I have 500MB a month (for which I pay 10EUR), and am usually getting along fine with it. That includes surfing, emailing, the odd app and video during train rides. I could upgrade to 2GB for 20EUR, but I don't see a need for that right now.
This is pretty much exactly what's in every Prius. Little electric motor driving the sun wheel, IIRC in my 2nd gen Prius it's a 9kW motor doing up to 10000rpm in both directions. Transitions from forward to backward speed seemlessly.
It ain't really necessary unless you go to seriously deep temperature. If your usage profile includes -12 C (conversion for those of us having no clue about Fahrenheits), proper oil with the right viscosity will be 'there' within half a minute, tops. From then on, light load is way better to heat up the engine than letting it idle for an eternity. It's quite some air pollution, too.
Now, if you're going -30 or so on a semi-regular basis, I'd suggest a block heater or a propper fuel based heating system. Those will actually prewarm the engine.
So, what better is a time shifting ad skipping viewer than no viewer at all to NBC?
They seem to gamble that more people will watch their shows life than are pissed off by this move.
Maybe they're trying to lose even more viewers by not letting these viewers tape their programs. How brilliant. Attract more customers by treating them like crap. Reminds me of RIAA. It's funny how with commercial TV the product always thinks it's the customer. Unless you pay NBC to receive their programming, they couldn't care less if you watch it timeshifting and ad-skipping, or if you choose not to watch it at all. They're after eye balls watching the ads. That's the product they offer to their customers.
In fact I am 35 and I watch all DVDs with the subtitles. (Of course, part of that is that I watch a lot of DVDs at 1.2x to 2x speed, but... Really who the Hell could actually stand "A Scanner Darkley" at normal speed?) Where's the point in watch DVD's accelerated? I mean, either you respect the work of art that it is and you watch it at the speed intended - or if it's not a work of art, it's a waste of your time anyway.
After all, unless you're a movie critic, nobody forces you to watch them...
The MediaMVP is a wonderful little device (we've got one in our bedroom), but mvpmc is not exactly a solution for everyone (I'm fairly technical, and I still haven't screwed up my courage enough to use any of the various replacement MVP solutions yet), and the native MVP software languished for almost a year before being updated a few times recently. Frankly, the MVP is probably one of the safest devices to fiddle around with: it boots its software over the net and - so you can try out whatever you want and if you don't like it or it doesn't work, pulling the plug will solve all problems.
The big new thing here is the playing of iTunes videos: I still remember how pissed off I was when I discovered that there was no way of streaming the Battlestar Galactica episode I bought from iTunes down to the TV in the living room. I was not about to make my wife and her mother crowd around a computer monitor to watch it. Since, last I checked, VLC won't play iTunes protected videos, using it as a bridge to stream content wouldn't work (if there's a way around that, I'm all ears!). Well, that'll teach you, then.
Go and pay iTunes for its stuff if it gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, and then download it via bittorrent, so you have a clean copy that you can actually use.
But darling! Why would anyone bother buying consumer electronics from any other brand?
That's clearly the market Bang & Olufsen aim at, and as long as they keep up fairly well with technologies their customers (their core market, repeat customers, at least) have no need to buy any other brand. People who buy a 50" Bang & Olufsen telly won't generally go out a Phillips HD-DVD player just because it's a few quid cheaper - they buy B&O for the whole style and "experience" (B&O probably use words like "lifestyle" and "enhancing" in their brochures) and so integration with other B&O products is the only important thing.
Stroller.
Well dear, I may not be in their core customer base, then. I have two of their products, mainly because I like my gear to either look good or be hidden. Hiding a TV set is rather counter productive, so I spent double the price on getting a good looking one.
The fact I still like to look at it 8 years later and it hasn't faded in image quality pleases me. A lot. The saying about the pleasure staying while the money spent is forgotten is true for me on this one.
However, they seem to be late with new technologies - I checked with them when I wanted a network music player, and I bought a Squeezebox. I checked with them when I wanted a portable mp3 player and bought an Ipod. I checked with them when I wanted a hard drive recorder and I have a mythtv setup. I always found their 6 CD tower spectacular - but, come on, what's 6 CD's when I have my entire collection on a 120GB drive? They like to handle media, sort of as tokens for the art on it. I can see that it makes for more spectacular design, but it's just not the way I want it to be done.
Re:Panasonic say: Buy Our TVs Film At 11.
on
Plasma or LCD?
·
· Score: 1
The Beo4 can control non-B&O gear, it just takes an IR receiver/blaster to do it, and you have to teach the Beo4 which commands to send.
The reason you need an IR receiver/blaster is that B&O uses a 455khz carrier frequency for their IR and most other manufacturers use 36, 38 or 56khz.
It's no worse than buying a normal universal remote control and teaching it, really. Could you elaborate a bit - haven't found IR receiver/blaster combination in their catalogue. What's possible - could I grab signals to switch lights and similar, too?
A link would be nice.
Re:Panasonic say: Buy Our TVs Film At 11.
on
Plasma or LCD?
·
· Score: 1
The image calibration and automatic adjustments ("Adaptive Black", contrast adjustments according to ambient light, image filtering and smoothing of analog inputs on LCDs and plasmas etc.) are very nicely done as well. You really don't notice the adjustments working until you really look for it, since it's so smoothly and non-intrusively implemented. Bang & Olufsen have long been known for having some of the very best and most consistent image quality.
I'm an owner of a seven year old B&O CRT and that's a major point: very good and consistent image (and the sound with it). Not degrading over time. Looking at new LCD's in stores, I don't see a reason to change.
Also, the integration between products of various kinds is second to none. The Beo4 remote controls every single Bang & Olufsen product from the last 25 years or so, and everything including lighting and curtains can be controlled using a single remote.
Yes, except that remote can control nothing but BO gear, and integration with non BO equipment is non existant.
...what the problem is with technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce?
Hunger and malnutrition is purely a distribution problem. People starve because it's more profitable not to feed them. GE crops will not change that one iota.
That aside, GE crops are purely designed to make money. Look at Monsanto's history in respecting people and decide if you'd like to give them control on your food.
Being locked in is still bad - even if you really like the food at your prison.
The day Apple decides to change their business model, or to tweak what they allow you to do is the day you'll notice.
I own an iPod nano, which stayed virgin for about half an hour after buying it - it never had a single song uploaded and played with Apple's software. I run rockbox on it and have freedom to use it as I see fit.
I find myself to check Linux availability for my stuff, too.
But the reasons tend to be more pragmatic: I can have the features I want by having a free system. My wireless router runs Linux because that allows me to use the network topology that works best for my setup. Not the one the manufacturer thought was the best compromise.
My Ipod runs not linux, but an open source firmware (rockbox), because that allows it to do gapless playback, and I can tailor the display so it's actually usable in a car.
My Mediaplayers run Linux because that way they can integrate nicely with the Mythtv server sitting in the basement.
The 'runs linux' badges simply says the device can do whatever the hardware is capable of and the user wants it to do. It will not miss functionality because the manufacturer thought it's not worth it or didn't want to cannibalise more expensive gear, and it will not lose functionality over time due to firmware 'upgrades' that block stuff.
Often just turns out to be the better buy, in the long run...
Dude, stop being a fucktard, and get with the program. If the lack of gapless playback pisses you off enough to avoid getting an iPod, you seriously need to get laid and stop being such a goddamn nerd.
I am, and I won't. It's part of my appeal:-)
The iPod's main advantage is that its user interface was designed by people who use a music player, not nerds who worry about playing.ogg and gapless playback and other stupid bullshit and ignore the obvious such as USABILITY.
My God... it has to have play, skip and volume up/down. For listening to music, that should mostly cover my needs.
The database does many useful things, which you would only know about and appreciate if you OWNED a fucking ipod. Things like weighted playlists, volume normalization, per-song EQ settings that integrate with iTunes, support for many different playlists, song ratings, metadata, and what have you.
Funny, my music listening seems to be different than yours.
I mostly listen to full albums in the order the artists intended them to be listened to, and to podcasts. Simple straightforward playlists do it for me. Podcasts get downloaded to a computer, playlists automatically generated and fed into slimserver for listening at home. The same setup will feed the iPod. All nicely automated with an elevated WAF.
Anyway, I don't mean to troll,
Hardly noticeable;->
just don't like people who diss iPods without ever having used one, just because they don't have some semi-useless, unnecessary feature. The iPod is a nearly-perfect music player already. It doesn't need gapless playback,.ogg support, an FM tuner, or any other gimmicks.
So, what does it need, then, according to you? For my intended usage profile, I can see Rockbox improving the Ipod. I enjoy having the choice.
Please name something that is a "Feature" not available on the iPod.
Gap less playback. Just can't live without it when listening to live recordings.
It's the one big thing that kept me from buying an Ipod, but I've ordered a Nano now.
And, I like the fact Rockbox seems to cope nicely with keeping one's music organized in folders - without any internal database. Makes it nicer to use the device on multiple computers, and actually use it as mass storage when you prefer listening to your tunes on a computer.
I use three of them as my Mythtv frontends using http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/. Low energy consumption, boots Linux over the LAN from my Mythtv server and supports slimserver's protocol for listening to music.
You don't need to adjust it because it'll get its time by radio from an atomic clock. You don't need to change batteries because it takes a quarter of an hour of sunlight to run for a day. It's close to indestructible because of its ceramic housing and scratch resistant glass. All of these great features without screaming to the world what a nerd you are - what more could you want?
Now, I've got to admit, I love how it changes seconds exactly the same instant than all my NTP-synchronised computers. But I'm weird...
the most you're probably going to get is one a year; you really don't need everything to be completely streamlined.
Apple plans to sell considerably more than one a year, so they may be very pleased with everything being completely streamlined.
Obviously I haven't read the article, but I wonder how good an emailed receipt is - will my spam filter trash it, can I use it to declare theft with my insurance company etc.
I'm spending my days helping people getting their transactions and processes optimized with the help of computer systems, so I admire this concept. But there's the old saying about paperless offices making about as much sense as paperless toilets...
Can't do that. The idea of a raid 5 is that one partition is allowed to fail without data loss. Soon as you put 2 partitions onto the same drive, losing that drive will make your raid fail.
If you don't care about that, easiest is to forget about the raid and go with LVM directly on the drives.
Thanks for the lead. I started with 40GB as 'ideal' size because it'll fit best into my disc sizes. I realized that even a 2 drive raid is ok, because it can still work - the more partitions, the better, though.
I put 3 4-drive partitions at 120GB each, 1 3-drive partition at 80, and a 2-drive partition at 40, with 50 left. Gets me 480GB usable out of 730.
I could even scale down to 20GB partitions - not to optimize usage, but to allow for smaller partitions which will help in extending/moving to another drive.
Now let's find out if Debian can boot from this setup...
Bear with me - I'm still recollecting parts of my just exploded brain:-)
I can see you wouldn't want to extend a degraded raid though. OTOH, if one knows that one can reconfigure it later, no trouble just replacing the disk and then rework one partition after the other, at one's leisure.
What I'm trying to work out right now is this: I read the total size of a raid is (number of drives -1)*size of smallest drive. Right now there's 4 drives in that computer - 120, 160, 200 and 250GB. By slicing them up to partitions and taking one partition of each drive into a raid, I'd get the same size than doing a single raid over all drives - a maximum of 3*120=360GB. Losing over half my current diskspace for redundancy. But, a raid 5 needs only 3 disks, not 4. So I'm thinking about how many raids I need to span in what combination on those disks to get close to the 547.5 GB that were possible if all my drives where the same size.
I'm thinking about rebuilding my home server which mainly is a mythtv backend. Currently using LVM to get bigger partitions than I have drives (my tv partition is at 480GB right now) and was thinking about RAIDing them for added security, but was put off by the fact you can't easily extend a raid.
I'll follow your tip, but will probably add boot and swap partitions to every drive. Not because it's needed on every drive, just to keep the setup consistent over all drives.
Couple questions, probably related to my missing experience about raids:
This will work with those newfangled extended partitions, right? Didn't use those since the days we dual booted DOS and OS/2.
If a drive dies, essentially the 10 raids will go on degraded and once I pop in a new drive, I can go and rebuild them with the LVM rather uninterested in the whole process. However, what happens if the new drive is bigger than the old one? Can I extend the raids while rebuilding them, or do I have to rebuild and then extend one after the other? How does that work?
A raid can span ATA as well as SATA drives, right?
Can't speak for all of Europe, but most places I've seen electrical installations get 3 phases of 240 with a common ground. Allows for a nice 400V, typically with 40 Amp or 64 Amp breakers in houses.
Slashdot Mirror
Mmmh.
I have 500MB a month (for which I pay 10EUR), and am usually getting along fine with it. That includes surfing, emailing, the odd app and video during train rides. I could upgrade to 2GB for 20EUR, but I don't see a need for that right now.
This is pretty much exactly what's in every Prius. Little electric motor driving the sun wheel, IIRC in my 2nd gen Prius it's a 9kW motor doing up to 10000rpm in both directions. Transitions from forward to backward speed seemlessly.
Very cool tech, but hardly new.
It ain't really necessary unless you go to seriously deep temperature. If your usage profile includes -12 C (conversion for those of us having no clue about Fahrenheits), proper oil with the right viscosity will be 'there' within half a minute, tops. From then on, light load is way better to heat up the engine than letting it idle for an eternity. It's quite some air pollution, too.
Now, if you're going -30 or so on a semi-regular basis, I'd suggest a block heater or a propper fuel based heating system. Those will actually prewarm the engine.
I seriously hope someone is fired or loses a contract over this.
It seems a silly idea to fire somebody just after having invested $(whatever_this_snafu_is_supposed_to_have_cost) into his education.
So, what better is a time shifting ad skipping viewer than no viewer at all to NBC? They seem to gamble that more people will watch their shows life than are pissed off by this move.
Have that happen to the country the GP refers to for about one year, and its population will have doubled.
Where's the point in watch DVD's accelerated? I mean, either you respect the work of art that it is and you watch it at the speed intended - or if it's not a work of art, it's a waste of your time anyway.
After all, unless you're a movie critic, nobody forces you to watch them...
Frankly, the MVP is probably one of the safest devices to fiddle around with: it boots its software over the net and - so you can try out whatever you want and if you don't like it or it doesn't work, pulling the plug will solve all problems.
The big new thing here is the playing of iTunes videos: I still remember how pissed off I was when I discovered that there was no way of streaming the Battlestar Galactica episode I bought from iTunes down to the TV in the living room. I was not about to make my wife and her mother crowd around a computer monitor to watch it. Since, last I checked, VLC won't play iTunes protected videos, using it as a bridge to stream content wouldn't work (if there's a way around that, I'm all ears!). Well, that'll teach you, then.
Go and pay iTunes for its stuff if it gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, and then download it via bittorrent, so you have a clean copy that you can actually use.
That's clearly the market Bang & Olufsen aim at, and as long as they keep up fairly well with technologies their customers (their core market, repeat customers, at least) have no need to buy any other brand. People who buy a 50" Bang & Olufsen telly won't generally go out a Phillips HD-DVD player just because it's a few quid cheaper - they buy B&O for the whole style and "experience" (B&O probably use words like "lifestyle" and "enhancing" in their brochures) and so integration with other B&O products is the only important thing.
Stroller.
Well dear, I may not be in their core customer base, then. I have two of their products, mainly because I like my gear to either look good or be hidden. Hiding a TV set is rather counter productive, so I spent double the price on getting a good looking one.The fact I still like to look at it 8 years later and it hasn't faded in image quality pleases me. A lot. The saying about the pleasure staying while the money spent is forgotten is true for me on this one.
However, they seem to be late with new technologies - I checked with them when I wanted a network music player, and I bought a Squeezebox. I checked with them when I wanted a portable mp3 player and bought an Ipod. I checked with them when I wanted a hard drive recorder and I have a mythtv setup. I always found their 6 CD tower spectacular - but, come on, what's 6 CD's when I have my entire collection on a 120GB drive? They like to handle media, sort of as tokens for the art on it. I can see that it makes for more spectacular design, but it's just not the way I want it to be done.
The reason you need an IR receiver/blaster is that B&O uses a 455khz carrier frequency for their IR and most other manufacturers use 36, 38 or 56khz.
It's no worse than buying a normal universal remote control and teaching it, really. Could you elaborate a bit - haven't found IR receiver/blaster combination in their catalogue. What's possible - could I grab signals to switch lights and similar, too?
A link would be nice.
The image calibration and automatic adjustments ("Adaptive Black", contrast adjustments according to ambient light, image filtering and smoothing of analog inputs on LCDs and plasmas etc.) are very nicely done as well. You really don't notice the adjustments working until you really look for it, since it's so smoothly and non-intrusively implemented. Bang & Olufsen have long been known for having some of the very best and most consistent image quality.
I'm an owner of a seven year old B&O CRT and that's a major point: very good and consistent image (and the sound with it). Not degrading over time. Looking at new LCD's in stores, I don't see a reason to change.
Also, the integration between products of various kinds is second to none. The Beo4 remote controls every single Bang & Olufsen product from the last 25 years or so, and everything including lighting and curtains can be controlled using a single remote.
Yes, except that remote can control nothing but BO gear, and integration with non BO equipment is non existant.
Hunger and malnutrition is purely a distribution problem. People starve because it's more profitable not to feed them. GE crops will not change that one iota.
That aside, GE crops are purely designed to make money. Look at Monsanto's history in respecting people and decide if you'd like to give them control on your food.
Being locked in is still bad - even if you really like the food at your prison.
The day Apple decides to change their business model, or to tweak what they allow you to do is the day you'll notice.
I own an iPod nano, which stayed virgin for about half an hour after buying it - it never had a single song uploaded and played with Apple's software. I run rockbox on it and have freedom to use it as I see fit.
I find myself to check Linux availability for my stuff, too. But the reasons tend to be more pragmatic: I can have the features I want by having a free system. My wireless router runs Linux because that allows me to use the network topology that works best for my setup. Not the one the manufacturer thought was the best compromise. My Ipod runs not linux, but an open source firmware (rockbox), because that allows it to do gapless playback, and I can tailor the display so it's actually usable in a car. My Mediaplayers run Linux because that way they can integrate nicely with the Mythtv server sitting in the basement. The 'runs linux' badges simply says the device can do whatever the hardware is capable of and the user wants it to do. It will not miss functionality because the manufacturer thought it's not worth it or didn't want to cannibalise more expensive gear, and it will not lose functionality over time due to firmware 'upgrades' that block stuff. Often just turns out to be the better buy, in the long run...
I am, and I won't. It's part of my appeal :-)
The iPod's main advantage is that its user interface was designed by people who use a music player, not nerds who worry about playingMy God... it has to have play, skip and volume up/down. For listening to music, that should mostly cover my needs.
The database does many useful things, which you would only know about and appreciate if you OWNED a fucking ipod. Things like weighted playlists, volume normalization, per-song EQ settings that integrate with iTunes, support for many different playlists, song ratings, metadata, and what have you.Funny, my music listening seems to be different than yours.
I mostly listen to full albums in the order the artists intended them to be listened to, and to podcasts. Simple straightforward playlists do it for me. Podcasts get downloaded to a computer, playlists automatically generated and fed into slimserver for listening at home. The same setup will feed the iPod. All nicely automated with an elevated WAF.
Anyway, I don't mean to troll,Hardly noticeable ;->
just don't like people who diss iPods without ever having used one, just because they don't have some semi-useless, unnecessary feature. The iPod is a nearly-perfect music player already. It doesn't need gapless playback,So, what does it need, then, according to you? For my intended usage profile, I can see Rockbox improving the Ipod. I enjoy having the choice.
Gap less playback. Just can't live without it when listening to live recordings.
It's the one big thing that kept me from buying an Ipod, but I've ordered a Nano now.
And, I like the fact Rockbox seems to cope nicely with keeping one's music organized in folders - without any internal database. Makes it nicer to use the device on multiple computers, and actually use it as mass storage when you prefer listening to your tunes on a computer.
Hauppauge's MediaMVP.
I use three of them as my Mythtv frontends using http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/. Low energy consumption, boots Linux over the LAN from my Mythtv server and supports slimserver's protocol for listening to music.
You don't need to adjust it because it'll get its time by radio from an atomic clock.
You don't need to change batteries because it takes a quarter of an hour of sunlight to run for a day.
It's close to indestructible because of its ceramic housing and scratch resistant glass.
All of these great features without screaming to the world what a nerd you are - what more could you want?
Now, I've got to admit, I love how it changes seconds exactly the same instant than all my NTP-synchronised computers. But I'm weird...
Apple plans to sell considerably more than one a year, so they may be very pleased with everything being completely streamlined.
Obviously I haven't read the article, but I wonder how good an emailed receipt is - will my spam filter trash it, can I use it to declare theft with my insurance company etc.
I'm spending my days helping people getting their transactions and processes optimized with the help of computer systems, so I admire this concept. But there's the old saying about paperless offices making about as much sense as paperless toilets...
Can't do that. The idea of a raid 5 is that one partition is allowed to fail without data loss. Soon as you put 2 partitions onto the same drive, losing that drive will make your raid fail.
If you don't care about that, easiest is to forget about the raid and go with LVM directly on the drives.
Thanks for the lead. I started with 40GB as 'ideal' size because it'll fit best into my disc sizes. I realized that even a 2 drive raid is ok, because it can still work - the more partitions, the better, though.
I put 3 4-drive partitions at 120GB each, 1 3-drive partition at 80, and a 2-drive partition at 40, with 50 left. Gets me 480GB usable out of 730.
I could even scale down to 20GB partitions - not to optimize usage, but to allow for smaller partitions which will help in extending/moving to another drive.
Now let's find out if Debian can boot from this setup...
Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.
Bear with me - I'm still recollecting parts of my just exploded brain :-)
I can see you wouldn't want to extend a degraded raid though. OTOH, if one knows that one can reconfigure it later, no trouble just replacing the disk and then rework one partition after the other, at one's leisure.
What I'm trying to work out right now is this: I read the total size of a raid is (number of drives -1)*size of smallest drive. Right now there's 4 drives in that computer - 120, 160, 200 and 250GB. By slicing them up to partitions and taking one partition of each drive into a raid, I'd get the same size than doing a single raid over all drives - a maximum of 3*120=360GB. Losing over half my current diskspace for redundancy. But, a raid 5 needs only 3 disks, not 4. So I'm thinking about how many raids I need to span in what combination on those disks to get close to the 547.5 GB that were possible if all my drives where the same size.
This is a great idea.
I'm thinking about rebuilding my home server which mainly is a mythtv backend. Currently using LVM to get bigger partitions than I have drives (my tv partition is at 480GB right now) and was thinking about RAIDing them for added security, but was put off by the fact you can't easily extend a raid.
I'll follow your tip, but will probably add boot and swap partitions to every drive. Not because it's needed on every drive, just to keep the setup consistent over all drives.
Couple questions, probably related to my missing experience about raids:
It's a very cool approach, definitely.
Can't speak for all of Europe, but most places I've seen electrical installations get 3 phases of 240 with a common ground. Allows for a nice 400V, typically with 40 Amp or 64 Amp breakers in houses.