Are any of the Dish DVR's with 2 outputs "smart" enough to know that one of the outputs is another recording device like a VCR for "copying" something from the DVR to media?
Can any of them control an off-board VCR for "tape dumping" like this?
It's highly unlikely that the plane "saturated" your receiver.
The two transmitters on board the aircraft in use during a departure climbout (ARINC and Airphone use would be prohibited or unlikely at that time) would be a low VHF AM 5W transmitter (slightly higher power on air-carrier class aircraft) and a radar transponder.
Both are far enough away in frequency from your SLD (silly little dish) receiver center frequency, that even if your Dish could "hear them" they'd be -80dBm to -120dBm weaker than the satellite if the aircraft were sitting in your front yard.
Then you add that RF power drops off as a function of distance-squared, and that the aircraft is at a MINIMUM 1000' straight up (and since you can see him, he's probably more like 4000' slant-range or much much more away) there's virtually no way.
Stick to the "probably blocking the signal" theory and you'll do fine... you're probably seeing both a direct blockage by the aircraft (remember there's a time delay in the buffers and the MPEG decoder, slight, but there...) and possibly some odd multipath effects as the aircraft's body moves through the "beam".
Unless you're one of the people in the photos in the article though, I wasn't talkin' about YOU.
Again... unless you're over the ERP limits. Then you're no better than ChickenBob the CB-radio boy with his "c'mon y'all and git it" "blower" under his front seat. Illegal is illegal.
(And the legality is the #1 point I wanted to make, while yes... being trite, because it fits so well into/. culture!)
Mod me Flamebait baby...
(Nice work if you REALLY do that quality of stuff... but make sure it's legal. We have enough idiots out there doing illegal stuff with Part 15 devices and broken Part 15 devices creating enough SPEW on the bands to keep interference hunters busy for a lifetime at this point... I'm just sick of hearing spewed crap from my neighbor's consumer-grade devices all up and down the bands -- and knowing there is very little realistic way I can convince them they're illgal when they operate out of their bands and get them to turn them off... because they think spectrum is a free-for-all and "wireless" is cool. Such is life, but that doesn't mean I don't have a "operate legally or die" mentality. Illegal 802.11b operators fall into the same scumbucket as Internet spammers in my book. And up until recently the spammers weren't even breaking the law, while the illegally operated 802.11b idiots WERE -- but I'm sure the illegal 802.11b operators would say they're "better" moral people than spammers.)
Kinda get where I'm coming from now?
802.11b -- LEARN THE RULES AND ABIDE BY THEM, is what I say to all those who post silly articles about rediculous distance contests which must certainly be breaking the laws of physics if they're not breaking the laws of the land.
So you are just trolling for a better price hoping he'll do your homework of finding one?
Or is there some great ethics lesson the poor guy should learn from your greatness of always posting with hard numbers to back up statements on Slashdot? (Now THERE'S a laugh.)
Why do you care if he posts real discounts or not... we ALL know (from experience) that MOST products in the U.S. eventually get sold at a discount off of MSRP (rarely do I ever pay MSRP for ANYTHING), and we all know that Apple doesn't allow that.
Why was this guys post targeted for some kind of ethics lesson? It's as bad as the hoardes that jump on someone who misspells one word in fifty posts... who cares?
I will agree with him. The other players WILL BE SOLD AT A DISCOUNT eventually, if they're not today.
There I did it... admonish me for not doing your shopping for you.
(I've already admitted here that I don't want one of these devices -- the $35 CD-R-based MP3 players look awfully sweet for just over 1/10th the price INCLUDING accessories. So I'm not going shopping for ya. Sorry man.)
You've just described Microsoft's plan for you as an end-user of their products.
Yes... people do seriously get by just fine without Windows. Haven't needed to boot the Windows machine here for months (there are 12 machines running here in the house, and easily ten times that number at the office - just in servers).
Download Mandrake or some other Linux distro that's actually TRYING to be a dekstop OS and not that shitty RedHat... (one of my EE friends likes Xandros, for example) and you're almost guaranteed to have a better experience. RedHat is not dedicated in any way to the desktop market any more. (Perhaps because they suck at it.)
Oh yeah, the "hype" around Linux isn't about what it does TODAY, it's about where it can go -- Free Software means you have the full source and can change it to do whatever scratches your itch. Good luck on asking Microsoft to provide same.
Homework project: Go read "The Cathedral and the Baazar." Now. Before you forget. I bet your Windows machine can find Google okay... (Oh yeah, they don't run Windows either.)
You personally can still be sued in cases of "gross negligence".
In other words, if you screw up and send someone else's business or life spiraling into the ground without warning from the software you wrote them, they can still sue you on the case that you've been not only "negligent" but "grossly negligent".
But nice try. Incorporation does not give one a shield from still being responsible for one's own actions.
He said "some" other MP3 player. You took the Rio and assumed it was the only other player out there and used that as an example of how he didn't give an example? Strange logic there.
He's 100% correct. Apple does not allow distributors to sell at a discount. Their business model is "one price fits all". When Apple products go "on sale" they go on sale everywhere at the same time.
Unless a distributor is "throwing in" a non-Apple product, you won't find Apple products any cheaper anywhere other than from Apple themselves.
I'm a non-professional musician (just for fun) and I delve deeply into all the music I purchase. I listen to tracks over and over listening for subtle techniques used by the musicians to make the song... musical.
Of course this means that I know almost every one of the 6GB worth of MP3's (ripped higher than 128, of course) that I currently have -- very well.
It also means I don't buy much pop crap.
But I can listen to (and know very well -- while still hearing new subtlety every time I listen to) Charlie Parker albums and tell you my favorite of his multiple renditions of the "same" song.
I can also tell you that there's a reason guys like Bill Mize win the national fingerstyle guitar competitons year after year.
I can't even come close to playing a guitar as well as Mr. Mize, but I know every subtlety of his music, and could probably pick out his playing style from any recording I hadn't heard yet.
Different people listen for different reasons. That's the beauty of music.
People always seem to have a hard time figuring it out when you mention to them that Apple even with its measly market share is a PROFITABLE business turning out some of the neatest hardware designs (from an asthetic standpoint definitely, from a technical standpoint -- they're okay) ever created to date.
From a business standpoint, Apple is very successful. They don't give a damn about porting all of their software to Windows, they just knew there are people out there who would buy quite a few more iPods in return for having to do a relatively "simple" port of iTunes to Windows.
Bringing along the rest of the applications would be suicidal from a support and cost-benefit standpoint.
You can find 'em even cheaper than the Rio Volt nowadays too.
Heck, I break a $35 WalMart-special portable MP3 CD-R player, I won't be losing any sleep over it.
At that price I could afford to leave one in the car, one on the desk at work... and maybe one in the wife's car.
A stack of 20-30 CD-R's at dirt cheap prices later and every one of them has that 6G of MP3's stored conveniently nearby.
I'm with you, right now the CD-R based MP3 players make more sense... and they're dirt cheap because they're "not cool" like the iPod mini and others...
So I say -- keep buying the iPod mini folks. It'll keep the prices artificially low on the CD-R based players!
And I'll be headed off to WalMart to grab a couple of them this weekend.
With a portable MP3-capable CD player with FM tuner and anti-skip (buffering) selling for about $35 at WalMart... they're a much smarter way to go for the budget-sensitive folks who want an MP3 player. Burn a few cheap CD-R's with your entire collection of tunes, and you're done. Wait until they add an AM tuner also at that price range, and you can use it to listen to the play-by-play at a baseball game.
Of course, for comfort and sanity, a good pair of your favorite over-the-ear device would probably be in order, but most folks already have those.
Later you can upgrade your car stereo to a direct MP3-playing unit and you already have the MP3's on CD-R.
A cheap MP3 CD-R player and small sleeve of CD's would meet the needs of anyone much more inexpensively than any of the flash players or hard disk players. It wouldn't be as flashy, but it'd work fine.
This is a dupe article from quite some time ago, but...
Why doesn't anyone ever point out that these guys/gals/idiots (and most other 802.11b antenna articles on Slashdot) are operating their transmitters illegally? You'd think folks like TechTV wouldn't sponsor illegal activity.
There are ERP limits (Effective Radiated Power) for 802.11b under their FCC Part 15 licensing.
No one seems to particularly care that there are legitimate licensed users in the 2.4 GHz band, I suppose.
Follow the legal limits in Part 15, folks... or ask the FCC to change the laws. Doesn't seem like that difficult a request.
I'd love to see the FCC show up at the next Wireless Shootout with a video camera and then start handing out $10,000 fines to all participants. Now THAT would be worthy of posting on/.
Real "nerds" (since/. is supposedly for nerds) use licensed radios and measure their power output levels with spectrum analyzers and RF service monitors... and probably build the antenna array using an RF Network Analyzer, too. They don't duct tape together some chicken wire.
These hacks and their/. fans are just illegal wanna-bees.
Of course, most/. techno-wanna-bee-idiots also use crappy RG-8 mini-foam coax to hook it all up with and let all the RF dissipate before it ever reaches the high gain antenna anyway...
Lame "radio" article - As usual.
Mod me Troll if you like. 802.11b "hackers" have zero idea what radio really is.
Doesn't say much for Harvard or Yale then does it?
That MBA didn't get him his jobs, his political connections did. (Like most of us.)
He's run at least one company into the ground before becoming President, which says he wasn't paying much attention at Harvard. (Not to mention he knew he'd still have money even if all of his workers were unemployed.)
Come to think of it, doesn't say much for the thoughtfulness of the people who voted for him either -- thinking that he was somehow qualified to do the job because his father was.
His father was a WWII vet, spent decades in Ambassadorships and eventually headed the CIA before becoming President. I can see a lot of reasons to "hire" a person like that for the Presidency.
His son, on the other hand, slacked off through Yale and Harvard on Grandpa's money, snorted cocaine through much of that process, went AWOL from his Guard unit, ran a successful oil business into the ground... and people adore him more than his dear-old-dad.
Sad.
Re:no, this guy's just clueless
on
Build Your Own PVR
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I do too, but turning it into an attack on all Linux PVR's is sensationalism and stupidity. That's the part I think is wrong... not the poor dude trying to build a PVR.
Again, the question is... why is this even a/. article?
a) Dude screws around putting a PC together and has problems. b) Dude loads linux, has a few problems, panics. c) Dude loads Windows and finds his own personal nirvana. d) Anonymous Coward convinces/. to post it as an interesting "question" article about how all Linux PVR's are "too difficult".
I just found it dumb that it became "newsworthy" enough for a) someone to put it in a document and b) for someone else to wonder if that meant "linux-based PVR's" were somehow at fault.
If I documented every time I set a jumper wrong, I'd look stupid too, so I guess the question is... why did/. even accept this silly "article"?
1. Find significant other who's not picky about silly things like wires. 2. ??? 3. Profit!
no, this guy's just clueless
on
Build Your Own PVR
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Anyone who can't properly hook up an IDE disk (check the jumpers BEFORE you install it) shouldn't be attempting to both build a computer and install an OS they've never tried before under a deadline.
He also did a horrible job on research and homework. He could have probably slapped a KnoppMyth CD in the drive and been done in record time.
I'd say -- this guy simply didn't have the basic computer and Linux skills to do anything but install pre-packaged software. He ended up with the solution that fit that skillset the best.
No offense, but he wasn't ready to try a do-it-yourself solution. A consumer solution *is* the best for someone with the limited time he had available (self-imposed deadlines) and knowledge level.
Slashdot Mirror
Are any of the Dish DVR's with 2 outputs "smart" enough to know that one of the outputs is another recording device like a VCR for "copying" something from the DVR to media?
Can any of them control an off-board VCR for "tape dumping" like this?
Gee that's funny, I know of at least two people happily using that exact setup in the Denver area.
They haven't done anything special to their boxes (including not covering anything with tape).
Maybe Comcast loves their employees so much they sent your g/f home with a refurbished hunk of crap that has a bad I/R receiver?
It's highly unlikely that the plane "saturated" your receiver.
The two transmitters on board the aircraft in use during a departure climbout (ARINC and Airphone use would be prohibited or unlikely at that time) would be a low VHF AM 5W transmitter (slightly higher power on air-carrier class aircraft) and a radar transponder.
Both are far enough away in frequency from your SLD (silly little dish) receiver center frequency, that even if your Dish could "hear them" they'd be -80dBm to -120dBm weaker than the satellite if the aircraft were sitting in your front yard.
Then you add that RF power drops off as a function of distance-squared, and that the aircraft is at a MINIMUM 1000' straight up (and since you can see him, he's probably more like 4000' slant-range or much much more away) there's virtually no way.
Stick to the "probably blocking the signal" theory and you'll do fine... you're probably seeing both a direct blockage by the aircraft (remember there's a time delay in the buffers and the MPEG decoder, slight, but there...) and possibly some odd multipath effects as the aircraft's body moves through the "beam".
Excellent dude. Amazingly good for /. !
/. culture!)
Unless you're one of the people in the photos in the article though, I wasn't talkin' about YOU.
Again... unless you're over the ERP limits. Then you're no better than ChickenBob the CB-radio boy with his "c'mon y'all and git it" "blower" under his front seat. Illegal is illegal.
(And the legality is the #1 point I wanted to make, while yes... being trite, because it fits so well into
Mod me Flamebait baby...
(Nice work if you REALLY do that quality of stuff... but make sure it's legal. We have enough idiots out there doing illegal stuff with Part 15 devices and broken Part 15 devices creating enough SPEW on the bands to keep interference hunters busy for a lifetime at this point... I'm just sick of hearing spewed crap from my neighbor's consumer-grade devices all up and down the bands -- and knowing there is very little realistic way I can convince them they're illgal when they operate out of their bands and get them to turn them off... because they think spectrum is a free-for-all and "wireless" is cool. Such is life, but that doesn't mean I don't have a "operate legally or die" mentality. Illegal 802.11b operators fall into the same scumbucket as Internet spammers in my book. And up until recently the spammers weren't even breaking the law, while the illegally operated 802.11b idiots WERE -- but I'm sure the illegal 802.11b operators would say they're "better" moral people than spammers.)
Kinda get where I'm coming from now?
802.11b -- LEARN THE RULES AND ABIDE BY THEM, is what I say to all those who post silly articles about rediculous distance contests which must certainly be breaking the laws of physics if they're not breaking the laws of the land.
Funny, those are the exact same reasons I was questioning you. ;-)
No tea, but I'll settle for a Coke.
So you are just trolling for a better price hoping he'll do your homework of finding one?
Or is there some great ethics lesson the poor guy should learn from your greatness of always posting with hard numbers to back up statements on Slashdot? (Now THERE'S a laugh.)
Why do you care if he posts real discounts or not... we ALL know (from experience) that MOST products in the U.S. eventually get sold at a discount off of MSRP (rarely do I ever pay MSRP for ANYTHING), and we all know that Apple doesn't allow that.
Why was this guys post targeted for some kind of ethics lesson? It's as bad as the hoardes that jump on someone who misspells one word in fifty posts... who cares?
I will agree with him. The other players WILL BE SOLD AT A DISCOUNT eventually, if they're not today.
There I did it... admonish me for not doing your shopping for you.
(I've already admitted here that I don't want one of these devices -- the $35 CD-R-based MP3 players look awfully sweet for just over 1/10th the price INCLUDING accessories. So I'm not going shopping for ya. Sorry man.)
"Shit flows down, son, not up."
You've just described Microsoft's plan for you as an end-user of their products.
Yes... people do seriously get by just fine without Windows. Haven't needed to boot the Windows machine here for months (there are 12 machines running here in the house, and easily ten times that number at the office - just in servers).
Download Mandrake or some other Linux distro that's actually TRYING to be a dekstop OS and not that shitty RedHat... (one of my EE friends likes Xandros, for example) and you're almost guaranteed to have a better experience. RedHat is not dedicated in any way to the desktop market any more. (Perhaps because they suck at it.)
Oh yeah, the "hype" around Linux isn't about what it does TODAY, it's about where it can go -- Free Software means you have the full source and can change it to do whatever scratches your itch. Good luck on asking Microsoft to provide same.
Homework project: Go read "The Cathedral and the Baazar." Now. Before you forget. I bet your Windows machine can find Google okay... (Oh yeah, they don't run Windows either.)
You personally can still be sued in cases of "gross negligence".
In other words, if you screw up and send someone else's business or life spiraling into the ground without warning from the software you wrote them, they can still sue you on the case that you've been not only "negligent" but "grossly negligent".
But nice try. Incorporation does not give one a shield from still being responsible for one's own actions.
He said "some" other MP3 player. You took the Rio and assumed it was the only other player out there and used that as an example of how he didn't give an example? Strange logic there.
He's 100% correct. Apple does not allow distributors to sell at a discount. Their business model is "one price fits all". When Apple products go "on sale" they go on sale everywhere at the same time.
Unless a distributor is "throwing in" a non-Apple product, you won't find Apple products any cheaper anywhere other than from Apple themselves.
I'm a non-professional musician (just for fun) and I delve deeply into all the music I purchase. I listen to tracks over and over listening for subtle techniques used by the musicians to make the song... musical.
Of course this means that I know almost every one of the 6GB worth of MP3's (ripped higher than 128, of course) that I currently have -- very well.
It also means I don't buy much pop crap.
But I can listen to (and know very well -- while still hearing new subtlety every time I listen to) Charlie Parker albums and tell you my favorite of his multiple renditions of the "same" song.
I can also tell you that there's a reason guys like Bill Mize win the national fingerstyle guitar competitons year after year.
I can't even come close to playing a guitar as well as Mr. Mize, but I know every subtlety of his music, and could probably pick out his playing style from any recording I hadn't heard yet.
Different people listen for different reasons. That's the beauty of music.
They're profitable NOW, idiot.
Why should they mess with that again?
It's not about making the "masses" happy.
They're running a business.
People always seem to have a hard time figuring it out when you mention to them that Apple even with its measly market share is a PROFITABLE business turning out some of the neatest hardware designs (from an asthetic standpoint definitely, from a technical standpoint -- they're okay) ever created to date.
From a business standpoint, Apple is very successful. They don't give a damn about porting all of their software to Windows, they just knew there are people out there who would buy quite a few more iPods in return for having to do a relatively "simple" port of iTunes to Windows.
Bringing along the rest of the applications would be suicidal from a support and cost-benefit standpoint.
It's called "running a profitable business".
One sentence for you, a word, and an action:
Portable CD-R based MP3 changer. WalMart. Go.
Amen.
You can find 'em even cheaper than the Rio Volt nowadays too.
Heck, I break a $35 WalMart-special portable MP3 CD-R player, I won't be losing any sleep over it.
At that price I could afford to leave one in the car, one on the desk at work... and maybe one in the wife's car.
A stack of 20-30 CD-R's at dirt cheap prices later and every one of them has that 6G of MP3's stored conveniently nearby.
I'm with you, right now the CD-R based MP3 players make more sense... and they're dirt cheap because they're "not cool" like the iPod mini and others...
So I say -- keep buying the iPod mini folks. It'll keep the prices artificially low on the CD-R based players!
And I'll be headed off to WalMart to grab a couple of them this weekend.
Agreed.
With a portable MP3-capable CD player with FM tuner and anti-skip (buffering) selling for about $35 at WalMart... they're a much smarter way to go for the budget-sensitive folks who want an MP3 player. Burn a few cheap CD-R's with your entire collection of tunes, and you're done. Wait until they add an AM tuner also at that price range, and you can use it to listen to the play-by-play at a baseball game.
Of course, for comfort and sanity, a good pair of your favorite over-the-ear device would probably be in order, but most folks already have those.
Later you can upgrade your car stereo to a direct MP3-playing unit and you already have the MP3's on CD-R.
A cheap MP3 CD-R player and small sleeve of CD's would meet the needs of anyone much more inexpensively than any of the flash players or hard disk players. It wouldn't be as flashy, but it'd work fine.
So important he posted anonymously.
Mod parent dowwwwwwn. -1 Lame.
Why doesn't anyone ever point out that these guys/gals/idiots (and most other 802.11b antenna articles on Slashdot) are operating their transmitters illegally? You'd think folks like TechTV wouldn't sponsor illegal activity.
There are ERP limits (Effective Radiated Power) for 802.11b under their FCC Part 15 licensing.
No one seems to particularly care that there are legitimate licensed users in the 2.4 GHz band, I suppose.
Follow the legal limits in Part 15, folks... or ask the FCC to change the laws. Doesn't seem like that difficult a request.
I'd love to see the FCC show up at the next Wireless Shootout with a video camera and then start handing out $10,000 fines to all participants. Now THAT would be worthy of posting on /.
Real "nerds" (since /. is supposedly for nerds) use licensed radios and measure their power output levels with spectrum analyzers and RF service monitors... and probably build the antenna array using an RF Network Analyzer, too. They don't duct tape together some chicken wire.
They put up antennas like these.
These hacks and their /. fans are just illegal wanna-bees.
Of course, most /. techno-wanna-bee-idiots also use crappy RG-8 mini-foam coax to hook it all up with and let all the RF dissipate before it ever reaches the high gain antenna anyway...
Lame "radio" article - As usual.
Mod me Troll if you like. 802.11b "hackers" have zero idea what radio really is.
The Breezecoms' are licensed radios, no? Higher allowable output power, bigger antennas = better range. Duh.
If they're not licensed, I'm *sure* you stayed within the legal ERP limits, right? Out of respect for the licensed users of the bands used?
You mean for Windows or Linux?
Of course, the Linux site would be www.tldp.org.
Windows... who cares?
Doesn't say much for Harvard or Yale then does it?
That MBA didn't get him his jobs, his political connections did. (Like most of us.)
He's run at least one company into the ground before becoming President, which says he wasn't paying much attention at Harvard. (Not to mention he knew he'd still have money even if all of his workers were unemployed.)
Come to think of it, doesn't say much for the thoughtfulness of the people who voted for him either -- thinking that he was somehow qualified to do the job because his father was.
His father was a WWII vet, spent decades in Ambassadorships and eventually headed the CIA before becoming President. I can see a lot of reasons to "hire" a person like that for the Presidency.
His son, on the other hand, slacked off through Yale and Harvard on Grandpa's money, snorted cocaine through much of that process, went AWOL from his Guard unit, ran a successful oil business into the ground... and people adore him more than his dear-old-dad.
Sad.
I do too, but turning it into an attack on all Linux PVR's is sensationalism and stupidity. That's the part I think is wrong... not the poor dude trying to build a PVR.
/. article?
/. to post it as an interesting "question" article about how all Linux PVR's are "too difficult".
Again, the question is... why is this even a
a) Dude screws around putting a PC together and has problems.
b) Dude loads linux, has a few problems, panics.
c) Dude loads Windows and finds his own personal nirvana.
d) Anonymous Coward convinces
Whatever.....
Actually you can configure it to change the viewport or the resolution, depending on what you have in your X config.
I just found it dumb that it became "newsworthy" enough for a) someone to put it in a document and b) for someone else to wonder if that meant "linux-based PVR's" were somehow at fault.
/. even accept this silly "article"?
/. -- gotta love it.
If I documented every time I set a jumper wrong, I'd look stupid too, so I guess the question is... why did
But I guess it *is*
1. Find significant other who's not picky about silly things like wires.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Anyone who can't properly hook up an IDE disk (check the jumpers BEFORE you install it) shouldn't be attempting to both build a computer and install an OS they've never tried before under a deadline.
He also did a horrible job on research and homework. He could have probably slapped a KnoppMyth CD in the drive and been done in record time.
I'd say -- this guy simply didn't have the basic computer and Linux skills to do anything but install pre-packaged software. He ended up with the solution that fit that skillset the best.
No offense, but he wasn't ready to try a do-it-yourself solution. A consumer solution *is* the best for someone with the limited time he had available (self-imposed deadlines) and knowledge level.