Hmmmm. Do firewire TV tuners exist? They could definitely have enough bandwidth for good resolution, but a quick search of Buy.com didn't turn up any, and who knows if they would work on Linux even if they existed.
Maybe so, but screenscraping zap2it is NOT a viable option.
Unless MythTV gets support for Guide+, you'll end up having to pay a subscription when zap2it shuts down mythtv scrapers like tvguide did.
Yahoo! offers free TV listings, they wouldn't notice a huge increase in traffic if MythTV users switched over, and creating a scraper for their site is not really hard. And, for all I know, there are another dozen portals out there that MythTV users could head to if they got shut down.
As a matter of fact, scrapers are pretty easy to create (well, if you're a programmer and you know Perl), and easy to create in such a way that it's not too likely you'll be caught. (Caveat coder! Possible TOS violations lurk, so think through whatever you want to do before you do it.)
This post is a little simplistic. I've downloaded mythtv and even used knoppixmyth which is even easier to use, but getting things to work are far from easy.
I made no claims about the time involved -- only the parts and the money. Yes, you would probably need to know what you were doing, and know your way around the Linux command line. However, I wanted to point out that it was possible if you wanted to.
If you're going to shell out $1000 to $1500 to build a PVR when you can buy a Tivo for a couple hundred, it's for the fun / geekiness of it, not because you want a PVR. (And, of course, you could just buy the one featured in this slashdot article to hack if you really want MythTV).
Step 2: Get yourself a USB DVD drive (brownie points for DVD burners)
Step 3: Get a USB TV Card that runs under Linux (Note: I did a quick google, but I'd bet money you could find one that worked much better. And that page was talking about spotty TV signals in 2002. I bet it's gotten better)
Bingo! You've now got a PVR which will either look nice in your stereo cabinet (like that ThinkGeek case), or which you can keep hidden, save for the external DVD drive (and since every DVD player has a DVD drive in it, you're not going to find anything with a much smaller footprint). And, it shouldn't be too hard to hide the OpenBrick. And all for under $1500.
Don't forget massive incompatibility and upgrade hassles.:)
I would imagine the upgrade of civilian equiptment would be something like the way they're doing Ipv6. Compatibility has been in software for a while now (Well, at least BSD and Linux). They're still several years away from upgrading, so I assume that when they do upgrade, if your hardware is older then 5 years, you're fscked. But because it's phased in gradually, how many people are going to actually have problems? Sort of like how USB was in computers long before USB devices became prevalent
$15/month is not the cheapest. They have $110 per year for 5 books/month. That's less than $10/month or with access to 50 books roughly $2.20 per book.
They have a variety of pricing plans, including something like $30 a month for unlimited access (assuming you're a corporation willing to commit to licenses for lots of employees). Whatever you decide on, Safari is definitely worth the price.
I'd like to add that although Safari is by O'reilly they've got a number of books by other publishers (including the text book publisher Addison Wesley). And they also have books not related to IT -- although they are few and far between. All in all it's a good deal. And if you want to download the book to print out sections they'll sell you PDFs (of course, they'll print all sorts of watermarks -- including your account number and the e-mail address to send the cease and desist letter to if it happens to end up on Kazaa or something <grins/>)
One of the nremap bugs posted on slashdot was really a dupe. It was the same thing and already fixed. At least, that's what I was told. See this thread on LinuxQuestions.org
If you read the article you will see that one of the reasons that they changed it was people's robots couldn't navigate on the first try and needed some modifications, or something went wrong. I think that if they are really looking for a promising candidate this is a great idea. After all, they're throwing money at development -- not buying a robot.
Most distros are still on 2.4.x kernels. So upgrading to a 2.6.x kernel necessarily involves compiling it and installing it. However, if you're running a distro like Red Hat, Mandrake, (or even slackware), when 2.6 becomes standard in those distros, all you'll need to do is either install a package (which is done almost automatically in mandrake, and involves a download, and 2 shell commands under slackware) or upgrade your machine.
The 2.6.x kernel happens to have some things in it which is vital for some people because of the newness of their machines. These people pay a price for living on the bleeding edge, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to pay that price when they finally upgrade to 2.6.
It's hard to make a "splash" when the code is so old!
Bleeding edge code -- especially in large distros -- can be buggy because companies like Mandrake have to modify code to fit everything together. Many people like the stability assosciated with a distro, and those that don't can always compile everything themselves from scratch.
Don't you really mean "I already know too many computer languages so learning another is not a problem"?
Well I can sit down and learn another language if needed and even get some (most) of the syntax from looking at code, but it's mostly an issue of memorization. Should I memorize more language specifications (with time I don't have), or ust use a language I know to implement something
I RTFT. Shell scripts can be BASH, CSH, TSH, SH, KSH, the list goes on. That's if you're assuming by "shell" they don't mean all interpreted languages -- I've seen a number of Perl / Python / Whatever scripts put in the general category of shell scripts before.
I am also curious what tools are assumed to be available to the user. There are a lot of programs available that are standard (i.e. wget), but is the author assuming a standard unix distribution, or does he say "if you have ___"?
This sounds useful, but what languages are used? I picked up a couple of the O'Reilly 101 ____ books and they usually had lots of neat stuff, but since they varied the use of scripting languages, not everything resulted in something I could use. (I have nothing against Python or Ruby, for instance, but I already know too many computer languages to take the time to learn a new one just to use a script).
I can remember the day when I could only get spotty support for most hardware on my Linux box. Buying a computer was complicated if I wanted to use Linux -- I might only have one or two choices for a component (i.e. soundcard) because the drivers came from the community. This is a great sign, if Intel starts supporting all of their products under Linux, other vendors will follow suit, and it won't be long before you'll see Lindows boxes alongside the Macs at CompUSA!
Well, any college or university with a serious computer science department. I've been to quite a few schools, and any place of decent size tends to have copies of Red Hat / Suse / Mandrake or Linux compatible software if only because students (undergrad or grad) are expected to be able to work in a *nix enviornment. For instance, at the University of Buffalo the computer science department uses a sweet cluster of dells to do things, running Red Hat. So everyone in comp sci gets exposed to *nix -- and some people even take to it (i.e. buying their own copy -- but I'm pretty sure many more download their own copies)
The parent post should be modded up Insightful and not funny. One of the major reasons, IMHO, geeks and nerds do not develop social skills is because they see no need. Most kids are concerned with their classmates opinions, and being liked. Those that do not care about being liked and just want to do what they want to do -- i.e. learn math -- develop in other ways their peers do not.
Another reason I believe that gifted children do not develop social skills is they lack peers. Think about talking to a child when you're an adult. You don't talk to them on the same level because they are immature and inexperienced. It's the same sort of thing for gifted children, they see themselves as the equivalent of a 20 year old trapped in a group of 10 year olds (or whatever). Solution? Put them with people of their intelligence level in their age group and watch them grow socially. (Not an easy task if they are in the top 1% or less of the population)
Easy for you to say, but most people only know what is on display at CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, WalMart, etc.
Point of information: CompUSA stocks macs and mac products. And, many malls are starting to see an Apple store pop up. Go into your local University store and you'll see Apples all over the place and Linux. Go into best buy and you'll see Linux. Order a PC from walmart.com and you can get Linux based PCs. The future is coming, and it is wonderfull M$ free. <grins/>
(Note to moderators: Please be patient. This is ontopic, albeit directly related to the parent post.)
You ever read Ayn Rand's Anthem? If not you should, it's a really good book. As a matter of fact, one of the premises of the book was what would happen if there was a society more interested in the status quo and change (modeled after the commies). There were a lot of interesting points -- one of which was that light bulbs would never be made because the industry of candlemakers would be put out of business. And if you don't benefit your fellow man, you must be evil.
Sometimes I wish I were a literary nerd so I could explain things better. Oh well, here's a link to a Wikipedia summary.
IIRC, Encarta is often bundled with new computers. Could this be the reason it is the new best seller? Seriously though, I would rather google through Wikipedia or another online reference source then bother with any other kind of encyclopedia.
Assault Rifle != Tommy Gun.
Assault Rifle != Machine Gun.
So why are you so impressed by something that looks like a borgified Deer Rifle and has a larger magazine? You don't need a rifle of any sort if you are simply interested in spraying bullets in crowded urban areas.
An AR-15 (or other "civilian" equivalent of a Military assault rifles) lack an automatic capability because there is a catch in the receiver. File off the catch and you have a machine gun. Generally speaking, civilian equivalents come from the same assembly lines as their military counterparts.
Now, there are reasons why you wouldn't want to do this -- for one thing it's illegal for another the barrels are generally made of different materials (whereas an M-16 is designed to be fired continuously over a short period an AR-15 isn't, so a modified AR-15 may melt). However, there are enough web sites out there that specialize in informing people on how to mod their "civilian" assault rifles or even sell parts (i.e. Tapco.com), that I believe there is cause for concern that assault rifles are obtainable by civilians.
Slashdot Mirror
CNN is running a story about the DARPA race/challenge, in case anyone is curious.
They sell those too. :-D
Hmmmm. Do firewire TV tuners exist? They could definitely have enough bandwidth for good resolution, but a quick search of Buy.com didn't turn up any, and who knows if they would work on Linux even if they existed.
Yahoo! offers free TV listings, they wouldn't notice a huge increase in traffic if MythTV users switched over, and creating a scraper for their site is not really hard. And, for all I know, there are another dozen portals out there that MythTV users could head to if they got shut down.
As a matter of fact, scrapers are pretty easy to create (well, if you're a programmer and you know Perl), and easy to create in such a way that it's not too likely you'll be caught. (Caveat coder! Possible TOS violations lurk, so think through whatever you want to do before you do it.)
I made no claims about the time involved -- only the parts and the money. Yes, you would probably need to know what you were doing, and know your way around the Linux command line. However, I wanted to point out that it was possible if you wanted to.
If you're going to shell out $1000 to $1500 to build a PVR when you can buy a Tivo for a couple hundred, it's for the fun / geekiness of it, not because you want a PVR. (And, of course, you could just buy the one featured in this slashdot article to hack if you really want MythTV).
You know I am pretty sure creating such a beast shouldn't be a problem. Watch.
Step 1: Get yourself a small form factor PC, like the ThinkGeek Cappucino or The Open Brick or build your own cool looking mini PC.
Step 2: Get yourself a USB DVD drive (brownie points for DVD burners)
Step 3: Get a USB TV Card that runs under Linux (Note: I did a quick google, but I'd bet money you could find one that worked much better. And that page was talking about spotty TV signals in 2002. I bet it's gotten better)
Step 4: Download a copy of MythTV
Bingo! You've now got a PVR which will either look nice in your stereo cabinet (like that ThinkGeek case), or which you can keep hidden, save for the external DVD drive (and since every DVD player has a DVD drive in it, you're not going to find anything with a much smaller footprint). And, it shouldn't be too hard to hide the OpenBrick. And all for under $1500.
I would imagine the upgrade of civilian equiptment would be something like the way they're doing Ipv6. Compatibility has been in software for a while now (Well, at least BSD and Linux). They're still several years away from upgrading, so I assume that when they do upgrade, if your hardware is older then 5 years, you're fscked. But because it's phased in gradually, how many people are going to actually have problems? Sort of like how USB was in computers long before USB devices became prevalent
They have a variety of pricing plans, including something like $30 a month for unlimited access (assuming you're a corporation willing to commit to licenses for lots of employees). Whatever you decide on, Safari is definitely worth the price.
I'd like to add that although Safari is by O'reilly they've got a number of books by other publishers (including the text book publisher Addison Wesley). And they also have books not related to IT -- although they are few and far between. All in all it's a good deal. And if you want to download the book to print out sections they'll sell you PDFs (of course, they'll print all sorts of watermarks -- including your account number and the e-mail address to send the cease and desist letter to if it happens to end up on Kazaa or something <grins />)
One of the nremap bugs posted on slashdot was really a dupe. It was the same thing and already fixed. At least, that's what I was told. See this thread on LinuxQuestions.org
If you read the article you will see that one of the reasons that they changed it was people's robots couldn't navigate on the first try and needed some modifications, or something went wrong. I think that if they are really looking for a promising candidate this is a great idea. After all, they're throwing money at development -- not buying a robot.
Most distros are still on 2.4.x kernels. So upgrading to a 2.6.x kernel necessarily involves compiling it and installing it. However, if you're running a distro like Red Hat, Mandrake, (or even slackware), when 2.6 becomes standard in those distros, all you'll need to do is either install a package (which is done almost automatically in mandrake, and involves a download, and 2 shell commands under slackware) or upgrade your machine.
The 2.6.x kernel happens to have some things in it which is vital for some people because of the newness of their machines. These people pay a price for living on the bleeding edge, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to pay that price when they finally upgrade to 2.6.
I RTFT. Shell scripts can be BASH, CSH, TSH, SH, KSH, the list goes on. That's if you're assuming by "shell" they don't mean all interpreted languages -- I've seen a number of Perl / Python / Whatever scripts put in the general category of shell scripts before.
I am also curious what tools are assumed to be available to the user. There are a lot of programs available that are standard (i.e. wget), but is the author assuming a standard unix distribution, or does he say "if you have ___"?
This sounds useful, but what languages are used? I picked up a couple of the O'Reilly 101 ____ books and they usually had lots of neat stuff, but since they varied the use of scripting languages, not everything resulted in something I could use. (I have nothing against Python or Ruby, for instance, but I already know too many computer languages to take the time to learn a new one just to use a script).
I can remember the day when I could only get spotty support for most hardware on my Linux box. Buying a computer was complicated if I wanted to use Linux -- I might only have one or two choices for a component (i.e. soundcard) because the drivers came from the community. This is a great sign, if Intel starts supporting all of their products under Linux, other vendors will follow suit, and it won't be long before you'll see Lindows boxes alongside the Macs at CompUSA!
Well, any college or university with a serious computer science department. I've been to quite a few schools, and any place of decent size tends to have copies of Red Hat / Suse / Mandrake or Linux compatible software if only because students (undergrad or grad) are expected to be able to work in a *nix enviornment. For instance, at the University of Buffalo the computer science department uses a sweet cluster of dells to do things, running Red Hat. So everyone in comp sci gets exposed to *nix -- and some people even take to it (i.e. buying their own copy -- but I'm pretty sure many more download their own copies)
I paid US dollars not UK Pounds.
The parent post should be modded up Insightful and not funny. One of the major reasons, IMHO, geeks and nerds do not develop social skills is because they see no need. Most kids are concerned with their classmates opinions, and being liked. Those that do not care about being liked and just want to do what they want to do -- i.e. learn math -- develop in other ways their peers do not.
Another reason I believe that gifted children do not develop social skills is they lack peers. Think about talking to a child when you're an adult. You don't talk to them on the same level because they are immature and inexperienced. It's the same sort of thing for gifted children, they see themselves as the equivalent of a 20 year old trapped in a group of 10 year olds (or whatever). Solution? Put them with people of their intelligence level in their age group and watch them grow socially. (Not an easy task if they are in the top 1% or less of the population)
Point of information: CompUSA stocks macs and mac products. And, many malls are starting to see an Apple store pop up. Go into your local University store and you'll see Apples all over the place and Linux. Go into best buy and you'll see Linux. Order a PC from walmart.com and you can get Linux based PCs. The future is coming, and it is wonderfull M$ free. <grins/>
You ever read Ayn Rand's Anthem? If not you should, it's a really good book. As a matter of fact, one of the premises of the book was what would happen if there was a society more interested in the status quo and change (modeled after the commies). There were a lot of interesting points -- one of which was that light bulbs would never be made because the industry of candlemakers would be put out of business. And if you don't benefit your fellow man, you must be evil.
Sometimes I wish I were a literary nerd so I could explain things better. Oh well, here's a link to a Wikipedia summary.
IIRC, Encarta is often bundled with new computers. Could this be the reason it is the new best seller? Seriously though, I would rather google through Wikipedia or another online reference source then bother with any other kind of encyclopedia.
Possibly. However, /.ing is so common I figured better safe then sorry.
An AR-15 (or other "civilian" equivalent of a Military assault rifles) lack an automatic capability because there is a catch in the receiver. File off the catch and you have a machine gun. Generally speaking, civilian equivalents come from the same assembly lines as their military counterparts.
Now, there are reasons why you wouldn't want to do this -- for one thing it's illegal for another the barrels are generally made of different materials (whereas an M-16 is designed to be fired continuously over a short period an AR-15 isn't, so a modified AR-15 may melt). However, there are enough web sites out there that specialize in informing people on how to mod their "civilian" assault rifles or even sell parts (i.e. Tapco.com), that I believe there is cause for concern that assault rifles are obtainable by civilians.