Your cable company will likely not allow you to purchase and run one of these on their system.
It's illegal to own your own cable box in most states. Plus, there's probably some magic switch that has to be flipped at the cable company for these things to be activated.
It will not take long before someone breaks it, but I would suggest avoiding participating in such ventures.
Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law. If you are leasing a cable box from the cable company, you are fined a huge bill if they catch you modifying their hardware. If you don't pay up, they'll take your arse to court or mess up your credit rating. Trust me, I know someone (guess who!) who's been through that mess over wanting free HBO.
On a side note, these boxes will have traps in place that will detect if something has been changed. Also, there will be break-away prongs that you can't put back in place once you take the box apart. So even if you get around their copy protection, you still get a rectal modification when they take the box back when you move or change cable providers (or get wise and go with satellite).
I know I sound like a broken record here, since I seem to say this in any entertainment related post, but go with satellite if you are going to do anything sneaky. You get to purchase your own equipment and the only thing that'll tell on you is the modem in the reciever. Luckily, you are not required to use the modem unless you want to access PPV.
Remember, all modern cable systems that can carry HDTV signals are advanced enough to communicate bi-directionally with the cable company. You do anything sneaky and they'll know.
Oh yes, that's what we were talking about!
Yeah, there's no catching those people and it's possible that you are going to get whacked by your ISP for letting other's into your network.
I had a firewall of mine get owned on a cable modem years ago. It was a very sad week as I was trying to explain that it wasn't me who owned some web server who was hacked via my bsd box.
I know it's not wifi, but the same thing could arise and the responsibilities of the end user to secure his own network still applies.
Nothing like a laptop and a 802.11 card on a boring afternoon.
It's for spam investigations and tracking individual user statistics.
How else would you be able to determine how much utilization is on your servers? Not just an overall, but which groups are used and how often? This sort of thing is very important since you don't want to go deleting whatever new, high traffic, warez newsgroup your customers may be enjoying.
Without that type of information, an admin who only follows the playstation2 might think the xbox groups are not being used by his customers enough to replicate the feed anymore. He'll then delete the group from the servers and have 700-800 users really pissed off. With user statistics assembled from logs, he'll know clearly that the demand for the group is high enough with his local users to keep it.
Also, if you are a software publisher and someone uploaded a software application you spent the last 4 years working on to alt.binaries.warez.whatever and you want to locate the person to file a suit against them. You'd be completely powerless without some kind of data trail in place.
An ISP isn't going to give out this type of information willy-nilly. You have to remember, Porn and Warez are a large part of what fuels the demand for broadband. Anyone who says otherwise is a mis-informed fool. They will protect users as much as possible without putting themselves in a position where they look ignorant or irrisponsible.
I recall a statistic in a meeting with a news administrator in 1996 where he had a printout of various statistics on the usenet server. Images and media in pornography groups out numbered all unrated material 800-to-1. If warez newsgroups alone were removed from the service, the company would save approxamately $11 million dollars in upgrades for the year since traffic and server utilization would drop by a factor of 20.
I hope the above clears up any paranoia about your ISP digging up something nasty and coming after you for it. They won't. They'd like to keep getting your $$$ as long as you don't draw any attention to yourself from outside entities.
Negative on it being a government scare tactic. You obviously don't see the big picture. The government is a minor concern. There is no specific law that I know of that says "You MUST log everything!" but there is this thing called the civil court system.
It does not require a law for a customer or other ISP to take you to court and sue you for a large sum of money for not being responsible with your data.
For instance, you want to cancel a user's account for abuse of your news servers. Well, you cancel their account without NNTP logs and you will have your butt served to you in court.
Another example would be a user giving his account information out to 15 other people, but not wanting to be billed for the concurrent logins (phone lines cost money!). You can't really do much without clear evidence before reprimanding or removing the user from your service.
Finally, say you need FBI assistance because someone is signing up for multiple accounts with stolen credit cards for the purpose of spamming or other devious activities. It makes investigators happy when you can produce dates, times, phone numbers, mail records, etc.
You need to wake up and think more like an american here. Our society is absolutely litigation crazy. I can't stress how much you need everything you can to avoid lawsuits these days. Remember, lawsuits have little to do with the law and more about the representation and amount of valid information you can divulge. Terms of Service and disclaimers are merely deterents, but may or may not hold up to a good attorney representing a client when it comes time to defend yourself.
Also, when it comes time to investigate a user and work with federal agencies you have to keep in mind that the scarey FBI people that you deal with are not as technically inclined as your average sysadmin or information security professional. If they were, they would be doing our jobs since they pay better. I've been asked by someone from the local technology crime branch if I was hiring. Trust me, they aren't the badasses you see in the movies. They are typically 35-45 year old men who have underpaid jobs and too many cases that go nowhere due to the lack of information or misinformation from people filing complaints.
The feds will also take forever to investigate if you don't have all this information I outlined. They might even say something is inconclusive or not worth their time if all this data is not there. One of the common things you hear in hacking/infosec related matters, the FBI doesn't want to be involved unless there is at least $20k worth of damages involved.
When it comes to technology issues, you can not roll over and expect the government to help you out. You have to help them help you. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure.
Also, copping an attitude about such a thing is silly. The most common use of data collected by an ISP is used to shut down spammers and DoS monkies. How do you suppose they are going to do this without any information? You can't have your cake and eat it too, especially when you consider everything you do on the 'net involves someone else's hardware.
On a final note, the FBI doesn't typically start a case. It typically requires a civillian or company to approach them with a concern or accusation before the wheels get turning.
I hope this educates you on the matter, as rambling as my grammar is this morning.:)
I used to work for a major ISP and had a security/abuse role.
About 95% of our customers were on dynamic IP dial-up accounts. If we were contacted to locate a user who was using a specific IP at a specific time, it would take all of 3 minutes to identify the user, duration of login, newsgroups accessed, pop3 mail access, phone number they dialed in from, and any other transactions that produced a line in the radius logs.
We are talking about a simple grep here, not a big search requiring many man hours like you guys make it seem. Sure, the logs are huge, but computers are fast these days.
These logs would archive on a raid array and be accessible for 90-120 days. After that, it would require a tape restore to locate them. Either way, it takes no time at all. There was usually a 365 day log attached to the user's billing information that kept track of time connected, access numbers utilized, etc for billing dispute purposes (ie. "I didn't use your services for 150 hours two months ago and I want my money back" BS people would try and pull).
Small ISPs have more trouble with this? Lord no, they have less users, thus logging requires less resources. I'd hate for my fellow geeks on here to think it actually requires a bunch of work to log properly, you should know this if you've ever been any type of admin. tsk tsk.
ISPs have to log this sort of thing for the sake of liability. If the FBI shows up wanting information about a users and you consistantly have no information for them, eventually they will hold you responsible for your user's crimes. That's how it works here in the states.
Yes, Kodak, and the image quality will be worse with analog cable?? Instead of artifacts, you get static and no digital audio.
Digital cable is also compressed. The artifacts will be the same there, too. God help you if someone in your area has bad wiring in their home and it screws with everyone's signal on the ring.
When I speak of the benefits of digital satellite, I speak of the overall value. You can't beat it with land line services currently.
Also, if artifacts are terrible, you may want to check signal strengths on your tuner. I purchased a 28" dish and better LNB (~70 bucks), which got me up to 99% signal. This was a noticable difference from the 84-90% I was getting before with the stock 18" dish.. Remember, any signal loss results in lost information thus more artifacts.
In the Southeastern US, cable prices are much higher than satellite charges. The difference at my current location for the same service is about $12.50 a month. That covers my UTV bill and half a premium channel (which doesn't get discounted nearly as well with cable services).
Plus, who wants to rely on that 20 year old wire? I had cable service a few years ago that was out easilly 20% of the time. If my DTV goes down now, it's something I can fix because, well, I own the receiver and the dish and can go give it an adjustment or replace a part. With cable, you are stuck waiting on some dumb redneck to come visit 2 weeks after reporting the problem to tell you there's a problem somewhere on the local ring (9 miles) and they can't find it. Plus, in most states you can't own your own receiver. lame. SCREW THAT. I am not paying for such BS!:)
Re:This device doesn't impress me.
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New Linux PVR Box
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· Score: 1
The connections here don't make a lot of sense to me. Yes, Open Source is the correct path. But, paying $900 for an open source solution is not the way to go when you can get a $35 device that does almost the same thing, well does all the 'expensive' features this does.
Scroll down a few responses and you see where someone quotes from the manual that you can't even record while watching. That's ludicrous, my $35 UTV unit has dual tuners and can record two shows at once while you watch another pre-recorded program. Plus, if you are watching a program and say, the woman comes home, you can hit record and it'll record from the beginning of the episode (assuming you tuned in at or before it's start) for her. Basically, they developed a proprietary device that does much more in the interest of making money off it for a few years before Open Source people duplicate the work legally. I'll help fund the popularity of current technology whislt looking forward to my superior open source solution when it actually arrives.
I won't go around touting that anything open source is better than anything closed when it's not. Not all great works come from the community. Most great works appear to begin with an individual idea, adopted by corporations, then oss developers work slowly to reproduce the work over time. Geeze, just look at Linux and how user friendly it'd be for grandma to setup for dial-up Internet access. It's no even as basic as setting up Windows 3.11 yet, thus could be argued as being 10+ years behind in the 'user friendly' department. How long has the OSS community been talking/coding/arguing over how to make Linux with a graphical interface simple enough for the masses? I've been following it since 94 and it seems we've made it as far as covering up shell scripted installations with a GUI. wooo.
I know the justification of any Open Source solution will always get a +5 kamra, which is sad in the fact that pushing Open Source is good all the time, just not good when it costs ten times as much as does less.
Instead of supporting these over-priced soltutions, support the Freevo and other free solutions.
This is much like saying "I'll pay any sum of money to see the source, however menial the technology is". I'm sorry but I don't care about the code in a set top box, nor the code in my automobile's computer system. I just want the thing to do what it was advertised to do, and I do trust a company like UTV to take care of it. I do, on the other hand, care about code that concerns my income (ie, servers I administer for a living).
I guess what I am trying to say is, that, well.. I have enough code to worry about to deal with, or care about, the code in every device in my home. It becomes a waste of time after a while.
Also comes the issue of this being a small company selling the hack jobs. What happens if you buy one, then need some support for it and they are gone? It's much more likely with a rinky dink linux company than a huge company. I'd prefer my support to be "Hey, my box quit working! Can we RMA this one and send me another ASAP?" than "Hello, yes, Okay. I'm in bash now. Ok, what processes should I kill/start? Hmm. This sure feels a lot like I'm at work, but dealing with someone else's mess. Are you sure you can't just send me another box? I really want to record Farscape next thursday..:("
This device doesn't impress me.
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New Linux PVR Box
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· Score: 3, Insightful
For starters, I bought a Ultimate TV unit for DirecTV for about $35 after all the rebates. I know you anti-capitalists want 'freedom' to use digital recorders to record staticy broadcast or analog cable.. Yeah, you do that. I'll live in the 2000's, thank you very much. Any digital satellite service is superior to any cable or broadcast network on the planet in regards to quality, quality, and price. Want to argue about that? Ok. Fine. You have reality issues.
Secondly, You could build a AMD K7 box, get a lian li mini ATX case (the new pancake fits in with AV components really well), 100 gig drive, ATI all in wonder pro, DVD, and a good sound card for less than this box -- but have greater performance. Plus you'll have access to all the great PC applications and HDTV outputs ($35 dongle required).
You could also get a used Xbox and a mod chip for 1/5th the price of this thing and get most of the functionality with Xbox Media Player. It also supports HDTV..
I'd suggest not getting excited and feeding the hype for these over-priced hacks. There's just no excuse to spend 900 bucks on something that doesn't do anything ground-breaking.
$220/mo? Let's see a link where DirecTV states that's the average.
Also, get it? DirecTivo? Of course it's for DirecTV. You can get a basic Tivo that does not require satellite service.
The benefit of getting a combo set that is designed for satellite is the image quality. You aren't going to get the same quality out of stand alone PVRs since there's an additional conversion on the signal to analog.
I use Microsoft's UltimateTV service. It was the best deal at the time, considering it was the only unit on the market with dual tuners. Sadly, a telephone repair man destroyed the modem in it while doing work on my phone lines a few months ago. No more PPV.:(
UltimateTV, even though it's M$, has no embedded ads. It's also not uncommon to power it up and have new features added with software updates.
I'm not sure how your RPG is any different. It's simply a different skin on a model. RPGs tend to be quite bloody and violent and would be a target of this sort of thing. They also deal with forbidden religons and magic. That sort of thing gets old people's panties all in a bunch.
Keep in mind that you are also comparing fictional characters in a game to real people. The cops in GTA aren't real. When you are playing that game, you are still a geek with a joystick in his hand, not a gun slinging madman. Same goes with your RPG. When you are chopping up Orcs in gorey detail, you are getting the same high someone else gets off a shooter. People who play these games are not going to associate a cop in a video game with real cops because, well, it's a bloody damned game.
Freedom = Me playing the games I like; you playing the games you like.
Not Freedom = You playing RPG's and chopping Orcs to bits; Me being bored and not playing games anymore because all the ones I liked were banned.
I had the same problem. Sprint has terrible coverage in Atlanta. I held on to them for 3 years and wish I had switched sooner.
AT&T, amazingly enough, has excellent coverage from midtown all the way out to rural areas. It's not 100%, but it'll do.
Atlanta is a bad example of a good wireless town. If you ever look at a detailed topology of the terrain around the metro area, you'll find that it would take an engineering marvel to achieve 100% coverage with such stumpy cell towers.
That's about the most pointless thing I've read all week.
Ok, so if I put 1000 80 gig tapes in a large box and Delta-dash them from Atlanta to LA it'll get there quicker than sending the information over an Internet connection.
How could someone not know that? It's the most basic common sense. I guess I deserve a good modding down on this one. It's just so obvious of a thing that I can't NOT say something.
" I'd like to use it at video rental places and CD stores to get product reviews. "
You browse aimlessly around video and CD stores? That's so 80's. Your best bet would be to read reviews at home, in the comfort of your desk and without distraction. Then, go to the store and pick the items up. Sometimes you can even check inventory before leaving your house. You could even take the low-tek approach and call them to see if the items are in stock.. If you ask nicely, they may have your merchandise waiting at the counter for you.
Plus, who wants to stand around in a store digging through a bunch of user reviews? Sounds like a waste of time. The retail establishment wouldn't do much to participate, as they prefer to control your shopping experience while on their premises.
Technology like this is just about getting the "whoa!" out of people. Then it fades away with the excuse "the market wasn't ready yet".
My point is, shopping is already easy enough of an experience. In the era of being able to get a car, Russian submarine, or house online, I just don't see it happening.
Re:Know why Linux will fail on the desktop?
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Linux on the Desktop
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· Score: 1
No kidding.
This whole spiel reminds me of a sorority house sponsored study on the positive health benefits of binge drinking.
I'm all about Linux, but positive CNN and Fox News articles are what gets the general public curious. Not this sort of thing.
Are you people idiots?
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SARS Contained
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Oh dear God, the people posting messages stating that SARS was over-hyped and nothing serious are really, really looking like twits.
First off, if the 'media hype' had not taken place, countries would have not been pressured to take measures (by scared civilians) to control it. Thus, SARS would have spread to a MUCH larger percentage of the population. 10% deathrate doesn't sound like revelations or anything, but think of your elderly parents and grand parents. They would likely have a very tough time. Remember, the 10% if overall. That can mean 19-35 year olds have a 3% chance of death, but elderly could have something like 85-90% since their immune systems can't cope.
Secondly, scientists still don't understand the virus. Wouldn't you like to give them a little extra time to come to grips with how it works and what gets rid of it before you talk out of your ass about how it's not serious?
Third, this is a virus. Not a bacterial infection. It's quite likely this will become a recurring disease. You take drugs to help fight it, most gets killed off, some mutates, goes to sleep for a few months, then re-infects with the mutated virus; then is likely harder to battle.
Finally, did you people who think it's not serious bother to read about the condition of SARS patients who have recovered? Didn't think so. They may have survived, but most have permanent scarring in their lungs. You want that to happen to you and your family? Want to have to wait and wonder, dreading the next 'season'? What if it comes back? You might not be able to survive a second infection since your lungs are still damaged from the first one.
I don't mean to sound offensive, but what sort of idiot wants to take chances? It really bothers me that 'geeks' would feel this way, considering we are supposed to be some of the smarter ones. Guess I was wrong...
First off, call me flaimbait -- but this article is not news and doesn't matter. How many years have people been using PC's as a PVR? Even myself, not even really a geek, running Windows 98, was doing this 3.5 years ago. The system was great, P2 400, DVD drive, TV out/Capture card, 2x 10 gig hard drives. At the time, I didn't think it was that big of a deal, hell ATI has been writing software to convert a PC into a PVR for how long? Hey, and it's free if you buy an 'All in Wonder' series card. I guess I should have wrote a lame web page about it so I could get/.'d.:)
Once I moved up to satellite, my little video box was rendered useless except for doing manual recording. The image quality of captures off compressed digital sources also didn't look as nice as analog cable captures did since the video is being converted/compressed/encoded an extra time..
Then a friend let me use his Tivo for a few days.. This was pretty much the same, digital broadcasts looked too grainy when played back through the Tivo. Plus, it couldn't do anything to tune the satellite without spending money. You can say in nerd talk "THAT IMAGE IS A-OK" but when you are using a 36" (or greater) tv, the flaws in compression become more noticable, especially in action scenes.
So, after giving back the Tivo I decided to try out M$'s Ultimate TV unit for DirecTV. All I can say is "wow!". Picked it up for $129 and it came with $150 of mail-in rebates. Sure, it's only 30 hours, but:
a) the image quality of recorded programs is great since it captures and records the actual compressed signal as decoded by the tuner. This gives you the benefit of compression without the additional quality loss by taking the compressed content, converting it to analog, sending it over to be captured digital again, recompressed, etc.
b) pause live tv
c) purchase an upcoming PPV event and have it record automatically with about 5 key presses on the remote
d) $9/mo instead of $12/mo, plus there are no retarded banner ads, popups, program suggestions, etc. It just does what I tell it to do, nothing else.
e) 5 hours/mo free internet access (wheeeeeeee!)
f) UTV has dual DTV tuners (requires a dual LNB on the dish and two cables to the unit), thus can record two programs at once, record one program and watch another, etc. I know this doesn't sound like much, but the first time you find yourself in the situation of having
Nerd factor is low on Ultimate TV units, since they are bound to DirecTV and have no means to upgrade the drive or attach it to a network. Mind you, I get more features and don't ever have to deal with stupid popups (like tivo owners deal with).
Along with the lower nerd factor of the UTV unit, I think you'll have a better chance of getting laid than the average Tivo owner. More often than not, I've noticed Tivo owner's homes tend to have a funny sour milk smell, full ashtrays, and never seem to change the kitty litter. P U
Anyway, I'm so happy with the darned thing. If you need a PVR the whole family can use, I'd suggest this box. You might have to get one off ebay, though, I am not sure if they are still being manufactured.
One comment on the nerd that built his PVR for $400+ to record 2 shows: You could have saved yourself a wad of cash just to download the shows off Usenet. A perl script + cron would have saved you some $$$..
Much love,
Victor
Yeah, Spielberg sucks for that. Mind you, the audience he is writing for is, typically, about the age range of the 'kid who knows all'.
Just as war movies with lots of violence usually have a male actor, 20-35 years old, who's character has gun handling abilities and wit that would stop a train. It's all about target audience.
So unless you are a small child that knows all, I doubt you would dig the 'kid who knows all' genre of characters.
It was obvious in Taken, they wrote this for a diverse audience. It's simple enough for a child to understand, enough drama and emotion for the soccer moms, lots of military stuff for the guys, good special effects for the geeks, etc.
At least it wasn't AI. Without the expensive special effects, I think this would have best been a straight-to-dvd/ppv release. It probably would have best been a NC17 release considering the mother/robot son relationship going on there. Quite perverse.
So why don't they block me from calling questionable 900 numbers, too? It's great they are looking out for me, but they can do so much more to protect me. How about blocking me from calling criminals and politicians, too?
I feel so much safer being looked out for by my cell provider. You guys rule.
"Users can page through two books at once, or take handwritten notes in a notebook on one screen while paging through a book on the other screen.' Sounds pretty cool!"
Hey dude,
Try raising your screen resolution to something higher than 640x480 so you won't have to run applications maximized (you know, when they take up the whole screen). Now that you can see the icons on your desktop, go ahead and open up another program. Ok, now either use alt-tab to switch between them or click it's name on that little bar at the bottom of your screen.
See, no need to get excited about that over-priced, would have been trendy in 1998, doodle book. You can do all those things on your current PC! HOOYA!
What's far fetched about his story? Over 90% of the time a gun is pulled on someone it's not reported to the police. Typically, if the gun is fired, then it's likely the police will find out.
Regardless, don't assume just because someone had to go to an extreme to defend themself, that they are telling lies.
Slashdot Mirror
Your cable company will likely not allow you to purchase and run one of these on their system. It's illegal to own your own cable box in most states. Plus, there's probably some magic switch that has to be flipped at the cable company for these things to be activated.
It will not take long before someone breaks it, but I would suggest avoiding participating in such ventures.
Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law. If you are leasing a cable box from the cable company, you are fined a huge bill if they catch you modifying their hardware. If you don't pay up, they'll take your arse to court or mess up your credit rating. Trust me, I know someone (guess who!) who's been through that mess over wanting free HBO.
On a side note, these boxes will have traps in place that will detect if something has been changed. Also, there will be break-away prongs that you can't put back in place once you take the box apart. So even if you get around their copy protection, you still get a rectal modification when they take the box back when you move or change cable providers (or get wise and go with satellite).
I know I sound like a broken record here, since I seem to say this in any entertainment related post, but go with satellite if you are going to do anything sneaky. You get to purchase your own equipment and the only thing that'll tell on you is the modem in the reciever. Luckily, you are not required to use the modem unless you want to access PPV.
Remember, all modern cable systems that can carry HDTV signals are advanced enough to communicate bi-directionally with the cable company. You do anything sneaky and they'll know.
Oh yes, that's what we were talking about! Yeah, there's no catching those people and it's possible that you are going to get whacked by your ISP for letting other's into your network. I had a firewall of mine get owned on a cable modem years ago. It was a very sad week as I was trying to explain that it wasn't me who owned some web server who was hacked via my bsd box. I know it's not wifi, but the same thing could arise and the responsibilities of the end user to secure his own network still applies. Nothing like a laptop and a 802.11 card on a boring afternoon.
It's for spam investigations and tracking individual user statistics.
:)
How else would you be able to determine how much utilization is on your servers? Not just an overall, but which groups are used and how often? This sort of thing is very important since you don't want to go deleting whatever new, high traffic, warez newsgroup your customers may be enjoying.
Without that type of information, an admin who only follows the playstation2 might think the xbox groups are not being used by his customers enough to replicate the feed anymore. He'll then delete the group from the servers and have 700-800 users really pissed off. With user statistics assembled from logs, he'll know clearly that the demand for the group is high enough with his local users to keep it.
Also, if you are a software publisher and someone uploaded a software application you spent the last 4 years working on to alt.binaries.warez.whatever and you want to locate the person to file a suit against them. You'd be completely powerless without some kind of data trail in place.
An ISP isn't going to give out this type of information willy-nilly. You have to remember, Porn and Warez are a large part of what fuels the demand for broadband. Anyone who says otherwise is a mis-informed fool. They will protect users as much as possible without putting themselves in a position where they look ignorant or irrisponsible.
I recall a statistic in a meeting with a news administrator in 1996 where he had a printout of various statistics on the usenet server. Images and media in pornography groups out numbered all unrated material 800-to-1. If warez newsgroups alone were removed from the service, the company would save approxamately $11 million dollars in upgrades for the year since traffic and server utilization would drop by a factor of 20.
I hope the above clears up any paranoia about your ISP digging up something nasty and coming after you for it. They won't. They'd like to keep getting your $$$ as long as you don't draw any attention to yourself from outside entities.
Another rambling reply of mine. Enjoy
Sorry djiin, I clicked on the wrong reply link and it looks like I was responding to you in my previous post. I concur with your statement. :)
Tj,
:)
Negative on it being a government scare tactic. You obviously don't see the big picture. The government is a minor concern. There is no specific law that I know of that says "You MUST log everything!" but there is this thing called the civil court system.
It does not require a law for a customer or other ISP to take you to court and sue you for a large sum of money for not being responsible with your data.
For instance, you want to cancel a user's account for abuse of your news servers. Well, you cancel their account without NNTP logs and you will have your butt served to you in court.
Another example would be a user giving his account information out to 15 other people, but not wanting to be billed for the concurrent logins (phone lines cost money!). You can't really do much without clear evidence before reprimanding or removing the user from your service.
Finally, say you need FBI assistance because someone is signing up for multiple accounts with stolen credit cards for the purpose of spamming or other devious activities. It makes investigators happy when you can produce dates, times, phone numbers, mail records, etc.
You need to wake up and think more like an american here. Our society is absolutely litigation crazy. I can't stress how much you need everything you can to avoid lawsuits these days. Remember, lawsuits have little to do with the law and more about the representation and amount of valid information you can divulge. Terms of Service and disclaimers are merely deterents, but may or may not hold up to a good attorney representing a client when it comes time to defend yourself.
Also, when it comes time to investigate a user and work with federal agencies you have to keep in mind that the scarey FBI people that you deal with are not as technically inclined as your average sysadmin or information security professional. If they were, they would be doing our jobs since they pay better. I've been asked by someone from the local technology crime branch if I was hiring. Trust me, they aren't the badasses you see in the movies. They are typically 35-45 year old men who have underpaid jobs and too many cases that go nowhere due to the lack of information or misinformation from people filing complaints.
The feds will also take forever to investigate if you don't have all this information I outlined. They might even say something is inconclusive or not worth their time if all this data is not there. One of the common things you hear in hacking/infosec related matters, the FBI doesn't want to be involved unless there is at least $20k worth of damages involved.
When it comes to technology issues, you can not roll over and expect the government to help you out. You have to help them help you. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure.
Also, copping an attitude about such a thing is silly. The most common use of data collected by an ISP is used to shut down spammers and DoS monkies. How do you suppose they are going to do this without any information? You can't have your cake and eat it too, especially when you consider everything you do on the 'net involves someone else's hardware.
On a final note, the FBI doesn't typically start a case. It typically requires a civillian or company to approach them with a concern or accusation before the wheels get turning.
I hope this educates you on the matter, as rambling as my grammar is this morning.
vic
I used to work for a major ISP and had a security/abuse role.
About 95% of our customers were on dynamic IP dial-up accounts. If we were contacted to locate a user who was using a specific IP at a specific time, it would take all of 3 minutes to identify the user, duration of login, newsgroups accessed, pop3 mail access, phone number they dialed in from, and any other transactions that produced a line in the radius logs.
We are talking about a simple grep here, not a big search requiring many man hours like you guys make it seem. Sure, the logs are huge, but computers are fast these days.
These logs would archive on a raid array and be accessible for 90-120 days. After that, it would require a tape restore to locate them. Either way, it takes no time at all. There was usually a 365 day log attached to the user's billing information that kept track of time connected, access numbers utilized, etc for billing dispute purposes (ie. "I didn't use your services for 150 hours two months ago and I want my money back" BS people would try and pull).
Small ISPs have more trouble with this? Lord no, they have less users, thus logging requires less resources. I'd hate for my fellow geeks on here to think it actually requires a bunch of work to log properly, you should know this if you've ever been any type of admin. tsk tsk.
ISPs have to log this sort of thing for the sake of liability. If the FBI shows up wanting information about a users and you consistantly have no information for them, eventually they will hold you responsible for your user's crimes. That's how it works here in the states.
Yes, Kodak, and the image quality will be worse with analog cable?? Instead of artifacts, you get static and no digital audio.
:)
Digital cable is also compressed. The artifacts will be the same there, too. God help you if someone in your area has bad wiring in their home and it screws with everyone's signal on the ring.
When I speak of the benefits of digital satellite, I speak of the overall value. You can't beat it with land line services currently.
Also, if artifacts are terrible, you may want to check signal strengths on your tuner. I purchased a 28" dish and better LNB (~70 bucks), which got me up to 99% signal. This was a noticable difference from the 84-90% I was getting before with the stock 18" dish.. Remember, any signal loss results in lost information thus more artifacts.
In the Southeastern US, cable prices are much higher than satellite charges. The difference at my current location for the same service is about $12.50 a month. That covers my UTV bill and half a premium channel (which doesn't get discounted nearly as well with cable services).
Plus, who wants to rely on that 20 year old wire? I had cable service a few years ago that was out easilly 20% of the time. If my DTV goes down now, it's something I can fix because, well, I own the receiver and the dish and can go give it an adjustment or replace a part. With cable, you are stuck waiting on some dumb redneck to come visit 2 weeks after reporting the problem to tell you there's a problem somewhere on the local ring (9 miles) and they can't find it. Plus, in most states you can't own your own receiver. lame. SCREW THAT. I am not paying for such BS!
The connections here don't make a lot of sense to me. Yes, Open Source is the correct path. But, paying $900 for an open source solution is not the way to go when you can get a $35 device that does almost the same thing, well does all the 'expensive' features this does.
:("
Scroll down a few responses and you see where someone quotes from the manual that you can't even record while watching. That's ludicrous, my $35 UTV unit has dual tuners and can record two shows at once while you watch another pre-recorded program. Plus, if you are watching a program and say, the woman comes home, you can hit record and it'll record from the beginning of the episode (assuming you tuned in at or before it's start) for her. Basically, they developed a proprietary device that does much more in the interest of making money off it for a few years before Open Source people duplicate the work legally. I'll help fund the popularity of current technology whislt looking forward to my superior open source solution when it actually arrives.
I won't go around touting that anything open source is better than anything closed when it's not. Not all great works come from the community. Most great works appear to begin with an individual idea, adopted by corporations, then oss developers work slowly to reproduce the work over time. Geeze, just look at Linux and how user friendly it'd be for grandma to setup for dial-up Internet access. It's no even as basic as setting up Windows 3.11 yet, thus could be argued as being 10+ years behind in the 'user friendly' department. How long has the OSS community been talking/coding/arguing over how to make Linux with a graphical interface simple enough for the masses? I've been following it since 94 and it seems we've made it as far as covering up shell scripted installations with a GUI. wooo.
I know the justification of any Open Source solution will always get a +5 kamra, which is sad in the fact that pushing Open Source is good all the time, just not good when it costs ten times as much as does less.
Instead of supporting these over-priced soltutions, support the Freevo and other free solutions.
This is much like saying "I'll pay any sum of money to see the source, however menial the technology is". I'm sorry but I don't care about the code in a set top box, nor the code in my automobile's computer system. I just want the thing to do what it was advertised to do, and I do trust a company like UTV to take care of it. I do, on the other hand, care about code that concerns my income (ie, servers I administer for a living).
I guess what I am trying to say is, that, well.. I have enough code to worry about to deal with, or care about, the code in every device in my home. It becomes a waste of time after a while.
Also comes the issue of this being a small company selling the hack jobs. What happens if you buy one, then need some support for it and they are gone? It's much more likely with a rinky dink linux company than a huge company. I'd prefer my support to be "Hey, my box quit working! Can we RMA this one and send me another ASAP?" than "Hello, yes, Okay. I'm in bash now. Ok, what processes should I kill/start? Hmm. This sure feels a lot like I'm at work, but dealing with someone else's mess. Are you sure you can't just send me another box? I really want to record Farscape next thursday..
For starters, I bought a Ultimate TV unit for DirecTV for about $35 after all the rebates. I know you anti-capitalists want 'freedom' to use digital recorders to record staticy broadcast or analog cable.. Yeah, you do that. I'll live in the 2000's, thank you very much. Any digital satellite service is superior to any cable or broadcast network on the planet in regards to quality, quality, and price. Want to argue about that? Ok. Fine. You have reality issues.
Secondly, You could build a AMD K7 box, get a lian li mini ATX case (the new pancake fits in with AV components really well), 100 gig drive, ATI all in wonder pro, DVD, and a good sound card for less than this box -- but have greater performance. Plus you'll have access to all the great PC applications and HDTV outputs ($35 dongle required).
You could also get a used Xbox and a mod chip for 1/5th the price of this thing and get most of the functionality with Xbox Media Player. It also supports HDTV..
I'd suggest not getting excited and feeding the hype for these over-priced hacks. There's just no excuse to spend 900 bucks on something that doesn't do anything ground-breaking.
$220/mo? Let's see a link where DirecTV states that's the average.
:(
Also, get it? DirecTivo? Of course it's for DirecTV. You can get a basic Tivo that does not require satellite service.
The benefit of getting a combo set that is designed for satellite is the image quality. You aren't going to get the same quality out of stand alone PVRs since there's an additional conversion on the signal to analog.
I use Microsoft's UltimateTV service. It was the best deal at the time, considering it was the only unit on the market with dual tuners. Sadly, a telephone repair man destroyed the modem in it while doing work on my phone lines a few months ago. No more PPV.
UltimateTV, even though it's M$, has no embedded ads. It's also not uncommon to power it up and have new features added with software updates.
"I have mixed feelings about this."
I'm not sure how your RPG is any different. It's simply a different skin on a model. RPGs tend to be quite bloody and violent and would be a target of this sort of thing. They also deal with forbidden religons and magic. That sort of thing gets old people's panties all in a bunch.
Keep in mind that you are also comparing fictional characters in a game to real people. The cops in GTA aren't real. When you are playing that game, you are still a geek with a joystick in his hand, not a gun slinging madman. Same goes with your RPG. When you are chopping up Orcs in gorey detail, you are getting the same high someone else gets off a shooter. People who play these games are not going to associate a cop in a video game with real cops because, well, it's a bloody damned game.
Freedom = Me playing the games I like; you playing the games you like.
Not Freedom = You playing RPG's and chopping Orcs to bits; Me being bored and not playing games anymore because all the ones I liked were banned.
I had the same problem. Sprint has terrible coverage in Atlanta. I held on to them for 3 years and wish I had switched sooner.
AT&T, amazingly enough, has excellent coverage from midtown all the way out to rural areas. It's not 100%, but it'll do.
Atlanta is a bad example of a good wireless town. If you ever look at a detailed topology of the terrain around the metro area, you'll find that it would take an engineering marvel to achieve 100% coverage with such stumpy cell towers.
That's about the most pointless thing I've read all week.
Ok, so if I put 1000 80 gig tapes in a large box and Delta-dash them from Atlanta to LA it'll get there quicker than sending the information over an Internet connection.
How could someone not know that? It's the most basic common sense. I guess I deserve a good modding down on this one. It's just so obvious of a thing that I can't NOT say something.
" I'd like to use it at video rental places and CD stores to get product reviews. "
You browse aimlessly around video and CD stores? That's so 80's. Your best bet would be to read reviews at home, in the comfort of your desk and without distraction. Then, go to the store and pick the items up. Sometimes you can even check inventory before leaving your house. You could even take the low-tek approach and call them to see if the items are in stock.. If you ask nicely, they may have your merchandise waiting at the counter for you.
Plus, who wants to stand around in a store digging through a bunch of user reviews? Sounds like a waste of time. The retail establishment wouldn't do much to participate, as they prefer to control your shopping experience while on their premises.
Technology like this is just about getting the "whoa!" out of people. Then it fades away with the excuse "the market wasn't ready yet".
My point is, shopping is already easy enough of an experience. In the era of being able to get a car, Russian submarine, or house online, I just don't see it happening.
No kidding.
This whole spiel reminds me of a sorority house sponsored study on the positive health benefits of binge drinking.
I'm all about Linux, but positive CNN and Fox News articles are what gets the general public curious. Not this sort of thing.
Oh dear God, the people posting messages stating that SARS was over-hyped and nothing serious are really, really looking like twits.
First off, if the 'media hype' had not taken place, countries would have not been pressured to take measures (by scared civilians) to control it. Thus, SARS would have spread to a MUCH larger percentage of the population. 10% deathrate doesn't sound like revelations or anything, but think of your elderly parents and grand parents. They would likely have a very tough time. Remember, the 10% if overall. That can mean 19-35 year olds have a 3% chance of death, but elderly could have something like 85-90% since their immune systems can't cope.
Secondly, scientists still don't understand the virus. Wouldn't you like to give them a little extra time to come to grips with how it works and what gets rid of it before you talk out of your ass about how it's not serious?
Third, this is a virus. Not a bacterial infection. It's quite likely this will become a recurring disease. You take drugs to help fight it, most gets killed off, some mutates, goes to sleep for a few months, then re-infects with the mutated virus; then is likely harder to battle.
Finally, did you people who think it's not serious bother to read about the condition of SARS patients who have recovered? Didn't think so. They may have survived, but most have permanent scarring in their lungs. You want that to happen to you and your family? Want to have to wait and wonder, dreading the next 'season'? What if it comes back? You might not be able to survive a second infection since your lungs are still damaged from the first one.
I don't mean to sound offensive, but what sort of idiot wants to take chances? It really bothers me that 'geeks' would feel this way, considering we are supposed to be some of the smarter ones. Guess I was wrong...
First off, call me flaimbait -- but this article is not news and doesn't matter. How many years have people been using PC's as a PVR? Even myself, not even really a geek, running Windows 98, was doing this 3.5 years ago. The system was great, P2 400, DVD drive, TV out/Capture card, 2x 10 gig hard drives. At the time, I didn't think it was that big of a deal, hell ATI has been writing software to convert a PC into a PVR for how long? Hey, and it's free if you buy an 'All in Wonder' series card. I guess I should have wrote a lame web page about it so I could get /.'d. :)
Once I moved up to satellite, my little video box was rendered useless except for doing manual recording. The image quality of captures off compressed digital sources also didn't look as nice as analog cable captures did since the video is being converted/compressed/encoded an extra time..
Then a friend let me use his Tivo for a few days.. This was pretty much the same, digital broadcasts looked too grainy when played back through the Tivo. Plus, it couldn't do anything to tune the satellite without spending money. You can say in nerd talk "THAT IMAGE IS A-OK" but when you are using a 36" (or greater) tv, the flaws in compression become more noticable, especially in action scenes.
So, after giving back the Tivo I decided to try out M$'s Ultimate TV unit for DirecTV. All I can say is "wow!". Picked it up for $129 and it came with $150 of mail-in rebates. Sure, it's only 30 hours, but:
a) the image quality of recorded programs is great since it captures and records the actual compressed signal as decoded by the tuner. This gives you the benefit of compression without the additional quality loss by taking the compressed content, converting it to analog, sending it over to be captured digital again, recompressed, etc.
b) pause live tv
c) purchase an upcoming PPV event and have it record automatically with about 5 key presses on the remote
d) $9/mo instead of $12/mo, plus there are no retarded banner ads, popups, program suggestions, etc. It just does what I tell it to do, nothing else.
e) 5 hours/mo free internet access (wheeeeeeee!)
f) UTV has dual DTV tuners (requires a dual LNB on the dish and two cables to the unit), thus can record two programs at once, record one program and watch another, etc. I know this doesn't sound like much, but the first time you find yourself in the situation of having
Nerd factor is low on Ultimate TV units, since they are bound to DirecTV and have no means to upgrade the drive or attach it to a network. Mind you, I get more features and don't ever have to deal with stupid popups (like tivo owners deal with).
Along with the lower nerd factor of the UTV unit, I think you'll have a better chance of getting laid than the average Tivo owner. More often than not, I've noticed Tivo owner's homes tend to have a funny sour milk smell, full ashtrays, and never seem to change the kitty litter. P U
Anyway, I'm so happy with the darned thing. If you need a PVR the whole family can use, I'd suggest this box. You might have to get one off ebay, though, I am not sure if they are still being manufactured.
One comment on the nerd that built his PVR for $400+ to record 2 shows: You could have saved yourself a wad of cash just to download the shows off Usenet. A perl script + cron would have saved you some $$$..
Much love,
Victor
Yeah, Spielberg sucks for that. Mind you, the audience he is writing for is, typically, about the age range of the 'kid who knows all'.
Just as war movies with lots of violence usually have a male actor, 20-35 years old, who's character has gun handling abilities and wit that would stop a train. It's all about target audience.
So unless you are a small child that knows all, I doubt you would dig the 'kid who knows all' genre of characters.
It was obvious in Taken, they wrote this for a diverse audience. It's simple enough for a child to understand, enough drama and emotion for the soccer moms, lots of military stuff for the guys, good special effects for the geeks, etc.
At least it wasn't AI. Without the expensive special effects, I think this would have best been a straight-to-dvd/ppv release. It probably would have best been a NC17 release considering the mother/robot son relationship going on there. Quite perverse.
So why don't they block me from calling questionable 900 numbers, too? It's great they are looking out for me, but they can do so much more to protect me. How about blocking me from calling criminals and politicians, too?
I feel so much safer being looked out for by my cell provider. You guys rule.
Victor
"Users can page through two books at once, or take handwritten notes in a notebook on one screen while paging through a book on the other screen.' Sounds pretty cool!"
Hey dude,
Try raising your screen resolution to something higher than 640x480 so you won't have to run applications maximized (you know, when they take up the whole screen). Now that you can see the icons on your desktop, go ahead and open up another program. Ok, now either use alt-tab to switch between them or click it's name on that little bar at the bottom of your screen.
See, no need to get excited about that over-priced, would have been trendy in 1998, doodle book. You can do all those things on your current PC! HOOYA!
Victor
What? Did you meet your girlfriend on IRC, too? Victor
"I just got off a NC to CA call placed from behind a firewall and the quality rocked."
What does a firewall have to do with the quality of the VoIP call?
Let me guess.. the gerbils make more of a whirring sound when the traffic passes the firewall, typically reducing the quality of audio streams.
Victor
What's far fetched about his story? Over 90% of the time a gun is pulled on someone it's not reported to the police. Typically, if the gun is fired, then it's likely the police will find out.
Regardless, don't assume just because someone had to go to an extreme to defend themself, that they are telling lies.
Regards,
Victor
Proper english aside, I think anyone who reads my post understands the point.
Grow some gonads and quit posting anonymous. It looks like you are up to something.
Regards,
Victor