Speaking of ad revenue, has anyone else noticed an increase in product placements in shows? There was a slashdot story a long while back about inserting produts into shows with CGI (paint a can of Pringles in on the counter in Leave it to Beaver, etc.). I've seen what might have been that in The King of Queens (some lawn care products in a conspicuous shelf on the outside of their garage).
Besides this, ina recent Law & Order, Barnes & Noble was mentioned several times in the dialog, and the characters had to visit the store (where there was a mostly gratuitous shot of a computer screen with the B&N logo at the top).
I can't skip over this type of ads with my Tivo, but I don't care because they don't bother me. They don't stop the flow of the story.
I wonder if this has anything at all to do with PVRs?
And it's probably just the start. I don't really wanna sit down and see the annoying "Would you like to change channels to record our spam or stay on the current channel?" prompt everytime I sit down. I turned off the auto-recommendations just because of this.
That would only happen if you were watching live TV. Why would you ever want to watch live TV anymore?
Also, once you had the database, you (or anyone on the net) could add stuff like scanned images or ASCII versions of the TOC and bibiography (so you can check from work whether that book at home is worth driving back for at lunch), reviews, recomendations for related books, links to or copies of related papers, etc. This makes it feasible to automatically check for updated editions, or anything that refers to it (literary criticism, related work, etc.). It then becomes a tool for finding more relevant books, articles, etc.
DirecTivo still gets upgrades off the phone and, I think, some guide information, so you need a phone (hell, they set the clock from the phone!), but they are moving more to the satellite
There's apparently been some progress here. I just installed 4 DirecTiVos. They all got their first upgrade over the phone, and at least one more over the satellite (I only noticed because one of the tuners was busy when I didn't expect it).
They've all always receieved their schedule info over the satellite.
My "phone connection" screen shows the calls have been about 2 minutes long lately.
... but it's all better now that we've got DirecTV with TiVo.
It's true the artifacts are visible on a large TV, which is why I only got 50 hours out of my 90G TiVo (using the second-best quality for almost everything).
Our cable (AT&T) signal quality sucked too, so we recently switched to DirecTV with TiVo. The noise is gone, the compression artifacts are essentially gone, and now each TiVo has 2 tuners.
As an added bonus, the PPV stuff is nicely integrated now. Recording PPV on TiVo kind of worked before with the AT&T digital box, but not well enough that I'd let it start unattended (It seemed like the AT&T box wouldn't always show your your movie if you tuned in a little early).
The only problem now is I can't get CBS off the dish, and DirecTiVos can't record off the air (they don't have MPEG encoders). CBS was listed on the DirecTV brochure as included in the local channel deal, but it turns out CBS (and/or KOIN here in Portland) decided not to allow DirecTV to carry them at some point (rumor has it it's related to some past deal with PrimeStar and at least one merger, but I haven't checked to see if that's even possible). We live in range of a decent signal from KOIN, but tried asking for dispensation to get the "distant" CBS stations anyway. Not surprisingly, KOIN declined.
I don't have enough inputs (or cabinet space) to hook up one of the old analog TiVos to our good TV, so CBS shows will have to be watched up in the den on the old crappy TV through a TiVo with rabbit ears (and no TiVo service, so we're bound to miss a few shows due to basketball or something). I expect we'll eventually lose interest in CBS shows completely (really just 60 Minutes and CSI) due to the incremental hassle required to watch them.
You might say we could just watch these shows live (assuming we had an antenna on the good TV, which we don't). That would require paying attention to when shows are actually broadcast. After using TiVos for 18 months, we're just not willing to do that anymore.
Infiniband has some interesting implications along these lines. This is evidently designed for large clusters of servers and their associated high-end IO.
When I read about it, I thought it did everything I wished cPCI did. If this lives, I'd bet it replaces cPCI. It appears to solve all the chassis extension problems and inter-node communication (between >1 PCs in a cPCI system) problems of cPCI.
I don't see any evidence of a device bay -like form factor for stacking individual system components (which would achieve something like you're wishing for, but maybe bulkier), but I don't think that's their target market. Maybe it will evolve that way when it gets cheaper (I'm assuming it's expensive now because it's new, but I've never checked).
See the blurb at http://www.infinibandta.org/backgrounder.html and the spec at http://www.infinibandta.org/data/spec/10spec_vol1a nd2.zip
I don't get it. Why is it these little single-use boxes sell? Is the general public really _that_ afraid of a general purpose personal computer?
That's not the point. It's small and quiet and does the one thing I'd want a PC next to my stereo to do today. This thing is a little uglier than I'd like for that particular application, but it's better than an ATX case.
If someone made small quiet (no fan or disk noise) general purpose machines we could use instead of special purpose boxes like these, I believe people would be using them. I haven't managed to find any. Have you?
Slashdot Mirror
So there, I can bitch about all ads, all the time if I want to! I can't do as much about the magazine ads, though...
Tear out those pages
Speaking of ad revenue, has anyone else noticed an increase in product placements in shows? There was a slashdot story a long while back about inserting produts into shows with CGI (paint a can of Pringles in on the counter in Leave it to Beaver, etc.). I've seen what might have been that in The King of Queens (some lawn care products in a conspicuous shelf on the outside of their garage).
Besides this, ina recent Law & Order, Barnes & Noble was mentioned several times in the dialog, and the characters had to visit the store (where there was a mostly gratuitous shot of a computer screen with the B&N logo at the top).
I can't skip over this type of ads with my Tivo, but I don't care because they don't bother me. They don't stop the flow of the story.
I wonder if this has anything at all to do with PVRs?
Space tethers, a related technology, can provide some of the features of a space elevator without the surface structures of a space elevator.
Instead, payloads are transferred to the tether from suitable high flying aircraft (which may not exist yet).
Tethers can also be used for orbital transfers.
This is all in the white papers at Tethers Unlimited.
That would only happen if you were watching live TV. Why would you ever want to watch live TV anymore?
For insurance records, certainly.
Also, once you had the database, you (or anyone on the net) could add stuff like scanned images or ASCII versions of the TOC and bibiography (so you can check from work whether that book at home is worth driving back for at lunch), reviews, recomendations for related books, links to or copies of related papers, etc. This makes it feasible to automatically check for updated editions, or anything that refers to it (literary criticism, related work, etc.). It then becomes a tool for finding more relevant books, articles, etc.
There's apparently been some progress here. I just installed 4 DirecTiVos. They all got their first upgrade over the phone, and at least one more over the satellite (I only noticed because one of the tuners was busy when I didn't expect it).
They've all always receieved their schedule info over the satellite.
My "phone connection" screen shows the calls have been about 2 minutes long lately.
... but it's all better now that we've got DirecTV with TiVo.
It's true the artifacts are visible on a large TV, which is why I only got 50 hours out of my 90G TiVo (using the second-best quality for almost everything).
Our cable (AT&T) signal quality sucked too, so we recently switched to DirecTV with TiVo. The noise is gone, the compression artifacts are essentially gone, and now each TiVo has 2 tuners.
As an added bonus, the PPV stuff is nicely integrated now. Recording PPV on TiVo kind of worked before with the AT&T digital box, but not well enough that I'd let it start unattended (It seemed like the AT&T box wouldn't always show your your movie if you tuned in a little early).
The only problem now is I can't get CBS off the dish, and DirecTiVos can't record off the air (they don't have MPEG encoders). CBS was listed on the DirecTV brochure as included in the local channel deal, but it turns out CBS (and/or KOIN here in Portland) decided not to allow DirecTV to carry them at some point (rumor has it it's related to some past deal with PrimeStar and at least one merger, but I haven't checked to see if that's even possible). We live in range of a decent signal from KOIN, but tried asking for dispensation to get the "distant" CBS stations anyway. Not surprisingly, KOIN declined.
I don't have enough inputs (or cabinet space) to hook up one of the old analog TiVos to our good TV, so CBS shows will have to be watched up in the den on the old crappy TV through a TiVo with rabbit ears (and no TiVo service, so we're bound to miss a few shows due to basketball or something). I expect we'll eventually lose interest in CBS shows completely (really just 60 Minutes and CSI) due to the incremental hassle required to watch them.
You might say we could just watch these shows live (assuming we had an antenna on the good TV, which we don't). That would require paying attention to when shows are actually broadcast. After using TiVos for 18 months, we're just not willing to do that anymore.
Infiniband has some interesting implications along these lines. This is evidently designed for large clusters of servers and their associated high-end IO.
a nd2.zip
When I read about it, I thought it did everything I wished cPCI did. If this lives, I'd bet it replaces cPCI. It appears to solve all the chassis extension problems and inter-node communication (between >1 PCs in a cPCI system) problems of cPCI.
I don't see any evidence of a device bay -like form factor for stacking individual system components (which would achieve something like you're wishing for, but maybe bulkier), but I don't think that's their target market. Maybe it will evolve that way when it gets cheaper (I'm assuming it's expensive now because it's new, but I've never checked).
See the blurb at http://www.infinibandta.org/backgrounder.html and the spec at http://www.infinibandta.org/data/spec/10spec_vol1
I don't get it. Why is it these little single-use boxes sell? Is the general public really _that_ afraid of a general purpose personal computer?
That's not the point. It's small and quiet and does the one thing I'd want a PC next to my stereo to do today. This thing is a little uglier than I'd like for that particular application, but it's better than an ATX case.
If someone made small quiet (no fan or disk noise) general purpose machines we could use instead of special purpose boxes like these, I believe people would be using them. I haven't managed to find any. Have you?