"Jamming" is not necessary. Everyone seems to think that blowing out a signal is the only way to get things done. That is way too short-sighted.
It's easy to install a cell network of your own. Hell, Sprint sells 4-person personal cell towers in their stores in the US. So instead of "jamming" the frequencies, make a localized cell network that simply black-holes the unauthorized calls. This could even be adapted so the ESNs of legitimate users (guards, warden, etc) could be passed through, so everyone is happy.
Or if you want to go the "Big Brother" route, make a localized network that snoops on all the unauthorized voice and data traffic. Seems like a great way to prove that criminals inside jails with cell phones are actually orchestrating crimes instead of just guessing about it.
I don't doubt it at all. My computer, which is usually the epitome of clean, caught a worm the other day. It was automatically downloaded and executed (no clicks or dialogs) from one of the top 10 mainstream news websites, no less. Most likely one of the injection attacks. Had to really dig into it to find out that it somehow got downloaded by prefetch in Firefox (which has been promptly disabled now).
The ironic part... with all of the precautions I take, it wasn't detected at the router level nor the virus scan level. Windows firewall caught it before it could download its payload. As I manually removed it and restored from yesterday's registry copy, I had to chuckle a little.
But now that I've seen first-hand an unrequested.exe not only downloaded into./system32 but executed - both without user approval or so much as a dialog box - I can only imagine how many zombies have popped up in the last few weeks.
Does anyone know the formula for the color-changing experiment? That amazes me, and assuming I don't kill myself or my neighbors in the process, I would love to try it out.
Plus, if anyone knows the recipe, do you also know the reaction that is taking place and why it happens repeatedly?
The other videos were cool, but that was the only one I just kept repeatedly staring at in amazement.
So your main argument is that it wasn't one cop versus one outspoken man? Way to ignore every other piece of the puzzle.
After he disrupted the session, and order couldn't be brought about from the stage... two officers asked him to stop, and he refused. So more officers asked him to stop. He refused. He was asked to leave. He refused. They attempted to escort him out. He refused. He was placed under arrest. He fought and resisted. He was tazed. He continued to resist. He was dragged out of the session.
He didn't have to make it to "arrest". He could have stopped at "asked to leave". He chose an option, he got the results of his choice.
Why does everyone seem to want to throw out the fact that he made multiple poor decisions here, and that there should be no consequences for doing such?!?
Ooh! I love trolls! Since you are one of only two people thus far to show a backbone and not post AC, I'll reply here.
I appreciate your read on my opinions on fascism, with your deep understanding of both my personal and political history. I am also a big fan of your reorganization of my quotes to take them out of context and make them seem far more sinister.
This has nothing to do with fascism, and everyone who makes those posts is oversimplifying to a critical degree. Forget the political aspect. If someone did this exact same thing at a corporate board meeting, a Rotarian meeting, or at a parent-teacher conference, I would expect the same kind of treatment to take place. You have to realize that a line was crossed. This was not baseline idealogic dissent. This was a staged act of disorder. He was asked several times to stop. He refused. At that point he was to be escorted out of the facility. He resisted, and not only flailed wildly at police, but began to move towards the stage. He was then placed under arrest. He resisted further, struggling against multiple peace officers. He got tazered. Forget the fact that this was a political rally... in what venue would any of this behavior be considered appropriate?
And let's take it further. You have to weigh an individual's interests against a group's interests. This event was not billed as "One obnoxious political dissonant interrogates politicians". Chances are, a lot of the other people in that auditorium were having their rights to a peaceful assembly violated by a disorderly man. It seemed obvious that not many others shared his viewpoint, due to a serious lack of vocal or physical support... up until a few people felt the tazer went to far. To each his own on that, as I feel it is justified and others don't feel the same way. But how do you feel this should have ended? The man slowly eliminated his options, one by one, by refusing to do ANYTHING he was asked in a calm manner. He had options. This wasn't an "outspokenness == tazer" situation. It was more like: if (outspoken) { { respondfromstage() } else { asktostop(); } else { asktoleave(); } else { escortout() } else { restrain() } else { arrest() } else { tazer() } }.
This is the MTV television and tabloid journalism mentality. I can go somewhere with cameras, make a scene, and do it with no consequences. The "What did I do?!?" is answered by being disorderly in public. Disorderly conduct is illegal. It's not like he wasn't asked repeatedly to stop.
The police handled things appropriately. A man swinging his arms at police as they are trying to escort him out of a venue is a threat to the police. He wasn't, until he resisted beyond reason, under arrest. Maybe he will learn where that line is now.
And on a personal note, I wish more people like this one would be tazed. It's not like this was political activism... this was about trying to make this event about himself, and trying to draw headlines for a quick 15 minutes of fame. In turn, he will try to parlay this into a career. I hope you're happy, and got what you wanted. I know, from the video, you got what you deserved.
As long as Google doesn't violate my reasonable expectation of privacy, I see no problems. If you can see me walking around in my underwear from the street with no blinds pulled, I have no claim to privacy as I have made my goods exposed to whomever is outside. However, if I pull a blackout curtain and you stare through the gap on either side, now you've violated my privacy.
Sunbathing in public offers no privacy expectations. Walking out of a XXX theater offers no privacy expectations. Seeing your cat through an open window offers no privacy expectations. Get over it. We all have embarrassing pictures taken.
Stop trying to shroud innovation as evil. I think this is a great tool, especially when I'm going someplace I've never been. Landmark-based drivers such as myself will absolutely love this. And if you're so concerned about someone taking a picture of you in a public street, wear a paper bag over your head. Both the photo and the paper bag are perfectly legal in this country.
It's not a matter of whether or not someone's watching over you. It's just a question of their intentions. -- Randy K. Milholland
I just got done working the North American International Auto Show, on one of the video production stages. One of the things we were forced to purchase from Cobo Hall was "Internet Service". Turns out they handed us our own dedicated T1 with 15 public IP addresses. I figured it out once I realized DHCP didn't work and found the paperwork to manually configure IP addresses.
Regardless, they gave us a network Printer/Fax/Copier. Guess what? It had one of the public IP addresses! I guess it was easier when setting up a temporary network to just hand out public IP addresses than it was to purchase a bunch of NAT routers. But there's a perfect example.
$800 is just about right for a device of this caliber. It is meant to be leading-edge tech. It is the most advanced DVR out there. The only people who are jumping into the waters early are the people who would gladly fork over that much money to have the latest and greatest - and they will get it.
And for all of the posts bitching about "$800 PLUS subscription!??!?!?", remember that this is a set-top box replacement. You already pay Comcast or [insert other cable behemoth here] $10/month for that POS DVR that they provide with a clunky unreliable interface. $2 more gets you a better interface, suggestions, downloadable content, more guide data, the ability to program over the internet, the ability to download shows to your laptop or other device, the ability to display slide shows, mp3 playback, mp3 streaming, podcast streaming, and so on and so on and so on. And that's not even including the features in the pipeline, like (official) storage upgrades and a ton of other unannounced projects.
For $3 more a month, bring me my TiVo. And as far as the $800 initial fee, if you can't afford it - just wait for the first round of rebates. Or do what I always do, upgrade when they offer unbelievably cheap factory refurb units. Every TiVo I've ever owned has been a refurb - and with proper cable surge protection and a Smart-UPS, my units have never failed me.
Well no one can stream uncompressed HD... it's 1.5G/sec. And it's a world of difference from what you see at home. You'd swear you were staring out a window.
It amazes me how much compression is involved. Even the transmission lines from the TV truck to the station compress the signal down to 270M/sec. Bounce it off a few satellites, hand it over to your cable provider, and you're staring at about 11M/sec or less by the time it gets to your house.
So by the time you're staring at that "beautiful" signal on your new $6,000 HDTV... think about the fact that the quality you're actually seeing is 1% of the original signal.
I know that I was a little disappointed at paying the additional money for this feature... but it boils down to codec licensing. Quoth the TiVoPony:
The upgrade? While TiVo Desktop 2.3 is free (as always), and the automatic transferring of programs to the PC is also free, the ability to convert those recording for portables has a small cost. It's $24.95 to unlock that ability (there's stuff in there that we have to license, and we can't give that away to everyone for free). But it's a one time fee...you pay once, and you can convert your recordings for playback on your portable automatically, every time they're transfered.
I don't know exactly why, but 20 minutes later the file no longer works in WMP10 alone. I can guarantee that I had the file copied to the desktop, opened it, and had it playing perfectly. Now, I don't know if the software did some poisoning, or if I had some perfect combination of things open at the right time, but it now no longer plays in WMP10 alone.
Odd.
AOL stores the high quality files locally!
on
In2TV Goes Public
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· Score: 3, Interesting
How thoughtful.
If you look into the service, you can stream the videos for free with nothing but an ActiveX plugin and Macromedia Flash. However, if you want "HighQ" video (what they claim is "DVD Quality"), you have to install a piece of software.
It's basically a BitTorrent ripoff. It's a peer-to-peer upload-as-you-download service. But since the files are stored locally and not streamed, I started poking around. Lo and behold, I found the hiding place for the WMV files!
Download a file with the service, then navigate to:
c:\Documents and Settings\~user\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*random hash*\filename.wmv
Note: You may have to do this at the command prompt, as any attemps I made to get into the "Content.IE5" folder through the GUI were futile. But take a look around, and you'll find all of the WMV files the program uses. Copy them to another directory, and there you have your DRM'd file. The first one I tried was named "PerfectStrangers_Barcode_151772C_1500.wmv~". It plays fine in the standalone WMP10, but not in BSPlayer or MPC. GSpot also doesn't recognize the file.
So there's the source file. Gentlemen, start your cracking!
This looks perfect - exactly what I need. And the on/off hours tally allows me to do some real nice things like billing estimates and schedule optimization.
The only bummer is I can't see your software on sourceforge - it says no file packages found. But looking at the manual for the thermostat, it doesn't look too complicated to conjure something up.
Though I usualy hate these types of "do you really need this" replies, this is a pretty fair question.
I live in Michigan. I am not yet living in this house (still very much under construction and awaiting an electrical inspection) and I keep the house at 45 degrees when not being worked on... the lowest allowed by my thermostat. This is partly due to a few uninsulated walls and an underinsulated hole in my ceiling... read this post for details. Anyways, I got my gas bill for last month... for 9 or 10 working days (at about 60 degrees average) and the rest being a constant 45 degrees, my gas bill alone was $89... and my water heater is set at the lowest possible setting. Underinsulated or not, the gas prices in Michigan are outrageous this year.
Thus the reason for this Ask Slashdot inquiry. The linked post provides some further insight as well.
Thanks for the reply. I've spent a lot of time looking at thermostats, and I've found a few that will get me close to where I want to be, but none of them allow remote reprogramming. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's not what I'm looking for.
In response to mysidia, I'm glad you're on the same page I am. As I posted here, I can end up spending a great deal of time away from the house - often I go on weekend road-trips or do double-duty and work 14-15 hours a day. That's a lot of wasted heating and cooling, and thus the reason I'm asking the question. Remote programming helps a lot... if my evening job cancels or gets rained out, it'd be nice to come home to a normal-temperature house instead of waiting an hour for the temperature to stabilize.
Also to BigBlockMopar, the manual thermostat in the utility room is a great idea. Failure was one of my concerns with this system, even though I was going to try to make it as fool-proof as possible (battery backups, etc). Makes perfect sense, and its a good layer of insurance that prevents frozen pipes.
Refer to my linked post for more info on my current state of insulation and other tidbits... and most importantly, keep the posts coming. I'm finding some real good info in these discussions.
This is a North American house, in Michigan. It is a 1950s brick house, and all of the existing insulation is blown-in. I have torn out the living room exterior wall, the kitchen exterior wall, and a load-bearing center wall that has left a hole in my ceiling. Also, the basement is uninsulated at this point.
We put up some R19 in the ceiling hole for the time being, and the open exterior walls will get insulated as soon as I can pass an electrical inspection (re-did electrical completely - there was some scary stuff in there). Insulation suggestions are welcome (read your post TF23 - good info in there), realizing that I don't want to tear out any more than I have to... so chances are the bedroom and bathroom exterior walls are going to stay as-is. Also, the siding is new, so Tyvek-style wraps are out for the time being. I may be considering re-blowing the ceiling insulation, or maybe just adding another coat instead of taking all of the old stuff out. I haven't decided yet.
The reason I'm focusing so much on programmable heating control is because with my job I tend to be gone for days at a time. Weekend trips are quite common in addition to the typical 9-5... but I also contract at night, so 14-15 hour days are also common. Add all those hours up, and we're talking about a great deal of time that the house remains unoccupied. Keeping the house around 70 for that whole time seems rather wasteful, when all I need the heat for is sleeping after those 14 hour days.
Keep the posts coming - I will be really interested to look into some of the posted suggestions. Oh - and I may be purchasing windows next year - so window efficiency suggestions are also on-topic.
I can't wait for FTTP, if only so it lowers the buy-in cost of upgrading the phone system as a whole.
I mean, come on. It's 2004. Why is it that we have private individuals developing spacecraft, yet it still takes me an entire sentence to describe to someone on the other end of the phone whether I said "S" or "F"?!? It makes no sense.
Increasing the quality of the telephone should be a major priority, for a great deal of reasons. Reduction of errors in transmission or understanding, safety reasons (911 calls or voice matching a criminal), far superior modem capabilities... the benefits would be endless.
And before you say "no one would spend the money on a better quality phone line", think about all of the people who make money off of phone calls. Broadcasters who have reporters do lives from a phone line to save costs on microwave trucks, radio call-in shows, news services who rely on phone-in reporting... a lot of people would help invest in a better telephone network - mainly because they would all benefit greatly from it.
If we finally get FTTP, and the majority of the phone network becomes packetized (VoIP or not) so that you're only transporting data and not voltage, the buy-in and initial investment in getting "Hi-Def Phones" to work will be minimal, and maybe it'll push things along much quicker.
Though a lot of people like to complain about the "yellow star" ads, I have found several of them quite useful. Even the direct promotions. A good example: There is a TiVo PVR that will burn directly to DVD. For a couple of weeks they had a yellow star ad that included 4 minute and 1 minute walkthroughs about the features and benefits of the unit. Pretty standard. But there was a third link which requested product literature. I liked the product, so I requested the lit. Got it a week later, read through it, and made a purchase decision.
It's horribly efficient. No "type in this 30-character URL", no "type in all your mailing info here", just push select and voila. This isn't the first time I've done it... TiVo offered a promotional DVD to give to your friends to tell them about TiVo. They made it available online, and via yellow star. Clicked, got the DVD. No hassles. No typing. Easy. And even after opting in (you can opt in, neutral, or out) to data collection in my personal preferences, I receive no junk mail or spam whatsoever from these companies. I get what I ask for, and nothing else.
This could be a phenomenal money maker for TiVo if done right. If I'm interested in your product, and you make information gathering as easy as pushing the "Thumbs Up" while watching the commercial (ala TiVoMatic icon), I guarantee I watch your 3- or 4-minute promotional video. Everyone wins. It helps the sponsor promote their product, and it does so without pissing off the end-user, because they request the video, they're not force fed. Now it becomes a convenience instead of an annoyance.
I hope the rest of the marketing world takes a good hard look at this business model... make your information easily accessible, don't beat your target audience over the head with it.
My company owns a block of 1000 phone numbers, and I've always wanted to get a number that spelled something either related to our department or an acronym which would be easy for clients to remember. But I can't find anything on the internet which helps you make words out of phone numbers. I would need to find a search engine or program that would accept an input like 345-555-6??? and spit out all the possible combinations that make words our of 4 digits, 7 digits, or 10 digits.
Has anyone run across a program or a website that could help?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I clicked on a funny link from a prior Slashdot thread that had an intentionally altered URL. The big shocker was, IE parsed it like it was no big deal, but my virus scanner picked up the malicious code. It warned me that the URL was modified by a bug in Internet Explorer, and allowed me to continue or back out.
I always swore by Norton, but from the things I've seen as of late, I think I'm sticking with Network Associates.
I've worked for 3 major Detroit sports teams. Two of them, owned by the same tight wad (if you live in Detroit, you know who I'm talking about), offer minimal bonuses to full time employees and nothing to the part timers or the production people, who bring in most of the sponsor money for a team. Needless to say, we hate working for them.
Now that a third sports team has moved to Detroit, I have the pleasure of working for them too. They do a great many things for company morale, like having a "social committee" who will arrange get-togethers at sports bars for Monday Night Football, or other nice little things, and the company picks up part of the tab. For Christmas last year, they threw a party at the facility (free food and drinks, but not concession food, the good stuff). Then, as a complete surprise (because for a period we were in a pretty bad financial spot), we received a bonus check for $1,000 each. Everyone. Even part-time staff like myself - and that bonus amounted to about 3 weeks of actual pay for me.
Needless to say they will need to pry me away from that sports team with a crowbar. They make work feel like a second home, and that's a great environment to be in. Just be careful the amount you give, because if people start expecting that $1,000 check, it can be a morale buster if it comes in at $500 next time. Make it a little less than you can afford, like $750, or give $500 and throw a party, all expenses paid. It promotes unity and gives your employee that warm and fuzzy feeling about working for you.
Hmmm... 2003-03-24 04:29:41 Finding war backhaul feeds on the Big Dish? (askslashdot,media) (rejected)
I have an analog BUD that can hit both horizons. The problem I've found, is that not a lot of signals are being broadcast Clear To Air anymore. Except for breaking news or sporting events being broadcast to a host of affiliates, almost everything is getting encrypted.
And unfortunately, a lot of the CTA signals that are still around are moving to digital. Unfortunately I can't justify the cost of upgrading our Chaparral analog C/KU receivers to digital, because we don't use our analog receiver that much to begin with.
Plus, wild feed websites are disappearing and/or not being updated. I'll end up finding a killer website with a full list of CTA radio and video signals, only to glance at the date and see it hasn't been updated since 1999.
Aside from usenet postings and Lyngsat (which is getting hit-or-miss), accurate information is sparse at best. Anyone have a good sat information repository that is updated frequently?
Oh, how wrong you are, my friend. Laserdiscs were most certanly burnable. They were THE thing to use for instant video access, before CD burning was big. Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, where the Detroit Red Wings play, used to use it exclusively for all of their headshots and moving font backgrounds. The same for the Detroit Tigers at Tiger Stadium. All of the font backgrounds, home and away headshots, and animated sponsor logos were put on them. They were incredibly ideal, with a cueing time of only a few frames. Compare that to having multiple Betacam tapes, which could take 20 seconds to a minute to prepare.
Unfortunately, due to the move from Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park, the writable laserdisc machine was stolen (god only knows who wanted or could use it). Joe Louis' writable laserdisc machine is still around and kicking. Even though we have an MPEG server for all of our videos and backgrounds now, the JLA video wall test patterns and other color patterns still come off of our reliable old writable laserdisc machine.
It was the greatest thing in the world in the mid-90s. The only pain was when you ran out of space on one side and had to have an operator eject and flip those big-ass platters over. It added 15-20 seconds to your cue time, but as long as you didn't put material you had to access all the time on the back, it worked just fine.
All sorts of phones do GPS, my Sanyo 4900 I bought months ago has GPS. Most of all cell phones released in the past 6 months (in the U.S.) do, because its a part of the new E911 initiative. When you dial 911, your phone passes your GPS info to the cell tower, and the cell tower sends you to the local police for the city you're in. They designed the new phones this way so the state police phones don't get bombarded with calls from all over the state... since most of the time they just forward you to a local police department anyways.
So what's to prevent phones right now from doing mapping? Couldn't someone write up a java applet or some other fuctionality that could do this on existing phones? The worst thing you should need is a minor firmware revision to allow java to access the GPS data.
I was going to ask this in an Ask Slashdot, but I guess I'll pose it here. Our phones have GPS on them today. Why don't we have mapping and positioning data accessible to us already?
Slashdot Mirror
"Jamming" is not necessary. Everyone seems to think that blowing out a signal is the only way to get things done. That is way too short-sighted.
It's easy to install a cell network of your own. Hell, Sprint sells 4-person personal cell towers in their stores in the US. So instead of "jamming" the frequencies, make a localized cell network that simply black-holes the unauthorized calls. This could even be adapted so the ESNs of legitimate users (guards, warden, etc) could be passed through, so everyone is happy.
Or if you want to go the "Big Brother" route, make a localized network that snoops on all the unauthorized voice and data traffic. Seems like a great way to prove that criminals inside jails with cell phones are actually orchestrating crimes instead of just guessing about it.
I don't doubt it at all. My computer, which is usually the epitome of clean, caught a worm the other day. It was automatically downloaded and executed (no clicks or dialogs) from one of the top 10 mainstream news websites, no less. Most likely one of the injection attacks. Had to really dig into it to find out that it somehow got downloaded by prefetch in Firefox (which has been promptly disabled now).
The ironic part... with all of the precautions I take, it wasn't detected at the router level nor the virus scan level. Windows firewall caught it before it could download its payload. As I manually removed it and restored from yesterday's registry copy, I had to chuckle a little.
But now that I've seen first-hand an unrequested .exe not only downloaded into ./system32 but executed - both without user approval or so much as a dialog box - I can only imagine how many zombies have popped up in the last few weeks.
Does anyone know the formula for the color-changing experiment? That amazes me, and assuming I don't kill myself or my neighbors in the process, I would love to try it out.
Plus, if anyone knows the recipe, do you also know the reaction that is taking place and why it happens repeatedly?
The other videos were cool, but that was the only one I just kept repeatedly staring at in amazement.
So your main argument is that it wasn't one cop versus one outspoken man? Way to ignore every other piece of the puzzle.
After he disrupted the session, and order couldn't be brought about from the stage... two officers asked him to stop, and he refused. So more officers asked him to stop. He refused. He was asked to leave. He refused. They attempted to escort him out. He refused. He was placed under arrest. He fought and resisted. He was tazed. He continued to resist. He was dragged out of the session.
He didn't have to make it to "arrest". He could have stopped at "asked to leave". He chose an option, he got the results of his choice.
Why does everyone seem to want to throw out the fact that he made multiple poor decisions here, and that there should be no consequences for doing such?!?
Ooh! I love trolls! Since you are one of only two people thus far to show a backbone and not post AC, I'll reply here.
I appreciate your read on my opinions on fascism, with your deep understanding of both my personal and political history. I am also a big fan of your reorganization of my quotes to take them out of context and make them seem far more sinister.
This has nothing to do with fascism, and everyone who makes those posts is oversimplifying to a critical degree. Forget the political aspect. If someone did this exact same thing at a corporate board meeting, a Rotarian meeting, or at a parent-teacher conference, I would expect the same kind of treatment to take place. You have to realize that a line was crossed. This was not baseline idealogic dissent. This was a staged act of disorder. He was asked several times to stop. He refused. At that point he was to be escorted out of the facility. He resisted, and not only flailed wildly at police, but began to move towards the stage. He was then placed under arrest. He resisted further, struggling against multiple peace officers. He got tazered. Forget the fact that this was a political rally... in what venue would any of this behavior be considered appropriate?
And let's take it further. You have to weigh an individual's interests against a group's interests. This event was not billed as "One obnoxious political dissonant interrogates politicians". Chances are, a lot of the other people in that auditorium were having their rights to a peaceful assembly violated by a disorderly man. It seemed obvious that not many others shared his viewpoint, due to a serious lack of vocal or physical support... up until a few people felt the tazer went to far. To each his own on that, as I feel it is justified and others don't feel the same way. But how do you feel this should have ended? The man slowly eliminated his options, one by one, by refusing to do ANYTHING he was asked in a calm manner. He had options. This wasn't an "outspokenness == tazer" situation. It was more like: if (outspoken) { { respondfromstage() } else { asktostop(); } else { asktoleave(); } else { escortout() } else { restrain() } else { arrest() } else { tazer() } }.
Luckily they didn't make it to "kill -9".
This is the MTV television and tabloid journalism mentality. I can go somewhere with cameras, make a scene, and do it with no consequences. The "What did I do?!?" is answered by being disorderly in public. Disorderly conduct is illegal. It's not like he wasn't asked repeatedly to stop.
The police handled things appropriately. A man swinging his arms at police as they are trying to escort him out of a venue is a threat to the police. He wasn't, until he resisted beyond reason, under arrest. Maybe he will learn where that line is now.
And on a personal note, I wish more people like this one would be tazed. It's not like this was political activism... this was about trying to make this event about himself, and trying to draw headlines for a quick 15 minutes of fame. In turn, he will try to parlay this into a career. I hope you're happy, and got what you wanted. I know, from the video, you got what you deserved.
As long as Google doesn't violate my reasonable expectation of privacy, I see no problems. If you can see me walking around in my underwear from the street with no blinds pulled, I have no claim to privacy as I have made my goods exposed to whomever is outside. However, if I pull a blackout curtain and you stare through the gap on either side, now you've violated my privacy.
Sunbathing in public offers no privacy expectations. Walking out of a XXX theater offers no privacy expectations. Seeing your cat through an open window offers no privacy expectations. Get over it. We all have embarrassing pictures taken.
Stop trying to shroud innovation as evil. I think this is a great tool, especially when I'm going someplace I've never been. Landmark-based drivers such as myself will absolutely love this. And if you're so concerned about someone taking a picture of you in a public street, wear a paper bag over your head. Both the photo and the paper bag are perfectly legal in this country.
It's not a matter of whether or not someone's watching over you. It's just a question of their intentions. -- Randy K. Milholland
I just got done working the North American International Auto Show, on one of the video production stages. One of the things we were forced to purchase from Cobo Hall was "Internet Service". Turns out they handed us our own dedicated T1 with 15 public IP addresses. I figured it out once I realized DHCP didn't work and found the paperwork to manually configure IP addresses.
Regardless, they gave us a network Printer/Fax/Copier. Guess what? It had one of the public IP addresses! I guess it was easier when setting up a temporary network to just hand out public IP addresses than it was to purchase a bunch of NAT routers. But there's a perfect example.
$800 is just about right for a device of this caliber. It is meant to be leading-edge tech. It is the most advanced DVR out there. The only people who are jumping into the waters early are the people who would gladly fork over that much money to have the latest and greatest - and they will get it.
And for all of the posts bitching about "$800 PLUS subscription!??!?!?", remember that this is a set-top box replacement. You already pay Comcast or [insert other cable behemoth here] $10/month for that POS DVR that they provide with a clunky unreliable interface. $2 more gets you a better interface, suggestions, downloadable content, more guide data, the ability to program over the internet, the ability to download shows to your laptop or other device, the ability to display slide shows, mp3 playback, mp3 streaming, podcast streaming, and so on and so on and so on. And that's not even including the features in the pipeline, like (official) storage upgrades and a ton of other unannounced projects.
For $3 more a month, bring me my TiVo. And as far as the $800 initial fee, if you can't afford it - just wait for the first round of rebates. Or do what I always do, upgrade when they offer unbelievably cheap factory refurb units. Every TiVo I've ever owned has been a refurb - and with proper cable surge protection and a Smart-UPS, my units have never failed me.
Well no one can stream uncompressed HD... it's 1.5G/sec. And it's a world of difference from what you see at home. You'd swear you were staring out a window.
It amazes me how much compression is involved. Even the transmission lines from the TV truck to the station compress the signal down to 270M/sec. Bounce it off a few satellites, hand it over to your cable provider, and you're staring at about 11M/sec or less by the time it gets to your house.
So by the time you're staring at that "beautiful" signal on your new $6,000 HDTV... think about the fact that the quality you're actually seeing is 1% of the original signal.
I don't know exactly why, but 20 minutes later the file no longer works in WMP10 alone. I can guarantee that I had the file copied to the desktop, opened it, and had it playing perfectly. Now, I don't know if the software did some poisoning, or if I had some perfect combination of things open at the right time, but it now no longer plays in WMP10 alone.
Odd.
How thoughtful.
If you look into the service, you can stream the videos for free with nothing but an ActiveX plugin and Macromedia Flash. However, if you want "HighQ" video (what they claim is "DVD Quality"), you have to install a piece of software.
It's basically a BitTorrent ripoff. It's a peer-to-peer upload-as-you-download service. But since the files are stored locally and not streamed, I started poking around. Lo and behold, I found the hiding place for the WMV files!
Download a file with the service, then navigate to:
c:\Documents and Settings\~user\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*random hash*\filename.wmv
Note: You may have to do this at the command prompt, as any attemps I made to get into the "Content.IE5" folder through the GUI were futile. But take a look around, and you'll find all of the WMV files the program uses. Copy them to another directory, and there you have your DRM'd file. The first one I tried was named "PerfectStrangers_Barcode_151772C_1500.wmv~". It plays fine in the standalone WMP10, but not in BSPlayer or MPC. GSpot also doesn't recognize the file.
So there's the source file. Gentlemen, start your cracking!
This looks perfect - exactly what I need. And the on/off hours tally allows me to do some real nice things like billing estimates and schedule optimization.
The only bummer is I can't see your software on sourceforge - it says no file packages found. But looking at the manual for the thermostat, it doesn't look too complicated to conjure something up.
Thanks!
Though I usualy hate these types of "do you really need this" replies, this is a pretty fair question.
I live in Michigan. I am not yet living in this house (still very much under construction and awaiting an electrical inspection) and I keep the house at 45 degrees when not being worked on... the lowest allowed by my thermostat. This is partly due to a few uninsulated walls and an underinsulated hole in my ceiling... read this post for details. Anyways, I got my gas bill for last month... for 9 or 10 working days (at about 60 degrees average) and the rest being a constant 45 degrees, my gas bill alone was $89... and my water heater is set at the lowest possible setting. Underinsulated or not, the gas prices in Michigan are outrageous this year.
Thus the reason for this Ask Slashdot inquiry. The linked post provides some further insight as well.
Thanks for the reply. I've spent a lot of time looking at thermostats, and I've found a few that will get me close to where I want to be, but none of them allow remote reprogramming. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's not what I'm looking for.
In response to mysidia, I'm glad you're on the same page I am. As I posted here, I can end up spending a great deal of time away from the house - often I go on weekend road-trips or do double-duty and work 14-15 hours a day. That's a lot of wasted heating and cooling, and thus the reason I'm asking the question. Remote programming helps a lot... if my evening job cancels or gets rained out, it'd be nice to come home to a normal-temperature house instead of waiting an hour for the temperature to stabilize.
Also to BigBlockMopar, the manual thermostat in the utility room is a great idea. Failure was one of my concerns with this system, even though I was going to try to make it as fool-proof as possible (battery backups, etc). Makes perfect sense, and its a good layer of insurance that prevents frozen pipes.
Refer to my linked post for more info on my current state of insulation and other tidbits... and most importantly, keep the posts coming. I'm finding some real good info in these discussions.
This is a North American house, in Michigan. It is a 1950s brick house, and all of the existing insulation is blown-in. I have torn out the living room exterior wall, the kitchen exterior wall, and a load-bearing center wall that has left a hole in my ceiling. Also, the basement is uninsulated at this point.
We put up some R19 in the ceiling hole for the time being, and the open exterior walls will get insulated as soon as I can pass an electrical inspection (re-did electrical completely - there was some scary stuff in there). Insulation suggestions are welcome (read your post TF23 - good info in there), realizing that I don't want to tear out any more than I have to... so chances are the bedroom and bathroom exterior walls are going to stay as-is. Also, the siding is new, so Tyvek-style wraps are out for the time being. I may be considering re-blowing the ceiling insulation, or maybe just adding another coat instead of taking all of the old stuff out. I haven't decided yet.
The reason I'm focusing so much on programmable heating control is because with my job I tend to be gone for days at a time. Weekend trips are quite common in addition to the typical 9-5... but I also contract at night, so 14-15 hour days are also common. Add all those hours up, and we're talking about a great deal of time that the house remains unoccupied. Keeping the house around 70 for that whole time seems rather wasteful, when all I need the heat for is sleeping after those 14 hour days.
Keep the posts coming - I will be really interested to look into some of the posted suggestions. Oh - and I may be purchasing windows next year - so window efficiency suggestions are also on-topic.
I can't wait for FTTP, if only so it lowers the buy-in cost of upgrading the phone system as a whole.
I mean, come on. It's 2004. Why is it that we have private individuals developing spacecraft, yet it still takes me an entire sentence to describe to someone on the other end of the phone whether I said "S" or "F"?!? It makes no sense.
Increasing the quality of the telephone should be a major priority, for a great deal of reasons. Reduction of errors in transmission or understanding, safety reasons (911 calls or voice matching a criminal), far superior modem capabilities... the benefits would be endless.
And before you say "no one would spend the money on a better quality phone line", think about all of the people who make money off of phone calls. Broadcasters who have reporters do lives from a phone line to save costs on microwave trucks, radio call-in shows, news services who rely on phone-in reporting... a lot of people would help invest in a better telephone network - mainly because they would all benefit greatly from it.
If we finally get FTTP, and the majority of the phone network becomes packetized (VoIP or not) so that you're only transporting data and not voltage, the buy-in and initial investment in getting "Hi-Def Phones" to work will be minimal, and maybe it'll push things along much quicker.
Though a lot of people like to complain about the "yellow star" ads, I have found several of them quite useful. Even the direct promotions. A good example: There is a TiVo PVR that will burn directly to DVD. For a couple of weeks they had a yellow star ad that included 4 minute and 1 minute walkthroughs about the features and benefits of the unit. Pretty standard. But there was a third link which requested product literature. I liked the product, so I requested the lit. Got it a week later, read through it, and made a purchase decision.
It's horribly efficient. No "type in this 30-character URL", no "type in all your mailing info here", just push select and voila. This isn't the first time I've done it... TiVo offered a promotional DVD to give to your friends to tell them about TiVo. They made it available online, and via yellow star. Clicked, got the DVD. No hassles. No typing. Easy. And even after opting in (you can opt in, neutral, or out) to data collection in my personal preferences, I receive no junk mail or spam whatsoever from these companies. I get what I ask for, and nothing else.
This could be a phenomenal money maker for TiVo if done right. If I'm interested in your product, and you make information gathering as easy as pushing the "Thumbs Up" while watching the commercial (ala TiVoMatic icon), I guarantee I watch your 3- or 4-minute promotional video. Everyone wins. It helps the sponsor promote their product, and it does so without pissing off the end-user, because they request the video, they're not force fed. Now it becomes a convenience instead of an annoyance.
I hope the rest of the marketing world takes a good hard look at this business model... make your information easily accessible, don't beat your target audience over the head with it.
My company owns a block of 1000 phone numbers, and I've always wanted to get a number that spelled something either related to our department or an acronym which would be easy for clients to remember. But I can't find anything on the internet which helps you make words out of phone numbers. I would need to find a search engine or program that would accept an input like 345-555-6??? and spit out all the possible combinations that make words our of 4 digits, 7 digits, or 10 digits.
Has anyone run across a program or a website that could help?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I clicked on a funny link from a prior Slashdot thread that had an intentionally altered URL. The big shocker was, IE parsed it like it was no big deal, but my virus scanner picked up the malicious code. It warned me that the URL was modified by a bug in Internet Explorer, and allowed me to continue or back out.
I always swore by Norton, but from the things I've seen as of late, I think I'm sticking with Network Associates.
I've worked for 3 major Detroit sports teams. Two of them, owned by the same tight wad (if you live in Detroit, you know who I'm talking about), offer minimal bonuses to full time employees and nothing to the part timers or the production people, who bring in most of the sponsor money for a team. Needless to say, we hate working for them.
Now that a third sports team has moved to Detroit, I have the pleasure of working for them too. They do a great many things for company morale, like having a "social committee" who will arrange get-togethers at sports bars for Monday Night Football, or other nice little things, and the company picks up part of the tab. For Christmas last year, they threw a party at the facility (free food and drinks, but not concession food, the good stuff). Then, as a complete surprise (because for a period we were in a pretty bad financial spot), we received a bonus check for $1,000 each. Everyone. Even part-time staff like myself - and that bonus amounted to about 3 weeks of actual pay for me.
Needless to say they will need to pry me away from that sports team with a crowbar. They make work feel like a second home, and that's a great environment to be in. Just be careful the amount you give, because if people start expecting that $1,000 check, it can be a morale buster if it comes in at $500 next time. Make it a little less than you can afford, like $750, or give $500 and throw a party, all expenses paid. It promotes unity and gives your employee that warm and fuzzy feeling about working for you.
Hmmm... 2003-03-24 04:29:41 Finding war backhaul feeds on the Big Dish? (askslashdot,media) (rejected)
I have an analog BUD that can hit both horizons. The problem I've found, is that not a lot of signals are being broadcast Clear To Air anymore. Except for breaking news or sporting events being broadcast to a host of affiliates, almost everything is getting encrypted.
And unfortunately, a lot of the CTA signals that are still around are moving to digital. Unfortunately I can't justify the cost of upgrading our Chaparral analog C/KU receivers to digital, because we don't use our analog receiver that much to begin with.
Plus, wild feed websites are disappearing and/or not being updated. I'll end up finding a killer website with a full list of CTA radio and video signals, only to glance at the date and see it hasn't been updated since 1999.
Aside from usenet postings and Lyngsat (which is getting hit-or-miss), accurate information is sparse at best. Anyone have a good sat information repository that is updated frequently?
Oh, how wrong you are, my friend. Laserdiscs were most certanly burnable. They were THE thing to use for instant video access, before CD burning was big. Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, where the Detroit Red Wings play, used to use it exclusively for all of their headshots and moving font backgrounds. The same for the Detroit Tigers at Tiger Stadium. All of the font backgrounds, home and away headshots, and animated sponsor logos were put on them. They were incredibly ideal, with a cueing time of only a few frames. Compare that to having multiple Betacam tapes, which could take 20 seconds to a minute to prepare.
Unfortunately, due to the move from Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park, the writable laserdisc machine was stolen (god only knows who wanted or could use it). Joe Louis' writable laserdisc machine is still around and kicking. Even though we have an MPEG server for all of our videos and backgrounds now, the JLA video wall test patterns and other color patterns still come off of our reliable old writable laserdisc machine.
It was the greatest thing in the world in the mid-90s. The only pain was when you ran out of space on one side and had to have an operator eject and flip those big-ass platters over. It added 15-20 seconds to your cue time, but as long as you didn't put material you had to access all the time on the back, it worked just fine.
All sorts of phones do GPS, my Sanyo 4900 I bought months ago has GPS. Most of all cell phones released in the past 6 months (in the U.S.) do, because its a part of the new E911 initiative. When you dial 911, your phone passes your GPS info to the cell tower, and the cell tower sends you to the local police for the city you're in. They designed the new phones this way so the state police phones don't get bombarded with calls from all over the state... since most of the time they just forward you to a local police department anyways.
So what's to prevent phones right now from doing mapping? Couldn't someone write up a java applet or some other fuctionality that could do this on existing phones? The worst thing you should need is a minor firmware revision to allow java to access the GPS data.
I was going to ask this in an Ask Slashdot, but I guess I'll pose it here. Our phones have GPS on them today. Why don't we have mapping and positioning data accessible to us already?