Yeah, I actually do the VCR thing right now. Except its only one VCR controlled by a cheap human. The quality might not be great, but since I don't have cable, the extra fuzz just blends right in;)
The one limitation of VCRs though is that you can't really shift a show by a few minutes. You have to wait till its over to start watching it.
I've been on a quest since two days ago to find an answer to a related question. What I wondered is "How cheap can I get a device with Tivo like functionality with no future costs?"
Option 1: Baseline Tivo/ReplayTV: $200 Lifetime subscription: $250 (also note that the lifetime subscription only applies to this device - if you buy a new Tivo you need a new subscription) Total: $450
Option 2: Build your own. Assuming you don't care about size and form factor (which you probably do) you can just get a bargain basement PC. There are some 700-800MHz jobbies starting at $200 but these are pretty marginal in terms of being able to encode video to disk. So you probably want to step up to one of the slightly better $300 base PCs. Then you have to get a video capture card and remote control card. If you go really cheap, you can get both for about $100. Assuming you use free software, you can get a working system for $400. But this is on the extremely low end with no thought to asthetics or quality parts. I'd say you can get a nice looking, reasonable quality system for $650. Total: $400-$650+
Option 3: A Panasonic DVD recorder. You really need the one with a harddrive to do Tivo well but you also get a nice side benefit that you can record to removable media. Total: $1000
Option 4: Buy one of the many Media centers. The alienware shuttle is a nice one. Anyway, they all start in the same ballpark as far as cost. Total: $1700
Given my analysis, a standard Tivo/ReplayTV is still hard to beat at $450 if you are strictly interested in the Tivo functions. If you build your own, you can get a lot more functions like MP3 jukebox, recording to removable media, etc...
OK, my attention span is gone, can someone please tell me how I can get the functionality of a Tivo as cheaply and with as minimal effort as possible. I'm not trying to pick a side on the whole PC vs. set-top appliance issue, I just care about functionality for crying out loud!
I would buy a Tivo, ReplayTV, or UltimateTV but these all require subscriptions (yes, they do now REQUIRE subscriptions). I don't want to pay an additional $10 per month for that. However, I also don't want to take on a whole tech support project just so I can have a PVR.
So maybe my question is - how cheaply can I get a PC and a video I/O card and a remote control - that are all guaranteed to work with any one of the PVR software packages. Can someone give me a quick summary? (Or even better, is there a Tivo clone that doesn't require a subscription?)
Coincidently, my wife just had an ultrasound. I had heard of these 4D things and looked into it and there was really only one in the Bay Area - Los Gatos, I think.
Anyway, we opted for the normal ultrasound but I was extremely impressed with the process. The individual 2D ultrasound images do not do it justice. In the live version, I could definitely count fingers and toes and even reconstruct a lot of the 3D structure in my head.
My point is that the radiologists are really, really good at spotting abnormalities in these grainy 2D pictures. So I'm wondering if these 4D ultrasounds aren't mainly just for parents. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing - but maybe it wouldn't be a huge leap for medical diagnosis.
What I've gathered so far from all these baby books I've been reading is that most prenatal abnormalities cannot be fixed. When something can be fixed, the risks of fixing it are really high. So they are only even going to try fixing the very major problems. I'm guessing that ordinary 2D ultrasounds can probably pick up these major problems. Maybe this will change though as the risks of prenatal surgery go down.
IIRC one of the biggest advantages of stippling in rendering surfaces is that you can get a fast simulation of transparency. Check out here. So maybe the same applies in 3D. The 3D stippling might allow you to simulate complex semi-transparent volumes - perhaps also avoiding some z sorting or alpha blending.
Also, maybe you WOULD see more of this in games if it could be done in real time. Just because all we have now is polygons doesn't mean that's the way it has to be.
Good luck... This has been promised since the 70's.
It sounds to me like they are admitting the difficulty of the problem and trying to introduce human mediated steps to reduce the difficulty. For example, if the speaker eliminates some of the ambiguity in the sentence by specifying parts of speech, then the problem is a lot less difficult.
So you might not need huge jumps in human language translation if you can get huge jumps in human-computer interaction.
I haven't ever seen that Pix thing actually used on a site. Anyway, I found it to be too hard and I don't see how it could ever be scalable. I got one that was supposed to be "nose" but it could have been about 20 other things including mouth, ear, eye, kiss, face, etc....
The proofs are definitely not meant for the visually impaired. From what I've heard they are supposed to be solvable by x% of the population y% of the time - where x and y are in the high 90s. I guess the disabled would have to prove their humanity through more traditional means like email.
Also, if we're talking about the future, who's to say that using Human Interactive Proofs or CAPTCHA's to verify human senders will continue to work. Maybe in the future, increased computer power will make these problems solvable. Alternately, maybe there will be some huge leaps in OCR algorithms.
I'll admit, it's not too likely, but probably as likely as people using white lists and these types of proofs.
Take a look at the hardware list on the CloneCD site. I haven't actually used this program so I'm not vouching for it. I've heard good things though.
Of course, this doesn't necessarily allow you to play the protected CD on your computer but it might help you copy it. But you asked about burners anyway.
OK, I'm not understanding the business model here. In the case of IE, I think the justification for giving it away was to eliminate competition from Netscape. Who would they put out of business if Windows was free? You can't put "Linux" out of business since it's not a company (much as the trolls like to say it is).
How exactly does Microsoft lose if they charge for both Windows and Office. Even if people use Office on Linux, MS still makes more money by charging for Windows. I can't think of any situation in which this would change open source development. Are open source developers going to trust MS to continue to give the OS away for free? Anyway, cost is only half of the argument for open source software. Now if MS made the OS free as in speech - then the story would be different.
That wasn't meant to be directed at you. It was more just a general observation. I almost always notice spelling mistakes and feel a strong urge to correct them. I have the same problem when I try to write a paper. I have a hard time writing rough drafts because I get caught up in the details. In hindsight though, the times when I've actually posted a spelling flame were when I didn't have anything else to say.
Well, according to the Guide to Flaming, the psychology behind the spelling/grammar flame is:
A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the author, instead of actually responding to that point.
I think this makes sense because, as the guide (and my experience) points out:
Spelling flames often contain spelling errors.
I think this argues for some other pathology rather than a simple need to improve comprehension. I think it is also often the flamer's desire to post something that is "correct" when they don't have anything to say about the actual topic. At least, that's why I'm posting about flaming rather than gambling;)
Not sure I understood your post. But just so you know, this is under serious consideration - take a look at JSR 121. Also note that the #2 request for enhancement (4466510) on the java developer connection is related to memory usage.
I can't see this being the default because it will take longer to read/write and will create bigger files. How can an XML format ever compete with a binary format in terms of speed and size? On the other hand, maybe this is part of their Palladium plan and its intended to encourage new PC sales.
Yeah, that's my attitude too. A side benefit is that its a nice FU to consumerism. I love pulling up next to all those chumps in their beamers and SUVs with my beat-up, never-washed, base model ford escort.
You can also bet that I'm not carrying collision or comprehensive on that sweet ride so the savings compound.
Nothing better than sticking it to the man and saving for your future at the same time.
You seem a little overconfident in knowing what is not a cause of autism given that we don't know what the cause is. The reason the debate is so complicated is because Autism does not have a single cause. Even the NYTimes article mentions that. My suspicion is that vaccines are a cause of autism through some higher order effect that these studies haven't taken into account.
Take a look at this paper (also cited in the previous post) comparing autism to mercury poisoning. I personally find too many similarities between the two diseases to dismiss it as pure coincidence. I've also heard enough anecdotal evidence (my wife is speech therapist in California) to suggest that there is a link between vaccination and autism.
Also, many of these regional studies seem to be a bit flawed in looking for causes of autism. For example, suppose they are looking in a population with a very low genetic predisposition to autism. Then, it might not matter for that population what environmental factors are introduced because the autism rate will continue to be extremely low.
Personally, since I have control on this issue, I'm not going to wait for science to prove what anecdotal evidence suggests. You DO HAVE A CHOICE for reduced thimerosal vaccines in many cases if you are willing to make the effort.
On a related note, it seems there is something unique about California that is causing a rise in Autism diagnoses. Yes, it probably has something to do genetic predisposition. But maybe it is also related to the increased intake of sushi - beware the mercury levels in fish;)
That definitely makes a good argument for why geoprofiling should work in the first place. However, it still seems that if a criminal knows the algorithm, they are going to be harder to catch. At least if I know that your algorithm says I'll commit crimes in my comfort zone, I'm going to go to extra lengths to commit crimes outside this zone. Sure it might require more work but if I'm determined to commit a crime, I'm probably going to deal with the inconvenience.
Note that the argument (in other posts) that most criminals have some kind of mental deficiencies isn't really relevant either. That might be reassuring if your looking for H.I. McDonough but its probably not an argument for using geoprofiling to look for a calculating serial killer that knows about geoprofiling.
In this case, it doesn't seem like having a surface to project on is the problem. After all, there are already heads-up displays that show you things like your speedometer. The bigger problem seems like it would be generating real time terrain maps that a human could understand.
I'm also wondering how practical it is since I don't have any liquid nitrogen around the house. AFAIK, you need a permit to even handle the stuff. Maybe there are other practical sources of non-wet fog but that doesn't seem likely?
I use Mozilla and was shocked to find out that it still supports blink. Is Mozilla a browser that properly supports CSS or no? Seemed to work on that one at least?
That's true, but I think there are probably a lot of people out there who only use one hand for the mouse and use the other hand for keyboard shortcuts...
Yes, and more importantly performing these mouse gestures typically requires a mouse drag. Mouse dragging is a well known cause of RSI. Dragging also requires a significant amout of energy relative to a mouse button or key press - its finger motion versus wrist or arm motion.
I think these are better explanations for why highly experienced computer users prefer keyboard shortcuts. Its really a matter of trying to conserve energy - ultimately leading to better efficiency.
The problem with using the right-hand-on-mouse left-hand-on-keyboard approach is that most of the keyboard shortcuts for web browsers require two hands or are on the right side of the keyboard. Backspace and alt-arrows are two good examples. I think if there were some consistent single-hand keyboard shortcuts on the left side of the keyboard, they would quickly dominate mouse gestures - for expert users anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I actually do the VCR thing right now. Except its only one VCR controlled by a cheap human. The quality might not be great, but since I don't have cable, the extra fuzz just blends right in ;)
The one limitation of VCRs though is that you can't really shift a show by a few minutes. You have to wait till its over to start watching it.
I've been on a quest since two days ago to find an answer to a related question. What I wondered is "How cheap can I get a device with Tivo like functionality with no future costs?"
Option 1:
Baseline Tivo/ReplayTV: $200
Lifetime subscription: $250 (also note that the lifetime subscription only applies to this device - if you buy a new Tivo you need a new subscription)
Total: $450
Option 2:
Build your own. Assuming you don't care about size and form factor (which you probably do) you can just get a bargain basement PC. There are some 700-800MHz jobbies starting at $200 but these are pretty marginal in terms of being able to encode video to disk. So you probably want to step up to one of the slightly better $300 base PCs. Then you have to get a video capture card and remote control card. If you go really cheap, you can get both for about $100. Assuming you use free software, you can get a working system for $400. But this is on the extremely low end with no thought to asthetics or quality parts. I'd say you can get a nice looking, reasonable quality system for $650.
Total: $400-$650+
Option 3:
A Panasonic DVD recorder. You really need the one with a harddrive to do Tivo well but you also get a nice side benefit that you can record to removable media.
Total: $1000
Option 4:
Buy one of the many Media centers. The alienware shuttle is a nice one. Anyway, they all start in the same ballpark as far as cost.
Total: $1700
Given my analysis, a standard Tivo/ReplayTV is still hard to beat at $450 if you are strictly interested in the Tivo functions. If you build your own, you can get a lot more functions like MP3 jukebox, recording to removable media, etc...
Does anybody know of any other options?
OK, my attention span is gone, can someone please tell me how I can get the functionality of a Tivo as cheaply and with as minimal effort as possible. I'm not trying to pick a side on the whole PC vs. set-top appliance issue, I just care about functionality for crying out loud!
I would buy a Tivo, ReplayTV, or UltimateTV but these all require subscriptions (yes, they do now REQUIRE subscriptions). I don't want to pay an additional $10 per month for that. However, I also don't want to take on a whole tech support project just so I can have a PVR.
So maybe my question is - how cheaply can I get a PC and a video I/O card and a remote control - that are all guaranteed to work with any one of the PVR software packages. Can someone give me a quick summary? (Or even better, is there a Tivo clone that doesn't require a subscription?)
Coincidently, my wife just had an ultrasound. I had heard of these 4D things and looked into it and there was really only one in the Bay Area - Los Gatos, I think.
Anyway, we opted for the normal ultrasound but I was extremely impressed with the process. The individual 2D ultrasound images do not do it justice. In the live version, I could definitely count fingers and toes and even reconstruct a lot of the 3D structure in my head.
My point is that the radiologists are really, really good at spotting abnormalities in these grainy 2D pictures. So I'm wondering if these 4D ultrasounds aren't mainly just for parents. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing - but maybe it wouldn't be a huge leap for medical diagnosis.
What I've gathered so far from all these baby books I've been reading is that most prenatal abnormalities cannot be fixed. When something can be fixed, the risks of fixing it are really high. So they are only even going to try fixing the very major problems. I'm guessing that ordinary 2D ultrasounds can probably pick up these major problems. Maybe this will change though as the risks of prenatal surgery go down.
IIRC one of the biggest advantages of stippling in rendering surfaces is that you can get a fast simulation of transparency. Check out here. So maybe the same applies in 3D. The 3D stippling might allow you to simulate complex semi-transparent volumes - perhaps also avoiding some z sorting or alpha blending.
Also, maybe you WOULD see more of this in games if it could be done in real time. Just because all we have now is polygons doesn't mean that's the way it has to be.
Good luck... This has been promised since the 70's.
It sounds to me like they are admitting the difficulty of the problem and trying to introduce human mediated steps to reduce the difficulty. For example, if the speaker eliminates some of the ambiguity in the sentence by specifying parts of speech, then the problem is a lot less difficult.
So you might not need huge jumps in human language translation if you can get huge jumps in human-computer interaction.
I haven't ever seen that Pix thing actually used on a site. Anyway, I found it to be too hard and I don't see how it could ever be scalable. I got one that was supposed to be "nose" but it could have been about 20 other things including mouth, ear, eye, kiss, face, etc....
The proofs are definitely not meant for the visually impaired. From what I've heard they are supposed to be solvable by x% of the population y% of the time - where x and y are in the high 90s. I guess the disabled would have to prove their humanity through more traditional means like email.
Also, if we're talking about the future, who's to say that using Human Interactive Proofs or CAPTCHA's to verify human senders will continue to work. Maybe in the future, increased computer power will make these problems solvable. Alternately, maybe there will be some huge leaps in OCR algorithms.
I'll admit, it's not too likely, but probably as likely as people using white lists and these types of proofs.
where are the burners that support this??
Take a look at the hardware list on the CloneCD site. I haven't actually used this program so I'm not vouching for it. I've heard good things though.
Of course, this doesn't necessarily allow you to play the protected CD on your computer but it might help you copy it. But you asked about burners anyway.
OK, I'm not understanding the business model here. In the case of IE, I think the justification for giving it away was to eliminate competition from Netscape. Who would they put out of business if Windows was free? You can't put "Linux" out of business since it's not a company (much as the trolls like to say it is).
How exactly does Microsoft lose if they charge for both Windows and Office. Even if people use Office on Linux, MS still makes more money by charging for Windows. I can't think of any situation in which this would change open source development. Are open source developers going to trust MS to continue to give the OS away for free? Anyway, cost is only half of the argument for open source software. Now if MS made the OS free as in speech - then the story would be different.
That wasn't meant to be directed at you. It was more just a general observation. I almost always notice spelling mistakes and feel a strong urge to correct them. I have the same problem when I try to write a paper. I have a hard time writing rough drafts because I get caught up in the details. In hindsight though, the times when I've actually posted a spelling flame were when I didn't have anything else to say.
Well, according to the Guide to Flaming, the psychology behind the spelling/grammar flame is:
;)
A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the author, instead of actually responding to that point.
I think this makes sense because, as the guide (and my experience) points out:
Spelling flames often contain spelling errors.
I think this argues for some other pathology rather than a simple need to improve comprehension. I think it is also often the flamer's desire to post something that is "correct" when they don't have anything to say about the actual topic. At least, that's why I'm posting about flaming rather than gambling
From the article:
Under an agreement reached between Intel and Intergraph in April...
I don't think that's how it usually works...only if you make an agreement like this outside of the courts.
Not sure I understood your post. But just so you know, this is under serious consideration - take a look at JSR 121. Also note that the #2 request for enhancement (4466510) on the java developer connection is related to memory usage.
can you tell me what happened to Jon Katz?
Take a look at this article. A quote from the article:
Now, the one-time crusader for the geek underclass has decided to concentrate on writing more general technology articles and media commentary.
I can't see this being the default because it will take longer to read/write and will create bigger files. How can an XML format ever compete with a binary format in terms of speed and size? On the other hand, maybe this is part of their Palladium plan and its intended to encourage new PC sales.
Yeah, that's my attitude too. A side benefit is that its a nice FU to consumerism. I love pulling up next to all those chumps in their beamers and SUVs with my beat-up, never-washed, base model ford escort.
You can also bet that I'm not carrying collision or comprehensive on that sweet ride so the savings compound.
Nothing better than sticking it to the man and saving for your future at the same time.
You seem a little overconfident in knowing what is not a cause of autism given that we don't know what the cause is. The reason the debate is so complicated is because Autism does not have a single cause. Even the NYTimes article mentions that. My suspicion is that vaccines are a cause of autism through some higher order effect that these studies haven't taken into account.
;)
Take a look at this paper (also cited in the previous post) comparing autism to mercury poisoning. I personally find too many similarities between the two diseases to dismiss it as pure coincidence. I've also heard enough anecdotal evidence (my wife is speech therapist in California) to suggest that there is a link between vaccination and autism.
Also, many of these regional studies seem to be a bit flawed in looking for causes of autism. For example, suppose they are looking in a population with a very low genetic predisposition to autism. Then, it might not matter for that population what environmental factors are introduced because the autism rate will continue to be extremely low.
Personally, since I have control on this issue, I'm not going to wait for science to prove what anecdotal evidence suggests. You DO HAVE A CHOICE for reduced thimerosal vaccines in many cases if you are willing to make the effort.
On a related note, it seems there is something unique about California that is causing a rise in Autism diagnoses. Yes, it probably has something to do genetic predisposition. But maybe it is also related to the increased intake of sushi - beware the mercury levels in fish
That definitely makes a good argument for why geoprofiling should work in the first place. However, it still seems that if a criminal knows the algorithm, they are going to be harder to catch. At least if I know that your algorithm says I'll commit crimes in my comfort zone, I'm going to go to extra lengths to commit crimes outside this zone. Sure it might require more work but if I'm determined to commit a crime, I'm probably going to deal with the inconvenience.
Note that the argument (in other posts) that most criminals have some kind of mental deficiencies isn't really relevant either. That might be reassuring if your looking for H.I. McDonough but its probably not an argument for using geoprofiling to look for a calculating serial killer that knows about geoprofiling.
Sorry you got the redundant. I appreciated the joke. Would have been even funnier if you linked to this story.
In this case, it doesn't seem like having a surface to project on is the problem. After all, there are already heads-up displays that show you things like your speedometer. The bigger problem seems like it would be generating real time terrain maps that a human could understand.
I'm also wondering how practical it is since I don't have any liquid nitrogen around the house. AFAIK, you need a permit to even handle the stuff. Maybe there are other practical sources of non-wet fog but that doesn't seem likely?
I use Mozilla and was shocked to find out that it still supports blink. Is Mozilla a browser that properly supports CSS or no? Seemed to work on that one at least?
That's true, but I think there are probably a lot of people out there who only use one hand for the mouse and use the other hand for keyboard shortcuts...
Yes, and more importantly performing these mouse gestures typically requires a mouse drag. Mouse dragging is a well known cause of RSI. Dragging also requires a significant amout of energy relative to a mouse button or key press - its finger motion versus wrist or arm motion.
I think these are better explanations for why highly experienced computer users prefer keyboard shortcuts. Its really a matter of trying to conserve energy - ultimately leading to better efficiency.
The problem with using the right-hand-on-mouse left-hand-on-keyboard approach is that most of the keyboard shortcuts for web browsers require two hands or are on the right side of the keyboard. Backspace and alt-arrows are two good examples. I think if there were some consistent single-hand keyboard shortcuts on the left side of the keyboard, they would quickly dominate mouse gestures - for expert users anyway.