-CableCARD support -Netflix client built in (though no HD for now) -Great remote -Very simple but functional UI -Free if you have a half-decent edition of either of the last two Windows releases -Xbox (with software), Xbox 360, and numerous other devices supported as extenders for a single central home DVR
I won't give up my HD cable channels, so Windows MCE, TiVo, and Moxi are the three options, end of story. Only one of those allows me to build my own machine and centralize all the tuners. If Myth or one of the others gains CableCARD support in the future, they might be worth considering. Until then...
Ding. I'm currently running pfSense on a Xeon dual-core 2.4GHz machine, but I plan to soon move it to a RouterStation Pro from Ubiquiti as soon as the RSPro build becomes stable enough for daily use. The Xeon is severely overkill obviously for a cable modem, but it's all I had available when my 1841 started acting up.
Which of course led to quite amusing results when some failure of a web developer made an app that performed actions from GET requests. I've heard anecdotes of entire databases being deleted by a web accelerator in these cases.
From RFC2616:
Implementors should be aware that the software represents the user in their interactions over the Internet, and should be careful to allow the user to be aware of any actions they might take which may have an unexpected significance to themselves or others.
In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods ought to be considered “safe”. This allows user agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is being requested.
Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.
It's the button you gain when you throw away Apple's shitty bundled mouse and plug something in that doesn't suck. The ADB mouse was the last good mouse Apple made (though the new glass trackpad is very enjoyable to use). The puck was of course so bad I don't expect even Apple fanboys to defend it, the "Pro Mouse" had nothing inherently wrong with it, but was simply uninteresting given that it lacked a scroll wheel and a minimum of three buttons. Since then they've tried twice to provide the missing input, but in both cases they have missed the mark. The "Mighty Mouse" scroll ball was too tiny to be of any use and right-clicking required lifting your left finger off the mouse surface entirely. The new "Magic Mouse" solves the scroll ball issue, but for some reason still requires lifting the left to click with the right.
Not an Apple hater though, this post typed from a Macbook Pro with an Apple aluminum keyboard, but with a Logitech G5 handling the mousing duties. I love the platform, just wish King Jobs would get his head out of his ass regarding the single button thing.
I'd love to use Myth, but as an American television consumer who loves his HDTV, I really can't. Show me a way I can get the HDTV feeds of Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, or any of the dedicated HDTV networks like HDNet or HD Theater on a Myth box without converting through analog first and I'll jump on it of course, but as far as I am aware this is not an option for those of us in the land of CableCard and DSS, rather than wonderful standard DVB.
I know it's possible to use smartcard emulators with DVB-S2 tuners to semi-reliably pick up Dish Network, but it looked like too much of a pain in the ass when I was a Dish subscriber and now would be both immoral (as I don't have a legit sub) and also impossible due to not having a good place to mount a dish in my current apartment.
A few years ago I built a few HTPCs, both Myth and Windows MCE, off old PC hardware with Hauppauge cards and as soon as that upcoming quad-tuner CableCARD tuner for Windows MCE hits the market my TiVo will be retired in favor of the Windows 7 MCE box sitting next to my AV rack. At this point, however, my combination of TiVo for near-realtime time shifting and PC+Internet for longer archival seems to be the best option available for my HDTV fix.
While there is a legal distinction, is there really a moral distinction between recording the show on your own DVR versus downloading a copy someone else recorded?
My TiVo HD records Mythbusters every week, but around 6 hours later my media server goes out to the internet and grabs a copy of the same episode. I could just script a few tools like kmttg does to rip the content off the TiVo and transcode to a format of my preference, but why bother when someone else has already done it for me and at the same time cut the commercials for me?
Yes, technically what I'm doing is illegal, but morally I can not see any way this is any different than if I was to waste my time scripting and waste my CPU time processing my own recordings in to the same end result.
I was going to say the same thing. I've been in the VoIP business for over four years now, starting with Cisco 79xx phones and now primarily working on Polycoms, and the whole time I've been able to easily perform every single task this guy wants to do. The Polycoms even do literally everything with XML, so writing import/exports for their data is trivial. Want a new global directory entry? Just add it to 000000000000-directory.xml. Want it only on one phone? Add it to -directory.xml. Easy as pie.
That said, for home use any kind of actual VoIP system (as opposed to a box you point at a hosted provider like Vonage or myself) is way overkill. I'm in the industry and don't even do that, it's a waste of my time.
Except that it plays basically any media format off of almost anything you can somehow attach to a computer while organizing it all in to libraries, pulling box art, etc.
Xvid, WMV, MPEG1/2/4, Quicktime, even freakin' Real. VCDs, DVDs, great!
Local HD, USB, SMB, NFS, UPnP, iTunes....
I hope you get the picture. And that's just what I used to use it for with my Xbox years ago. I've been more organized since leaving college and switched to a Windows MCE setup once I didn't need to support millions of sources as WMCE had hardware decoding where XBMC didn't, so for HD it was my only choice. That has since changed though, so XBMC is coming back soon I'm sure.
Unless your LAN is slower than your WAN (remember that wireless never achieves its advertised rate) there should be no way BitTorrent is slowing down your LAN.
Basically unless you have FiOS or similar and are using 802.11 to access it, something is wrong with your LAN if torrents break it.
Yes, because everyone had their computer near their TV and had video-out capable video cards back when DVD drives were new in computers......oh wait...no...
On the other hand, almost every time I'm in my car, I have my phone with me. Right now I have my TomTom set to use my phone's Bluetooth connection to get online and download traffic/weather info. The idea of a phone that has this built in so I can get rid of one device and remove tethering from my phone plan seems rather appealing, and at this point if Verizon has actually managed to resist their compulsions to fuck up phones I'll be a Droid owner by the end of next month.
Firefox is actually a great example of the problem. I'm an Ubuntu user and more than once in the last few years I have ended up stuck with an out-of-date version due to being stuck in "distro stability" hell. I shouldn't have to upgrade my entire operating system or even go through the trouble of finding backport repositories just so I'm not stuck using Firefox 2.0.x when 3.5.x is out. On Windows or Mac OS X, I can easily go to the Firefox web site and download a single file which will either install the application I want (Windows) or contain a single item I drag to my Applications folder (OS X). At that point I'm done. It doesn't matter if I'm using Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 2008, etc. It doesn't matter if I'm running OS X 10.4, 10.5, or 10.6. The application just downloads and works.
That is what Linux needs to succeed on the desktop. Either drop the idea of distro stability for user-level software so we can get up-to-date versions within a reasonable amount of time or let the users easily install non-repo software.
I love the fact that most of my software is automatically installed and kept up to date by the repositories, but pretending they're the end-all solution is lying to yourself. I'm with Mr. Hall, Linux needs OS X style single file packages NOW.
I wouldn't consider ME to be its own generation, but Vista certainly started one.
I see Windows generations as follows:
DOS Shell era: 1. Windows 1.x (November 1985) 2. Windows 2.x (December 1987) 25 months 3. Windows 3.x (May 1990) 29 months 4. Windows 9x/Me (August 1995) 63 months
NT era: 5. Windows NT 3.x (July 1993) 6. Windows NT 4 (July 1996) 36 months
Modern NT era: 7. Windows 2000/XP/2003 - NT 5.x (February 2000) 43 months 8. Windows Vista/2008/7 - NT 6.x (November 2006) 81 months
Microsoft's own version numbering actually is very logical with the generations of OS from both a programming and user experience standpoint. All of the OSes in a given generation operate similarly enough that users should be able to transition their skills, hardware, and software with minimal pain.
From the dates above, if you treat the DOS and NT versions of Windows independently, average each group, then average those two you end up with 65.6666 repeating months between generations, and I wouldn't call nearly 11 years a short lifespan for electronic hardware.
That said, I have an early '90s model HP LaserJet 4+ that I won't give up until it dies, and even then I might just buy another.
A warning that some HP laser printers (I can say the Color 2600n for sure, but I believe others are similar) are not independent of the host even if used over a network. I have not yet managed to get a 2600n to work reliably off a print server in three years. The print server always ends up getting gummed up somewhere. This applies to Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Debian Etch, and OS X 10.5 as the server with Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.5 as clients via SMB.
Installing the printer as a direct network printer rather than going through a print server works fine.
I would also like to know if there is any legal case to made that Sony and Microsoft should allow for some way to resell downloadable games which have been purchased on a console.
Nope, and it would be a slam dunk for Sony or MS if someone tried. With physical boxed software products, you've purchased it before the license "agreement" comes up. With digital purchases, as part of the sign up to the "store" you agree to the terms before you purchase.
I'm not sure what the timeout is and I have not yet figured out how to change it, but both Windows and Mac OS have a short grace period on the autolock which allows the same behavior.
Now that would be an interesting question on these various state-specific consumer protection laws work. If such a law was passed, would it only affect products sold in MA to MA residents? How about something a MA resident bought elsewhere? Non-resident who bought in MA? What if I lived in MA, bought in MA, but then moved to Texas for some reason?
I can't see any way such a thing could be implemented and limited to MA in any practical way, but that doesn't mean legislators and lobbyists won't try their hardest to make it happen anyways.
FYI, both Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative are simply packages of the respective DirectShow codecs as released by Apple and Real, plus any dependencies needed to use those codecs. Effectively all they did is strip out the proprietary frontend app, which hasn't been necessary anyways for quite some time. Note how the Quicktime Alternative pack even installs the official Quicktime control panel. There should be no performance difference, or at the most a minimal difference, between QT Alt and official QT.
AT&T is at fault for not making sure their network was actually ready for this. Apple is at fault for getting in to a carrier exclusivity deal. T-Mobile is at fault for having useless coverage outside of major metro areas. Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, etc. are at fault for continuing to push CDMA2000 shit rather than using the world standard of GSM, thus limiting themselves to the ghetto of the phone universe, just so they can fuck around with firmware to lock out features the phone would otherwise have. The FCC is at fault for not working to align our mobile phone frequencies with the rest of the world and allowing T-Mobile to deploy their 3G on a different band than even AT&T, meaning that most "world" 3G phones are still not compatible, locking any of those users to AT&T only in the US.
If you want a phone that hasn't been fucked with by a carrier AND decent rural coverage, AT&T is the only game in the country here.
I hate giving any arm of AT&T my money, but I don't have a choice for now.
Fortunately three of the big four have now committed to using LTE as their 4G standard, so in a few years it will be technically possible to have choice in networks when using properly open phones. We shall see how the carriers try to fuck that up.
None of these require any subscription for guide data or functionality, and the top two even have CableCard support so you can enjoy your HD content fix. TiVo Series2 units with DVD burners often come with a free "limited" subscription to TiVo's guide data, lacking the recommendations and ability to look more than three days in to the future IIRC.
It runs much smoother in resource-limited environments like netbooks. I don't notice much of a difference on my normal machines, but they're all dual cores with 4+GB of RAM. My Mini 9 on the other hand sees a huge difference, since it doesn't have much to spare with a single core Atom and only 2GB of RAM. Ubuntu Netbook Remix is still snappier, but that's a netbook-focused distro versus a general purpose OS, it's apples and oranges.
Sat-nav creators should hold some responsibility for their actions, or rather inactions in forseeing shit like this happen.
They did forsee it, that's why there are a number of trucker-focused nav products on the market. Same maps, but the routing engine is tweaked to plan for an oversize vehicle and low bridges are flagged. The problem is idiot truckers buying the cheapest consumer nav product they find, then trusting the directions blindly. I've never driven OTR, but I occasionally pilot a RV and used to maneuver large trailers with farm tractors, if you know the vehicle you're driving and are paying attention to the road you won't get in to a bad spot. Drivers in your area obviously don't fall in to one or both of those categories.
It's the combination of a bit of NIH plus the freedom that Linux brings to a programmer. If you know enough C to not break things horribly and can operate Google, you can create a filesystem. There are also hundreds of proprietary filesystems from older hardware running other OSes, and Linux supports a number of those thanks to users of those older systems developing drivers for them.
I'd bet that the vast majority of filesystems supported by Linux are rarely if ever used, and when used they're operated in read-only mode to retrieve data from old disks.
There are still a number, probably in the low teens, of filesystems in active use on modern Linux systems. Those are typically chosen either for compatibility with other platforms (FAT and it's derivatives for example, no one sane would choose to use that when other options are available, but it's just so compatible that often other options don't exist) or for specific job requirements (at one point I ran XFS on my file server because it supported growing the FS while mounted and seemed to be the best choice at the time for a box primarily handling large files). So I guess after all that, yes, it is that hard to get it right because the definition of right varies. Some jobs might want a filesystem to just be incredibly fast with a certain type of data and possibly rely on a nice RAID controller for reliability and caching, others might want the filesystem to handle everything and allow the controller to be dumb. SSDs bring an entirely different set of needs to the table and a filesystem that was laid out to be fast on disk might have serious problems on some SSDs.
As many things as there are to legitimately bitch about when it comes to Comcast, they were one of the pioneering companies in responding directly and publicly to complaints raised via the Internet. I don't know how long it will last, whether this is a fad or a lasting trend, but regardless of how it ends up working out I have to give them that it's great PR and seems to be working well at the moment.
On the normal state of mind thing, I could see a point there. My roommate is a much heavier smoker than I, and often I can't tell if he's high or not. He's fairly functional, where I tend to only be able to focus on one thing at a time.
As for the video, I have a semi-permanent camera mounted for racing and just to cover my ass in case someone does something stupid on the road and causes me to wreck. I only thought to check it out after the fact.
I didn't know that about the piss tests, I know there are obviously higher concentrations of some chemicals and probably lower of others when closer to the time of consumption, so logically it can be done, but making something as portable or easy to use as a breathalyzer would be interesting. Then again, with what we've recently seen on breathalyzer accuracy, who knows.
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One more vote for MCE.
-CableCARD support
-Netflix client built in (though no HD for now)
-Great remote
-Very simple but functional UI
-Free if you have a half-decent edition of either of the last two Windows releases
-Xbox (with software), Xbox 360, and numerous other devices supported as extenders for a single central home DVR
I won't give up my HD cable channels, so Windows MCE, TiVo, and Moxi are the three options, end of story. Only one of those allows me to build my own machine and centralize all the tuners. If Myth or one of the others gains CableCARD support in the future, they might be worth considering. Until then...
Ding. I'm currently running pfSense on a Xeon dual-core 2.4GHz machine, but I plan to soon move it to a RouterStation Pro from Ubiquiti as soon as the RSPro build becomes stable enough for daily use. The Xeon is severely overkill obviously for a cable modem, but it's all I had available when my 1841 started acting up.
Which of course led to quite amusing results when some failure of a web developer made an app that performed actions from GET requests. I've heard anecdotes of entire databases being deleted by a web accelerator in these cases.
From RFC2616:
It's the button you gain when you throw away Apple's shitty bundled mouse and plug something in that doesn't suck. The ADB mouse was the last good mouse Apple made (though the new glass trackpad is very enjoyable to use). The puck was of course so bad I don't expect even Apple fanboys to defend it, the "Pro Mouse" had nothing inherently wrong with it, but was simply uninteresting given that it lacked a scroll wheel and a minimum of three buttons. Since then they've tried twice to provide the missing input, but in both cases they have missed the mark. The "Mighty Mouse" scroll ball was too tiny to be of any use and right-clicking required lifting your left finger off the mouse surface entirely. The new "Magic Mouse" solves the scroll ball issue, but for some reason still requires lifting the left to click with the right.
Not an Apple hater though, this post typed from a Macbook Pro with an Apple aluminum keyboard, but with a Logitech G5 handling the mousing duties. I love the platform, just wish King Jobs would get his head out of his ass regarding the single button thing.
I'd love to use Myth, but as an American television consumer who loves his HDTV, I really can't. Show me a way I can get the HDTV feeds of Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, or any of the dedicated HDTV networks like HDNet or HD Theater on a Myth box without converting through analog first and I'll jump on it of course, but as far as I am aware this is not an option for those of us in the land of CableCard and DSS, rather than wonderful standard DVB.
I know it's possible to use smartcard emulators with DVB-S2 tuners to semi-reliably pick up Dish Network, but it looked like too much of a pain in the ass when I was a Dish subscriber and now would be both immoral (as I don't have a legit sub) and also impossible due to not having a good place to mount a dish in my current apartment.
A few years ago I built a few HTPCs, both Myth and Windows MCE, off old PC hardware with Hauppauge cards and as soon as that upcoming quad-tuner CableCARD tuner for Windows MCE hits the market my TiVo will be retired in favor of the Windows 7 MCE box sitting next to my AV rack. At this point, however, my combination of TiVo for near-realtime time shifting and PC+Internet for longer archival seems to be the best option available for my HDTV fix.
While there is a legal distinction, is there really a moral distinction between recording the show on your own DVR versus downloading a copy someone else recorded?
My TiVo HD records Mythbusters every week, but around 6 hours later my media server goes out to the internet and grabs a copy of the same episode. I could just script a few tools like kmttg does to rip the content off the TiVo and transcode to a format of my preference, but why bother when someone else has already done it for me and at the same time cut the commercials for me?
Yes, technically what I'm doing is illegal, but morally I can not see any way this is any different than if I was to waste my time scripting and waste my CPU time processing my own recordings in to the same end result.
I was going to say the same thing. I've been in the VoIP business for over four years now, starting with Cisco 79xx phones and now primarily working on Polycoms, and the whole time I've been able to easily perform every single task this guy wants to do. The Polycoms even do literally everything with XML, so writing import/exports for their data is trivial. Want a new global directory entry? Just add it to 000000000000-directory.xml. Want it only on one phone? Add it to -directory.xml. Easy as pie.
That said, for home use any kind of actual VoIP system (as opposed to a box you point at a hosted provider like Vonage or myself) is way overkill. I'm in the industry and don't even do that, it's a waste of my time.
Except that it plays basically any media format off of almost anything you can somehow attach to a computer while organizing it all in to libraries, pulling box art, etc.
Xvid, WMV, MPEG1/2/4, Quicktime, even freakin' Real. VCDs, DVDs, great!
Local HD, USB, SMB, NFS, UPnP, iTunes....
I hope you get the picture. And that's just what I used to use it for with my Xbox years ago. I've been more organized since leaving college and switched to a Windows MCE setup once I didn't need to support millions of sources as WMCE had hardware decoding where XBMC didn't, so for HD it was my only choice. That has since changed though, so XBMC is coming back soon I'm sure.
Unless your LAN is slower than your WAN (remember that wireless never achieves its advertised rate) there should be no way BitTorrent is slowing down your LAN.
Basically unless you have FiOS or similar and are using 802.11 to access it, something is wrong with your LAN if torrents break it.
Yes, because everyone had their computer near their TV and had video-out capable video cards back when DVD drives were new in computers......oh wait...no...
On the other hand, almost every time I'm in my car, I have my phone with me. Right now I have my TomTom set to use my phone's Bluetooth connection to get online and download traffic/weather info. The idea of a phone that has this built in so I can get rid of one device and remove tethering from my phone plan seems rather appealing, and at this point if Verizon has actually managed to resist their compulsions to fuck up phones I'll be a Droid owner by the end of next month.
Firefox is actually a great example of the problem. I'm an Ubuntu user and more than once in the last few years I have ended up stuck with an out-of-date version due to being stuck in "distro stability" hell. I shouldn't have to upgrade my entire operating system or even go through the trouble of finding backport repositories just so I'm not stuck using Firefox 2.0.x when 3.5.x is out. On Windows or Mac OS X, I can easily go to the Firefox web site and download a single file which will either install the application I want (Windows) or contain a single item I drag to my Applications folder (OS X). At that point I'm done. It doesn't matter if I'm using Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 2008, etc. It doesn't matter if I'm running OS X 10.4, 10.5, or 10.6. The application just downloads and works.
That is what Linux needs to succeed on the desktop. Either drop the idea of distro stability for user-level software so we can get up-to-date versions within a reasonable amount of time or let the users easily install non-repo software.
I love the fact that most of my software is automatically installed and kept up to date by the repositories, but pretending they're the end-all solution is lying to yourself. I'm with Mr. Hall, Linux needs OS X style single file packages NOW.
I wouldn't consider ME to be its own generation, but Vista certainly started one.
I see Windows generations as follows:
DOS Shell era:
1. Windows 1.x (November 1985)
2. Windows 2.x (December 1987) 25 months
3. Windows 3.x (May 1990) 29 months
4. Windows 9x/Me (August 1995) 63 months
NT era:
5. Windows NT 3.x (July 1993)
6. Windows NT 4 (July 1996) 36 months
Modern NT era:
7. Windows 2000/XP/2003 - NT 5.x (February 2000) 43 months
8. Windows Vista/2008/7 - NT 6.x (November 2006) 81 months
Microsoft's own version numbering actually is very logical with the generations of OS from both a programming and user experience standpoint. All of the OSes in a given generation operate similarly enough that users should be able to transition their skills, hardware, and software with minimal pain.
From the dates above, if you treat the DOS and NT versions of Windows independently, average each group, then average those two you end up with 65.6666 repeating months between generations, and I wouldn't call nearly 11 years a short lifespan for electronic hardware.
That said, I have an early '90s model HP LaserJet 4+ that I won't give up until it dies, and even then I might just buy another.
A warning that some HP laser printers (I can say the Color 2600n for sure, but I believe others are similar) are not independent of the host even if used over a network. I have not yet managed to get a 2600n to work reliably off a print server in three years. The print server always ends up getting gummed up somewhere. This applies to Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Debian Etch, and OS X 10.5 as the server with Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.5 as clients via SMB.
Installing the printer as a direct network printer rather than going through a print server works fine.
I would also like to know if there is any legal case to made that Sony and Microsoft should allow for some way to resell downloadable games which have been purchased on a console.
Nope, and it would be a slam dunk for Sony or MS if someone tried. With physical boxed software products, you've purchased it before the license "agreement" comes up. With digital purchases, as part of the sign up to the "store" you agree to the terms before you purchase.
I'm not sure what the timeout is and I have not yet figured out how to change it, but both Windows and Mac OS have a short grace period on the autolock which allows the same behavior.
Now that would be an interesting question on these various state-specific consumer protection laws work. If such a law was passed, would it only affect products sold in MA to MA residents? How about something a MA resident bought elsewhere? Non-resident who bought in MA? What if I lived in MA, bought in MA, but then moved to Texas for some reason?
I can't see any way such a thing could be implemented and limited to MA in any practical way, but that doesn't mean legislators and lobbyists won't try their hardest to make it happen anyways.
FYI, both Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative are simply packages of the respective DirectShow codecs as released by Apple and Real, plus any dependencies needed to use those codecs. Effectively all they did is strip out the proprietary frontend app, which hasn't been necessary anyways for quite some time. Note how the Quicktime Alternative pack even installs the official Quicktime control panel. There should be no performance difference, or at the most a minimal difference, between QT Alt and official QT.
It's far wider than that.
AT&T is at fault for not making sure their network was actually ready for this.
Apple is at fault for getting in to a carrier exclusivity deal.
T-Mobile is at fault for having useless coverage outside of major metro areas.
Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, etc. are at fault for continuing to push CDMA2000 shit rather than using the world standard of GSM, thus limiting themselves to the ghetto of the phone universe, just so they can fuck around with firmware to lock out features the phone would otherwise have.
The FCC is at fault for not working to align our mobile phone frequencies with the rest of the world and allowing T-Mobile to deploy their 3G on a different band than even AT&T, meaning that most "world" 3G phones are still not compatible, locking any of those users to AT&T only in the US.
If you want a phone that hasn't been fucked with by a carrier AND decent rural coverage, AT&T is the only game in the country here.
I hate giving any arm of AT&T my money, but I don't have a choice for now.
Fortunately three of the big four have now committed to using LTE as their 4G standard, so in a few years it will be technically possible to have choice in networks when using properly open phones. We shall see how the carriers try to fuck that up.
There is currently no DVR that requires no monthly fees that has at least some rudimentary capability to acquire the listings.
Moxi
Windows Media Center
Beyond TV
SageTV
MythTV
None of these require any subscription for guide data or functionality, and the top two even have CableCard support so you can enjoy your HD content fix. TiVo Series2 units with DVD burners often come with a free "limited" subscription to TiVo's guide data, lacking the recommendations and ability to look more than three days in to the future IIRC.
It runs much smoother in resource-limited environments like netbooks. I don't notice much of a difference on my normal machines, but they're all dual cores with 4+GB of RAM. My Mini 9 on the other hand sees a huge difference, since it doesn't have much to spare with a single core Atom and only 2GB of RAM. Ubuntu Netbook Remix is still snappier, but that's a netbook-focused distro versus a general purpose OS, it's apples and oranges.
Sat-nav creators should hold some responsibility for their actions, or rather inactions in forseeing shit like this happen.
They did forsee it, that's why there are a number of trucker-focused nav products on the market. Same maps, but the routing engine is tweaked to plan for an oversize vehicle and low bridges are flagged. The problem is idiot truckers buying the cheapest consumer nav product they find, then trusting the directions blindly. I've never driven OTR, but I occasionally pilot a RV and used to maneuver large trailers with farm tractors, if you know the vehicle you're driving and are paying attention to the road you won't get in to a bad spot. Drivers in your area obviously don't fall in to one or both of those categories.
Currently using all three on FF 3.5b99, so they should work fine on the RC as well.
It's the combination of a bit of NIH plus the freedom that Linux brings to a programmer. If you know enough C to not break things horribly and can operate Google, you can create a filesystem. There are also hundreds of proprietary filesystems from older hardware running other OSes, and Linux supports a number of those thanks to users of those older systems developing drivers for them.
I'd bet that the vast majority of filesystems supported by Linux are rarely if ever used, and when used they're operated in read-only mode to retrieve data from old disks.
There are still a number, probably in the low teens, of filesystems in active use on modern Linux systems. Those are typically chosen either for compatibility with other platforms (FAT and it's derivatives for example, no one sane would choose to use that when other options are available, but it's just so compatible that often other options don't exist) or for specific job requirements (at one point I ran XFS on my file server because it supported growing the FS while mounted and seemed to be the best choice at the time for a box primarily handling large files). So I guess after all that, yes, it is that hard to get it right because the definition of right varies. Some jobs might want a filesystem to just be incredibly fast with a certain type of data and possibly rely on a nice RAID controller for reliability and caching, others might want the filesystem to handle everything and allow the controller to be dumb. SSDs bring an entirely different set of needs to the table and a filesystem that was laid out to be fast on disk might have serious problems on some SSDs.
As many things as there are to legitimately bitch about when it comes to Comcast, they were one of the pioneering companies in responding directly and publicly to complaints raised via the Internet. I don't know how long it will last, whether this is a fad or a lasting trend, but regardless of how it ends up working out I have to give them that it's great PR and seems to be working well at the moment.
On the normal state of mind thing, I could see a point there. My roommate is a much heavier smoker than I, and often I can't tell if he's high or not. He's fairly functional, where I tend to only be able to focus on one thing at a time.
As for the video, I have a semi-permanent camera mounted for racing and just to cover my ass in case someone does something stupid on the road and causes me to wreck. I only thought to check it out after the fact.
I didn't know that about the piss tests, I know there are obviously higher concentrations of some chemicals and probably lower of others when closer to the time of consumption, so logically it can be done, but making something as portable or easy to use as a breathalyzer would be interesting. Then again, with what we've recently seen on breathalyzer accuracy, who knows.