these components (and optionally these others)", "download this software" and "it works". What I found instead was a discussion of what hardware might happen to work with a particular driver version under a particular kernel. Ugh.
Uh why?
Though I doubt that XP "Reloaded" will have 64-bit support merged in, if it did, why couldn't the installer just detect your CPU type and install 64-bit if appropriate and 32-bit if not?
As for binaries, the x86-64 can run 32-bit binaries when it's in 64-bit mode, so no worries.
Um, ARM is big or little endian depending on configuration. Some ARM processors are not in fact implemented big endian.
The best unit conversion is mass into energy.
Try:
1 kilogram in joules
The problem is that a lot of times, read the FAQ is not merely stated "Read the FAQ". Instead, some people seem to have a powertrip over embedding "Read the FAQ" in personal insults or putdowns.
No, this doesn't mean you specifically, or even 90% of the community. However, for whatever reason, there's a sizable section of Linux users that like to tout their superiority. It's great that these people know so much about their OS of choice, and it's great they're taking the time to answer a question, but if they're going to do all that anyway, there's no reason for them to try to prove how great they are.
Basically, if someone wanders into a forum and asks a question, they're likely going to be appreciative of an informative response. Live for that reward instead of the powertrip.
Personally, I've been using Linux for nearly 10 years as a server platform. It's not my desktop of choice, and I don't spend 90% of my time reading up on the latest distros, kernels or apps. Consequently, I'm not always up on all the latest and greates Linux info. I do search for answers before pestering groups, but I've still seen the elitest attitude.
No, he said the HD-PVR will set you back a grand, which is true. The regular PVR (which you have) doesn't record HD signals.
Two years ago I was given Civ III as a gift. Unfortunately there was no CD in the box. It was shrink wrapped and everything and had the manual, but just no CD.
The publisher sent a new one to me.
If you're looking for the Airzooka locally, try a Spencer's Gift store. Mine had them marked down from $15 to $9.99 on clearance. Good deal.
You get around vote-buying by requiring people to turn in the paper receipt before leaving. This way they can check the receipt after e-voting and then turn in a paper record in case a recount is needed.
Slightly offtopic, but funny and certainly applicable to this message board...
Last night when I went to see Matrix Revolutions, they aired the typical "please don't pirate movies" ad, but it was upside down and played in reverse (including the sound). All the rest of the ads were normal, so it's obvious that someone that worked at the theater was making a point.
The audience was about 1/2 full and just about everyone was high school senior (or maybe college) crowd excepting a few of us 30-somethings. But everyone was laughing and found it highly amusing (perhaps more so than the movie itself).
The law pops up from time to time and has various critics for various reasons.
I do understand where you're coming from and it seems to make some sense, but consider this perspective. In college, you're obviously well educated and at least somewhat financially stable. A large percentage of today's immigrants are neither so they might not be as able to pick up a new language, or at least not immediately. Is it fair to them to force them to have to learn the language before they can fill out government forms, or get directions somewhere?
As with many political things, this issue has a lot more to it than one would think at first glance.
Well, assuming you're not trolling...unlike many countries, the US does not have a national language. So providing multiple languages on a voting screen seems to make sense.
Here in North Carolina (at least in Durham anyway), you go to your designated polling place, find the line that contains your last name and then tell them who you are. For "verification" they make you tell them your address (which is typically plainly visible on the paper in their book if you wanted to cheat). Upon being verified, they put a sticker that has your name/address on a piece of paper that you had to another person who in turn gives you the ballot.
This does prevent any name from voting twice of course, but it doesn't require that you be correctly identified.
Now admittedly, even in a "big" election, my polling place will only get maybe 1000 voters, so in theory it's possible someone would notice you if you tried to vote a few times under neighbors' names or some such, but I'm sure it could be pulled off if you really tried...or if you had an organized group go do it.