My marketing research also tells me that people who bough the cure for baldness may also be interesting in buying some prime buildable real-estate in Florida: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swampland_in_Florida
Now modern "tablets" are more akin to mobile phones (e.g. ARM processors and embedded type OSes like android and QNX) and the MS stuff was an attempt to shoehorn an XP PC into a smaller form factor. But still, the did try. Perhaps they were ahead of their time, or just inept in bringing novel products to market.
I sorta agree with the "fad" characterization, in the sense that the new devices have the cachet of cool companies like Apple and Google and that is why the are now becoming sucessful. Before, it was just a niche and not on the radar screen of the consumer, but now it is. The iPhone and iPad have shown that powerful devices can fit in a pocket or purse, and people now expect and will from now on continue to expect to have all the power of a PC in their pocket. MS will have to really worry about tablets/smartphones when businesses start issuing them to their employees *instead* of PCs and laptops, and not just in addition to PCs and laptops. I think that day is coming and MS should be afraid; very afraid.
People in the countryside necessarily are forced to drive more miles than city dwellers. In urban and suburban areas, commutes are shorter (distance), even if they take longer time wise because of congestion. Additional, there usually are some public transit options available in the city. People in rural areas have no choice but to drive long distances.
This is doubled in the last 30 years by the âoeWal-Mart Effectâ. Small town economies have been crippled by 1) shutting down local manufacturing with massive amounts of cheap imports (yes, lots of small towns had factories) and 2) driving out all small town downtown business with predatory pricing by big-box stores. In some areas, every type of business or service is concentrated at a regional mid-size town which has the regional Wal-Mart and the surrounding towns are reduced to bedroom communities. In some towns, there isnâ(TM)t even a grocery store anymore because Wal-Mart has run them out of business. People in these towns are forced to drive 20 miles to get groceries or to go to the doctor. As economic activity has concentrated in the regional centers, so have the jobs. With the factories shutdown and the downtown shuttered, people have to commute to work in the regional centers instead of working locally.
A tax like this would disproportionally tax people who are already poor.
First, good for them (Boxee), and I wish them success in their niche. That being said.....
I've been using the Dell Zino with Win 7 Media Center for several months now (since Sept 10) with wireless keyboard with trackball. The Zino is an extremely small box (8 in x 8 in) with a HDMI connector, so it plugs right into the TV. As far as I know, it does everything the Boxee does, plus more because its a regular Windows computer. Vudu, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Slashcontrol, etc all have regular web interfaces (plus Hulu has the Hulu Desktop client), so everything can be accessed just by opening a browser. I use the desktop app for Hulu. Plus, I can play all my DVDs and CDs that I have ripped to my NAS from the Win 7 media center. As I mentioned in a previous post back in Sept, I am having very good luck with the vanilla Win 7 media center that comes with Win 7 Home Premium. The user interface is easy enough for my 6 year old to operate it without assistance. No trans-coding or format translations required to play DVD rips. I have my video library (DVD native VOBs) backed up on a 2 TB NAS (WD My Book World Edition, which is a Linux box that you can admin through the web gui or SSH and to which I have installed a CUPS print server ). Everything plays perfectly on my three Win 7 media center clients and on my Vista media center client (Vista requires an easy registry hack to get the DVD library to show up, Win 7 needs only be pointed to the NAS). Again, these are straight DVD backups with no trans-coding. The good thing with this is that all the DVD menus and special features are available. I have removed the dedicated DVD-player from the living room and use the DVD drive in the Zino now instead. There is essentially no fan noise (you literally have to put your ear up next to the machine to hear the fan).
I added a Hauppauge tuner so I can use the Zino as a DVR [analog cable and unscrambled digital only, although it picks up digital HD broadcast too ] . I had bought the upgraded HDD on the expectation of saving lots of recorded shows, but now I realize I didn't need it, because I can move recorded shows to the NAS if the HDD starts to get full. For the next purchase, I'll keep the standard drive.
So, If I was going to spend $199 for another box to hook to a TV, I'd spend the extra $100 to get the Zino (low end is $299). The extra functionality is probably worth the extra $100.
So far the only real annoyance that I've had, is that when Windows updates itself, the video driver sometimes get confused and fubars the HDMI audio to Media Center (but oddly not to the rest of Windows). So I have to regularly (probably at least monthly) ensure that I have the latest video driver.
I also have to say I've been favorably impressed with the WD Mybook World Edition. Nowadays, they include a checkbox in the web gui to enable ssh. You can then ssh in and do anything you want with it. In my case, I replaced the busybox setup with a full system using optware (ipkg), installed a cups print server, and attached a printer to the USB port. So far it has been able to serve up different movies to three different clients simultaneously over my home network without any problems.
I use a power-line Ethernet adapter because I perceived it to be easier and more reliable than wireless. The kids go to a separate room to watch their own stuff on their computers and I was concerned about flooding my wireless network by trying to stream multiple DVDs/online videos to different rooms, so I went with a wired solution.
Perhaps insects could be a replacement for fishmeal, an important component in feeds for both aquaculture and livestock. They use the fishmeal to provide protein to the livestock/salmon. One of the persistent criticisms of aquaculture is that it takes several kilograms of wild-caught forage/bait fish (mostly anchovies) to be processed into feed to make one kilo of salmon. Same with feed for livestock made from fishmeal. I suspect it would not be too hard to grind up grasshoppers instead of anchovies.
I think calling this a swipe at Intel is overblown.
Intel has historically sold ARM-based processors ( see the XScale at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale), although they sold-off most of their ARM business to a company called Marvell. However, Intel continued to Fab for Marvell until Marvell was able to build or rent their own Fab. I don't know the current situation, but there is a good chance that Intel still has an ARM production line running under contract for Marvell. At the bottom of the wiki article it says, "Intel still holds an ARM license even after the sale of XScale." So they can move right into the business again if they see the market justification for it.
Looks like you can also get it with a safari books online (i.e. o'reilly) subscription. I used to have a subscription when I needed to access lots of language references and I really liked the bookshelf concept.
This would be great for the civil-assistance/rescue mission of the US Coast Guard if used for search-and-rescue helicopters and air-ambulances. Something like this would have been handy to park in the Gulf of Mexico as a mobile operating base during the oil-spill or to twin up with the USNS Mercy during the Haiti Earthquake or Indonesian Tsuanmi missions. Since the USNS Mercy and its sister [the USNS Comfort] have limited helicopter capacity, this would be a good supplement.
Microwave transmission of power can send 10s of kilowatts. A heavy infrantry squad travels in an armoured personnel carrier, so the APC could have a microwave power transmision system (similiar to raytheon's "active denial" pain-ray) installed to support the dismounted troops. Line-of-sight could be a problem, but that can be rectified with short-term batteries for when you temporarily drop out of sight and/or with a drone relay circling overhead. It would also be nearly silent since the hydraulics would be driven by an electrical motor, although a drone overhead might give away position (depending on its altitude and proximty).
Although well over 90 percent of the minerals are produced in China, they are found in many places around the world, and, in spite of their name, are actually abundant in the earth's crust (the name is a hold-over from a 19th-century convention). In recent years, low-cost Chinese production and environmental concerns have caused suppliers outside of China to shut down operations.
Although well over 90 percent of the minerals are produced in China, they are found in many places around the world, and, in spite of their name, are actually abundant in the earth's crust (the name is a hold-over from a 19th-century convention). In recent years, low-cost Chinese production and environmental concerns have caused suppliers outside of China to shut down operations.
In other words, we (the West) have artifically created this situation by shutting down our own mines with labor and evironmental regulations, while allowing China (with no real enforcement of labor or environmental regulations, even if they are on the books) to dominate the market. I saw a TV spot about this a while back and apparently there was an operating mine in California as recently as 10 years ago, which simply wasn't able to compete with Chinese prices because the California mine had the expense of actually complying with the US environmental regulations. That gives the Chinese an artificial price advantage.
The market for these goods are mostly export markets in Japan, North America, and Europe, so this is in our power to control. To stimulate production in the west, we could do one of two things : 1) eliminate our own self-imposed regulations (perhaps unacceptabe from an environmental point of view) or 2) eliminate the artifical price advantage that the chinese have from not having regulations. I would choose # 2. We need only tax chinese imports and goods with chinese components. For example, say a motor from Japan uses magnets and is being exported to the USA, then the manufacturer would need to demonstrate that the magnet was made from non-chinese metals to be exempt from an import tariff. Once the artifical price advantage of the chinese component is nullfied, the manufacturer would be willing to pay higher prices from other non-chinese mines. Then other mines outside China would arise in the market. As an added side-effect, the Chinese might even begin regulating their own industry to get out from under the tariff.
In my case, the problem was the kids scratching up the DVD collection, so I wanted a way for the kids to watch a movie without worrying about them popping it out of the player with peanut-butter covered hands. Now I backup up the originals (which go on a high shelf) and we watch the digital backup over the network.
I am having good luck with the vanilla Win 7 media center that comes with Win 7 Home Premium. The user interface is easy enough for my 5 year old to operate it without assistance. No trans-coding or format translations required. I have my video library (DVD native VOBs) backed up on a 2 TB NAS (WD My Book World Edition, which is a Linux box that you can admin through the web gui or SSH ). Everything plays perfectly my two Win 7 media center clients and on my Vista media center client (Vista requires an easy registry hack to get the DVD library to show up, Win 7 needs only be pointed to the NAS). Again, these are straight DVD backups with no trans-coding. The good thing with this is that all the DVD menus and special features are available.
I am in the process of extending my setup to the TV in the living room. I have a Dell Zino HD on order (delivers Saturday). I can't comment yet on fan noise, but this is an extremely small box (8 in x 8 in) with a HDMI connector. I bought a Hauppauge tuner and a wireless keyboard with trackball to go with it (I suppose I could also buy a media center remote too, but I think the keyboard and trackball will be enough).
I had tried a media center extender before and I was severely disappointed because they don't play VOBs, which means you have to trans-code, or rip to another format, and in either case you won't have menus. But the Win 7 clients can play VOBs over the network flawlessly. I am high hopes for the Zino when it gets here in a few days.
I also have to say I've been favorably impressed with the WD Mybook World Edition. Nowadays, they include a checkbox in the web gui to enable ssh. You can then ssh in and do anything you want with it. In my case, I replaced the busybox setup with a full system using optware (ipkg), installed a cups print server, and attached a printer to the USB port. So far it has been able to serve up different movies to three different clients simultaneously over my home network without any problems.
I used to work for the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) at Veterans Affairs (VA). NCA uses two automated systems: Burial Operations Support System (BOSS) and Automated Monunment Application System (AMAS). They even have an on-line grave locator at http://www.cem.va.gov/ . These systems work very well. The systems are fully linked into the the VA administration of burial benefits due to deceased veterans or deceased military. The system contains information on current burials and has also been loaded with historical data all they way back to the civil war. Arlington already uses AMAS to order headstones. I'm sure the VA would be happy to add Arlington as a site for BOSS (they already manage 128 cemeteries and Arlington would just add one more). It would take some work to load the data, but that would be a one-time effort.
The interesting thing about the well-functioning VA systems is that they are NOT developed or administered by contractors. They were developed and are maintained by Government employees (civil servants). They are administered daily by civil servants. The programers are all GS employees and the DBAs are all GS employees. Contractors have never touched the systems and hopefully never will. The only thing that contractors did was provide some unskilled labor to do document scanning that was then imported into the system by the Government developers/admins.
VA has had success when they do in-house development with Government employees and dismal failures when they try to contract-out development. Just Google "CoreFLS" to see how a contractor developed system can fail to the tune of $250 Million and then never be deployed. CoreFLS was a $250 Million boondogle worked on by a bunch of H-1Bs that was so bad the Assistant Secretary for IM was fired by the President. If the President of the United States has to be personally notified that you fscked up, its as bad as it gets.
I image that to get the circulatory system into the organ, they need to have a micro-printing process, perhaps like is used for production of microelectronics. According to wikipedia, capillaries are in the range of 5-10 micrometers. I think that is probably an achievable technology. They would have to switch to a differnt "ink" (i.e. cells for a blood vessel wall) instead of the primary "ink" for the organ cells.
Instead of using a donor and then stripping cells to get the collogen scaffold, next they should do 3-D printing of collogen into any shape they want. "Grown" organs in the future will not be grown, they will be built layer-by-layer.
So no the idiots at the Army Corps of Engineers who signed the contract for this didn't in fact get ownership of anything other than the physical sculpture.
Actually, the Corps of Engineers included clauses in the contract that gave "GOVERNMENT RIGHTS (UNLIMITED)" and "DRAWINGS AND OTHER DATA TO BECOME PROPERTY OF GOVERNMENT". The dissenting opinion of Judge Newman makes this clear. The rest of the court chose to ignore this because, apparently, the Government's lawyer (inexplicably) did not include it in the brief to the appellate court. Read the dissenting opinion.
That is the propaganda and lies that the pirates have been using to rationalize their lawlessness and I'm surprised anybody literate enough to post to slashdot is foolish enough to fall for it. They have been seizing ships far outside the 12 mile territorial limit and even far outside the 200 mile exclusive economic zone. They are now seizing ships off the Seychelles, which is many hundreds of miles south of Somalia. Seas outside of the exclusive economic zone are free to fish for any nation's fleet. So if this is their reason, why are they seizing yachts which are clearly not outfitted with commercial fishing gear and are hundreds of miles outside of the Somali EEZ? Because they are murderous thieves and thugs; that's why.
What I and my family watch on Hulu is not available on cable or broadcast. We watch some really old cartoons with my kids like "Speed Racer","He-Man", and "She-Ra". Its a chance for me and my wife to share with our kids some of the things that we used to enjoy when we were growning up. I don't have a problem paying (a reasonable price) for content that is not available elsewhere. If my cable company had that kind of video libarary available on demand, I would pay them instead, but they don't. If you have an Xbox360 or media extender (with the PlayOn and vmcPlayIt plug-ins), you can watch Hulu (and netflix instant view) on your TV, not just the computer. Its better than cable, because its on demand and has a fairly large library. I want them to be profitable, because it will a) keep them around for me to enjoy b) encourge them to expand their library further. I'll gladly pay for that.
You're right. Google wants to control the data. The Hardware, the OS, and the applications are just tools to that end. This is a opportunity for them to push all of their "cloud" services such as Google Docs and GMail. I predict the hardare will have extremely small home partitions for user storage, because the user will be expected store all their docucments and data on the Google servers. There may not be enough disk space to install third-party applications and that that will be by design because the user will be expected to use the web-apps from Google. Heck, the entire local media might be read-only and user storage may be completely on Google's servers.
Once all of your data belongs to them, expect the pay subscription model to start.
Well my hope is that any PC or Netbook OEM who supports ChromeOS will have to write kernel drivers for all their own hardware and only buy from suppliers who aslo support linux. I hope this will also provide impetus for third party devices like printers, cameras, etc, etc to provide OEM supported linux kernel drivers. While I am imagining utopia, instead of binary blobs, maybe they will even be willing to give out specficiations so other people like BSD can make drivers too.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe baldness has already been cured with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil
My marketing research also tells me that people who bough the cure for baldness may also be interesting in buying some prime buildable real-estate in Florida: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swampland_in_Florida
You can also earn millions working from home: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing
Twice in the last decade MS has tried to do tablet type devices and failed in the market.
Remember project "Origami" circa 2006 , aka the "Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC)". Well, here are some slashdot articles to refresh your memory: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/06/02/24/1734257/What-is-Microsofts-Origami-Project and http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/05/03/2337233/Death-of-the-UMPC
The also tried those laptop type devices with the reversable screen circa 2002-2005 that they called tablets; http://slashdot.org/story/02/10/27/1458259/Windows-XP-Tablet-PC-Edition.
Now modern "tablets" are more akin to mobile phones (e.g. ARM processors and embedded type OSes like android and QNX) and the MS stuff was an attempt to shoehorn an XP PC into a smaller form factor. But still, the did try. Perhaps they were ahead of their time, or just inept in bringing novel products to market.
I sorta agree with the "fad" characterization, in the sense that the new devices have the cachet of cool companies like Apple and Google and that is why the are now becoming sucessful. Before, it was just a niche and not on the radar screen of the consumer, but now it is. The iPhone and iPad have shown that powerful devices can fit in a pocket or purse, and people now expect and will from now on continue to expect to have all the power of a PC in their pocket. MS will have to really worry about tablets/smartphones when businesses start issuing them to their employees *instead* of PCs and laptops, and not just in addition to PCs and laptops. I think that day is coming and MS should be afraid; very afraid.
People in the countryside necessarily are forced to drive more miles than city dwellers. In urban and suburban areas, commutes are shorter (distance), even if they take longer time wise because of congestion. Additional, there usually are some public transit options available in the city. People in rural areas have no choice but to drive long distances.
This is doubled in the last 30 years by the âoeWal-Mart Effectâ. Small town economies have been crippled by 1) shutting down local manufacturing with massive amounts of cheap imports (yes, lots of small towns had factories) and 2) driving out all small town downtown business with predatory pricing by big-box stores. In some areas, every type of business or service is concentrated at a regional mid-size town which has the regional Wal-Mart and the surrounding towns are reduced to bedroom communities. In some towns, there isnâ(TM)t even a grocery store anymore because Wal-Mart has run them out of business. People in these towns are forced to drive 20 miles to get groceries or to go to the doctor. As economic activity has concentrated in the regional centers, so have the jobs. With the factories shutdown and the downtown shuttered, people have to commute to work in the regional centers instead of working locally.
A tax like this would disproportionally tax people who are already poor.
First, good for them (Boxee), and I wish them success in their niche. That being said.....
I've been using the Dell Zino with Win 7 Media Center for several months now (since Sept 10) with wireless keyboard with trackball. The Zino is an extremely small box (8 in x 8 in) with a HDMI connector, so it plugs right into the TV. As far as I know, it does everything the Boxee does, plus more because its a regular Windows computer. Vudu, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Slashcontrol, etc all have regular web interfaces (plus Hulu has the Hulu Desktop client), so everything can be accessed just by opening a browser. I use the desktop app for Hulu. Plus, I can play all my DVDs and CDs that I have ripped to my NAS from the Win 7 media center. As I mentioned in a previous post back in Sept, I am having very good luck with the vanilla Win 7 media center that comes with Win 7 Home Premium. The user interface is easy enough for my 6 year old to operate it without assistance. No trans-coding or format translations required to play DVD rips. I have my video library (DVD native VOBs) backed up on a 2 TB NAS (WD My Book World Edition, which is a Linux box that you can admin through the web gui or SSH and to which I have installed a CUPS print server ). Everything plays perfectly on my three Win 7 media center clients and on my Vista media center client (Vista requires an easy registry hack to get the DVD library to show up, Win 7 needs only be pointed to the NAS). Again, these are straight DVD backups with no trans-coding. The good thing with this is that all the DVD menus and special features are available. I have removed the dedicated DVD-player from the living room and use the DVD drive in the Zino now instead. There is essentially no fan noise (you literally have to put your ear up next to the machine to hear the fan).
I added a Hauppauge tuner so I can use the Zino as a DVR [analog cable and unscrambled digital only, although it picks up digital HD broadcast too ] . I had bought the upgraded HDD on the expectation of saving lots of recorded shows, but now I realize I didn't need it, because I can move recorded shows to the NAS if the HDD starts to get full. For the next purchase, I'll keep the standard drive.
So, If I was going to spend $199 for another box to hook to a TV, I'd spend the extra $100 to get the Zino (low end is $299). The extra functionality is probably worth the extra $100.
So far the only real annoyance that I've had, is that when Windows updates itself, the video driver sometimes get confused and fubars the HDMI audio to Media Center (but oddly not to the rest of Windows). So I have to regularly (probably at least monthly) ensure that I have the latest video driver.
I also have to say I've been favorably impressed with the WD Mybook World Edition. Nowadays, they include a checkbox in the web gui to enable ssh. You can then ssh in and do anything you want with it. In my case, I replaced the busybox setup with a full system using optware (ipkg), installed a cups print server, and attached a printer to the USB port. So far it has been able to serve up different movies to three different clients simultaneously over my home network without any problems.
I use a power-line Ethernet adapter because I perceived it to be easier and more reliable than wireless. The kids go to a separate room to watch their own stuff on their computers and I was concerned about flooding my wireless network by trying to stream multiple DVDs/online videos to different rooms, so I went with a wired solution.
Perhaps insects could be a replacement for fishmeal, an important component in feeds for both aquaculture and livestock. They use the fishmeal to provide protein to the livestock/salmon. One of the persistent criticisms of aquaculture is that it takes several kilograms of wild-caught forage/bait fish (mostly anchovies) to be processed into feed to make one kilo of salmon. Same with feed for livestock made from fishmeal. I suspect it would not be too hard to grind up grasshoppers instead of anchovies.
I think calling this a swipe at Intel is overblown. Intel has historically sold ARM-based processors ( see the XScale at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale), although they sold-off most of their ARM business to a company called Marvell. However, Intel continued to Fab for Marvell until Marvell was able to build or rent their own Fab. I don't know the current situation, but there is a good chance that Intel still has an ARM production line running under contract for Marvell. At the bottom of the wiki article it says, "Intel still holds an ARM license even after the sale of XScale." So they can move right into the business again if they see the market justification for it.
Looks like you can also get it with a safari books online (i.e. o'reilly) subscription. I used to have a subscription when I needed to access lots of language references and I really liked the bookshelf concept.
Attempts have been made at this for years with pnuematic tubes, with varying success. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_public_transportation
This is essentially an update on the old steam-era (shall I venture "steam-punk"?) tech
This would be great for the civil-assistance/rescue mission of the US Coast Guard if used for search-and-rescue helicopters and air-ambulances. Something like this would have been handy to park in the Gulf of Mexico as a mobile operating base during the oil-spill or to twin up with the USNS Mercy during the Haiti Earthquake or Indonesian Tsuanmi missions. Since the USNS Mercy and its sister [the USNS Comfort] have limited helicopter capacity, this would be a good supplement.
Microwave transmission of power can send 10s of kilowatts. A heavy infrantry squad travels in an armoured personnel carrier, so the APC could have a microwave power transmision system (similiar to raytheon's "active denial" pain-ray) installed to support the dismounted troops. Line-of-sight could be a problem, but that can be rectified with short-term batteries for when you temporarily drop out of sight and/or with a drone relay circling overhead. It would also be nearly silent since the hydraulics would be driven by an electrical motor, although a drone overhead might give away position (depending on its altitude and proximty).
It looks to be an old lady, so its entirely possible that what he is seeing is something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ardent_hearing_aid.JPG which is part of this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkney_Wireless_Museum also seen here http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display.aspx?id=6713
Here is the part of the article I was quoting:
Although well over 90 percent of the minerals are produced in China, they are found in many places around the world, and, in spite of their name, are actually abundant in the earth's crust (the name is a hold-over from a 19th-century convention). In recent years, low-cost Chinese production and environmental concerns have caused suppliers outside of China to shut down operations.
In other words, we (the West) have artifically created this situation by shutting down our own mines with labor and evironmental regulations, while allowing China (with no real enforcement of labor or environmental regulations, even if they are on the books) to dominate the market. I saw a TV spot about this a while back and apparently there was an operating mine in California as recently as 10 years ago, which simply wasn't able to compete with Chinese prices because the California mine had the expense of actually complying with the US environmental regulations. That gives the Chinese an artificial price advantage.
The market for these goods are mostly export markets in Japan, North America, and Europe, so this is in our power to control. To stimulate production in the west, we could do one of two things : 1) eliminate our own self-imposed regulations (perhaps unacceptabe from an environmental point of view) or 2) eliminate the artifical price advantage that the chinese have from not having regulations. I would choose # 2. We need only tax chinese imports and goods with chinese components. For example, say a motor from Japan uses magnets and is being exported to the USA, then the manufacturer would need to demonstrate that the magnet was made from non-chinese metals to be exempt from an import tariff. Once the artifical price advantage of the chinese component is nullfied, the manufacturer would be willing to pay higher prices from other non-chinese mines. Then other mines outside China would arise in the market. As an added side-effect, the Chinese might even begin regulating their own industry to get out from under the tariff.
In my case, the problem was the kids scratching up the DVD collection, so I wanted a way for the kids to watch a movie without worrying about them popping it out of the player with peanut-butter covered hands. Now I backup up the originals (which go on a high shelf) and we watch the digital backup over the network.
I am having good luck with the vanilla Win 7 media center that comes with Win 7 Home Premium. The user interface is easy enough for my 5 year old to operate it without assistance. No trans-coding or format translations required. I have my video library (DVD native VOBs) backed up on a 2 TB NAS (WD My Book World Edition, which is a Linux box that you can admin through the web gui or SSH ). Everything plays perfectly my two Win 7 media center clients and on my Vista media center client (Vista requires an easy registry hack to get the DVD library to show up, Win 7 needs only be pointed to the NAS). Again, these are straight DVD backups with no trans-coding. The good thing with this is that all the DVD menus and special features are available.
I am in the process of extending my setup to the TV in the living room. I have a Dell Zino HD on order (delivers Saturday). I can't comment yet on fan noise, but this is an extremely small box (8 in x 8 in) with a HDMI connector. I bought a Hauppauge tuner and a wireless keyboard with trackball to go with it (I suppose I could also buy a media center remote too, but I think the keyboard and trackball will be enough).
I had tried a media center extender before and I was severely disappointed because they don't play VOBs, which means you have to trans-code, or rip to another format, and in either case you won't have menus. But the Win 7 clients can play VOBs over the network flawlessly. I am high hopes for the Zino when it gets here in a few days.
I also have to say I've been favorably impressed with the WD Mybook World Edition. Nowadays, they include a checkbox in the web gui to enable ssh. You can then ssh in and do anything you want with it. In my case, I replaced the busybox setup with a full system using optware (ipkg), installed a cups print server, and attached a printer to the USB port. So far it has been able to serve up different movies to three different clients simultaneously over my home network without any problems.
I used to work for the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) at Veterans Affairs (VA). NCA uses two automated systems: Burial Operations Support System (BOSS) and Automated Monunment Application System (AMAS). They even have an on-line grave locator at http://www.cem.va.gov/ . These systems work very well. The systems are fully linked into the the VA administration of burial benefits due to deceased veterans or deceased military. The system contains information on current burials and has also been loaded with historical data all they way back to the civil war. Arlington already uses AMAS to order headstones. I'm sure the VA would be happy to add Arlington as a site for BOSS (they already manage 128 cemeteries and Arlington would just add one more). It would take some work to load the data, but that would be a one-time effort.
The interesting thing about the well-functioning VA systems is that they are NOT developed or administered by contractors. They were developed and are maintained by Government employees (civil servants). They are administered daily by civil servants. The programers are all GS employees and the DBAs are all GS employees. Contractors have never touched the systems and hopefully never will. The only thing that contractors did was provide some unskilled labor to do document scanning that was then imported into the system by the Government developers/admins.
VA has had success when they do in-house development with Government employees and dismal failures when they try to contract-out development. Just Google "CoreFLS" to see how a contractor developed system can fail to the tune of $250 Million and then never be deployed. CoreFLS was a $250 Million boondogle worked on by a bunch of H-1Bs that was so bad the Assistant Secretary for IM was fired by the President. If the President of the United States has to be personally notified that you fscked up, its as bad as it gets.
I suppose they did from orbit, as its the only way to be sure.
BTW, has anybody been able to dial Chicago lately?
MS did give away a pretty good game for free. Here is the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(video_game). It is now community maintained. You can download and play it now. You can get the game at http://www.freeallegiance.org/
Which one has the cut that left the blood behind?
I image that to get the circulatory system into the organ, they need to have a micro-printing process, perhaps like is used for production of microelectronics. According to wikipedia, capillaries are in the range of 5-10 micrometers. I think that is probably an achievable technology. They would have to switch to a differnt "ink" (i.e. cells for a blood vessel wall) instead of the primary "ink" for the organ cells.
Instead of using a donor and then stripping cells to get the collogen scaffold, next they should do 3-D printing of collogen into any shape they want. "Grown" organs in the future will not be grown, they will be built layer-by-layer.
Actually, the Corps of Engineers included clauses in the contract that gave "GOVERNMENT RIGHTS (UNLIMITED)" and "DRAWINGS AND OTHER DATA TO BECOME PROPERTY OF GOVERNMENT". The dissenting opinion of Judge Newman makes this clear. The rest of the court chose to ignore this because, apparently, the Government's lawyer (inexplicably) did not include it in the brief to the appellate court. Read the dissenting opinion.
That is the propaganda and lies that the pirates have been using to rationalize their lawlessness and I'm surprised anybody literate enough to post to slashdot is foolish enough to fall for it. They have been seizing ships far outside the 12 mile territorial limit and even far outside the 200 mile exclusive economic zone. They are now seizing ships off the Seychelles, which is many hundreds of miles south of Somalia. Seas outside of the exclusive economic zone are free to fish for any nation's fleet. So if this is their reason, why are they seizing yachts which are clearly not outfitted with commercial fishing gear and are hundreds of miles outside of the Somali EEZ? Because they are murderous thieves and thugs; that's why.
What I and my family watch on Hulu is not available on cable or broadcast. We watch some really old cartoons with my kids like "Speed Racer","He-Man", and "She-Ra". Its a chance for me and my wife to share with our kids some of the things that we used to enjoy when we were growning up. I don't have a problem paying (a reasonable price) for content that is not available elsewhere. If my cable company had that kind of video libarary available on demand, I would pay them instead, but they don't. If you have an Xbox360 or media extender (with the PlayOn and vmcPlayIt plug-ins), you can watch Hulu (and netflix instant view) on your TV, not just the computer. Its better than cable, because its on demand and has a fairly large library. I want them to be profitable, because it will a) keep them around for me to enjoy b) encourge them to expand their library further. I'll gladly pay for that.
You're right. Google wants to control the data. The Hardware, the OS, and the applications are just tools to that end. This is a opportunity for them to push all of their "cloud" services such as Google Docs and GMail. I predict the hardare will have extremely small home partitions for user storage, because the user will be expected store all their docucments and data on the Google servers. There may not be enough disk space to install third-party applications and that that will be by design because the user will be expected to use the web-apps from Google. Heck, the entire local media might be read-only and user storage may be completely on Google's servers.
Once all of your data belongs to them, expect the pay subscription model to start.
Well my hope is that any PC or Netbook OEM who supports ChromeOS will have to write kernel drivers for all their own hardware and only buy from suppliers who aslo support linux. I hope this will also provide impetus for third party devices like printers, cameras, etc, etc to provide OEM supported linux kernel drivers. While I am imagining utopia, instead of binary blobs, maybe they will even be willing to give out specficiations so other people like BSD can make drivers too.