I have a perfectly serviceable 36" Sony XBR digital "HD Ready" set. It has component, S-video, composite and RF inputs. Just because the industry wants to play musical chairs with HD inputs and DRM does not mean I trash a very good set or go out and buy another one. XBMC pretty much plays nicely with component video. I want the mac mini to do the same.
It should be pointed out that the new iMacs are using the Intel graphics that share system memory:
Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
Add to that Steve Jobs stating that "Yes you can hook it up to your TV" - well sorta. You can use the Apple DVI-Composite/SVideo adpater cable, but that doesn't necessarily look so hot.
What this thing has going for it is the integrated FrontRow, remote and it's super small form factor. I was interested in this as an XBMC Media Center replacement. Unfortunately it seems that Frontrow will only play videos that are compatible with Quicktime. This rules out most of what I have on XBMC. When you boil it all down, it's the old Mac mini + Frontrow w/intel inside.
This is a country where if you run the A/C (really needed in the summer) and run a microwave and TV you will trip the circuit breaker for the ENTIRE HOUSE. This is on pretty modern construction too (1990's). At least the breaker box is indoors and usually right by the front door near the ceiling. Resetting it is common during the summer months.
$6800-$10000 per month income. As checks. I'd bet that:
1. None of these companies are withholding federal and state taxes and social security 2. I'm also pretty sure he's not getting 1099'd either 3. He does not report this money as income
The IRS would love to get their mitts on this guy. Any income (including illegal income) is still taxable income to them.
If any post could be modded up more than +5, this one deserves it.
Bravo. I usually don't look at the DRM problem this way - instead I usually look at it as a set of limitations on the end-user. When it comes to online music, this lock-in is definitely a problem for the end-user.
It's a double-edged sword as well. Apple may benefit from the lock-in, but they can also be screwed when RIAA gets greedy for their next contract and want $2.50 per song and the (iTunes using) userbase basically blames Apple and goes back to p2p.
Dunno. It may have had other accessories, but there's a point where you want to haggle and another where you want to just shake your head and walk away. This was one of the latter cases.
I collected "vintage" computers and videogames back in the 1990's - mainly to relive my childhood and own all the stuff I could never afford. I called it my pre-midlife crisis. Now I am in full midlife crisis mode and have the ragtop sportscar to prove it.
One of my favorite stories was in 1998 or so I was at a flea market and saw a C64 in great condition, with the box, manuals, everything. It looked hardly used. Since I needed one for the collection, I asked about the price:
"$800. And that's a FIRM price." Came the reply.
"Why $800?" I asked. "That thing's nearly 15 years old."
"$800. That's what I paid for it, and that's what I want for it."
I eventually picked one up. My biggest problem is that I could find C64's and drives easily enough, but I could NEVER find a damn cable for the floppy. After months of searching, I gave up and made my own cable.
Not just to injunctions shutting down the service, "upgrades" that go wonky, but to idiots with backhoes!
Funny you mention this. The water main to our building went down at 11AM (for "two hours"), and now we are told it's out for the rest of the day. No water, no coffee, no restrooms... It's 2PM and I just finished lunch a few hours ago with a large soda and I'm feeling pretty screwed right now.
A voter's registration card is handed out when you register. It's free. Better yet when it's sent to the address on the registration form instead of handed out when the registration is filled out.
There are ways to work out a system where the voter need not pay anything and have at least rudimentary verification of who they are. I think the current honor system is broken.
But you can always get a new account and have multiple accounts. For example: I have two different accounts. One on the US and one on the Japanese iTunes store. Files downloaded off of either play just fine in iTunes and in my iPod.
So I could sell off the iPod with digital files and "unregister" my credit card info (I actually use gift cards). Then I could pass my account over to the new owner. The new owner could then authorize the songs and add them to his existing collection.
The previous owner could simply open a new iTunes account and start collecting again if they felt the need to do so.
It isn't even "all or nothing". I could sell off 50% of my song collection and keep the other half - all because once you download a song, you cannot download it again without paying for it again. It just would not be wise to use that account to get any new stuff.
Well depending on your state, they do NOT verify you are who you claim to be. In fact, there is a big resistance to verifying a voter's identity among certain political groups.
In California you can walk up to a polling place look at the sheet of registered voters hanging outside the polling location and use any of the names that haven't been crossed off, or shoulder surf the voter ahead of you to get an unused name. Pollworkers are forbidden from checking ID's of any potential voter (one of the reminders the Dems were trumpeting for the 2004 elections to report voter disenfranchisement). Sure they may catch this later, but with crappy voter turnouts, you have a good chance of it getting by undetected. I wonder how a "provisional ballot" would be handled in this case?
This lack of ID checking screams of fraud potential. A voter should bring in something to verify they are the registered voter. Such as: voter reg. card, driver's license, state ID, federal ID, passport or even a utility bill. Preventing even a simple ID check is as if they wanted to protect fraud.
Regarding Diebold, the spineless politicians who wrote the proposal and put it out for bids should have made it clear that all work performed on the contract is the property of the public. The contractor can make all the money they want with development, hw sales, consulting and post-deployment support well after the software is "done".
Source, data, and database files should be public record. What's going on now doesn't even pass the "sniff test".
I can't fault them either. It's marketed as a Mac and it's sold as a Mac and nothing more - especially not as a backwards-compatible PC.
If you can put Windows or Linux on it, it's just an unsupported bonus feature. It may eventually happen, but just sharing a bunch of common hardware with a PC does not make it a PC. Look at the XBOX. It's just a legacy-free PC with a special BIOS. I don't recall anyone running Windows on that and they had years to hack away at it.
What version of the TRS-80 did you use? The most common ones (Model I and III) used 5 1/4" floppies (if the option was purchased). The Model II used 8" disks, and it really wasn't intended or marketed to be a game computer.
Flip4Mac used to be a crippleware codec (about $9.00) for playback. In demo mode it would play only a portion of the file.
I was surprised that MS would be trumpeting a company that reverse-engineered WMV and charged people for it. The playback codec now appears to be free, but you can kiss goodbye any chance of seeing DRM'd materials in Media player formats on the Mac.
Anyhow, since it's free now I would not worry about it. They still have paid export versions - I assume that's what the auditing is for. I don't know if the app phones home, but if it does, we will hear about it soon enough.
If I had to assemble another AMD 939-chipset based Suse 10 Linux server, I know exactly the parts required to do so with the minimal amount of fuss and expense.
The problem is, I only need one server for my house. This server is expected to last for quite a while. The machine it replaced was a Gateway PII450 purchased in 1998. In 5+ years when I expect this one to be replaced, I'll be back to the same problems I had two months ago.
I jumped from a PII to an AMD64 Athlon, 5V 32-bit PCI and AGP to PCIe, SDRAM to DDR RAM, Plug-n-Play to APIC, Voodoo 3500TV to Geforce 6200. PATA to SATA (though I'm still using the old PATA drives), Suse 9.0 to Suse 10 64-bit.
And you are partly right. ATI grsphics did not work correctly and it was replaced with an Nvidia GeForce 6200 which works just fine.
Most of the problems I had came from lack of support of the ATI bridge chipset on the MoBo and less than enthusiastic support from ECS regarding their buggy APIC code.
Be fair to him. Drop one of the screens and add a KVM switch. You probably can do it, and it'll be a kludge, but it's possible.
I'd personally prefer the warranty support from Apple (which has always been a good experience for me) and the ability to install my own replacements, cross-shipped from Apple, or take it to a nearby mall to have their minions look at it.
Too many people overlook that. When I was younger and everything was on a budget I scrimped on everything and assembling my own kit was considered a cost saver. Now preassembled machines are the norm because the effort of fixing a self-built machine via all the individual manufacturers it just too much of a hassle. Even more so when the manufacturer wants the part shipped to them for service and won't cross-ship a replacement. One point of contact is preferable. I'll take my chances after the warranty expires.
The most recent machine I built myself was an AMD 64 939-based system running SUSE 10 two months ago. It took several hours of selecting parts based on price/performance and deal-hunting at local PC stores and Fry's ads. There were compatibility issues with the ECS MoBo and ATI Graphics. Several reinstalls were done and eventually a new MoBo and graphics card were used and now the system is now trouble-free. This took several days of effort to sort out. Some the money saved was spent on minor cost overruns that ate into the savings and time wasted fighting with hardware.
So in the end, you get more than a cool-looking machine on your desk when you buy from a decent box-pusher like Apple, Dell, etc.
It's more simple than that. They don't want another 20+ year format like the CD. They want to shuffle the DVD out the door, force everyone to a new encrypted medium, and eventually make all of us buy our media all over again.
Nope. Not for me. Not until I can watch it on my "HD-Ready" TV. One would think a 36" Sony XBR would be good enough, but noooo...
Benson, Arizona, the warm wind through your hair My body flies the galaxies, my heart longs to be there Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I
Yes it's dead because the DRM has been cracked. If it weren't for DeCSS, there would not be so strong a push to get everyone switched over to Blu-ray or HD-DVD (which both are so far uncracked).
After getting screwed over because the industry decided they would not trust anyone with analog composite inputs, I'm not about to fork over more cash for new hardware just because my "HD Ready" TV was obsolete after less than one year when the industry decided they wanted to encrypt the signal to the TV.
You have nothing compared to the Chinese. The Chinese will and do eat just about anything that swims, wiggles, crawls, walks, hops, or flies. Before some of you mark this as flame-bait, read up on it a bit - it's true. Sea Cucumber, Bear Paws, Tiger Penis, Shark's Fin, Civet Cats, and various venomous reptiles.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would I do that?
I have a perfectly serviceable 36" Sony XBR digital "HD Ready" set. It has component, S-video, composite and RF inputs. Just because the industry wants to play musical chairs with HD inputs and DRM does not mean I trash a very good set or go out and buy another one. XBMC pretty much plays nicely with component video. I want the mac mini to do the same.
Add to that Steve Jobs stating that "Yes you can hook it up to your TV" - well sorta. You can use the Apple DVI-Composite/SVideo adpater cable, but that doesn't necessarily look so hot.
What this thing has going for it is the integrated FrontRow, remote and it's super small form factor. I was interested in this as an XBMC Media Center replacement. Unfortunately it seems that Frontrow will only play videos that are compatible with Quicktime. This rules out most of what I have on XBMC. When you boil it all down, it's the old Mac mini + Frontrow w/intel inside.
This is a country where if you run the A/C (really needed in the summer) and run a microwave and TV you will trip the circuit breaker for the ENTIRE HOUSE. This is on pretty modern construction too (1990's). At least the breaker box is indoors and usually right by the front door near the ceiling. Resetting it is common during the summer months.
(I've been there, done that)
I prefer my term:
"They're trying to stuff the shit back into the donkey."
$6800-$10000 per month income. As checks. I'd bet that:
1. None of these companies are withholding federal and state taxes and social security
2. I'm also pretty sure he's not getting 1099'd either
3. He does not report this money as income
The IRS would love to get their mitts on this guy. Any income (including illegal income) is still taxable income to them.
If any post could be modded up more than +5, this one deserves it.
Bravo. I usually don't look at the DRM problem this way - instead I usually look at it as a set of limitations on the end-user. When it comes to online music, this lock-in is definitely a problem for the end-user.
It's a double-edged sword as well. Apple may benefit from the lock-in, but they can also be screwed when RIAA gets greedy for their next contract and want $2.50 per song and the (iTunes using) userbase basically blames Apple and goes back to p2p.
Dunno. It may have had other accessories, but there's a point where you want to haggle and another where you want to just shake your head and walk away. This was one of the latter cases.
Who knows? You might get lucky.
I collected "vintage" computers and videogames back in the 1990's - mainly to relive my childhood and own all the stuff I could never afford. I called it my pre-midlife crisis. Now I am in full midlife crisis mode and have the ragtop sportscar to prove it.
One of my favorite stories was in 1998 or so I was at a flea market and saw a C64 in great condition, with the box, manuals, everything. It looked hardly used. Since I needed one for the collection, I asked about the price:
"$800. And that's a FIRM price." Came the reply.
"Why $800?" I asked. "That thing's nearly 15 years old."
"$800. That's what I paid for it, and that's what I want for it."
I eventually picked one up. My biggest problem is that I could find C64's and drives easily enough, but I could NEVER find a damn cable for the floppy. After months of searching, I gave up and made my own cable.
Funny you mention this. The water main to our building went down at 11AM (for "two hours"), and now we are told it's out for the rest of the day. No water, no coffee, no restrooms... It's 2PM and I just finished lunch a few hours ago with a large soda and I'm feeling pretty screwed right now.
So I know exactly what you mean!
Hey, if they can't make money off of it, they sure as hell will make sure no one else can either. That's what IP laws are for.
A voter's registration card is handed out when you register. It's free. Better yet when it's sent to the address on the registration form instead of handed out when the registration is filled out.
There are ways to work out a system where the voter need not pay anything and have at least rudimentary verification of who they are. I think the current honor system is broken.
But you can always get a new account and have multiple accounts. For example: I have two different accounts. One on the US and one on the Japanese iTunes store. Files downloaded off of either play just fine in iTunes and in my iPod.
So I could sell off the iPod with digital files and "unregister" my credit card info (I actually use gift cards). Then I could pass my account over to the new owner. The new owner could then authorize the songs and add them to his existing collection.
The previous owner could simply open a new iTunes account and start collecting again if they felt the need to do so.
It isn't even "all or nothing". I could sell off 50% of my song collection and keep the other half - all because once you download a song, you cannot download it again without paying for it again. It just would not be wise to use that account to get any new stuff.
Well depending on your state, they do NOT verify you are who you claim to be. In fact, there is a big resistance to verifying a voter's identity among certain political groups.
In California you can walk up to a polling place look at the sheet of registered voters hanging outside the polling location and use any of the names that haven't been crossed off, or shoulder surf the voter ahead of you to get an unused name. Pollworkers are forbidden from checking ID's of any potential voter (one of the reminders the Dems were trumpeting for the 2004 elections to report voter disenfranchisement). Sure they may catch this later, but with crappy voter turnouts, you have a good chance of it getting by undetected. I wonder how a "provisional ballot" would be handled in this case?
This lack of ID checking screams of fraud potential. A voter should bring in something to verify they are the registered voter. Such as: voter reg. card, driver's license, state ID, federal ID, passport or even a utility bill. Preventing even a simple ID check is as if they wanted to protect fraud.
Regarding Diebold, the spineless politicians who wrote the proposal and put it out for bids should have made it clear that all work performed on the contract is the property of the public. The contractor can make all the money they want with development, hw sales, consulting and post-deployment support well after the software is "done".
Source, data, and database files should be public record. What's going on now doesn't even pass the "sniff test".
I can't fault them either. It's marketed as a Mac and it's sold as a Mac and nothing more - especially not as a backwards-compatible PC.
If you can put Windows or Linux on it, it's just an unsupported bonus feature. It may eventually happen, but just sharing a bunch of common hardware with a PC does not make it a PC. Look at the XBOX. It's just a legacy-free PC with a special BIOS. I don't recall anyone running Windows on that and they had years to hack away at it.
What version of the TRS-80 did you use? The most common ones (Model I and III) used 5 1/4" floppies (if the option was purchased). The Model II used 8" disks, and it really wasn't intended or marketed to be a game computer.
Sorry - had to set the record straight here...
IIRC, Ford is licensing some of Toyota's hybrid Tech for their vehicles. Or at least paying some form of royalty to Toyota.
Flip4Mac used to be a crippleware codec (about $9.00) for playback. In demo mode it would play only a portion of the file.
I was surprised that MS would be trumpeting a company that reverse-engineered WMV and charged people for it. The playback codec now appears to be free, but you can kiss goodbye any chance of seeing DRM'd materials in Media player formats on the Mac.
Anyhow, since it's free now I would not worry about it. They still have paid export versions - I assume that's what the auditing is for. I don't know if the app phones home, but if it does, we will hear about it soon enough.
Let's put it this way:
If I had to assemble another AMD 939-chipset based Suse 10 Linux server, I know exactly the parts required to do so with the minimal amount of fuss and expense.
The problem is, I only need one server for my house. This server is expected to last for quite a while. The machine it replaced was a Gateway PII450 purchased in 1998. In 5+ years when I expect this one to be replaced, I'll be back to the same problems I had two months ago.
I jumped from a PII to an AMD64 Athlon, 5V 32-bit PCI and AGP to PCIe, SDRAM to DDR RAM, Plug-n-Play to APIC, Voodoo 3500TV to Geforce 6200. PATA to SATA (though I'm still using the old PATA drives), Suse 9.0 to Suse 10 64-bit.
That's a lot of new variables in one jump.
And you are partly right. ATI grsphics did not work correctly and it was replaced with an Nvidia GeForce 6200 which works just fine.
Most of the problems I had came from lack of support of the ATI bridge chipset on the MoBo and less than enthusiastic support from ECS regarding their buggy APIC code.
Be fair to him. Drop one of the screens and add a KVM switch.
You probably can do it, and it'll be a kludge, but it's possible.
I'd personally prefer the warranty support from Apple (which has always been a good experience for me) and the ability to install my own replacements, cross-shipped from Apple, or take it to a nearby mall to have their minions look at it.
Too many people overlook that. When I was younger and everything was on a budget I scrimped on everything and assembling my own kit was considered a cost saver. Now preassembled machines are the norm because the effort of fixing a self-built machine via all the individual manufacturers it just too much of a hassle. Even more so when the manufacturer wants the part shipped to them for service and won't cross-ship a replacement. One point of contact is preferable. I'll take my chances after the warranty expires.
The most recent machine I built myself was an AMD 64 939-based system running SUSE 10 two months ago. It took several hours of selecting parts based on price/performance and deal-hunting at local PC stores and Fry's ads. There were compatibility issues with the ECS MoBo and ATI Graphics. Several reinstalls were done and eventually a new MoBo and graphics card were used and now the system is now trouble-free. This took several days of effort to sort out. Some the money saved was spent on minor cost overruns that ate into the savings and time wasted fighting with hardware.
So in the end, you get more than a cool-looking machine on your desk when you buy from a decent box-pusher like Apple, Dell, etc.
Here's a resaon why it's so cheap in HK.
Hong Kong: 422 square miles, main island is 36 square miles
United States: 3,537,441 square miles
It's more simple than that. They don't want another 20+ year format like the CD. They want to shuffle the DVD out the door, force everyone to a new encrypted medium, and eventually make all of us buy our media all over again.
Nope. Not for me. Not until I can watch it on my "HD-Ready" TV. One would think a 36" Sony XBR would be good enough, but noooo...
It certainly is...
Benson, Arizona, the warm wind through your hair
My body flies the galaxies, my heart longs to be there
Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky
But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I
Yes it's dead because the DRM has been cracked. If it weren't for DeCSS, there would not be so strong a push to get everyone switched over to Blu-ray or HD-DVD (which both are so far uncracked).
After getting screwed over because the industry decided they would not trust anyone with analog composite inputs, I'm not about to fork over more cash for new hardware just because my "HD Ready" TV was obsolete after less than one year when the industry decided they wanted to encrypt the signal to the TV.
You have nothing compared to the Chinese. The Chinese will and do eat just about anything that swims, wiggles, crawls, walks, hops, or flies. Before some of you mark this as flame-bait, read up on it a bit - it's true. Sea Cucumber, Bear Paws, Tiger Penis, Shark's Fin, Civet Cats, and various venomous reptiles.