Seriously, WTF is Pando and why do I give a crap about them?
This is like "US Government partners with Some Guy from Nowheresville, New Jersey for US Citizen Bill of Rights."
Just goes to show how big a load of crap this so-called bill of rights is. Given that it means jack and they are free to ignore it at will because it will have no force of law.
Indeed it would also be correct with Maxtor as apparently since the Seagate acquisition they've used the "Maxtor" label as a replacement for their "Does not meet QC--destroy" label.
My buying rules: Hitachi Seagate Samsung Fujitsu
My "Don't Buy" list: Toshiba Maxtor Western Digital
My dad's drive just finally failed...it's an 80GB IBM drive I picked out for him in about 2001. That's a good run in my book. The only failure I've had, both professionally and personally, have been a Toshiba in my old PowerBook. Even though my laptops take a huge amount of abuse, I've never had a Hitachi fail, even in my laptop.
I understand Raptors are a different product line, and while I do like products named after dinosaurs, I won't buy a premium product from a company who puts out a crappy mainstream product. WD is and always has been the "bargain value" player in the mainstream market. They are always the cheapest, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. Which makes them the #1 choice for people whose own data is not at risk, and whose own money won't go toward buying the replacement. So basically this means OEMs, people who sell generic "external hard drives," DVRs, etc.
When you say 'based on 2.5" tech,' does that mean this IS a laptop drive? Or is it a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" shell?
I assume the power requirements would be intense though, so even if you could fit it in a laptop I suppose it would be unwise unless you're always plugged in.
And also being a WD drive, as far as reliability goes you'd probably be better off just keeping your important documents in RAM.
I didn't realize they were still selling new desktop PCs with Vista with bad video cards. I'm sorry.
I hope your computer has a PCI-Express slot so you can put a real video card in it eventually.
The last PC I built for my Dad, about 5 months ago, I used a 256MB card. The total cost of the machine was under $600. Lame that the OEMs, after all we've been through with the whole Vista-capable brouhaha, still aren't giving their customers true Vista-capable machines.
Come on, the grandparent was right that a 2008 or 2009 computer will meet the specs with no problem. 256MB VRAM is basically required for Vista to perform satisfactorily, so it can be assumed that most people with Vista are getting that.
DDR RAM (PC-2700)--Expensive by comparison: A single 1GB chip, $46 so that's $92 just for 2GB. Yikes!
Everybody who has a computer that uses DDR2 RAM should absolutely be at either their computer's max RAM capacity, or 4GB, whichever is smaller. It just makes sense considering the performance you get per dollar. There's no better way to spend $40 on your computer than a RAM upgrade.
Likewise, everyone with a Santa Rosa or better chipset should have 4GB in their laptop. It's only $75 for 4GB right now.
*I swear I don't work for Newegg, but I do buy stuff there a lot.
Also, any idiot could install RAM. I guarantee you, if you can read, you can do it. Do not pay someone for this, you'd be getting ripped off. Find the manufacturer's manual if your model is confusing, but most put a cute little "chip" icon by the screws you need to remove, or on the panel you remove. Give it a shot.
So based on your logic, I guess you'd be in favor of detaining any introverted computer geeks for interrogation every day upon entering the high school because they are statistically more likely to shoot up their school, right?
It's what they deserve for looking like the bad guys!/Already modded in this thread but gave it up to post this.
I never understood the point of robots.txt crap. Why put the site up if you don't want people to find it? Well I'm glad you asked. The presence (and continued following) of the robots.txt standard is crucial for these reasons:
- Scripts with potentially infinite results. If you have a calendar script on your site, that shows this month's calendar with a link to "next month" and "previous month" then without Robots.txt, the search engine could index back into prehistoric times and past the death of the Sun, with blank event calendars for each month. This is stupid. With your robots.txt file you tell the spider what URLs it's in BOTH your best interests not to crawl. You save server resources and bandwidth, Google saves their time and resources.
- If you have a duplicate copy or copies of your site for development, or perhaps an experimental "beta" version of your site, you don't want it competing with the real site for search engine placement, or worse, causing SE spiders to think you're a filthy spammer with duplicate content all over the place. So you disallow the dupes with robots.txt. Now sure ideally that server could be inside your firewall instead of on the Web, but it gets more challenging when your dev team is on a different continent.
- Temporary crap that has no value to the outside world, once again, it's a waste of both yours and the search engine's time to index it.
The above are all reasons why you might want some or all of the content on a site not indexed.
rubes who blindly install and run PC Pitstop software on their Windows boxes are a representative sampling of the computer user community as a whole,
But "rubes" is exactly how i'd generalize the general populace. How is this not an accurate representative sample, then?
Keep in mind that when we speak about the Average Person, we're talking about people with little-to-no understanding of ANYTHING. They just do what they're told and don't ask questions.
Yeah, but you have to remember, Japan had national pride working in their favor when they were working their way up the quality ladder. Japanese people wouldn't have been able to live with themselves with a bad reputation for poor quality and unsafe merchandise.
But China? I gotta say that as a whole, China is 100% shameless and has none of that kind of pride, and will stop at nothing to make an extra buck.
It would be cool if PRC pulled a Japan and became highly-respected and full of quality in 10 years, but I don't see what would cause that to happen.
(To clarify, when I said I thought most people with TiVos had only one tuner, I actually meant they probably only get the use of one tuner because the signal has to go through their crappy cable box first, and they don't have any CableCards.)
I do think you're right, CableCard is a neat idea. But doesn't the DRM annoy you? One reason I built a PC DVR (probably tied for #1 reason with no monthly fees) is that I have control of what I've recorded. TiVo (even without CableCard) won't let me just FTP into it and copy the shows onto my Mac, iPod, PC, Linux machine, etc. but on my Windows-based DVR I can do just that. And with CableCard, you have HDCP mandatory, and at any point, all the networks or cable companies can just decide they're fed up with people being able to record shows, and flip the Broadcast Flag switch on 100% of the time. Making this expensive device far less useful than it was when you bought it.
I get that the CableCard is supposed to equal more choice for customers. And it would be awesome, but only if:
1. Cableco didn't require and charge for a technician visit to shove a card in a slot
2. Cableco didn't register the device you use the CC in, preventing you from swapping it to your new device without another charged tech visit
3. No DRM. No HDCP, no broadcast flag, nothing. Come on. It's pointless. If I want HD rips of every show on TV, I know where to look—BitTorrent. Including all this BS makes it way more likely I'll stop paying their ridiculous bill altogether and start downloading all my TV like some of my friends already do.
4. Make them 2-way and support an API like the electronics industry wanted, not requiring a Java (yuck!) environment for running more shitty cable-company interfaces, (which is what I believe has been chosen for CableCard 2.0, by the cablecos). Standardize a simple protocol for buying Video-on-Demand, PPV, etc.
5. Allow me to use a CableCard in a PC. A real PC, not freaking Vista built by an approved OEM only. Open freaking standards. The card's job is to decrypt the TV signal if I have the right to it. That's the only part that needs to be secret. I suppose without the added DRM, as stated above, this would be a given.
I think right now the CableCard represents a move away from choice--now it's more like "your choice of any restrictive-DRM-having appliance-like DVR that limits your fair-use rights that has been approved by Cable Labs."
Well, I might be able to afford that if I didn't have to pay $1500 a month for rent.
Think about it this way. I would say you're lucky to be able to spend $180 a year on TiVo. I don't have that luxury because after I pay my rent, car payment, student loans, renter's, health, dental, and car insurance, power, water, and cable, and food to put on the table, I can't justify another $180 a year. Sure, I could do it, but it'd probably just force me to go into debt. Which is something I try to avoid.
He's absolutely right. If this country were being run by the same assholes in 1900 as the ones who run it now, we'd all still be driving Ford Model T's because Ford would have been granted a patent on the "4-wheeled driving apparatus" and given such a lead that no one else would have ever been able to compete.
Yay TiVo is good.
Boo blocking competition stagnates the industry and is BAD. Except for f**ing TiVo. That's GOOD for them.
Okay, but standalone comes with its own set of annoyances. IR Blasters are #1 on that list. Given that Crapcast gives me a cable box from the late 1800s, with its serial port disabled, the only way TiVo (or any standalone DVR) could control it is via IR. Which is unreliable and ugly. Oh, and that also means you only get one lousy tuner. Unless you pay the $1000 or whatever ridiculous price they charge now for the TiVo HD box and pay Comcast for 2 CableCards. And then at the end of the day when your TiVo doesn't "Just work" who do you call? Comcast won't help you, they'll say "Should have bought our DVR." And TiVo would just blame Comcast.
Standalone DVRs are the opposite of the "It just works so perfectly" fairytale TiVo wants you to believe.
BeyondTV on Windows XP, actually. I studied Myth and just didn't think I had what it takes to achieve all my goals on Myth and Linux. BTV was something I tried the demo of when I was a poor college student with a cheap-ass tuner card, and it impressed me back then, so when I had the money to build a real DVR box I paid for it.
My only complaints about the platform: 1. BTV doesn't support closed captioning in any form, be it live TV or recorded. 2. It doesn't play DVDs. Its excellent "Firefly" remote works out of the box with PowerDVD, but PowerDVD doesn't have a "10-foot" interface so it's pretty awkward to do much beyond play and pause. If I could play DVDs just like any other video file, that would be cool. 3. It sorts programs that start with "The" under "T." 4. Poor digital support, from what I've heard so far. Hopefully they get there before I get a new TV (I still have an old-fashioned TV so it doesn't affect me now).
On the plus side, I lucked out and built a platform that is rock-solid on XP, though. If it'd been crashy I'd have wanted to pull out my hair.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, WTF is Pando and why do I give a crap about them?
This is like "US Government partners with Some Guy from Nowheresville, New Jersey for US Citizen Bill of Rights."
Just goes to show how big a load of crap this so-called bill of rights is. Given that it means jack and they are free to ignore it at will because it will have no force of law.
Does WD also offer a warranty for the data their drives take with them to the big ATA controller in the sky?
Indeed it would also be correct with Maxtor as apparently since the Seagate acquisition they've used the "Maxtor" label as a replacement for their "Does not meet QC--destroy" label.
My buying rules:
Hitachi
Seagate
Samsung
Fujitsu
My "Don't Buy" list:
Toshiba
Maxtor
Western Digital
My dad's drive just finally failed...it's an 80GB IBM drive I picked out for him in about 2001. That's a good run in my book. The only failure I've had, both professionally and personally, have been a Toshiba in my old PowerBook. Even though my laptops take a huge amount of abuse, I've never had a Hitachi fail, even in my laptop.
I understand Raptors are a different product line, and while I do like products named after dinosaurs, I won't buy a premium product from a company who puts out a crappy mainstream product. WD is and always has been the "bargain value" player in the mainstream market. They are always the cheapest, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. Which makes them the #1 choice for people whose own data is not at risk, and whose own money won't go toward buying the replacement. So basically this means OEMs, people who sell generic "external hard drives," DVRs, etc.
niiiiiice. I see what you did there.
When you say 'based on 2.5" tech,' does that mean this IS a laptop drive? Or is it a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" shell?
I assume the power requirements would be intense though, so even if you could fit it in a laptop I suppose it would be unwise unless you're always plugged in.
And also being a WD drive, as far as reliability goes you'd probably be better off just keeping your important documents in RAM.
I didn't realize they were still selling new desktop PCs with Vista with bad video cards. I'm sorry.
I hope your computer has a PCI-Express slot so you can put a real video card in it eventually.
The last PC I built for my Dad, about 5 months ago, I used a 256MB card. The total cost of the machine was under $600. Lame that the OEMs, after all we've been through with the whole Vista-capable brouhaha, still aren't giving their customers true Vista-capable machines.
Come on, the grandparent was right that a 2008 or 2009 computer will meet the specs with no problem. 256MB VRAM is basically required for Vista to perform satisfactorily, so it can be assumed that most people with Vista are getting that.
The only way you are screwed is if you need previous generation ram. DDR2 is dirt cheap:
DDR2 RAM (PC2-5300): 2x1GB chips for laptops, $36, for desktops, $36
DDR RAM (PC-2700)--Expensive by comparison: A single 1GB chip, $46 so that's $92 just for 2GB. Yikes!
Everybody who has a computer that uses DDR2 RAM should absolutely be at either their computer's max RAM capacity, or 4GB, whichever is smaller. It just makes sense considering the performance you get per dollar. There's no better way to spend $40 on your computer than a RAM upgrade.
Likewise, everyone with a Santa Rosa or better chipset should have 4GB in their laptop. It's only $75 for 4GB right now.
*I swear I don't work for Newegg, but I do buy stuff there a lot.
Also, any idiot could install RAM. I guarantee you, if you can read, you can do it. Do not pay someone for this, you'd be getting ripped off. Find the manufacturer's manual if your model is confusing, but most put a cute little "chip" icon by the screws you need to remove, or on the panel you remove. Give it a shot.
Crysis!
So based on your logic, I guess you'd be in favor of detaining any introverted computer geeks for interrogation every day upon entering the high school because they are statistically more likely to shoot up their school, right?
/Already modded in this thread but gave it up to post this.
It's what they deserve for looking like the bad guys!
- Scripts with potentially infinite results. If you have a calendar script on your site, that shows this month's calendar with a link to "next month" and "previous month" then without Robots.txt, the search engine could index back into prehistoric times and past the death of the Sun, with blank event calendars for each month. This is stupid. With your robots.txt file you tell the spider what URLs it's in BOTH your best interests not to crawl. You save server resources and bandwidth, Google saves their time and resources.
- If you have a duplicate copy or copies of your site for development, or perhaps an experimental "beta" version of your site, you don't want it competing with the real site for search engine placement, or worse, causing SE spiders to think you're a filthy spammer with duplicate content all over the place. So you disallow the dupes with robots.txt. Now sure ideally that server could be inside your firewall instead of on the Web, but it gets more challenging when your dev team is on a different continent.
- Temporary crap that has no value to the outside world, once again, it's a waste of both yours and the search engine's time to index it.
The above are all reasons why you might want some or all of the content on a site not indexed.
Keep in mind that when we speak about the Average Person, we're talking about people with little-to-no understanding of ANYTHING. They just do what they're told and don't ask questions.
Yeah, but you have to remember, Japan had national pride working in their favor when they were working their way up the quality ladder. Japanese people wouldn't have been able to live with themselves with a bad reputation for poor quality and unsafe merchandise.
But China? I gotta say that as a whole, China is 100% shameless and has none of that kind of pride, and will stop at nothing to make an extra buck.
It would be cool if PRC pulled a Japan and became highly-respected and full of quality in 10 years, but I don't see what would cause that to happen.
(To clarify, when I said I thought most people with TiVos had only one tuner, I actually meant they probably only get the use of one tuner because the signal has to go through their crappy cable box first, and they don't have any CableCards.)
I do think you're right, CableCard is a neat idea. But doesn't the DRM annoy you? One reason I built a PC DVR (probably tied for #1 reason with no monthly fees) is that I have control of what I've recorded. TiVo (even without CableCard) won't let me just FTP into it and copy the shows onto my Mac, iPod, PC, Linux machine, etc. but on my Windows-based DVR I can do just that. And with CableCard, you have HDCP mandatory, and at any point, all the networks or cable companies can just decide they're fed up with people being able to record shows, and flip the Broadcast Flag switch on 100% of the time. Making this expensive device far less useful than it was when you bought it.
I get that the CableCard is supposed to equal more choice for customers. And it would be awesome, but only if:
- 1. Cableco didn't require and charge for a technician visit to shove a card in a slot
- 2. Cableco didn't register the device you use the CC in, preventing you from swapping it to your new device without another charged tech visit
- 3. No DRM. No HDCP, no broadcast flag, nothing. Come on. It's pointless. If I want HD rips of every show on TV, I know where to look—BitTorrent. Including all this BS makes it way more likely I'll stop paying their ridiculous bill altogether and start downloading all my TV like some of my friends already do.
- 4. Make them 2-way and support an API like the electronics industry wanted, not requiring a Java (yuck!) environment for running more shitty cable-company interfaces, (which is what I believe has been chosen for CableCard 2.0, by the cablecos). Standardize a simple protocol for buying Video-on-Demand, PPV, etc.
- 5. Allow me to use a CableCard in a PC. A real PC, not freaking Vista built by an approved OEM only. Open freaking standards. The card's job is to decrypt the TV signal if I have the right to it. That's the only part that needs to be secret. I suppose without the added DRM, as stated above, this would be a given.
I think right now the CableCard represents a move away from choice--now it's more like "your choice of any restrictive-DRM-having appliance-like DVR that limits your fair-use rights that has been approved by Cable Labs."Sorry, I was thinking of the "Tivo Series 3". Apparently they have removed their heads from their asses since then and decided to offer a unit that costs less than a small car.
What's the trade-off though? What did they leave off of the "Tivo HD" that was in the "Series 3"?
I may have to reconsider them if this "CableCard" thing actually works and isn't just another chance for Comcast to screw you.
I bet most TiVo users have only one tuner though, and just have their analog cable plugged right into it. Seriously, I bet at least 75% of them.
Well, I might be able to afford that if I didn't have to pay $1500 a month for rent.
Think about it this way. I would say you're lucky to be able to spend $180 a year on TiVo. I don't have that luxury because after I pay my rent, car payment, student loans, renter's, health, dental, and car insurance, power, water, and cable, and food to put on the table, I can't justify another $180 a year. Sure, I could do it, but it'd probably just force me to go into debt. Which is something I try to avoid.
Haha, i said "workbook" in the parent when I was thinking "woodwork."
Why is parent being modded down?
He's absolutely right. If this country were being run by the same assholes in 1900 as the ones who run it now, we'd all still be driving Ford Model T's because Ford would have been granted a patent on the "4-wheeled driving apparatus" and given such a lead that no one else would have ever been able to compete.
Yay TiVo is good.
Boo blocking competition stagnates the industry and is BAD. Except for f**ing TiVo. That's GOOD for them.
I'm glad you're rich, but you'll forgive me if I don't want to spend 50% more on top of my TV bill for the right to record shit on a hard drive.
Okay, but standalone comes with its own set of annoyances. IR Blasters are #1 on that list. Given that Crapcast gives me a cable box from the late 1800s, with its serial port disabled, the only way TiVo (or any standalone DVR) could control it is via IR. Which is unreliable and ugly. Oh, and that also means you only get one lousy tuner. Unless you pay the $1000 or whatever ridiculous price they charge now for the TiVo HD box and pay Comcast for 2 CableCards. And then at the end of the day when your TiVo doesn't "Just work" who do you call? Comcast won't help you, they'll say "Should have bought our DVR." And TiVo would just blame Comcast.
Standalone DVRs are the opposite of the "It just works so perfectly" fairytale TiVo wants you to believe.
BeyondTV on Windows XP, actually. I studied Myth and just didn't think I had what it takes to achieve all my goals on Myth and Linux. BTV was something I tried the demo of when I was a poor college student with a cheap-ass tuner card, and it impressed me back then, so when I had the money to build a real DVR box I paid for it.
My only complaints about the platform:
1. BTV doesn't support closed captioning in any form, be it live TV or recorded.
2. It doesn't play DVDs. Its excellent "Firefly" remote works out of the box with PowerDVD, but PowerDVD doesn't have a "10-foot" interface so it's pretty awkward to do much beyond play and pause. If I could play DVDs just like any other video file, that would be cool.
3. It sorts programs that start with "The" under "T."
4. Poor digital support, from what I've heard so far. Hopefully they get there before I get a new TV (I still have an old-fashioned TV so it doesn't affect me now).
On the plus side, I lucked out and built a platform that is rock-solid on XP, though. If it'd been crashy I'd have wanted to pull out my hair.