The MCE Extenders give you the ability to watch live tv and use the guide, pause/rewind/skip, scedule recordings etc. All of the PVR functionality that is in Media Center on the PC is also available on the extender device. The fact that all the real work is taking place on the PC 'server' is transparent.
Media Center is basically putting together a client/server model where a single PC may serve multiple client devices at the same time. The devices all have access to the same content on the PC and share the tuners that are installed on the PC.
For all the XBMC fans here - MCE has moved far beyond what XMBC offers in terms functionality - and knee jerk reactions won't change that. XMBC is itself a pretty blatant rip-off of the MCE interface (I never realized how true this was till I looked at Tivo and ReplayTV and realized that they DON'T look like MCE - but XBMC does.)
There are definitely downsides to the MCE Extender story at this point - to be honest about it:
- It will not remote DVD playback - partly because of DRM concerns and partly because remoting the DVD menus is non-trivial. The XBox with the extender software will however play back DVDs locally (think of the XBOX Extender Kit as a superset of the XBOX DVD Kit)
- It does not output HDTV resolutions (though there have been some rumors that an update might enable this)
- The slick UI transitions that you see on the local MCE PC do not occur on the remote XBOX Client. I am not sure if this is the case for the non-XBOX extenders.
Re:Does it work properly/completely with Opera yet
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No, it does NOT use ActiveX - it just uses the full HTML support IE provices (dynamic HTML) - same sort of thing that makes OWA (Outlook Web Access) possible... (probably the most impressive web email that exists - granted you need an exchange server so it's hardly fair to compare it to free mail systems)
A cable modem does in fact modulate and demodulate a digital steam of bits into / out of a frequency space on a (cable) wire. There is really nothing wrong with the name.
As soon as the media player knows how to look up tracks when you put a CD in it enters the realm of privacy issues - or are you saying you don't want that feature?
But you are trolling. You've started off with the premise that installing a service pack somehow requires reinstalling apps and reapplying your settings - and it doesn't.
Not only is it reasonable to install a service pack without flattening the box - for most people it's the only choice they have since most people do not have access to the slipstream builds (everything built together for a fresh install.)
You've got to be kidding - copy program files? And you think any of those programs are going to work without their registry keys? Ok, back up the registry... and you will have defeated the whole point of reinstalling since you just brought all the old install's problems with you.
That's exactly what's been done with hybrid cars. My Civic Hybrid starts faster than you can take your foot off the brake and press down on the gas - and the starting process is no louder than when the engine is running. They just use the electric motor as an extremely powerful starter motor.
It doesn't work so well if you don't have a large electric motor to start the engine with - you end up slowly turning the engine over with a little starter motor waiting for a few cylinders to fire and get the process going. And little starter motors need to run at high RPMs (geared down to get enough power) and hence are pretty loud.
If that's the case then it might actually be a good idea - I'd feel ripped off if I couldn't feel the effects of a drug I chose to take - but who the hell actually *wants* the feeling of addiction?
Most countries, including at least the US and Canada - require you to have the work done to get your car up to their requirements when you move it there. This might slip by on the same continent but when shipping a car overseas (not that most people bother) it would be very difficult.
Actually it's "we'll put a boot IN your ass, it's the American way."
The song is by Toby Keith - a country singer who is otherwise rather mild. The song is about two years old - perhaps more, it was a response to September 11th, the 'you' who would get a boot in the ass was referring to the terrorists from 9.11.
The idea was that 'we, americans, are not going to take this kind of crap lying down - we will fight back' - it was not any kind of 'might makes right' justification.
Fighting back against terrorists - good.
Attacking Iraq because Bush can't tell the difference between real and imaginary enemies - bad.
Here's another example for you: wood-frame houses, built on-site. I don't see why houses couldn't be built from steel, like commercial buildings, and manufactured in a factory and transported to the site for final assembly. Yes, there are modular homes, but they never seem to compare at all to good stick-built homes for some reason; they're just a step up from a trailer.
This has a lot to do with the cost of steel.
To give another example, I watched a large overpass system be constructed over the last few years - it was interesting that all of the actual bridges were constructed from large steel pieces brought in on trucks, but all the ramps up and down (and they were BIG) were made from concrete and rebar.
The steel sections took very little time to install and complete - the cement parts took months. My reasoning was that they had to use steel for the bridges because they can't close I-90 for months - but they can take their time and save money with the rest.
Think about the billions of other interesting constructs that *didn't* happen - yes, we see lots of improbable results of evolution. These are the things that *did* happen. Statistically they were unlikely - but so were lots of things that didn't occur - these just happened to. We aren't 100% sure on the order that they happened in but I'm sure we'll figure it out in time.
Then again, we could just place everything we don't know in this big easy bucket called 'god' - who cares, that bucket gets emptied out a bit further each year as science advances and provides answers for the things mythology tried to explain when science couldn't.
That is - you intended to hold up a liqour store with a gun - you killed someone in the process - even if you didn't intend to kill them you sure did intend to hold up the store and it's you're own damn fault that you killed someone in the process.
Come now, the fact that no one in their right mind would ever willingly use Real's software is not the issue here... though it does limit the damage to Apple:)
You have to remember the trick used to claim that Microsoft was a monopoly - define the market as narrowly as possible.
Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems...... for personal computers... that aren't used as servers... as long as you don't count PDAs, Consumer electronics, game consoles... and only include computers with x86 processors
Apple now has a monopoly MP3 players...... that have hard drives... and firewire ports... and can play FairPlay AAC files...... and have a white case with a screen and a touch wheel maybe with some buttons above or on the wheel depending on which version you get
Uhm, vote for someone else? The fact that one of those two parties will win (and yes, I agree, it sucks) doesn't change the fact you can send a message by voting for some *other* candidate - and it's a much stronger message that not voting at all.
Actually no - unless something is explicitly illegal it IS legal. That doesn't mean that if you do something irresponsible and as a consequence kill someone that the irresponsibility should somehow absolve you of the crime of killing someone...
It is manslaughter - it is not murder. Murder requires intent - unless you want to prove that he consciously decided that he would watch DVDs while driving with the intent of upping his chances of killing someone then there is no argument for labeling it as murder.
The only thing you listed that actually *requires* satellites is the GPS reciever.
Cell phones and pagers don't use satellites at all (the hard wired phone network they tap into does - but not for most calls because the latency of satellite communication is too high)
Satellite phones exist for remote places where there are no cell towers but they are extremely expensive to use and are hardly essential to most people.
Interestingly the GPS reciever works via satellites for the same reason phones don't (work well.) The significant amount of time it takes to transmit the signal creates a measurable difference in the timecode which can be used to determine your distance from each satellite - and in turn your actual location (one of two possible locations with 3 satellites within reach - the other possible location is somewhere well beyond orbit and hence is discarded by the reciever.
What, you've never seen the midwest? It's a bunch of open space - much of it is used for agriculture but we don't even need most of that agriculture as we have the capacity to produce so much food already that we pay farmers not to produce it.
Also, the popluation of the US is declining if you take away immigration. Fewer and fewer people are having lots of children - because most people are more interested in pursuing their own lives for longer and simply don't have time to have lots of children.
Land is scarse around major cities in the US - but there is no nationwide land shortage.
Now, this is bound to piss someone off but...
We have significant population growth in 3rd world countries where women still live highly restricted lives and frankly have nothing better to do than have more children. These are the same countries that regularly experience mass famine. This works out in the end - by the time society reaches the point where most people don't die from disease people have also decided that there are more interesting things to do in life than have 10 children.
Then we go into those 3rd world countries and bring them medecine that they don't even understand - massively disrupting the balance that would otherwise exist.
Yes, we are going to be swamped with people from 3rd world countries in a few hundred years - we the '1st world' are going to weed ourselves right out of the gene pool.
While I am personally thrilled by the exploration of space it is not as simple as 'one man, one vote' - I am really dissapointed when I see people think this way because it's the result of the mass media pushing this notion that we (USA) live in a democracy - and we don't.
When we vote on issues we are supposed to be voting on whether they are the right thing to do - not whether or not they are something we personally want to see happen. If you were, say, hindu, and the majority of people in the USA were, say, christian - would you appreciate it if they decided to 'vote' that the national religion would be christianity and everyone had to go to the same church each sunday? Hey, it's one man one vote and the majority rules.... bullshit.
We have this thing called freedom - freedom to make choices like what religion to believe, if any - freedom to do what we want with our own money - or at least to not have it taken away from us for the whims of the majority.
The downside of democracy is that taken too far it essentially boils down to a mob rule. We (and I mean USA) live in a Constitutional Republic - we use democratic means to elect many of our leaders. In some cases we use democratic means to vote on specific measures (though this can be and has been abused.)
If everyone could really grasp that they were not supposed to vote their opinion of what they would like to see happen - but rather their opinion of what the right thing to do based on this country's founding principles - then perhaps we could have a full democracy without it becoming a mob rule - but people like you are showing this tendency to vote for, for example, space flight, simply because you want to see it happen - not because it is somehow the right thing for the government to do (which it might be if, for example, it was really necessary to defend us in a war, or it was really necessary for some specific result that would benefit the *vast* majority of people in the country - and not just because it boosts their egos.
Microsoft releases all of the actual security patches for Win2K as well... XPSP2 is not just a set of security patches though. Odds are that every *known* vulnerability that is fixed in XPSP2 has already had it's fix released publicly for both XP and Win2K.
SP2 also includes tons of fixes for 'possible' vulnerabilities (things like 'ok, here's a potential buffer overrun - can't find a specific path for an outsider to get in and exploit it but we're going to fix it anyway.)
Most importantly SP2 includes 'security features' within the OS - like new auto update functionality (pushing it to be on by default, nagging you repeatedly if you apply an update that requires a reboot and opt to reboot later), a way better firewall including firewall protection from the moment the system comes on to the net at boot time (previously there was a short window where the firewall wasn't on), popup blocking but more importantly a very strong effort to help users NOT install activex controls unless they really want them (you have to see it to understand what I mean...) - lots of measures there surrounding avoiding spyware.
These are all product features, not security patches - you really can't expect to get them in Win2K - they just aren't part of the product. That's not to say that some of these things might not get ported anyway - but you can't really complain if they don't... as long as you get the actual patches for vulnerabilities.
I have to agree - compatability with a competitor's software in a business where most or all of the money is made selling the software is a pretty bad idea.
Their best bet is to have compatability with XBox1... a few XBox1 games that get 'a little extra' when played on XBox2 would probably help encourage sales of the new console - but the extras need to be way less than you can get from 'native' XBox2 games or else developers won't be very motivated to make XBox2-only titles.
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The MCE Extenders give you the ability to watch live tv and use the guide, pause/rewind/skip, scedule recordings etc. All of the PVR functionality that is in Media Center on the PC is also available on the extender device. The fact that all the real work is taking place on the PC 'server' is transparent.
Media Center is basically putting together a client/server model where a single PC may serve multiple client devices at the same time. The devices all have access to the same content on the PC and share the tuners that are installed on the PC.
For all the XBMC fans here - MCE has moved far beyond what XMBC offers in terms functionality - and knee jerk reactions won't change that. XMBC is itself a pretty blatant rip-off of the MCE interface (I never realized how true this was till I looked at Tivo and ReplayTV and realized that they DON'T look like MCE - but XBMC does.)
There are definitely downsides to the MCE Extender story at this point - to be honest about it:
- It will not remote DVD playback - partly because of DRM concerns and partly because remoting the DVD menus is non-trivial. The XBox with the extender software will however play back DVDs locally (think of the XBOX Extender Kit as a superset of the XBOX DVD Kit)
- It does not output HDTV resolutions (though there have been some rumors that an update might enable this)
- The slick UI transitions that you see on the local MCE PC do not occur on the remote XBOX Client. I am not sure if this is the case for the non-XBOX extenders.
Getting Media Center Edition no longer requires purchasing a new overpriced system. Some references:
c ription=32-102-311&depa=0
c ription=80-100-851&DEPA=0
... $589 &loc=101&sp=1
9
t =438918&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&
MCE 2005 OEM (Software) - $140
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?des
MCE 2005 Remote - $40
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?des
Xbox MCE Extender software (includes remote - is what this whole article is about)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=1038520
LinkSys MCE Extender (standalone/wireless) -
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=1038266
HP has one too also can't find it for sale yet
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?produc
No, it does NOT use ActiveX - it just uses the full HTML support IE provices (dynamic HTML) - same sort of thing that makes OWA (Outlook Web Access) possible ... (probably the most impressive web email that exists - granted you need an exchange server so it's hardly fair to compare it to free mail systems)
A cable modem does in fact modulate and demodulate a digital steam of bits into / out of a frequency space on a (cable) wire. There is really nothing wrong with the name.
As soon as the media player knows how to look up tracks when you put a CD in it enters the realm of privacy issues - or are you saying you don't want that feature?
But you are trolling. You've started off with the premise that installing a service pack somehow requires reinstalling apps and reapplying your settings - and it doesn't.
Not only is it reasonable to install a service pack without flattening the box - for most people it's the only choice they have since most people do not have access to the slipstream builds (everything built together for a fresh install.)
You've got to be kidding - copy program files? And you think any of those programs are going to work without their registry keys? Ok, back up the registry ... and you will have defeated the whole point of reinstalling since you just brought all the old install's problems with you.
That's exactly what's been done with hybrid cars. My Civic Hybrid starts faster than you can take your foot off the brake and press down on the gas - and the starting process is no louder than when the engine is running. They just use the electric motor as an extremely powerful starter motor.
It doesn't work so well if you don't have a large electric motor to start the engine with - you end up slowly turning the engine over with a little starter motor waiting for a few cylinders to fire and get the process going. And little starter motors need to run at high RPMs (geared down to get enough power) and hence are pretty loud.
If that's the case then it might actually be a good idea - I'd feel ripped off if I couldn't feel the effects of a drug I chose to take - but who the hell actually *wants* the feeling of addiction?
Most countries, including at least the US and Canada - require you to have the work done to get your car up to their requirements when you move it there. This might slip by on the same continent but when shipping a car overseas (not that most people bother) it would be very difficult.
Actually it's "we'll put a boot IN your ass, it's the American way."
The song is by Toby Keith - a country singer who is otherwise rather mild. The song is about two years old - perhaps more, it was a response to September 11th, the 'you' who would get a boot in the ass was referring to the terrorists from 9.11.
The idea was that 'we, americans, are not going to take this kind of crap lying down - we will fight back' - it was not any kind of 'might makes right' justification.
Fighting back against terrorists - good.
Attacking Iraq because Bush can't tell the difference between real and imaginary enemies - bad.
1) There is no new DRM anything in SP2
2) Apart from the fixes already available you probably won't be able to download pieces of SP2 seperately
3) This is not about 'windows messenger' which you may have deleted - it is about the messenger service which has been there since NT4 or even earlier
This has a lot to do with the cost of steel.
To give another example, I watched a large overpass system be constructed over the last few years - it was interesting that all of the actual bridges were constructed from large steel pieces brought in on trucks, but all the ramps up and down (and they were BIG) were made from concrete and rebar.
The steel sections took very little time to install and complete - the cement parts took months. My reasoning was that they had to use steel for the bridges because they can't close I-90 for months - but they can take their time and save money with the rest.
Think about the billions of other interesting constructs that *didn't* happen - yes, we see lots of improbable results of evolution. These are the things that *did* happen. Statistically they were unlikely - but so were lots of things that didn't occur - these just happened to. We aren't 100% sure on the order that they happened in but I'm sure we'll figure it out in time.
Then again, we could just place everything we don't know in this big easy bucket called 'god' - who cares, that bucket gets emptied out a bit further each year as science advances and provides answers for the things mythology tried to explain when science couldn't.
For felony murder intent follows the crime.
That is - you intended to hold up a liqour store with a gun - you killed someone in the process - even if you didn't intend to kill them you sure did intend to hold up the store and it's you're own damn fault that you killed someone in the process.
Come now, the fact that no one in their right mind would ever willingly use Real's software is not the issue here ... though it does limit the damage to Apple :)
You have to remember the trick used to claim that Microsoft was a monopoly - define the market as narrowly as possible.
... ... for personal computers ... that aren't used as servers ... as long as you don't count PDAs, Consumer electronics, game consoles ... and only include computers with x86 processors
... ... that have hard drives ... and firewire ports ... and can play FairPlay AAC files ... ... and have a white case with a screen and a touch wheel maybe with some buttons above or on the wheel depending on which version you get
:)
Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems
Apple now has a monopoly MP3 players
How dare Real try to upset their Monopoly!
Uhm, vote for someone else? The fact that one of those two parties will win (and yes, I agree, it sucks) doesn't change the fact you can send a message by voting for some *other* candidate - and it's a much stronger message that not voting at all.
Actually no - unless something is explicitly illegal it IS legal. That doesn't mean that if you do something irresponsible and as a consequence kill someone that the irresponsibility should somehow absolve you of the crime of killing someone ...
It is manslaughter - it is not murder. Murder requires intent - unless you want to prove that he consciously decided that he would watch DVDs while driving with the intent of upping his chances of killing someone then there is no argument for labeling it as murder.
Slowly wandering off topic I know but ...
The only thing you listed that actually *requires* satellites is the GPS reciever.
Cell phones and pagers don't use satellites at all (the hard wired phone network they tap into does - but not for most calls because the latency of satellite communication is too high)
Satellite phones exist for remote places where there are no cell towers but they are extremely expensive to use and are hardly essential to most people.
Interestingly the GPS reciever works via satellites for the same reason phones don't (work well.) The significant amount of time it takes to transmit the signal creates a measurable difference in the timecode which can be used to determine your distance from each satellite - and in turn your actual location (one of two possible locations with 3 satellites within reach - the other possible location is somewhere well beyond orbit and hence is discarded by the reciever.
What, you've never seen the midwest? It's a bunch of open space - much of it is used for agriculture but we don't even need most of that agriculture as we have the capacity to produce so much food already that we pay farmers not to produce it.
...
Also, the popluation of the US is declining if you take away immigration. Fewer and fewer people are having lots of children - because most people are more interested in pursuing their own lives for longer and simply don't have time to have lots of children.
Land is scarse around major cities in the US - but there is no nationwide land shortage.
Now, this is bound to piss someone off but
We have significant population growth in 3rd world countries where women still live highly restricted lives and frankly have nothing better to do than have more children. These are the same countries that regularly experience mass famine. This works out in the end - by the time society reaches the point where most people don't die from disease people have also decided that there are more interesting things to do in life than have 10 children.
Then we go into those 3rd world countries and bring them medecine that they don't even understand - massively disrupting the balance that would otherwise exist.
Yes, we are going to be swamped with people from 3rd world countries in a few hundred years - we the '1st world' are going to weed ourselves right out of the gene pool.
Pretty sad actually.
While I am personally thrilled by the exploration of space it is not as simple as 'one man, one vote' - I am really dissapointed when I see people think this way because it's the result of the mass media pushing this notion that we (USA) live in a democracy - and we don't.
.... bullshit.
When we vote on issues we are supposed to be voting on whether they are the right thing to do - not whether or not they are something we personally want to see happen. If you were, say, hindu, and the majority of people in the USA were, say, christian - would you appreciate it if they decided to 'vote' that the national religion would be christianity and everyone had to go to the same church each sunday? Hey, it's one man one vote and the majority rules
We have this thing called freedom - freedom to make choices like what religion to believe, if any - freedom to do what we want with our own money - or at least to not have it taken away from us for the whims of the majority.
The downside of democracy is that taken too far it essentially boils down to a mob rule. We (and I mean USA) live in a Constitutional Republic - we use democratic means to elect many of our leaders. In some cases we use democratic means to vote on specific measures (though this can be and has been abused.)
If everyone could really grasp that they were not supposed to vote their opinion of what they would like to see happen - but rather their opinion of what the right thing to do based on this country's founding principles - then perhaps we could have a full democracy without it becoming a mob rule - but people like you are showing this tendency to vote for, for example, space flight, simply because you want to see it happen - not because it is somehow the right thing for the government to do (which it might be if, for example, it was really necessary to defend us in a war, or it was really necessary for some specific result that would benefit the *vast* majority of people in the country - and not just because it boosts their egos.
Microsoft releases all of the actual security patches for Win2K as well ... XPSP2 is not just a set of security patches though. Odds are that every *known* vulnerability that is fixed in XPSP2 has already had it's fix released publicly for both XP and Win2K.
...) - lots of measures there surrounding avoiding spyware.
... as long as you get the actual patches for vulnerabilities.
SP2 also includes tons of fixes for 'possible' vulnerabilities (things like 'ok, here's a potential buffer overrun - can't find a specific path for an outsider to get in and exploit it but we're going to fix it anyway.)
Most importantly SP2 includes 'security features' within the OS - like new auto update functionality (pushing it to be on by default, nagging you repeatedly if you apply an update that requires a reboot and opt to reboot later), a way better firewall including firewall protection from the moment the system comes on to the net at boot time (previously there was a short window where the firewall wasn't on), popup blocking but more importantly a very strong effort to help users NOT install activex controls unless they really want them (you have to see it to understand what I mean
These are all product features, not security patches - you really can't expect to get them in Win2K - they just aren't part of the product. That's not to say that some of these things might not get ported anyway - but you can't really complain if they don't
I have to agree - compatability with a competitor's software in a business where most or all of the money is made selling the software is a pretty bad idea.
... a few XBox1 games that get 'a little extra' when played on XBox2 would probably help encourage sales of the new console - but the extras need to be way less than you can get from 'native' XBox2 games or else developers won't be very motivated to make XBox2-only titles.
Their best bet is to have compatability with XBox1
David
Yes, and 'SenderID' is a compromise between CallerID and SPF.