This came up in another thread a while back and someone said thatwhen it's all said and done, any sort of currency, whether it's strictly paper or backed by gold, is ultimately based upon the trust that it can be used tomorrow in exchange for goods and services.
There is nothing inherently special about gold...it's only valuable because people perceive it to be valuable. A long time ago some people agreed to use it as currency for goods and services. Same deal with paper money now.
"This is classic "protection". It will remind you that Bill Gates knows where you live and the names of your cats just in case you get funny ideas about infringing on copyrights or alternte software."
We just adopted a new kitten. I'd like to see Bill Gates try and kill my kitten! Oh wait...ewwwwww...never mind.
I once put a copy of Unix in a Nutshell on a small table used for reading materials in the men's room at work. Maybe somebody was mistakenly offended and *that's* why it got thrown out!
Bandwidth: You can only suck so much down on a broadband connection at a time. One guy downloading MP3's all day is using more bandwidth than two people in a household with simple needs who want to network their two computers.
Customer Support: If the service contract says one IP, one system, they're not going to help you solve problems with your network. Comcast refuses to troubleshoot anything for me until I plug my system directly into the cable modem, for example.
Security: The user bears this cost, not the ISP.
Repairs: If you pay for "consumer level" service, they're only going to give you "consumer level" service, regardless of how many people use the connection.
Actually, I will be getting the camera; it was part of the package I bought. The guy who sold me his TT has yet to receive it from the fullfillment center, but will send it over when it arrives....or face the full wrath of hell!
God fsckn' damnit!!! I just did a 5-second snipe on a Tungsten T last night on eBay and I see this in the morning!
Overall, I think I still would have bought the TT over the TC. I bought my Palm mostly for portable editing of Word & Excel files (Palms do this better than PocketPC apparently).
In connection with the foregoing, I intend to buy the full-sized Ultra Thin keyboard. I've seen a lot of nice Clie's with built-in keyboards already, and I think for any real work a bigger keyboard will be better, supplemented by grafitti for quick note jotting.
The Wi-Fi built-into the TC would not be of much use to me. In fact, I have no use for the Bluetooth built-into the TT. If I ever need to use Wi-Fi, there's always SDIO add-in cards.
My Series 2 TiVo has never touched a phone line. It did its initial call using the Linksys USB adapter I bought for it.
Re:Legal issues around feral robots
on
Feral Robot Dogs
·
· Score: 1
Let's see...you bought a robot. You now own it. You let it wander about...the fact that you may or may not have reprogrammed it is irrelevant because you're still responsible for it. You would be completely responsible for any damage it causes.
How is that any different than putting a crowbar in my John Deere's steering wheel and letting it loose on my neighbor's lawn? Or putting a brick on the gas pedal of my car and letting it roam around the neighborhood?
Don't let the gee-whiz-brave-new-world-buzz of this thing detach you too far from reality and personal responsibility.
I have a TiVo Series 2 and love it. I think out of all the open source solutions, MythTV has a good chance of being a good alternative to TiVo. All it needs is a drop-in ISO image and a known-good set of supported capture cards, sound cards and remotes to gain some real momentum.
However, I think anybody who thinks they'll be able to get a complete TiVo alternative without paying anyone is having a pipe dream. In the end, the real value is not in the software or the hardware or the GUI, it's in the value of getting a consistent and reliable program guide that gives you fine-grained information like actors, episode names, directors, producers, genres, etc. BTW, nobody is going to provide such a valuable service for free.
""For example, if Mystro TV is successfully developed and the appropriate rights secured from owners of video programming, a subscriber could use the Mystro TV service to watch a program that aired the previous day, or to begin watching from the beginning a show already in progress," AOL said."
AOL's ability to secure the redistribution rights from the copyright holders is a *big* if for two reasons:
1. The cost to redistribute might make MystroTV cost prohibitive. 2. The copyright holders could simply refuse their consent in their sole discretion. Think Disney, Viacom, et al being dicks about it...
With TiVo, the programming is recorded from the medium the copyright holder has already chosen, ie the TV channel. Mystro is trying to be a middle man. The copyright holders cannot refuse their consent for the program to be recorded in the same way they can't prevent you from recording to plain old analog tape.
True, you *might* miss certain shows if your TiVo isn't set to record it. However, with TiVo's Season Pass, Thumbs Up/Down, independent recording and especially the Wishlists, a TiVo user can almost take a "set it and forget it" attitude to recording shows they like.
With Mystro TV, there is no guarantee that AOL/TW will be so gracious as to record any of the obscure programming that gets my attention. In other words, while Mystro TV is making sure to have archives of Friends and whatever generic family sitcom ABC is putting out nowadays, my TiVo will be keeping an eye out for interesting foreign films and documentaries that I'd otherwise miss or never hear about.
I've got Comcast. The Comcast on-demand service is dead-slow, unresponsive and crashes now and then. Aside from the first 4 eps of Neon Genesis Evangelion on its system, there is no compelling reason to even bother with it.
It's going to take a while; because of the massive investment in "infrastructure" set up for TiVo with regard to its database of programming information, from which the guide gets its data and from which season passes, wish lists, thumbs up/down and autonomous recordings flow.
The roll-your-own crowd seems to think a free replacement for TiVo is as simple as putting together some inexpensive hardware and throwing one's luck to the wind in hopes that guide data can be pulled from the net. However, after using one for a few months now, I can say that the value added by the TiVo service is not something that can be inexpensively provided by goodwill alone.
1. Senior citizens vote down any new school spending proposals and parents of school children do nothing.
2. Public education is handled on the local level, instead of the county level, creating a $$$$hitload of expensive redundancy that wouldn't be there if people would just get over their fear/bigotry towards people of different socioeconomic groups. This keeps property taxes super high, resulting in item #1.
Aside from a 2 second mention of "how good Peter is at science," with no followup or demonstration of how, I don't think they played up his intellect at all.
Agreed. Furthermore, I think now is the time for Freenet to gain a reputation as an "online repository useful for the distribution out of print books and/or books in the public domain" before it gains a stigma for "anonymous sharing of pirated software and child porn."
There are certain rights that cannot be signed away, even if you sign a contract...IANAL, but feel free to sign up and dispute it if you have a problem.
They would have to be retrained no matter what. You cannot go from Windows 95 to any NT-based Windows without a learning curve. Might as well save money in that regard.
Up-front costs for interoperability will likely pay for themselves in the long run because the infrastructure will open itself up to a cross-platform environment, allowing for best-of-breed solutions regardless of the platform.
I'd say it exceeded its expectations. The floppy disk was originally invented by IBM as a way to insert code updates into mainframes (think flash rom but bigger). Computer scientists/engineers found it could make a handy portable storage media and the 3.5" disk that we use today is just an evolved, smaller version.
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This came up in another thread a while back and someone said thatwhen it's all said and done, any sort of currency, whether it's strictly paper or backed by gold, is ultimately based upon the trust that it can be used tomorrow in exchange for goods and services.
There is nothing inherently special about gold...it's only valuable because people perceive it to be valuable. A long time ago some people agreed to use it as currency for goods and services. Same deal with paper money now.
"This is classic "protection". It will remind you that Bill Gates knows where you live and the names of your cats just in case you get funny ideas about infringing on copyrights or alternte software."
We just adopted a new kitten. I'd like to see Bill Gates try and kill my kitten! Oh wait...ewwwwww...never mind.
"Well, the popup runs code on my computer."
No, your web browser runs the code to generate the pop-up.
I once put a copy of Unix in a Nutshell on a small table used for reading materials in the men's room at work. Maybe somebody was mistakenly offended and *that's* why it got thrown out!
The funny thing is, when I see the zeros in a round-number price, I perceive it to be cheaper...ie $400 versus $399.99.
When I think of numbers verbally, I have the same perception. Round numbers "feel" smaller:
Four hundred dollars[STOP]
vs.
Three hundred ninety nine dollars and ninety nine cents[STOP]
Or, the real father is an Italian guy.
:)
Sorry, it had to be said
There are no additional costs.
Bandwidth: You can only suck so much down on a broadband connection at a time. One guy downloading MP3's all day is using more bandwidth than two people in a household with simple needs who want to network their two computers.
Customer Support: If the service contract says one IP, one system, they're not going to help you solve problems with your network. Comcast refuses to troubleshoot anything for me until I plug my system directly into the cable modem, for example.
Security: The user bears this cost, not the ISP.
Repairs: If you pay for "consumer level" service, they're only going to give you "consumer level" service, regardless of how many people use the connection.
Actually, I will be getting the camera; it was part of the package I bought. The guy who sold me his TT has yet to receive it from the fullfillment center, but will send it over when it arrives....or face the full wrath of hell!
They already do. Go to the store on Palm's website and you'll see all sorts of books, manuals and guides on SD cards.
God fsckn' damnit!!! I just did a 5-second snipe on a Tungsten T last night on eBay and I see this in the morning!
Overall, I think I still would have bought the TT over the TC. I bought my Palm mostly for portable editing of Word & Excel files (Palms do this better than PocketPC apparently).
In connection with the foregoing, I intend to buy the full-sized Ultra Thin keyboard. I've seen a lot of nice Clie's with built-in keyboards already, and I think for any real work a bigger keyboard will be better, supplemented by grafitti for quick note jotting.
The Wi-Fi built-into the TC would not be of much use to me. In fact, I have no use for the Bluetooth built-into the TT. If I ever need to use Wi-Fi, there's always SDIO add-in cards.
My Series 2 TiVo has never touched a phone line. It did its initial call using the Linksys USB adapter I bought for it.
Let's see...you bought a robot. You now own it. You let it wander about...the fact that you may or may not have reprogrammed it is irrelevant because you're still responsible for it. You would be completely responsible for any damage it causes.
How is that any different than putting a crowbar in my John Deere's steering wheel and letting it loose on my neighbor's lawn? Or putting a brick on the gas pedal of my car and letting it roam around the neighborhood?
Don't let the gee-whiz-brave-new-world-buzz of this thing detach you too far from reality and personal responsibility.
I have a TiVo Series 2 and love it. I think out of all the open source solutions, MythTV has a good chance of being a good alternative to TiVo. All it needs is a drop-in ISO image and a known-good set of supported capture cards, sound cards and remotes to gain some real momentum.
However, I think anybody who thinks they'll be able to get a complete TiVo alternative without paying anyone is having a pipe dream. In the end, the real value is not in the software or the hardware or the GUI, it's in the value of getting a consistent and reliable program guide that gives you fine-grained information like actors, episode names, directors, producers, genres, etc. BTW, nobody is going to provide such a valuable service for free.
""For example, if Mystro TV is successfully developed and the appropriate rights secured from owners of video programming, a subscriber could use the Mystro TV service to watch a program that aired the previous day, or to begin watching from the beginning a show already in progress," AOL said."
AOL's ability to secure the redistribution rights from the copyright holders is a *big* if for two reasons:
1. The cost to redistribute might make MystroTV cost prohibitive.
2. The copyright holders could simply refuse their consent in their sole discretion. Think Disney, Viacom, et al being dicks about it...
With TiVo, the programming is recorded from the medium the copyright holder has already chosen, ie the TV channel. Mystro is trying to be a middle man. The copyright holders cannot refuse their consent for the program to be recorded in the same way they can't prevent you from recording to plain old analog tape.
True, you *might* miss certain shows if your TiVo isn't set to record it. However, with TiVo's Season Pass, Thumbs Up/Down, independent recording and especially the Wishlists, a TiVo user can almost take a "set it and forget it" attitude to recording shows they like.
With Mystro TV, there is no guarantee that AOL/TW will be so gracious as to record any of the obscure programming that gets my attention. In other words, while Mystro TV is making sure to have archives of Friends and whatever generic family sitcom ABC is putting out nowadays, my TiVo will be keeping an eye out for interesting foreign films and documentaries that I'd otherwise miss or never hear about.
I've got Comcast. The Comcast on-demand service is dead-slow, unresponsive and crashes now and then. Aside from the first 4 eps of Neon Genesis Evangelion on its system, there is no compelling reason to even bother with it.
It's going to take a while; because of the massive investment in "infrastructure" set up for TiVo with regard to its database of programming information, from which the guide gets its data and from which season passes, wish lists, thumbs up/down and autonomous recordings flow.
The roll-your-own crowd seems to think a free replacement for TiVo is as simple as putting together some inexpensive hardware and throwing one's luck to the wind in hopes that guide data can be pulled from the net. However, after using one for a few months now, I can say that the value added by the TiVo service is not something that can be inexpensively provided by goodwill alone.
This is what happens when:
1. Senior citizens vote down any new school spending proposals and parents of school children do nothing.
2. Public education is handled on the local level, instead of the county level, creating a $$$$hitload of expensive redundancy that wouldn't be there if people would just get over their fear/bigotry towards people of different socioeconomic groups. This keeps property taxes super high, resulting in item #1.
Aside from a 2 second mention of "how good Peter is at science," with no followup or demonstration of how, I don't think they played up his intellect at all.
*cough*organicwebshootersnotincomic*cough*
...about how you'd like to make your own salty chocolate balls [HERE].
Agreed. Furthermore, I think now is the time for Freenet to gain a reputation as an "online repository useful for the distribution out of print books and/or books in the public domain" before it gains a stigma for "anonymous sharing of pirated software and child porn."
I was a big, big fan of Beast Wars, but I hated Starship Troopers. However, Starship Troopers was clearly far more photorealistic than Beast Wars.
The conclusion?
GIVE ME A GOOD STORY FIRST AND FANCY GRAPHICS SECOND
There are certain rights that cannot be signed away, even if you sign a contract...IANAL, but feel free to sign up and dispute it if you have a problem.
They would have to be retrained no matter what. You cannot go from Windows 95 to any NT-based Windows without a learning curve. Might as well save money in that regard.
Up-front costs for interoperability will likely pay for themselves in the long run because the infrastructure will open itself up to a cross-platform environment, allowing for best-of-breed solutions regardless of the platform.
I'd say it exceeded its expectations. The floppy disk was originally invented by IBM as a way to insert code updates into mainframes (think flash rom but bigger). Computer scientists/engineers found it could make a handy portable storage media and the 3.5" disk that we use today is just an evolved, smaller version.