You are correct - I got my parents a DirecTiVo and not only does it have two tuners (one live/record, one background record), DirecTV doesn't charge you for using the second one!
I interviewed at Fermi a few months ago and got a tour of a few of their cold rooms.
Oh...my...*drool* *wipe* *wipe*
Rows of Origin machines churning away...tape rooms with robot arms zipping about faster than you can figure out what they're doing...Linux everywhere you turn...it was heaven. I was dizzy with envy. Alas, they didn't pay enough to make the commute worth it - they're about 45 minutes out on I-55 (non-rush hour) and I like living downtown.
How long until they make an arbitrary change that breaks all the "new" clients? While I don't understand why they'd care (the customer is still, in theory, paying for the service), the fact that they've kept it secret for so long makes me wonder if they'll let this slide. Not to mention their annoying policies regarding the AIM client (how many times did they break everybuddy?)
8 months for a scrawny nerd in a juvenile detention center? He's going to get the shit kicked out of him regularly, I would surmise. That's a pretty hard sentence for running some other idiot's code.
My government is doing something that impedes progress in a given field? I don't believe it. They certainly haven't done anything to impede the progress of prescription drugs, cellular phones or HDTV. And never to the detriment of other countries. </sarcasm>
When has the US been the fore-runners of technology that didn't involve killing people somewhere else?
two grand? Give me a break - if that's not an obscure niche market, I don't know what is. Most consumers aren't even aware of DVRs existing. I'm very talkative about how great TiVo is and it's rare that I don't have to explain what it is.
So, now, a unit that's over 6 and a half times the cost of my Sony SVR2000 (i.e. an expensive model of TiVo) is supposed to revolutionize TV viewing? My ass. Sure, I plan on putting another larger drive in my TiVo, but I'm not whining about lack of space - it'll just be a nice cushion for when I'm away for the weekend.
btw, 8 times my current capacity isn't a whole season. It's maybe two months. Three tops. And I'm not particularly psycho about my TiVoing.
What about three competing "full" Microsofts? I agree product-line splitting is rather silly, and more of a death warrant than penalty. But look at the Baby Bell "system"...it came back around well enough...
My "anonymity" is a lame argument. First, no one believes "boinger" is my actual and/or full name. Second, anyone can find out who I am if you take about 10 seconds of time to look. Third, I'm not representing my own company with an artificial persona in an effort to drive up revenue. There's a big difference.
I suppose I can see his point - George Tirebiter is a bit silly. Perhaps he should have made it TireByter or something more obvious. Regardless, astroturfing is lame, and he's right to apologize.
Can you imagine most other companies (say, Microsoft, for instance) ever apologizing for anything? I would expect the standard "mistakes were made...steps have been taken to prevent...blah, blah, blah". It's refreshing to see someone in the public light in the commercial side of this industry with humility.
I think this sort of twisted perception of technology is representative of the half-assed (at best) understanding of technology that is so prevalent in California. The Bay Area was for so long seen as some sort of geek mecca, and every kid who had a Commodore64 decided s/he could cut it with the Big Kids. It's no wonder to me that Silicon Valley is collapsing in on itself (from a tech industry standpoint) with all the idiots making a pain in the ass for the people who do know what they're doing.
I just moved back to Chicago after living in San Francisco for a year, and I really believe that about 20% of the tech professionals know what they're doing out there and they fight to hold everything together in spite of the 80% who stumble through their work.
While that's a bit offtopic, I do have a point. I found that many, many "professionals" tend to assume they know what they're doing with a minimum of information, much less familiarity with a given technology or product. It seems to me that the problem extends to the legal system. Some judge thinks that because he can open a Word document all on his own (and get keen virus to show to his judge friends) he knows what there is to know about the computer industry. It makes me mad, as a person with a strong desire to do my work correctly and efficiently. Maybe work ethic is too "old school"? *sigh*
Conjecture, at best
on
Mac Rants
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Is there somewhere he proves his point that I missed? Saying "That's dumb. Macs are slow, and people who like them suck." in various creative (?) ways doesn't amount to anything close to proof. Even if I can accept his rant as an "anti-proof" (which is impossible, of course) he doesn't even offer the alternative - that of course being some benchmarks that disprove the pro-Mac analysis.
I understand that - I was asking as to the algorhythm used to generate/dev/urandom. Is this formula for binary digits of pi as low-resource intensive as the/dev/urandom formula?
If it's really low, could we even use/dev/urandom as a seed for the digit choice? Or vice versa?
How do we know the calculated values of pi are correct? The 56 millionth place, for instance...Who's checking this work? It can't be done by hand, only by another computer, right?
If this formula to calculate arbitrary binary digits is derived from being able to calculate pi as a whole, how is it proven that the original formula is valid?
The article discusses a formula now in use that allow computation with less computing power than before...Does this imply that the earlier formulae were flawed such that errors were introduced into the sequence? I'm sure someone would notice some huge error 250 digits in, but, after 250,000? 250,000,000?
Maybe my brain has discarded the answers to these questions and replaced it with PERL syntax or something. So Mathies, please, be kind.
So, if pi is random, is it a "good" random? How does it compare to/dev/urandom for useability?
I think someone's said it before, but, doesn't having a formula that allows calculation of arbitrary binary digit, in fact, make it NOT random? I'm just trying to grok how something can be "easily calculated" and still be truly random.
Quasi stereo component
on
DeMuDi Linux
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· Score: 2
Would it be a reasonable task to cull the pachage list to act as a stereo component-style MP3 player? (attractive component-looking case not included)
This is a teeny hard drive, not a RAM device - I doubt it would be an acceptable solution for a digital device unless it has some serious built-in cache.
Just food for thought before you pitch a few on the old AmEx.
You know, they might just not have much footage worthy of a DVD from that far back. It certainly wasn't the phenomenon that it became around season 3 or so.
I'm just hoping they release the alternate endings to "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (They had several alternates animated so that no one could leak what the real ending was - or so rumor has it).
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct - I got my parents a DirecTiVo and not only does it have two tuners (one live/record, one background record), DirecTV doesn't charge you for using the second one!
Oh...my...*drool* *wipe* *wipe*
Rows of Origin machines churning away...tape rooms with robot arms zipping about faster than you can figure out what they're doing...Linux everywhere you turn...it was heaven. I was dizzy with envy. Alas, they didn't pay enough to make the commute worth it - they're about 45 minutes out on I-55 (non-rush hour) and I like living downtown.
How long until they make an arbitrary change that breaks all the "new" clients? While I don't understand why they'd care (the customer is still, in theory, paying for the service), the fact that they've kept it secret for so long makes me wonder if they'll let this slide. Not to mention their annoying policies regarding the AIM client (how many times did they break everybuddy?)
You can come play it, if you want.
8 months for a scrawny nerd in a juvenile detention center? He's going to get the shit kicked out of him regularly, I would surmise. That's a pretty hard sentence for running some other idiot's code.
</sarcasm>
When has the US been the fore-runners of technology that didn't involve killing people somewhere else?
I watch more than one show.
So, now, a unit that's over 6 and a half times the cost of my Sony SVR2000 (i.e. an expensive model of TiVo) is supposed to revolutionize TV viewing? My ass. Sure, I plan on putting another larger drive in my TiVo, but I'm not whining about lack of space - it'll just be a nice cushion for when I'm away for the weekend.
btw, 8 times my current capacity isn't a whole season. It's maybe two months. Three tops. And I'm not particularly psycho about my TiVoing.
Finally, they agree with me.
Whoops. :)
Yahoo! Mail - forgot that damn http://
And Yahoo! Messenger kicks AIM's and MSN Messenger's asses.
Why tempt fate?
What about three competing "full" Microsofts? I agree product-line splitting is rather silly, and more of a death warrant than penalty. But look at the Baby Bell "system"...it came back around well enough...
I'm pretty sure back then I wasn't even yet a sperm/egg couple living separately.
My "anonymity" is a lame argument. First, no one believes "boinger" is my actual and/or full name. Second, anyone can find out who I am if you take about 10 seconds of time to look. Third, I'm not representing my own company with an artificial persona in an effort to drive up revenue. There's a big difference.
Can you imagine most other companies (say, Microsoft, for instance) ever apologizing for anything? I would expect the standard "mistakes were made...steps have been taken to prevent...blah, blah, blah". It's refreshing to see someone in the public light in the commercial side of this industry with humility.
I just moved back to Chicago after living in San Francisco for a year, and I really believe that about 20% of the tech professionals know what they're doing out there and they fight to hold everything together in spite of the 80% who stumble through their work.
While that's a bit offtopic, I do have a point. I found that many, many "professionals" tend to assume they know what they're doing with a minimum of information, much less familiarity with a given technology or product. It seems to me that the problem extends to the legal system. Some judge thinks that because he can open a Word document all on his own (and get keen virus to show to his judge friends) he knows what there is to know about the computer industry. It makes me mad, as a person with a strong desire to do my work correctly and efficiently. Maybe work ethic is too "old school"? *sigh*
Is there somewhere he proves his point that I missed? Saying "That's dumb. Macs are slow, and people who like them suck." in various creative (?) ways doesn't amount to anything close to proof. Even if I can accept his rant as an "anti-proof" (which is impossible, of course) he doesn't even offer the alternative - that of course being some benchmarks that disprove the pro-Mac analysis.
*sigh* Yeah, right.
If it's really low, could we even use /dev/urandom as a seed for the digit choice? Or vice versa?
If this formula to calculate arbitrary binary digits is derived from being able to calculate pi as a whole, how is it proven that the original formula is valid?
The article discusses a formula now in use that allow computation with less computing power than before...Does this imply that the earlier formulae were flawed such that errors were introduced into the sequence? I'm sure someone would notice some huge error 250 digits in, but, after 250,000? 250,000,000?
Maybe my brain has discarded the answers to these questions and replaced it with PERL syntax or something. So Mathies, please, be kind.
I think someone's said it before, but, doesn't having a formula that allows calculation of arbitrary binary digit, in fact, make it NOT random? I'm just trying to grok how something can be "easily calculated" and still be truly random.
Would it be a reasonable task to cull the pachage list to act as a stereo component-style MP3 player? (attractive component-looking case not included)
Exactly the situation I was referring to. That major in Electronic Media (until I quit to make a good salary) taught me at least a few things.
Just food for thought before you pitch a few on the old AmEx.
I'm just hoping they release the alternate endings to "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (They had several alternates animated so that no one could leak what the real ending was - or so rumor has it).