However, I'd still say get a tivo (if you have a satelite, it's your only real choice since you can record 2 shows at once) and then spend $100 on one of the dazzle capture/dvd creation station, then you can just burn from the tivo (or any svideo/rca source) to vcd or dvd's that can be viewed in most dvd players.
Why bother with the losses you'll get from digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion? Get a NIC for your TiVo and rip the streams directly from it. To make SVCDs, you'll need to reencode, but if you tweak your TiVo's recording settings a bit, you could make DVDs with a combination of some rough editing (remove GOPs that are entirely within the bounds of commercial breaks) and taking advantage of DVD playback-control methods to eliminate what's left of the commercials.
(Some say that you can make similar tweaks to make SVCDs without reencoding. However, TMPGEnc is a much better low-to-medium-bitrate MPEG-2 encoder than the hardware encoder used in a TiVo. At the higher bitrates used for DVDs, the hardware encoder should be adequate.)
Well, unless I'm mistajken, the current Tivos have analog tuners to get normal TV stations. This is fed into their hardware MPEG(2, I think) compression and then stored on disk.
Standalone TiVos do. DirecTiVos don't...they record the MPEG-2 stream uplinked by DirecTV. Standalone TiVos can record anything that's on an RF, composite, or S-video signal (including DirecTV, Dish Network, or digital cable...run some cables from the satellite receiver and/or cable box and set up the IR blaster so the TiVo can control both). DirecTiVos can only record what's on the satellite...they can record two of those streams simultaneously, but they lack the hardware to pick up local broadcast or cable channels.
social security numbers are decided based on your birth state and other info.
Not always...in fact, I suspect that's not too common. It is based on the ZIP code given when you put in for your mark-of-the-beast, and that usually doesn't happen at birth. I was born in Florida and my sister was born in Colorado. We were overseas at the time the cards were issued...I think it was Germany. Our mailing address ended with "APO New York 09012," so we both ended up with marks-of-the-beast beginning with 055.
TivoApp is buggy and slow, and doesn't decode/demux the streams for you automatically like TyTool does. It also doesn't require a zillion hacks to get it working.
The tyStream->MPEG conversion in TyTool is superior, but the TiVo-resident daemon TyTool uses for extraction has issues...it tends to wedge my TiVo after two or three extractions. I'd recommend telnetting into the TiVo and using mfs_stream and netcat to rip the stream. You can then use TyTool to convert the stream once it's on your Win2K box (WinXP sucks, NT 4 is behind the times (no DirectX >3), and Win9x doesn't support files >2GB).
(You might also want to follow this DealDatabase thread about a demuxer that'll build under at least Win32, Linux, and Mac OS X. As it stands now, it chokes on streams >2GB, but it works great on smaller streams. I think that bit has been fixed, but not released yet because the author also wants to fix some issues related to decoding DirecTiVo streams before releasing a new version.)
Well, get an Apple ][ or TRS-80 to serve me alcohol, and I'll give you kudos instead...
Once I get my brewing fridge cleaned up (lots of rust and stickers on the outside that I want to remove), I plan on setting up a II+ as a temperature controller...it should be able to start at one temperature for primary fermentation and slowly ramp the temperature down for lagering. Instead of serving alcohol, it'll assist in making the stuff.:-)
Definitely realistic, but I wonder whether or not Tivo will be decompressing on-the-fly and re-compressing and re-sampling to a format which will be slightly degraded, but take up less space?
I would hope they just demodulate the signal and store the stream as it was broadcast...that's how DirecTiVo works. It would take a substantially bigger HD, but that shouldn't be a problem.
(They should still include an MPEG encoder for handling analog broadcasts. Hell, they should've included an MPEG encoder with DirecTiVo so that it could record local TV.)
Side Note: Wonder if they will be putting out software upgrades to those of us who own Tivo Series2's and older Tivos to make use of HD at somewhat degraded resolution?
I doubt the needed hardware is present to do that. In addition to the tuner (which is already present), I'd think that some sort of demodulator would be needed to take the analog signal from the tuner and convert it to a digital bitstream. Due to the bandwidth needed (and the analog input), you're not going to get that with a USB dongle.
But changing those things is not the same as perfomance tuning. Normally you have to burn an EPROM and place that in your ECU, or change to a stand alone unit that simulates the ECU to the car.
With many newer vehicles, you can get away with just twiddling some bits in the computer through the diagnostic connector. Here's one line of devices that do that for several late-model domestics. Looking at the info that would apply to my '02 S-10, their device tweaks several operating parameters:
engine timing
rev limiter
shift points
shift firmness
speed limiter
tire size & gear ratio (if you change them)
These can be set up for either 87 octane or 91 octane (though if you're going to spend the $$$ for one of these gadgets, you might as well start burning premium).
(Disclaimer: I don't even own one of these, so I can't vouch for the claims. I've considered picking one up, but a stock S-10 with a V-6 and the ZQ8 sport-suspension package runs pretty well as-is.)
Probably, but you'd still need special hardware for the interface. I know of at least one WinCE-based dynometer software package (I believe there's also a Palm version), but I can't remember the name or website at the moment. Google should help.
I haven't heard of any hardware yet that'll allow connection of a laptop to the OBD connector, but I'd like to see it.
Since this gadget connects your Palm to an ODB-II connector through a serial port, I'd think it wouldn't be too much to lash up an adapter that would hook it into a computer. The big question, though, is where most of the device's intelligence is located. If it's mostly in the bundled software, that could be a problem if you want to try to roll your own. (OTOH, you should be able to run it on a Palm emulator. IIRC, emulators and ROMs are available here.)
Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but why not pick up a plain ordinary FM tuner and a phono-to-minijack lead? Then you can just plug it into your sound card.
By not modulating and demodulating the audio signal, you'd get better audio quality with this than you would with an FM transmitter/receiver pair. It's the same reason you hook your VCR to your TV with line-level audio and video cables instead of coax, but with the added benefit here that your audio stays digital until it hits the RCA jacks on this device. (Someone could do a digital wireless connection...then again, you could bridge this receiver (or an Audiotron or Rio Receiver) to WiFi.)
Maybe because it's a nasty, semi-legal hack using MS/Apple binaries.
You forgot to add "that works extremely well". I think it's better than WMP. It's much much much more stable (in my experience, can't speak for everyone) and supports about as many formats (more?).
It also doesn't hurt that mplayer allows you to liberate media from restrictive formats. I've used it to convert from Windows Media to MPEG and from QuickTime to MPEG...not that QuickTime is a particularly restrictive format, but I'm sure we know how user-hostile a format Windows Media can be. I haven't tried going from Real to MPEG yet, mainly because there's really not that much (that I'm interested in, anyway) that uses Real anymore.
I used it to make available an MPEG version of the fan-made Star Trek episode you might've read about lately. A list of mirrors is still here, but I took the file down earlier this week after our outbound DSL line was lit solid for 72 hours.:-)
Why on earth we don't just have a simple flat tax is beyond me.
Because a flat tax screws the people with smaller incomes; whereas a graduated tax at least tries to spread the screwing more equitably.
Every flat-tax proposal I've seen has a much larger standard deduction than the ~$7k (single, no dependents) you're currently getting. Please explain to everyone how lower-income people would be screwed by not paying any tax at all under the typical flat-tax proposal. (The number I've most frequently heard is $30k for a family of four...any income below that amount wouldn't be taxed.)
Hell, anything has to be better than the top 10% paying two-thirds and the top 50% paying 96.1% of all tax revenue...
My god... that was all present tense. That's scary.
It fits in well with the theme of this article, don't you think? Besides, getting some equipment to do things it wasn't intended to do is part of the fun. (About ten years ago, I wrote a WAV player for the IIe...needed no additional hardware to do the job. I've been doing this kind of stuff for a while.:-) )
I can put the IIGS, IIe, Mac, and PC/XT on my LAN, too...makes getting files onto them much easier than stringing serial cables around. (The IIs talk to the network through a GatorBox, which converts between LocalTalk and Ethernet. netatalk serves files to them and to the Mac. I was able to track down an 8-bit ISA NIC for the XT here . I then installed the DOS-based network client from the NT Server CD on it so that it can talk to Samba.)
The GS and the 99/4A are pretty nicely equipped (the GS was my main machine for years, and I've tracked down a PEB with 32K, RS-232, and a floppy drive for the 99/4A). I have a cartridge switch box, a floppy controller, and some other odds-and-ends for the CoCo, but I've never gotten a floppy drive to work properly with it. The IIe has a Workstation Card and a 1-meg RamWorks. The other machines are in more-or-less basic configurations.
Picture the scene, its the mid-80s. Apple engineers want a way to network their dinky 9" screen toaster macs. All they have is a serial port, and almost no one has heard of Ethernet.
More importantly, the wife (landlord or whoever) is not going to stand for rewiring the house with some computer nonsense.
Solution: AppleTalk networking over LocalTalk cabling. ie, use the existing phone sockets and cabling to send data. By modern standards it crawls, but it works well and is still in use today (by some unfortunate souls).
What you describe is PhoneNet, which was developed by Farallon as a cabling substitute. Real LocalTalk cabling was a round cable with mini-DIN-4 connectors on each end, and (like everything else from Apple) was expen$ive (another motivation for PhoneNet was the reduced cost). A box with a mini-DIN-8 plug and two mini-DIN-4 jacks plugged into a computer, printer, or whatever, and the LocalTalk cables plugged into those boxes. PhoneNet replaced the boxes with different boxes that worked with phone cord.
My Mac (a Quadra 610) plugs directly into Ethernet, but I have a short PhoneNet run from my Apple IIGS (and occasionally an Apple IIe) into a Cayman GatorBox CS. Through the GatorBox, the GS can access files on the Mac or on the Linux server, and Marinetti adds Internet access (with clients for Telnet, FTP, and some other services available) over the same connection (the GatorBox acts as a MacIP gateway).
What I would like to see is a bluetooth adapter that plugs into the wall socket to provide powerline network access to my home server to any bluetooth enabled device in the room.
Why go to the bother of conjuring up a powerline-to-Bluetooth adapter when you can plug a USB Bluetooth dongle into your server? Bluetooth should have sufficient range to cover a decent-sized home if you put the server in a central location. Read this for info on one way to get this kind of setup working under Linux. It's oriented at getting Internet access over Bluetooth to a Palm Tungsten T, but it should be a good start for enabling other types of usage. After figuring out that bluefw needs leading zeroes on the bus and device numbers, I got this USB Bluetooth dongle set up yesterday so that I can check mail, browse the web, and log into VNC and SSH servers with my Palm.
Side note: A "bulky" V8 isn't any longer than a 4 cylinder, just a little wider. Think about it...
As proof, consider the V8 swaps that have been done into small cars such as the Fiero or even the Chevette. (My first car was an '80 Chevette...a bigger engine would've kicked ass.:-) )
Well, well... 10,000 hits
an hour were just a little
beyond what Mac.Com
was willing to tolerate.
The movies have been
taken offline until an
alternative host can be
found.
If they didn't know what a slashdotting was before, they sure as hell know now.:-)
I'm now sharing all 5 files on the Gnutella and WinMX networks. In a minute I'll have them on Kazaa too. They're named starshipexeter_actone.mov, starshipexeter_acttwo.mov, etc. I'll leave them up until sometime tomorrow.
I'll have them up on Kazaa under the same names in a few minutes (they're reading from the CD-RW as I type this). Multiple download sources are always a Good Thing(TM).
And there you go. I am not going to wait a whole damn week for one program to compile properly.
If it takes a week to compile a program, you need a new computer. Linux 0.99something only took an hour or two on my 386SX-25, back in the day...more recently, mplayer took maybe 10-15 minutes (I wasn't counting) to emerge on my Gentoo box @ home (Athlon XP 2400).
The site is slowing down, here is a mirror site until things get back to normal.
Looks like you've been/.'d...site came back with "connection refused." Meanwhile, the teaser's coming through from the original site @ 4.9 KB/s...good thing I'm downloading it and not trying to watch it while it's streaming, or the... pauses... in... each... sentence...... would...... be...... really......... really......... long.........
Slashdot Mirror
Why bother with the losses you'll get from digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion? Get a NIC for your TiVo and rip the streams directly from it. To make SVCDs, you'll need to reencode, but if you tweak your TiVo's recording settings a bit, you could make DVDs with a combination of some rough editing (remove GOPs that are entirely within the bounds of commercial breaks) and taking advantage of DVD playback-control methods to eliminate what's left of the commercials.
(Some say that you can make similar tweaks to make SVCDs without reencoding. However, TMPGEnc is a much better low-to-medium-bitrate MPEG-2 encoder than the hardware encoder used in a TiVo. At the higher bitrates used for DVDs, the hardware encoder should be adequate.)
Standalone TiVos do. DirecTiVos don't...they record the MPEG-2 stream uplinked by DirecTV. Standalone TiVos can record anything that's on an RF, composite, or S-video signal (including DirecTV, Dish Network, or digital cable...run some cables from the satellite receiver and/or cable box and set up the IR blaster so the TiVo can control both). DirecTiVos can only record what's on the satellite...they can record two of those streams simultaneously, but they lack the hardware to pick up local broadcast or cable channels.
Not always...in fact, I suspect that's not too common. It is based on the ZIP code given when you put in for your mark-of-the-beast, and that usually doesn't happen at birth. I was born in Florida and my sister was born in Colorado. We were overseas at the time the cards were issued...I think it was Germany. Our mailing address ended with "APO New York 09012," so we both ended up with marks-of-the-beast beginning with 055.
The tyStream->MPEG conversion in TyTool is superior, but the TiVo-resident daemon TyTool uses for extraction has issues...it tends to wedge my TiVo after two or three extractions. I'd recommend telnetting into the TiVo and using mfs_stream and netcat to rip the stream. You can then use TyTool to convert the stream once it's on your Win2K box (WinXP sucks, NT 4 is behind the times (no DirectX >3), and Win9x doesn't support files >2GB).
(You might also want to follow this DealDatabase thread about a demuxer that'll build under at least Win32, Linux, and Mac OS X. As it stands now, it chokes on streams >2GB, but it works great on smaller streams. I think that bit has been fixed, but not released yet because the author also wants to fix some issues related to decoding DirecTiVo streams before releasing a new version.)
Once I get my brewing fridge cleaned up (lots of rust and stickers on the outside that I want to remove), I plan on setting up a II+ as a temperature controller...it should be able to start at one temperature for primary fermentation and slowly ramp the temperature down for lagering. Instead of serving alcohol, it'll assist in making the stuff. :-)
I would hope they just demodulate the signal and store the stream as it was broadcast...that's how DirecTiVo works. It would take a substantially bigger HD, but that shouldn't be a problem.
(They should still include an MPEG encoder for handling analog broadcasts. Hell, they should've included an MPEG encoder with DirecTiVo so that it could record local TV.)
I doubt the needed hardware is present to do that. In addition to the tuner (which is already present), I'd think that some sort of demodulator would be needed to take the analog signal from the tuner and convert it to a digital bitstream. Due to the bandwidth needed (and the analog input), you're not going to get that with a USB dongle.
With many newer vehicles, you can get away with just twiddling some bits in the computer through the diagnostic connector. Here's one line of devices that do that for several late-model domestics. Looking at the info that would apply to my '02 S-10, their device tweaks several operating parameters:
These can be set up for either 87 octane or 91 octane (though if you're going to spend the $$$ for one of these gadgets, you might as well start burning premium).
(Disclaimer: I don't even own one of these, so I can't vouch for the claims. I've considered picking one up, but a stock S-10 with a V-6 and the ZQ8 sport-suspension package runs pretty well as-is.)
Since this gadget connects your Palm to an ODB-II connector through a serial port, I'd think it wouldn't be too much to lash up an adapter that would hook it into a computer. The big question, though, is where most of the device's intelligence is located. If it's mostly in the bundled software, that could be a problem if you want to try to roll your own. (OTOH, you should be able to run it on a Palm emulator. IIRC, emulators and ROMs are available here.)
<rimshot> Isn't that how they all left the factory? </rimshot>
Better yet, go with a distro that doesn't foist Sendmail on you by default...you can then do something like this:
# emerge qmail
By not modulating and demodulating the audio signal, you'd get better audio quality with this than you would with an FM transmitter/receiver pair. It's the same reason you hook your VCR to your TV with line-level audio and video cables instead of coax, but with the added benefit here that your audio stays digital until it hits the RCA jacks on this device. (Someone could do a digital wireless connection...then again, you could bridge this receiver (or an Audiotron or Rio Receiver) to WiFi.)
emerge -u media-video/mplayer
It also doesn't hurt that mplayer allows you to liberate media from restrictive formats. I've used it to convert from Windows Media to MPEG and from QuickTime to MPEG...not that QuickTime is a particularly restrictive format, but I'm sure we know how user-hostile a format Windows Media can be. I haven't tried going from Real to MPEG yet, mainly because there's really not that much (that I'm interested in, anyway) that uses Real anymore.
I used it to make available an MPEG version of the fan-made Star Trek episode you might've read about lately. A list of mirrors is still here, but I took the file down earlier this week after our outbound DSL line was lit solid for 72 hours. :-)
Every flat-tax proposal I've seen has a much larger standard deduction than the ~$7k (single, no dependents) you're currently getting. Please explain to everyone how lower-income people would be screwed by not paying any tax at all under the typical flat-tax proposal. (The number I've most frequently heard is $30k for a family of four...any income below that amount wouldn't be taxed.)
Hell, anything has to be better than the top 10% paying two-thirds and the top 50% paying 96.1% of all tax revenue...
It fits in well with the theme of this article, don't you think? Besides, getting some equipment to do things it wasn't intended to do is part of the fun. (About ten years ago, I wrote a WAV player for the IIe...needed no additional hardware to do the job. I've been doing this kind of stuff for a while. :-) )
I can put the IIGS, IIe, Mac, and PC/XT on my LAN, too...makes getting files onto them much easier than stringing serial cables around. (The IIs talk to the network through a GatorBox, which converts between LocalTalk and Ethernet. netatalk serves files to them and to the Mac. I was able to track down an 8-bit ISA NIC for the XT here . I then installed the DOS-based network client from the NT Server CD on it so that it can talk to Samba.)
The GS and the 99/4A are pretty nicely equipped (the GS was my main machine for years, and I've tracked down a PEB with 32K, RS-232, and a floppy drive for the 99/4A). I have a cartridge switch box, a floppy controller, and some other odds-and-ends for the CoCo, but I've never gotten a floppy drive to work properly with it. The IIe has a Workstation Card and a 1-meg RamWorks. The other machines are in more-or-less basic configurations.
What you describe is PhoneNet, which was developed by Farallon as a cabling substitute. Real LocalTalk cabling was a round cable with mini-DIN-4 connectors on each end, and (like everything else from Apple) was expen$ive (another motivation for PhoneNet was the reduced cost). A box with a mini-DIN-8 plug and two mini-DIN-4 jacks plugged into a computer, printer, or whatever, and the LocalTalk cables plugged into those boxes. PhoneNet replaced the boxes with different boxes that worked with phone cord.
My Mac (a Quadra 610) plugs directly into Ethernet, but I have a short PhoneNet run from my Apple IIGS (and occasionally an Apple IIe) into a Cayman GatorBox CS. Through the GatorBox, the GS can access files on the Mac or on the Linux server, and Marinetti adds Internet access (with clients for Telnet, FTP, and some other services available) over the same connection (the GatorBox acts as a MacIP gateway).
Why go to the bother of conjuring up a powerline-to-Bluetooth adapter when you can plug a USB Bluetooth dongle into your server? Bluetooth should have sufficient range to cover a decent-sized home if you put the server in a central location. Read this for info on one way to get this kind of setup working under Linux. It's oriented at getting Internet access over Bluetooth to a Palm Tungsten T, but it should be a good start for enabling other types of usage. After figuring out that bluefw needs leading zeroes on the bus and device numbers, I got this USB Bluetooth dongle set up yesterday so that I can check mail, browse the web, and log into VNC and SSH servers with my Palm.
As proof, consider the V8 swaps that have been done into small cars such as the Fiero or even the Chevette. (My first car was an '80 Chevette...a bigger engine would've kicked ass. :-) )
here. If you can't handle QuickTime for whatever reason or you just want to burn a VCD that you can pop into your DVD player, you want this file.
A quick check with Google turned up sites such as Dumb Criminal Acts and Bozo Criminal of the Day. Enjoy. :-)
If they didn't know what a slashdotting was before, they sure as hell know now. :-)
I'll have them up on Kazaa under the same names in a few minutes (they're reading from the CD-RW as I type this). Multiple download sources are always a Good Thing(TM).
If it takes a week to compile a program, you need a new computer. Linux 0.99something only took an hour or two on my 386SX-25, back in the day...more recently, mplayer took maybe 10-15 minutes (I wasn't counting) to emerge on my Gentoo box @ home (Athlon XP 2400).
Looks like you've been /.'d...site came back with "connection refused." Meanwhile, the teaser's coming through from the original site @ 4.9 KB/s...good thing I'm downloading it and not trying to watch it while it's streaming, or the ... pauses ... in ... each ... sentence ...... would ...... be ...... really ......... really ......... long .........