The station wagon disappeared in part due to tax breaks for large trucks being available for small business (read, anybody that can work up LLC paperwork), and because millage restrictions on cars did not also apply to "trucks". [...] A lot of market forces were at work to make the current situation like it is.
Sounds like a lot of regulatory forces made the current situation like it is?
Hell, the original hummer was good at what it was, a serious offroad vehicle. Doesn't work as well as a combat vehicle but hey, it wasn't designed for that. The new hummers are just stupid because they're designed to look tough but can't keep up with what the original hummers could do. Dumb!
Last I heard, the H2 was built on the Suburban frame. So what Chevy has created is a vehicle that has the off-road capabilities of a Suburban, but the people/cargo capabilities of a Hummer. Isn't that backwards?! You said it best... Dumb!
Now if they could combine the off-roading prowess of the military Hummer, and the comfort/capacity of the Suburban, then they'd be on to something. Not that a lot of people would actually need something like that, but it would certainly make more sense than the H2's current incarnation.
That's the NYSE Arca Book, which only shows bid/ask and size for a stock, not the last execution price. The best bid/ask on NYSE Arca is not necessarily the national best bid/ask, meaning the B/A size is likely different too. Plus it doesn't operate in real-time. (Sure, it's delayed by 5-15 seconds, but it's nonetheless delayed.)
If a security trades outside the bid or ask, or if the security is illiquid and the spread is large enough, you would never know the actual price it is trading at. The Arca Book is only useful as a Poor Richard's Level II screen, although if you need LII you should be able to afford the data fees anyway.
Could you elaborate on that a bit? I can't seem to find a lot of concrete information on the difference between Level I and Level II information. I.e., what information is contained in each level? Why is it split up in levels in the first place?
What exactly is the Arca book, and how does it relate to the "actual" book? Is it just a delayed snapshot? Why do they maintain two books in the first place?
My big objection to open workspaces is the lack of noise control. As a creative worker (software developer), I get most of my job done by switching back and forth between two modes: discussion mode and focused mode.
Discussion mode is typically animated and noisy; happens at random unpredictable times; most frequently involves the same one or two people, occasionally involves others; often needs a whiteboard; etc.
Focus mode is the rest of the time, mostly happens at my desk, and I need quiet in order to be at my most productive. No music, no white noise, no intercom, no fax machine beeping that it's out of paper, no cell phones with hip-hop ring tones ringing at full volume, no animated discussions happening "right over there".
I hear ya. Whenever I get annoyed at my current office environment, I try to think what the ideal environment would be. And I always go back and forth between having something conducive to discussion mode, but also allows for the privacy and seclusion needed for focus mode. I can't think of anything that's reasonably simple that fulfills both requirements.
In my first job, we had a cube farm, but many of the cubes were four-person units. It was one large cubicle, and each person had their own corner. The space had a small table in the center, so we could all turn around and have impromptu meetings (i.e. discussion mode) when necessary. I really liked that. One of the desks was usually empty (unless we had an intern), and my cube-mates were always quiet. So focus mode was available on-demand. That was also my first "real" job, so I was in discussion mode more often than not (being a newbie I had lots of questions).
Towards the end of my tenure there, the whole building was remodeled with new cubicles. Gone were the multi-person cubes, and everybody had an individual unit. By this time, I more or less knew what I was doing, and needed more focus time. So in theory, the individual cube would have been nice. However, the company went really cheap on everything, and despite having my own "private" space, there was actually more noise. The old cube walls were padded and coated with cloth; they were also taller. So most noise outside of my immediate cube was significantly dampened. But the new cubes didn't block sound at all; I could hear every word of conversations from people several cubes down (and these were people with average volume voices).
My current job has what I would call an open plan. It's a trading company, and I gather that this kind of setup is typical for traders (and programmers in the finance industry). The first thing that annoys the hell out of me is that we don't have desks with drawers. Our desks are basically just tables. They are big, but I like to keep my work area tidy, and with nowhere to stash things, my desk always looks messy.
But what really annoys me is that the quality of open seating is dictated by your neighbors. I never realized how good I had it in the quiet shared cubicle I described above. The guy who sits by me drives me insane---and it's petty stuff, so I feel bad about asking him to be quiet. But, as an example (begin rant): he's a smoker, so a few times a day he comes in and stinks up the whole room. His smoking also gives him a hacking cough. He flips his pen while he's thinking, which means that every few seconds I hear the sound of his pen crashing down on his desk. He slurps his food---and I mean, really slurps. I'm certainly not Mr. Manners, but I've literally heard wild animals make less noise when eating. If he's not flipping his pen while he's thinking, he's constantly slamming C-x C-s (emacs' file save key sequence). If it weren't so annoying, I'd actually be impressed at how quickly he could hit C-x C-s over and over and over and over again. There's also the humming; sometimes he just hums the tune in his head; other times, he hums louder to hear himself over his headphones. If he gets confused by something, he starts sighing really l
Ubuntu certainly has come a long way in terms of usability for the average person. But it's still not nice enough for the average person.
I built a computer for my fiancee and put Ubuntu 7.04 (and later 7.10) on it. She thinks it's just OK. She recently quit her job to go back to school. She wants a laptop, and she insisted that it have Windows XP. I didn't even suggest that she let me put Linux on it. Her current Ubuntu workstation is used for casual tasks that aren't that important: MySpace, YouTube, email, listening to music, etc. Since these tasks aren't of great importance, she's willing to wait for me to fix things that break (and they do break). But I can't expect that of her when she's got a paper to turn in or an online assignment to complete.
I know there's a huge debate (maybe even a holy war) about whether open source desktops should innovate or just copy Windows. Fortunately there's enough choice that different projects more or less have both avenues covered. But---and it pains me to say this---emulating Windows (pre-Vista Windows anyway) is probably the way to go if converts are really wanted. Even though doing things in Windows isn't always consistent or elegant or even easy, it's familiar. Computer geeks like myself like differences: they are fun to explore and play with and foster ideas. But the rest of the world just wants to get their work done. They don't care what's going on behind the scenes, and they don't have the patience to mess with "restricted drivers", the command line, "Synaptic", or different document formats just to get something done.
Right now sound isn't working on her Ubuntu machine. All I did was run the update. Looks like a buggy ALSA driver got installed (do a search for "ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave"). But for the life of me, I can't find a fix, other than to upgrade to 8.04.
When I initially set up her computer, there was some version mis-match or something like that with the packaged flash player. The solution was to download a specific version of the.deb file and do a manual dpkg (or apt-get) install. Relatively easy for me, but my why should I expect my fiancee to have to go through all that? Even in the article, the author said it was YouTube's fault for redirecting a browser that doesn't have Flash installed. It doesn't matter---in Windows, when you go to a Flash site without having Flash installed, you get the same behavior: "Click here to install flash", and you're done.
I installed Skype on her computer; it mostly works, except that the emoticons aren't animated like they are on the Windows client. Not a big deal, but it's just one more thing that makes Linux feel like a downgrade to her. This is one example where the Linux world lacks the polish of the Windows world. Polish may not mean anything to the geekier among us, but it does make the typical person feel like they've take a step backwards.
She recently got an iPod Shuffle... this sort of works. I forget the name of the application that auto-loads when the iPod is plugged in, but about half the time it crashes. No error message or anything, the whole Window just disappears. Sometimes we'll start sync'ing songs to the iPod, minimize that application, go do something else for a while, and... where did that program go? Looks like we have to start the process all over again.
There's been a number of other issues, off and on, that require my intervention (i.e. track down the bug or quirk on the web, then install/uninstall/upgrade/downgrade a package, and possibly hack some things on the commandline). But the biggest killer for her is still OpenOffice.org. That program also crashes randomly. (Ironically, one of the crashes was when I was having her make a list of things she liked/didn't like about Ubuntu, and what she needed for a laptop. I can't think of a more simple/straightforward task: start OOWriter, create a bulleted list and save.)
I've been in the "real world" for about six years now, after graduating with a computer science degree. I'm currently in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I've spent the past several months looking for a good software engineering job, both in the Chicago and Milwaukee (Wisconsin) areas. Just from this experience, my take is that Java and C#/.NET technologies are hottest right now.
My first job was using C and C++. This was partly due to historical reasons (the application was about 12 years old), but also because the API for the platform was only in C. Shortly before I came in, and during my tenure there, we were trying to move more towards C++ and build a more object-oriented framework. My current position is at a high-frequency trading firm. All our software is custom and mostly C++ (some C here and there, and a handful of Perl to glue things together).
So based on this experience, when I was looking for a job, I was focusing on C/C++ positions. What I found is that there aren't a lot of people looking for C/C++ developers. In Milwaukee, virtually all of the demand for C/C++ programmers was for embedded systems. In Chicago, there was little demand for experience in those languages outside of embedded systems and the finance industry (which I was/am trying to get out of!).
This is just my casual observation of a relatively small portion of the software engineer landscape as a whole.
On top of a diminishing demand for C/C++ programmers, I found that quite a few companies who were looking for Java/C# programmers wouldn't even consider C/C++ people. The languages aren't all that different, and the concepts should definitely be portable. I think knowing concepts, understanding programming ideas/patterns, problem solving, etc, are more important that knowing the specifics of a particular language. Shrug.
Probably comes from people who, like me, used a ton of WD200, WD400, WD800, and some others, that had over 90% failure rate in the first 6 months. The only reason the OEM I worked for even used the drives is that they were cheaper (by only a few bucks, but every buck counts in this business!) than the others.
[...]
Once we switched to Seagate, we never had to deal with all of that again. Yes, we might have 1 drive go bad once in a blue moon, but no where near what we had with WD.
I don't doubt the accuracy of your story, but I've heard the same story over and over again, but with every hard drive manufacturer. I build my own computers, and have been for quite some time. I research the heck out of my components before I buy them. Like a lot of people, I want to get the best bang for my buck. Reliability factors into that. But in all the research I've done, as far as hard drive reliability goes, I've found that you don't have to look too hard to find your exact story, only with Seagate or Maxtor or Fujitsu or Hitachi or whatever. Seriously, go check out the forums at StorageReview.com, and do a search for "reliable". You'll find all kinds of "authoritative" posts like this:
I've been a [sysadmin/system integrator/builder/whatever] for [10+] years. I've always used [WD/Seagate/Hitachi/whatever], and only had [very small number] failures out of [very large number] of drives.
...Or the analogue, like your post, where someone has had [very large number] of failures with a particular brand.
The point is, I think all manufacturers (in general, not just hard drive makers) go through bad spells. Unfortunately, those bad spells typically aren't found out until too long after the fact. Best bet, if you can get away with it, is probably to buy technology that's a generation or two old, so you can see how the product has fared thus far. Sometimes I know that's not possible, so if it were me, I'd probably buy from multiple vendors, and spread the risk.
Also, if I remember correctly, there was that study done by Google on hard drive reliability/longevity that said no brand was more failure prone than the next.
It's been a while since I've seen the David Lynch Dune movie. But I remember I hated it tremendously. I saw the movie after reading the book. At the time, I didn't know anyone else who was into Dune, either the book or the movie.
It was only later that I realized that the movie is quite polarizing; people either love it or they hate it. I just remember being so repulsed and disgusted at the movie that I never wanted to watch it again. But now that I've seen enough people be so fond of it, perhaps I'll give it another try. But I don't really want to!
The parent triggered one of the things I remember disliking most about the movie: the characterization of the Baron. While reading the book, I imagined him as a cold, calculating, truly sinister person---somebody who's mere presence was enough to make a well-adjusted person feel ill. I never got the impression that he was the cartoon-like "mad scientist" type as portrayed in the movie. His words and deeds were enough characterize his vileness---he didn't need to say and do them with "flair".
Another thing I remember was that the movie was only about 90 minutes long. Why even try? There's so much that's interesting and complex about the first book alone that it begs waaaaaay more than 90 minutes. The first book alone I believe is worth of a LOTR-style three-movie trio, with each movie being three or more hours long.
Unfortunately, your scenario probably isn't too far off.
I built my fiancee a computer a few weeks ago and installed Ubuntu on it. Works fine for her most of the time, as she only does "the basics" (web, email, photos, etc).
But Linux still struggles a bit with the basics. She went to pay her credit card bill online, at CitiCards.com. The site doesn't work with Firefox. Google "firefox citicards" or see this link.
Now, in this case, you could argue that it's Citi's fault. But the point is, to someone like my fiancee, who's not a slack-jawed yokel by any means, who just wants a computer that works without tweaking or troubleshooting, it's broke. She has no interest in googling "firefox citicards" and figuring out how to work around the problem. She can just use her Windows PC at work and visit the site with IE and be done with it.
I suppose the ideal outcome would be that if enough Citi Card-holding "Joe Sixpacks" bought the $200 Wal-Mart Linux PC and wanted to pay their bills online, maybe Citi would actually correct their website. But as you can see from the thread I linked, Citi has already said, "sorry, we don't support Linux or Firefox."
I don't really have a solution. MS seems to have the games all locked up. WINE is making slow inroads but with the arrival of DirectX 10 they are another gen behind.
Emphasis mine. DirectX: isn't that just it, in a nutshell, why gaming on Linux is woefully behind Windows?
My understanding is that DirectX is basically the equivalent of the MS Office file formats, i.e. the vendor lock-in that keeps Linux out. In other words, if games were developed using OpenGL, wouldn't they be much easier to port to Linux? And if they were really well-architected around open APIs, Linux support should almost be trivial.
Simple solution. Contracting. Since I changed, I never looked back. I will NEVER work for free. I will work as long as the job requires, I will bust my ass to get things working, but, I will not do it for free.
As someone who's not particularly energized by my current job[1], I've been giving some thought to going the contracting route. The problem is, I can't seem to determine if it's right for me or not. It seems to be almost polarizing, as I've seen opinions vary from making it sound anywhere from a euphoric, semi-retired state, to a hellish flip-ya-over-and-do-ya-dry brothel.
How does one get started in the contracting world? How do you make sure you're getting a good contract? Do you get vacation days, sick days, personal time off? Basically, how would I know if contracting is right for me? It seems like an awful big risk to take if I don't have some confidence that it will work out for me. I'm an INTP that likes to experiment and do proof-of-concept work; be the first to get a general understanding of something new, and then move on. I don't like wrote work or filling in function bodies in an architecture that someone else wrote.
[1] I'm now working for a startup trading company. The company is doing very well. With my bonus, I'll probably make 2x what I made at my previous job. But I'm here 10 hours/day, every day (all my colleagues work 12 hour days), plus I have an hour commute on either side. For some reason, the work doesn't interest me too much. I spend entirely too much time slacking (like right now).
Luckily, with the way our company and our "teams" are structured, each person is assigned specfici tasks to do and are trained to do those tasks...as such, unless you have been trained to do something, they could be short 5 people and they STILL won't ask you to help out.
It sounds assbackwords, I know, but in doing it this way people are EXTREMELY proficient at what they do...our revenues are massive, and our clients are always happy...not to mention you never get someone who is "luke warm" about their job...if you don't like what you are doing, you are simply moved to another role.
Sadly, there's a ton of anecdotal evidence to support this. Why, recently, my company tried to get cable in our office. We're a small startup in downtown Chicago. All we wanted was cable television. We're in an office building, so our installation is considered "commercial". You can't set up a commercial service from Comcast's webpage.
So my colleague called them, and first they said we have to use the web page. After we explained that there's no functionality for that on the web, they said that some system was down, and that they couldn't take our order at this time. But they said they'd call back the next day. They never called back. This happened in a tight loop for over two weeks: we call them, get the runaround, they never call back and/or claim they can't do anything at this time. We were trying to give them money, trying to buy their service.
We eventually got service, only because my boss just happens to personally know an executive-level Comcast employee. It took a personal call to an executive level person to actually get service in our suite!
You can demonize carbohydrates all you want -- but you're wrong. The real problem here is that it takes 1500 calories at McDs to temporarily feel like you're eating 400 calories of real food.
Many societies (Asian, Italian) have fewer obese people than America does, however they eat carb-rich diets, so what you're claiming is really bunk.
The real problem is that HFCS is deadly, and cane sugar is not. Artificial sweeteners as well as unnatural HFCS is the real culprit to tricking the body into a starved state, which consequently causes obesity. Unprocessed, or lightly processed foods are closer to what nature intended, and that is what our bodies process best.
You're right; I hate to be cliche, but there are "good carbs" and "bad carbs". That is the danger of McDonald's, though: a typical McMeal is well over 1000 Calories, yet you're hungry again in an hour or less. If half of the simple sugars were replaced with fiber, you'd only be able to eat half as much and would feel full for the rest of the day.
What I struggle with, though, is convenience. Frozen pizzas, microwave dinners, fast food: it tastes good and it's cheap and easy. I try to eat marginally healthier sandwiches than greasy fast food, but still---none of the big sandwich chains (to my knowledge) offer truly 100% whole wheat bread (i.e. high fiber, low sugar).
I don't understand why someone hasn't capitalized on creating a truly health conscious convenience restaurant. Raw or streamed vegetables, high-fiber foods, small-portion lean means, etc. It's not hard to eat healthy, and it can certainly be delicious, but I feel like I can't afford the time it takes to eat healthy.
I'm afraid that as Ubuntu gets *really* popular that it will be on the receiving end of more and more criticism and less praise, and there is quite a bit to criticize.
Such as? Note: I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm honestly asking what those criticisms are.
I can think of some criticisms, but they can be overcome by a different distribution. In my case, how much can you customize Ubuntu without breaking it? I mean, I prefer lightweight, standalone window managers to full-blown desktop environments like KDE/Gnome. How do I change my default Window Manager, and what are the effects? What "it just works" niceties are provided by the desktop environment, versus the "behind-the-scenes" infrastructure? I.e., if I change my window manager, will I lose automatic switching between wired and wireless network when I dock/undock my laptop? How about suspend/hibernate, are those settings configured through GNOME or ACPI? What if I want a custom kernel, or some self-installed 3rd party software? What if I want to use suspend2 instead of the default kernel suspend?
My answer: use Ubuntu on my laptop and fiancee's computer, and Gentoo everywhere else. She doesn't have any need for customization, and everything just works for her, so she's happy. Virtually no maintenance required on my part. Similar goes for my laptop: I often have it in situations where I don't have access to the Internet and actually need to get something done. Ubuntu does that perfectly.
But for my other boxes, that I want to customize and tinker with, and where I can tolerate downtime while I learn how to configure something, Gentoo is ideal. It is by design meant to be customizable.
Finally, I'm not saying Gentoo or Ubuntu are perfect by any means. But they are "perfect" for me personally. They are indicative of what to me are Linux and open source's greatest strength: flexibility. Different strokes for different folks.
I'd like to think that as Ubuntu gets really popular, the effort that goes into maintaining and enhancing it will grow proportionally. But I think it's popularity will also grow the popularity of other distributions as well: i.e., the people who really get into and like Linux, who want to learn more about it, who will ultimately switch to Debian or Ubuntu or Slackware or whatever.
This isn't a real touchpad, or at least, not a traditional one. It is small and efficient just like the eraser-mouse. The thing I hate about the Dell laptop I have is that is has both. If it has one or the other I'd be happy since accidental bumps of the touchpad move my cursor some place less convenient surprisingly often.
I'm not sure about Dell, but on my IBM Thinkpad T43, I can (and do) disable the touchpad in the BIOS. I'm a eraser-only guy as well, and the touchpad drove me insane. Dead simple fix!
I'm on my second "real" job now, since graduating in December, 2001 with a Computer Science degree. My first job was for a huge, established manufacturing company. Dress code was business-casual, good pay and benefits, but few other dot-com-style perks (hours were semi-flexible, as long as we didn't miss meetings and were generally there during "core" business hours, e.g. 9--3). Cubefarm.
Since October, I've been working at a trading startup. We're slowly adding perks---just got a new TV, a nice leather couch in the "break" (conference) room, paid lunches. Dress has always been casual. I even got to bring in my own chair (a Herman-Miller Aeron). Definitely not a cubefarm. No false sincerity or "professional" behavior---people cuss like it's going out of style. And I'm making nearly 2x what I was in the previous job (though I moved to Chicago where the cost of living is arguably 2x higher than where I was).
Sounds cushy, right? I'm currently looking for a different job (BTW, the company is doing great, and if I were to stick it out, I have a real opportunity to become wealthy/retire early). The new job demands at least 10 hour days, and with an hour commute on each end, I have very little time for exercising, spending time with my fiancee, and hobbies. The job is also very high-stress, there is no training, and the hours are inflexible. Work-life balance is an old memory.
What it comes down to for me is the job and environment:
Are the people with whom I work interesting and friendly?
Is there plenty of direction and support for newbies?
Are senior people given authority that is proportional to their responsibilities?
Is the work interesting? Does it require creativity? Or are the tasks rote and tedious?
Is the management open to new ideas and different approaches?
Without meeting the above criteria, all the pay and perks in the world aren't going to make someone love their job. More time with my friends and family, and time to spend on my hobbies is worth a lot of money to me. I'll give up a casual dress code and catered lunches if it means someone will take the time to help me understand the business, the big picture, overall company goals and objectives (i.e. gives that initial direction and support).
Maybe such a thing doesn't exist, but all I want is a job that pays well enough for me to be comfortable and gives me time to do things I really want to do. The first job I had was pretty close. Unfortunately, my authority did not match my responsibilities; bureaucracy was rampant and worsening. Just give me a job that typically only requires eight hours a day, lets me be creative, lets me make my own decisions, and pays enough to live in a house in a safe neighborhood. Those criteria seem simple enough, but I'm finding it really tough to find a job that meets those requirements.
As a side note, I find the whole catered lunch thing is a mixed blessing anyway. Obviously, it's convenient and saves money. On the other, it's really hard to eat healthy. I actually prefer to bring my lunch: it's much cheaper coming from the grocery store anyway, and much easier to pack lots of fruits, veggies, lean meats and high-fiber foods.
go to your favorite movie rental place... of the hundreds of movies on the new release wall we saw 3 that interested us
Has anyone else noticed that Steven Seagal has a dis-proportionate number of "new releases"? Seriously, every time I'm in the video store scanning the new releases, there's a Steven Seagal flick every few columns.
I used to like his movies as a kid... but if you've seen one, you've seen them all. They always feature that one scene where he walks into a bar with a large front-facing window. The bar is dark and brooding. Someone makes a comment about his pony tail. The camera switches to the street view and someone comes flying out of the bar through the window. Cut back to the bar with Seagal kicking all kinds of ass.
Ah! What a waste of $$$ paying lawyers to get regulations that in the end are impossible to enact/enforce... Just watch the "unbreakable" DRM of the HD-DVD be broken in a few weeks. How will they actually force me to have the DVD in the player when I can (and I will) rip it off to a HD? Oh, well, it is their money...
(Emphasis mine) No! It's not their money, it's your money. Unless, of course, you never buy or rent movies, or go see a movie in the theater. But rest assured, the MPAA and friends subsidize their DRM efforts (tech and lobbying) with increased prices. That's what I find particularly irksome: if you buy a DVD (or HD-DVD or BluRay), part of the cost goes to cover the expense of its DRM. We're paying for stuff we don't want. Nobody requested DRM!
I hate to repeat the standard mantra, but... no DRM, lower prices and better content and all this "piracy" would just go away. I mean, we all know it can never be totally squelched, but can easily be made unprofitable enough to be marginalized.
You forgot being able to watch a recording on your laptop while on the toilet. I'm puzzled as to why MythTV doesn't advertise this feature a bit more, since it's one of my favorites.
Yes, and more generally, MythTV's client-server architecture opens up a lot of possibilities. If you have a busy household (e.g. big family), build yourself a monster MythTV backend, and stash in in your basement. Then install MythTV thin clients everywhere in your house, and everyone can watch what they want when they want.
I also use the MythVideo plugin. I've copied all the DVDs I own to a big file server (so I have all my movies "on-demand" via MythTV). My girlfriend said it would be cool to install another MythTV system in a spare bedroom. Then when we had guests, they could watch a movie before going to bed (or when they get up in the morning, whatever).
Yeah, it's definitely not trivial to setup. But I always thought someone could make a business out of setting MythTV up for people. Charge a big upfront fee, and it's free after that. (Of course, you expose yourself to risk like this Zap2It debacle!)
MythTV offerers Cable Cards? OTA HD, and Cable HD? Wow, news to me.
Cable card, no. OTA HD, certainly. Cable HD, maybe. For cable HD, you might be able to use an HD tuner card (e.g. pcHDTV-5500) to tune directly from your cable outlet. Generally this only works for the stuff that's already free over-the-air. The alternative is to use your cable box's ieee1394 output. But then some HD cable channels might still be encrypted, in which case, you're out of luck.
I'm one of those people who are interested in better 2D acceleration and hardware MPEG-4/H264 acceleration. I'm a MythTV user. Nvidia's hardware does have support for such acceleration; they call it Purevideo. Unfortunately, the Linux drivers don't support it.
Well, the "nv" driver doesn't support it, but Nvidia's own driver does ("it" being the XvMC extension in Xorg).
Given that you're a MythTV user, here's a link to their Wiki, which contains a page about XvMC support.
XvMC only supports MPEG-2 (e.g. what standard-def DVD movies use and over-the-air HD (in the USA anyway). After bending over backwards and other headaches, I finally got XvMC working on my MythTV, only to find that the video quality was still pretty lousy. Maybe there was still some tweaking left to be done, but search for "xvmc" on the mythtv user's mailing list archive, and you'll find an overwhelming amount of people who are also struggling with it. I think a lot of people do like me, and just concede to getting a fast dual-core processor.
Q:... People seem to be especially interested in better 2D acceleration, hardware MPEG-4/H264 acceleration...
A: (Nothing Related to video acceleration)
I'm one of those people who are interested in better 2D acceleration and hardware MPEG-4/H264 acceleration. I'm a MythTV user. Nvidia's hardware does have support for such acceleration; they call it Purevideo. Unfortunately, the Linux drivers don't support it. Supposedly, it will be supported "in the future". But it's really frustrating. The new 7050PV chipset would be perfect for a high-definition, relatively low-powered (meaning quiet) MythTV system. But alas, the HD decoding features of that chip aren't (yet) supported in Linux, and therefore you still need a beefy processor to do HD in MythTV.
Instead, I think the way to go is with Intel integrated GPUs. They don't have MPEG acceleration yet, but they are working on APIs and drivers to greatly improve this (the hardware has very good video support). I'm hoping Intel GPUs quickly become the far and away best option for Myth users.. let open source prevail.
I wish Intel would release a standalone video card. This would be perfect for my workstation: an enthusiast motherboard for overclocking, but an ordinary video card (since I don't game on this machine). The problem is, the best overclocking motherboards rarely have onboard video.
Or read the book, by Stanislaw Lem. When my roommate in college lent me this book, I got so wrapped up in it, I read it in one night! (It's fairly short.) I haven't seen the original movie, but the newer movie was "meh" at best (didn't have half the cool stuff that the book did).
To make this post quasi-on topic, though, I don't recall any mention of the particle. (Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, I just don't recall.)
Either I've missed it or nobody's referenced this classic EMACS rip: EMACS stands for Escape-Meta-Alt-Ctrl-Shift.
Of course, I think EMACS versus Vi(m) really just comes down to personal preference. Some people will naturally find one more intuitive, or be more productive with, one than the other. At least with the Vim flavor of vi, EMACS and Vim (as editors and IDEs) can probably each do 95% of what the other can do, and both are extensible enough to do the remaining 5%.
Me, I'm a Vim user. I used Emacs for quite a while in college. If I took the time to learn some LISP, I think I could have a lot of fun with EMACS. But the three things that "sold" me on vim were: (1) vim loads so much faster than emacs; (2) the constant chording required by emacs was annoying; and (3) I preferred other standalone programs to emacs' integrated ones. Regarding (1), I know there is emacs server/session or whatever that allows you to attach to an already running emacs session (thus sparing you the load time). But when I last played with this, it didn't work remotely, i.e. I couldn't start emacs server locally, then remote in to my box and attach to the already running session. (Though that was years ago and I wouldn't be surprised if they've since implemented that feature.)
Regarding (3) above, it seemed a waste to me to use emacs as an editor only. If you start it up, and live in it all day, it's great (nice, cohesive environment). But for programs that need an external editor, like mutt and slrn, it just makes more sense to have one that loads quickly. Hence, vi(m) for me.
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Sounds like a lot of regulatory forces made the current situation like it is?
Last I heard, the H2 was built on the Suburban frame. So what Chevy has created is a vehicle that has the off-road capabilities of a Suburban, but the people/cargo capabilities of a Hummer. Isn't that backwards?! You said it best... Dumb!
Now if they could combine the off-roading prowess of the military Hummer, and the comfort/capacity of the Suburban, then they'd be on to something. Not that a lot of people would actually need something like that, but it would certainly make more sense than the H2's current incarnation.
That's the NYSE Arca Book, which only shows bid/ask and size for a stock, not the last execution price. The best bid/ask on NYSE Arca is not necessarily the national best bid/ask, meaning the B/A size is likely different too. Plus it doesn't operate in real-time. (Sure, it's delayed by 5-15 seconds, but it's nonetheless delayed.)
If a security trades outside the bid or ask, or if the security is illiquid and the spread is large enough, you would never know the actual price it is trading at. The Arca Book is only useful as a Poor Richard's Level II screen, although if you need LII you should be able to afford the data fees anyway.
Could you elaborate on that a bit? I can't seem to find a lot of concrete information on the difference between Level I and Level II information. I.e., what information is contained in each level? Why is it split up in levels in the first place? What exactly is the Arca book, and how does it relate to the "actual" book? Is it just a delayed snapshot? Why do they maintain two books in the first place?My big objection to open workspaces is the lack of noise control. As a creative worker (software developer), I get most of my job done by switching back and forth between two modes: discussion mode and focused mode. Discussion mode is typically animated and noisy; happens at random unpredictable times; most frequently involves the same one or two people, occasionally involves others; often needs a whiteboard; etc. Focus mode is the rest of the time, mostly happens at my desk, and I need quiet in order to be at my most productive. No music, no white noise, no intercom, no fax machine beeping that it's out of paper, no cell phones with hip-hop ring tones ringing at full volume, no animated discussions happening "right over there".
I hear ya. Whenever I get annoyed at my current office environment, I try to think what the ideal environment would be. And I always go back and forth between having something conducive to discussion mode, but also allows for the privacy and seclusion needed for focus mode. I can't think of anything that's reasonably simple that fulfills both requirements.
In my first job, we had a cube farm, but many of the cubes were four-person units. It was one large cubicle, and each person had their own corner. The space had a small table in the center, so we could all turn around and have impromptu meetings (i.e. discussion mode) when necessary. I really liked that. One of the desks was usually empty (unless we had an intern), and my cube-mates were always quiet. So focus mode was available on-demand. That was also my first "real" job, so I was in discussion mode more often than not (being a newbie I had lots of questions).
Towards the end of my tenure there, the whole building was remodeled with new cubicles. Gone were the multi-person cubes, and everybody had an individual unit. By this time, I more or less knew what I was doing, and needed more focus time. So in theory, the individual cube would have been nice. However, the company went really cheap on everything, and despite having my own "private" space, there was actually more noise. The old cube walls were padded and coated with cloth; they were also taller. So most noise outside of my immediate cube was significantly dampened. But the new cubes didn't block sound at all; I could hear every word of conversations from people several cubes down (and these were people with average volume voices).
My current job has what I would call an open plan. It's a trading company, and I gather that this kind of setup is typical for traders (and programmers in the finance industry). The first thing that annoys the hell out of me is that we don't have desks with drawers. Our desks are basically just tables. They are big, but I like to keep my work area tidy, and with nowhere to stash things, my desk always looks messy.
But what really annoys me is that the quality of open seating is dictated by your neighbors. I never realized how good I had it in the quiet shared cubicle I described above. The guy who sits by me drives me insane---and it's petty stuff, so I feel bad about asking him to be quiet. But, as an example (begin rant): he's a smoker, so a few times a day he comes in and stinks up the whole room. His smoking also gives him a hacking cough. He flips his pen while he's thinking, which means that every few seconds I hear the sound of his pen crashing down on his desk. He slurps his food---and I mean, really slurps. I'm certainly not Mr. Manners, but I've literally heard wild animals make less noise when eating. If he's not flipping his pen while he's thinking, he's constantly slamming C-x C-s (emacs' file save key sequence). If it weren't so annoying, I'd actually be impressed at how quickly he could hit C-x C-s over and over and over and over again. There's also the humming; sometimes he just hums the tune in his head; other times, he hums louder to hear himself over his headphones. If he gets confused by something, he starts sighing really l
Ubuntu certainly has come a long way in terms of usability for the average person. But it's still not nice enough for the average person.
I built a computer for my fiancee and put Ubuntu 7.04 (and later 7.10) on it. She thinks it's just OK. She recently quit her job to go back to school. She wants a laptop, and she insisted that it have Windows XP. I didn't even suggest that she let me put Linux on it. Her current Ubuntu workstation is used for casual tasks that aren't that important: MySpace, YouTube, email, listening to music, etc. Since these tasks aren't of great importance, she's willing to wait for me to fix things that break (and they do break). But I can't expect that of her when she's got a paper to turn in or an online assignment to complete.
I know there's a huge debate (maybe even a holy war) about whether open source desktops should innovate or just copy Windows. Fortunately there's enough choice that different projects more or less have both avenues covered. But---and it pains me to say this---emulating Windows (pre-Vista Windows anyway) is probably the way to go if converts are really wanted. Even though doing things in Windows isn't always consistent or elegant or even easy, it's familiar. Computer geeks like myself like differences: they are fun to explore and play with and foster ideas. But the rest of the world just wants to get their work done. They don't care what's going on behind the scenes, and they don't have the patience to mess with "restricted drivers", the command line, "Synaptic", or different document formats just to get something done.
Right now sound isn't working on her Ubuntu machine. All I did was run the update. Looks like a buggy ALSA driver got installed (do a search for "ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave"). But for the life of me, I can't find a fix, other than to upgrade to 8.04.
When I initially set up her computer, there was some version mis-match or something like that with the packaged flash player. The solution was to download a specific version of the .deb file and do a manual dpkg (or apt-get) install. Relatively easy for me, but my why should I expect my fiancee to have to go through all that? Even in the article, the author said it was YouTube's fault for redirecting a browser that doesn't have Flash installed. It doesn't matter---in Windows, when you go to a Flash site without having Flash installed, you get the same behavior: "Click here to install flash", and you're done.
I installed Skype on her computer; it mostly works, except that the emoticons aren't animated like they are on the Windows client. Not a big deal, but it's just one more thing that makes Linux feel like a downgrade to her. This is one example where the Linux world lacks the polish of the Windows world. Polish may not mean anything to the geekier among us, but it does make the typical person feel like they've take a step backwards.
She recently got an iPod Shuffle... this sort of works. I forget the name of the application that auto-loads when the iPod is plugged in, but about half the time it crashes. No error message or anything, the whole Window just disappears. Sometimes we'll start sync'ing songs to the iPod, minimize that application, go do something else for a while, and... where did that program go? Looks like we have to start the process all over again.
There's been a number of other issues, off and on, that require my intervention (i.e. track down the bug or quirk on the web, then install/uninstall/upgrade/downgrade a package, and possibly hack some things on the commandline). But the biggest killer for her is still OpenOffice.org. That program also crashes randomly. (Ironically, one of the crashes was when I was having her make a list of things she liked/didn't like about Ubuntu, and what she needed for a laptop. I can't think of a more simple/straightforward task: start OOWriter, create a bulleted list and save.)
But the MS Office to Ope
I've been in the "real world" for about six years now, after graduating with a computer science degree. I'm currently in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I've spent the past several months looking for a good software engineering job, both in the Chicago and Milwaukee (Wisconsin) areas. Just from this experience, my take is that Java and C#/.NET technologies are hottest right now.
My first job was using C and C++. This was partly due to historical reasons (the application was about 12 years old), but also because the API for the platform was only in C. Shortly before I came in, and during my tenure there, we were trying to move more towards C++ and build a more object-oriented framework. My current position is at a high-frequency trading firm. All our software is custom and mostly C++ (some C here and there, and a handful of Perl to glue things together).
So based on this experience, when I was looking for a job, I was focusing on C/C++ positions. What I found is that there aren't a lot of people looking for C/C++ developers. In Milwaukee, virtually all of the demand for C/C++ programmers was for embedded systems. In Chicago, there was little demand for experience in those languages outside of embedded systems and the finance industry (which I was/am trying to get out of!).
This is just my casual observation of a relatively small portion of the software engineer landscape as a whole.
On top of a diminishing demand for C/C++ programmers, I found that quite a few companies who were looking for Java/C# programmers wouldn't even consider C/C++ people. The languages aren't all that different, and the concepts should definitely be portable. I think knowing concepts, understanding programming ideas/patterns, problem solving, etc, are more important that knowing the specifics of a particular language. Shrug.
I don't doubt the accuracy of your story, but I've heard the same story over and over again, but with every hard drive manufacturer. I build my own computers, and have been for quite some time. I research the heck out of my components before I buy them. Like a lot of people, I want to get the best bang for my buck. Reliability factors into that. But in all the research I've done, as far as hard drive reliability goes, I've found that you don't have to look too hard to find your exact story, only with Seagate or Maxtor or Fujitsu or Hitachi or whatever. Seriously, go check out the forums at StorageReview.com, and do a search for "reliable". You'll find all kinds of "authoritative" posts like this:
I've been a [sysadmin/system integrator/builder/whatever] for [10+] years. I've always used [WD/Seagate/Hitachi/whatever], and only had [very small number] failures out of [very large number] of drives.
...Or the analogue, like your post, where someone has had [very large number] of failures with a particular brand.
The point is, I think all manufacturers (in general, not just hard drive makers) go through bad spells. Unfortunately, those bad spells typically aren't found out until too long after the fact. Best bet, if you can get away with it, is probably to buy technology that's a generation or two old, so you can see how the product has fared thus far. Sometimes I know that's not possible, so if it were me, I'd probably buy from multiple vendors, and spread the risk.
Also, if I remember correctly, there was that study done by Google on hard drive reliability/longevity that said no brand was more failure prone than the next.
It's been a while since I've seen the David Lynch Dune movie. But I remember I hated it tremendously. I saw the movie after reading the book. At the time, I didn't know anyone else who was into Dune, either the book or the movie.
It was only later that I realized that the movie is quite polarizing; people either love it or they hate it. I just remember being so repulsed and disgusted at the movie that I never wanted to watch it again. But now that I've seen enough people be so fond of it, perhaps I'll give it another try. But I don't really want to!
The parent triggered one of the things I remember disliking most about the movie: the characterization of the Baron. While reading the book, I imagined him as a cold, calculating, truly sinister person---somebody who's mere presence was enough to make a well-adjusted person feel ill. I never got the impression that he was the cartoon-like "mad scientist" type as portrayed in the movie. His words and deeds were enough characterize his vileness---he didn't need to say and do them with "flair".
Another thing I remember was that the movie was only about 90 minutes long. Why even try? There's so much that's interesting and complex about the first book alone that it begs waaaaaay more than 90 minutes. The first book alone I believe is worth of a LOTR-style three-movie trio, with each movie being three or more hours long.
Unfortunately, your scenario probably isn't too far off.
I built my fiancee a computer a few weeks ago and installed Ubuntu on it. Works fine for her most of the time, as she only does "the basics" (web, email, photos, etc).
But Linux still struggles a bit with the basics. She went to pay her credit card bill online, at CitiCards.com. The site doesn't work with Firefox. Google "firefox citicards" or see this link.
Now, in this case, you could argue that it's Citi's fault. But the point is, to someone like my fiancee, who's not a slack-jawed yokel by any means, who just wants a computer that works without tweaking or troubleshooting, it's broke. She has no interest in googling "firefox citicards" and figuring out how to work around the problem. She can just use her Windows PC at work and visit the site with IE and be done with it.
I suppose the ideal outcome would be that if enough Citi Card-holding "Joe Sixpacks" bought the $200 Wal-Mart Linux PC and wanted to pay their bills online, maybe Citi would actually correct their website. But as you can see from the thread I linked, Citi has already said, "sorry, we don't support Linux or Firefox."
Emphasis mine. DirectX: isn't that just it, in a nutshell, why gaming on Linux is woefully behind Windows?
My understanding is that DirectX is basically the equivalent of the MS Office file formats, i.e. the vendor lock-in that keeps Linux out. In other words, if games were developed using OpenGL, wouldn't they be much easier to port to Linux? And if they were really well-architected around open APIs, Linux support should almost be trivial.
As someone who's not particularly energized by my current job[1], I've been giving some thought to going the contracting route. The problem is, I can't seem to determine if it's right for me or not. It seems to be almost polarizing, as I've seen opinions vary from making it sound anywhere from a euphoric, semi-retired state, to a hellish flip-ya-over-and-do-ya-dry brothel.
How does one get started in the contracting world? How do you make sure you're getting a good contract? Do you get vacation days, sick days, personal time off? Basically, how would I know if contracting is right for me? It seems like an awful big risk to take if I don't have some confidence that it will work out for me. I'm an INTP that likes to experiment and do proof-of-concept work; be the first to get a general understanding of something new, and then move on. I don't like wrote work or filling in function bodies in an architecture that someone else wrote.
[1] I'm now working for a startup trading company. The company is doing very well. With my bonus, I'll probably make 2x what I made at my previous job. But I'm here 10 hours/day, every day (all my colleagues work 12 hour days), plus I have an hour commute on either side. For some reason, the work doesn't interest me too much. I spend entirely too much time slacking (like right now).
Where do you work? What do you do?
They hate their customers.
Sadly, there's a ton of anecdotal evidence to support this. Why, recently, my company tried to get cable in our office. We're a small startup in downtown Chicago. All we wanted was cable television. We're in an office building, so our installation is considered "commercial". You can't set up a commercial service from Comcast's webpage.
So my colleague called them, and first they said we have to use the web page. After we explained that there's no functionality for that on the web, they said that some system was down, and that they couldn't take our order at this time. But they said they'd call back the next day. They never called back. This happened in a tight loop for over two weeks: we call them, get the runaround, they never call back and/or claim they can't do anything at this time. We were trying to give them money, trying to buy their service.
We eventually got service, only because my boss just happens to personally know an executive-level Comcast employee. It took a personal call to an executive level person to actually get service in our suite!
You're right; I hate to be cliche, but there are "good carbs" and "bad carbs". That is the danger of McDonald's, though: a typical McMeal is well over 1000 Calories, yet you're hungry again in an hour or less. If half of the simple sugars were replaced with fiber, you'd only be able to eat half as much and would feel full for the rest of the day.
What I struggle with, though, is convenience. Frozen pizzas, microwave dinners, fast food: it tastes good and it's cheap and easy. I try to eat marginally healthier sandwiches than greasy fast food, but still---none of the big sandwich chains (to my knowledge) offer truly 100% whole wheat bread (i.e. high fiber, low sugar).
I don't understand why someone hasn't capitalized on creating a truly health conscious convenience restaurant. Raw or streamed vegetables, high-fiber foods, small-portion lean means, etc. It's not hard to eat healthy, and it can certainly be delicious, but I feel like I can't afford the time it takes to eat healthy.
Such as? Note: I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm honestly asking what those criticisms are.
I can think of some criticisms, but they can be overcome by a different distribution. In my case, how much can you customize Ubuntu without breaking it? I mean, I prefer lightweight, standalone window managers to full-blown desktop environments like KDE/Gnome. How do I change my default Window Manager, and what are the effects? What "it just works" niceties are provided by the desktop environment, versus the "behind-the-scenes" infrastructure? I.e., if I change my window manager, will I lose automatic switching between wired and wireless network when I dock/undock my laptop? How about suspend/hibernate, are those settings configured through GNOME or ACPI? What if I want a custom kernel, or some self-installed 3rd party software? What if I want to use suspend2 instead of the default kernel suspend?
My answer: use Ubuntu on my laptop and fiancee's computer, and Gentoo everywhere else. She doesn't have any need for customization, and everything just works for her, so she's happy. Virtually no maintenance required on my part. Similar goes for my laptop: I often have it in situations where I don't have access to the Internet and actually need to get something done. Ubuntu does that perfectly.
But for my other boxes, that I want to customize and tinker with, and where I can tolerate downtime while I learn how to configure something, Gentoo is ideal. It is by design meant to be customizable.
Finally, I'm not saying Gentoo or Ubuntu are perfect by any means. But they are "perfect" for me personally. They are indicative of what to me are Linux and open source's greatest strength: flexibility. Different strokes for different folks.
I'd like to think that as Ubuntu gets really popular, the effort that goes into maintaining and enhancing it will grow proportionally. But I think it's popularity will also grow the popularity of other distributions as well: i.e., the people who really get into and like Linux, who want to learn more about it, who will ultimately switch to Debian or Ubuntu or Slackware or whatever.
I'm not sure about Dell, but on my IBM Thinkpad T43, I can (and do) disable the touchpad in the BIOS. I'm a eraser-only guy as well, and the touchpad drove me insane. Dead simple fix!
I'm on my second "real" job now, since graduating in December, 2001 with a Computer Science degree. My first job was for a huge, established manufacturing company. Dress code was business-casual, good pay and benefits, but few other dot-com-style perks (hours were semi-flexible, as long as we didn't miss meetings and were generally there during "core" business hours, e.g. 9--3). Cubefarm.
Since October, I've been working at a trading startup. We're slowly adding perks---just got a new TV, a nice leather couch in the "break" (conference) room, paid lunches. Dress has always been casual. I even got to bring in my own chair (a Herman-Miller Aeron). Definitely not a cubefarm. No false sincerity or "professional" behavior---people cuss like it's going out of style. And I'm making nearly 2x what I was in the previous job (though I moved to Chicago where the cost of living is arguably 2x higher than where I was).
Sounds cushy, right? I'm currently looking for a different job (BTW, the company is doing great, and if I were to stick it out, I have a real opportunity to become wealthy/retire early). The new job demands at least 10 hour days, and with an hour commute on each end, I have very little time for exercising, spending time with my fiancee, and hobbies. The job is also very high-stress, there is no training, and the hours are inflexible. Work-life balance is an old memory.
What it comes down to for me is the job and environment:
Without meeting the above criteria, all the pay and perks in the world aren't going to make someone love their job. More time with my friends and family, and time to spend on my hobbies is worth a lot of money to me. I'll give up a casual dress code and catered lunches if it means someone will take the time to help me understand the business, the big picture, overall company goals and objectives (i.e. gives that initial direction and support).
Maybe such a thing doesn't exist, but all I want is a job that pays well enough for me to be comfortable and gives me time to do things I really want to do. The first job I had was pretty close. Unfortunately, my authority did not match my responsibilities; bureaucracy was rampant and worsening. Just give me a job that typically only requires eight hours a day, lets me be creative, lets me make my own decisions, and pays enough to live in a house in a safe neighborhood. Those criteria seem simple enough, but I'm finding it really tough to find a job that meets those requirements.
As a side note, I find the whole catered lunch thing is a mixed blessing anyway. Obviously, it's convenient and saves money. On the other, it's really hard to eat healthy. I actually prefer to bring my lunch: it's much cheaper coming from the grocery store anyway, and much easier to pack lots of fruits, veggies, lean meats and high-fiber foods.
Has anyone else noticed that Steven Seagal has a dis-proportionate number of "new releases"? Seriously, every time I'm in the video store scanning the new releases, there's a Steven Seagal flick every few columns.
I used to like his movies as a kid... but if you've seen one, you've seen them all. They always feature that one scene where he walks into a bar with a large front-facing window. The bar is dark and brooding. Someone makes a comment about his pony tail. The camera switches to the street view and someone comes flying out of the bar through the window. Cut back to the bar with Seagal kicking all kinds of ass.
(Emphasis mine) No! It's not their money, it's your money. Unless, of course, you never buy or rent movies, or go see a movie in the theater. But rest assured, the MPAA and friends subsidize their DRM efforts (tech and lobbying) with increased prices. That's what I find particularly irksome: if you buy a DVD (or HD-DVD or BluRay), part of the cost goes to cover the expense of its DRM. We're paying for stuff we don't want. Nobody requested DRM!
I hate to repeat the standard mantra, but... no DRM, lower prices and better content and all this "piracy" would just go away. I mean, we all know it can never be totally squelched, but can easily be made unprofitable enough to be marginalized.
Yes, and more generally, MythTV's client-server architecture opens up a lot of possibilities. If you have a busy household (e.g. big family), build yourself a monster MythTV backend, and stash in in your basement. Then install MythTV thin clients everywhere in your house, and everyone can watch what they want when they want.
I also use the MythVideo plugin. I've copied all the DVDs I own to a big file server (so I have all my movies "on-demand" via MythTV). My girlfriend said it would be cool to install another MythTV system in a spare bedroom. Then when we had guests, they could watch a movie before going to bed (or when they get up in the morning, whatever).
Yeah, it's definitely not trivial to setup. But I always thought someone could make a business out of setting MythTV up for people. Charge a big upfront fee, and it's free after that. (Of course, you expose yourself to risk like this Zap2It debacle!)
Cable card, no. OTA HD, certainly. Cable HD, maybe. For cable HD, you might be able to use an HD tuner card (e.g. pcHDTV-5500) to tune directly from your cable outlet. Generally this only works for the stuff that's already free over-the-air. The alternative is to use your cable box's ieee1394 output. But then some HD cable channels might still be encrypted, in which case, you're out of luck.
XvMC only supports MPEG-2 (e.g. what standard-def DVD movies use and over-the-air HD (in the USA anyway). After bending over backwards and other headaches, I finally got XvMC working on my MythTV, only to find that the video quality was still pretty lousy. Maybe there was still some tweaking left to be done, but search for "xvmc" on the mythtv user's mailing list archive, and you'll find an overwhelming amount of people who are also struggling with it. I think a lot of people do like me, and just concede to getting a fast dual-core processor.
I'm one of those people who are interested in better 2D acceleration and hardware MPEG-4/H264 acceleration. I'm a MythTV user. Nvidia's hardware does have support for such acceleration; they call it Purevideo. Unfortunately, the Linux drivers don't support it. Supposedly, it will be supported "in the future". But it's really frustrating. The new 7050PV chipset would be perfect for a high-definition, relatively low-powered (meaning quiet) MythTV system. But alas, the HD decoding features of that chip aren't (yet) supported in Linux, and therefore you still need a beefy processor to do HD in MythTV.
I wish Intel would release a standalone video card. This would be perfect for my workstation: an enthusiast motherboard for overclocking, but an ordinary video card (since I don't game on this machine). The problem is, the best overclocking motherboards rarely have onboard video.
Or read the book, by Stanislaw Lem. When my roommate in college lent me this book, I got so wrapped up in it, I read it in one night! (It's fairly short.) I haven't seen the original movie, but the newer movie was "meh" at best (didn't have half the cool stuff that the book did).
To make this post quasi-on topic, though, I don't recall any mention of the particle. (Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, I just don't recall.)
Either I've missed it or nobody's referenced this classic EMACS rip: EMACS stands for Escape-Meta-Alt-Ctrl-Shift.
Of course, I think EMACS versus Vi(m) really just comes down to personal preference. Some people will naturally find one more intuitive, or be more productive with, one than the other. At least with the Vim flavor of vi, EMACS and Vim (as editors and IDEs) can probably each do 95% of what the other can do, and both are extensible enough to do the remaining 5%.
Me, I'm a Vim user. I used Emacs for quite a while in college. If I took the time to learn some LISP, I think I could have a lot of fun with EMACS. But the three things that "sold" me on vim were: (1) vim loads so much faster than emacs; (2) the constant chording required by emacs was annoying; and (3) I preferred other standalone programs to emacs' integrated ones. Regarding (1), I know there is emacs server/session or whatever that allows you to attach to an already running emacs session (thus sparing you the load time). But when I last played with this, it didn't work remotely, i.e. I couldn't start emacs server locally, then remote in to my box and attach to the already running session. (Though that was years ago and I wouldn't be surprised if they've since implemented that feature.)
Regarding (3) above, it seemed a waste to me to use emacs as an editor only. If you start it up, and live in it all day, it's great (nice, cohesive environment). But for programs that need an external editor, like mutt and slrn, it just makes more sense to have one that loads quickly. Hence, vi(m) for me .