Try convincing an average 65 year old they need to buy an X-Box, oh, I'm sure a few will be on board but the very fact the thing is known for playing video games will chase them off. LG builds their own "platform" and have been doing it for a while making the boxes you mentioned redundant, even the video game ones for the purposes we're discussing. LG builds their content players into their devices. Currently I'm still using an non-HD 36" Mitsubishi Dimatron, it's a great TV of years past, out of date, but good enough for now. I've got an LG Blu-ray player on it, ignore the stuff the game consoles can add and I've got the ability to do Netflix, Amazon Video, Vudu, Hulu+, and about a dozen others that are dedicated to music or indie flix that I can't remember the name of at the moment. My next TV will very likely be an LG also, and all the stuff that's built into my Blu-Ray player will be built into the TV itself making the Blu-Ray player redundant for everything but playing Blu-Ray disk. The difference between LG and a game console is I have a better chance of convincing a 65 year old to buy a TV that will play his movies "without a VCR!" than I do convincing him to buy a game system. The Wii oddly stands out as an occasional exception, my 52 year old mother plays hers daily and is actually getting folks older than her somewhat interested.
On another note high-end TV's of the late 90's had VGA ports, those that didn't often had RGB ports making connecting to the older VGA standard rather trivial, as long as you knew what to set your resolution and refresh at. Sure it was beyond the average know-nothing, but the average know-nothing had little reason to want to do that unless they wanted to play a video game of the era and it didn't even require special hardware.
What we need is instead of a Wii platform, an XBOX-360 platform, a PS3 platform, a PSP platform, a Playstation Vita platform, a DSi platform, a 3DS platform, a Samsung platform, an LG platform, a Roku platform, an Apple TV platform, an Android platform, a Blackberry Platform, a Tivo platform we may need to come up with a "standard integrated app" languague. Java and Flash have filled in to some degree making a little bit of engine portability possible even if a new front-end needs to be written for nearly everything, but I'm sure a standard can be achieved.
so that it works with the likes of Ubuntu TV, Boxee, and maybe even Miro so we don't have even MORE competing standards I'll be happy with it. Having LG on-board is the best thing I've read about this, hardware manufacturers are often one of the most important steps, and my LG Blu-ray player is the coolest thing in my living room. Even if the Blu-ray drive quit working that player would still be the central part of my entertainment setup considering all the online and UPNP support built in. LG is the right partner for this. Samsung is not unfortunately, I tried going Samsung first but I found their local media support to be a joke. Their online stuff wasn't bad, but the player was sluggish and buggy.
Once ISPs in the US start pushing for better access to more places cable will become irrelevant and I can't wait.
My Bluray player served the same purpose as your Roku. My LG player does Amazon video and Hulu+. I use Amazon since it's about the only way I can find certain bike tools and parts and Prime gives me free shipping etc, yes I know how evil Amazon is and I used to not deal with them but I gave up. Hulu+ sucks because they still play commercials at you even if you pay, it's buggy as hell, and about half the content or more is "web only" meaning I can't use my stupid Bluray player with it anyways.
Hopefully, UbuntuTV will allow for a work around by spawning an actual desktop copy of Chromium or Firefox to playback Hulu+ really ticking off the content providers by giving consumers what they want and paid for.
I've used MythTV extensively in the past, not as much anymore since cable providers fight tooth and nail against clear QAM and NTSC, but never mind that.
One thing I really liked about MythTV was the ability to launch any program I wanted through use of the "Game Player" section - most notably, I actually liked being able to launch actual video games. If this thing actually hits TV's or a set top box the box itself needs to support Bluetooth - for pairing PS3 controls. USB would be an alright work around and there's lots you could do with it, but really Bluetooth is the way to go. They need the MythTV like game launch for ZSNES, Mednafen, MAME, and whatever else. The console in the TV would be the rockinest thing ever!
(Building in support for a Myth backend would be nice also, but who am I fooling? Cable providers have put a bullet in that. It's easier to just torrent and watch shows than it is to time shift - the irony of the situation - fighting against the peoples ability to legally do as they should be able to causes more piracy - who would have guessed?)
and every other technology outlet that covers the technology machine and every outlet concerned about health or childrens rights that covers this machine. Seriously could you imagine the amount of buzz/free advertising that would be generated by targeting only Men for example, and the number of women who would buy the product just to say "screw you I'll eat it anyways"?
Jello may have just invented the advertising by exclusion business model.
but was buggy as hell and crashed all the time. 2.x is much more stable but it counter-intuitive to use and downright cryptic when it comes to simple functions. Random? How do I set random play? dig, dig, dig, help, OH? Ok. Random.
You see you made me. I made a couple of statements on occasion about not liking Apples version of attempted lock-in, not acknowledging Linux exist, and some really crappy security policies that only hurt their users. See, I used to have a Mac. I found out I couldn't use USB or Firewire drives for any "multi-media" work. Apple insisted that only the internal drive be used, the more expensive one that's harder to replace and the one I really didn't want to wear out.
Mentioning these very real and fair complaints got me moded down by fan boys every single time I made these non-trolling real remarks. I got the impression I was not allowed to make any disparaging statements about Apple no matter how slight, and I don't like being told what I can and can't do, especially when it's done by someone who has not earned my respect or a legitimate company or governmental superior position. Now I no longer have a Mac and I troll, because you made me and I can. I don't care if you share habitual offender and target remark information off-site so anyone with mod points can check the "fan boy alert" board so those with mod points know who to take out or not, I'm will continue to disparage Apple until the fan boys line up, apologize and admit to sharing targeting info, or until a good year or so passes without retaliation, one or the other, because you made me.
Running on battery I plugged my EVO into my Acer AspireONE while driving to/through Louisiana. My girlfriend ran the thing for a good three of four hours using the EVO as a USB network device to browse the web, which meant not only was it holding itself up but it was charging my EVO while the EVO was moving data. We shut the netbook down when we got to where we were going.
Fine, WiFi was was disabled on both devices at the time, but I still call that impressive for a dual core Atom.
It's a data interface that can be used for communications. Not only is it a data interface if properly implemented Firewire can do up to 30V 1.5A, talk about charging. I know it's not everyone's favorite interface, but I find having daisy chaining as an option is nice, but if I prefer not to I can use separate ports, the fact there's next to no processor overhead to use it is nice. The fact I can buy 5" cables for daisy chaining makes really makes wire management simple and clean, and I can use every one of my Firewire drives at once with little perceptible slow down.
If it came with Firewire that would be good enough for me, because I like it. I think it would be a stupid move on the part of the manufacturer considering USB has pretty much won that war, but it meets my criteria. My desktop and two out of my three laptops support it, and I happen to have a Firewire car charger, it's right there with USB in my world of convenience.
My previous girlfriend has a son with rather high functioning but still obvious PDD-NOS Autism.
My insight into what he was dealing with, because I dealt with it also, granted on lesser scale helped her and her family tremendously when it came to dealing with him. I helped to get him over some of his "I don't like it!" food issues, I helped them to understand why he reacted to things the way he did and how to deal with these reactions and I really helped them to get into his head. As a result he's gained some weight (he was underweight), he's actually growing in height again, he was so under nourished from refusing to eat anything that wasn't ketchup that his growth was actually stunted. His entire family, meaning aunt, grandparents, mother all get along with him much better and are closer simply because having been there, granted to a lesser degree, I knew what was going on in his head.
I do think there's a good chance a high percentage of the people on Slashdot have some degree of the Autism spectrum, people with the disorder tend to learn details and the ins and outs of things making them great techs and programmers. I would bet money if real research was done you would find a higher percentage of people with measurable Autism Spectrum Disorders on Slashdot than you would on a Twilight fan board or an American Idle fan board and probably a much higher general IQ as well.
Here's the kicker. The reason I broke up with this girlfriend with the Autistic son? Diagnosed OCD that I couldn't deal with. Seriously, I can't handle a 45 minute discussion about what color of shoelaces to buy to put in your shoes, just buy a set and deal with it and if you're not certain buy both, don't call me on the phone, ask my opinion, then continue yammering about it in my ear after I begrudgingly give you an opinion. Then repeat when you see me that evening. Turns out I know something about OCD also, I don't think it's a cute disorder and considering the effort I've put into dealing with my issues, so much that you wouldn't notice them until you get to know me well unless you catch my phonetic spelling issues then she can make more efforts towards suppressing her OCD, especially when I point out when she's doing it. I very much have the contempt for social rituals and pointless noise and talking that are typical of people along the spectrum, and OCD that amplifies attention to the meaningless is not compatible with me. I tried, she treated me incredibly well, I loved her kids and they me in turn, but I realized that it wasn't going to end well if I stuck around. Yes, I know quite a bit about OCD and Autism, and yes, obsessing about spelling and grammar is still obsessing and very much can be a sign of an OCD issue or of just being an asshole. I'll take it on a case by case basis.
Please, give me a link to something where I claim I'm a programmer.
Also of the programmers I do know few of them get their code to compile the first time every time, there's always a simple error somewhere to be worked out.
At least one of the people I'm thinking of is an engineer, but he's not a software engineer.
I've discovered something about myself of course. I'm not a programmer, but when I do retype the same things all the time I develop muscle memory for them, I'm sure people who can't spell sometimes do fine deep in the code. It's very different than spoken language anyways, heck unlike English programming languages actually make sense (mostly). At least the nuances in programming code are less and easier to remember than the ones in English anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
You basically just backed up what I said.
Try convincing an average 65 year old they need to buy an X-Box, oh, I'm sure a few will be on board but the very fact the thing is known for playing video games will chase them off. LG builds their own "platform" and have been doing it for a while making the boxes you mentioned redundant, even the video game ones for the purposes we're discussing. LG builds their content players into their devices. Currently I'm still using an non-HD 36" Mitsubishi Dimatron, it's a great TV of years past, out of date, but good enough for now. I've got an LG Blu-ray player on it, ignore the stuff the game consoles can add and I've got the ability to do Netflix, Amazon Video, Vudu, Hulu+, and about a dozen others that are dedicated to music or indie flix that I can't remember the name of at the moment. My next TV will very likely be an LG also, and all the stuff that's built into my Blu-Ray player will be built into the TV itself making the Blu-Ray player redundant for everything but playing Blu-Ray disk. The difference between LG and a game console is I have a better chance of convincing a 65 year old to buy a TV that will play his movies "without a VCR!" than I do convincing him to buy a game system. The Wii oddly stands out as an occasional exception, my 52 year old mother plays hers daily and is actually getting folks older than her somewhat interested.
On another note high-end TV's of the late 90's had VGA ports, those that didn't often had RGB ports making connecting to the older VGA standard rather trivial, as long as you knew what to set your resolution and refresh at. Sure it was beyond the average know-nothing, but the average know-nothing had little reason to want to do that unless they wanted to play a video game of the era and it didn't even require special hardware.
What we need is instead of a Wii platform, an XBOX-360 platform, a PS3 platform, a PSP platform, a Playstation Vita platform, a DSi platform, a 3DS platform, a Samsung platform, an LG platform, a Roku platform, an Apple TV platform, an Android platform, a Blackberry Platform, a Tivo platform we may need to come up with a "standard integrated app" languague. Java and Flash have filled in to some degree making a little bit of engine portability possible even if a new front-end needs to be written for nearly everything, but I'm sure a standard can be achieved.
so that it works with the likes of Ubuntu TV, Boxee, and maybe even Miro so we don't have even MORE competing standards I'll be happy with it. Having LG on-board is the best thing I've read about this, hardware manufacturers are often one of the most important steps, and my LG Blu-ray player is the coolest thing in my living room. Even if the Blu-ray drive quit working that player would still be the central part of my entertainment setup considering all the online and UPNP support built in. LG is the right partner for this. Samsung is not unfortunately, I tried going Samsung first but I found their local media support to be a joke. Their online stuff wasn't bad, but the player was sluggish and buggy.
Once ISPs in the US start pushing for better access to more places cable will become irrelevant and I can't wait.
My Bluray player served the same purpose as your Roku. My LG player does Amazon video and Hulu+. I use Amazon since it's about the only way I can find certain bike tools and parts and Prime gives me free shipping etc, yes I know how evil Amazon is and I used to not deal with them but I gave up. Hulu+ sucks because they still play commercials at you even if you pay, it's buggy as hell, and about half the content or more is "web only" meaning I can't use my stupid Bluray player with it anyways.
Hopefully, UbuntuTV will allow for a work around by spawning an actual desktop copy of Chromium or Firefox to playback Hulu+ really ticking off the content providers by giving consumers what they want and paid for.
I've used MythTV extensively in the past, not as much anymore since cable providers fight tooth and nail against clear QAM and NTSC, but never mind that.
One thing I really liked about MythTV was the ability to launch any program I wanted through use of the "Game Player" section - most notably, I actually liked being able to launch actual video games. If this thing actually hits TV's or a set top box the box itself needs to support Bluetooth - for pairing PS3 controls. USB would be an alright work around and there's lots you could do with it, but really Bluetooth is the way to go. They need the MythTV like game launch for ZSNES, Mednafen, MAME, and whatever else. The console in the TV would be the rockinest thing ever!
(Building in support for a Myth backend would be nice also, but who am I fooling? Cable providers have put a bullet in that. It's easier to just torrent and watch shows than it is to time shift - the irony of the situation - fighting against the peoples ability to legally do as they should be able to causes more piracy - who would have guessed?)
and every other technology outlet that covers the technology machine and every outlet concerned about health or childrens rights that covers this machine. Seriously could you imagine the amount of buzz/free advertising that would be generated by targeting only Men for example, and the number of women who would buy the product just to say "screw you I'll eat it anyways"?
Jello may have just invented the advertising by exclusion business model.
How can you honestly sit there and say exactly what you did with a straight face when "accessing another app while talking" is the patent at hand?
that's not it's place. I think it's us as citizens to organize the militia, raid their compound, and line their board and execs up against the wall.
but was buggy as hell and crashed all the time. 2.x is much more stable but it counter-intuitive to use and downright cryptic when it comes to simple functions. Random? How do I set random play? dig, dig, dig, help, OH? Ok. Random.
PRIOR ART!!!!
Really, Apple needs to be knee-capped.
Why just march when you can lead?
It probably has something to do with the nets.
I could, as long as I wasn't using music CD's or commercial DVD's.
You see you made me . I made a couple of statements on occasion about not liking Apples version of attempted lock-in, not acknowledging Linux exist, and some really crappy security policies that only hurt their users. See, I used to have a Mac. I found out I couldn't use USB or Firewire drives for any "multi-media" work. Apple insisted that only the internal drive be used, the more expensive one that's harder to replace and the one I really didn't want to wear out.
Mentioning these very real and fair complaints got me moded down by fan boys every single time I made these non-trolling real remarks. I got the impression I was not allowed to make any disparaging statements about Apple no matter how slight, and I don't like being told what I can and can't do, especially when it's done by someone who has not earned my respect or a legitimate company or governmental superior position. Now I no longer have a Mac and I troll, because you made me and I can. I don't care if you share habitual offender and target remark information off-site so anyone with mod points can check the "fan boy alert" board so those with mod points know who to take out or not, I'm will continue to disparage Apple until the fan boys line up, apologize and admit to sharing targeting info, or until a good year or so passes without retaliation, one or the other, because you made me .
Running on battery I plugged my EVO into my Acer AspireONE while driving to/through Louisiana. My girlfriend ran the thing for a good three of four hours using the EVO as a USB network device to browse the web, which meant not only was it holding itself up but it was charging my EVO while the EVO was moving data. We shut the netbook down when we got to where we were going.
Fine, WiFi was was disabled on both devices at the time, but I still call that impressive for a dual core Atom.
and once again proven!
I know why they moded my TLP, but this one is certainly not excusable as anything more than a vengeance mod!
For the record, the previous link in the "Proving my theory" chain.
No shortage I said.
Along with Bin Laden, Gaddafi, and Steve Jobs all inside a year.
The world is still not running out of assholes.
I'm a Kubuntu user. My external drives are mostly Acomdata bays.
Apple is evil.
It's a data interface that can be used for communications. Not only is it a data interface if properly implemented Firewire can do up to 30V 1.5A, talk about charging. I know it's not everyone's favorite interface, but I find having daisy chaining as an option is nice, but if I prefer not to I can use separate ports, the fact there's next to no processor overhead to use it is nice. The fact I can buy 5" cables for daisy chaining makes really makes wire management simple and clean, and I can use every one of my Firewire drives at once with little perceptible slow down.
If it came with Firewire that would be good enough for me, because I like it. I think it would be a stupid move on the part of the manufacturer considering USB has pretty much won that war, but it meets my criteria. My desktop and two out of my three laptops support it, and I happen to have a Firewire car charger, it's right there with USB in my world of convenience.
Can't make a flow chart on Slashdot.......
You still have to charge it somehow.
I might make an exception for a simple round connection like the PSP-2000 had, but not for a "multi-use port".
There's a simple test I put electronics through before I buy them - it reads something like this:
Does it need a data port?
Y - Go to next step
N - Star weighing other details
Does it have a Micro USB port?
Y - Star weighing other details
N - Go to next step.
Does it have a Mini USB port?
Y - Star weighing other details
N - Go to next step.
Does it have a Full sized USB port?
Y - Star weighing other details
N - Go to next step.
Does it have a six pin Firewire port?
Y - Star weighing other details
N - Go to next step.
Does it have a four pin Fiewire port?
Y - Star weighing other details
N - DON'T BUY THE DAMNED THING
Playstation Vita fails this simple test. It's also why I passed on the Galaxy Tab. I really don't need to carry any more cables with me.
My previous girlfriend has a son with rather high functioning but still obvious PDD-NOS Autism.
My insight into what he was dealing with, because I dealt with it also, granted on lesser scale helped her and her family tremendously when it came to dealing with him. I helped to get him over some of his "I don't like it!" food issues, I helped them to understand why he reacted to things the way he did and how to deal with these reactions and I really helped them to get into his head. As a result he's gained some weight (he was underweight), he's actually growing in height again, he was so under nourished from refusing to eat anything that wasn't ketchup that his growth was actually stunted. His entire family, meaning aunt, grandparents, mother all get along with him much better and are closer simply because having been there, granted to a lesser degree, I knew what was going on in his head.
I do think there's a good chance a high percentage of the people on Slashdot have some degree of the Autism spectrum, people with the disorder tend to learn details and the ins and outs of things making them great techs and programmers. I would bet money if real research was done you would find a higher percentage of people with measurable Autism Spectrum Disorders on Slashdot than you would on a Twilight fan board or an American Idle fan board and probably a much higher general IQ as well.
Here's the kicker. The reason I broke up with this girlfriend with the Autistic son? Diagnosed OCD that I couldn't deal with. Seriously, I can't handle a 45 minute discussion about what color of shoelaces to buy to put in your shoes, just buy a set and deal with it and if you're not certain buy both, don't call me on the phone, ask my opinion, then continue yammering about it in my ear after I begrudgingly give you an opinion. Then repeat when you see me that evening. Turns out I know something about OCD also, I don't think it's a cute disorder and considering the effort I've put into dealing with my issues, so much that you wouldn't notice them until you get to know me well unless you catch my phonetic spelling issues then she can make more efforts towards suppressing her OCD, especially when I point out when she's doing it. I very much have the contempt for social rituals and pointless noise and talking that are typical of people along the spectrum, and OCD that amplifies attention to the meaningless is not compatible with me. I tried, she treated me incredibly well, I loved her kids and they me in turn, but I realized that it wasn't going to end well if I stuck around. Yes, I know quite a bit about OCD and Autism, and yes, obsessing about spelling and grammar is still obsessing and very much can be a sign of an OCD issue or of just being an asshole. I'll take it on a case by case basis.
Please, give me a link to something where I claim I'm a programmer.
Also of the programmers I do know few of them get their code to compile the first time every time, there's always a simple error somewhere to be worked out.
Who said they wrote software?
At least one of the people I'm thinking of is an engineer, but he's not a software engineer.
I've discovered something about myself of course. I'm not a programmer, but when I do retype the same things all the time I develop muscle memory for them, I'm sure people who can't spell sometimes do fine deep in the code. It's very different than spoken language anyways, heck unlike English programming languages actually make sense (mostly). At least the nuances in programming code are less and easier to remember than the ones in English anyways.