Skip trying to hack yourself a tape drive interface, and try to find yourself an ATR8000.
The ATR8000 is a interace box that I used to have on my 800XL. Had drive controllers, ran CP/M, lots of neat stuff. Find an old 8" or 5.25" floppy drive, plug it in, and go, cause the damn thing ran just about any tape drive you could find. On top of which, it will give you the ability to learn a little CP/M if you're so inclined.
I remember, when my dad first picked it up, playing DOnkey Kong Jr., from 8" floppies, on the ATR. It was pretty cool:)
The problem with "putting together...one that actually does what we all know a PVR should do" is that what we all know they should do runs afoul of groups like Hollywood and MPAA/RIAA. If I had my say, a PVR would do:
Multiple guide setups. Me, Wife, Kids, all channels, Movie channels, sport channels. At least 8 customizable guides, and easily switchable without having to dig through the menus. DishPVR had this part right.
Season Pass type recording. Scan the guide, pattern match the show titles, and record all of those. Tivo has this right, but I like the feature where they pop the Thumbs Up button on commercials that it recognizez, and offers to Season Pass a show directly from the commercial.
Time skip. I don't care if it's 30 seconds, or 15 seconds, or 2 minutes, but I miss this feature the most from DishPVR.
Dump recordings to (Insert device here). Tivo will control yout VCR to archive stuff onto. What would be really nice is if it would use the serial port to connect to your computer, and burn to DVD or VCD from the video feed. According to the Tivo specs I've seen, there's at least 1 unused TTY port in the V2 boxes, so you wouldn't even have to give up your TTY/DSS link to do this. Or for that matter....
DVD-RW. If not as a built-in, then as an external accessory. I don't care if I can play back on the DVD, but DVD's are getting to the point that they are like VCR's....many many people have one. Let me dump video directly to DVD.
Multiple guide formats. Tivo's extended view per channel is OK, but Dish/Replay's full-grid is, too. It's not like 60 gig HD's are that expensive, and how much code does it really take to program bothformats in and make them selectable?
Ethernet. It took too damn long for Tivo to get it, and DishPVR doesn't have Ether at all. While we're at it, WTF do I still have to use a phoneline to set up PPV movies? Put a damn Ether jack on the DSS boxes so I can connect to your billing servers directly and order the movie without having to run a phone line through my attic and into the living room.
"Hackable". So you only sell models with 20G hard drives, make the tools to do drive upgrades the right way available. I can put a new hard drive in my computer without voiding the warranty, why can't I do the same thing in other devices that use mass storage.
The V4 software for Tivo supports the USB Ethernet cards. The one I just bought was V3 software, so I had a phone cord running across the house for 3 or 4 days until it got the V4 download.
And I bought a Replay over Tivo, just because of their stand against the Media companies...but the product just doesn't compare. Changing channels is ass-slow, there's no multi-user guide/preference setup, nothign other than the cool sharing feature, which is likely going away.
Go for the Tivo, you'll be ahppier.
Buy a digital camera now. Learn to use it. We bought a CoolPix 2500 the month before the baby got here. 2MP, about $180, images up to 1600x1200, flawless reprints up to about 8x10. Buy 2 additional memory cards for it, too. We have a 128M card, and it holds 273 pictures at 1600x1200, high-quality mode. Drop it to 1280x1024, and it jumps to over 500. You can probably get away with 64M cards for a 2MP camera.
Photo Printer. Epson Stylus is nice, but the color cartridge is one cart for all 6 colors. Just get one that prints photo-quality. Go to Besy Buy or something and hit all the demo buttons. Then, when Grandma visits, you can take a picture of her and the baby, pull it off the camera, and print it right there before she leaves.
Find a hosting site to put Gallery or something on. Figure out the best way to get your pictures from your camera into it with the least fuss, realizing you will have no more than about an hour at a time in the first 3 months to work on the pictures.
Buy a decent photo program. Not Photoshop or a professional graphics program, but an actual digital photography editor/organizer. I have Roxio PhotoSomethingSomething, was about 40-50 bucks at CompUSA. Does all the red-eye, organizing, etc etc. Does PhotoMosaics. Does printer layouts, where you select a page of, say, "2 3x5, 4 wallet", then drag pictures onto the page, and create a single page of pictures to print. You don't have to have the $100 versions of, say, Adobe Photo Elements or stuff, but don't skimp and buy the $14.99 "WalMart Photo Editing Program with Free Cheese".
That may be, but then you end up with someone who isn't you, who has your pin code, and is getting money from your account...
Why, you must have given it to them! Because the systems are secure, right?
He said/she said blah blah.
And I have to second this one. Rather than opening a script to take shell commands, this actually runs an interactive shell, with login and everything, completely tunnelled over HTTP, which is a problem for people who are stuck behind a very-hard firewall at a remote site (read - most people's work locations).
As many of the people have already commented, your responses are going to break down into one of two types:
Tech people: WTF, I don't do business process crap
Managment people: Six Sigma is a useful tool
The question is, what exactly are you hoping to make use of 6S for? Six Sigma is a methodology for analyzing business processes - customer interactions, process flow, things like that. It's not a process for developing programs or websites or business tasks.
The majority of the audience here on/. probably does not (judging from comments already posted) does not know the difference between "business processes" and "business tasks". Tasks should be done in the manner which is most effective. However, the framework around those tasks is something that can be analyzed and improved...
You don't apply Six Sigma to your coders, you apply it to the process by which the business comes up with requirements and specifications, which are then handed off to Project managers, who work with the developers and endusers to come up with the product.
You don't apply Six Sigma to the people in your call center, you apply it to the process by which they answer calls, then collect and present the data the customer needs, then handles the call themselves, or hands off the call to an area which has more expertice
You don't apply Six Sigma to website development, you apply it to the process of having testers or endusers use the site to perform tasks that the site is designed to handle, then give feedback to the developers, who fix the site.
If you are an end-of-the-line technician/programmer/coder/etc/etc/etc, then Six Sigma will not necessarily be of help for you. Six Sigma will not help your company with the people that do the business. However, if your position gives you access to be a project manager, or department leader, or something sith some kind of management level overview, where you can influence the way various groups work with each other, then you will find the methodologies helpful.
It's not reinventing the wheel - doing what they want in Nuke would require a bunch of patching to the Nuke storycode.
Nuke lets you post stories and present them in a logical Slash-type layout. In fact, I'm almost sure it was "inspired" by old Slash. What they have created is something of a hybrid between a Content Management System, and a Workflow Management System, which I imagine lets stories pass through the various departments in the back-end befiore finally hitting the "publish" stage and going into the portal front-end.
Nuke will not fill the need for what they have created - not without essentially rewriting it, in which case, they did the right thing in starting over and not adding all the other crap that Nuke does that a "Newspaper Portal" wouldn't need.
You give up some of your freedom of speech almost every time you enter into an employment agreement, a contract of some sort, or any other number of legally binding arrangements. To be so blind as to that fact to say "you can't have a little bit freedom of speech" (sic) is to judge everything you come in contact with as either good or bad, white or black.
You work for a company? In return for their employing you, I suspect part of your employment contract prevents you from discussing company policies or secrets that you may have access to. Don't like that? Find another job.
Beta testing that new MMORPG? There's a clause in that agreement that you not disclose any information about the game until such-and-such time, after the beta has been finished.
And of course, there's the whole libel and slander issue. Your right to free speech does not carry over into a right to say whatever you want without repercussions.
In your pull-quote up there, Farr is right - there is a balance between free speech and total repression that should be reached; to preserve your right to speech, and your employer's right to their trade secrets, and your co-workers' rights to be free of libelous writings.
Unless their 3G network expands outside their normal cell network, Sprint's coverage is also pretty crap, unless you live on an interstate, or a large city.
You're the network and hardware administrator. You don't support Windows. Regardless of whether you know Win or not, the company that pays your salary does so in order to keep you maintaining the Mac network, not some secretary's WinXP box so she can use ICQ or whatever.
The computers aren't there for their convenience and entertainment, they are there so that they can do the work they are paid to do. Since you're running over 100 of these systems, I'm making a fairly safe assumption that everything that needs done in day-to-day business can be done on the Macs that the company provides?
There is no reason to introduce unsupported hardware and software into your environment. Maybe the handful of people should be made aware that if Windows boxes were to come into play, they'd have to fund a new employee to manage those computers, which would drop $100K or so from the anual budget; that's a lot of company-expenses dinners and parties that won't happen, jsut so they can play Age of Empires or whatever while they're working.
Remember, Emacs is a front-end text editor over a LISP interpreter. Personally, I'd vote more for EMACS itself written in an AI language than solving a recursive logic problem in a text editor shell over an AI engine.
I have to second this - the facilities crew here has these things ALL OVER the place - in fact, they have had planter boxes built that snap right on the top of the cube walls In the 2 months I've been here, they've watered them like 4 times, and I've pulled about 10 yellowing leaves off of 2 large planter boxes full of plant.
And Xerox and other brands of photocopiers are often used to make copies of books. Some of those copies even get handed out in classrooms for student use, in violation of the original copyright of the source material. So since Xerox machines can be used to break copyright, we should ban them!
And don't even get me started on VCRs. I mean, can you believe people record TV programs, then give those copies to their friends?!?!?! It's criminal, I tell you. Once VCRs are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCRs. And Xerox machines.
Oh, and don't pay any attention to those photocopies of the tables from my HTML, Perl, MySQL, and other reference books so that I can have everything in a single binder. And those tapes on my VCR of last week's Enterprise episode? Don't touch them, they're going on EBay to the highest bidder. Oh, and all those songs in my Rio? Yeah, they're from my personal CD collection, just like the remixed CD's I put together for when I work out in the yard or at the Gym, from before I had my Rio. Send in the MPAA and RIAA, but be warned, I copied directions out of a book at the library about how to make a bomb, and tapes an episode of Junkyard Wars that had the inspiration for my delivery vehicle, so I'm ready for them.
The problem, mister Karmic Limb, is that they're editing out existing copyright information, and replacing it with theirs. No one has said "We don't want them using our code", the complaint is that the original authors are not being given credit for the work. This is where the GPL violation is...
Volumes 1, 2, and 3. One, in particular, teaches you everything you need to know about networking protocols. Everything is broken out at the tcpdump level, and his demo network is well illustrated, so you can see how everything talks.
Practically, ATI should just get out of the graphics market. Or at the very least, stop trying to push standards, and write decent drivers.
The big deal isn't that the language is the end-all-be-all of graphics implementation languages, but that it's from a company with a history of being OpenSource-friendly, that has provided (albeit in binary not code form) drivers to OPen Source OS's, and has some of the best home graphics hardware out there.
So maybe it's not a perfect language. But it will be fixed, and we who run Open Source will buy more NVidia cards to support the effort.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a copy of MyDOS, it was what every disk we owned booted off of :)
Skip trying to hack yourself a tape drive interface, and try to find yourself an ATR8000.
The ATR8000 is a interace box that I used to have on my 800XL. Had drive controllers, ran CP/M, lots of neat stuff. Find an old 8" or 5.25" floppy drive, plug it in, and go, cause the damn thing ran just about any tape drive you could find. On top of which, it will give you the ability to learn a little CP/M if you're so inclined.
I remember, when my dad first picked it up, playing DOnkey Kong Jr., from 8" floppies, on the ATR. It was pretty cool :)
And the problem here is......what?
The problem with "putting together...one that actually does what we all know a PVR should do" is that what we all know they should do runs afoul of groups like Hollywood and MPAA/RIAA. If I had my say, a PVR would do:
The V4 software for Tivo supports the USB Ethernet cards. The one I just bought was V3 software, so I had a phone cord running across the house for 3 or 4 days until it got the V4 download. And I bought a Replay over Tivo, just because of their stand against the Media companies...but the product just doesn't compare. Changing channels is ass-slow, there's no multi-user guide/preference setup, nothign other than the cool sharing feature, which is likely going away. Go for the Tivo, you'll be ahppier.
Buy a digital camera now. Learn to use it. We bought a CoolPix 2500 the month before the baby got here. 2MP, about $180, images up to 1600x1200, flawless reprints up to about 8x10. Buy 2 additional memory cards for it, too. We have a 128M card, and it holds 273 pictures at 1600x1200, high-quality mode. Drop it to 1280x1024, and it jumps to over 500. You can probably get away with 64M cards for a 2MP camera. Photo Printer. Epson Stylus is nice, but the color cartridge is one cart for all 6 colors. Just get one that prints photo-quality. Go to Besy Buy or something and hit all the demo buttons. Then, when Grandma visits, you can take a picture of her and the baby, pull it off the camera, and print it right there before she leaves. Find a hosting site to put Gallery or something on. Figure out the best way to get your pictures from your camera into it with the least fuss, realizing you will have no more than about an hour at a time in the first 3 months to work on the pictures. Buy a decent photo program. Not Photoshop or a professional graphics program, but an actual digital photography editor/organizer. I have Roxio PhotoSomethingSomething, was about 40-50 bucks at CompUSA. Does all the red-eye, organizing, etc etc. Does PhotoMosaics. Does printer layouts, where you select a page of, say, "2 3x5, 4 wallet", then drag pictures onto the page, and create a single page of pictures to print. You don't have to have the $100 versions of, say, Adobe Photo Elements or stuff, but don't skimp and buy the $14.99 "WalMart Photo Editing Program with Free Cheese".
And I answer my own question... :)
http://www.warp2search.net/article.php?sid=11377
Anyone have this patch hosted somewhere?
That may be, but then you end up with someone who isn't you, who has your pin code, and is getting money from your account... Why, you must have given it to them! Because the systems are secure, right? He said/she said blah blah.
http://www.shellinabox.com
And I have to second this one. Rather than opening a script to take shell commands, this actually runs an interactive shell, with login and everything, completely tunnelled over HTTP, which is a problem for people who are stuck behind a very-hard firewall at a remote site (read - most people's work locations).
As many of the people have already commented, your responses are going to break down into one of two types:
The question is, what exactly are you hoping to make use of 6S for? Six Sigma is a methodology for analyzing business processes - customer interactions, process flow, things like that. It's not a process for developing programs or websites or business tasks.
The majority of the audience here on /. probably does not (judging from comments already posted) does not know the difference between "business processes" and "business tasks". Tasks should be done in the manner which is most effective. However, the framework around those tasks is something that can be analyzed and improved...
If you are an end-of-the-line technician/programmer/coder/etc/etc/etc, then Six Sigma will not necessarily be of help for you. Six Sigma will not help your company with the people that do the business. However, if your position gives you access to be a project manager, or department leader, or something sith some kind of management level overview, where you can influence the way various groups work with each other, then you will find the methodologies helpful.
It's not reinventing the wheel - doing what they want in Nuke would require a bunch of patching to the Nuke storycode.
Nuke lets you post stories and present them in a logical Slash-type layout. In fact, I'm almost sure it was "inspired" by old Slash. What they have created is something of a hybrid between a Content Management System, and a Workflow Management System, which I imagine lets stories pass through the various departments in the back-end befiore finally hitting the "publish" stage and going into the portal front-end.
Nuke will not fill the need for what they have created - not without essentially rewriting it, in which case, they did the right thing in starting over and not adding all the other crap that Nuke does that a "Newspaper Portal" wouldn't need.
Reloaded and Revolutions are sequels to Matrix 1.
The next 2 that come out will be the prequels.
So, the lineup looks like:
Prequel 1
Prequel 2
The Matrix
Matrix Reloaded
Matris Revolutions
You give up some of your freedom of speech almost every time you enter into an employment agreement, a contract of some sort, or any other number of legally binding arrangements. To be so blind as to that fact to say "you can't have a little bit freedom of speech" (sic) is to judge everything you come in contact with as either good or bad, white or black.
You work for a company? In return for their employing you, I suspect part of your employment contract prevents you from discussing company policies or secrets that you may have access to. Don't like that? Find another job.
Beta testing that new MMORPG? There's a clause in that agreement that you not disclose any information about the game until such-and-such time, after the beta has been finished.
And of course, there's the whole libel and slander issue. Your right to free speech does not carry over into a right to say whatever you want without repercussions.
In your pull-quote up there, Farr is right - there is a balance between free speech and total repression that should be reached; to preserve your right to speech, and your employer's right to their trade secrets, and your co-workers' rights to be free of libelous writings.
Free speech != unrestricted speech
Unless their 3G network expands outside their normal cell network, Sprint's coverage is also pretty crap, unless you live on an interstate, or a large city.
You're the network and hardware administrator. You don't support Windows. Regardless of whether you know Win or not, the company that pays your salary does so in order to keep you maintaining the Mac network, not some secretary's WinXP box so she can use ICQ or whatever.
The computers aren't there for their convenience and entertainment, they are there so that they can do the work they are paid to do. Since you're running over 100 of these systems, I'm making a fairly safe assumption that everything that needs done in day-to-day business can be done on the Macs that the company provides?
There is no reason to introduce unsupported hardware and software into your environment. Maybe the handful of people should be made aware that if Windows boxes were to come into play, they'd have to fund a new employee to manage those computers, which would drop $100K or so from the anual budget; that's a lot of company-expenses dinners and parties that won't happen, jsut so they can play Age of Empires or whatever while they're working.
If that's the only problem re: Proofreading you saw in this review, then please read again.
I've seen better book reports written by 5th graders....
This one is not such a big deal, actually.
Remember, Emacs is a front-end text editor over a LISP interpreter. Personally, I'd vote more for EMACS itself written in an AI language than solving a recursive logic problem in a text editor shell over an AI engine.
Yeah, you look like you're in the center of the problem, beingin metro DC...here's a line out of my traceroute between work and home...
9 0.so-1-2-0.TL2.DCA6.ALTER.NET (152.63.3.194) 1234.111 ms 1194.558 ms 1206.814 ms
The times just get worse from there on out...
I have to second this - the facilities crew here has these things ALL OVER the place - in fact, they have had planter boxes built that snap right on the top of the cube walls In the 2 months I've been here, they've watered them like 4 times, and I've pulled about 10 yellowing leaves off of 2 large planter boxes full of plant.
411 also doesn't to reverse directory lookups...
And Xerox and other brands of photocopiers are often used to make copies of books. Some of those copies even get handed out in classrooms for student use, in violation of the original copyright of the source material. So since Xerox machines can be used to break copyright, we should ban them!
And don't even get me started on VCRs. I mean, can you believe people record TV programs, then give those copies to their friends?!?!?! It's criminal, I tell you. Once VCRs are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCRs. And Xerox machines.
Oh, and don't pay any attention to those photocopies of the tables from my HTML, Perl, MySQL, and other reference books so that I can have everything in a single binder. And those tapes on my VCR of last week's Enterprise episode? Don't touch them, they're going on EBay to the highest bidder. Oh, and all those songs in my Rio? Yeah, they're from my personal CD collection, just like the remixed CD's I put together for when I work out in the yard or at the Gym, from before I had my Rio. Send in the MPAA and RIAA, but be warned, I copied directions out of a book at the library about how to make a bomb, and tapes an episode of Junkyard Wars that had the inspiration for my delivery vehicle, so I'm ready for them.
The problem, mister Karmic Limb, is that they're editing out existing copyright information, and replacing it with theirs. No one has said "We don't want them using our code", the complaint is that the original authors are not being given credit for the work. This is where the GPL violation is...
Volumes 1, 2, and 3. One, in particular, teaches you everything you need to know about networking protocols. Everything is broken out at the tcpdump level, and his demo network is well illustrated, so you can see how everything talks.
Practically, ATI should just get out of the graphics market. Or at the very least, stop trying to push standards, and write decent drivers.
The big deal isn't that the language is the end-all-be-all of graphics implementation languages, but that it's from a company with a history of being OpenSource-friendly, that has provided (albeit in binary not code form) drivers to OPen Source OS's, and has some of the best home graphics hardware out there.
So maybe it's not a perfect language. But it will be fixed, and we who run Open Source will buy more NVidia cards to support the effort.