Look, the real answer is that of course, even for very, very large Java projects, a newish G4 PowerBook is going to be fast enough.
You might be able to find a P4 laptop you can cook an egg on and might also compile your app a little faster, but what is it going to save you, really? 3 seconds per compile, if that?
When developing, if you're any good at all, you spend the bulk of your time writing code, not compiling it. If you're not very good, most of your time is still spent fixing errors reported by the compiler, or debugging code, and so maybe the debugger is where you should be asking performance questions.
Either way, deciding if you should get a Pentium or G4 based on compiler performance when what you're doing is writing code is somewhat like asking if you should get a Dodge or a Honda based on horsepower when what you're doing is driving a couple of miles to work... I mean, it's very likely that *other* factors are more important, like ease-of-use, target deployment platform, what you'd rather be spending your time/money on, preferred editor/IDE, etc... and in the long run, either one will do the job. Of course, my answer is don't send money to Microsoft, they have plenty.
How on earth is that comment interesting? He's one guy, and probably not the norm among PS2 owners.
I have a huge stack of PS1 games, and I *still* play them on a fairly regular basis, even when ( like now ) I've just bought a PS2 game and am hung up on it. Many PS1 games are not crappy at all ( no game is *all* about graphics ) and games similar to them often simply aren't made for PS2. Also, PS1 games are still half the cost of PS2 gamees. I still occasionally buy good, cheap PS1 games.
Having the PS2 being backwards-compatible wasn't a requirement for my purchase, but then again, it did help. I wasn't an early adopter. I played my PS1 games for a couple of years while the PS2 was out. Why? They were fun, and I couldn't justify spending several hundreds of dollars for a new console and games when I was having fun with my old one. It did help make the transition easier, and justify it, though- I didn't have to have two machines hooked up, and I didn't need to run out and buy more than a couple of new PS2 games right away. But now I have maybe 20 PS2 games. Building in backwards compatability is a brilliant move if it's economically feasable.
For MS, their new hardware is going to be too unlike their old hardware, and not quite fast enough for a big emulation layer to work well without increasing the cost. P3 to G5 is one thing, but changing the video system as well blows the emulation deal for them for sure. That added to the relatively small number of Xbox games sold equals no backwards compatability for Xbox2 as currently designed.
However, Sony has set the standard and raised the expectation, and will likely continue to support PS2 games on the PS3... and my personal prediction is that MS will have their ass served to them on this one. Hell, they've already lost this round, and that's with a considerable time/technology advantage. The Xbox2 will only win in it's ability to be a home media PVR-type center, which it may not be. We'll see.
Huh. Now I wonder if I'm the only one still playing my PS1 games. I have to admit, it's most often because I'm playing with my very young son, or playing good multi-player games with my wife. And I ( and my son ) still occasionally fire up a Sega Genesis to play Toy Story 2 and a couple of other games... which is admittedly a little weird, though they're fun games... well, that's besides the point. MS won't have backwards compatability for the Xbox2, and that'll be something used to ding them no matter how sweet the graphics and games are.
Short answer : The XBox ( and it's games ) didn't sell well enough to justify keeping any next-generation XBox compatible with previous games.
For Sony, it made sense to build in PS1 emulation to the PS2 because the original Playstation was so popular and sold so many games. Heck, they're *still* selling orginal Playstations, and people are still buying shrink-wrapped Playstation 1 games, to a lesser extent.
Will Microsoft piss off the majority of the console-game users if they release a new game console which doesn't play Xbox games? No, because most of us don't _have_ Xbox games...
MS may ( correctly ) figure that the current crop of Xbox owners will buy the latest and greatest game machine no matter what, "because it plays Halo5" or whatever...
You can get a single, muli-seat-license disk from Microsoft with a single CD key for less than the retail price of buying many single copies of Office. Of course, there is no OEM licensing, but still, there's a multi-seat license that makes sense for a BUSINESS which has many Macs. I don't have the details but it's much like any other MS volume license.
I wish I had seen this article on Friday when people might have seen this post, but I was doing real work on my Macintosh!!!
Absolutely right. One Comcast cable-using pal of mine had his cable out for over 32 hours this past year. Compare that to 3 minutes of fade during a *severe* downpour, which I've seen once this year with DirecTV, and you realize the cable folks are spreading FUD because they just can't compete.
What's more, they're still not used to competing. What happens when an artificial monopoly is exposed to competition? We're seeing it...
Much of this has already been covered, and it looks like the clear answer from Slashdot is already "DirecTV beats Comcast Cable in every way", but since I have DirecTV ( have had it for years ) and my neighbor has Comcast digital cable, I think I can answer that DirecTV clearly wins on many points when compared to Comcast digital:
1) Downtime much less than cable. Seriously. Although rain fade does happen, it's never for more than a couple of minutes even in the *most* severe of storms. It's a matter of *extreme* downpours causing some signal loss, not a matter of it going out constantly. Not a problem, really. A well-pointed dish and clear horizon help, too, but my dish is pointed right at a tree, gets 80% signal at best, and it's still almost never a problem. The cable companies lie, of course. When Comcast's cable goes out ( it definitely does happen ) it's for hours and hours at a time, not minutes.
2) DirecTV has a _great_ program guide and lots of cool features built into even their most basic set-top boxes, *especially* when compared to Comcast.
Comcast's program guide is hard to read, and worst of all, has HUGE advertisements that take up half the screen or more!! It's barely usable. It's just a channel with a scrolling loop. DirecTV's is actually an interactive program guide which is layered on top of whatever channel you're watching, it has _days_ of programming. See if you can find someone who has it and try it out- you won't need a TV guide ever again.
3) DirecTivo is the best! Cable Tivos can't even tune two channels at once, and don't integrate with the cable set-top at all. DirecTV also offers their Tivos cheaply - you can get a complete multi-room system *with* installation and upgrade one room to Tivo for $99 bucks. Compare to $200+ for other Tivos. Also, probably since the program guide comes from DirecTV, the Tivo subscription is only $4.99, not the normal $12.99.
4) More channels, more flexible channel packages, actually cheaper than cable in every configuration as well. If you're a sports fan ( I'm not ), DirecTV is where it's at, you may never leave the house again.
5) Local channels are better quality. Maybe a small point, but someone who has cable recently pointed this out to me. I think it's because DirecTV charges $4.99 to give you locals and can sell them out-of-market ( I live in CA but could in theory get NY channels if I wanted to pay for them ). Cable _has_ to carry the locals by law and can't charge for them, so put the minimum of effort into doing so- they stick up an antenna wherever is convenient and give you that signal, which may well be worse than what you'd get on your own.
Seriously, if you find someone who has DirecTV, especialy with Tivo, spend 15 minutes or so having them demo it for you, compare it to someone else who has Comcast digital cable, and you'll understand why the vast majority of posts here are singing the praises of DirecTV. I hate them for their evil smartcard lawsuit ways, but they're easily the best pay TV service around, and I'd rather be their customer and send them letters telling them how bad a mistake their legal guys are making on that front than pay a cable company who's even worse to their customers. It's much like picking a political candidate to vote for... and DirecTV is clearly the lesser of the evils.
Almost forgot- this varies greatly by area of course, but Comcast only recently went digital in my area. On all fronts tech, HDTV rollout, everything, DirecTV has been way ahead of them. I'm sure there are more ways DirecTV is better than Comcast, and there _might_ be a better cable service than DirecTV, but I haven't heard of it.
What do you mean, "I don't believe in God"? I talk to him every day. What do you mean, "I don't support your system"? I go to court when I have to. What do you mean, "I can't get to work on time"? I got nothing better to do And, what do you mean, "I don't pay my bills"? Why do you think I'm broke? Huh?
Chorus If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line. But, it better work this time.
What do you mean, "I hurt your feelings"? I didn't know you had any feelings. What do you mean, "I ain't kind"? I'm just not your kind. What do you mean, "I couldn't be president, of the United States of America"? Tell me something, it's still "We the people", right?
Chorus (repeat)
If there's a new way I'll be the first in line, But, it better work this time. Can you put a price on peace? Peace, Peace sells..., Peace, Peace sells..., Peace sells...,but who's buying? Peace sells...,but who's buying? Peace sells...,but who's buying? Peace sells...,but who's buying? No, peace sells...
Well, not really, the thought of big-ass robot-controlled tanks give me the creeps, but I *definitely* want them to know I'm *not* a target, if that's at all possible.
Believe me, environmentalists haven't missed the fact that NASA and the military are sending up buckets of plutonium strapped to rockets. It's just that they've tried and can't seem to do anything about it.
When I worked at the JPL, I personally stamped "declassified" on a huge stack of Environmental Impact Report documents ( boss' orders, of course ). Why they were ever considered classified I'll leave to your consideration, but they were. These were in preparation for the launch of the Galileo probe.
The short of it is that some dudes in New Mexico played with the RTG units and a rocket sled, then told the feds that these things "most likely" would not rain plutonium dust on Disney's theme parks in Florida, at least not dust small enough to get stuck in your lung and cause you serious health problems. In a technical safety-ratios sort of way. OK. It could happen. Not terribly likely. And the heat tiles on the shuttle are safe, too, won't break. And nobody is going to hijack a plane just to fly it into a building.
Yea. We should all trust guys who work at a nuclear test lab to provide unbiased data about plutonium containment saftey. Is your sarcasm detector working ?
I don't know if your *brain* is working if you're completely unconcerned about plutonium being strapped to giant rockets and blasted into the stratosphere, given the probability of a launch mishap. Of even more concern are low-earth-orbit military birds which are going to "safely" burn up in the atmosphere. Like meteors... oh... wait...
Don't get me wrong, I actually _want_ NASA to launch these things. I'm less excited about the larger, more likely to re-enter ones the military has/is/will be putting over *your* head...
Aw, c'mon, there just _has_ to be some Chinese text about astrology or gunpowder or something that predates this by centuries, don't you think?
Or are we looking only for a 'manual' that describes how to use a device, not a scientific document on how to make or measure something? How about some Mayan or Egyptian glyphs showing how to check the date of the equinox through the use of some pyramid or something like that ? They're harder to date but known to exist and be older than a paltry 613 years...
Let's call this the oldest known example of an old white English guy's tech manual, and leave it at that, huh ? I mean, I'm as euro-centric as the next guy, but 600 years is nothing in human history, there _must_ be something that qualifies as a tech manual that's older...
My answer is in this thread because it's essentially the same. Why on earth would I feel guilty?
I'll feel guilty when Linux has 1) a desktop UI as nice as OS X. 2) an easy-to-use set of applications which duplicates the functionality of the current iLife package ( music player, photo organizer/editor, DV editor, DVD authoring, music editing/recording ) 3) has a simple point-and-click update utility 4) is supported by a wide range of software vendors
I realize that some parts of the above are in place for Linux already. I do expect that at some point in the next 10 years or so, I might install some version of Linux ( or some other GNU+kernel+packages thing, maybe the kernel will be Darwin ) on some machine or the other. But feel guilty for supporting the clear alternative to Micro$oft on the desktop? No way.
Just a small datapoint on the reliability of Apple hardware : I work at a company which uses ( almost ) exclusively Apple hardware, whose employees also buy a lot of Apple laptops, etc. Aside from some laptops needing repair after being mistreated ( which were under AppleCare and replaced with no questions ), nobody I know has *ever* had a hardware failure with Apple equipment. I know 4 people with PCs as their primary computer- one of the four has a machine that won't boot ( it's newish, it shipped with XP ).
My comments here are a little late in the game, but hopefully someone will find them interesting anyway:
9. Make it smaller if it gets in the way.
It's easy to make it smaller. I thought HCI guys liked big click targets, I'm confused by the complaint...
8. Minimized windows look different if they are, and things dragged from the Finder look like they do in the Finder.
Minimized windows DO show differences ( they're images of what the window looks like )- in this bullet point he's only refering to documents you place on the dock, which get the exact same icon they have in the finder... he wants that different why?? What would it be??
In general, this point seems a bit confused, and really, if you're keeping more than one or two documents of the same type in the dock, you're doing something a bit odd- you should use a folder in the Finder. Maybe your Documents folder, or a correctly named folder inside of Documents?? In the Finder, you can set your view preferences to show all of the file size and other info he's asking to see in the dock ( why there? What a mess that would be! ).
7. The dock has labels for items, you just have to move your mouse over them. In many of these points, Tog wants something other than the Dock... and without realizing it, what he wants is the Finder! So use the Finder, Tog!! The dock has labels, just not all of the time. If you have similar items and don't want to give them different icons. I have 3 folders I wanted in my dock, so to tell them appart a bit easier, I gave them different icons... easy. Does "scrubing" for the titles really take that much time ?? Again, if you have a bunch of items of the same type and icon in the Dock, you probably really want to use the Finder instead.
6. Dock objects do not need color. Again, Tog wants the Dock to be just like the Finder. It serves a completely different purpose. It's for Applications, minimized windows and frequently used folders, and *maybe* one or two current high-use documents. If you're storing lots of document links here, you maybe really want them on the Desktop or somewhere else in the actual Finder where you can look at all of the various attributes?? Maybe, just maybe, having the dock use the Finder color label in it's text is a good enough idea, but is it a big deal, or even necesarily a good idea? I don't actually think so.
5. The trash can is pretty close to the corner. I mean, close enough, right? My Dock is usually full ( 9 oft-used apps and 5 oft-visited folders ), so the trash is actually always in the corner, right where he wants it. I know an office full of OS X users, none of whom complains that they can't find the trash or miss it. I'm not sure this is more than a pet peeve... Tog, did you decide to put the trash there? Besides, since you can't remove the trash can ( I'd like to, actually ) you always know where to look for it on any machine... it's at the end of the dock! If someone moved it under OS 9, do you know where to find it? No. So you could as easily argue that the Dock trash is *better* than the OS 9 trash using the same arguments. Sigh.
4. The dock's locations are entirely predictable. The applications and other icons that stay in the dock are always where you left them. Running apps and minimized windows are placed after the permanent set in the order they were placed. Sure it's dynamic... but if you start looking for documents from the left and apps from the right, you'll find what you're lookng for quickly, the dynamic nature of the dock is more useful than problematic.
3. This is the same as #9?? Pathetic.
2. Use ASM, if command-tab is too complicated for you or you just miss the Application Switcher Menu. Oddly enough, he says as much. Not actually a complaint about the Dock, is this? Not in 10.3, anyway... as for the Tab-menu, that sucked even more than the dock, and even Tog says it sucked. Applications or folders placed in the dock do a better and more reliable job than the Tab menu...
How about checking the Apple website and searching for Tivo ?
Seriously, though... you're asking about TivoToGo? It sounds like some form of crippled Home Media Option to me... it might happen, but it's not going to be there right away. iTunes weak "DRM" aside, Tivo probably knows how anti-DRM the Apple folks are, anyway, and won't provide TivoToGo there until it's well-tested on the Windoze side...
Why not just network your Tivo, hack your way in, enable ftp, and grab the files off of it that way? When I have the time and *really* want to do it, that's what I'll do to my DirecTivo. It'll probably be in another year, after my warranty expires and I swap out the HD for a larger capacity one, then I'll use the fact that my Tivo is really a Linux computer in disguise.
Call your cable company. This is up to them. Tivo would do it in a heartbeat, but the cable company has a lock on what box you get, and aside from using an external Tivo2, which DOES work with most cable boxes, what you can get is determined exclusively by your cable company. They need to do a licensing and development deal with Tivo !
Wait just a minute. You call yourself a geek and you don't want to have one more box in your A/V cabinet, even if it's a PowerPC Linux machine? Get off SlashDot, Detritus, you clearly don't belong here !!;-)
Yea, that's exactly the feature that Replay had their pants sued off for. Broadcasters also didnt' like the "30 second skip" feature, either, but it was really the file-sharing feature that got them in trouble. I'm getting good at timing the fast-forward on my Tivo, but a skip *exactly* the length of most commercials would be pretty nifty.
Clearly a lot of folks have already mentioned this, but...
1) there's a feature on the Tivo where you can tell it to "start early" when recording a particular show, you tell it how many minutes... it also lets you record past the scheduled end of a show, too.
2) dual-tuner Tivos work around the two-programs-one-right after-another problem, though you apparently don't get that option with Cable Tivo2 ( one word : DirecTV ).
3) how important is the first minute of most shows, anyway?
I'm not so sure they're trying to "defeat Tivo" as much as "make sure you tune in early for extra commercials and the end of that other show they really want you to watch". Or maybe even "didn't sell that other commercial slot"...
With the possible exception of providing internet or telephone service as well, aren't cable and satellite providers *already* just "simple provider(s) of digital feed" ? What else do they do ? What's the big difference between cable provider A and satellite provider B ?
Clearly, TimeWarnerAOLComcastATT *are* worried, and they should be. The smart folks are partnering ( or have already partnered ) with Tivo and Tivo wannabes ( M$, etc ) to churn out hardware and services that "compliment" the digital feeds and make them more useful. They're also looking for ways to leverage their digital feeds and customer relationships into other growth areas, like internet service and DVR.
I *love* my DirecTivo. All I need is to swap in a bigger hard drive... just as soon as my warranty exipres...
my Tivo has a menu item that says "Record to VCR".
It's true they haven't done this part: "Longer programs can be scaled to fit onto smaller video tapes by speeding up the play speed or dropping frames." but they're updating the software all the time, and Tivo today does everything else listed.
The only bad part of DirecTV is their smartcard litigation. Aside from that, DirecTV is easily the best pay TV service available in the US, and is about to get better for me when my DirecTivo is installed next week.
A word of warning- apparently DirecTV didn't realize how popular this promotion would be. I was on a waiting list for a couple of weeks before they called me back to let me know I could actually buy the thing.
DO NOT buy a DirecTivo at some retailer, at least not without checking out what is involved in installation, especially in multi-room setups ( you need a 'multiswitch', more lines of cable than you think, etc ). You'll get a better deal from DirecTV anyway, especiallly if you're a new customer.
There are also a couple of weird downsides to DirecTivo- 1) you can't buy the Tivo "Home Media Option", which 'lets' you stream tunes and slideshows from your computer to your Tivo 2) I don't know that you can get a lifetime subscription... but the monthly fee is less!
both of these 'downsides' are things which might change, and I can live with. Really, I just want Tivo so my wife can watch her "reality" shows _after_ dinner...
Rain Fade happens only during unbelievably severe downpours, which I've seen maybe twice in 3 years ( granted, the SF bay area doesn't see much heavy rain ).
Compared to how many times my neighbor's cable system has been out, the satellite signal is rock-solid. When the cable goes out, it's usually for a *lot* longer than the rain-fade.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, the real answer is that of course, even for very, very large Java projects, a newish G4 PowerBook is going to be fast enough.
You might be able to find a P4 laptop you can cook an egg on and might also compile your app a little faster, but what is it going to save you, really? 3 seconds per compile, if that?
When developing, if you're any good at all, you spend the bulk of your time writing code, not compiling it. If you're not very good, most of your time is still spent fixing errors reported by the compiler, or debugging code, and so maybe the debugger is where you should be asking performance questions.
Either way, deciding if you should get a Pentium or G4 based on compiler performance when what you're doing is writing code is somewhat like asking if you should get a Dodge or a Honda based on horsepower when what you're doing is driving a couple of miles to work... I mean, it's very likely that *other* factors are more important, like ease-of-use, target deployment platform, what you'd rather be spending your time/money on, preferred editor/IDE, etc... and in the long run, either one will do the job. Of course, my answer is don't send money to Microsoft, they have plenty.
How on earth is that comment interesting? He's one guy, and probably not the norm among PS2 owners.
I have a huge stack of PS1 games, and I *still* play them on a fairly regular basis, even when ( like now ) I've just bought a PS2 game and am hung up on it. Many PS1 games are not crappy at all ( no game is *all* about graphics ) and games similar to them often simply aren't made for PS2. Also, PS1 games are still half the cost of PS2 gamees. I still occasionally buy good, cheap PS1 games.
Having the PS2 being backwards-compatible wasn't a requirement for my purchase, but then again, it did help. I wasn't an early adopter. I played my PS1 games for a couple of years while the PS2 was out. Why? They were fun, and I couldn't justify spending several hundreds of dollars for a new console and games when I was having fun with my old one. It did help make the transition easier, and justify it, though- I didn't have to have two machines hooked up, and I didn't need to run out and buy more than a couple of new PS2 games right away. But now I have maybe 20 PS2 games. Building in backwards compatability is a brilliant move if it's economically feasable.
For MS, their new hardware is going to be too unlike their old hardware, and not quite fast enough for a big emulation layer to work well without increasing the cost. P3 to G5 is one thing, but changing the video system as well blows the emulation deal for them for sure. That added to the relatively small number of Xbox games sold equals no backwards compatability for Xbox2 as currently designed.
However, Sony has set the standard and raised the expectation, and will likely continue to support PS2 games on the PS3... and my personal prediction is that MS will have their ass served to them on this one. Hell, they've already lost this round, and that's with a considerable time/technology advantage. The Xbox2 will only win in it's ability to be a home media PVR-type center, which it may not be. We'll see.
Huh. Now I wonder if I'm the only one still playing my PS1 games. I have to admit, it's most often because I'm playing with my very young son, or playing good multi-player games with my wife. And I ( and my son ) still occasionally fire up a Sega Genesis to play Toy Story 2 and a couple of other games... which is admittedly a little weird, though they're fun games... well, that's besides the point. MS won't have backwards compatability for the Xbox2, and that'll be something used to ding them no matter how sweet the graphics and games are.
Short answer : The XBox ( and it's games ) didn't sell well enough to justify keeping any next-generation XBox compatible with previous games.
For Sony, it made sense to build in PS1 emulation to the PS2 because the original Playstation was so popular and sold so many games. Heck, they're *still* selling orginal Playstations, and people are still buying shrink-wrapped Playstation 1 games, to a lesser extent.
Will Microsoft piss off the majority of the console-game users if they release a new game console which doesn't play Xbox games? No, because most of us don't _have_ Xbox games...
MS may ( correctly ) figure that the current crop of Xbox owners will buy the latest and greatest game machine no matter what, "because it plays Halo5" or whatever...
You can get a single, muli-seat-license disk from Microsoft with a single CD key for less than the retail price of buying many single copies of Office. Of course, there is no OEM licensing, but still, there's a multi-seat license that makes sense for a BUSINESS which has many Macs. I don't have the details but it's much like any other MS volume license.
I wish I had seen this article on Friday when people might have seen this post, but I was doing real work on my Macintosh!!!
Absolutely right. One Comcast cable-using pal of mine had his cable out for over 32 hours this past year. Compare that to 3 minutes of fade during a *severe* downpour, which I've seen once this year with DirecTV, and you realize the cable folks are spreading FUD because they just can't compete.
What's more, they're still not used to competing. What happens when an artificial monopoly is exposed to competition? We're seeing it...
Much of this has already been covered, and it looks like the clear answer from Slashdot is already "DirecTV beats Comcast Cable in every way", but since I have DirecTV ( have had it for years ) and my neighbor has Comcast digital cable, I think I can answer that DirecTV clearly wins on many points when compared to Comcast digital :
1) Downtime much less than cable. Seriously. Although rain fade does happen, it's never for more than a couple of minutes even in the *most* severe of storms. It's a matter of *extreme* downpours causing some signal loss, not a matter of it going out constantly. Not a problem, really. A well-pointed dish and clear horizon help, too, but my dish is pointed right at a tree, gets 80% signal at best, and it's still almost never a problem. The cable companies lie, of course. When Comcast's cable goes out ( it definitely does happen ) it's for hours and hours at a time, not minutes.
2) DirecTV has a _great_ program guide and lots of cool features built into even their most basic set-top boxes, *especially* when compared to Comcast.
Comcast's program guide is hard to read, and worst of all, has HUGE advertisements that take up half the screen or more!! It's barely usable. It's just a channel with a scrolling loop. DirecTV's is actually an interactive program guide which is layered on top of whatever channel you're watching, it has _days_ of programming. See if you can find someone who has it and try it out- you won't need a TV guide ever again.
3) DirecTivo is the best! Cable Tivos can't even tune two channels at once, and don't integrate with the cable set-top at all. DirecTV also offers their Tivos cheaply - you can get a complete multi-room system *with* installation and upgrade one room to Tivo for $99 bucks. Compare to $200+ for other Tivos. Also, probably since the program guide comes from DirecTV, the Tivo subscription is only $4.99, not the normal $12.99.
4) More channels, more flexible channel packages, actually cheaper than cable in every configuration as well. If you're a sports fan ( I'm not ), DirecTV is where it's at, you may never leave the house again.
5) Local channels are better quality. Maybe a small point, but someone who has cable recently pointed this out to me. I think it's because DirecTV charges $4.99 to give you locals and can sell them out-of-market ( I live in CA but could in theory get NY channels if I wanted to pay for them ). Cable _has_ to carry the locals by law and can't charge for them, so put the minimum of effort into doing so- they stick up an antenna wherever is convenient and give you that signal, which may well be worse than what you'd get on your own.
Seriously, if you find someone who has DirecTV, especialy with Tivo, spend 15 minutes or so having them demo it for you, compare it to someone else who has Comcast digital cable, and you'll understand why the vast majority of posts here are singing the praises of DirecTV. I hate them for their evil smartcard lawsuit ways, but they're easily the best pay TV service around, and I'd rather be their customer and send them letters telling them how bad a mistake their legal guys are making on that front than pay a cable company who's even worse to their customers. It's much like picking a political candidate to vote for... and DirecTV is clearly the lesser of the evils.
Almost forgot- this varies greatly by area of course, but Comcast only recently went digital in my area. On all fronts tech, HDTV rollout, everything, DirecTV has been way ahead of them. I'm sure there are more ways DirecTV is better than Comcast, and there _might_ be a better cable service than DirecTV, but I haven't heard of it.
What do you mean, "I don't believe in God"?
I talk to him every day.
What do you mean, "I don't support your system"?
I go to court when I have to.
What do you mean, "I can't get to work on time"?
I got nothing better to do
And, what do you mean, "I don't pay my bills"?
Why do you think I'm broke? Huh?
Chorus
If there's a new way,
I'll be the first in line.
But, it better work this time.
What do you mean, "I hurt your feelings"?
I didn't know you had any feelings.
What do you mean, "I ain't kind"?
I'm just not your kind.
What do you mean, "I couldn't be president, of the United States of America"?
Tell me something, it's still "We the people", right?
Chorus (repeat)
If there's a new way I'll be the first in line, But, it better work this time. Can you put a price on peace?
Peace,
Peace sells...,
Peace,
Peace sells...,
Peace sells...,but who's buying?
Peace sells...,but who's buying?
Peace sells...,but who's buying?
Peace sells...,but who's buying?
No, peace sells...
welcome our new robot overlords.
Well, not really, the thought of big-ass robot-controlled tanks give me the creeps, but I *definitely* want them to know I'm *not* a target, if that's at all possible.
welcome our new robot overlords. I can't believe I was the first one to say it. You guys are getting soft.
Believe me, environmentalists haven't missed the fact that NASA and the military are sending up buckets of plutonium strapped to rockets. It's just that they've tried and can't seem to do anything about it.
When I worked at the JPL, I personally stamped "declassified" on a huge stack of Environmental Impact Report documents ( boss' orders, of course ). Why they were ever considered classified I'll leave to your consideration, but they were. These were in preparation for the launch of the Galileo probe.
The short of it is that some dudes in New Mexico played with the RTG units and a rocket sled, then told the feds that these things "most likely" would not rain plutonium dust on Disney's theme parks in Florida, at least not dust small enough to get stuck in your lung and cause you serious health problems. In a technical safety-ratios sort of way. OK. It could happen. Not terribly likely. And the heat tiles on the shuttle are safe, too, won't break. And nobody is going to hijack a plane just to fly it into a building.
Yea. We should all trust guys who work at a nuclear test lab to provide unbiased data about plutonium containment saftey. Is your sarcasm detector working ?
I don't know if your *brain* is working if you're completely unconcerned about plutonium being strapped to giant rockets and blasted into the stratosphere, given the probability of a launch mishap. Of even more concern are low-earth-orbit military birds which are going to "safely" burn up in the atmosphere. Like meteors... oh... wait...
Don't get me wrong, I actually _want_ NASA to launch these things. I'm less excited about the larger, more likely to re-enter ones the military has/is/will be putting over *your* head...
Aw, c'mon, there just _has_ to be some Chinese text about astrology or gunpowder or something that predates this by centuries, don't you think?
Or are we looking only for a 'manual' that describes how to use a device, not a scientific document on how to make or measure something? How about some Mayan or Egyptian glyphs showing how to check the date of the equinox through the use of some pyramid or something like that ? They're harder to date but known to exist and be older than a paltry 613 years...
Let's call this the oldest known example of an old white English guy's tech manual, and leave it at that, huh ? I mean, I'm as euro-centric as the next guy, but 600 years is nothing in human history, there _must_ be something that qualifies as a tech manual that's older...
My answer is in this thread because it's essentially the same. Why on earth would I feel guilty?
I'll feel guilty when Linux has
1) a desktop UI as nice as OS X.
2) an easy-to-use set of applications which duplicates the functionality of the current iLife package ( music player, photo organizer/editor, DV editor, DVD authoring, music editing/recording )
3) has a simple point-and-click update utility
4) is supported by a wide range of software vendors
I realize that some parts of the above are in place for Linux already. I do expect that at some point in the next 10 years or so, I might install some version of Linux ( or some other GNU+kernel+packages thing, maybe the kernel will be Darwin ) on some machine or the other. But feel guilty for supporting the clear alternative to Micro$oft on the desktop? No way.
Just a small datapoint on the reliability of Apple hardware : I work at a company which uses ( almost ) exclusively Apple hardware, whose employees also buy a lot of Apple laptops, etc. Aside from some laptops needing repair after being mistreated ( which were under AppleCare and replaced with no questions ), nobody I know has *ever* had a hardware failure with Apple equipment. I know 4 people with PCs as their primary computer- one of the four has a machine that won't boot ( it's newish, it shipped with XP ).
My comments here are a little late in the game, but hopefully someone will find them interesting anyway :
9. Make it smaller if it gets in the way.
It's easy to make it smaller. I thought HCI guys liked big click targets, I'm confused by the complaint...
8. Minimized windows look different if they are, and things dragged from the Finder look like they do in the Finder.
Minimized windows DO show differences ( they're images of what the window looks like )- in this bullet point he's only refering to documents you place on the dock, which get the exact same icon they have in the finder... he wants that different why?? What would it be??
In general, this point seems a bit confused, and really, if you're keeping more than one or two documents of the same type in the dock, you're doing something a bit odd- you should use a folder in the Finder. Maybe your Documents folder, or a correctly named folder inside of Documents?? In the Finder, you can set your view preferences to show all of the file size and other info he's asking to see in the dock ( why there? What a mess that would be! ).
7. The dock has labels for items, you just have to move your mouse over them.
In many of these points, Tog wants something other than the Dock... and without realizing it, what he wants is the Finder! So use the Finder, Tog!! The dock has labels, just not all of the time. If you have similar items and don't want to give them different icons. I have 3 folders I wanted in my dock, so to tell them appart a bit easier, I gave them different icons... easy. Does "scrubing" for the titles really take that much time ?? Again, if you have a bunch of items of the same type and icon in the Dock, you probably really want to use the Finder instead.
6. Dock objects do not need color.
Again, Tog wants the Dock to be just like the Finder. It serves a completely different purpose. It's for Applications, minimized windows and frequently used folders, and *maybe* one or two current high-use documents. If you're storing lots of document links here, you maybe really want them on the Desktop or somewhere else in the actual Finder where you can look at all of the various attributes?? Maybe, just maybe, having the dock use the Finder color label in it's text is a good enough idea, but is it a big deal, or even necesarily a good idea? I don't actually think so.
5. The trash can is pretty close to the corner.
I mean, close enough, right? My Dock is usually full ( 9 oft-used apps and 5 oft-visited folders ), so the trash is actually always in the corner, right where he wants it. I know an office full of OS X users, none of whom complains that they can't find the trash or miss it. I'm not sure this is more than a pet peeve... Tog, did you decide to put the trash there? Besides, since you can't remove the trash can ( I'd like to, actually ) you always know where to look for it on any machine... it's at the end of the dock! If someone moved it under OS 9, do you know where to find it? No. So you could as easily argue that the Dock trash is *better* than the OS 9 trash using the same arguments. Sigh.
4. The dock's locations are entirely predictable. The applications and other icons that stay in the dock are always where you left them. Running apps and minimized windows are placed after the permanent set in the order they were placed. Sure it's dynamic... but if you start looking for documents from the left and apps from the right, you'll find what you're lookng for quickly, the dynamic nature of the dock is more useful than problematic.
3. This is the same as #9?? Pathetic.
2. Use ASM, if command-tab is too complicated for you or you just miss the Application Switcher Menu.
Oddly enough, he says as much. Not actually a complaint about the Dock, is this? Not in 10.3, anyway... as for the Tab-menu, that sucked even more than the dock, and even Tog says it sucked. Applications or folders placed in the dock do a better and more reliable job than the Tab menu...
How about checking the Apple website and searching for Tivo ?
Seriously, though... you're asking about TivoToGo? It sounds like some form of crippled Home Media Option to me... it might happen, but it's not going to be there right away. iTunes weak "DRM" aside, Tivo probably knows how anti-DRM the Apple folks are, anyway, and won't provide TivoToGo there until it's well-tested on the Windoze side...
Why not just network your Tivo, hack your way in, enable ftp, and grab the files off of it that way? When I have the time and *really* want to do it, that's what I'll do to my DirecTivo. It'll probably be in another year, after my warranty expires and I swap out the HD for a larger capacity one, then I'll use the fact that my Tivo is really a Linux computer in disguise.
Call your cable company. This is up to them. Tivo would do it in a heartbeat, but the cable company has a lock on what box you get, and aside from using an external Tivo2, which DOES work with most cable boxes, what you can get is determined exclusively by your cable company. They need to do a licensing and development deal with Tivo !
;-)
Wait just a minute. You call yourself a geek and you don't want to have one more box in your A/V cabinet, even if it's a PowerPC Linux machine? Get off SlashDot, Detritus, you clearly don't belong here !!
Yea, that's exactly the feature that Replay had their pants sued off for. Broadcasters also didnt' like the "30 second skip" feature, either, but it was really the file-sharing feature that got them in trouble. I'm getting good at timing the fast-forward on my Tivo, but a skip *exactly* the length of most commercials would be pretty nifty.
Clearly a lot of folks have already mentioned this, but...
1) there's a feature on the Tivo where you can tell it to "start early" when recording a particular show, you tell it how many minutes... it also lets you record past the scheduled end of a show, too.
2) dual-tuner Tivos work around the two-programs-one-right after-another problem, though you apparently don't get that option with Cable Tivo2 ( one word : DirecTV ).
3) how important is the first minute of most shows, anyway?
I'm not so sure they're trying to "defeat Tivo" as much as "make sure you tune in early for extra commercials and the end of that other show they really want you to watch". Or maybe even "didn't sell that other commercial slot"...
With the possible exception of providing internet or telephone service as well, aren't cable and satellite providers *already* just "simple provider(s) of digital feed" ? What else do they do ? What's the big difference between cable provider A and satellite provider B ?
Clearly, TimeWarnerAOLComcastATT *are* worried, and they should be. The smart folks are partnering ( or have already partnered ) with Tivo and Tivo wannabes ( M$, etc ) to churn out hardware and services that "compliment" the digital feeds and make them more useful. They're also looking for ways to leverage their digital feeds and customer relationships into other growth areas, like internet service and DVR.
I *love* my DirecTivo. All I need is to swap in a bigger hard drive... just as soon as my warranty exipres...
Thanks. That needed to be said.
My next vote will be for someone who will not have John Ashcroft defending American's civil liberties.
Jews who were hauled off to death camps in WWII trusted their government.
Remember that the goverment is made out of people, and they have their own interests at heart, not yours...
You're not a troll, you're just overly trusting to the point of stupidity. Now G.W. can know *for sure* who to call for donations...
What makes you think it runs on Linux? It runs OS X. The performance numbers were taken while the system was running OS X 10.2.
my Tivo has a menu item that says "Record to VCR".
:
It's true they haven't done this part
"Longer programs can be scaled to fit onto smaller video tapes by speeding up the play speed or dropping frames."
but they're updating the software all the time, and Tivo today does everything else listed.
The glitch was that it was showing up in Software Update even on machines which didn't have the developer tools installed.
For those machines, it would continue to show up even if the package was installed.
So there's a problem with the installer, not the code. I'm sure it'll be fixed soon if it isn't already fixed.
The only bad part of DirecTV is their smartcard litigation. Aside from that, DirecTV is easily the best pay TV service available in the US, and is about to get better for me when my DirecTivo is installed next week.
A word of warning- apparently DirecTV didn't realize how popular this promotion would be. I was on a waiting list for a couple of weeks before they called me back to let me know I could actually buy the thing.
DO NOT buy a DirecTivo at some retailer, at least not without checking out what is involved in installation, especially in multi-room setups ( you need a 'multiswitch', more lines of cable than you think, etc ). You'll get a better deal from DirecTV anyway, especiallly if you're a new customer.
There are also a couple of weird downsides to DirecTivo-
1) you can't buy the Tivo "Home Media Option", which 'lets' you stream tunes and slideshows from your computer to your Tivo
2) I don't know that you can get a lifetime subscription... but the monthly fee is less!
both of these 'downsides' are things which might change, and I can live with. Really, I just want Tivo so my wife can watch her "reality" shows _after_ dinner...
Rain Fade happens only during unbelievably severe downpours, which I've seen maybe twice in 3 years ( granted, the SF bay area doesn't see much heavy rain ).
Compared to how many times my neighbor's cable system has been out, the satellite signal is rock-solid. When the cable goes out, it's usually for a *lot* longer than the rain-fade.