They used to work, now they don't so much. A couple of years ago the load article keyboard shortcut went missing. This means I can look up and down the page of articles (j/k etc.), but never load the article, or RTFA without moving to a mouse (or using a browser plugin that allows me to do this).
Pressing Tab should visually highlight the current element (it doesn't)
Broken keyboard interation changed my interaction with the site from daily use (almost every single day since launch) to once every few days.
As an IT Administrator, your users are going to be increasingly using such things as Facebook, Myspace, Gmail, Linked-In etc. Can you afford to be left behind and not know what is going on in your environments? You'd be stupid to think you could.
(originally published in Nature Magazine, January 2006)
Cory Doctorow
The coppers smashed my father's printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da's look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.
The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of Da's customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade pharmaceuticals -- performance enhancers, memory supplements, metabolic boosters. The kind of things that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of things you could print at home, if you didn't mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.
They destroyed grandma's trunk, the one she'd brought from the old country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of printer-wire.
Da. What they did to him. When he was done, he looked like he'd been brawling with an entire rugby side. They brought him out the door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car. All the while a spokesman told the world that my Da's organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least 20 million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted arrest.
I saw it all from my phone, in the remains of the sitting room, watching it on the screen and wondering how, just how anyone could look at our little flat and our terrible, manky estate and mistake it for the home of an organized crime kingpin. They took the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. Its little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly empty. When I roused myself and picked up the flat and rescued my poor peeping tweetybird, I put a blender there. It was made out of printed parts, so it would only last a month before I'd need to print new bearings and other moving parts. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.
By the time I turned 18, they were ready to let Da out of prison. I'd visited him three times -- on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died. It had been two years since I'd last seen him and he was in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.
"Lanie," he said, as he sat me down. "You're a smart girl, I know that. You wouldn't know where your old Da could get a printer and some goop?"
I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my palms. I closed my eyes. "You've been in prison for ten years, Da. Ten. Years. You're going to risk another ten years to print out more blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?"
He grinned. "I'm not stupid, Lanie. I've learned my lesson. There's no hat or laptop that's worth going to jail for. I'm not going to print none of that rubbish, never again." He had a cup of tea, and he drank it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied exhalation. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
"Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here and listen to your stupid Da."
I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker, that much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison. "What, Da?" I said, leaning in close.
"Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone
Let's face it, there is a large amount of pirated music available on the various p2p networks. Regardless of whether the copyright owner would have sold a copy of the track to the consumer had it not been for p2p, the fact remains that by downloading the track and listening to it the owner has provided the consumer entertainment that the owner offered for a cost elsewhere. If the levy could be offered and hooks to the p2p networks added such that it could track which produces should get what proportion of the pie, wouldn't that make more sense than constant RIAA court cases. I'd love to see a defense against one of these suits someday along the lines of I've paid my license fee and that covers the download that I'm being sued for. For this sort of thing to really work though, the cost would have to be much less than the 99c per track (iTunes model) due to the fact that most people will download songs never to listen to them, broken downloads, quality issues of p2p downloaded tracks etc.
To the grammar Nazis, the above was stream of consciousness, don't bitch too much.
It seems that if there is such a close race that there is only 10 votes in it, then it's not really democracy that's deciding the winner of this. Instead it comes down to combinations of random events. How many car accidents statewide were there on the day of the ballot... How many people couldn't get to the polling booths due to bad health etc. Why not just flip a coin to decide who gets in, it would probably have just as much meaning.
I worked as a shiftworker for the last 11 months. These were 12 hour shifts, 7am-7pm or 7pm-7am, 2 days followed by two nights followed by 4 days off. To work my sleep best I'd sleep 7 times every 8 days or effectively increase my days by about 3.5 hours per day. I got out of that job recently but have found that my circadian rhythm hasn't returned to normal yet (It's 3am here atm)
Has anyone looked at the EULA / licence on those samples yet? What prevents someone from just re-releasing the samples to the public for very little (cost of several DVDs).
I've been looking at these for a couple of weeks, and I reckon it's the best idea. Reads pretty much all various media formats, writes to whatever size hdd you put in it. Grab a small CF / mmc / whatever and xfer all the photos to this once you've filled it and you're cheering. The only hassle that the original poster may have is the usb, though there's gotta be some net cafes round the place that have USB...
Unlimited internal storage capacity The X'S-Drive II works with 2.5 inches Hard Drives of any capacity. You can purchase the X'S-Drive II with a pre-installed Hard Drive or install your own (provided it's 9.5mm).
Compact & light device It weights only 300g with the built-in Hard drive and is easy to carry (13 x 7.5 x 2.5 cm). The X'S-Drive II is provided with a free Carry Bag that you can also use to carry your memory cards.
Compatible with all the Memory Cards - No Adapter required (apart from xD which require a CF adapter) The X'S-Drive works with all current memory cards used with digital cameras: Compactflash, IBM Microdrive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick (Sony & LexarMedia), Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital, and MultiMediaCard.
Fast transfer speeds The file transfer from a memory card to the X'S-Drive is performed quickly by the X'S-Drive (i.e. a full CompactFlash 128MB is transferred to the HDD in 2:15 minutes). The file transfer to and from your computer are done via the fast USB 2.0 interface connection.
LCD Panel LCD Panel to display the working status (no picture preview).
1. File transfer status
2. Amount of battery power left
3. Main storage out of memory indicator
Rechargeable Battery The Xâ(TM)S-Drive II has a built-in rechargeable Lithium-ion battery which allows 1.6 hours of usage on full charge.
Warranty The Xâ(TM)S-Drive II is guaranteed against manufacturer's defects for 1 year.
If everyone uses the printable version, it would probably reduce the bandwith on the site as it doesn't contain the comments on the artice (of which makes up around 80% of the page)/articles/art0553.html?printable=1 . I managed to get the article on the first try and friends managed to on the second or third but very slowly, so keep trying (/ hammering the server:)
Re:Ganglion cysts are basically harmless
on
Mouse Not Required?
·
· Score: 1
Heh, I was going to post the same thing, had them for several years, and I'm not willing to trade in the occasional pain of them in winter for the problems that may be worse from doing the family bible / small coin trick. When you work in IT, your hands are one of you greatest assests, without mine, I would find a way, but it would be so much tougher. I had to quit a trolley pushing job a long time ago due to gangelions, and they always seem to flare up around exams / times when I have a million assignments.:(
Human ears on mice Pig's heart on sheep What's next? In latest news scientists have announced that they have engineered a monkey with a duck's bill, a cat's whiskers, a pig's tail and a elephant's ears. Dunno what use it will be for the monkey in question, but anything in the aid of science / boffinism.
Nope, the master key in this situation is the minimal set of keys that it takes to get into the place where the whole ring is stored. If this is in a key cabinet in the janitor's office, the "master key" for this system is the janitor's office key and a key that opens the key cabinet. I'd include the concept of wilfully breaking into the office as part of the key too.
The csiro page has a note saying to please leave it alone, as it is being used by emergency services to monitor the fire zones, so please don't click on the "Map [csiro.au]" link, as we don't want to slashdot a valuable resource like this.
Pfft, given that he's hardly in canberra anyway, and more often in sydney where he *lives*, I think South would be the general direction that he would be looking were he to bother to make more than a token effort to visit what should be his home town./rant:)
people can and *do* remember long strings of numbers all the time, 12 digits is less than two phone numbers. I know of a few poeple that can actually read barcodes from a few metres away, because they had a system in their school that granted access and marked attendance based on barcodes. I personally wouldn't trust this sort of security more than a physical key, though perhaps it would be ok if coupled with a standard key for access.
If the court decides that domains aren't property, then every registrar out there can be done for false advertising, as they are stating that you are buying property, then everyone that has a domain registered can claim that they did not get what was advertised. Sounds like a nice big class action suit.
If on the other hand the court decides that the domains are property, then we get into an interesting grey area of trespass etc.
IANAL, but I would guess that the reason the court was asked to sort out this distinction is that the original owner needs to be able to work out whether they are arguing about theft of property by deception, or something else if it is a service. It's like the distinction if someone steals your cable box vs someone hooks into your service.
I read a better article quite some time ago by Tim Berners Lee, entitled Cool URIs don't change, in which he discusses the designing urls properly ie. what to leave out of a url (things like.cgi, cgiexec, access details - members / non...). The things he suggests are easily implementable in.htaccess for apache using mod_rewrite for php / cgi things.
oooh those really hard command line commands are really really hard.
If you have abcde installed (on debian at least) it defaults to using ogg as the media type. The command to run it is not quite as simple as abc, but is exactly 'abcde'. just change to the dir that you want the rip to end up in and run one command and it cddb's, rips, encodes, tags and cleans up after itself.
I'm all for making things easier for the user, but we should be looking at things that are really hard to do on the command line, or things that have awful command options.
... of this story is that there are so many posts along thw lines of the kids of today... when you sitback and realize the forum you have chosen to put your point across is slashdot, not exactly know for it's great adherance to everyday grammer.
A friend of mine does similar though he uses RCS instead. I'm not all that familiar with RCS, but I'm sure there is porbably some reason why he uses it over CVS.
I was over at the ANU the other day visiting the research school of physics (not sure if that's its exact name, but close enough). Because they do a lot of stuff to do with plasma and small fusion experiments, they also generate knowledge of antenna and use of radio waves, as this is something that the stability of the plasma research relies on. So as a side project they have some interesting research going on somewhere near Cowra IIRC where they transmit a network on the unused VHF TV bands (generally channel 0-2, whatever ABC isn't using). Now this gets over the line of site issue that microwave towers have, as well as the telstra quality of telephone line issues. So the updhot is that there are people actively looking at various ways around the massively disconnected geographical areas.
I'm a fellow resident of Canberra, where Tridge (Andrew Tridgell) happens to reside when he is not jetsetting around the world with Quantum. At the last meeting of CLUG (Canberra Linux Users Group) someone brought along a UK Tivo to have a play around with. The hacking process was relatively simple and involved no breaking of the seal of the box. Basically you need a custom cable (9 pin serial to 3 pin standard stereo audio jack), and to hit enter a few times within 1 second of bootup. Then you pretty much follow a few of the instructions that can be found somewhere on samba.org (another post mentioned exactly where), and you reboot and get a linux shell. Tridge has reverse engineered the Tivo guide format and has scripts to convert on of the online tv-guides for aussie tv to Tivo format, but does not wish these scripts to be released in the public domain as it would most probably impact the subscription model in the states, leading to possible legal hassles for Tridge. In thory you could use this link to update the Tivo guide data every couple of days, but the even cooler method is to install a network card onto the box. Apparently all new Tivo's come with Tridge's drivers for the custom bus bridge so you should be able to just plug it in and start playing with it on the network. UK models have one other niggle, 5.5MHz vs 6MHz spread between voice and data, but as far as I remember this was changeable in the debug menus that first come up when you boot the Tivo. Moving away from Tivo, I do recall seeing ads for a PVR made by LG Electronics on TV recently, though I've not used or seen them, but they sound like a more consumer orientated solution, if nowhere as powerful as a Tivo. Anyway, it's probaly worth checking out samba.org and maybe clug.org.au (I think this site is currently being redev'd, but I can't remember the link for the propsed new site which might have more details about Tivo stuff, there should be a link in the mailing list archives though).
Slashdot Mirror
They used to work, now they don't so much. A couple of years ago the load article keyboard shortcut went missing. This means I can look up and down the page of articles (j/k etc.), but never load the article, or RTFA without moving to a mouse (or using a browser plugin that allows me to do this).
Pressing Tab should visually highlight the current element (it doesn't)
Broken keyboard interation changed my interaction with the site from daily use (almost every single day since launch) to once every few days.
As an IT Administrator, your users are going to be increasingly using such things as Facebook, Myspace, Gmail, Linked-In etc. Can you afford to be left behind and not know what is going on in your environments? You'd be stupid to think you could.
Select All, Drag to a folder in explorer. folder now contains a bunch of msg files that can be read by outlook.
Printcrime
Copy this story.
(originally published in Nature Magazine, January 2006)
Cory Doctorow
The coppers smashed my father's printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da's look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.
The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of Da's customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade pharmaceuticals -- performance enhancers, memory supplements, metabolic boosters. The kind of things that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of things you could print at home, if you didn't mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.
They destroyed grandma's trunk, the one she'd brought from the old country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of printer-wire.
Da. What they did to him. When he was done, he looked like he'd been brawling with an entire rugby side. They brought him out the door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car. All the while a spokesman told the world that my Da's organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least 20 million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted arrest.
I saw it all from my phone, in the remains of the sitting room, watching it on the screen and wondering how, just how anyone could look at our little flat and our terrible, manky estate and mistake it for the home of an organized crime kingpin. They took the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. Its little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly empty. When I roused myself and picked up the flat and rescued my poor peeping tweetybird, I put a blender there. It was made out of printed parts, so it would only last a month before I'd need to print new bearings and other moving parts. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.
By the time I turned 18, they were ready to let Da out of prison. I'd visited him three times -- on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died. It had been two years since I'd last seen him and he was in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.
"Lanie," he said, as he sat me down. "You're a smart girl, I know that. You wouldn't know where your old Da could get a printer and some goop?"
I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my palms. I closed my eyes. "You've been in prison for ten years, Da. Ten. Years. You're going to risk another ten years to print out more blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?"
He grinned. "I'm not stupid, Lanie. I've learned my lesson. There's no hat or laptop that's worth going to jail for. I'm not going to print none of that rubbish, never again." He had a cup of tea, and he drank it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied exhalation. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
"Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here and listen to your stupid Da."
I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker, that much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison. "What, Da?" I said, leaning in close.
"Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone
I agree, this exact method worked for me also. Just wait it out. I had to wait an entire year, but once I got it back twas all good.
Let's face it, there is a large amount of pirated music available on the various p2p networks. Regardless of whether the copyright owner would have sold a copy of the track to the consumer had it not been for p2p, the fact remains that by downloading the track and listening to it the owner has provided the consumer entertainment that the owner offered for a cost elsewhere. If the levy could be offered and hooks to the p2p networks added such that it could track which produces should get what proportion of the pie, wouldn't that make more sense than constant RIAA court cases. I'd love to see a defense against one of these suits someday along the lines of I've paid my license fee and that covers the download that I'm being sued for. For this sort of thing to really work though, the cost would have to be much less than the 99c per track (iTunes model) due to the fact that most people will download songs never to listen to them, broken downloads, quality issues of p2p downloaded tracks etc.
To the grammar Nazis, the above was stream of consciousness, don't bitch too much.
It seems that if there is such a close race that there is only 10 votes in it, then it's not really democracy that's deciding the winner of this. Instead it comes down to combinations of random events. How many car accidents statewide were there on the day of the ballot... How many people couldn't get to the polling booths due to bad health etc. Why not just flip a coin to decide who gets in, it would probably have just as much meaning.
I worked as a shiftworker for the last 11 months. These were 12 hour shifts, 7am-7pm or 7pm-7am, 2 days followed by two nights followed by 4 days off. To work my sleep best I'd sleep 7 times every 8 days or effectively increase my days by about 3.5 hours per day. I got out of that job recently but have found that my circadian rhythm hasn't returned to normal yet (It's 3am here atm)
Has anyone looked at the EULA / licence on those samples yet? What prevents someone from just re-releasing the samples to the public for very little (cost of several DVDs).
I've been looking at these for a couple of weeks, and I reckon it's the best idea. Reads pretty much all various media formats, writes to whatever size hdd you put in it. Grab a small CF / mmc / whatever and xfer all the photos to this once you've filled it and you're cheering. The only hassle that the original poster may have is the usb, though there's gotta be some net cafes round the place that have USB...
The website for it is here:
http://www.xs-drive.com/xsdrive2/
copy/paste from the site:
X'S-DRIVE II FEATURES
Unlimited internal storage capacity
The X'S-Drive II works with 2.5 inches Hard Drives of any capacity. You can purchase the X'S-Drive II with a pre-installed Hard Drive or install your own (provided it's 9.5mm).
Compact & light device
It weights only 300g with the built-in Hard drive and is easy to carry (13 x 7.5 x 2.5 cm).
The X'S-Drive II is provided with a free Carry Bag that you can also use to carry your memory cards.
Compatible with all the Memory Cards - No Adapter required (apart from xD which require a CF adapter)
The X'S-Drive works with all current memory cards used with digital cameras: Compactflash, IBM Microdrive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick (Sony & LexarMedia), Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital, and MultiMediaCard.
Fast transfer speeds
The file transfer from a memory card to the X'S-Drive is performed quickly by the X'S-Drive (i.e. a full CompactFlash 128MB is transferred to the HDD in 2:15 minutes).
The file transfer to and from your computer are done via the fast USB 2.0 interface connection.
LCD Panel
LCD Panel to display the working status (no picture preview).
1. File transfer status
2. Amount of battery power left
3. Main storage out of memory indicator
Rechargeable Battery
The Xâ(TM)S-Drive II has a built-in rechargeable Lithium-ion battery which allows 1.6 hours of usage on full charge.
Warranty
The Xâ(TM)S-Drive II is guaranteed against manufacturer's defects for 1 year.
If everyone uses the printable version, it would probably reduce the bandwith on the site as it doesn't contain the comments on the artice (of which makes up around 80% of the page) /articles/art0553.html?printable=1 . I managed to get the article on the first try and friends managed to on the second or third but very slowly, so keep trying (/ hammering the server :)
Heh, I was going to post the same thing, had them for several years, and I'm not willing to trade in the occasional pain of them in winter for the problems that may be worse from doing the family bible / small coin trick. When you work in IT, your hands are one of you greatest assests, without mine, I would find a way, but it would be so much tougher. I had to quit a trolley pushing job a long time ago due to gangelions, and they always seem to flare up around exams / times when I have a million assignments. :(
Human ears on mice
Pig's heart on sheep
What's next?
In latest news scientists have announced that they have engineered a monkey with a duck's bill, a cat's whiskers, a pig's tail and a elephant's ears. Dunno what use it will be for the monkey in question, but anything in the aid of science / boffinism.
Nope, the master key in this situation is the minimal set of keys that it takes to get into the place where the whole ring is stored. If this is in a key cabinet in the janitor's office, the "master key" for this system is the janitor's office key and a key that opens the key cabinet. I'd include the concept of wilfully breaking into the office as part of the key too.
The csiro page has a note saying to please leave it alone, as it is being used by emergency services to monitor the fire zones, so please don't click on the "Map [csiro.au]" link, as we don't want to slashdot a valuable resource like this.
Pfft, given that he's hardly in canberra anyway, and more often in sydney where he *lives*, I think South would be the general direction that he would be looking were he to bother to make more than a token effort to visit what should be his home town. /rant :)
pfft,
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 4 (approximately)
people can and *do* remember long strings of numbers all the time, 12 digits is less than two phone numbers. I know of a few poeple that can actually read barcodes from a few metres away, because they had a system in their school that granted access and marked attendance based on barcodes. I personally wouldn't trust this sort of security more than a physical key, though perhaps it would be ok if coupled with a standard key for access.
If the court decides that domains aren't property, then every registrar out there can be done for false advertising, as they are stating that you are buying property, then everyone that has a domain registered can claim that they did not get what was advertised. Sounds like a nice big class action suit.
If on the other hand the court decides that the domains are property, then we get into an interesting grey area of trespass etc.
IANAL, but I would guess that the reason the court was asked to sort out this distinction is that the original owner needs to be able to work out whether they are arguing about theft of property by deception, or something else if it is a service. It's like the distinction if someone steals your cable box vs someone hooks into your service.
I haven't looked up the the urls, but these are sure to be found somewhere:
1. IBM and God: In the beginning god said "I be", and then to correct his grammatical error added "Am"...
I read a better article quite some time ago by Tim Berners Lee, entitled Cool URIs don't change, in which he discusses the designing urls properly ie. what to leave out of a url (things like .cgi, cgiexec, access details - members / non ...). The things he suggests are easily implementable in .htaccess for apache using mod_rewrite for php / cgi things.
oooh those really hard command line commands are really really hard.
If you have abcde installed (on debian at least) it defaults to using ogg as the media type. The command to run it is not quite as simple as abc, but is exactly 'abcde'. just change to the dir that you want the rip to end up in and run one command and it cddb's, rips, encodes, tags and cleans up after itself.
I'm all for making things easier for the user, but we should be looking at things that are really hard to do on the command line, or things that have awful command options.
... of this story is that there are so many posts along thw lines of the kids of today ... when you sitback and realize the forum you have chosen to put your point across is slashdot, not exactly know for it's great adherance to everyday grammer.
A friend of mine does similar though he uses RCS instead. I'm not all that familiar with RCS, but I'm sure there is porbably some reason why he uses it over CVS.
I was over at the ANU the other day visiting the research school of physics (not sure if that's its exact name, but close enough). Because they do a lot of stuff to do with plasma and small fusion experiments, they also generate knowledge of antenna and use of radio waves, as this is something that the stability of the plasma research relies on. So as a side project they have some interesting research going on somewhere near Cowra IIRC where they transmit a network on the unused VHF TV bands (generally channel 0-2, whatever ABC isn't using). Now this gets over the line of site issue that microwave towers have, as well as the telstra quality of telephone line issues. So the updhot is that there are people actively looking at various ways around the massively disconnected geographical areas.
I'm a fellow resident of Canberra, where Tridge (Andrew Tridgell) happens to reside when he is not jetsetting around the world with Quantum. At the last meeting of CLUG (Canberra Linux Users Group) someone brought along a UK Tivo to have a play around with. The hacking process was relatively simple and involved no breaking of the seal of the box. Basically you need a custom cable (9 pin serial to 3 pin standard stereo audio jack), and to hit enter a few times within 1 second of bootup. Then you pretty much follow a few of the instructions that can be found somewhere on samba.org (another post mentioned exactly where), and you reboot and get a linux shell. Tridge has reverse engineered the Tivo guide format and has scripts to convert on of the online tv-guides for aussie tv to Tivo format, but does not wish these scripts to be released in the public domain as it would most probably impact the subscription model in the states, leading to possible legal hassles for Tridge. In thory you could use this link to update the Tivo guide data every couple of days, but the even cooler method is to install a network card onto the box. Apparently all new Tivo's come with Tridge's drivers for the custom bus bridge so you should be able to just plug it in and start playing with it on the network. UK models have one other niggle, 5.5MHz vs 6MHz spread between voice and data, but as far as I remember this was changeable in the debug menus that first come up when you boot the Tivo. Moving away from Tivo, I do recall seeing ads for a PVR made by LG Electronics on TV recently, though I've not used or seen them, but they sound like a more consumer orientated solution, if nowhere as powerful as a Tivo. Anyway, it's probaly worth checking out samba.org and maybe clug.org.au (I think this site is currently being redev'd, but I can't remember the link for the propsed new site which might have more details about Tivo stuff, there should be a link in the mailing list archives though).