> DirecTV's mpeg2 encoding's glorious original quality is a complete joke.
I disagree (sort-of) the artifacts are not visible (S-video from TIVO to 42" HDTV) on many channels. The problem is they aren't consistant quality, some channels, and some programs are badly done. I am guessing what I see is a directv choice, but also when my signal quality gets real low, their is some blockyness their also. but some channels are too consistantly bad to be just a weak signal.
The best programs do seam to be the ones that advertise as available in HDTV, maybe some channels/programs don't provide a digital signal for DTV to compress, and thats where they suck (* no HDTivo for me:^( *)
of course mame runs on windows. but mame is served by mythtv. the difference is, if you want to play the games you installed in mame on MCE on your extender,E.G. a XBOX, you can't (without modifying the XBOX to install mame, and the games their also).
With mythTV, once you install the mythTV front end on any client, be that your XBOX, your axim, your windows 2000 pc, etc. The games, the phone, the DVD recorder/player, the HDTV channels all go with it. Not true (according to the msft FAQ) for the MCE extender, or any MCE clients.
> Games, Weather, Phone etc. are also avaiable on MCE. You can do these things at the PC with the MCE, you can do these on any frontend with MythTV (as a single install.) Also MythTV has support for mame, so you can play any game, on any mythtv frontend, including handhelds, and HDTV. MCE only supports these if you have another complete PC running another version of MCE.
Since Mythtv has the same license for clients, etc, I guess you could say this is all just a licensing diference, since the mythtv clients have the same license (GPL I assume) you could call another MCE server as a frontend, and have simular features.
Personally I like that you can easily look in all the groups to get the MythTV video files (including DVD's) into any quality/format you choose, directly accesible to almost any device.
> Oh wait. Standalone DVD recorders are already available that burn in real time without a hard drive.
great idea. However if you want the equivilent of the store bought DVD, it needs to be Dual Layer, my understaning is 1) it won't be CSS encrypted (movie studio wont allow it) 2) can't be the streamed content (not as good of quality, different format) 3) My understanding was the DVD is read switching layers every spin, but is recorded top layer, then back layer
I would much prefer a DIVX disc anyway, then again my DVD player plays that.
I think the bad analogy in this article is between the products. In the case of a book, it is a complete product. When a book is released, it is unlikely to be used for other than the intended purposes, and when used with another product it is not expected to still stand on its own (you cant subst the 265th page for another authors page, and expect it to work, but that is expected of the dll's, windows 98 vs XP, etc.) Most software is either released inside a complete product, and the product liabilty is left intact. Or it is software inteded to be used with other software, and with the original programmers usually not being the system integraters, going back to a single person to be responsible is no longer easy or practical.
wouldn't it make even more sense for microsoft to pay some other company to wield patents against their competitors, and thus be limited from the PR backlash, and any anti competitve lawsuit back-lash.
or is that too hypethetical (not like micrsoft paid SCO to fling lawsuits, they just helped bankroll the company after the lawsuit war was started.)
>TV stations pay for the right to distribute. You do not. I'm not sure how it works for rentals, but I'm sure the MPAA gets some bank from them as well.
Their is a "inventory fee" on for profit rentals (no fee for non-profit "educational" rental such as libraries)
pretty sure their is no legal precedents yet for torrents, seams the studios are going after the seeders first. If I were to equate a torrent download (with some content uploaded) to a TV station. I would say the torrents re-sharing during download would be equivalent to putting a antenna booster on a apartment complex (to its residents). IE (until you learn otherwise) the original seeder (broadcaster) had the right to broadcast that material, and the receivers (downloaders) have the legal right to receive the signal, then you are simply improving the signal for the others around you.
Now, when the antenna booster allows a under age person to watch howard stern (MA only) swear (braking FCC broadcast rights) and the broadcaster doesn't properly block that, are you now breaking the law by enabling them to get that signal to more people (and one may happen to be a under age unsupervised minor)? possibly, but without a precedent showing otherwise it is not currently a clear violation.
> you have no control over the recipient and the transport to them.
You don't have any of that controll in the VOIP phone, after all skype has adapters for a regular phone connector (the person on the other end can choose.) The most insecure phone call (in my experience) is one made using the typical wireless phone, after all (especially the 900mhz and under phones) anyone with a $20 scanner within a mile or so (with proper antenna) can hear that call. At least with email, even if you just send a encrypted zip file, you can then guarantee that it wasn't (easily) unencrypted without the password. Granted the phone encryption headseats of old, that the goverment used (uses?) at what I would guess costing a few thousand dollars could provide the same for the phone.
>from which to purchase individual songs(ITunes Music store, et al) there is no reason to still be pirating music,
Their is still no way to purchase a individual song, and play it directly on my mp3 player. (by mp3, I of course meen it plays mp3's not the DRM stuff sold) I realize some allow you to burn a cd in windows, then rip that to a mp3... well it's still easier to just download the mp3, and it works (even if you do use windows.)
> Of course, the analogy falls apart as soon as I join a swarm and start uploading. (sigh)
why? sticking to the grandparents logic, if he has a legitiment non-infringing use for the download, then perhaps all the others downloaders do as well. If distributing for non-infringing use were illegal (with a occasional infringer), then every TV station/Rental store/Retail store would be guilty also (after all they have distribitued content for profit, that has ended up being used for infringment as well.)
The MPAA/RIAA response seams to be that the majority of downloaders of their copyrighted works are infrining.
why is their no short circuit protection on the front USB straite from the MB? mulitple motherboards I have used crash hard with a short to these, the K8VM800 I am using now, included. I guess this is another feature for the hacker, can have the PC reboot automatically when you plug in your bootable usb fob.
because of that I only want the powered front USB hub (which this system appears to have in addition) in the drive bay. would be nice if they would allow a hardrive to share the same bay though.
> All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables
I wonder what they do for burn in? My experience is the same as yours with monarch, neither the system, or the complete board (MB+CPU+DDR+fan) I got worked right at first, and took 3 returns of the system, for them to get it so it could even boot a linux install cd (apperently was bad memory.)
this might be industry standard for discounters for all I know though. They did get the system working again, but not worth the down time.
with azuerus, if it's multiple files, you simply set a priority on the first file, and those chunks will come first (in the view files in the torrent section.)
It would be much more useable if that was included in the torrent seed file (possible?).
your post is valid, I am not debating that for the average person you are 100% correct.
However, I have a 42" plasma HDTV connected to the buffalo linktheater. I have been ripping all my DVD's to divx format and placing them on my hard disk (which is streamed to the linktheater, when it requests.) when I rip to divx format, I do 2 pass encoding, to a VBR of 2kbps, this makes a 2 hour DVD about 2 Gig. for everything, put blue sky shots, it is impossible to tell on this TV the difference from the 2 gig divx file, and the original DVD (you can see a few artifects in the blending of almost solid colors like the sky when it covers the entire screen, I am told their is a mencoder option to fix this also.) My comparison is a upsambling DVD to 1080i vs the Divx rip upsampled the same, both through this same player.
exactly the same as mp3's this is so much more convient, than the DVD's. I have a 300 Gig USB hard disk ($120), so it easily holds about 150hours of DVD quality Videos. At home, I don't have to look through drawers of DVD's for something I feal like watching, and carefully handle them... I simply sit on the couch with a menu of all my movies, click and go (and no more waiting to see the FBI warning for the 150th time.) Also the Civial war movie I just watched was 2 sided dvd, no fliping, the linktheater with play all, just jumped to the second disk. Also I killed the DVD player on my work laptop, so when I went to Chile for work for a week, I just grabbed that USB hard disk, with all my movies, dropped a movie on my laptop for the flight down, different one for the flight back, have my entire collection to choose from while their, and the battery lasts longer loading from Hard drive than DVD, and my DVD's are safe at home.
I would imagine it is the same their as in the states. a few cases of people who have slammed on their brakes, or throw it in reverse to cause a rear-end accident. They are liable, if you can prove that car in front performed a un-reasonable act. But it is usually to difficult to overcome the evidence at the scene, and the reasonable conclusion of causation such that the insurance company of the car behind pays up immediately.
> won't most systems lock a user out before 75 attempts?
Cool, new workplace prank, lock down all the office computers, with failed password attempts. (a manual DNS attack, so guess not a new concpet, but probably still patentable, until I hit submit that is) doh
> The guy that implemented the routine just didn't know about the mathematical boundaries of floating point numbers. It's just an example...
I completly agree with your post, but I do get frustrated sometimes by all the extra stuff the 4 year colleges typically include. IE, this important job stuff in my case was packed in the first year, and last year, now when I needed it, I had it available, because that was my greatest intrest. but many of my fellow graduates I worked with didn't recall these things, and I think that is because of the equal importance they placed on your GPA from the non important job stuff (that was much easier for most of us techi people.)
now that non Job stuff has come in really helpfull in improving life, from the economics that helps invest, and plan finance, to understanding politics.
also I would highly recomend the legal background classes, because that really doesn come into play in every aspect now (probably more in the future.)
I know it's flame bait, but it's so bright >You want to double you salary - refuse to work on point-and click systems your pay should be based on your ROI (Return on Investment) if it's not then your a piss poor negotiator. You write a gui, so anyone can fix it, freeing yourself to make more stuff better. You only need to lock yourself in as the only one who knows how to do something, if you (don't know/cant figure out) how to do anything else.
>it is about having the wrong hands knowing how the software works, so they can duplicate it and have the same advantage as we do.
having the same advantage is the point of GNU license. give anyone in your company/anyone in the country/anyone in the world/ doing the same work the advantage of starting not from scratch, when it needs fixed.
A thread about what GNU does for us would be more "Insightful" What GNU licese does for most programers (me), is allow them(me) to be more productive, and thus worth more, and thus better paid. It also lowers entry costs for new/small companys, which increases competition, increases the number of products, and builds on it's self.
If I had to completly write every different application from scatch and buy a dozen licenses for everything I tried for my company, I wouldn't accomplish anything without a large team. since my company can't afford a large team for my job, they just wouldn't keep any programmers at this stage, and stay with the status quo, of what is working.
> and the volume of the bucket will increase by exactly the same amount even though all of the steel is not submerged.
umm, you were good up to that point, the floating metal ship should displace more water, than that sunkin ship (not much though.) example, If you were to place a very dense piece of metal on top of that Ice, it may submerge the entire glacier, but if that very dense object then fell off that glacier, the glacier would rise, and a much smaller displacement would rest on the ocean floor. (best example would be a rock under the water level in the glacier, when it falls out, the glacier would rise, no more water is displaced from the fallen piece because it was in the water already.) I think it would be possible if their is alott of heavy stuff on the ice, that falls to the floor, for a net lowering effect.
Slashdot Mirror
> DirecTV's mpeg2 encoding's glorious original quality is a complete joke.
:^( *)
I disagree (sort-of) the artifacts are not visible (S-video from TIVO to 42" HDTV) on many channels. The problem is they aren't consistant quality, some channels, and some programs are badly done. I am guessing what I see is a directv choice, but also when my signal quality gets real low, their is some blockyness their also. but some channels are too consistantly bad to be just a weak signal.
The best programs do seam to be the ones that advertise as available in HDTV, maybe some channels/programs don't provide a digital signal for DTV to compress, and thats where they suck (* no HDTivo for me
> MAME front-ends are also available for MCE.
of course mame runs on windows. but mame is served by mythtv. the difference is, if you want to play the games you installed in mame on MCE on your extender,E.G. a XBOX, you can't (without modifying the XBOX to install mame, and the games their also).
With mythTV, once you install the mythTV front end on any client, be that your XBOX, your axim, your windows 2000 pc, etc. The games, the phone, the DVD recorder/player, the HDTV channels all go with it. Not true (according to the msft FAQ) for the MCE extender, or any MCE clients.
> Games, Weather, Phone etc. are also avaiable on MCE.
You can do these things at the PC with the MCE, you can do these on any frontend with MythTV (as a single install.) Also MythTV has support for mame, so you can play any game, on any mythtv frontend, including handhelds, and HDTV. MCE only supports these if you have another complete PC running another version of MCE.
Since Mythtv has the same license for clients, etc, I guess you could say this is all just a licensing diference, since the mythtv clients have the same license (GPL I assume) you could call another MCE server as a frontend, and have simular features.
Personally I like that you can easily look in all the groups to get the MythTV video files (including DVD's) into any quality/format you choose, directly accesible to almost any device.
> Oh wait. Standalone DVD recorders are already available that burn in real time without a hard drive.
great idea. However if you want the equivilent of the store bought DVD, it needs to be Dual Layer, my understaning is 1) it won't be CSS encrypted (movie studio wont allow it) 2) can't be the streamed content (not as good of quality, different format) 3) My understanding was the DVD is read switching layers every spin, but is recorded top layer, then back layer
I would much prefer a DIVX disc anyway, then again my DVD player plays that.
I think the bad analogy in this article is between the products. In the case of a book, it is a complete product. When a book is released, it is unlikely to be used for other than the intended purposes, and when used with another product it is not expected to still stand on its own (you cant subst the 265th page for another authors page, and expect it to work, but that is expected of the dll's, windows 98 vs XP, etc.)
Most software is either released inside a complete product, and the product liabilty is left intact. Or it is software inteded to be used with other software, and with the original programmers usually not being the system integraters, going back to a single person to be responsible is no longer easy or practical.
wouldn't it make even more sense for microsoft to pay some other company to wield patents against their competitors, and thus be limited from the PR backlash, and any anti competitve lawsuit back-lash.
or is that too hypethetical (not like micrsoft paid SCO to fling lawsuits, they just helped bankroll the company after the lawsuit war was started.)
>TV stations pay for the right to distribute. You do not. I'm not sure how it works for rentals, but I'm sure the MPAA gets some bank from them as well.
Their is a "inventory fee" on for profit rentals (no fee for non-profit "educational" rental such as libraries)
pretty sure their is no legal precedents yet for torrents, seams the studios are going after the seeders first. If I were to equate a torrent download (with some content uploaded) to a TV station. I would say the torrents re-sharing during download would be equivalent to putting a antenna booster on a apartment complex (to its residents). IE (until you learn otherwise) the original seeder (broadcaster) had the right to broadcast that material, and the receivers (downloaders) have the legal right to receive the signal, then you are simply improving the signal for the others around you.
Now, when the antenna booster allows a under age person to watch howard stern (MA only) swear (braking FCC broadcast rights) and the broadcaster doesn't properly block that, are you now breaking the law by enabling them to get that signal to more people (and one may happen to be a under age unsupervised minor)?
possibly, but without a precedent showing otherwise it is not currently a clear violation.
>Skype does use encryption:
r isk+iax+rsa+auth
>Where as something like Asterisk doesn't:
Asterisk does use/support encryption, just doesn handle the mentioned SIP version.
http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Aste
this is the IAX protocol, which is what asterisk uses between asterisk box's, and at least one VOIP provider uses (IAXtell, if they still exist.)
> you have no control over the recipient and the transport to them.
You don't have any of that controll in the VOIP phone, after all skype has adapters for a regular phone connector (the person on the other end can choose.) The most insecure phone call (in my experience) is one made using the typical wireless phone, after all (especially the 900mhz and under phones) anyone with a $20 scanner within a mile or so (with proper antenna) can hear that call. At least with email, even if you just send a encrypted zip file, you can then guarantee that it wasn't (easily) unencrypted without the password. Granted the phone encryption headseats of old, that the goverment used (uses?) at what I would guess costing a few thousand dollars could provide the same for the phone.
>from which to purchase individual songs(ITunes Music store, et al) there is no reason to still be pirating music,
Their is still no way to purchase a individual song, and play it directly on my mp3 player. (by mp3, I of course meen it plays mp3's not the DRM stuff sold)
I realize some allow you to burn a cd in windows, then rip that to a mp3... well it's still easier to just download the mp3, and it works (even if you do use windows.)
> Of course, the analogy falls apart as soon as I join a swarm and start uploading. (sigh)
why? sticking to the grandparents logic, if he has a legitiment non-infringing use for the download, then perhaps all the others downloaders do as well. If distributing for non-infringing use were illegal (with a occasional infringer), then every TV station/Rental store/Retail store would be guilty also (after all they have distribitued content for profit, that has ended up being used for infringment as well.)
The MPAA/RIAA response seams to be that the majority of downloaders of their copyrighted works are infrining.
why is their no short circuit protection on the front USB straite from the MB? mulitple motherboards I have used crash hard with a short to these, the K8VM800 I am using now, included. I guess this is another feature for the hacker, can have the PC reboot automatically when you plug in your bootable usb fob.
because of that I only want the powered front USB hub (which this system appears to have in addition) in the drive bay.
would be nice if they would allow a hardrive to share the same bay though.
> All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables
I wonder what they do for burn in?
My experience is the same as yours with monarch, neither the system, or the complete board (MB+CPU+DDR+fan) I got worked right at first, and took 3 returns of the system, for them to get it so it could even boot a linux install cd (apperently was bad memory.)
this might be industry standard for discounters for all I know though. They did get the system working again, but not worth the down time.
http://participatoryculture.org/bm/ is somehow able to do that with torrents.
also not exactly what you asked.
with azuerus, if it's multiple files, you simply set a priority on the first file, and those chunks will come first (in the view files in the torrent section.)
It would be much more useable if that was included in the torrent seed file (possible?).
mencoder dvd://1 -ffourcc xvid -ni -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=2000:vqmin=2:vqmax=31:vp ass=1:turbo -oac copy -o My_dvd.avi
>battery lasts longer loading from Hard drive than DVD, and my DVD's are safe at home.
I forgot the main reason for this may be that I now put a 2nd battery in the DVD slot, so maybe it isn't spinning the DVD killing the battery...
your post is valid, I am not debating that for the average person you are 100% correct.
However, I have a 42" plasma HDTV connected to the buffalo linktheater. I have been ripping all my DVD's to divx format and placing them on my hard disk (which is streamed to the linktheater, when it requests.)
when I rip to divx format, I do 2 pass encoding, to a VBR of 2kbps, this makes a 2 hour DVD about 2 Gig. for everything, put blue sky shots, it is impossible to tell on this TV the difference from the 2 gig divx file, and the original DVD (you can see a few artifects in the blending of almost solid colors like the sky when it covers the entire screen, I am told their is a mencoder option to fix this also.) My comparison is a upsambling DVD to 1080i vs the Divx rip upsampled the same, both through this same player.
exactly the same as mp3's this is so much more convient, than the DVD's. I have a 300 Gig USB hard disk ($120), so it easily holds about 150hours of DVD quality Videos. At home, I don't have to look through drawers of DVD's for something I feal like watching, and carefully handle them... I simply sit on the couch with a menu of all my movies, click and go (and no more waiting to see the FBI warning for the 150th time.) Also the Civial war movie I just watched was 2 sided dvd, no fliping, the linktheater with play all, just jumped to the second disk. Also I killed the DVD player on my work laptop, so when I went to Chile for work for a week, I just grabbed that USB hard disk, with all my movies, dropped a movie on my laptop for the flight down, different one for the flight back, have my entire collection to choose from while their, and the battery lasts longer loading from Hard drive than DVD, and my DVD's are safe at home.
I would imagine it is the same their as in the states.
a few cases of people who have slammed on their brakes, or throw it in reverse to cause a rear-end accident. They are liable, if you can prove that car in front performed a un-reasonable act. But it is usually to difficult to overcome the evidence at the scene, and the reasonable conclusion of causation such that the insurance company of the car behind pays up immediately.
> the FBI blocked from using it as a "wiretap"
appears the only reason it was blocked, was because onstar at that time couldn't interupt the monitoring to transmit a airbag deployed alert...
Seams like a minor software change, that GM would not have to announce, and this wouldn't be blocked anymore. (IE the FBI may not be blocked anymore.)
> won't most systems lock a user out before 75 attempts?
Cool, new workplace prank, lock down all the office computers, with failed password attempts.
(a manual DNS attack, so guess not a new concpet, but probably still patentable, until I hit submit that is) doh
> The guy that implemented the routine just didn't know about the mathematical boundaries of floating point numbers. It's just an example...
I completly agree with your post, but I do get frustrated sometimes by all the extra stuff the 4 year colleges typically include. IE, this important job stuff in my case was packed in the first year, and last year, now when I needed it, I had it available, because that was my greatest intrest. but many of my fellow graduates I worked with didn't recall these things, and I think that is because of the equal importance they placed on your GPA from the non important job stuff (that was much easier for most of us techi people.)
now that non Job stuff has come in really helpfull in improving life, from the economics that helps invest, and plan finance, to understanding politics.
also I would highly recomend the legal background classes, because that really doesn come into play in every aspect now (probably more in the future.)
I know it's flame bait, but it's so bright
>You want to double you salary - refuse to work on point-and click systems
your pay should be based on your ROI (Return on Investment) if it's not then your a piss poor negotiator.
You write a gui, so anyone can fix it, freeing yourself to make more stuff better. You only need to lock yourself in as the only one who knows how to do something, if you (don't know/cant figure out) how to do anything else.
>it is about having the wrong hands knowing how the software works, so they can duplicate it and have the same advantage as we do.
having the same advantage is the point of GNU license. give anyone in your company/anyone in the country/anyone in the world/ doing the same work the advantage of starting not from scratch, when it needs fixed.
A thread about what GNU does for us would be more "Insightful" What GNU licese does for most programers (me), is allow them(me) to be more productive, and thus worth more, and thus better paid. It also lowers entry costs for new/small companys, which increases competition, increases the number of products, and builds on it's self.
If I had to completly write every different application from scatch and buy a dozen licenses for everything I tried for my company, I wouldn't accomplish anything without a large team. since my company can't afford a large team for my job, they just wouldn't keep any programmers at this stage, and stay with the status quo, of what is working.
> > i wrote an internal forum for my school (mysql/php) and licensed it gpl.
>I hope you weren't being paid by the school at the time.
gotta love slashdot legal advice, all black and white. you got paid for it, so it can't be GPL'd.
when I word it that way, does it make your post sound stupid? it should.
> and the volume of the bucket will increase by exactly the same amount even though all of the steel is not submerged.
umm, you were good up to that point, the floating metal ship should displace more water, than that sunkin ship (not much though.) example, If you were to place a very dense piece of metal on top of that Ice, it may submerge the entire glacier, but if that very dense object then fell off that glacier, the glacier would rise, and a much smaller displacement would rest on the ocean floor.
(best example would be a rock under the water level in the glacier, when it falls out, the glacier would rise, no more water is displaced from the fallen piece because it was in the water already.)
I think it would be possible if their is alott of heavy stuff on the ice, that falls to the floor, for a net lowering effect.
> . So, the evidence is mounting to the point where even the Bush administration is having to acknowledge that global warming is a reality.
yes, but they can blame it on asteriods, so we need to build more weapons in space to attack them nasty aliens....