If PCMCIA is important there's also the HP Jornada 720 to consider. Aside from the PC card you've got a built-in modem, compact flash slot, and an actual keyboard (a must for me, my handwriting can't be recognized by people let along machines), color display, etc. Pricey, though.
But the ability to run VNC and surf the net over my wireless 802.11b makes it all worth while.
Re:Let's just drag Roddenberry's name thru the mud
on
Andromeda
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· Score: 1
I'd rather watch Babylon 5 re-runs. I'm gonna go back to DS 9, too.
Other than my concept of "King of UPC", which I couldn't muster interest in, I don't think anybody came up with anything useful at all.
I was under the impression that people were using it to inventory their books and CDs...? I never did myself, but the idea is appealing. Perhaps that's how DC can rise from the ashes: Inventory Cat!
Is "King of the UPC" anything like Barcode Battler?
The real threat is that companies like AOL Time Warner and media outlets like MSN are already marginalizing, then eliminating lesser competitors by offering vast amounts of content and service to middle-class consumers at relatively low cost.
Yeah, nobody saw that coming.
In the 1910s there were over 100 automobile companies in the United States. Now there are two.
The concept of a new industry spawning off lots of little fish, and then ending up with just a few big fish isn't exactly a revalation. Even in the computer industry, both hardware (how many different platforms were there in the early 80's?) and software (Ashton-Tate. Remember them? How about Digital Research. Foxpro. Lotus... the list goes on).
I'm waiting for the end of the "end of the net [whatever]" articles.
Disclaimer: I own a Replay box, which is a competing version of PVR. I don't know enough about the differences between the units to know if all the same features are on Tivo.
Essentially it's a box that watches TV so you don't have to. You tell it what programs you like, it consults the TV listings it downloads every night and records those shows to the hard drive. Yes, you can set a VCR up to do most of this, but the biggest advantage is convenience:
You don't have to put a tape in, or remember to take a prerecorded tape out, or worry about whether you've got enough room on the tape.
It automagically erases old episodes for you (you can specify how many to cache, so you could keep, say, the last three episodes).
It can find a show & record it reguardless of what channel or time it's on. You can say "Record every single 'This Old House'" and it'll do that.
What it does that a VCR can't: automatically spools the live feed. By that I mean you can be watching a ball game live, the phone rings, you hit Pause on the remote, and the game freezes, but is recorded on the hard drive. Phonecall over, you hit Play and it picks up right where it left off. Even if you don't pause the play you've got "instant replay" on live feeds, so you can take another look at that last pitch, a dozen times if you'd like.
But the BEST feature (and the one that's got to drive advertisers crazy): you skip commercials. On a show that's pre-recorded or one that's been spooled, you can zip n number of 30 second increments forward. "We'll be right back after"... 3, Quickskip, zingo we're right back to the good stuff.
The Replay has really changed the way I watch TV. I think in 5 years these things will be ubitquitous, as common as VCRs are today. Hopefully we'll soon see versions with built-in DVD-R burners for archiving shows.
Plant uses photosynthesis to convert H20 and CO2 into sugar. We use yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. (Or other biological fuels such as methane.) Then we burn the alcohol. CO2 is released, but it is never more than the plants first took out of the air with photosynthesis.
As a homebrewer I know that the yeast produce CO2 as well as alcohol as part of the fermentation process. Does your equation take that into account?
My hand seems to hurt more when I use the mouse alot, but typing doesn't seem to be a problem.
Have you tried something like a touchpad? Unlike mice you don't have to pick'em up and put'em down all the time, so less of a workout for your wrist. Just zip your finger along the surface.
I use the Cirque Glidepoint, and I like it much better than a mouse.
If I move into an apartment, the previous renter having watched an ungodly amount of pr0n, and the cable company forgets to flush their viewing habit records, am I going to get flooded with commercials for aphrodisiacs and french ticklers?
Based on the replies so far, this is vastly perferable to the average Slashdotter than the UNGODLY HORROR OF TAMPON COMMERCIALS!
I'm not going to buy any of the crap they're trying to sell.
Perhaps you really meant "I'm not going to change my buying habits based on a commercial", because unless you live in a cave I find it difficult to believe that you've never bought anything that you've seen a commercial for. I bet your electric company does commercials, are you off the grid in protest?:)
So, as long as they include a way to turn off all ads, I'll be happy.
The ads pay for the content. Turn off the ads, turn off the content, and everything becomes pay-per-view. Be careful what you wish for.
"Well yeah, boss, there is a business reason for my needing that 61 inch monitor. It will help me insure that no nasty Outlook viruses would, say, for example, dump all those e-mails to 'HoneyBuns' from your outbox into your wife's inbox. No, don't bother deleting them now, they've all been archived. I can expect delivery tomorrow? Wonderful!"
I assumed that the "obvious" way of getting the data would be through a small square in the corner of the picture. Modulate the square's luminance, and you have data transfer.
It's been done, IIRC. Please don't ask for details, I barely remember reading about this ages ago. Some UK computer (Acorn?) had a thingie you could hook to it and point to the TV screen, during some computer program on the BBC a square would flicker away downloading to your deck. I though that was a pretty keen idea. I did a cursory Google but didn't turn up anything.
Whatever their audio decoder costs, I'm sure that a simple photocell would be cheaper.
I think you'd want a phototransistor instead, photocells are slow in their reaction times, relatively speaking.
Banner ads aside - that's an interesting idea: the electronic school book. Never goes out of date. Plug it into the desk socket and zonk - history as of ten minutes ago.
Or a set of electronic encyclopedias. Er, for when you can't get to the net.
One thing that wasn't noted in the article - how sturdy is it? You fold/bend/crinkle paper and it still can be read. How well will this hold up when it ends up in the hands of the lowest common denominators?
The article did mention the trick that makes this work: suspend a tiny white bead in what amounts to black "ink", electrodes all through the paper will create a charge that will either make the bead come to the surface (white pixel) or push it down into the soup (black pixel). Lots of beads means lots of resolution.
I imagine that crumpling the paper would not only destroy the electrodes but give your hands an annoying ink stain.
My question - how well does the bead stick in it's programmed posistion? If I shake this like an Etch-a-Sketch, does the image fade?
Yes, I read the article. Notice that the author still indicates that the company intended to reduce functionality of those devices that are not partaking of the subscription services.
Read it again. They're removing the functionality going forward. They did not intend to remove it for people who'd already had it. The people who won't get the quick-record capability will never miss it, because they never had it to begin with, and were never promised it.
It sounds to me that Tivo is trying hard to keep it's promises, it stumbled slightly, and the/. knee is, as always, in hyper-speed auto-jerk mode.
We should all agree to some sort of 72 hour moratorium before declaring every error a conspiracy.
These people think they still own the boxes, even after you've plunked over your money and taken the box home.
Perhaps they think they're doing the best job they can to deliver value to their customers. Does there have to be a conspiracy behind every tree? Do you look under your bed for Bill Gates before you go to sleep at night?
Tivo put out an upgrade of their software that was intended to add functionality to the box, and in all but a small handful of cases, did.
It should be no more than a week to get a version of 1.3 into the hands of everyone who wants it.
And how does Tivo know whether or not you "want" it? It's not like you can put a Post-it note on your box saying "Please downgrade me ASAP!" Any change in software will get rippled to every Tivo - so they're not about to rush a slap-dash "fix" into production, and that's the right thing to do.
At the risk of changing your sense of perspective, their 2.0 upgrade adversely affected what, a few dozen people? Maybe a few hundred? It's a drop in the bucket. By rushing a "fix" to appease 0.2% of their customer base they risk hosing up everyone. Better they should take their time and do it right.
I think you'd be well advised to hold of a bit. As others have mentioned this could be a case of "easy come, easy go" - TiVo can (and I imagine will) send your box an "upgrade" that'll stomp the guts out of the hack.
If you're going to buy a Tivo, buy it because it's default operation is of sufficient value, not because of back doors that might get locked. That way you won't get burnt.
Still, if you expect to use your Tivo for more than two years, this is still a bargain.
Doesn't look that way to me. I jumped over to Yahoo and did some quick price comparisons, a 30-hour Tivo can be had for about $300, a 30-hour Panasonic Replay goes for about $430. The Replay comes out of the box with the lifetime sub, no additional fees to pay. So in essense the Replay subscription is half the price of Tivo's.
The major difference, of course, is that Tivo gives you a choice as to how you want to pay (lifetime vs monthly), Replay doesn't.
If you're going to get the lifetime sub you'll save money buying a Replay.
why would you need to display up to 16 DVDs on one screen?
It's a demo. Make the product look good by having it do something outrageous. Think of a sports-car commercial, they show the car going very fast through tight curves and slaloms and what not. They're not suggesting you buy their car to do the same thing (in fact they usually have disclaimers at the bottom: "Closed track, professional driver" etc), but they're making the car look good by driving it outrageously.
Slashdot Mirror
If PCMCIA is important there's also the HP Jornada 720 to consider. Aside from the PC card you've got a built-in modem, compact flash slot, and an actual keyboard (a must for me, my handwriting can't be recognized by people let along machines), color display, etc. Pricey, though.
But the ability to run VNC and surf the net over my wireless 802.11b makes it all worth while.
I'd rather watch Babylon 5 re-runs. I'm gonna go back to DS 9, too.
Isn't that redundant?
I would have loved to see XBOX hold rock solid against MS,
Hand[0]: Big fat juicy check with B. Gates' signature at the bottom.
Hand[1]: Smug satisfaction of burning M-Soft's corporate ass.
Err, I'll take what's on the check, Monty!
and watch the antics as the MS engine rapidly tried to pull another name from it's magical hat,
Like "HexBox" or "EcksBox" or X-Boss or S-Boxx or...
But even I would be daunted by having probably millions pushed in my face just to change the company name.
Daunted? Are you sure you didn't mean "sport major wood and drool like a baby sucking a lemon"?
I know I would.
Other than my concept of "King of UPC", which I couldn't muster interest in, I don't think anybody came up with anything useful at all.
I was under the impression that people were using it to inventory their books and CDs...? I never did myself, but the idea is appealing. Perhaps that's how DC can rise from the ashes: Inventory Cat!
Is "King of the UPC" anything like Barcode Battler?
The real threat is that companies like AOL Time Warner and media outlets like MSN are already marginalizing, then eliminating lesser competitors by offering vast amounts of content and service to middle-class consumers at relatively low cost.
Yeah, nobody saw that coming.
In the 1910s there were over 100 automobile companies in the United States. Now there are two.
The concept of a new industry spawning off lots of little fish, and then ending up with just a few big fish isn't exactly a revalation. Even in the computer industry, both hardware (how many different platforms were there in the early 80's?) and software (Ashton-Tate. Remember them? How about Digital Research. Foxpro. Lotus... the list goes on).
I'm waiting for the end of the "end of the net [whatever]" articles.
Disclaimer: I own a Replay box, which is a competing version of PVR. I don't know enough about the differences between the units to know if all the same features are on Tivo.
Essentially it's a box that watches TV so you don't have to. You tell it what programs you like, it consults the TV listings it downloads every night and records those shows to the hard drive. Yes, you can set a VCR up to do most of this, but the biggest advantage is convenience:
You don't have to put a tape in, or remember to take a prerecorded tape out, or worry about whether you've got enough room on the tape.
It automagically erases old episodes for you (you can specify how many to cache, so you could keep, say, the last three episodes).
It can find a show & record it reguardless of what channel or time it's on. You can say "Record every single 'This Old House'" and it'll do that.
What it does that a VCR can't: automatically spools the live feed. By that I mean you can be watching a ball game live, the phone rings, you hit Pause on the remote, and the game freezes, but is recorded on the hard drive. Phonecall over, you hit Play and it picks up right where it left off. Even if you don't pause the play you've got "instant replay" on live feeds, so you can take another look at that last pitch, a dozen times if you'd like.
But the BEST feature (and the one that's got to drive advertisers crazy): you skip commercials. On a show that's pre-recorded or one that's been spooled, you can zip n number of 30 second increments forward. "We'll be right back after"... 3, Quickskip, zingo we're right back to the good stuff.
The Replay has really changed the way I watch TV. I think in 5 years these things will be ubitquitous, as common as VCRs are today. Hopefully we'll soon see versions with built-in DVD-R burners for archiving shows.
Hope that answers you question...
Plant uses photosynthesis to convert H20 and CO2 into sugar. We use yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. (Or other biological fuels such as methane.) Then we burn the alcohol. CO2 is released, but it is never more than the plants first took out of the air with photosynthesis.
As a homebrewer I know that the yeast produce CO2 as well as alcohol as part of the fermentation process. Does your equation take that into account?
My hand seems to hurt more when I use the mouse alot, but typing doesn't seem to be a problem.
Have you tried something like a touchpad? Unlike mice you don't have to pick'em up and put'em down all the time, so less of a workout for your wrist. Just zip your finger along the surface.
I use the Cirque Glidepoint, and I like it much better than a mouse.
If I move into an apartment, the previous renter having watched an ungodly amount of pr0n, and the cable company forgets to flush their viewing habit records, am I going to get flooded with commercials for aphrodisiacs and french ticklers?
Based on the replies so far, this is vastly perferable to the average Slashdotter than the UNGODLY HORROR OF TAMPON COMMERCIALS!
what in GOD'S NAME is that blue stuff?
Err, a euphemism? I suppose that using red stuff would be closer to the point, but which would you rather see while you're eating?
I'm not going to buy any of the crap they're trying to sell.
:)
Perhaps you really meant "I'm not going to change my buying habits based on a commercial", because unless you live in a cave I find it difficult to believe that you've never bought anything that you've seen a commercial for. I bet your electric company does commercials, are you off the grid in protest?
So, as long as they include a way to turn off all ads, I'll be happy.
The ads pay for the content. Turn off the ads, turn off the content, and everything becomes pay-per-view. Be careful what you wish for.
...BOFH are rubbing their hands in glee!
"Well yeah, boss, there is a business reason for my needing that 61 inch monitor. It will help me insure that no nasty Outlook viruses would, say, for example, dump all those e-mails to 'HoneyBuns' from your outbox into your wife's inbox. No, don't bother deleting them now, they've all been archived. I can expect delivery tomorrow? Wonderful!"
Waterproof one of these bad boys, put it at one end of your back yard, install some speakers on poles and bingo! Mini-Drive-In!
I assumed that the "obvious" way of getting the data would be through a small square in the corner of the picture. Modulate the square's luminance, and you have data transfer.
It's been done, IIRC. Please don't ask for details, I barely remember reading about this ages ago. Some UK computer (Acorn?) had a thingie you could hook to it and point to the TV screen, during some computer program on the BBC a square would flicker away downloading to your deck. I though that was a pretty keen idea. I did a cursory Google but didn't turn up anything.
Whatever their audio decoder costs, I'm sure that a simple photocell would be cheaper.
I think you'd want a phototransistor instead, photocells are slow in their reaction times, relatively speaking.
Banner ads aside - that's an interesting idea: the electronic school book. Never goes out of date. Plug it into the desk socket and zonk - history as of ten minutes ago.
Or a set of electronic encyclopedias. Er, for when you can't get to the net.
One thing that wasn't noted in the article - how sturdy is it? You fold/bend/crinkle paper and it still can be read. How well will this hold up when it ends up in the hands of the lowest common denominators?
The article did mention the trick that makes this work: suspend a tiny white bead in what amounts to black "ink", electrodes all through the paper will create a charge that will either make the bead come to the surface (white pixel) or push it down into the soup (black pixel). Lots of beads means lots of resolution.
I imagine that crumpling the paper would not only destroy the electrodes but give your hands an annoying ink stain.
My question - how well does the bead stick in it's programmed posistion? If I shake this like an Etch-a-Sketch, does the image fade?
Yes, I read the article. Notice that the author still indicates that the company intended to reduce functionality of those devices that are not partaking of the subscription services.
/. knee is, as always, in hyper-speed auto-jerk mode.
Read it again. They're removing the functionality going forward. They did not intend to remove it for people who'd already had it. The people who won't get the quick-record capability will never miss it, because they never had it to begin with, and were never promised it.
It sounds to me that Tivo is trying hard to keep it's promises, it stumbled slightly, and the
We should all agree to some sort of 72 hour moratorium before declaring every error a conspiracy.
No, nevermind, that wouldn't be any fun at all.
These people think they still own the boxes, even after you've plunked over your money and taken the box home.
Perhaps they think they're doing the best job they can to deliver value to their customers. Does there have to be a conspiracy behind every tree? Do you look under your bed for Bill Gates before you go to sleep at night?
Tivo put out an upgrade of their software that was intended to add functionality to the box, and in all but a small handful of cases, did.
It should be no more than a week to get a version of 1.3 into the hands of everyone who wants it.
And how does Tivo know whether or not you "want" it? It's not like you can put a Post-it note on your box saying "Please downgrade me ASAP!" Any change in software will get rippled to every Tivo - so they're not about to rush a slap-dash "fix" into production, and that's the right thing to do.
At the risk of changing your sense of perspective, their 2.0 upgrade adversely affected what, a few dozen people? Maybe a few hundred? It's a drop in the bucket. By rushing a "fix" to appease 0.2% of their customer base they risk hosing up everyone. Better they should take their time and do it right.
Thank goodness we didn't jump to conclusions assuming this was Yet Another Evil Corporate Move - imagine how silly we'd feel!
time ot buy a TiVo...
I think you'd be well advised to hold of a bit. As others have mentioned this could be a case of "easy come, easy go" - TiVo can (and I imagine will) send your box an "upgrade" that'll stomp the guts out of the hack.
If you're going to buy a Tivo, buy it because it's default operation is of sufficient value, not because of back doors that might get locked. That way you won't get burnt.
This comparison, of course, assumes that Replay will be staying in business and not changing their service for the next year or two.
It makes exactly the same assumption about Tivo. Except that Tivo has already changed their service.
Still, if you expect to use your Tivo for more than two years, this is still a bargain.
Doesn't look that way to me. I jumped over to Yahoo and did some quick price comparisons, a 30-hour Tivo can be had for about $300, a 30-hour Panasonic Replay goes for about $430. The Replay comes out of the box with the lifetime sub, no additional fees to pay. So in essense the Replay subscription is half the price of Tivo's.
The major difference, of course, is that Tivo gives you a choice as to how you want to pay (lifetime vs monthly), Replay doesn't.
If you're going to get the lifetime sub you'll save money buying a Replay.
I can't tell from the article if the labels that are signing on will be supplying the content on "pay" servers.
Does anyone have a link that explains the plan in a little more detail?
If the idea is to sell music a track at a time over the internet, then I'm all for it. Free market and all that.
why would you need to display up to 16 DVDs on one screen?
It's a demo. Make the product look good by having it do something outrageous. Think of a sports-car commercial, they show the car going very fast through tight curves and slaloms and what not. They're not suggesting you buy their car to do the same thing (in fact they usually have disclaimers at the bottom: "Closed track, professional driver" etc), but they're making the car look good by driving it outrageously.