So why can't I have a couple gigs of that in my system instead of a paging file on the hard drive?
512 megs of primary system ram (DDR333) and 2 gigs of secondary (PC133/100/66). That'd be a huge performance boost over swapping to that ridiculous spinning piece of magnetic media.
Stick 2 gigs of it on a PCI card - present it to the system like a secondary IDE controller (like disk-on-chip), just configure OS of choice to use it.
Look in the dollar bin, As-Is hard drives for a buck. Pulls from systems, not guaranteed. I snagged a handful of em on another order, and they worked fine for the purpose (booting a headless router setup). I got a 3.6 gigger that worked fine.
Of course, if you want a tested and error free pull, it's 20 bucks.
They stop producing them as demand dries up. If their production line is churning out 40 gig platters, the drives are built with 40 gig platters. If they had to open a new factory every time they want to make a bigger platter, they wouldnt be 1$/gig - and legacy drives would cost just as much to make as ever.
It's like chip fabs - where are the new 486dx's for me to build cheap routers out of?
Newer XBoxes are shipping with 20gig drives, even though they only partition and use 8. 8 gig drives just dont exist, 20 gigs is the cheapest option.
Now quit fighting progress. I like my 120 giggers.
>> Essentially, a TiVo without the service is about as useful as a VCR.
All I want is a VCR.
If the service is worth the money, pay for it. To you it is, to me - who watches maybe 3 hours of TV a week - it isn't.
As long as TiVos fine print reads "Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected.", no dice. Basically that says "we reserve the right to make your TiVo a doorstop if the monthly cheques stop coming in."
And all the downmodding and slashvertisements in the world won't convince me otherwise.
I don't get it. We wouldnt accept clauses like that in any other software/hardware EULA - what's so special about TiVo that their business practices are above criticism?
"TiVo DVR is intended for use only with a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected. Receipt of TiVo service is subject to the terms of the TiVo Service Agreement. TiVo service is accessed through a standard telephone line and is available as a local call in most areas. In some areas, local and long-distance toll charges may apply. "
Current models I guess do work without the subscription, but there's absolutely no guarantee going in that the device will even power on without a subscription.
So, I'm misreading this (from fine print at tivo.com)?
"TiVo DVR is intended for use only with a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected. Receipt of TiVo service is subject to the terms of the TiVo Service Agreement. TiVo service is accessed through a standard telephone line and is available as a local call in most areas. In some areas, local and long-distance toll charges may apply. "
It may very well work as a recorder without a subscription - I've read that some models do, some dont until they're 'activated'. The fine print seems to say they can remove that 'feature' at will.
Yeah, y'all go ahead and mod me down some more. I'm not going to buy a TiVo, not never. but I will roll my own PVR.
But that's just it, I don't WANT a well-updated TV guide, nor any software updates.
If I want a service that tells me what shows I like, then I'd pay for it. But I dont want nor need that.
I want a device to record Cartoon Network from 10:00-11:00 PM on sundays so I dont miss Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And I won't pay ongoing fees to do it. I already pay a monthly fee for the channel, I'm not going to be double billed to record it.
I don't want a service - I want a device to perform a task. You shouldn't have to pay ongoing fees just to use a device you bought.
Would you pay 30 bucks a month to Intel/AMD to be able to use your CPU?
I can't get past paying a subscription to record TV on top of the subscription I already pay to watch TV.
Nope. Not gonna do it.
Everything is switching to a subscription based service.
Maybe a few bucks a month for TiVo isn't much, but one day when you have to subscribe to a service to use your 'digital' radio, microwave, fridge, video game console, shoes, toothbrush, you name it, we'll end up with the average joe having the same amount of technology in his home as he did in the 30's.
Digital technologies are supposed to make products cheaper - yet they seem to be doing the opposite.
Can't support TiVo. I can see paying for convenient TV listings, but the ability to record/timeshift should come straight out of the box.
But then, he could be considered the skeptic. A skeptic IMO is just someone who doubts the veracity of a popular opinion just because it's a popular opinion, and sets about disproving it.
The popular opinion is that bigfoot doesn't exist. If your great uncle spent years searching for concrete evidence that it does exist - then I'd say he was the skeptic looking to debunk a popular theory.
Is it possible there's another large ape that we haven't discovered? Sure. The lowland gorilla was a fable not too long ago - until someone found it noone believed it existed.
Myself I tend to believe it doesnt exist, though it's possible, until someone proves otherwise. This is just because it's nearly impossible to prove a negative. You could prove it does exist easily - by showing me one, but how do you prove it doesnt? You can only really say it's doubtful because we haven't seen one.
I only brought up Bigfoot because of the ridiculous show I watched on Discovery last night.
>> 1000 years ago, they probably would not have believed in Lions or a round earth or some magical force that cannot be explained like gravity.. but they all exist.
Skeptics in history like Gallileo and Copernicus who didn't want to believe in a flat Earth, around which the Sun revolved, just because thats what religion told them to do.
Most of what we know was only learned because someone said "prove it"
The skeptic is once again playing an increasingly important role in the TV age.
Watch any of the 'educational' commercial channels (Discovery, TLC, Science) and see the 'documentaries' on complete horse-pooey like ghost-hunting, bigfoot, loch ness monsters, ufos. The amount of air-time this stuff gets is enormous, because it's entertaining. But people are buying it - people think this is science.
Having someone pop up and remind us that it's all fantasy, theory and unproven is healthy for our society.
>> Look at the xbox. MS lost massive quantities of money on it, and didn't care, because it gave them a foothold into a new market that they wanted to dominate.
Only an initial loss, they expect it to be profitable after a few years. This is par for the course introducing a new piece of consumer electronics.
MSFT is a publically traded company, owned by shareholders. They aren't allowed to deliberately lose money; the FTC would be all over their asses.
Surely MESS could emulate the 286/386 era accurately enough to play them.. I don't think watching a DVD movie of them would capture the look and feel..
Frankly some of the coolest demos I ever seen were attached to bootlegged console titles from the NES through PSX (and DC and now PS2/XBox). Though I'd get more nostalgic remembering the C64 days.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be of the 'more expensive = more reliable' school of thought.
RAID
RAID
Cheap drives mean the home user can afford it now. That's real data protection.
I'll take 2 120 giggers for 240$ in a RAID 1 array over 1 240$ drive any day of the week.
Do they still produce them, or is that just legacy data on the site? If you click "where to buy" you get a 404.
Here's my question.. SDRAM is cheap as it gets.
So why can't I have a couple gigs of that in my system instead of a paging file on the hard drive?
512 megs of primary system ram (DDR333) and 2 gigs of secondary (PC133/100/66). That'd be a huge performance boost over swapping to that ridiculous spinning piece of magnetic media.
Stick 2 gigs of it on a PCI card - present it to the system like a secondary IDE controller (like disk-on-chip), just configure OS of choice to use it.
?
Ask a silly question..
http://www.pcliquidators.com/
Look in the dollar bin, As-Is hard drives for a buck. Pulls from systems, not guaranteed. I snagged a handful of em on another order, and they worked fine for the purpose (booting a headless router setup). I got a 3.6 gigger that worked fine.
Of course, if you want a tested and error free pull, it's 20 bucks.
They stop producing them as demand dries up. If their production line is churning out 40 gig platters, the drives are built with 40 gig platters. If they had to open a new factory every time they want to make a bigger platter, they wouldnt be 1$/gig - and legacy drives would cost just as much to make as ever.
It's like chip fabs - where are the new 486dx's for me to build cheap routers out of?
Newer XBoxes are shipping with 20gig drives, even though they only partition and use 8. 8 gig drives just dont exist, 20 gigs is the cheapest option.
Now quit fighting progress. I like my 120 giggers.
I haven't had any more trouble with HDDs I've bought in the last couple of years than I ever have.
Mayhaps you are exaggerating, or perhaps your semi-annual crash/replace/rebuild is caused by another problem?
Frankly, I'd rather spend 120$ for a 1 year warranty drive than 500$ for a 3 year one. Simple math shows it to be cost-effective.
Isn't it ironic that MSFT circa 1978 looks exactly like the Linux community of 2003?
Is ironic even the word I want? Pathetic maybe?
>> Essentially, a TiVo without the service is about as useful as a VCR.
All I want is a VCR.
If the service is worth the money, pay for it. To you it is, to me - who watches maybe 3 hours of TV a week - it isn't.
As long as TiVos fine print reads "Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected.", no dice. Basically that says "we reserve the right to make your TiVo a doorstop if the monthly cheques stop coming in."
And all the downmodding and slashvertisements in the world won't convince me otherwise.
I don't get it. We wouldnt accept clauses like that in any other software/hardware EULA - what's so special about TiVo that their business practices are above criticism?
"TiVo DVR is intended for use only with a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected. Receipt of TiVo service is subject to the terms of the TiVo Service Agreement. TiVo service is accessed through a standard telephone line and is available as a local call in most areas. In some areas, local and long-distance toll charges may apply. "
Current models I guess do work without the subscription, but there's absolutely no guarantee going in that the device will even power on without a subscription.
So, I'm misreading this (from fine print at tivo.com)?
"TiVo DVR is intended for use only with a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Without the TiVo service, a TiVo DVR has extremely limited functionality. No functionality is represented or should be expected. Receipt of TiVo service is subject to the terms of the TiVo Service Agreement. TiVo service is accessed through a standard telephone line and is available as a local call in most areas. In some areas, local and long-distance toll charges may apply. "
It may very well work as a recorder without a subscription - I've read that some models do, some dont until they're 'activated'. The fine print seems to say they can remove that 'feature' at will.
Yeah, y'all go ahead and mod me down some more. I'm not going to buy a TiVo, not never. but I will roll my own PVR.
Like I said, it's not a matter of affording it.
/. sensitivities.
You could probably afford 5$ a month to wear Calvin Klein underpants too - but would you pay it?
You pay subscriptions to services, not to use a device. I don't want the service, I want a box to record cartoons.
Make it an option.
This is like Microsoft forcing you to pay a subscription to MSN to use the XBox whether you need it or not. Maybe that will appeal to
The software updates contain code like this:
if cleared(CHEQUE(network)) {
record(PROMOTED_SHOW(network))
}
But that's just it, I don't WANT a well-updated TV guide, nor any software updates.
If I want a service that tells me what shows I like, then I'd pay for it. But I dont want nor need that.
I want a device to record Cartoon Network from 10:00-11:00 PM on sundays so I dont miss Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And I won't pay ongoing fees to do it. I already pay a monthly fee for the channel, I'm not going to be double billed to record it.
I don't want a service - I want a device to perform a task. You shouldn't have to pay ongoing fees just to use a device you bought.
Would you pay 30 bucks a month to Intel/AMD to be able to use your CPU?
I can't get past paying a subscription to record TV on top of the subscription I already pay to watch TV.
Nope. Not gonna do it.
Everything is switching to a subscription based service.
Maybe a few bucks a month for TiVo isn't much, but one day when you have to subscribe to a service to use your 'digital' radio, microwave, fridge, video game console, shoes, toothbrush, you name it, we'll end up with the average joe having the same amount of technology in his home as he did in the 30's.
Digital technologies are supposed to make products cheaper - yet they seem to be doing the opposite.
Can't support TiVo. I can see paying for convenient TV listings, but the ability to record/timeshift should come straight out of the box.
But then, he could be considered the skeptic. A skeptic IMO is just someone who doubts the veracity of a popular opinion just because it's a popular opinion, and sets about disproving it.
The popular opinion is that bigfoot doesn't exist. If your great uncle spent years searching for concrete evidence that it does exist - then I'd say he was the skeptic looking to debunk a popular theory.
Is it possible there's another large ape that we haven't discovered? Sure. The lowland gorilla was a fable not too long ago - until someone found it noone believed it existed.
Myself I tend to believe it doesnt exist, though it's possible, until someone proves otherwise. This is just because it's nearly impossible to prove a negative. You could prove it does exist easily - by showing me one, but how do you prove it doesnt? You can only really say it's doubtful because we haven't seen one.
I only brought up Bigfoot because of the ridiculous show I watched on Discovery last night.
>> 1000 years ago, they probably would not have believed in Lions or a round earth or some magical force that cannot be explained like gravity.. but they all exist.
Skeptics in history like Gallileo and Copernicus who didn't want to believe in a flat Earth, around which the Sun revolved, just because thats what religion told them to do.
Most of what we know was only learned because someone said "prove it"
The skeptic is once again playing an increasingly important role in the TV age.
Watch any of the 'educational' commercial channels (Discovery, TLC, Science) and see the 'documentaries' on complete horse-pooey like ghost-hunting, bigfoot, loch ness monsters, ufos. The amount of air-time this stuff gets is enormous, because it's entertaining. But people are buying it - people think this is science.
Having someone pop up and remind us that it's all fantasy, theory and unproven is healthy for our society.
>> Look at the xbox. MS lost massive quantities of money on it, and didn't care, because it gave them a foothold into a new market that they wanted to dominate.
Only an initial loss, they expect it to be profitable after a few years. This is par for the course introducing a new piece of consumer electronics.
MSFT is a publically traded company, owned by shareholders. They aren't allowed to deliberately lose money; the FTC would be all over their asses.
It's all based on the same mathematical principles when all is said and done.
They could be developed in complete isolation and still come up with close-to-identical algorithms.
Both parties are claiming ownership of a few mathematical gyrations based on decades, if not centuries old math.
I'd like to see cats like Descartes, Newton and Pythagoras rise from the grave and start suing all of these guys for prior arts.
The DVD player you have now uses MPEG2, and a liscensing fee has been payed for each unit produced.
The DVD player of the future will run: ?
That's more what this is about. Not to mention TiVo-like devices, videophones, blah blah.
This is about more than little porn movies on the desktop.
Complaining about MSFT's cheaper product did worlds of good for Real, Sun, Netscape, Wordperfect .... oh wait.
They define "open" as "We will sell it to anyone"
They define "proprietary" as "Microsoft will sell it to anyone".
Pure PR move. They count on the geek community viewing Microsoft as evil, vile monsters, and themselves as a committee of care bears.
Let the MSFT-flaming commence.
Of course MPEG4 could be:
a) cheaper
b) better
or
c) all of the above.
I don't need another 'open standard' like MPEG2.
And your DVD player on a lo-res TV screen better emulates VGA at the scanline level?
I don't buy it.
Why would you need to 'emulate' vga - it's still supported as the common denominator among cards anyways.
Surely MESS could emulate the 286/386 era accurately enough to play them.. I don't think watching a DVD movie of them would capture the look and feel..
Frankly some of the coolest demos I ever seen were attached to bootlegged console titles from the NES through PSX (and DC and now PS2/XBox). Though I'd get more nostalgic remembering the C64 days.