I believe when you set up your Tivo for the first time, you get 2-4 weeks to try the service out.
Of course you can continue to use the Tivo without the service - so long as you leave the software version at 1.3. Do not let it upgrade to 2.xx otherwise, you won't be able to do much without the service.
That said, the service is what really makes the Tivo worth owning. Seriously. It's features blow any other DVR out of the water. I didn't even bother with the trial period. Once I was sure the unit was operating fine, I immediatly paid for the lifetime.
However, no PC-DVR solution comes close to offering the sort of features or ease of use that Replay or Tivo offer - AND with a PC-DVR solution you're going to end up spending *more* money. Seriously.
Tivo + service is $450-500. You can't build a PC-DVR solution for that amount of money that will still inlclude:
* A remote
* Detailed TV schedule data
* Able to record up to 30 hours of programming
* Easy to use UI that is usable on a TV screen
* (and this is a big one) DOES NOT CRASH
I know many folks here pride themselves on being able to hack something together with the illusion of saving money...but don't forget, your *time* is worth something too. I guess if you don't value your time, building an inferior solution from scratch in 4 or 5 hours may be a good solution.
But, I'm not in college in anymore, and personally being able to take something out of the box, and have it ready to use when I turn it on is worth it.
Tivo is really easy to set up. All you need to know is your zipcode and who your program provider is (satellite provider, cable company, antenna, etc.) Tivo then dials into headquarters, sets it clock, and downloads the channel lineup and schedule.
After that, you simply tell Tivo the name of the show you want to watch. Then you tell Tivo to record it. That's it. That's really all it takes. You don't need to know what day or time the show is on. Hell, I don't even know what time any of my shows are on anymore because I don't care. All I know is that each week, a new episode shows up, and I'll watch it when I want to.
The biggest difficulty is getting people to understand that Tivo is like a VCR - you have to either leave your TV on channel 3/4, or use an auxillary video input. However, if they've used a VCR or DVD player to watch movies, using Tivo isn't much of a jump.
As for why aren't they more popular, I'd have to say price is a major factor. Tivo costs $2-300 and requires a subscription fee, or a one time fee of $250. ReplayTV starts at $700. These things aren't going to be considered "cheap" to the average consumer.
TrustE isn't just spam friendly - they're spammers themselves I believe.
Isn't TrustE run by the former CEO of RealNetworks, who's proven themselves again and again to be UN-trustworthy with regards to private data, spamming, spy-ware, etc?
I actually tried to report one of TrustE's members for spamming. 3 weeks later, I finally got a message from someone asking me to explain why I was contacting them (as if my original email didn't contain all the information...) I played along, and another 3 weeks later, I got another email from TrustE saying they'd asked their member to stop mailing me.
Oh, joy. So 6 weeks of spam, and all TrustE can say is "please wash your lists."
Now they want me to accept TrustE "certified" spam?
That won't provide gravity everywhere on the surface of the sphere... What you'll end up is a wide "ring" that has gravity in the middle, but as you went towards the poles, the gravity would be less and less. This is why a ringworld makes more sense, since you wouldn't have these large areas that would be somewhat uninhabitable (or at least, less desirable) due to a lack of gravity.
(actually, if you had a Dyson's Sphere, the poles would have gravity...it'd just be towards the sun in the middle, right?)
Gads...bad resumes...oh, the stories I could tell.
I did a job fair while at a company one time. It was a sobering experience being on the other side of the table...
It was both a shocking and sobering experience to see how many so-called engineers utterly LACK any sort of basic writing skills, despite having gone through college.
Free hint - doesn't matter how smart you are, if you can't effectively communicate through writing and by speaking, you're going to have a hard time finding a job.
Re:Headhunters: what do you look for?
on
Resume Spamming Redux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
What do I look for in a headhunter?
Someone with a clue and who respects me.
Seriously.
I've had headhunters call me when they obviously didn't read my resume, just saw a warm body they could hammer into whatever position they had, irregardless of what skills I had, where I was located, or even whether I wanted contract or full-time. I won't hesitate to tell these to go away, and don't bother me.
I've had other headhunters call me, but don't really understand the industry they're hiring for. I once had a headhunter tell me that he had a hot job for me fixing ATM machines because I told him I knew something about ATM networking. *sigh* Another didn't know what the salary scale for my profession was. Turns out he was trying to find folks with more 5+ years of experience to take jobs at less than half than what I was making in the same geographical area.
I've had others who have social-engineered my phone number from somewhere and call me at work - something I had said was a definite NO-NO.
A good headhunter doesn't forget that he's dealing with people on both sides. Stuffing me into a job I hate might get him his finders fee, but isn't going to make me happy, and I certainly wouldn't use him again, nor reccomend him to my friends.
You made an effort to only send your resume to addresses which were created to specifically receive resumes.
If a website says "Send resumes to this address..." and you do, it's not spam because it's not unsolicited.
Sending your resume to *MY* address, on the other hand, would be considered spam because I haven't stated that I'm looking for resumes, or that I'm even involved with hiring decisions at my company.
I wouldn't worry too much about accidentally mailing a company twice. Most of the times, your resume is simply fed into a program that reduces your resume into a list of keywords they find useful (eg. "C" "C++") and when a manager opens a req which contains those keywords, your name and phone number pops up.
Yeah, times are tough and all that, but has this guy even *tried* the myriad of job sites out there? Good grief, I can think of 3 major, nationwide job boards - 2 of which are specifically for TECH WORKERS. Then there's local newspapers, tech publications, websites of companies (which almost always list an address for resumes), etc. Bernie was supposedly a consultant. Did he think of contacting his previous employers and seeing if they any work, or knew of other leads for him?
None of these things would be considered spamming.
Guess what, finding a job requires a bit of effort on your part. Simply spamming your resume to 1000s of random people doesn't take any effort, but at the same time, won't get you a job.
Go to trade shows (if you can represent your company, go for it) and walk around seeing what the other companies in your industry are doing.
Join professional organizations and go to their meetings (LUGs are a great place to meet folk.)
Talk to people outside your department at work. At one company, this led to me learning about things my manager was withholding from me because he was afraid I'd leave the company. (He was right, it did.)
When you do leave a company, try to do in as professional manner as possible. Try to finish your current project, or at least get to a good breaking point. You'd be surprised how "small" the world is, and someone you interview with might know one of your former coworkers or boss.
Sending out resumes to addresses who haven't asked for them certainly *IS* spam.
Let's review:
* Unsolicited: They didn't ask for it.
* Commercial: Sending a resume means you want a job - IE. you want to enter into some sort of business agreement.
* Email: (obviously.)
There are also those who think spam is simply Unsolicited Bulk Email - which again, sending out resumes to bunches of places that don't want them makes it spam.
Bernie spammed.
The previous poster's friend who sent out his resume to every job listing on a job site did not spam.
I know that all the folks who teach how to write a resume tell you to use subtley colored paper, with nicely done fonts, etc.
What a waste of time and effort.
At many larger companies the only thing that'll see your pretty font resume on pretty paper is a computer scanner. Your resume is OCR'd into a database, scanned for relevant keywords, and filed away until a hiring manager opens a REQ with the same number of keywords.
By the time anyone important sees your resume, you can bet it won't be using your pretty paper, or your pretty fonts.
I've never mailed a resume to a company - even when I was in school. Between FAX and email, why bother? I'm applying for what I have in my head, not how well I can use pretty paper.
Sending your resume to a job site isn't unsolicited.
Sending your resume to an email address specifically set up for that purpose isn't spamming (in fact, I got a job by sending a resume a company's "Jobs@..." address.)
Sending your resume to addresses that AREN'T related to employment, or haven't otherwise instructed you to send your resume to them *IS* spamming.
Remember, spam is "Unsolicited Commercial (or Bulk) Email." Idiots who send me their are *definitely* considered spammers and usually end up being treated as such by their ISP.
Sticking a PVR into a game console would be an unwise and expensive proposition.
At best, you essentially cram 2 "computers" into a single (expensive) box - one to play games, and one to record your shows. At worst, your console suddenly turns the game you were about to win at 8pm so it can record that show you told it to record.
Not everyone who wants a console is going to want to pay for the extra hardware to run a PVR. Likewise, not everyone who wants a PVR is going to want to pay for the extra game hardware.
Yeah, convergence is still the holy grail of the electronics market, but there are cases when it makes sense to have two separate devices. This, IMHO, is one of them.
Tivo will be cheaper than XBox - it already is, actually, if you consider the DirecTivo units which are less than $100 and offer 30 hours of storage.
By the time this legendary game console/WebTV/PVR thingie comes out from Microsoft, what do you think it's going to cost? Unless Microsoft skimps on the hard drive space, it's probably going to cost more than *just* a Tivo.
Surprise, surprise, many people who want a Tivo-like device, DON'T want to play games, and aren't going to want to buy a device that does something they don't care about. It'd be like buying a PS2 to ONLY play DVDs.
Why can't the Xbox do it all now? It's got 10 gig of hard disk, a hefty processor for whatever compression scheme they want to use (divx anyone?:), dolby sound (didn't that set off alarm bells for anyone else?), a broadband connector (great for a private network for delivering pay-per-view, too), and is it true that the Xbox has an extra port labelled "video in"!?
Um...XBox is missing a few components... A video compressor/encoder capable of dealing with realtime streams is one of them. The standalone Tivo comes with a TV tuner and a MPEG compressor-on-a-chip to handle this. Yeah, Divx is nice...but I don't think there's a HW solution capable of handling an incoming video stream right now:) Sure, you could probably do it in software...but wait, you wanted to play games on this thing as well, right?
And, as stated elsewhere, 10GB just isn't big enough. Sure, you can do 1GB/hour...but it's going to look like your VCR at EP speed. And don't forget, you're supposed to use this same 10GB for your music, your game saves, and the game cache (700MB/game.)
As for using the broadband link to download video... Even assuming 1GB/hour for TV quality video and sound, how long will it take you to download a 1 hour episode? Hm... Nothing like downloading last week's episode of Buffy 2 weeks after it aired...
You'd probably be better off having your friend record the show onto a VHS tape or onto (S)VCD and *driving* it over to you - better bandwidth that way.
If Microsoft pushes XBox2 too soon, they'll not only annoy their consumers, but the game developers as well. With no software, the XBox2 will never be successful...at least, not as a game console.
Maybe that's what Microsoft wants. They'll just sell an expensive DVD/PVR box, which will "play" games like the Nuon.
Do you think the XBox has the hardware to allow you to play DOA3 while performing on-the-fly compression on that episode of Buffy at the same time?
Furthermore, PVRs want *large* hard drives - in fact the more, the better. The XBox ships with, what, a 10GB drive? At slighty worse than EP quality, that's about 10 hours of programming - oh wait, you want to use the HD for game saves, music, and the games themselves?
Maybe XBox2 will come with dual processors, 500MB of RAM and 500GB of diskspace, in addition to a TV tuner and MPEG encoder card...
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I believe when you set up your Tivo for the first time, you get 2-4 weeks to try the service out.
Of course you can continue to use the Tivo without the service - so long as you leave the software version at 1.3. Do not let it upgrade to 2.xx otherwise, you won't be able to do much without the service.
That said, the service is what really makes the Tivo worth owning. Seriously. It's features blow any other DVR out of the water. I didn't even bother with the trial period. Once I was sure the unit was operating fine, I immediatly paid for the lifetime.
Yeah, mine claims it can do that...but it doesn't work (and I have 3 or 4 PBS stations.) I still end up having to set the time manually.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
s _c heaper BS.
#standard_I_am_a_geek_so_I_build_a_PC_to_do_thi
Can you build or make a PC act as a DVR? Sure.
However, no PC-DVR solution comes close to offering the sort of features or ease of use that Replay or Tivo offer - AND with a PC-DVR solution you're going to end up spending *more* money. Seriously.
Tivo + service is $450-500. You can't build a PC-DVR solution for that amount of money that will still inlclude:
* A remote
* Detailed TV schedule data
* Able to record up to 30 hours of programming
* Easy to use UI that is usable on a TV screen
* (and this is a big one) DOES NOT CRASH
I know many folks here pride themselves on being able to hack something together with the illusion of saving money...but don't forget, your *time* is worth something too. I guess if you don't value your time, building an inferior solution from scratch in 4 or 5 hours may be a good solution.
But, I'm not in college in anymore, and personally being able to take something out of the box, and have it ready to use when I turn it on is worth it.
Tivo is really easy to set up. All you need to know is your zipcode and who your program provider is (satellite provider, cable company, antenna, etc.) Tivo then dials into headquarters, sets it clock, and downloads the channel lineup and schedule.
After that, you simply tell Tivo the name of the show you want to watch. Then you tell Tivo to record it. That's it. That's really all it takes. You don't need to know what day or time the show is on. Hell, I don't even know what time any of my shows are on anymore because I don't care. All I know is that each week, a new episode shows up, and I'll watch it when I want to.
The biggest difficulty is getting people to understand that Tivo is like a VCR - you have to either leave your TV on channel 3/4, or use an auxillary video input. However, if they've used a VCR or DVD player to watch movies, using Tivo isn't much of a jump.
As for why aren't they more popular, I'd have to say price is a major factor. Tivo costs $2-300 and requires a subscription fee, or a one time fee of $250. ReplayTV starts at $700. These things aren't going to be considered "cheap" to the average consumer.
TrustE isn't just spam friendly - they're spammers themselves I believe.
Isn't TrustE run by the former CEO of RealNetworks, who's proven themselves again and again to be UN-trustworthy with regards to private data, spamming, spy-ware, etc?
I actually tried to report one of TrustE's members for spamming. 3 weeks later, I finally got a message from someone asking me to explain why I was contacting them (as if my original email didn't contain all the information...) I played along, and another 3 weeks later, I got another email from TrustE saying they'd asked their member to stop mailing me.
Oh, joy. So 6 weeks of spam, and all TrustE can say is "please wash your lists."
Now they want me to accept TrustE "certified" spam?
No thanks.
Ah, but what would happen if you taped one of those return envelopes to a brick?
:)
Would the post office deliver it to the junk mailer, and demand the ~$5 postage it cost?
(btw, I thought the article was about spam, not junk mail. I may get annoyed with junk mail as well, but at least it's not spam.)
That won't provide gravity everywhere on the surface of the sphere... What you'll end up is a wide "ring" that has gravity in the middle, but as you went towards the poles, the gravity would be less and less. This is why a ringworld makes more sense, since you wouldn't have these large areas that would be somewhat uninhabitable (or at least, less desirable) due to a lack of gravity.
(actually, if you had a Dyson's Sphere, the poles would have gravity...it'd just be towards the sun in the middle, right?)
Suppose M$/MSN has a plan to spread influence extraterrestrially?
:)
Does this mean they'll discover that space is round, and not just a mostly flat (albeit "bumpy") field?
As with the Japanese linux kit, you won't be able to use the monitor adapter to play games or DVD movies.
The video routines aren't interchangable, unfortunatly.
Gads...bad resumes...oh, the stories I could tell.
I did a job fair while at a company one time. It was a sobering experience being on the other side of the table...
It was both a shocking and sobering experience to see how many so-called engineers utterly LACK any sort of basic writing skills, despite having gone through college.
Free hint - doesn't matter how smart you are, if you can't effectively communicate through writing and by speaking, you're going to have a hard time finding a job.
What do I look for in a headhunter?
Someone with a clue and who respects me.
Seriously.
I've had headhunters call me when they obviously didn't read my resume, just saw a warm body they could hammer into whatever position they had, irregardless of what skills I had, where I was located, or even whether I wanted contract or full-time. I won't hesitate to tell these to go away, and don't bother me.
I've had other headhunters call me, but don't really understand the industry they're hiring for. I once had a headhunter tell me that he had a hot job for me fixing ATM machines because I told him I knew something about ATM networking. *sigh* Another didn't know what the salary scale for my profession was. Turns out he was trying to find folks with more 5+ years of experience to take jobs at less than half than what I was making in the same geographical area.
I've had others who have social-engineered my phone number from somewhere and call me at work - something I had said was a definite NO-NO.
A good headhunter doesn't forget that he's dealing with people on both sides. Stuffing me into a job I hate might get him his finders fee, but isn't going to make me happy, and I certainly wouldn't use him again, nor reccomend him to my friends.
No, you didn't spam.
You made an effort to only send your resume to addresses which were created to specifically receive resumes.
If a website says "Send resumes to this address..." and you do, it's not spam because it's not unsolicited.
Sending your resume to *MY* address, on the other hand, would be considered spam because I haven't stated that I'm looking for resumes, or that I'm even involved with hiring decisions at my company.
I wouldn't worry too much about accidentally mailing a company twice. Most of the times, your resume is simply fed into a program that reduces your resume into a list of keywords they find useful (eg. "C" "C++") and when a manager opens a req which contains those keywords, your name and phone number pops up.
Yeah, times are tough and all that, but has this guy even *tried* the myriad of job sites out there? Good grief, I can think of 3 major, nationwide job boards - 2 of which are specifically for TECH WORKERS. Then there's local newspapers, tech publications, websites of companies (which almost always list an address for resumes), etc. Bernie was supposedly a consultant. Did he think of contacting his previous employers and seeing if they any work, or knew of other leads for him?
None of these things would be considered spamming.
Guess what, finding a job requires a bit of effort on your part. Simply spamming your resume to 1000s of random people doesn't take any effort, but at the same time, won't get you a job.
Networking isn't really that hard...
Go to trade shows (if you can represent your company, go for it) and walk around seeing what the other companies in your industry are doing.
Join professional organizations and go to their meetings (LUGs are a great place to meet folk.)
Talk to people outside your department at work. At one company, this led to me learning about things my manager was withholding from me because he was afraid I'd leave the company. (He was right, it did.)
When you do leave a company, try to do in as professional manner as possible. Try to finish your current project, or at least get to a good breaking point. You'd be surprised how "small" the world is, and someone you interview with might know one of your former coworkers or boss.
Sending out resumes to addresses who haven't asked for them certainly *IS* spam.
Let's review:
* Unsolicited: They didn't ask for it.
* Commercial: Sending a resume means you want a job - IE. you want to enter into some sort of business agreement.
* Email: (obviously.)
There are also those who think spam is simply Unsolicited Bulk Email - which again, sending out resumes to bunches of places that don't want them makes it spam.
Bernie spammed.
The previous poster's friend who sent out his resume to every job listing on a job site did not spam.
I know that all the folks who teach how to write a resume tell you to use subtley colored paper, with nicely done fonts, etc.
What a waste of time and effort.
At many larger companies the only thing that'll see your pretty font resume on pretty paper is a computer scanner. Your resume is OCR'd into a database, scanned for relevant keywords, and filed away until a hiring manager opens a REQ with the same number of keywords.
By the time anyone important sees your resume, you can bet it won't be using your pretty paper, or your pretty fonts.
I've never mailed a resume to a company - even when I was in school. Between FAX and email, why bother? I'm applying for what I have in my head, not how well I can use pretty paper.
Suing spammers is a waste of time.
Think about it for a second...do you *really* think you're going to be able to get any sort of monetary award out of some broke, unemployed loser? No.
At the same time, however, "just hitting delete" will do nothing to deter the spammer.
Just forward the loser's message back to his ISP, and let them practice their own method "just hit delete."
You can't very well spam if you don't have internet access, you know...
What your friend did was not spamming.
Spamming is unsolicited.
Sending your resume to a job site isn't unsolicited.
Sending your resume to an email address specifically set up for that purpose isn't spamming (in fact, I got a job by sending a resume a company's "Jobs@..." address.)
Sending your resume to addresses that AREN'T related to employment, or haven't otherwise instructed you to send your resume to them *IS* spamming.
Remember, spam is "Unsolicited Commercial (or Bulk) Email." Idiots who send me their are *definitely* considered spammers and usually end up being treated as such by their ISP.
Naw, in your analogy, a spammer would be someone who walks into a bar with a megaphone and propositions everyone present, all at once.
Don't forget, 99.999% of everyone who gets spammed, has no interest whatsoever in whatever the spammer is selling.
Sticking a PVR into a game console would be an unwise and expensive proposition.
At best, you essentially cram 2 "computers" into a single (expensive) box - one to play games, and one to record your shows. At worst, your console suddenly turns the game you were about to win at 8pm so it can record that show you told it to record.
Not everyone who wants a console is going to want to pay for the extra hardware to run a PVR. Likewise, not everyone who wants a PVR is going to want to pay for the extra game hardware.
Yeah, convergence is still the holy grail of the electronics market, but there are cases when it makes sense to have two separate devices. This, IMHO, is one of them.
Tivo will be cheaper than XBox - it already is, actually, if you consider the DirecTivo units which are less than $100 and offer 30 hours of storage.
By the time this legendary game console/WebTV/PVR thingie comes out from Microsoft, what do you think it's going to cost? Unless Microsoft skimps on the hard drive space, it's probably going to cost more than *just* a Tivo.
Surprise, surprise, many people who want a Tivo-like device, DON'T want to play games, and aren't going to want to buy a device that does something they don't care about. It'd be like buying a PS2 to ONLY play DVDs.
Why can't the Xbox do it all now? It's got 10 gig of hard disk, a hefty processor for whatever compression scheme they want to use (divx anyone? :), dolby sound (didn't that set off alarm bells for anyone else?), a broadband connector (great for a private network for delivering pay-per-view, too), and is it true that the Xbox has an extra port labelled "video in"!?
:) Sure, you could probably do it in software...but wait, you wanted to play games on this thing as well, right?
Um...XBox is missing a few components... A video compressor/encoder capable of dealing with realtime streams is one of them. The standalone Tivo comes with a TV tuner and a MPEG compressor-on-a-chip to handle this. Yeah, Divx is nice...but I don't think there's a HW solution capable of handling an incoming video stream right now
And, as stated elsewhere, 10GB just isn't big enough. Sure, you can do 1GB/hour...but it's going to look like your VCR at EP speed. And don't forget, you're supposed to use this same 10GB for your music, your game saves, and the game cache (700MB/game.)
As for using the broadband link to download video... Even assuming 1GB/hour for TV quality video and sound, how long will it take you to download a 1 hour episode? Hm... Nothing like downloading last week's episode of Buffy 2 weeks after it aired...
You'd probably be better off having your friend record the show onto a VHS tape or onto (S)VCD and *driving* it over to you - better bandwidth that way.
But that's not how the console market works.
If Microsoft pushes XBox2 too soon, they'll not only annoy their consumers, but the game developers as well. With no software, the XBox2 will never be successful...at least, not as a game console.
Maybe that's what Microsoft wants. They'll just sell an expensive DVD/PVR box, which will "play" games like the Nuon.
On giving XBox PVR capabilities...
Why do folks think this would be a good idea?
Do you think the XBox has the hardware to allow you to play DOA3 while performing on-the-fly compression on that episode of Buffy at the same time?
Furthermore, PVRs want *large* hard drives - in fact the more, the better. The XBox ships with, what, a 10GB drive? At slighty worse than EP quality, that's about 10 hours of programming - oh wait, you want to use the HD for game saves, music, and the games themselves?
Maybe XBox2 will come with dual processors, 500MB of RAM and 500GB of diskspace, in addition to a TV tuner and MPEG encoder card...
Yeah, but unlike anime, we're not paying for a team of translators and a second voice-over cast :)
Buffy Season 1 is $30 retail for 13, "1 hour" episodes across 3 or 4 DVDs.
That's a lot closer to the "Way It Should Be."