One of the interesting hackable Linux-based products on the European market (available in America, too, but only as a sat receiver version) is the Dreambox family of digital set-top boxes and PVRs.
Dreamboxes are DVB set-top boxes that can, depending on the model,...
...receive over-the-air (DVB-T) terrestrial digital broadcasts (better known with the moniker "Freeview" in the UK)
...and record the MPEG-2 Transport Stream data either to an internal HDD, or to a network share (NFS, CIFS), without restrictions. The better models have two tuners, so you can record from two MUXes simultaneously. The firmware images are Linux-based and typically have a web interface, telnet server, ssh server, busybox shell, samba server, etc. There are various unofficial, enhanced firmware images for the various Dreambox models - with user-written plugins, etc. - and a thriving (if a bit too diverse and decentralized) user community.
The manufacturer (Dream Multimedia GmbH) is supportive of unofficial development. (Hackability is one of the main selling points of their whole set-top box product range.)
STBs usually put out a composite video signal, so the analogue TV you're converting had better have a composite input.
All DVB set-top boxes I have ever seen have put out a composite video signal and SCART RGB signal.
It is usually the SCART RGB signal that people are actually using even though they might not be aware of that. (The selection between the RGB signal and the composite signal, both of which are simultaneously available on the SCART connector, will usually happen automatically in favor of the RGB signal.)
The same principle also applies to European DVD players.
Of course, this means that vcr recorders need their own box, and programmatic recording is ruined.
VHS VCRs are being phased out anyway, due to the emergence of HDD-based video recorders with a built-in DVB tuner/decoder.
That being said, "programmatic recording" is not ruined. Most VCRs sold in Europe have long had an externally controlled recording capability. That is, the VCR can be directly controlled by the timer in the DVB set-top-box: the STB can instruct the VCR to start or stop recording via a Scart cable. Different VCR manufacturers have used different names for this capability - such as Sat Record, External Link, or Rec Link - but you can usually find it by reading the manual.
I'm pretty sure that digital (terrestrial) TV in the UK isn't HDTV. So even after analog is cut off, they STILL won't have HD. They might have widescreen, but it won't be HD.
Correct on all accounts. Digital television in Europe means "SDTV resolution, broadcast digitally" - not HDTV. The highest resolution you can currently get is 720×576 (which can be interpreted either as a 4:3 picture or as a 16:9 picture, depending on the aspect ratio flags broadcast within the video stream.) That's all that is broadcast today and, more importantly, all that the current DVB receivers on the market are capable of decoding.
Having the DVB infrastructure laid out all over the country means that it will become possible to start HDTV broadcasts at some later date in the future (without changing the actual broadcast technology but just the type of bitstream that is being broadcast), but if (when) that happens, the viewer will need a new set-top-box with a more powerful MPEG decoder and HD video outputs. Those with a DVB receiver card in their PCs should be fine, though.
As of now, there is only a single satellite channel in Europe that broadcasts in HD, and you will need to buy a special STB to watch their broadcasts. Their current broadcast format is MPEG-2, but they are going to switch to MPEG-4 later. It remains to be seen how HD will be broadcast in Europe in the future, but chances are that the format won't be MPEG-2 when HDTV actually starts gaining some foothold here.
Teletext works just fine with DVB [1]. The powers-that-be have decided that the UK people won't need Teletext on digital, but other DVB countries are free to make their own decisions. For example, in Finland, all main digital channels have a full Teletext service - just like their analogue counterparts.
The majority of people that will be upset by this are those with very old TVs, ones without a SCART socket on the back or black and white (That pay a 50% licence fee). They need a new TV to recieve Freeview, whereas anyone with a relatively new TV has no problem plugging in a box.
There are many DVB set-top boxes on the market with a built-in RF modulator. "Plugging in a box" to a TV set without a Scart socket (or even a black and white tv) shouldn't be a problem at all, if you just make sure that you will buy a box with an RF modulator.
I think you are mistaking any intention on my part to customize my personal copy with an intention to customize the public copy. There isn't a case of "really much you can do about it" because I didn't care to do anything about it in the first place. You are taking an off the cuff comment by me way more seriously than it warrants.
Just wanted to clear up that the terminology in the movie was not based on any arbitrary one-off random decision, but to keep continuity with the previous movies - that's all. No offense meant.
(The earlier episodes of Star Wreck are now temporarily offline, by the way, but will be re-released some time later. Or so it has been promised.)
I recognize that it is supposed to be like that because it is a joke- but it is really weak as a joke- it seemed more silly than funny. Changing the weapons to standard names would strengthen the piece for me and make the other humor stand out more.
The weird technical terminology in SW:ITP (such as "hand twinkler") has been consistently used in the previous Star Wreck movies, as well. They names are equally silly in the original Finnish dialog. There isn't really much you can do about it any longer, as those terms have become an integral part of the Star Wreck series.
That being said, if you have already seen the movie in its entirety, and don't fear of being spoiled any more, you might want to take a look at the annotated English translation which gives some backround to of many of the more peculiar word choices and figures of speech in the English subtitles.
Anyone considering fansubbing or fandubbing In the Pirkinning should study that document very carefully in order not to miss the many in-jokes and subleties in the original script.
Moreover, it would be highly advisable to contact the authors before conceiving translation projects of any kind so that things can be kept well-coordinated and technically sound, and you don't end up needlessly duplicating projects that others have already started working on.
To get in touch with the authors, try dropping a message on the Star Wreck Forum, or simply emailing them.
All I read looks like pure Star Trek spoofage, except it the Slashdot article. Tell me I'm not downloading this for nothing...
Not to worry. You could almost say there's more B5 spoofage in this movie than any Trek-related stuff. (The previous installments of the Star Wreck series have been pure Trek spoofage, though.)
I don't understand why people want a browser that has a POP and NEWS client built in? If I want to use POP I use my POP client (not outhouse). If I want to use NNTP I use a NEWS client.
E-mail and news (and offline dial-up BBS messaging of the old days) are all sides of the same coin, communication-wise:
You have paragraphs of text.
You have quoting.
You have signatures.
You need to have a message editor.
You usually have a need to archive important messages into folders of your own choosing.
Most often you would like to keep a record of what you have yourself written.
You need some search facilities.
There must be a way to see a list of new messages, and an option to thread them into coherent discussions.
A well-written news message is the same as a well-written e-mail message. The line between the two further blurs when you subscribe to mailing lists. Why use (and learn) two different interfaces and programs for handling what is essentially the same form of communication?
Unless you want to route using a single network adapter only (the built-in 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port) you will need to get one or more additional USB ethernet adapters.
Note that the Xbox USB connectors adhere to the USB v1.1 standard - in other words, their throughput is limited to 12 Mbps. The built-in Ethernet port can naturally go faster.
Since when is Ethernet and a modchip included in the $200 XBox bundle?
Since day one? Xbox comes standard with a 10/100BaseT(X) network port. It is not an add-on. As for "mod chips", they are really just regular Flash ROM chips soldered with wires on the motherboard. If you want to do it really cheap, you can buy an empty 256K flash from any good electronics store and flash it yourself on the motherboard of your PC.
Theoretically, it is even possible to re-flash the flash rom on the motherboard, without having to buy a chip at all, but this is a Catch-22 situation as you cannot run unsigned code (such as a self-made flash programmer) without having some "mod chip" already installed.
Besides that, you need to pay more to get an XBox remote (to play DVDs)
A separate remote is no longer needed to play DVDs after modding. Sure, you can still buy and use one, but it is possible to use the controller instead.
more for the adapter to get more than stereo (ie. Dolby Surroud-Sound), etc.
This is correct. However, the digital sound output is just a TTL-level S/PDIF pin on the AV connector - just like on some SoundBlasters. You could solder your own Toslink/Coax adapter if you'd like to get digital audio without buying the official cable. There are plenty of guides for that on the web.
Imagine if this could be made to work on an MS Xbox? It would transform that clunky Halo-player into a practical work computer - or even an affordable clustering machine.
There already is an open BIOS project for XBox. See this message from the xbox-linux developer mailing list.
I use Allaire Homesite on Windows 2000. It has a preview area that uses IE. It would be possible to make Windows 2000 without IE, but applications expect that service to be provided.
If applications desperately need a HTML rendering engine to be present in the system, Microsoft's HTML engine could be made a replacable plug-in module with a clearly defined API. Then you could uninstall it, and slip in a replacement engine (such as Gecko).
There is no technical or practical need to mix a HTML rendering engine with a file management user interface or with a component that provides the desktop environment.
if you did get your hands on the code, what would you do with it?
Take all the marketing cruft out of it.
Provide a distribution with a clean installer, making all the components user-selectable.
Active Desktop, Web Integration and All The Wizards Must Go
Mouse pointer shall not have a distracting shadow.
We do not need a bouncing "Click here to begin", either.
Fix the default settings for Outlook Express. Remove the ability to run scripts and post in HTML, and make it GNKSA compliant.
Re:Picture of bills with US bill
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
>> why didn't they do the 2 side thing for
>> the bills like they did for the coins?
> Well, perhaps they were afraid that the French
> would put nudie pictures and such on their bills,
> raising the ire (amongst other things) of more
> staid nations.
Not completely unimaginable. For example, the old Finnish markka bank notes from 1922 had some naked people pictured on them.
Isn't it just simpler to include the tax in the retail price? Thats what a majority of societies do. And the receipt will show a break down of article cost/tax.
You don't live in the US, do you? I agree it's dumb, but stores like to be able to show how "low" their prices are.
I don't live in the US, either, and was quite shocked to find out that the price tags on the products and the actual price didn't match. Adding this kind of unnecessary confusion doesn't benefit the consumer much, now does it?
The other odd practice was the tipping in the restaurants. OK, you might say that it's good because you can refuse to pay tips if you get bad service, but then why doesn't this practice apply to all occupations?
Plenty of people are complaining about people distributing this kind of stuff via email. I agree, it sucks. but what is a better grassroots, universally accessible kind of way to share?
Defining a way to send the e-mail attachments as pure 8-bit data (instead of fluffy encoded garbage that inflates the data size by one third for nothing) would be a good start...
Web has the problem that 1) not everyone has/can use a web page and 2) servers get overloaded (like when they get/.ed).
As if the overloading problem wouldn't be bigger with large e-mail attachments...
if youdve told me that kids would be using a CAD program to play with LEGOs a decade ago, I would have called you nuts.
Not only that, but did you ever imagine seeing a neat software product box with both Autodesk and LEGO logos printed on it?:-o This is kind of surreal...
Why is [forcing schoolchildren to wear uniforms] necessarily bad? And why is it acceptable when grownups in the army/navy wear uniforms? Is that suppression as well?
I think it largely is. Uniforms serve at least three purposes in the army:
They very much underline the hierachical command structure. When people are wearing uniforms and marks of the rank, it is very easy to spot those who have the right to give orders to others and those who do not.
Uniforms (just like the standard phrases for addressing superior officers and giving out orders to men) somewhat conceal/diminish your personality and, in effect, make you expendable. If necessary, anyone with a similar uniform (and ranking) can be ordered to take your place and carry on, just like you never were there in the first place.
While at barracks, it is easy to arrange a centralized washing services, as the laundry does not have to be returned to the exact person that brought it in for washing.
Uniforms are very much a command structure related thing. Are the teachers/professors your mentors and friends and guides to learning, or the ones shouting out orders down to the masses of uniformed non-individuals?
Totalitarian societies favor uniforms and army-like command structures (even in non-militaristic organisations) because they give an easy access to rank, classify and control people.
How does the author of this AP news story find out about Peg Graham? Also, her problem is entirely unrelated to the issues of AOL taking over the Internet duties for the entire computer. [...] Obviously, if she reinstalled the operating system three times, and was still unable to fix the problem, there was something else going on.
Or then again, maybe not.
"Reinstalling" can mean two things in the Windows world. Either you start from scratch; boot the computer from an MS-DOS boot disk, format C: wiping it out completely etc. blah blah, or then you just might install Windows over itself again (which really isn't a complete reinstall in the sense we understand it as it preserves most of the old registry settings and almost all of the installed 3rd party software.)
It would seem likely that P. Graham was just performing the latter procedure (and didn't have the technical knowledge and competence to even try the former option.)
Features I would like to see: Photo CD support. (Well, it will display an image associated with any given MP3 file, so you could use it as a slide show that way.)
You can easily do slide shows by using the still image feature found in VideoCD 2.0 (White Book) specs. The images can be 352x288 or 702x576 on a PAL system and 352x240 or 702x480 on an NTSC system. Simply use a decent VCD authoring software, like Cequadrat's VideoPack.
in one of his movies (From Russia with Love i think), he is listed as Q (Major Boothroyd). I've never heard this name - maybe it was mentioned once then dropped. Anyway, a little trivia for you...
Maybe my memory doesn't serve me right, but wasn't Q a female character in the original Ian Fleming books? (Or was it only after some other author - John Gardner or what was his name - took over writing the Bond book series?)
Slashdot Mirror
One of the interesting hackable Linux-based products on the European market (available in America, too, but only as a sat receiver version) is the Dreambox family of digital set-top boxes and PVRs.
Dreamboxes are DVB set-top boxes that can, depending on the model, ...
...and record the MPEG-2 Transport Stream data either to an internal HDD, or to a network share (NFS, CIFS), without restrictions. The better models have two tuners, so you can record from two MUXes simultaneously. The firmware images are Linux-based and typically have a web interface, telnet server, ssh server, busybox shell, samba server, etc. There are various unofficial, enhanced firmware images for the various Dreambox models - with user-written plugins, etc. - and a thriving (if a bit too diverse and decentralized) user community.
The manufacturer (Dream Multimedia GmbH) is supportive of unofficial development. (Hackability is one of the main selling points of their whole set-top box product range.)
All DVB set-top boxes I have ever seen have put out a composite video signal and SCART RGB signal.
It is usually the SCART RGB signal that people are actually using even though they might not be aware of that. (The selection between the RGB signal and the composite signal, both of which are simultaneously available on the SCART connector, will usually happen automatically in favor of the RGB signal.)
The same principle also applies to European DVD players.
VHS VCRs are being phased out anyway, due to the emergence of HDD-based video recorders with a built-in DVB tuner/decoder.
That being said, "programmatic recording" is not ruined. Most VCRs sold in Europe have long had an externally controlled recording capability. That is, the VCR can be directly controlled by the timer in the DVB set-top-box: the STB can instruct the VCR to start or stop recording via a Scart cable. Different VCR manufacturers have used different names for this capability - such as Sat Record, External Link, or Rec Link - but you can usually find it by reading the manual.
Correct on all accounts. Digital television in Europe means "SDTV resolution, broadcast digitally" - not HDTV. The highest resolution you can currently get is 720×576 (which can be interpreted either as a 4:3 picture or as a 16:9 picture, depending on the aspect ratio flags broadcast within the video stream.) That's all that is broadcast today and, more importantly, all that the current DVB receivers on the market are capable of decoding.
Having the DVB infrastructure laid out all over the country means that it will become possible to start HDTV broadcasts at some later date in the future (without changing the actual broadcast technology but just the type of bitstream that is being broadcast), but if (when) that happens, the viewer will need a new set-top-box with a more powerful MPEG decoder and HD video outputs. Those with a DVB receiver card in their PCs should be fine, though.
As of now, there is only a single satellite channel in Europe that broadcasts in HD, and you will need to buy a special STB to watch their broadcasts. Their current broadcast format is MPEG-2, but they are going to switch to MPEG-4 later. It remains to be seen how HD will be broadcast in Europe in the future, but chances are that the format won't be MPEG-2 when HDTV actually starts gaining some foothold here.
Teletext works just fine with DVB [1]. The powers-that-be have decided that the UK people won't need Teletext on digital, but other DVB countries are free to make their own decisions. For example, in Finland, all main digital channels have a full Teletext service - just like their analogue counterparts.
_____
[1] See ETSI EN 300 472: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Specification for conveying ITU-R System B Teletext in DVB bitstreams .
There are many DVB set-top boxes on the market with a built-in RF modulator. "Plugging in a box" to a TV set without a Scart socket (or even a black and white tv) shouldn't be a problem at all, if you just make sure that you will buy a box with an RF modulator.
Just wanted to clear up that the terminology in the movie was not based on any arbitrary one-off random decision, but to keep continuity with the previous movies - that's all. No offense meant.
(The earlier episodes of Star Wreck are now temporarily offline, by the way, but will be re-released some time later. Or so it has been promised.)
The weird technical terminology in SW:ITP (such as "hand twinkler") has been consistently used in the previous Star Wreck movies, as well. They names are equally silly in the original Finnish dialog. There isn't really much you can do about it any longer, as those terms have become an integral part of the Star Wreck series.
That being said, if you have already seen the movie in its entirety, and don't fear of being spoiled any more, you might want to take a look at the annotated English translation which gives some backround to of many of the more peculiar word choices and figures of speech in the English subtitles.
Anyone considering fansubbing or fandubbing In the Pirkinning should study that document very carefully in order not to miss the many in-jokes and subleties in the original script.
Moreover, it would be highly advisable to contact the authors before conceiving translation projects of any kind so that things can be kept well-coordinated and technically sound, and you don't end up needlessly duplicating projects that others have already started working on.
To get in touch with the authors, try dropping a message on the Star Wreck Forum, or simply emailing them.
Not to worry. You could almost say there's more B5 spoofage in this movie than any Trek-related stuff. (The previous installments of the Star Wreck series have been pure Trek spoofage, though.)
E-mail and news (and offline dial-up BBS messaging of the old days) are all sides of the same coin, communication-wise:
A well-written news message is the same as a well-written e-mail message. The line between the two further blurs when you subscribe to mailing lists. Why use (and learn) two different interfaces and programs for handling what is essentially the same form of communication?
-- znarkJust get an Xbox Linux distribution of your choice from the Xbox Linux website and use the standard Linux tools.
Unless you want to route using a single network adapter only (the built-in 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port) you will need to get one or more additional USB ethernet adapters.
Note that the Xbox USB connectors adhere to the USB v1.1 standard - in other words, their throughput is limited to 12 Mbps. The built-in Ethernet port can naturally go faster.
Since day one? Xbox comes standard with a 10/100BaseT(X) network port. It is not an add-on. As for "mod chips", they are really just regular Flash ROM chips soldered with wires on the motherboard. If you want to do it really cheap, you can buy an empty 256K flash from any good electronics store and flash it yourself on the motherboard of your PC.
Theoretically, it is even possible to re-flash the flash rom on the motherboard, without having to buy a chip at all, but this is a Catch-22 situation as you cannot run unsigned code (such as a self-made flash programmer) without having some "mod chip" already installed.
A separate remote is no longer needed to play DVDs after modding. Sure, you can still buy and use one, but it is possible to use the controller instead.
This is correct. However, the digital sound output is just a TTL-level S/PDIF pin on the AV connector - just like on some SoundBlasters. You could solder your own Toslink/Coax adapter if you'd like to get digital audio without buying the official cable. There are plenty of guides for that on the web.
There already is an open BIOS project for XBox. See this message from the xbox-linux developer mailing list.
If applications desperately need a HTML rendering engine to be present in the system, Microsoft's HTML engine could be made a replacable plug-in module with a clearly defined API. Then you could uninstall it, and slip in a replacement engine (such as Gecko).
There is no technical or practical need to mix a HTML rendering engine with a file management user interface or with a component that provides the desktop environment.
>> why didn't they do the 2 side thing for
>> the bills like they did for the coins?
> Well, perhaps they were afraid that the French
> would put nudie pictures and such on their bills,
> raising the ire (amongst other things) of more
> staid nations.
Not completely unimaginable. For example, the old Finnish markka bank notes from 1922 had some naked people pictured on them.
Here you can find almost the same thing looked from another angle: Amiga Report Top 100 Games Of All Time .
I don't live in the US, either, and was quite shocked to find out that the price tags on the products and the actual price didn't match. Adding this kind of unnecessary confusion doesn't benefit the consumer much, now does it?
The other odd practice was the tipping in the restaurants. OK, you might say that it's good because you can refuse to pay tips if you get bad service, but then why doesn't this practice apply to all occupations?
Defining a way to send the e-mail attachments as pure 8-bit data (instead of fluffy encoded garbage that inflates the data size by one third for nothing) would be a good start...
As if the overloading problem wouldn't be bigger with large e-mail attachments...
--znarkNot only that, but did you ever imagine seeing a neat software product box with both Autodesk and LEGO logos printed on it? :-o This is kind of surreal...
I think it largely is. Uniforms serve at least three purposes in the army:
Uniforms are very much a command structure related thing. Are the teachers/professors your mentors and friends and guides to learning, or the ones shouting out orders down to the masses of uniformed non-individuals?
Totalitarian societies favor uniforms and army-like command structures (even in non-militaristic organisations) because they give an easy access to rank, classify and control people.
Or then again, maybe not.
"Reinstalling" can mean two things in the Windows world. Either you start from scratch; boot the computer from an MS-DOS boot disk, format C: wiping it out completely etc. blah blah, or then you just might install Windows over itself again (which really isn't a complete reinstall in the sense we understand it as it preserves most of the old registry settings and almost all of the installed 3rd party software.)
It would seem likely that P. Graham was just performing the latter procedure (and didn't have the technical knowledge and competence to even try the former option.)
You can easily do slide shows by using the still image feature found in VideoCD 2.0 (White Book) specs. The images can be 352x288 or 702x576 on a PAL system and 352x240 or 702x480 on an NTSC system. Simply use a decent VCD authoring software, like Cequadrat's VideoPack.
Maybe my memory doesn't serve me right, but wasn't Q a female character in the original Ian Fleming books? (Or was it only after some other author - John Gardner or what was his name - took over writing the Bond book series?)
This is not true. See this article for further information.