It is imporant to note that Thompson pulled out, not TiVo. TiVo licenses their technology for FREE, they get no royalties for hardware sales whatsoever, they survive on subscription revenues only.
That's a pretty good lather you worked yourself into, too bad it has no basis in reality. You're not paying for the enhanced content, the advertiser bears the costs, and it actually reduces the cost of your TiVo subscription in the process. If I have to be "spammed" with content I never see and it pays for part of my subscription, I'm fine with it. The big flap over "spamming" was because people got irate over the CONTENT of the show. Nobody whined about enhanced content for MONTHS, until they saw the one program they disliked, and then suddenly it's spam. Sorry, it isn't.
What a bunch of crap. TiVo units have a certain amount of memory set aside for "enhanced content" (that means infomercials). If you don't look in the menus, you'd never know it was there, unless you happened to be watching at 4AM when it was captured. In NO way can TiVo be said to be spamming. Someone bought a paid placement. Hey, I hated it when TiVo recorded a bunch of crappy Eminem interviews, but I just didn't watch it, and I certainly didn't whine about it.
Remember TiVo makes ZERO dollars from hardware sales, they are solely supported by subscription revenues, ad placements, and selling marketing data.
You should be aware that your credit history is more open to prospective employers than creditors. If you've had bad credit more than 7 years ago, it will roll off your credit report, and will not affect your ability to get new credit. Nothing over 7 years is visible on a standard credit report.
BUT.. there is a special provision in the credit laws, allowing any employer who does a credit check for a job over some fixed amount ($35k IIRC) to see your ENTIRE credit history, back to day 1.
you blow your brains out at age 30. This is the only industry I know of that eviscerates itself every few years and rejects the knowledge of its senior experts. I'm 45 with experience from design and assembly to sales to engineering to programming, and I've been looking for an IT job for years. Ever heard the term "gray-listing"...?
Yeah, I liked the show, in fact, a previous History Channel show on this subject (about 4 or 5 years ago) got me interested in digitizing my own vinyl records. But those acetate on aluminum disks CAN be saved. Laser scanners were invented specifically for recording broken albums. Just because it's lost its substrate, doesn't mean you can't lay it down flat on a new one, even temporarily for a reference recording. Even in totally fragmented condition, it's savable, perhaps with future technology. The very first paper I ever read about Computers in art was an IBM paper about using computers to collect and reassemble broken pieces of ancient frescoes, from different museums across the world. And this was in 1964! Yes, that acetate disk was the only thing I saw them discard unnecessarily, but recall that some of the tapes they were digizing were destroyed in the process, so ultimately a LOT of stuff is being destroyed in order to save it... Anyway, it's been a while so maybe I was wrong about the 96kbit vs 96khz. But still, when I see someone using a Win95 workstation with ancient Steinberg declicker plugins, I know it's crap because I'm using a new PowerMac and the modern audio tools are miles ahead of that old junk.
I just meant they're screwing up when they toss out ANYTHING. You never know what kind of technology will come up, like the laser scanners. But they're just tossing out the damaged disks. And I worried when I heard at what a low data rate they're recording the preservation tracks. Come on, in the future nobody will want 96k mp3s, they'll want much higher uncompressed data rates, to suck every bit of nuance out of the old data, because the originals will be long gone. But I suppose that's the best they can do with win98 computers for digitizing.
About a week or two ago, I saw a documentary on The History Channel about this exact project. I was rather surprised to see them digitizing audio on Win95 workstations with a few primitive apps. These guys seriously need technological help. But the real focus here is on analog. I cringed as I saw historic reel-to-reel tapes shred when played, I was even more appalled when I saw vinyl-on-aluminum records that the vinyl popped off when he took it out of the sleeve. He said "oops, this album is ruined." They discard damaged vinyl like that, but I think they're screwing up. There are already laser scanners that can read the grooves optically, all you have to do is keep ALL the pieces and put them on a backing in the correct position, the laser will scan off the grooves and you can edit out the pops in postproduction. But ultimately this is the same old conservation issue. Do you try to capture the deteriorating tapes and records NOW, or do you let them deteriorate further in hopes that a miracle solution will appear before they are completely destroyed? There is no good answer.
Well count me in as an electric guitar luddite. I thought it was ironic that the article mentioned the '57 Les Paul, because I used to own one. Back in the 70s, I saw the lead guitarist from Uriah Heep strumming a '56 Les Paul Jr.. with a handfull of tire chains. Try that with your expensive computerized guitar!
Anyway, part of the point of electric guitars are that they are noisy, and that's part of the whole sound. I heard one eminent musicologist declare, "music is just pure tone plus noise, and each genre expresses one particular noise preference." Even a virtuoso like Segovia would sound like crap on a guitar with no noise in the signal.
I remember in the early 90s when my university had a major Japanese film studies department. Now all the serious scholars have moved on to serious Ivy League schools like Columbia or Princeton, leaving the "film studies" department dumbed down to the level of anime studies. I'm not surprised that serious scholars are desperate to move to schools that take film seriously.
I got an international drivers license
on
Spammers Busted
·
· Score: 1
I was going on a trip to Japan so I got an International Driver's License at AAA. IIRC it cost $15. My trip fell through so I never used it. A license sure wouldn't be worth any more than $10 or $20 to anyone, let alone through a spammer. And it doesn't get you out of tickets or anything, it's just money down the drain unless you really need a foreign license.
SW radios like the Sony ICF-SW1000T can be programmed to tune a specific frequency at a specific time, and record to cassette tapes, much like a VCR. It should not be too hard to substitute an MP3 recording program in place of the cassette recorder. SW users have been doing this for years, they are the people you should be consulting.
I always said to maximize a programmer's efficiency would require a full-time attending nurse, to administer IV drips that insure adequate levels of hydration, nutrients, stimulants, etc, as well as urinary catheterization. Haven't figured out how to handle the need to take a dump, although I figure that would be gradually minimized by 100% IV feeding.
There really are no good computer-based tools for teachning Japanese. Trust me on this, I've got a degree in Japanese and I've seen them all. None of the tools offer a significant advantage over paper flashcards or textbooks. Sometimes low-tech is the best. You may hear glowing reviews of these tools, but I bet you 1000 quatloos that none of them are actually fluent. The computer tools are wonderful for giving you the belief you know some Japanese, without actually teaching you any valuable language skills. You must understand that the Japanese, despite their reputation, are technophobic, particularly older Japanese. The current crop of teachers are from the pre-computer era and have been notoriously slow to adopt ANY computer tools into the curriculum. Let me give you an example. When Netscape 2 came out with Japanese support for the first time (1993 I think), I arranged a demonstration on how to read the Asahi Shimbun online, in our school's computer lab. When I discussed the plan with the lab manager, she had a fit. How DARE I put such a frivolous application as a web browser on their computers! Everyone knows that web surfing is not a serious academic application of computers! I was only permitted to perform the demo if I agreed to remove Netscape afterwards. Anyway, the tools situation is better at higher levels. Japan is one of the most wired countries, it has incredible amounts of text and video available online. There is a wealth of native language materials online that are excellent for improving fluency. But nothing out there will translate it for you automatically, the auto-glossing tools like WWWJDIC are intended to supplement your own language skills.
Apologies are unnecessary. We all need every excuse we can get to quote the illustrious Mr. Adams. Someone mod up that excerpt! BTW, those quotes I gave are from the h2g2 site, it's a whole lot of fun. There are plenty more digs at digital watches there, I just picked the 2 best.
One of the most pointless inventions known to mankind (Although we still think that they are a pretty neat idea). Although we already had a perfectly good way of telling the time we thought that we ought to invent anouther one just because we can. If it had stopped their it would only have been mildly pointless but no. The people who made these watches decided that they sould have lights, oh and an altimeter, and air pressure function and oh it should do all this at 1000m under water and with a series of musical alarms whist telling you the time in 50 countries. What mankind failed to realise is that situations which REQUIRE knowing your altitude and the time in bangladesh and Paris whilst 100m underwater in the dark to the tune of the national anthem, are quite rare.. ---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A183476
For hundreds of years, clocks, pocket watches and most recently wrist watches have been elegantly ticking off the seconds with style, grace and perhaps most importantly an ever increasing degree of accuracy.
Analogue watches (especially the expensive ones with sweeping second hands) are testimony to human kinds mastery of materials, art and science.
Digital watches are not.
I have resisted the urge to mention that man thinks these ugly things "a pretty neat idea" -
Ooops. ----
Oh he goes on and on and on about digital watches. I wish I could find that quote about how Humans are the only species that things digital watches are a good idea.
This is nothing new, tracking dishes are available at any RV dealer. They only work on the interstate, when the turns and the position change are gradual. Go around a 90 degree turn and the dish can't track fast enough. They suck.
but it's not signed by Jobs. I've heard this issue is pretty rare and valuable on its own, but surely not in the >$2k range. I wonder what it is worth unsigned? I also have some issue #1s of other early mags like Kilobaud Microcomputing, I hear that one goes for insane money (well, not compared to $2k though). Hell, I've got all kinds of vintage stuff, like the highly-sought Macintosh "Picasso" crystal display sign in mint condition, only given to the first Mac dealers. Redlightrunner has one for sale for $1k. I keep wondering if I should try to sell this stuff now (I really need the money) or wait a bit longer for vintage computer collectables to rise even more. I have a car worth $200 but Apple collectables worth maybe thousands. Hmmm.. what to do...
You are correct, the pads are no longer manufactured. The sole source for the NOS pads is MilKey. They cost way too much, since their target market is aging but irreplaceable machines in the DoD.
Hey thanks for the offer. I just need the pads, I figure two keyboards worth should cover it, since any single old kbd probably has a few bad pads. And then I'd have a few leftover pads for future repairs. Actually, I was thinking of taking one whole extra set of pads and sealing them in a bottle filled with inert gas, pickling them for the next restoration, in another 25 years when the pads rot again. These KB101 pads are probably already about 10 years old, I figure they've got about 15 years left in em max. I hate to post my real address here, I set up a temp account at this address, mail me: SolSeventyFive@netscape.net
Someone on the internet located some old Sun4 kbds for me, apparently they made a couple of different types and the pads weren't the right type. I'm still looking. I could buy a kit of new-old-stock pads from one supplier for about $50, but that just isn't the proper way to restore an old vintage computer, it's got to be done right, and that means canniballizing old hardware on the cheap, not buying new parts off the shelf.. Yep, I've turned the thing on, the power supply only at first, it rates at precisely the same voltages as when I first built it, I wrote them in the margins of the manual. I ran it for an hour as a smoke test, seemed to work OK. Then I tested the motherboard and got a cursor, good video, seems to be 100% operational except for the kbd. The SOL power supply was a monster and the huge electrolytic caps all seem to be fine, but I don't know squat about power supplies, I don't know how I'd tell if it was bad or how I'd "reform" it. Any suggestions? The only thing I haven't tested is my two 16KRA boards. Lots of little caps on that board, I'm afraid to power it up. I don't know how I'd test all those tiny caps, but they shouldn't be too hard to replace with modern equivalents (if I don't blow up anything else while testing).
I've been working on restoration of my old Sol-20 for several years. The big stumbling block is locating keyboard refurbishment parts. They say that the Keytronics KB-101 keyboard can be cannibalized for parts. I used to sell by KB-101s by the hundreds but now I can't find ANY. If anyone knows where I can get some cheap, even broken KB-101 units, let me know. Oh man, I am so close to getting my old Sol-20 running 100%. Then I have to see if I can get my 20+ year old data cassettes to read. I'm going to dump the audio straight into my Mac, since the tapes will probably shred on the first pass. One preservation capture, then burn to CD. I could probably just use my Mac as a big dumb cassette player like the Sol was originally built for.
Well, yes and no. The best thing on this subject I ever heard was from an advertising book, it said the goal of advertising is to turn innate desires into specific behaviors. In this case, the record company advertising and promotion (including the payola) is turning our innate desire to listen to pleasant sounds into the behavior of purchasing specific music products. It's a cynical manipulation of the public taste, with only one goal, profit. The record industry is more monopolistic and much more aggressive than even Microsoft.
No, music wasn't killed because of society and culture. I used to work computer support with all the LA record companies back in the 80s, and that's when music became corporatized. My rolodex is still full of CEOs and VPs of all the big music companies, and I know them all well. And they're all fucking mafiosa scum, which is why I quit that job. They don't care about music, only money. Oh, and they're also interested in one OTHER thing, that they make money and you DON'T.
Slashdot Mirror
It is imporant to note that Thompson pulled out, not TiVo. TiVo licenses their technology for FREE, they get no royalties for hardware sales whatsoever, they survive on subscription revenues only.
That's a pretty good lather you worked yourself into, too bad it has no basis in reality. You're not paying for the enhanced content, the advertiser bears the costs, and it actually reduces the cost of your TiVo subscription in the process. If I have to be "spammed" with content I never see and it pays for part of my subscription, I'm fine with it. The big flap over "spamming" was because people got irate over the CONTENT of the show. Nobody whined about enhanced content for MONTHS, until they saw the one program they disliked, and then suddenly it's spam. Sorry, it isn't.
What a bunch of crap. TiVo units have a certain amount of memory set aside for "enhanced content" (that means infomercials). If you don't look in the menus, you'd never know it was there, unless you happened to be watching at 4AM when it was captured. In NO way can TiVo be said to be spamming. Someone bought a paid placement. Hey, I hated it when TiVo recorded a bunch of crappy Eminem interviews, but I just didn't watch it, and I certainly didn't whine about it.
Remember TiVo makes ZERO dollars from hardware sales, they are solely supported by subscription revenues, ad placements, and selling marketing data.
You should be aware that your credit history is more open to prospective employers than creditors. If you've had bad credit more than 7 years ago, it will roll off your credit report, and will not affect your ability to get new credit. Nothing over 7 years is visible on a standard credit report.
BUT.. there is a special provision in the credit laws, allowing any employer who does a credit check for a job over some fixed amount ($35k IIRC) to see your ENTIRE credit history, back to day 1.
you blow your brains out at age 30. This is the only industry I know of that eviscerates itself every few years and rejects the knowledge of its senior experts. I'm 45 with experience from design and assembly to sales to engineering to programming, and I've been looking for an IT job for years. Ever heard the term "gray-listing"...?
Yeah, I liked the show, in fact, a previous History Channel show on this subject (about 4 or 5 years ago) got me interested in digitizing my own vinyl records.
But those acetate on aluminum disks CAN be saved. Laser scanners were invented specifically for recording broken albums. Just because it's lost its substrate, doesn't mean you can't lay it down flat on a new one, even temporarily for a reference recording. Even in totally fragmented condition, it's savable, perhaps with future technology. The very first paper I ever read about Computers in art was an IBM paper about using computers to collect and reassemble broken pieces of ancient frescoes, from different museums across the world. And this was in 1964!
Yes, that acetate disk was the only thing I saw them discard unnecessarily, but recall that some of the tapes they were digizing were destroyed in the process, so ultimately a LOT of stuff is being destroyed in order to save it...
Anyway, it's been a while so maybe I was wrong about the 96kbit vs 96khz. But still, when I see someone using a Win95 workstation with ancient Steinberg declicker plugins, I know it's crap because I'm using a new PowerMac and the modern audio tools are miles ahead of that old junk.
I just meant they're screwing up when they toss out ANYTHING. You never know what kind of technology will come up, like the laser scanners. But they're just tossing out the damaged disks. And I worried when I heard at what a low data rate they're recording the preservation tracks. Come on, in the future nobody will want 96k mp3s, they'll want much higher uncompressed data rates, to suck every bit of nuance out of the old data, because the originals will be long gone. But I suppose that's the best they can do with win98 computers for digitizing.
About a week or two ago, I saw a documentary on The History Channel about this exact project. I was rather surprised to see them digitizing audio on Win95 workstations with a few primitive apps. These guys seriously need technological help. But the real focus here is on analog. I cringed as I saw historic reel-to-reel tapes shred when played, I was even more appalled when I saw vinyl-on-aluminum records that the vinyl popped off when he took it out of the sleeve. He said "oops, this album is ruined." They discard damaged vinyl like that, but I think they're screwing up. There are already laser scanners that can read the grooves optically, all you have to do is keep ALL the pieces and put them on a backing in the correct position, the laser will scan off the grooves and you can edit out the pops in postproduction.
But ultimately this is the same old conservation issue. Do you try to capture the deteriorating tapes and records NOW, or do you let them deteriorate further in hopes that a miracle solution will appear before they are completely destroyed? There is no good answer.
Well count me in as an electric guitar luddite. I thought it was ironic that the article mentioned the '57 Les Paul, because I used to own one. Back in the 70s, I saw the lead guitarist from Uriah Heep strumming a '56 Les Paul Jr.. with a handfull of tire chains. Try that with your expensive computerized guitar!
Anyway, part of the point of electric guitars are that they are noisy, and that's part of the whole sound. I heard one eminent musicologist declare, "music is just pure tone plus noise, and each genre expresses one particular noise preference." Even a virtuoso like Segovia would sound like crap on a guitar with no noise in the signal.
I remember in the early 90s when my university had a major Japanese film studies department. Now all the serious scholars have moved on to serious Ivy League schools like Columbia or Princeton, leaving the "film studies" department dumbed down to the level of anime studies. I'm not surprised that serious scholars are desperate to move to schools that take film seriously.
I was going on a trip to Japan so I got an International Driver's License at AAA. IIRC it cost $15. My trip fell through so I never used it. A license sure wouldn't be worth any more than $10 or $20 to anyone, let alone through a spammer. And it doesn't get you out of tickets or anything, it's just money down the drain unless you really need a foreign license.
SW radios like the Sony ICF-SW1000T can be programmed to tune a specific frequency at a specific time, and record to cassette tapes, much like a VCR. It should not be too hard to substitute an MP3 recording program in place of the cassette recorder.
SW users have been doing this for years, they are the people you should be consulting.
I always said to maximize a programmer's efficiency would require a full-time attending nurse, to administer IV drips that insure adequate levels of hydration, nutrients, stimulants, etc, as well as urinary catheterization. Haven't figured out how to handle the need to take a dump, although I figure that would be gradually minimized by 100% IV feeding.
There really are no good computer-based tools for teachning Japanese. Trust me on this, I've got a degree in Japanese and I've seen them all. None of the tools offer a significant advantage over paper flashcards or textbooks. Sometimes low-tech is the best. You may hear glowing reviews of these tools, but I bet you 1000 quatloos that none of them are actually fluent. The computer tools are wonderful for giving you the belief you know some Japanese, without actually teaching you any valuable language skills.
You must understand that the Japanese, despite their reputation, are technophobic, particularly older Japanese. The current crop of teachers are from the pre-computer era and have been notoriously slow to adopt ANY computer tools into the curriculum. Let me give you an example. When Netscape 2 came out with Japanese support for the first time (1993 I think), I arranged a demonstration on how to read the Asahi Shimbun online, in our school's computer lab. When I discussed the plan with the lab manager, she had a fit. How DARE I put such a frivolous application as a web browser on their computers! Everyone knows that web surfing is not a serious academic application of computers! I was only permitted to perform the demo if I agreed to remove Netscape afterwards.
Anyway, the tools situation is better at higher levels. Japan is one of the most wired countries, it has incredible amounts of text and video available online. There is a wealth of native language materials online that are excellent for improving fluency. But nothing out there will translate it for you automatically, the auto-glossing tools like WWWJDIC are intended to supplement your own language skills.
Apologies are unnecessary. We all need every excuse we can get to quote the illustrious Mr. Adams. Someone mod up that excerpt!
BTW, those quotes I gave are from the h2g2 site, it's a whole lot of fun. There are plenty more digs at digital watches there, I just picked the 2 best.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A39647
One of the most pointless inventions known to mankind (Although we still think that they are a pretty neat idea). Although we already had a perfectly good way of telling the time we thought that we ought to invent anouther one just because we can. If it had stopped their it would only have been mildly pointless but no. The people who made these watches decided that they sould have lights, oh and an altimeter, and air pressure function and oh it should do all this at 1000m under water and with a series of musical alarms whist telling you the time in 50 countries. What mankind failed to realise is that situations which REQUIRE knowing your altitude and the time in bangladesh and Paris whilst 100m underwater in the dark to the tune of the national anthem, are quite rare..
---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A183476
For hundreds of years, clocks, pocket watches and most recently wrist watches have been elegantly ticking off the seconds with style, grace and perhaps most importantly an ever increasing degree of accuracy.
Analogue watches (especially the expensive ones with sweeping second hands) are testimony to human kinds mastery of materials, art and science.
Digital watches are not.
I have resisted the urge to mention that man thinks these ugly things
"a pretty neat idea" -
Ooops.
----
Oh he goes on and on and on about digital watches. I wish I could find that quote about how Humans are the only species that things digital watches are a good idea.
This is nothing new, tracking dishes are available at any RV dealer. They only work on the interstate, when the turns and the position change are gradual. Go around a 90 degree turn and the dish can't track fast enough. They suck.
but it's not signed by Jobs. I've heard this issue is pretty rare and valuable on its own, but surely not in the >$2k range. I wonder what it is worth unsigned? I also have some issue #1s of other early mags like Kilobaud Microcomputing, I hear that one goes for insane money (well, not compared to $2k though). Hell, I've got all kinds of vintage stuff, like the highly-sought Macintosh "Picasso" crystal display sign in mint condition, only given to the first Mac dealers. Redlightrunner has one for sale for $1k. I keep wondering if I should try to sell this stuff now (I really need the money) or wait a bit longer for vintage computer collectables to rise even more. I have a car worth $200 but Apple collectables worth maybe thousands. Hmmm.. what to do...
You are correct, the pads are no longer manufactured. The sole source for the NOS pads is MilKey. They cost way too much, since their target market is aging but irreplaceable machines in the DoD.
Hey thanks for the offer. I just need the pads, I figure two keyboards worth should cover it, since any single old kbd probably has a few bad pads. And then I'd have a few leftover pads for future repairs. Actually, I was thinking of taking one whole extra set of pads and sealing them in a bottle filled with inert gas, pickling them for the next restoration, in another 25 years when the pads rot again. These KB101 pads are probably already about 10 years old, I figure they've got about 15 years left in em max.
I hate to post my real address here, I set up a temp account at this address, mail me:
SolSeventyFive@netscape.net
Someone on the internet located some old Sun4 kbds for me, apparently they made a couple of different types and the pads weren't the right type. I'm still looking. I could buy a kit of new-old-stock pads from one supplier for about $50, but that just isn't the proper way to restore an old vintage computer, it's got to be done right, and that means canniballizing old hardware on the cheap, not buying new parts off the shelf..
Yep, I've turned the thing on, the power supply only at first, it rates at precisely the same voltages as when I first built it, I wrote them in the margins of the manual. I ran it for an hour as a smoke test, seemed to work OK. Then I tested the motherboard and got a cursor, good video, seems to be 100% operational except for the kbd. The SOL power supply was a monster and the huge electrolytic caps all seem to be fine, but I don't know squat about power supplies, I don't know how I'd tell if it was bad or how I'd "reform" it. Any suggestions?
The only thing I haven't tested is my two 16KRA boards. Lots of little caps on that board, I'm afraid to power it up. I don't know how I'd test all those tiny caps, but they shouldn't be too hard to replace with modern equivalents (if I don't blow up anything else while testing).
I've been working on restoration of my old Sol-20 for several years. The big stumbling block is locating keyboard refurbishment parts. They say that the Keytronics KB-101 keyboard can be cannibalized for parts. I used to sell by KB-101s by the hundreds but now I can't find ANY. If anyone knows where I can get some cheap, even broken KB-101 units, let me know.
Oh man, I am so close to getting my old Sol-20 running 100%. Then I have to see if I can get my 20+ year old data cassettes to read. I'm going to dump the audio straight into my Mac, since the tapes will probably shred on the first pass. One preservation capture, then burn to CD. I could probably just use my Mac as a big dumb cassette player like the Sol was originally built for.
and replace him with a robot replica.
Well, yes and no. The best thing on this subject I ever heard was from an advertising book, it said the goal of advertising is to turn innate desires into specific behaviors. In this case, the record company advertising and promotion (including the payola) is turning our innate desire to listen to pleasant sounds into the behavior of purchasing specific music products. It's a cynical manipulation of the public taste, with only one goal, profit. The record industry is more monopolistic and much more aggressive than even Microsoft.
No, music wasn't killed because of society and culture. I used to work computer support with all the LA record companies back in the 80s, and that's when music became corporatized. My rolodex is still full of CEOs and VPs of all the big music companies, and I know them all well. And they're all fucking mafiosa scum, which is why I quit that job. They don't care about music, only money. Oh, and they're also interested in one OTHER thing, that they make money and you DON'T.