It'd allow TiVo to take advantages of several features already enjoyed by DirecTiVo owners...
- Faster response to changes. If there's a last-minute change by the TV networks due to something like a presidential speech, the signal providers are usually good about updating their guide data as soon as they know about it. However, if you don't have a "daily call" between the change and the event, you're going to record the wrong programs because you don't get word of the change. - Another data source. It'd be great if TiVo could just use the data that's being pushed out by the system operator instead of having to license it from Tribune. There would be coverage for company-specific Pay Per View channels that Tribune doesn't cover, and channel lineup changes would be detected and adjusted for as they happened. (The cost of the data and piping it over a modem are the main reasons they have to charge so much for a subscription.) - No missed changes. TiVo's pretty reliable at getting digital cable boxes to change channels by IR blast, but they're not perfect. However, when it's all on the same board there's never an accident that way. - System timekeeping. Ever notice that your digital cable box is a very accurate clock that you don't have to set? There's already a time signal on the wire, and TiVo could benefit from that instead of having to use NTP over a modem connect. Also, this time broadcast would account for any relay delays inherent in the network, if any.
I love my TiVo, but is they haven't really dropped the price (or expanded the storage/dollar) as hard drive prices have fallen. I have to say that some competition is welcome.
There's really a "Tale of two TiVos" going on...
The integrated TiVo and DirecTV combo boxes, known officially as a "DirecTV DVR with TiVo" and commonly called a "DirecTiVo", have fallen in price dramatically recently. The units that were first sold for $299 are available for just $99 thanks to major subsidies from DirecTV. The service fee is only $4.99 per month and covers all TiVo units on the same household account.
Meanwhile, the prices of the Series 2 stand-alone TiVo units have not fallen, and in fact their service costs went up to $12.95 per month with no discounts at all for having more than one. Clearly, being able to integrate with service providers is key for TiVo's survival...
Nothing in TiVo's DirecTV contract prevents them from working with cable companies, only other DBS companies like Dish Network and Voom... clearly TiVo would like to have a dual-tuner-integrated box for digital cable, but the hardware makers aren't giving up the specs for that...
One phone call to either TiVo customer service (or DirecTV's customer service if you own a "DirecTV DVR powered by TiVo" device) is all it takes for them to send your device a signal to stop uploading the viewer-habits data. True, that's opt-out rather than opt-in... but at least they're making it easy to get out.
Me... I kinda like the fact that it reports what I watch. I've always wanted to actually count in the ratings...
Because that's what's really locking TiVo out of the digital cable biz. They can't directly operate on a digital cable wire, and the companies such as Scientific Atlanta are not releasing their decoding specs so that TiVo can make a box compatible with cable systems that run their backend equpiment.
Analog CATV is standardized, cable channel 27 in one town is on the same frequencies as cable channel 27 in another. OpenCable will basically do the same for digital. It should be noted however that OpenCable is leaving decryption and conditional access for others to handle... they're just defining a slot in which the system provider's choice of smart card that that will handle that stuff goes into.
Slashdot has written before that this isn't quite the same as Open Source in the way that it's usually thought of here, this is a hardware spec that pretty much gives up a single-channel digital bitstream to the device's wishes once the access card lets it go.
In the future, this could lead to "digital cable ready" TVs and devices, including TiVo that won't need the assitance of a settop box. But, of course, the present digital cable system makers don't want to give up their cash cow. That's why the current digital cable device makers can eat TiVo's lunch right now...
Few of those questioned had a preference for the format of the music being stored.
So much for the demand for OGG music players. Most people will end up picking a PC-based... music player and sticking with it some even being talked into saving ripped CDs in the players favored format. A consumer doesn't really care about open compatiblity, just that their portable and their PC music collection can play nice together. For DRM'ed digital music downloads, they definitely don't want to hit the wall of not being able to take those to their portable device.
Surprisingly, it's Microsoft who has the most compatible-with-them devices, and also is the only one who has multiple compatible-with-them digital music stores. Microsoft the champion of consumer choice? Who let that happen?
You might have a ton of songs on your PC's HD, but How many tracks do you actually listen to?
The average radio station might have access to thousands of songs on their premises, but in a typical broadcast day they're only going to use about 40 to 50 of them.
1000 songs at roughly 3 minutes each is 3,000 minutes. That's 50 hours. We're talking enough music to go two days without having to re-dock to swap songs without having to repeat anything during constant playback. By that point, you'd want to hear your favorite songs again.
Sure, having more space on your iPod is great if you intend on using it as a data transfer and backup device. However, your average jogger doesn't care about that, and they in fact would rather shave off the 2 ounces and 2.64 square inches off the form factor. Smaller is better sometimes.
Life is adaptive, but even species are not. I kinda think we as humanity want to keep this delaying this meek-inheriting-the-Earth thing as long as possible.
Global warming most definitely exists as a short-term trend over the last 30 years, as so many different measurements can't all be wrong.
The next question, however, is whether us humans are really the cause of it... would the Earth still be getting warmer even if we weren't creating manmade polution? It may just be that even if were we able to eliminate all of the anti-ozone polution in the world, the global average temerature might still go up anyway simply because the Sun keeps throwing more energy our way.
It may be possible that the environmentalists are identifying a real problem, but not proposing a strong enough solution... that we'll actually have to somehow reflect-away a good chunk of sunlight in order to keep the Earth's temperature stable.
The knob is for volume control... you get to preset your 10 favorite streams, the other few thousand you'll have to type in or at least click on a hyperlink at a PC...
that's gotta be one hot piece of hardware. I'd bet it'd be hard to keep thieves at bay.
This thing would never survive in a dorm environment. The payload will always be stolen, and it'd be constantly knocked over by people who just want to be jerks.
However it might work just fine within a "friendly" office environment...
Not every college says their computing resources are for academic use only. Honestly, such a policy is kind of ridiculous - with such an agreement, you've suddenly said your students aren't allowed to do a whole host of things, such as use their campus network connection (or campus e-mail account) to keep in touch with family and friends. You've also said your students can't use the campus network to download games and all sorts of other stuff that you really shouln't be disallowing people who live on campus from doing.
Eh, that's where they point to that clause that says they reserve the right to non-enforce any policy and only apply it when they feel like it.
The images on the home page actually made me think that this bot was more advanced than it really is...
Instead of having an on-board fridge... why not send it down to in-building vending machine, where it completes the transaction against the student's account, and then grabs the item and take it where it needs to go for delivery.
That'd give it a much wider inventory and an ability to serve a wider audience than just one person.
You can tell these kids are going to make it in the business world...
He provides no source nor price for such key components as Sonar, LCD, IR detectors, Motors, and Wheels. You can almost hear the future bean counter cutting them a check for $260 for this project and laughing.
"It's the kind of thing we hear from universities or customers that act more as an ISP," said Doug Jacobson, Palisade's founder and chief technology officer. "They want to take the position of not filtering out all peer-to-peer [traffic], stopping copyrighted works but not the other content."
They want something impossible. Therefore, we've developed a program that kinda-sorta does the job and we're here to sell it...
The university I attend has explicit privacy rules, available for everyone to read. If I recall correctly this sort of thing would violate those rights awarded by the school and as soon as someone brings it up it'll disappear.
Do you mean this software, or the particular privacy rule that it violates is going to go away?
With the tightness of funds that today's universities are dealing with, maybe that bandwidth money could be better spent.
Every college's Terms of Service says that their computer systems are for "academic use only" or some similar phrase, in part because they have to in order to get grant funding to pay for their bandwidth. You might not remember signing that TOS, but trust me, every student at a college has signed something when they accepted admission that basically binds you to everything the school ever puts out as a "rule" whether you bother to read it or not.
So, forget the dream that they have to give you totally unrestricted bandwidth as part of the price of your dorm room. They never promised that to you, so if it goes away, tough.
Colleges have mostly played dumb that P2P has been going on, trying to claim that they're just a common carrier that can't really coprehend what's fair and what's foul over their network. Once they start trying to block copyrighted content, they'll start becoming liable for whatever slips through their checkpoint.
So... that's why any blocks we're going to see going up are going to be whole-protocol blocks or bandwidth throttles. They won't be blocking in the name of copyright protection, they'll be blocking in the name of bandwidth protection...
There's no way that any piece of software would be able to peek into encrypted sessions... so the only option this software would have would be a "deny all".
Seems like this could be useful as something a college could threaten installing unless P2P violators knock it off... but would be trading off quite a bit of legit functionality to ensure zero violations.
An artist can copyright his own work and choose to release it to the public under the terms he dictates. It's still copyrighted, he still owns the work, but it can still be legal to distribute it if the copyright owner says you can.
Of course, in the case of anybody with a major-label CD deal, that's the RIAA-member-owned label who is the copyright holder, not the artist.
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You'd still have a hard time determining the difference between a rerun and a flashback-heavy "new" episode.
It'd allow TiVo to take advantages of several features already enjoyed by DirecTiVo owners...
- Faster response to changes. If there's a last-minute change by the TV networks due to something like a presidential speech, the signal providers are usually good about updating their guide data as soon as they know about it. However, if you don't have a "daily call" between the change and the event, you're going to record the wrong programs because you don't get word of the change.
- Another data source. It'd be great if TiVo could just use the data that's being pushed out by the system operator instead of having to license it from Tribune. There would be coverage for company-specific Pay Per View channels that Tribune doesn't cover, and channel lineup changes would be detected and adjusted for as they happened. (The cost of the data and piping it over a modem are the main reasons they have to charge so much for a subscription.)
- No missed changes. TiVo's pretty reliable at getting digital cable boxes to change channels by IR blast, but they're not perfect. However, when it's all on the same board there's never an accident that way.
- System timekeeping. Ever notice that your digital cable box is a very accurate clock that you don't have to set? There's already a time signal on the wire, and TiVo could benefit from that instead of having to use NTP over a modem connect. Also, this time broadcast would account for any relay delays inherent in the network, if any.
I love my TiVo, but is they haven't really dropped the price (or expanded the storage/dollar) as hard drive prices have fallen. I have to say that some competition is welcome.
There's really a "Tale of two TiVos" going on...
The integrated TiVo and DirecTV combo boxes, known officially as a "DirecTV DVR with TiVo" and commonly called a "DirecTiVo", have fallen in price dramatically recently. The units that were first sold for $299 are available for just $99 thanks to major subsidies from DirecTV. The service fee is only $4.99 per month and covers all TiVo units on the same household account.
Meanwhile, the prices of the Series 2 stand-alone TiVo units have not fallen, and in fact their service costs went up to $12.95 per month with no discounts at all for having more than one. Clearly, being able to integrate with service providers is key for TiVo's survival...
Nothing in TiVo's DirecTV contract prevents them from working with cable companies, only other DBS companies like Dish Network and Voom... clearly TiVo would like to have a dual-tuner-integrated box for digital cable, but the hardware makers aren't giving up the specs for that...
One phone call to either TiVo customer service (or DirecTV's customer service if you own a "DirecTV DVR powered by TiVo" device) is all it takes for them to send your device a signal to stop uploading the viewer-habits data. True, that's opt-out rather than opt-in... but at least they're making it easy to get out.
Me... I kinda like the fact that it reports what I watch. I've always wanted to actually count in the ratings...
Where's OpenCable when we need it?
Because that's what's really locking TiVo out of the digital cable biz. They can't directly operate on a digital cable wire, and the companies such as Scientific Atlanta are not releasing their decoding specs so that TiVo can make a box compatible with cable systems that run their backend equpiment.
Analog CATV is standardized, cable channel 27 in one town is on the same frequencies as cable channel 27 in another. OpenCable will basically do the same for digital. It should be noted however that OpenCable is leaving decryption and conditional access for others to handle... they're just defining a slot in which the system provider's choice of smart card that that will handle that stuff goes into.
Slashdot has written before that this isn't quite the same as Open Source in the way that it's usually thought of here, this is a hardware spec that pretty much gives up a single-channel digital bitstream to the device's wishes once the access card lets it go.
In the future, this could lead to "digital cable ready" TVs and devices, including TiVo that won't need the assitance of a settop box. But, of course, the present digital cable system makers don't want to give up their cash cow. That's why the current digital cable device makers can eat TiVo's lunch right now...
Most consumers, however, don't need to transfer large data files between places. They don't see that functionality as being worth $50 more.
Few of those questioned had a preference for the format of the music being stored.
So much for the demand for OGG music players. Most people will end up picking a PC-based... music player and sticking with it some even being talked into saving ripped CDs in the players favored format. A consumer doesn't really care about open compatiblity, just that their portable and their PC music collection can play nice together. For DRM'ed digital music downloads, they definitely don't want to hit the wall of not being able to take those to their portable device.
Surprisingly, it's Microsoft who has the most compatible-with-them devices, and also is the only one who has multiple compatible-with-them digital music stores. Microsoft the champion of consumer choice? Who let that happen?
You might have a ton of songs on your PC's HD, but How many tracks do you actually listen to?
The average radio station might have access to thousands of songs on their premises, but in a typical broadcast day they're only going to use about 40 to 50 of them.
1000 songs at roughly 3 minutes each is 3,000 minutes. That's 50 hours. We're talking enough music to go two days without having to re-dock to swap songs without having to repeat anything during constant playback. By that point, you'd want to hear your favorite songs again.
Sure, having more space on your iPod is great if you intend on using it as a data transfer and backup device. However, your average jogger doesn't care about that, and they in fact would rather shave off the 2 ounces and 2.64 square inches off the form factor. Smaller is better sometimes.
I'm sure the RIAA is gonna demand royalties for that technology...
Life is adaptive, but even species are not. I kinda think we as humanity want to keep this delaying this meek-inheriting-the-Earth thing as long as possible.
Global warming most definitely exists as a short-term trend over the last 30 years, as so many different measurements can't all be wrong.
The next question, however, is whether us humans are really the cause of it... would the Earth still be getting warmer even if we weren't creating manmade polution? It may just be that even if were we able to eliminate all of the anti-ozone polution in the world, the global average temerature might still go up anyway simply because the Sun keeps throwing more energy our way.
It may be possible that the environmentalists are identifying a real problem, but not proposing a strong enough solution... that we'll actually have to somehow reflect-away a good chunk of sunlight in order to keep the Earth's temperature stable.
The knob is for volume control... you get to preset your 10 favorite streams, the other few thousand you'll have to type in or at least click on a hyperlink at a PC...
Another way to do this on the cheap is to just plug in a standard analog wireless headphone or speaker transmitter into the back of your soundcard.
900 Mhz is typically used for this application, so you can keep 2.4 GHz free for WiFi.
If he can interrupt the meeting for "quickly ordering a drink fir himself", I doubt that the-not-so-the-future-client would be happy to not get one!!
:)
Eh, he just has to program a macro on the computer so that he can send the network commands with a simple descrete hotkey sequence press.
See, this document reveals that although this project is ahead of schedule, the prototype won't even be done until August. :)
that's gotta be one hot piece of hardware. I'd bet it'd be hard to keep thieves at bay.
This thing would never survive in a dorm environment. The payload will always be stolen, and it'd be constantly knocked over by people who just want to be jerks.
However it might work just fine within a "friendly" office environment...
Not every college says their computing resources are for academic use only. Honestly, such a policy is kind of ridiculous - with such an agreement, you've suddenly said your students aren't allowed to do a whole host of things, such as use their campus network connection (or campus e-mail account) to keep in touch with family and friends. You've also said your students can't use the campus network to download games and all sorts of other stuff that you really shouln't be disallowing people who live on campus from doing.
Eh, that's where they point to that clause that says they reserve the right to non-enforce any policy and only apply it when they feel like it.
Ahh, the 90s... when people thought that the Internet could make a delivery service that would have never worked with phone-based orders viable. :)
The images on the home page actually made me think that this bot was more advanced than it really is...
Instead of having an on-board fridge... why not send it down to in-building vending machine, where it completes the transaction against the student's account, and then grabs the item and take it where it needs to go for delivery.
That'd give it a much wider inventory and an ability to serve a wider audience than just one person.
You can tell these kids are going to make it in the business world...
He provides no source nor price for such key components as Sonar, LCD, IR detectors, Motors, and Wheels. You can almost hear the future bean counter cutting them a check for $260 for this project and laughing.
"It's the kind of thing we hear from universities or customers that act more as an ISP," said Doug Jacobson, Palisade's founder and chief technology officer. "They want to take the position of not filtering out all peer-to-peer [traffic], stopping copyrighted works but not the other content."
They want something impossible. Therefore, we've developed a program that kinda-sorta does the job and we're here to sell it...
The university I attend has explicit privacy rules, available for everyone to read. If I recall correctly this sort of thing would violate those rights awarded by the school and as soon as someone brings it up it'll disappear.
Do you mean this software, or the particular privacy rule that it violates is going to go away?
With the tightness of funds that today's universities are dealing with, maybe that bandwidth money could be better spent.
Every college's Terms of Service says that their computer systems are for "academic use only" or some similar phrase, in part because they have to in order to get grant funding to pay for their bandwidth. You might not remember signing that TOS, but trust me, every student at a college has signed something when they accepted admission that basically binds you to everything the school ever puts out as a "rule" whether you bother to read it or not.
So, forget the dream that they have to give you totally unrestricted bandwidth as part of the price of your dorm room. They never promised that to you, so if it goes away, tough.
Colleges have mostly played dumb that P2P has been going on, trying to claim that they're just a common carrier that can't really coprehend what's fair and what's foul over their network. Once they start trying to block copyrighted content, they'll start becoming liable for whatever slips through their checkpoint.
So... that's why any blocks we're going to see going up are going to be whole-protocol blocks or bandwidth throttles. They won't be blocking in the name of copyright protection, they'll be blocking in the name of bandwidth protection...
There's no way that any piece of software would be able to peek into encrypted sessions... so the only option this software would have would be a "deny all".
Seems like this could be useful as something a college could threaten installing unless P2P violators knock it off... but would be trading off quite a bit of legit functionality to ensure zero violations.
An artist can copyright his own work and choose to release it to the public under the terms he dictates. It's still copyrighted, he still owns the work, but it can still be legal to distribute it if the copyright owner says you can.
Of course, in the case of anybody with a major-label CD deal, that's the RIAA-member-owned label who is the copyright holder, not the artist.