Heh, I always get distracted coding helper methods. By the time I'm done, I've rewritten the API three times and only half-implemented each rewrite.
Still haven't quite managed to find a solution other than periodically whipping myself and pulling out pubes with tweezers everytime I decide to redesign the API.
You talking about the broke-ass legal system here in the US?;)
The same legal system that fails to see the democratic value of 40 million people sharing files that happen to have copyrights associated with their content?
Yeah right. Revolution is in order, I think.
(A rebuttal about on the same level as the one I received)
Copy protection costs money, time and must constantly be reworked to have any effect upon the bottom line. The only reason that publishers of stuff bother with it is because they are trying to keep the intellectual rights they have loosed within the bounds they defined for that loosing in the face of a society that, by and large, winks at the thieves that bedevil them.
Um, copy protection is a violation of copyright law. Even though the DMCA protects it, copyright law still requires two things to be able to happen: Fair uses of the work need to be allowed (which are prevented by copy protection), and the work needs to pass into the public domain when the copyright expires (also prevented by copy protection).
The logical solution is the take away copyrights that carry such weaponry in the distribution of the work.
There's nothing honorable about being a hacker in the "I will invade your stuff for whatever reason" sense of the word.
There's also nothing honorable about being a content producer in the "Every one who buys my stuff is thief" sense of the word.
Open Source is more of a nonproliferation pact: open source publishes, which precludes patenting (if the system works).
Eh? Patents is all about publishing! Without publishing your invention, what is the benefit to society gained by granting the patent? Patent is all about publishing! Open source and IP law have the same root, which is making the technology available for the good of society in the most practical way possible. Where open source and IP law collide is all about how patents are dealt with for software. If software patents were consistent with other patents and required source code, there would be little actual collision here. We'd still have problems with software patents, don't get me wrong, but much of the threat of litigation would be gone because the source code for the patented stuff would be there for easy comparison.
Patent is specifically "You publish your work, and in exchange for that we'll grant you the sole right to manufacture and distribute the work, temporarily." If any patent is being granted without the necessary payment of the work, then the patent is invalid.
Trade secrets come into play because a trade secret is a patentable technology that you chose not to patent, instead you chose to keep it secret. You don't get the kind of protection a patented invention gets, but you do get the added ability to keep your monopoly over the invention, provided you can keep it secret. But it is getting increasingly difficult to make an invention, produce and sell it, and keep it secret.
Re:It's not a side step; it's a precharged questio
on
Rob Pike Responds
·
· Score: 1
Ok, I'll go along with it, with a minor correction.
IP protection embues certain rights under various juridictions.
IP protection is about taking rights from the people/society/the public. IP law has at its foundation the concept of communal ownership over ideas. So when you invent something, the Law of Nature is that everybody owns the invention. In order to encourage invention, the Law of Nature is briefly discarded by something called a "patent".
I don't totally disagree with your post, I just take issue with the now-popular assumption that IP Law is all about protecting individual rights, and it's never been about that.
Re:If You Want a Serious Answer... Don't Get Cute
on
Rob Pike Responds
·
· Score: 1
as for saying that their "invention" might be stupid or obvious, it's perfectly within the boundaries set by the law to patent something that doesn't already exist or hasn't been thought up. so while the amazon 1-click patent might seem stupid or obvious, if it's so obvious, why hasn't anyone else used the idea?
Actually, non-obvious is a criteria for being granted a patent. If you try to patent something that is obvious to any reasonably competent professional in the field, it's supposed to be rejected. The reason the USPTO still grants such patents is twofold. First, the USPTO isn't comprised of professionals in every patentable field, they're just patent clerks, and not competent for evaluating the non-obvious criteria on a lot of the patents they grant. Second, it's easier for them to grant the patent and thusly delegate challenging the patent back to the market than it is for them to deal with actually trying to competently evaluate every patent under the non-obvious criteria. When you combine these two things with a plethora of patent applications each year, the result is actually pretty predictable.
It would be oh so sweet if I could offload the DVD encoding to another box like my server instead of the PVR. The PVR would of course read the DVD but the SMP server could handle the encoding
Forgot to mention. It looks like MPlayer's server will do exactly that. Provided mencoder supports it, that is. It's in the MPlayer docs, but I don't remember exactly where it is. Check it out. So you could write a simple daemon that runs on the machine you want to do all the ripping that accepts commands from the PVR, and the PVR can just automatically use it to do the encoding, optionally streaming it back to the PVR for storage. The technology is there, it jsut needs a good wrapper.:)
Then there's the data that should really only pertain to specific individuals unless they want to share it, like their personal playlists, selection history, viewing history, etc. I'd never thought about multi-user PVRs but I can see where it would be desirable. The hardest part would be authentication.
I wasn't actually thinking about dealing with authentication. Just something that lets you say you're a different user, and base it on the trust system, which is how my home operates anyway. If I have movies I don't want my kids to watch, I put it in my home directory and chmod 600 it. Not that that's even an issue right now, since my oldest is just learning how to read. I have to say I think an authentication mechanism has to be pretty transparent. How about a web cam that does some basic pattern recognition on the user holding the remote control?:) You could use gestures then. In fact, with a web cam you could build a UI with gestures. that would be pretty cool.
"Honey, to play the movie you have to jump up and down. Works best with your shirt off."
"How is our daughter supposed to play movies?"
"Ummm, I hadn't thought of that."
The way I see it is if I can enter data easily and keep it fairly organized then I just might keep my site reasonably up to date. Otherwise it will die a fate similar to my last site which hasn't been updated in close to 6 years.:-( Which frontend do you recommend? Your's looks like php-nuke. Is it? We don't demand much, do we.;-)
Oh boy. Mine's Mambo. I picked Mambo solely because it looked like the most mature of what was available. I didn't think slashcode was anywhere close to what I wanted, and I'm not about to start hacking perl anyway. I limited myself to php stuff, in fact. I haven't liked any of the php-nuke stuff I've seen, but that doesn't mean I couldn't build a good php-nuke site. Mambo has a great plugin architecture, and a whole buttload of plugins already available.
I'm not entirely happy with Mambo, but I really don't know if I'd be happier with anything else. It does take 99% of my website maintenance off my mind, but I'm still worried about the future of my site. I had hoped Mambo wouldn't leave me worried anymore, and I suspect that I just want more than what's available.
One of these days I'm actually going to crack open the Mambo API docs and start writing the components and modules I really want. Then I'll probably be a lot happier with Mambo.:)
I'm not totally disagreeing with you about soldier's attitudes, I'm just disagreeing about the order of technological developments vs soldier attitudes, because the soldiers don't make the R&D decisions. It's higher-ranked guys that don't have to risk their lives anymore, and don't necessarily have to worry about risking other people's lives, because it's their job to do so as needed.
So, yeah, that's the only disagreement here.:) I'm certainly not interested in joining the US military right now and fighting any war. I'd rather spend my fighting time fighting the government that's currently in charge....(It's an election year, I've been listening to "Vote with a bullet" a lot)
What's your thoughts about doing this with a PVR machine. Make it into an all-in-one does-it-all personal recorders? It seems like I saw plugins for MythTV and Freevo that handle audio.
I haven't actually looked real closely at MythTV and Freevo, but it seems to me that the article poster's question should be within the scope of both of those projects.:) At least, it would be if I were doing it. But then, if I were doing it, there'd be a million posts on mailing lists about it and 5 lines of code. Heh. MPlayer, which is what MythTV uses iirc, already supports audio CDs, and audio only files that it has codecs to support (so you could have an avi file with AC3 audio for your music if you want).
I'd like to build an all in one box that can not only rip and store DVDs on command but also handle ripping audio CDS, getting their details via CDDB or some other free site, and writing them to disk in an organized manner. Then I'd like to see the same interface (or something similar) be used to quickly and easily find and playback my recorded data. Playlists, sorting by genre, and maybe even an iTunes-like ratings system would be a plus. If you want a project, undertake that one.:-)
My hands are pretty full right now, but if I were to suddenly find full-time work that paid decently, I'd be all over a media box project, because that's exactly the direction I intend to go when I get the money together.
I'm actually fairly irritated that in 10 years of media players, it doesn't look like anybody's worked a rating system into playlists. I'm also irritated that playlists are still simple text files. Scheduled additions to my alarm clock involve changing playlists to be a simple pointer to a path (with a timer going off that scans the path for new files) and tracking the use of each song. Basically, since it's an alarm clock application, I want to track how many times a song gets snoozed compared to how many times a song gets shut off and make the program favor songs that don't get snoozed much under the reasoning that if the song doesn't get snoozed much it means it woke me up. Tracking listening habits seems like such a no-brainer feature to me that I'm shocked it's not there yet. (yes, I know, there's a plugin for XMMS for it. I haven't tried it because I don't really like xmms, and the long-term plan is to morph my alarm clock into a general purpose music player)
In any case, your ripping program will already have CDDB support, most likely, and it'll probably use freedb, which is fine.:) The main issue I've encountered with programs that do some sort of data manipulation and then stash it is finding it later, a simple problem that could be addressed by just telling you where it put it.:) You know, something like "According to the database, your CD is Heavy Metal/Thrash. You will find the tracks there in your genre tree" or whatever.
The playlist is something that needs to be grown a whole bunch, I think. Since my own system would necessarily be multi-user, I'd like some way for a person to say who they are when they rip a CD and associate themselves with already-ripped music in the case of overlapping interests. That way you can say "Just play my songs" and it'll play the songs you like.
Damn, I could go on and on and on about playlists and how shitty they are right now.
Looks like cdrdao has a number of cryptic commands for ripping cds that almost require scripting to make them work. It'll get the names of tracks from a CDDB you specify, so a little bit of work (probably some googling is all that's needed) will generate a commandline for that.
Ripping DVDs is a little more complicated, but mencoder does a fine job. Transcode will rip DVDs too, but I haven't managed ot do it successfully with transcode yet (although I have used transcode to convert avi files to mpgs I could burn onto SVCDs).
So your program, if you choose to write one, is just a mat
Didn't it ever occur to you to just grab a few d10s and use those for your hit points? That way you're only erasing and rewriting your hit points once a game, at the end when it's time to go.
Or, for those of us who suffered Frequent Death Syndrome, I could just use a d12 to track my hit points.
Soldiers are less willing to do dangerous missions or to be on the front. Hence the developement of technology that permits remote killing or surveillance.
Bullshit. The technology came first, then the soldier's attitudes. Sorry.:) Large corporations don't cater to the individual fears and attitudes of the soldier. The technology was built to save soldiers' lives not because the soldiers themselves didn't want to put them on the line, but because the powers that be (those in charge of military spending and research) determined that the fewer soldiers they risked in intelligence gathering and surveillance, the more they'd have to fight the big fight. They also learned that technology can get answers to questions you couldn't have even asked previously by using the brute force method of just sending people in.
Warfare is becoming mechanized because it's cheaper and generally more destructive to build machines that blow themselves up than it is to send in actual humans, supoprt them, and then try to bring them home.
I don't think I made my point quite right, so I'm hoping you'll do a little reading between the lines to find it if need be. But like any other slashdotter, if you read between the lines and find the wrong point.....;)
mpg123 is a command line mp3 player. I think the vorbis library comes with a command line vorbis player. If you go to my website and look at the program pyAlarm, you can pull out the magical code that plays music. You could easily write a Python-based media player, if you need to.
Ecasound plays everything under the sun, and more importantly, is a command line player. Just make srue you install lame, ogg vorbis, and anything else you want to play (timidity for midi, mikmod for mod files, etc).
PHP and Python are both well-supported for your web server. Both support syscalls, but you'll have to make sure the user has appropriate rights. The biggest problem you're likely to find is that only certain logged in users can have access to the sound device. Good luck with that, but I couldn't get anything to play from a cronjob.
As for automatically ripping CDs? cdrecord rips, and Grip is a front-end to cdrecord's ripper. transcode also rips, and I think MPlayer will rip too. All three of these are command line applications, but cdrecord is the one most likely to be bundled in your distribution.
Mandrake uses a kernel patch that makes it so that whenever you put a CD in, it watches and then does something. I think you can put something in your fstab for the CD player device that'll let you execute a script or program, and it shouldn't take much for you to throw something together for bash or python or something that'll handle the ripping. You might also find a solution to this problem with a few minutes spent googling.
What else do you need? Ask and you shall receive.
If you're really dead set on doing this yourself, knock yourself out. I might be interested in doing it for you (if you ship me the computer and I'll ship it back) if I can get one of my editors to be interested in the story. Send me an email from my website (linked in my sig) if you're interested.
Look, I don't really like Jar-Jar either, but there's a little more going on in the Phantom Menace than the introduction of Anakin Skywalker.
First and foremost, the story in the Phantom Menace is about Naboo, the Queen, and some cultural changes that need to take place for them to keep their independence. Sure, we watch the movie and know that it's only a small episode in the grand scheme of things, and that what's really important in this movie is the introduction of Darth Vader, the beginning of his relationship with Obi-Wan, and the return of the Sith to the Republic.
Hate Jar-Jar all you want, but hate the game, not the player. Jar-Jar's purpose in the flick was to bring the Naboo and the Gungans together to beat a mutual enemy, and the cultural changes that happen on Naboo as a result are fundamental and important.
I actually like the Phantom Menace, but in order to watch it I have to hypnotize myself into thinking I'm 8 years old. But other than that, I find it's a decent flick. But a "flick" is exactly what it is. How good or bad either of the first two episodes are will be determined by the third episode.
If my kids weren't sleeping, I'd be laughing loud enough for them to hear me in San Antone.
I can even see where the bolts were missing.:) I can just picture some long-haired stoner with a ratchet giggling his nuts off while he's taking the bolts out. "They'll never figure this out. Heee heee! They won't even check! Heeee Heeeee! Put snakes in my cup, will they, hahahahahahahahaha"
That one has practical joke written all over it.:) And those two guys in the white suits with the shower caps, they're looking at it like "I told you to check the bolts." "I thought you said you had checked the bolts."
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, I always get distracted coding helper methods. By the time I'm done, I've rewritten the API three times and only half-implemented each rewrite.
Still haven't quite managed to find a solution other than periodically whipping myself and pulling out pubes with tweezers everytime I decide to redesign the API.
Whatever happened to "fix the very first error listed, then recompile"? It's usually a missed include anyway.... ;)
No python?
hmmmm........
Python: You can shoot yourself in the foot by writing a simple wrapper over anything else on this page.
Somehow I don't think your professors would like Python one bit. Working with Python is what finally got my { up on the line with the if(condition).
Now I look at it and think "Duh!". Functions, claasses, everything, now.
If I didn't do it, I'd code like this:
This sentence no verb.
Sorry, I not resist. I jargon file last night and this funniest sentence in the whole thing.
You talking about the broke-ass legal system here in the US? ;)
The same legal system that fails to see the democratic value of 40 million people sharing files that happen to have copyrights associated with their content?
Yeah right. Revolution is in order, I think.
(A rebuttal about on the same level as the one I received)
Copy protection costs money, time and must constantly be reworked to have any effect upon the bottom line. The only reason that publishers of stuff bother with it is because they are trying to keep the intellectual rights they have loosed within the bounds they defined for that loosing in the face of a society that, by and large, winks at the thieves that bedevil them.
Um, copy protection is a violation of copyright law. Even though the DMCA protects it, copyright law still requires two things to be able to happen: Fair uses of the work need to be allowed (which are prevented by copy protection), and the work needs to pass into the public domain when the copyright expires (also prevented by copy protection).
The logical solution is the take away copyrights that carry such weaponry in the distribution of the work.
There's nothing honorable about being a hacker in the "I will invade your stuff for whatever reason" sense of the word.
There's also nothing honorable about being a content producer in the "Every one who buys my stuff is thief" sense of the word.
Open Source is more of a nonproliferation pact: open source publishes, which precludes patenting (if the system works).
Eh? Patents is all about publishing! Without publishing your invention, what is the benefit to society gained by granting the patent? Patent is all about publishing! Open source and IP law have the same root, which is making the technology available for the good of society in the most practical way possible. Where open source and IP law collide is all about how patents are dealt with for software. If software patents were consistent with other patents and required source code, there would be little actual collision here. We'd still have problems with software patents, don't get me wrong, but much of the threat of litigation would be gone because the source code for the patented stuff would be there for easy comparison.
Patent is specifically "You publish your work, and in exchange for that we'll grant you the sole right to manufacture and distribute the work, temporarily." If any patent is being granted without the necessary payment of the work, then the patent is invalid.
Trade secrets come into play because a trade secret is a patentable technology that you chose not to patent, instead you chose to keep it secret. You don't get the kind of protection a patented invention gets, but you do get the added ability to keep your monopoly over the invention, provided you can keep it secret. But it is getting increasingly difficult to make an invention, produce and sell it, and keep it secret.
Ok, I'll go along with it, with a minor correction.
IP protection embues certain rights under various juridictions.
IP protection is about taking rights from the people/society/the public. IP law has at its foundation the concept of communal ownership over ideas. So when you invent something, the Law of Nature is that everybody owns the invention. In order to encourage invention, the Law of Nature is briefly discarded by something called a "patent".
I don't totally disagree with your post, I just take issue with the now-popular assumption that IP Law is all about protecting individual rights, and it's never been about that.
as for saying that their "invention" might be stupid or obvious, it's perfectly within the boundaries set by the law to patent something that doesn't already exist or hasn't been thought up. so while the amazon 1-click patent might seem stupid or obvious, if it's so obvious, why hasn't anyone else used the idea?
Actually, non-obvious is a criteria for being granted a patent. If you try to patent something that is obvious to any reasonably competent professional in the field, it's supposed to be rejected. The reason the USPTO still grants such patents is twofold. First, the USPTO isn't comprised of professionals in every patentable field, they're just patent clerks, and not competent for evaluating the non-obvious criteria on a lot of the patents they grant. Second, it's easier for them to grant the patent and thusly delegate challenging the patent back to the market than it is for them to deal with actually trying to competently evaluate every patent under the non-obvious criteria. When you combine these two things with a plethora of patent applications each year, the result is actually pretty predictable.
It would be oh so sweet if I could offload the DVD encoding to another box like my server instead of the PVR. The PVR would of course read the DVD but the SMP server could handle the encoding
Forgot to mention. It looks like MPlayer's server will do exactly that. Provided mencoder supports it, that is. It's in the MPlayer docs, but I don't remember exactly where it is. Check it out. So you could write a simple daemon that runs on the machine you want to do all the ripping that accepts commands from the PVR, and the PVR can just automatically use it to do the encoding, optionally streaming it back to the PVR for storage. The technology is there, it jsut needs a good wrapper. :)
Then there's the data that should really only pertain to specific individuals unless they want to share it, like their personal playlists, selection history, viewing history, etc. I'd never thought about multi-user PVRs but I can see where it would be desirable. The hardest part would be authentication.
I wasn't actually thinking about dealing with authentication. Just something that lets you say you're a different user, and base it on the trust system, which is how my home operates anyway. If I have movies I don't want my kids to watch, I put it in my home directory and chmod 600 it. Not that that's even an issue right now, since my oldest is just learning how to read. I have to say I think an authentication mechanism has to be pretty transparent. How about a web cam that does some basic pattern recognition on the user holding the remote control? :) You could use gestures then. In fact, with a web cam you could build a UI with gestures. that would be pretty cool.
"Honey, to play the movie you have to jump up and down. Works best with your shirt off."
"How is our daughter supposed to play movies?"
"Ummm, I hadn't thought of that."
The way I see it is if I can enter data easily and keep it fairly organized then I just might keep my site reasonably up to date. Otherwise it will die a fate similar to my last site which hasn't been updated in close to 6 years. :-( Which frontend do you recommend? Your's looks like php-nuke. Is it? We don't demand much, do we. ;-)
Oh boy. Mine's Mambo. I picked Mambo solely because it looked like the most mature of what was available. I didn't think slashcode was anywhere close to what I wanted, and I'm not about to start hacking perl anyway. I limited myself to php stuff, in fact. I haven't liked any of the php-nuke stuff I've seen, but that doesn't mean I couldn't build a good php-nuke site. Mambo has a great plugin architecture, and a whole buttload of plugins already available.
I'm not entirely happy with Mambo, but I really don't know if I'd be happier with anything else. It does take 99% of my website maintenance off my mind, but I'm still worried about the future of my site. I had hoped Mambo wouldn't leave me worried anymore, and I suspect that I just want more than what's available.
One of these days I'm actually going to crack open the Mambo API docs and start writing the components and modules I really want. Then I'll probably be a lot happier with Mambo. :)
I'm not totally disagreeing with you about soldier's attitudes, I'm just disagreeing about the order of technological developments vs soldier attitudes, because the soldiers don't make the R&D decisions. It's higher-ranked guys that don't have to risk their lives anymore, and don't necessarily have to worry about risking other people's lives, because it's their job to do so as needed.
So, yeah, that's the only disagreement here. :) I'm certainly not interested in joining the US military right now and fighting any war. I'd rather spend my fighting time fighting the government that's currently in charge....(It's an election year, I've been listening to "Vote with a bullet" a lot)
What's your thoughts about doing this with a PVR machine. Make it into an all-in-one does-it-all personal recorders? It seems like I saw plugins for MythTV and Freevo that handle audio.
I haven't actually looked real closely at MythTV and Freevo, but it seems to me that the article poster's question should be within the scope of both of those projects. :) At least, it would be if I were doing it. But then, if I were doing it, there'd be a million posts on mailing lists about it and 5 lines of code. Heh. MPlayer, which is what MythTV uses iirc, already supports audio CDs, and audio only files that it has codecs to support (so you could have an avi file with AC3 audio for your music if you want).
I'd like to build an all in one box that can not only rip and store DVDs on command but also handle ripping audio CDS, getting their details via CDDB or some other free site, and writing them to disk in an organized manner. Then I'd like to see the same interface (or something similar) be used to quickly and easily find and playback my recorded data. Playlists, sorting by genre, and maybe even an iTunes-like ratings system would be a plus. If you want a project, undertake that one. :-)
My hands are pretty full right now, but if I were to suddenly find full-time work that paid decently, I'd be all over a media box project, because that's exactly the direction I intend to go when I get the money together.
I'm actually fairly irritated that in 10 years of media players, it doesn't look like anybody's worked a rating system into playlists. I'm also irritated that playlists are still simple text files. Scheduled additions to my alarm clock involve changing playlists to be a simple pointer to a path (with a timer going off that scans the path for new files) and tracking the use of each song. Basically, since it's an alarm clock application, I want to track how many times a song gets snoozed compared to how many times a song gets shut off and make the program favor songs that don't get snoozed much under the reasoning that if the song doesn't get snoozed much it means it woke me up. Tracking listening habits seems like such a no-brainer feature to me that I'm shocked it's not there yet. (yes, I know, there's a plugin for XMMS for it. I haven't tried it because I don't really like xmms, and the long-term plan is to morph my alarm clock into a general purpose music player)
In any case, your ripping program will already have CDDB support, most likely, and it'll probably use freedb, which is fine. :) The main issue I've encountered with programs that do some sort of data manipulation and then stash it is finding it later, a simple problem that could be addressed by just telling you where it put it. :) You know, something like "According to the database, your CD is Heavy Metal/Thrash. You will find the tracks there in your genre tree" or whatever.
The playlist is something that needs to be grown a whole bunch, I think. Since my own system would necessarily be multi-user, I'd like some way for a person to say who they are when they rip a CD and associate themselves with already-ripped music in the case of overlapping interests. That way you can say "Just play my songs" and it'll play the songs you like.
Damn, I could go on and on and on about playlists and how shitty they are right now.
Looks like cdrdao has a number of cryptic commands for ripping cds that almost require scripting to make them work. It'll get the names of tracks from a CDDB you specify, so a little bit of work (probably some googling is all that's needed) will generate a commandline for that.
Ripping DVDs is a little more complicated, but mencoder does a fine job. Transcode will rip DVDs too, but I haven't managed ot do it successfully with transcode yet (although I have used transcode to convert avi files to mpgs I could burn onto SVCDs).
So your program, if you choose to write one, is just a mat
Didn't it ever occur to you to just grab a few d10s and use those for your hit points? That way you're only erasing and rewriting your hit points once a game, at the end when it's time to go.
Or, for those of us who suffered Frequent Death Syndrome, I could just use a d12 to track my hit points.
Soldiers are less willing to do dangerous missions or to be on the front. Hence the developement of technology that permits remote killing or surveillance.
Bullshit. The technology came first, then the soldier's attitudes. Sorry. :) Large corporations don't cater to the individual fears and attitudes of the soldier. The technology was built to save soldiers' lives not because the soldiers themselves didn't want to put them on the line, but because the powers that be (those in charge of military spending and research) determined that the fewer soldiers they risked in intelligence gathering and surveillance, the more they'd have to fight the big fight. They also learned that technology can get answers to questions you couldn't have even asked previously by using the brute force method of just sending people in.
Warfare is becoming mechanized because it's cheaper and generally more destructive to build machines that blow themselves up than it is to send in actual humans, supoprt them, and then try to bring them home.
I don't think I made my point quite right, so I'm hoping you'll do a little reading between the lines to find it if need be. But like any other slashdotter, if you read between the lines and find the wrong point..... ;)
Screw backups. Run lopster and you'll always have backups.
(to paraphrase a famous Linus quote)
Add a $50 pci card to run the hard drive and....what? I've got one I would sell, works in Linux.
I just plugged in my laptop and used XMMS. Keyboard shortcuts are a wonder, and xmms has a bunch of keybindings.
Ok, here's what you want to know.
mpg123 is a command line mp3 player. I think the vorbis library comes with a command line vorbis player. If you go to my website and look at the program pyAlarm, you can pull out the magical code that plays music. You could easily write a Python-based media player, if you need to.
Ecasound plays everything under the sun, and more importantly, is a command line player. Just make srue you install lame, ogg vorbis, and anything else you want to play (timidity for midi, mikmod for mod files, etc).
PHP and Python are both well-supported for your web server. Both support syscalls, but you'll have to make sure the user has appropriate rights. The biggest problem you're likely to find is that only certain logged in users can have access to the sound device. Good luck with that, but I couldn't get anything to play from a cronjob.
As for automatically ripping CDs? cdrecord rips, and Grip is a front-end to cdrecord's ripper. transcode also rips, and I think MPlayer will rip too. All three of these are command line applications, but cdrecord is the one most likely to be bundled in your distribution.
Mandrake uses a kernel patch that makes it so that whenever you put a CD in, it watches and then does something. I think you can put something in your fstab for the CD player device that'll let you execute a script or program, and it shouldn't take much for you to throw something together for bash or python or something that'll handle the ripping. You might also find a solution to this problem with a few minutes spent googling.
What else do you need? Ask and you shall receive.
If you're really dead set on doing this yourself, knock yourself out. I might be interested in doing it for you (if you ship me the computer and I'll ship it back) if I can get one of my editors to be interested in the story. Send me an email from my website (linked in my sig) if you're interested.
I have read about people getting their PhDs in the 60s and 70s.
I hear thousands of people got their PhDs in the 60s and 70s, but that it's a lot easier to get a PhD now than it was back then.
Look, I don't really like Jar-Jar either, but there's a little more going on in the Phantom Menace than the introduction of Anakin Skywalker.
First and foremost, the story in the Phantom Menace is about Naboo, the Queen, and some cultural changes that need to take place for them to keep their independence. Sure, we watch the movie and know that it's only a small episode in the grand scheme of things, and that what's really important in this movie is the introduction of Darth Vader, the beginning of his relationship with Obi-Wan, and the return of the Sith to the Republic.
Hate Jar-Jar all you want, but hate the game, not the player. Jar-Jar's purpose in the flick was to bring the Naboo and the Gungans together to beat a mutual enemy, and the cultural changes that happen on Naboo as a result are fundamental and important.
I actually like the Phantom Menace, but in order to watch it I have to hypnotize myself into thinking I'm 8 years old. But other than that, I find it's a decent flick. But a "flick" is exactly what it is. How good or bad either of the first two episodes are will be determined by the third episode.
I had a lobotomy once. Nobody told me about it, so I did a scan of my brain. I found a big letter "F" carved into the side of one of my frontal lobes.
Freaky, huh?
"Steve, I'd like to do some work on Jones."
"George, we finished Jones a long time ago."
"Yeah, but you know, I was never really happy with it."
"I was. And after I saw what you did to Star Wars, you can keep your filthy fingers off my flick."
"What do you mean? Now I'm happy with Star Wars."
"If you were playing to an audience of one, that would be great. Now go away, I'm fishing."
"No you're not, you're making a movie."
"What are you, stupid? Why do you think I'm wearing this silly hat and vest?"
If my kids weren't sleeping, I'd be laughing loud enough for them to hear me in San Antone.
I can even see where the bolts were missing. :) I can just picture some long-haired stoner with a ratchet giggling his nuts off while he's taking the bolts out. "They'll never figure this out. Heee heee! They won't even check! Heeee Heeeee! Put snakes in my cup, will they, hahahahahahahahaha"
That one has practical joke written all over it. :) And those two guys in the white suits with the shower caps, they're looking at it like "I told you to check the bolts." "I thought you said you had checked the bolts."