I disagree. The first 3 films (4-6) had a good story. The other first 3 films (1-3) have a TERRIBLE story. The first film was actually about a dispute over trade rights or something equally boring.
Plus the scripts are all over the place. The writing problem is not limited to dialog. There are many scenes, particularly extended action/chase scenes that just don't make any sense in the movie. Why are they chasing the would-be assassin and leaving whats-her-face completely alone and vulnerable when they are supposed to be protecting her?
About Heroes. We've only just started that show. Basically all we've seen so far is an introduction to the various characters. I don't think you can make judgements about substance until we're further into the show and the storylines begin to mesh.
Yeah, I think time constraints have something to do with it. In a movie you have about 2 hours give or take to tell a story. In a TV show you have around 20 a year, assuming you don't get cancelled. This means you can get a lot more in depth than you can in a movie.
Also production quality on TV shows has risen to the point that it can compete with mid-budget movies. We also seem to see a lot more "movie" actors appearing in television shows as either guests or regular characters.
Actually, I can. My cell phone happens to have a stop watch along with all the other "tools" (alarm clock, calculator, etc). Not that I've ever used that for anything beyond playing around with it.
Like the original poster, I too haven't used a wristwatch in years. In fact, even before I got a cell phone if I carried a watch at all it would be in my pocket.
Apache isn't needed at all. You only need it if you want to use the web interface, which is not necessary as you can do all the same stuff on the regular frontend. Also, even if you do want to use it, it doesn't need to be on the same machine as either your backend or frontend.
As for mysql, it's my understanding that they did do some experiments with other methods but they simply were not as effective. All of the various recording rules and custom records etc can make for some complex queries and mysql does the job well.
And so is it with "media" computers or "home theathre" computers too. It's not that people are somehow not "technologically informed", it's that it's such a techno-fetishist use of technology. To record a show, even an ancient VCR is enough. (Though you might go for a DVD recorder nowadays.)
I agree with most of what you say, and while it's true all you need is a VCR to record a show, there is so much more to a PVR than that.
I can honestly say that using a PVR (MythTV in my case) has changed my life. I just tell it what I want to see, and watch it whenever I please and I never need to think about it again. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but really it is. Maybe if you don't watch TV it wouldn't be. I do watch TV, but now if I want to go out or work late I can do so and I don't miss a thing. I don't even need to fiddle around with the VCR timer in order to do it... which incidently doesn't help if I want to record a show on HBO followed by a show on Showtime.
It's not about being a "techno-fetishist" and just doing it because I can, it's about making my life easier.
You can pick up a bttv card for under $20. Even with that though, it is still more expensive than a TiVo unless you have an old computer you're not using for anything else.
Setting up MythTV is certainly not easy. After it's setup, it's very easy to use.
MythTV is a hobby that happens to have a practical usage. Like any other hobby you throw money and time at it. If you get into MythTV looking for a quick and dirty way to get a PVR you will be sorely disappointed.
My own MythTV box has been running for over two years. During that time, the only reason I've missed a TV show I want to see has been due to power outages. That's pretty damn reliable.
More than that, we actually saw some of the old '78 cylons on board galactica (as it was being turned into a museum).
In addition, I'm fairly positive Six (or maybe it was one of the other human-form cylons) mentioned that the old models were still in use in certain situations.
Ha ha, hope I don't have to buy anything at that store, my lastname is only three letters (Orr).
I haven't come across that before, but I have been prevented from registering because I did not provide a middle initial... problem is I don't have a middle name! I just put in an "X" to get around it and complained to the contact address.
On the password issue, one of the best password schemes I've come across is the one that compuserve used to use. This consisted of two words joined by a random piece of punctuation, I still remember mine and I haven't used it in ten years.
What happened to the other idea about completely new characters set sometime between end of enterprise and the begining of TOS with a backdrop of the romulan war? That sounded a lot better.
I've been running MythTV for over 3 years now, and to tell the truth, I'm really not sure what most people are using for display devices nowadays. Getting decent TV-out in Linux has never been easy for a noob, but Myth isn't exactly noob-friendly either
You've got about a year on me, just checked my first recording, it's dated April 2004.
For TV out I just use a GeForce FX card. It works good enough for me and my current television set, and really the only noticable difference over live tv is I need to get it to overscan a little which it refuses to do, but it's a very minor amount.
But, you're right, setting up MythTV is not for everybody. Even if you are technically savvy it's still only right for you if you're willing to consider setting it up and maintaining it as a hobby. If you just want to plug something in and have it work, buy a TiVo (or whatever).
For me personally, it has been very much that. I started with an old celeron 466. a 10GB hard drive and a TV out card with no tuner, and just used MythVideo to display some video files. I later added a bttv tuner and a DVD drive. That old celeron could record/playback with the bttv tuner fine, but it struggled with DVDs, so it got my next hand-down, a 2.4 GHz pentium which it's still running on. I now have 3 PVR 250s and a 320 GB hard drive. The nice thing about it was I was able to build a working system with basically only old bits of hardware I had lying around, later on as I could afford it I bought extra stuff and improved it.
A friend who was over last night thought that watching TV on my PVR-350 was 'interesting'. "You do realize that this is really weird, right?" she said, "I'm not sure if I really liked the experience."
You do realize your 350 has a TV out, right?
I think most people who run a home-made PVR full time (mythtv or otherwise) watch it on a TV screen and not a monitor.
Anybody know how to keep my MythTV box from locking up when the disk gets full? I have a separate partition just for recordings, but MythTV can't seem to figure out that it should delete old ones when the partition is full. I never had to configure my Tivo to handle this very obvious issue.
You can set how much free space you want to keep on your drive. Usually you want to set this to about the size of a 2 hour recording at your settings times the number of tuners you have.
Personally I haven't had an issue with that though, I usually just delete stuff immediately after watching it.
Standing at my best friends wedding as the best man at the front of the church during the service and my Blackberry rings and I insisted that I had to answer it. That's when everyone figured I had a problem.
I hope you're joking about that. Unless somebody is actually going to die, no problem can't wait 10 minutes while your best friend goes through one of the most important moments of his life.
MySQL got the head start. Postgres has had a better feature set for a long time now, but when I first looked at it you couldn't do left joins and all triggers had to be written in C. At the same time MySQL could... well.. do what MySQL does now.
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Which is the exact same conclusion the article came to.
I disagree. The first 3 films (4-6) had a good story. The other first 3 films (1-3) have a TERRIBLE story. The first film was actually about a dispute over trade rights or something equally boring.
Plus the scripts are all over the place. The writing problem is not limited to dialog. There are many scenes, particularly extended action/chase scenes that just don't make any sense in the movie. Why are they chasing the would-be assassin and leaving whats-her-face completely alone and vulnerable when they are supposed to be protecting her?
About Heroes. We've only just started that show. Basically all we've seen so far is an introduction to the various characters. I don't think you can make judgements about substance until we're further into the show and the storylines begin to mesh.
I think he is referring to the movies they show every week rather than the original series.
Some of them aren't awful though. Dog Soldiers was shown as one of them.
Yeah, I think time constraints have something to do with it. In a movie you have about 2 hours give or take to tell a story. In a TV show you have around 20 a year, assuming you don't get cancelled. This means you can get a lot more in depth than you can in a movie.
Also production quality on TV shows has risen to the point that it can compete with mid-budget movies. We also seem to see a lot more "movie" actors appearing in television shows as either guests or regular characters.
Can you time your laps with your cellphone?
Actually, I can. My cell phone happens to have a stop watch along with all the other "tools" (alarm clock, calculator, etc). Not that I've ever used that for anything beyond playing around with it.
Like the original poster, I too haven't used a wristwatch in years. In fact, even before I got a cell phone if I carried a watch at all it would be in my pocket.
Apache isn't needed at all. You only need it if you want to use the web interface, which is not necessary as you can do all the same stuff on the regular frontend. Also, even if you do want to use it, it doesn't need to be on the same machine as either your backend or frontend.
As for mysql, it's my understanding that they did do some experiments with other methods but they simply were not as effective. All of the various recording rules and custom records etc can make for some complex queries and mysql does the job well.
Actually that's different. In the 60's and early 70's it was the BBC's policy to delete old programs.
At that time, nobody really say the cultural (or commercial) value in storing television programs.
And so is it with "media" computers or "home theathre" computers too. It's not that people are somehow not "technologically informed", it's that it's such a techno-fetishist use of technology. To record a show, even an ancient VCR is enough. (Though you might go for a DVD recorder nowadays.)
I agree with most of what you say, and while it's true all you need is a VCR to record a show, there is so much more to a PVR than that.
I can honestly say that using a PVR (MythTV in my case) has changed my life. I just tell it what I want to see, and watch it whenever I please and I never need to think about it again. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but really it is. Maybe if you don't watch TV it wouldn't be. I do watch TV, but now if I want to go out or work late I can do so and I don't miss a thing. I don't even need to fiddle around with the VCR timer in order to do it ... which incidently doesn't help if I want to record a show on HBO followed by a show on Showtime.
It's not about being a "techno-fetishist" and just doing it because I can, it's about making my life easier.
Plus, it's real easy to sort in that format.
Here's the site
You can pick up a bttv card for under $20. Even with that though, it is still more expensive than a TiVo unless you have an old computer you're not using for anything else.
Setting up MythTV is certainly not easy. After it's setup, it's very easy to use.
MythTV is a hobby that happens to have a practical usage. Like any other hobby you throw money and time at it. If you get into MythTV looking for a quick and dirty way to get a PVR you will be sorely disappointed.
My own MythTV box has been running for over two years. During that time, the only reason I've missed a TV show I want to see has been due to power outages. That's pretty damn reliable.
More than that, we actually saw some of the old '78 cylons on board galactica (as it was being turned into a museum).
In addition, I'm fairly positive Six (or maybe it was one of the other human-form cylons) mentioned that the old models were still in use in certain situations.
But they're not selling the software (which would also be a GPL violation, wouldn't it?).
They are selling the hardware plus a setup fee and charging for support.
Ha ha, hope I don't have to buy anything at that store, my lastname is only three letters (Orr).
I haven't come across that before, but I have been prevented from registering because I did not provide a middle initial ... problem is I don't have a middle name! I just put in an "X" to get around it and complained to the contact address.
On the password issue, one of the best password schemes I've come across is the one that compuserve used to use. This consisted of two words joined by a random piece of punctuation, I still remember mine and I haven't used it in ten years.
I gotta say this sounds absolutely terrible.
What happened to the other idea about completely new characters set sometime between end of enterprise and the begining of TOS with a backdrop of the romulan war? That sounded a lot better.
Oh well.
Anyone remember how Wing Commander included Blueprints, a manual, offers, etc?
And eleven 5.25" floppy disks :).
Yes, but it's VERY rare for a US television to be capable of displaying PAL.
I've been running MythTV for over 3 years now, and to tell the truth, I'm really not sure what most people are using for display devices nowadays. Getting decent TV-out in Linux has never been easy for a noob, but Myth isn't exactly noob-friendly either
You've got about a year on me, just checked my first recording, it's dated April 2004.
For TV out I just use a GeForce FX card. It works good enough for me and my current television set, and really the only noticable difference over live tv is I need to get it to overscan a little which it refuses to do, but it's a very minor amount.
But, you're right, setting up MythTV is not for everybody. Even if you are technically savvy it's still only right for you if you're willing to consider setting it up and maintaining it as a hobby. If you just want to plug something in and have it work, buy a TiVo (or whatever).
For me personally, it has been very much that. I started with an old celeron 466. a 10GB hard drive and a TV out card with no tuner, and just used MythVideo to display some video files. I later added a bttv tuner and a DVD drive. That old celeron could record/playback with the bttv tuner fine, but it struggled with DVDs, so it got my next hand-down, a 2.4 GHz pentium which it's still running on. I now have 3 PVR 250s and a 320 GB hard drive. The nice thing about it was I was able to build a working system with basically only old bits of hardware I had lying around, later on as I could afford it I bought extra stuff and improved it.
A friend who was over last night thought that watching TV on my PVR-350 was 'interesting'. "You do realize that this is really weird, right?" she said, "I'm not sure if I really liked the experience."
You do realize your 350 has a TV out, right?
I think most people who run a home-made PVR full time (mythtv or otherwise) watch it on a TV screen and not a monitor.
Anybody know how to keep my MythTV box from locking up when the disk gets full? I have a separate partition just for recordings, but MythTV can't seem to figure out that it should delete old ones when the partition is full. I never had to configure my Tivo to handle this very obvious issue.
You can set how much free space you want to keep on your drive. Usually you want to set this to about the size of a 2 hour recording at your settings times the number of tuners you have.
Personally I haven't had an issue with that though, I usually just delete stuff immediately after watching it.
I hope you're joking about that. Unless somebody is actually going to die, no problem can't wait 10 minutes while your best friend goes through one of the most important moments of his life.
In fact, if the passengers had not used their cell phones that flight may well have struck its intended target.
James Cameron wrote the abyss screenplay. Orson Scott Card did the novelisation.
Yeah, I didn't say that postgres was around first, I said mysql did more first.
MySQL got the head start. Postgres has had a better feature set for a long time now, but when I first looked at it you couldn't do left joins and all triggers had to be written in C. At the same time MySQL could ... well .. do what MySQL does now.
So MySQL became the popular open-source database.