Caller ID is easy to spoof, our company spoofs ALL outgoing phone traffic to report the phone number of our main trunk line. So this isn't that surprising to me. It's all in what you send over the data channel.
But what about 911? They use something other than Caller ID, don't they? Something that can't be spoofed by the end user? If they don't, or it can in fact be spoofed as well, I can see quite a bit of abuse once this practice becomes mainstream.
What is their "special" Caller ID called? How is it transmitted to them? Can regular people receive it?
Yes indeed, TiVo comes with USB2 ports. It's true, the original Series2 units (AT&T TiVo, real early Series2 units) only came with USB1.1. However, TiVo released a new hardware stepping that fixed a few complaints people had (bad reception on a few channels on the internal tuner, etc) - and one of the new features added in this minor hardware revision: USB2.
The new hardware revision has been on the market for months. It was a silent revision, there is some minor change in the S/N to distinguish the units, but I don't have that information in front of me. Regardless, the fact still remains, that yes, TiVo has USB2.
Do they make anything like this for the home, maybe a simple laundry interface that lets you see where the machine is in the cycle, change options (like soap, load size or softener), or report problems with the washer to a remote terminal? Maybe even starting a wash cycle from a remote location, or pausing in the middle of a cycle if you need to use the hot water for a shower or other purpose?
I would buy one of these tomorrow, if not outrageously priced.
TiVo has been toying around with this ever since the 2.5 software came out in the US. TiVo uses these recordings for good as well as evil.
In the 3.0 software, TiVos will now download a large chunk of their data from these special programs. TiVo does this by buying a late-night paid programming slot on the Discovery Channel. The actual show looks like a screen full of CC data, and there is a major upside to receiving these datacasts. They significantly shorten the length of daily phone calls. Bonus. (Not to mention that the 3.0 software on Series 2 units unofficially supports update-over-internet...)
As has been stated over and over, the special recordings don't take up usable space. A portion of the MFS filesystem is flagged as Reserved, and this is where the data goes. TiVo downloads a promo, it runs its course, and disappears. It also will never switch to record the show if you have something else set to record in the same time slot, so it's not even very intrusive. And in the US (not sure about the UK), the time slot is early in the AM when you're not likely to have programs scheduled to record anyways.
Regardless, the promos aren't that intrusive, don't take up recording space, and don't interfere with your recordings. Plus, Embeem has created a script to remove the ads, which has been around for quite a while, so you can remove the ads yourself if you're horribly offended.
So long story short, this is not a crisis situation. You're not forced to watch the ads, and its easy to ignore them. Hell, you can even remove them yourself with a little trickery. What's the big deal?
If an extra menu item in TiVo Central with an icon next to it is enough to make you refuse to buy or even return your TiVo, ESPECIALLY since Embeem offers you a script to remove the menu item yourself, feel free to take your TiVo back to its point of sale. It just means less complaint postings in the TiVo Forums for the rest of us to wade through.
Ok, so now to skew the results, I put one of those water-drinking toy ducks in front of the motion detector, and turn on Oprah. There you go, skewed results.
Now the only thing that I may be in danger of, is Arbitron thinking that my wife really loves to give head when Oprah is on...
I have a lot of professional wireless video equipment. We do all of our transmits at my work in the 2.4ghz range. It's kind of funny, when a certain local TV station does live remotes from the downtown area, we get their signal on our antennas, reminiscent of finding a backhaul feed in my B.U.D. satellite days.
Anyways, along with receiving equipment, I have a lot of high-gain Yagi directional antennas. I know the antennas would be good for this sort of thing, but is the x10 receiver just a standard 2.4ghz video transmitter? Should I be able to pick up x10 cameras with my receiver, or even worse, can our broadcasts be picked up by people sitting at home with a cheap x10 receiver?
As simple and repetitive as this post sounds, it's really true. The "mainstream" radio stations seem to have a total catalog of about 9 new songs, and 15 old songs that have been played to death. Just the other day I was flipping through the Detroit-area radio stations in amazement that everything I was hearing either sounded exactly the same, or was played 100 times before. I have actually logged incidents where I've heard the same song 3 times in 2 hours on one station, and heard it another 2 times on a different T40 station in that same timeframe.
The industry is killing themselves. They are offering absolutely no incentive to sound any different than everybody else. It's quite clear where they're putting all of their marketing money. Why? Because it's the same list of 10 artists that you see or hear from about 80x a day in every possible medium. Hell, if I couldn't get enough Brittney in radio, now she does just about every TV commercial, AND you can see her movie! Kill me.
The only hope is in the alternative or partially underground radio stations that still have a very nice rotation of new artists and sounds. I swear, if it wasn't for CIMX 88.7FM in Detroit, I wouldn't even know about any of the new artists. No one else plays their music. I hear a smaller portion of the new music on WRIF 101.1FM, but only the real mainstream hard rock (since they do a lot of classic rock too).
But it's obvious that there is NO marketing money being spent on anything but teenie pop at the moment. This makes for absolutely no incentive for an artist who isn't a pop rapper, boy band or jail bait to release a record now... since the recording industry makes sure you make NO money off of record sales, do you think they're going to put any significant force behind a tour for you? Hell no... and that's one of the only ways you can actually make any money as an artist. Without a tour, you're not much better off than a cashier at Target's yearly salary. So if I was an artist, I sure as hell wouldn't want to release anything now - I could end up IN DEBT to the record company because they won't promote anything that doesn't sound like everything else!
So why are record sales down? Because the prices are outrageous, the recording industry has killed the best music advertising medium ever created, and the fact that they aren't releasing anything NEW or INNOVATIVE. I'm really glad that they're making people look at the numbers, this is the perfect opportunity to force people to look at the fact that it's the marketing morons' fault, and not the technology. The technology was the only thing helping the music industry thrive when the executives were making every moronic decision in the book. Hey, maybe the reason no one buys your CDs anymore is because NO ONE CAN LISTEN TO THEM thanks to all of this new "copy protection" nonsense you're trying to cram down our throats!!! Not to mention the fact that if the industry would take the artificial price bloat out of CDs (which never gets to the artist anyways), you could easilly buy CDs from any consumer end point for $9 a pop. It's damn near criminal that they're allowed to charge what they do for music.
It's the industry's own stupidity and greed that's killing music, and I hope someone FINALLY rubs their face in it publicly.
This is a really odd announcement, especially considering this article released by Tom's Hardware Guide yesterday. Basically, the article tested the upcoming P4 chips at 2666mhz and 2533mhz, and stated many times that the performance gained by using both a 133mhz FSB and 533mhz memory clock would show enormous gains over any current Intel or AMD processor. Some of the performance numbers on THG's graphs were rather impressive.
So I see one of two things here. Either this report is wildly inaccurate or misinterpreted, or Intel sure is shooting themselves in the foot yet again. As soon as they create technology that can utilize Rambus' enormous memory bandwidth, they can the technology? Something about that doesn't sound right. Intel may be dumb, but they're stubborn too. If this is true, they sure picked a hell of a time to seriously rethink their relationship with Rambus.
Sure this is great technology and all, but why should I be forced to pay $10/month for music I can get for free on regular radio? Sure it's not digital quality, but for the most part it's good enough. Plus, this new "digital satellite radio" can't be as robust as regular analog radio. What's going to happen everytime you go under a cement overpass or are sitting in a parking garage? Is my new fabulous digital solution going to "skip" 50 times on my average daily commute? Sorry, digital quality audio just isn't worth it if this is the case.
What's more, when I decide I want a song in digital quality, that's what I have my car minidisc deck for. I have an optical connection from my computer to my standalone minidisc recorder, and I record digital music (usually MP3s) to my heart's content, and take the minidisc into my car. Even in mono (~150min) it sounds absolutely perfect on my car stereo (6 speakers, 1 sub).
If they made a flavor of Satellite Radio with commercials that was FREE, then I might consider getting a satellite receiver. Until that time, I can't imagine getting one. In fact, when I hear my friends talking about getting a satellite radio, I chime in "Are you really going to pay $10 per month for radio?" and they immediately respond, "They charge a monthly fee??" It'll be interesting to see how much of the wow factor will wear off when people go to their car audio shop and find out there's a monthly fee for a car stereo.
I only see two ways for this to really take off. One option would be to add an extra $250 or $500 to each new vehicle pricetag, to act as a sort of "down payment" on the satellite radio service. That way, at least you get two years (or four) of the service "for free" with your vehicle purchase, and after that time you can decide if you want to stick with it or not. The only other option I see, is to stick some commercials in the service, and offer a free alternative. Put ads on the LCD, regular audio commercials, whatever is necessary... but I can guarantee you this, I would never, ever, pick up one of these stereos if I knew I would have to pay $10/month indefinitely just to USE that incredibly expensive receiver I bought. No way.
>As if anybody hasn't noticed, given the choice
>between paying one price for something or paying
>more for the same thing, which is the typical
>consumer going to pick?
So by your flawed logic, everyone in the United States uses Linux as their operating system since after all, it's much cheaper than buying a copy of Windows. What's more, all of those people also went out and bought AMD processors, which offer not only a much better price/performance ratio but offer better performance per clock than Intel processors. Funny though, I don't see any numbers that support those facts.
The fact is, no one buys these processors because no one HEARS anything about them. The reason no one hears anything about them is because they are stifled. Microsoft has agreements with every OEM they deal with requiring operating system exclusivity. You aren't allowed to have any other OS readilly accessible on a computer shipped with Windows. Research has shown that it's only a tiny slice of the consumer pie that will go out of their way to install these alternative operating systems... and even when they make the decision to do so, more often than not it requires repartitioning of the hard drive, meaning the user has to start from scratch. Not a very attractive option to someone who is just becoming computer literate.
AMD has taken the silent route for a very good reason... to keep prices low. Anyone who knows anything knows that AMD now produces a superior product when compared directly to Intel's identical line of processors. This, however, hasn't made enough of a difference to consumers, thanks to the Intel marketing machine. Instead AMD is starting to do very intelligent things... like the elimination of clock indicators. This bought them free press, the cheapest kind of advertising there is. AMD is also doing their "road show", giving away free processors in 20+ major cities. Things like these increase word-of-mouth, but allow AMD to keep expenses low, so they can make a cheaper product. They need to KEEP their products cheaper than Intel, or most of their advantage over Intel will disappear.
So please, dispense with the "cheaper = more popular" mode of thinking. It is NOT always the case that the superior product is more popular, nor that the cheaper one will be purchased more. In AMD's case, where they have both a superior AND cheaper product, they still fall far behind Intel in sales.
Real life story for why not to do that...
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GPS Meets PCS
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· Score: 3, Informative
Instead of these other posts that sound "nagging" in nature, I'll give you a real life story as to why these things once existed, and now rarely do.
911 gets a call from a cell phone. They answer, and all they hear is a constant loud roar. After a minute or so of not being able to communicate, the line is dropped. The call comes in again, 5 to 10 minutes later. The same roar, yet no communication with anyone. The 911 operator gets curious, and makes a few calls. The line drops. Yet another call, minutes later, same roar, no human. A unit is deployed to find where this signal is coming from. Strangely enough the signal was traced to the Pontiac Silverdome (in Michigan, over 60,000+ seating).
They traced the signal to a man who was watching a Detroit Lions game. The man was quite large, probably a little too large for the seat that was given to him. Anyways, his cell phone was pressing up against the arm rest of the seat, and pushing the emergency button every time he shifted. This story is true, and there are several of these stories in existance if you take the time to talk to 911 operators.
This is the reason that cell phones now rarely have 911 buttons. This is also the reason most phones will now come with a "keyguard" function that ignores all button pushes until a certain key combination is pressed. It's just not feasible, with how easily buttons can be pushed in a pocket, on a belt, or in a purse. Cell phones may be good for many things, just not this.
I about wet myself when walking through a Meijers just the other day. I walked through the video games, and found a cartridge from Namco that absolutely had to walk out of the store with me.
Namco has released NamcoMuseum, a game cartridge for Gameboy Advance that has four of my all-time favorite legacy video games... Pole Position, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac Man, and Galaga (Galaxian too, but who cares). Combined, these four games probably took the majority of my childhood quarters. This cartridge is fantastic, because even though I used to own the consoles to run these games, as of recently I can't find anything older than my SNES. This more than makes up for my loss.
I had purchased my GBA to play all of the Gameboy games I hadn't played in years (due to a fried gameboy), so I had legacy titles in mind from the start. I only own two GBA titles... F-Zero, and the NamcoMuseum pack... and I can honestly say I haven't touched F-Zero in weeks. Merely turning on NamcoMuseum and hearing all of those familiar sound effects and songs from years ago gave me chills. I can't put this game pack down.
New games come and go... but those legacy titles never die. Hopefully in a few years I'll have enough dough to start collecting the actual arcade units... but multi-game packs like these will more than keep my attention for the time being.
Swap space is more of a secondary precaution. No one NEEDS it in a RAM-intensive PC, but it's just a precaution in case you DO fill up your RAM.
The issue here isn't necessarilly what you have open... it's more of an issue of leakage. Memory leaks plague even the best of computers. Two programs I use frequently, Photoshop and SBNews, have vicious memory leaks in them. I have 256M RAM in my P3-500 box (yeah yeah I know), and after a good session in either one of those programs, every program I open will swap like crazy until I reboot. Hell, even after a week-and-a-half of not rebooting Windows, the system will start swapping due to many little memory leaks that exist everywhere, and not just in programs... but the OS as well.
So the swap file is more of a precaution than anything. There's no need to go make a 3G swap file for a computer with 1G of RAM... but it is a very good idea to keep at least a small swap file around for those unexpected occurrences where you might need it. Hell, make a sub-40M swap file if space is tight. It's better than watching your system tie a rope around its neck and jump off your desk in the middle of a very important project.
So do you need it? No. Is it wise? Of course. If space is of the essence, make a tiny one... just make sure it's around for redundancy purposes. Chances are that once you find out you should have had one, you won't be in the best of moods as that project you just spent the last three hours on gets sucked into the void.
This is one of those situations where you have to look past the cost. Ease of use is the factor here, not to mention the fact that no one knows of a combo RF/Ethernet card. I know I've never heard of such an animal.
I do what you do, but on a larger scale. I have "accumulated" 4 ethernet cards. One a 10baseT/2 with a dongle, one a 100baseT with a connector built in, another 100baseT with a dongle, and an Orinoco (Lucent) 802.11b card. It is by FAR easier to have a different card for each network configuration.
You've got to be asking yourself, why? This is easy. Every one of my networks has a night-and-day difference from the other ones. One network is DHCP, another won't reply unless my MAC and IP are set properly, the wireless is told to only answer a specific IP... and so on. Anyways, in my laptop, the OS knows each network configuration, simply by assigning a new network configuration to each piece of hardware. As soon as you plug it in, it just works. No reconfig, no additional programs... plug the SOB in, and you're networking.
And yes, I've tried all of those icky little Netswitcher-type programs, and none of them work as well as just simply having different hardware for each config. Once it's configured, even a monkey could make it work. It may not be cost effective, but it's reliable as all hell.
You can hack TiVo to work with PAL, but not the new TiVos. The new TiVos come with several checksum routines that forbid the modification of TiVo's kernel (and some key files). This has effectively killed the PAL hack.
Go to the TiVo Message Board and search the underground forum (maybe the archives, this is an old topic) for PAL. The hack only works on software version 1.3 if I remember correctly. The newer TiVos have the file checking PROM code and will go into a reboot loop if you try to do this. And no, you can't just flash the PROM to an older version, it's been tried.;)
It's funny... it seems as if ReplayTV has been scouring the TiVo message boards and looking for complaints from the underground. Every single one of these features are things that have been worked on or at least discussed in the TiVo Underground. Seems like the TiVo employees aren't the only ones browsing the bulletin boards in their free time.
Things of this nature have been discussed for a long time, but eventually discarded as being impractical. Now, here it is in box form, and it's even more impractical than I would have ever imagined.
First of all, I spent $250 on my 20hr TiVo, and then an additional $300 in hard drives for a total of ~144 hours recording time in 120gig of storage. This combined total is CONSIDERABLY less than their 40hr unit, and comes with over 3x more storage time. This, alone, proves that it's not worth it. And $2000? For a PVR? Don't even get me started. I would MUCH rather buy a video card with TV in and the PVR-like services that video cards are being bundled with now. Then I could record to my heart's content... not that I've ever been able to accumulate 65hrs of content on my TiVo to date...
The networked video storage... this was never spoken of (out loud) because of the frowning of not only the TiVo sponsors, but the threat of lawsuits to a young company. People seem to have major issues when you distribute copies of programs with no visual loss between generations. At least someone else is here to take the fall that TiVo couldn't.
Skipping commercials was the other big problem. This has always been available via backdoors in TiVo (removed in 2.0.1, rumored to be back in 2.5), but again, never a mainstream feature because of the sponsor problems it would cause. I'm going to be real interested to find out how the television community reacts to these features, and hopefully ReplayTV can be the whipping boy to pave the way for TiVo's next software update.
This will be the only good thing to come out of ReplayTV, the fact that every legal team even eyeing TiVo in the past will all start looking Replay's way now... and if Replay can get away with these features without a problem, expect the apprehensive TiVo to have them Q1 next year. As for me, I couldn't even consider buying a PVR for $700. I almost never bought mine for $250, there's just NO WAY I could justify that much of an expense. Not when I could get at TiVo with better service (just a few less tricks up it's sleeve) for $199 nowadays.
This a HIGHLY intelligent move by AMD. Think about it. Intel made their next-generation CPU SLOWER mhz for mhz than their PIII series. Why? So that they can boast higher mhz speeds, since the common misconception among consumers is that more mhz = = more speed! Geeks know this to be untrue, but John and Jane computer buyer don't... thus they buy the P4 2ghz since it has to be better than the other processors... there's more Ps and a higher number next to ghz!!
AMD is calling Intel's bluff, and making the mhz rating a thing of the past. They're forcing consumers to base their decisions on the CPU that is truly faster rather than staring at FUD from marketing people. Face it... clock for clock, AMD is faster than Intel - not to mention MUCH cheaper. Now they have to try to tell John and Jane consumer this... and get them to forget the mhz fallicy.
This is a BRILLIANT move by AMD, and in my mind is the first step in getting rid of the notion that more MHZ = = more speed. I think that this is better not only for the company, but for the legions of computer-buying morons as well. Now they'll have to take a closer look to their computer purchases to find out which is truly better... instead of using an old wives tail to make the decision for them.
Heh, when I first read that subject line, I thought that RC had actually came out with an RC car that drives around on your computer's desktop, with a wireless control like a normal RC car.:) Plug a little RF receiver into a serial port, and you're good to go. With a little thought and innovation, it might even be a decent replacement for a wireless mouse (though the little RC car tire skid marks might be a little distracting on a webpage...)
Now THAT would be a great time killer... and would finally force me to erase that cute little sheep.exe program.
Here's the frightening part. One time quite a while back, when w98 was still brand new, I found out about the windowsupdate site. The first couple of times I tried it, everything was quick and easy, and all was right with the world. I was actually praising Microsoft for a fantastic feature.... UNTIL...
About the 4th or 5th time in, they wanted to upgrade my ActiveX controls when I tried to enter the site. Hearing the bad things that ActiveX can do (and not being very wise at the time) I told the applet not to accept the upgrade. On top of that, I clicked the "never ask me this again" checkbox, basically denying any microsoft ActiveX updates on my computer.
In doing so, this broke the windowsupdate site, almost all ActiveX functionality, and actually forced me to do a complete reinstall to get that damn toggle out of my system. I thought it was a little ironic that telling your computer not to trust the company that made the OS it's running caused it to eat itself from the inside out... and to this day, I put quite a bit of thought into either checking the "yes" or "no" boxes on Microsoft installs, and I have never touched any "always" or "never" checkboxes since.
That was a good read. There is a lot of the assumptions that I'm skeptical about, and I would love to read the reaction of the more skeptical of the/. crowd to see how realistic the assumptions really are.
Not that I haven't submitted a good story or two in my day that has been denied... but this one really peaked my interest, especially given the recent outbreak of worms. Until someone gives the internet the pill I give my dog all the time, we need to start planning ahead before this type of thing really does cripple the internet.
Personally, I can imagine much worse attacks than the one listed in that article... all it would take is a good firmware flaw in a few key internet routers, and tahdah, the internet slinks along at the once familiar speed of 28.8kbps. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything.:)
It's funny, you actually beat me to that exact comment.:)
Found just two articles down on the front page:
On the geek side, their server is a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable running a port of Aache and PHP." Something seems extremely suspicious about that server...
I could put myself through college finding typos on Slashdot...
To complement this fabulous new key spying technology, the FBI is now actively using special tracking devices to find the locations of certain computers. Although the FBI was unavailable for comment, keylogs of sensitive FBI laptops were obtained from an anonymous source.
In analyzing the data received from the laptops, it is obvious that some sort of high-tech encryption has been used, since none of the information obtained contains any human-readable content. A snippet of the data used to control this high-tech tracking mechanism was released to the press earlier today. The following line from the logs seems to control this amazing new tracking technology:
Yes, I do remember hearing about this somewhere. In fact I saw a link posted on/. to Dell's survey, but by the time I got to the link the survey was gone (or the link was bad). I searched around on their website, and it was nowhere to be found.
I would never buy a pre-made PC from anyone (I'm a do-it-yourselfer and very anti-everything-on-one-board), but you can't exactly go out and build your own laptop. Regardless, I feel that AMD is at the point where they will continue to provide processors that are superior to Intel (provided they stay on the same track they're on now), and even the next power desktop I build will be carrying AMD Inside. Their mobile processors are no different - after spending hours going over graphs and reading thorough explanations over at Tom's Hardware, plus looking at the MSRP difference between AMD and Intel processors, I just can't bring myself to paying more for a label when they truly do provide an inferior product to the competition.
Dell has really been trying to dig into the "value" laptop market... I guess I don't understand why a part of that plan isn't purchasing faster processors at a lower price. Not to mention they won't burn up in my lap like my wonderful PII/233 does.
I still have my Inspiron 3200 - though it's about time for a new one. It was cutting edge at the time... PII/233 with 4gig... it was really cool, but that damn thing was so hot it just about lit on fire after a little while at 100% load. It's just too old to do anything I want it to (sucks at gaming, too small to triple-OS it, etc) and thus I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop in the near future. The support I've had from Dell has been fantastic to say the least (best repair policy I've ever dealt with), and I would never consider any other laptop maker... oh yeah, except for one thing.
WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO START MAKING AMD LAPTOPS?
I'm all for their power line with the Geforce2, too much RAM and HD, etc... but I would MUCH rather purchase an AMD-based laptop for oh-so-many reasons (not the least being performance-per-$$). I'm sure they're bound by some piece of paper they signed at some point in the past... but this is the main reason I haven't ALREADY bought a new laptop from Dell.
I don't consider Dell not including Linux on laptops a big story... I'd much rather do it myself so I can triple-partition and get WinNT, Win9x and Linux on the same laptop. But when are they ever going to wise up and start including AMD processors in their laptops? Is there something fairly obvious I'm missing here?
PVRs are a godsend. I've had my TiVo for about half-a-year, and I almost refuse to watch TV without it. I watch twice as many programs as I used to, and I do it all in the same amount of time I've always had.
TiVo's suggestions and season passes are fantastic. I have a very intrusive work schedule, and I used to have a hard time keeping up with a lot of the shows I like to watch on a daily basis. With my modified 144hr TiVo, I literally set season passes up for every show I like to watch - and view them whenever it's convenient. Skipping commercials saves a good 1/4 of my time, and it's ideal for watching time-shifted sports. Wrastlin' for example (ok ok, sports entertainment... whatever) is awesome on TiVo... 60x FF through commercials and "reviews", 2x FF through matches you don't care too much about (since you can still see all the action), and watch all of the rest of the program. I nuke a 1:07 WWF RAW in 31min. I also will purposely start watching shows late, just to have the ability to burn through any TV show. I can watch yesterday's and today's Simpsons episode in just about the same half-hour.
Probably the best feature of TiVo is the instant replay. I use it often for catching those commercials that are absolutely hysterical, or even more for "live TV mishaps"... when someone accidently cuts to a backstage camera or puts something on the screen that certainly shouldn't be there. It's perfect for that flasher that walks up behind your local news guy's stand-up.:)
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Caller ID is easy to spoof, our company spoofs ALL outgoing phone traffic to report the phone number of our main trunk line. So this isn't that surprising to me. It's all in what you send over the data channel.
But what about 911? They use something other than Caller ID, don't they? Something that can't be spoofed by the end user? If they don't, or it can in fact be spoofed as well, I can see quite a bit of abuse once this practice becomes mainstream.
What is their "special" Caller ID called? How is it transmitted to them? Can regular people receive it?
Yes indeed, TiVo comes with USB2 ports. It's true, the original Series2 units (AT&T TiVo, real early Series2 units) only came with USB1.1. However, TiVo released a new hardware stepping that fixed a few complaints people had (bad reception on a few channels on the internal tuner, etc) - and one of the new features added in this minor hardware revision: USB2.
The new hardware revision has been on the market for months. It was a silent revision, there is some minor change in the S/N to distinguish the units, but I don't have that information in front of me. Regardless, the fact still remains, that yes, TiVo has USB2.
Do they make anything like this for the home, maybe a simple laundry interface that lets you see where the machine is in the cycle, change options (like soap, load size or softener), or report problems with the washer to a remote terminal? Maybe even starting a wash cycle from a remote location, or pausing in the middle of a cycle if you need to use the hot water for a shower or other purpose?
I would buy one of these tomorrow, if not outrageously priced.
TiVo has been toying around with this ever since the 2.5 software came out in the US. TiVo uses these recordings for good as well as evil.
In the 3.0 software, TiVos will now download a large chunk of their data from these special programs. TiVo does this by buying a late-night paid programming slot on the Discovery Channel. The actual show looks like a screen full of CC data, and there is a major upside to receiving these datacasts. They significantly shorten the length of daily phone calls. Bonus. (Not to mention that the 3.0 software on Series 2 units unofficially supports update-over-internet...)
As has been stated over and over, the special recordings don't take up usable space. A portion of the MFS filesystem is flagged as Reserved, and this is where the data goes. TiVo downloads a promo, it runs its course, and disappears. It also will never switch to record the show if you have something else set to record in the same time slot, so it's not even very intrusive. And in the US (not sure about the UK), the time slot is early in the AM when you're not likely to have programs scheduled to record anyways.
Regardless, the promos aren't that intrusive, don't take up recording space, and don't interfere with your recordings. Plus, Embeem has created a script to remove the ads, which has been around for quite a while, so you can remove the ads yourself if you're horribly offended.
So long story short, this is not a crisis situation. You're not forced to watch the ads, and its easy to ignore them. Hell, you can even remove them yourself with a little trickery. What's the big deal?
If an extra menu item in TiVo Central with an icon next to it is enough to make you refuse to buy or even return your TiVo, ESPECIALLY since Embeem offers you a script to remove the menu item yourself, feel free to take your TiVo back to its point of sale. It just means less complaint postings in the TiVo Forums for the rest of us to wade through.
Ok, so now to skew the results, I put one of those water-drinking toy ducks in front of the motion detector, and turn on Oprah. There you go, skewed results.
Now the only thing that I may be in danger of, is Arbitron thinking that my wife really loves to give head when Oprah is on...
I have a lot of professional wireless video equipment. We do all of our transmits at my work in the 2.4ghz range. It's kind of funny, when a certain local TV station does live remotes from the downtown area, we get their signal on our antennas, reminiscent of finding a backhaul feed in my B.U.D. satellite days.
Anyways, along with receiving equipment, I have a lot of high-gain Yagi directional antennas. I know the antennas would be good for this sort of thing, but is the x10 receiver just a standard 2.4ghz video transmitter? Should I be able to pick up x10 cameras with my receiver, or even worse, can our broadcasts be picked up by people sitting at home with a cheap x10 receiver?
As simple and repetitive as this post sounds, it's really true. The "mainstream" radio stations seem to have a total catalog of about 9 new songs, and 15 old songs that have been played to death. Just the other day I was flipping through the Detroit-area radio stations in amazement that everything I was hearing either sounded exactly the same, or was played 100 times before. I have actually logged incidents where I've heard the same song 3 times in 2 hours on one station, and heard it another 2 times on a different T40 station in that same timeframe.
The industry is killing themselves. They are offering absolutely no incentive to sound any different than everybody else. It's quite clear where they're putting all of their marketing money. Why? Because it's the same list of 10 artists that you see or hear from about 80x a day in every possible medium. Hell, if I couldn't get enough Brittney in radio, now she does just about every TV commercial, AND you can see her movie! Kill me.
The only hope is in the alternative or partially underground radio stations that still have a very nice rotation of new artists and sounds. I swear, if it wasn't for CIMX 88.7FM in Detroit, I wouldn't even know about any of the new artists. No one else plays their music. I hear a smaller portion of the new music on WRIF 101.1FM, but only the real mainstream hard rock (since they do a lot of classic rock too).
But it's obvious that there is NO marketing money being spent on anything but teenie pop at the moment. This makes for absolutely no incentive for an artist who isn't a pop rapper, boy band or jail bait to release a record now... since the recording industry makes sure you make NO money off of record sales, do you think they're going to put any significant force behind a tour for you? Hell no... and that's one of the only ways you can actually make any money as an artist. Without a tour, you're not much better off than a cashier at Target's yearly salary. So if I was an artist, I sure as hell wouldn't want to release anything now - I could end up IN DEBT to the record company because they won't promote anything that doesn't sound like everything else!
So why are record sales down? Because the prices are outrageous, the recording industry has killed the best music advertising medium ever created, and the fact that they aren't releasing anything NEW or INNOVATIVE. I'm really glad that they're making people look at the numbers, this is the perfect opportunity to force people to look at the fact that it's the marketing morons' fault, and not the technology. The technology was the only thing helping the music industry thrive when the executives were making every moronic decision in the book. Hey, maybe the reason no one buys your CDs anymore is because NO ONE CAN LISTEN TO THEM thanks to all of this new "copy protection" nonsense you're trying to cram down our throats!!! Not to mention the fact that if the industry would take the artificial price bloat out of CDs (which never gets to the artist anyways), you could easilly buy CDs from any consumer end point for $9 a pop. It's damn near criminal that they're allowed to charge what they do for music.
It's the industry's own stupidity and greed that's killing music, and I hope someone FINALLY rubs their face in it publicly.
This is a really odd announcement, especially considering this article released by Tom's Hardware Guide yesterday. Basically, the article tested the upcoming P4 chips at 2666mhz and 2533mhz, and stated many times that the performance gained by using both a 133mhz FSB and 533mhz memory clock would show enormous gains over any current Intel or AMD processor. Some of the performance numbers on THG's graphs were rather impressive.
So I see one of two things here. Either this report is wildly inaccurate or misinterpreted, or Intel sure is shooting themselves in the foot yet again. As soon as they create technology that can utilize Rambus' enormous memory bandwidth, they can the technology? Something about that doesn't sound right. Intel may be dumb, but they're stubborn too. If this is true, they sure picked a hell of a time to seriously rethink their relationship with Rambus.
Sure this is great technology and all, but why should I be forced to pay $10/month for music I can get for free on regular radio? Sure it's not digital quality, but for the most part it's good enough. Plus, this new "digital satellite radio" can't be as robust as regular analog radio. What's going to happen everytime you go under a cement overpass or are sitting in a parking garage? Is my new fabulous digital solution going to "skip" 50 times on my average daily commute? Sorry, digital quality audio just isn't worth it if this is the case.
What's more, when I decide I want a song in digital quality, that's what I have my car minidisc deck for. I have an optical connection from my computer to my standalone minidisc recorder, and I record digital music (usually MP3s) to my heart's content, and take the minidisc into my car. Even in mono (~150min) it sounds absolutely perfect on my car stereo (6 speakers, 1 sub).
If they made a flavor of Satellite Radio with commercials that was FREE, then I might consider getting a satellite receiver. Until that time, I can't imagine getting one. In fact, when I hear my friends talking about getting a satellite radio, I chime in "Are you really going to pay $10 per month for radio?" and they immediately respond, "They charge a monthly fee??" It'll be interesting to see how much of the wow factor will wear off when people go to their car audio shop and find out there's a monthly fee for a car stereo.
I only see two ways for this to really take off. One option would be to add an extra $250 or $500 to each new vehicle pricetag, to act as a sort of "down payment" on the satellite radio service. That way, at least you get two years (or four) of the service "for free" with your vehicle purchase, and after that time you can decide if you want to stick with it or not. The only other option I see, is to stick some commercials in the service, and offer a free alternative. Put ads on the LCD, regular audio commercials, whatever is necessary... but I can guarantee you this, I would never, ever, pick up one of these stereos if I knew I would have to pay $10/month indefinitely just to USE that incredibly expensive receiver I bought. No way.
>As if anybody hasn't noticed, given the choice
>between paying one price for something or paying
>more for the same thing, which is the typical
>consumer going to pick?
So by your flawed logic, everyone in the United States uses Linux as their operating system since after all, it's much cheaper than buying a copy of Windows. What's more, all of those people also went out and bought AMD processors, which offer not only a much better price/performance ratio but offer better performance per clock than Intel processors. Funny though, I don't see any numbers that support those facts.
The fact is, no one buys these processors because no one HEARS anything about them. The reason no one hears anything about them is because they are stifled. Microsoft has agreements with every OEM they deal with requiring operating system exclusivity. You aren't allowed to have any other OS readilly accessible on a computer shipped with Windows. Research has shown that it's only a tiny slice of the consumer pie that will go out of their way to install these alternative operating systems... and even when they make the decision to do so, more often than not it requires repartitioning of the hard drive, meaning the user has to start from scratch. Not a very attractive option to someone who is just becoming computer literate.
AMD has taken the silent route for a very good reason... to keep prices low. Anyone who knows anything knows that AMD now produces a superior product when compared directly to Intel's identical line of processors. This, however, hasn't made enough of a difference to consumers, thanks to the Intel marketing machine. Instead AMD is starting to do very intelligent things... like the elimination of clock indicators. This bought them free press, the cheapest kind of advertising there is. AMD is also doing their "road show", giving away free processors in 20+ major cities. Things like these increase word-of-mouth, but allow AMD to keep expenses low, so they can make a cheaper product. They need to KEEP their products cheaper than Intel, or most of their advantage over Intel will disappear.
So please, dispense with the "cheaper = more popular" mode of thinking. It is NOT always the case that the superior product is more popular, nor that the cheaper one will be purchased more. In AMD's case, where they have both a superior AND cheaper product, they still fall far behind Intel in sales.
Instead of these other posts that sound "nagging" in nature, I'll give you a real life story as to why these things once existed, and now rarely do.
911 gets a call from a cell phone. They answer, and all they hear is a constant loud roar. After a minute or so of not being able to communicate, the line is dropped. The call comes in again, 5 to 10 minutes later. The same roar, yet no communication with anyone. The 911 operator gets curious, and makes a few calls. The line drops. Yet another call, minutes later, same roar, no human. A unit is deployed to find where this signal is coming from. Strangely enough the signal was traced to the Pontiac Silverdome (in Michigan, over 60,000+ seating).
They traced the signal to a man who was watching a Detroit Lions game. The man was quite large, probably a little too large for the seat that was given to him. Anyways, his cell phone was pressing up against the arm rest of the seat, and pushing the emergency button every time he shifted. This story is true, and there are several of these stories in existance if you take the time to talk to 911 operators.
This is the reason that cell phones now rarely have 911 buttons. This is also the reason most phones will now come with a "keyguard" function that ignores all button pushes until a certain key combination is pressed. It's just not feasible, with how easily buttons can be pushed in a pocket, on a belt, or in a purse. Cell phones may be good for many things, just not this.
I about wet myself when walking through a Meijers just the other day. I walked through the video games, and found a cartridge from Namco that absolutely had to walk out of the store with me.
Namco has released NamcoMuseum, a game cartridge for Gameboy Advance that has four of my all-time favorite legacy video games... Pole Position, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac Man, and Galaga (Galaxian too, but who cares). Combined, these four games probably took the majority of my childhood quarters. This cartridge is fantastic, because even though I used to own the consoles to run these games, as of recently I can't find anything older than my SNES. This more than makes up for my loss.
I had purchased my GBA to play all of the Gameboy games I hadn't played in years (due to a fried gameboy), so I had legacy titles in mind from the start. I only own two GBA titles... F-Zero, and the NamcoMuseum pack... and I can honestly say I haven't touched F-Zero in weeks. Merely turning on NamcoMuseum and hearing all of those familiar sound effects and songs from years ago gave me chills. I can't put this game pack down.
New games come and go... but those legacy titles never die. Hopefully in a few years I'll have enough dough to start collecting the actual arcade units... but multi-game packs like these will more than keep my attention for the time being.
Swap space is more of a secondary precaution. No one NEEDS it in a RAM-intensive PC, but it's just a precaution in case you DO fill up your RAM.
The issue here isn't necessarilly what you have open... it's more of an issue of leakage. Memory leaks plague even the best of computers. Two programs I use frequently, Photoshop and SBNews, have vicious memory leaks in them. I have 256M RAM in my P3-500 box (yeah yeah I know), and after a good session in either one of those programs, every program I open will swap like crazy until I reboot. Hell, even after a week-and-a-half of not rebooting Windows, the system will start swapping due to many little memory leaks that exist everywhere, and not just in programs... but the OS as well.
So the swap file is more of a precaution than anything. There's no need to go make a 3G swap file for a computer with 1G of RAM... but it is a very good idea to keep at least a small swap file around for those unexpected occurrences where you might need it. Hell, make a sub-40M swap file if space is tight. It's better than watching your system tie a rope around its neck and jump off your desk in the middle of a very important project.
So do you need it? No. Is it wise? Of course. If space is of the essence, make a tiny one... just make sure it's around for redundancy purposes. Chances are that once you find out you should have had one, you won't be in the best of moods as that project you just spent the last three hours on gets sucked into the void.
This is one of those situations where you have to look past the cost. Ease of use is the factor here, not to mention the fact that no one knows of a combo RF/Ethernet card. I know I've never heard of such an animal.
I do what you do, but on a larger scale. I have "accumulated" 4 ethernet cards. One a 10baseT/2 with a dongle, one a 100baseT with a connector built in, another 100baseT with a dongle, and an Orinoco (Lucent) 802.11b card. It is by FAR easier to have a different card for each network configuration.
You've got to be asking yourself, why? This is easy. Every one of my networks has a night-and-day difference from the other ones. One network is DHCP, another won't reply unless my MAC and IP are set properly, the wireless is told to only answer a specific IP... and so on. Anyways, in my laptop, the OS knows each network configuration, simply by assigning a new network configuration to each piece of hardware. As soon as you plug it in, it just works. No reconfig, no additional programs... plug the SOB in, and you're networking.
And yes, I've tried all of those icky little Netswitcher-type programs, and none of them work as well as just simply having different hardware for each config. Once it's configured, even a monkey could make it work. It may not be cost effective, but it's reliable as all hell.
You can hack TiVo to work with PAL, but not the new TiVos. The new TiVos come with several checksum routines that forbid the modification of TiVo's kernel (and some key files). This has effectively killed the PAL hack.
;)
Go to the TiVo Message Board and search the underground forum (maybe the archives, this is an old topic) for PAL. The hack only works on software version 1.3 if I remember correctly. The newer TiVos have the file checking PROM code and will go into a reboot loop if you try to do this. And no, you can't just flash the PROM to an older version, it's been tried.
It's funny... it seems as if ReplayTV has been scouring the TiVo message boards and looking for complaints from the underground. Every single one of these features are things that have been worked on or at least discussed in the TiVo Underground. Seems like the TiVo employees aren't the only ones browsing the bulletin boards in their free time.
Things of this nature have been discussed for a long time, but eventually discarded as being impractical. Now, here it is in box form, and it's even more impractical than I would have ever imagined.
First of all, I spent $250 on my 20hr TiVo, and then an additional $300 in hard drives for a total of ~144 hours recording time in 120gig of storage. This combined total is CONSIDERABLY less than their 40hr unit, and comes with over 3x more storage time. This, alone, proves that it's not worth it. And $2000? For a PVR? Don't even get me started. I would MUCH rather buy a video card with TV in and the PVR-like services that video cards are being bundled with now. Then I could record to my heart's content... not that I've ever been able to accumulate 65hrs of content on my TiVo to date...
The networked video storage... this was never spoken of (out loud) because of the frowning of not only the TiVo sponsors, but the threat of lawsuits to a young company. People seem to have major issues when you distribute copies of programs with no visual loss between generations. At least someone else is here to take the fall that TiVo couldn't.
Skipping commercials was the other big problem. This has always been available via backdoors in TiVo (removed in 2.0.1, rumored to be back in 2.5), but again, never a mainstream feature because of the sponsor problems it would cause. I'm going to be real interested to find out how the television community reacts to these features, and hopefully ReplayTV can be the whipping boy to pave the way for TiVo's next software update.
This will be the only good thing to come out of ReplayTV, the fact that every legal team even eyeing TiVo in the past will all start looking Replay's way now... and if Replay can get away with these features without a problem, expect the apprehensive TiVo to have them Q1 next year. As for me, I couldn't even consider buying a PVR for $700. I almost never bought mine for $250, there's just NO WAY I could justify that much of an expense. Not when I could get at TiVo with better service (just a few less tricks up it's sleeve) for $199 nowadays.
This a HIGHLY intelligent move by AMD. Think about it. Intel made their next-generation CPU SLOWER mhz for mhz than their PIII series. Why? So that they can boast higher mhz speeds, since the common misconception among consumers is that more mhz = = more speed! Geeks know this to be untrue, but John and Jane computer buyer don't... thus they buy the P4 2ghz since it has to be better than the other processors... there's more Ps and a higher number next to ghz!!
AMD is calling Intel's bluff, and making the mhz rating a thing of the past. They're forcing consumers to base their decisions on the CPU that is truly faster rather than staring at FUD from marketing people. Face it... clock for clock, AMD is faster than Intel - not to mention MUCH cheaper. Now they have to try to tell John and Jane consumer this... and get them to forget the mhz fallicy.
This is a BRILLIANT move by AMD, and in my mind is the first step in getting rid of the notion that more MHZ = = more speed. I think that this is better not only for the company, but for the legions of computer-buying morons as well. Now they'll have to take a closer look to their computer purchases to find out which is truly better... instead of using an old wives tail to make the decision for them.
You go, AMD.
Heh, when I first read that subject line, I thought that RC had actually came out with an RC car that drives around on your computer's desktop, with a wireless control like a normal RC car. :) Plug a little RF receiver into a serial port, and you're good to go. With a little thought and innovation, it might even be a decent replacement for a wireless mouse (though the little RC car tire skid marks might be a little distracting on a webpage...)
Now THAT would be a great time killer... and would finally force me to erase that cute little sheep.exe program.
Here's the frightening part. One time quite a while back, when w98 was still brand new, I found out about the windowsupdate site. The first couple of times I tried it, everything was quick and easy, and all was right with the world. I was actually praising Microsoft for a fantastic feature.... UNTIL...
About the 4th or 5th time in, they wanted to upgrade my ActiveX controls when I tried to enter the site. Hearing the bad things that ActiveX can do (and not being very wise at the time) I told the applet not to accept the upgrade. On top of that, I clicked the "never ask me this again" checkbox, basically denying any microsoft ActiveX updates on my computer.
In doing so, this broke the windowsupdate site, almost all ActiveX functionality, and actually forced me to do a complete reinstall to get that damn toggle out of my system. I thought it was a little ironic that telling your computer not to trust the company that made the OS it's running caused it to eat itself from the inside out... and to this day, I put quite a bit of thought into either checking the "yes" or "no" boxes on Microsoft installs, and I have never touched any "always" or "never" checkboxes since.
That was a good read. There is a lot of the assumptions that I'm skeptical about, and I would love to read the reaction of the more skeptical of the /. crowd to see how realistic the assumptions really are.
:)
Not that I haven't submitted a good story or two in my day that has been denied... but this one really peaked my interest, especially given the recent outbreak of worms. Until someone gives the internet the pill I give my dog all the time, we need to start planning ahead before this type of thing really does cripple the internet.
Personally, I can imagine much worse attacks than the one listed in that article... all it would take is a good firmware flaw in a few key internet routers, and tahdah, the internet slinks along at the once familiar speed of 28.8kbps. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything.
It's funny, you actually beat me to that exact comment. :)
...
Found just two articles down on the front page:
On the geek side, their server is a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable running a port of Aache and PHP." Something seems extremely suspicious about that server
I could put myself through college finding typos on Slashdot...
To complement this fabulous new key spying technology, the FBI is now actively using special tracking devices to find the locations of certain computers. Although the FBI was unavailable for comment, keylogs of sensitive FBI laptops were obtained from an anonymous source.
In analyzing the data received from the laptops, it is obvious that some sort of high-tech encryption has been used, since none of the information obtained contains any human-readable content. A snippet of the data used to control this high-tech tracking mechanism was released to the press earlier today. The following line from the logs seems to control this amazing new tracking technology:
c:\msdos\tracert.exe
Yes, I do remember hearing about this somewhere. In fact I saw a link posted on /. to Dell's survey, but by the time I got to the link the survey was gone (or the link was bad). I searched around on their website, and it was nowhere to be found.
I would never buy a pre-made PC from anyone (I'm a do-it-yourselfer and very anti-everything-on-one-board), but you can't exactly go out and build your own laptop. Regardless, I feel that AMD is at the point where they will continue to provide processors that are superior to Intel (provided they stay on the same track they're on now), and even the next power desktop I build will be carrying AMD Inside. Their mobile processors are no different - after spending hours going over graphs and reading thorough explanations over at Tom's Hardware, plus looking at the MSRP difference between AMD and Intel processors, I just can't bring myself to paying more for a label when they truly do provide an inferior product to the competition.
Dell has really been trying to dig into the "value" laptop market... I guess I don't understand why a part of that plan isn't purchasing faster processors at a lower price. Not to mention they won't burn up in my lap like my wonderful PII/233 does.
I still have my Inspiron 3200 - though it's about time for a new one. It was cutting edge at the time... PII/233 with 4gig... it was really cool, but that damn thing was so hot it just about lit on fire after a little while at 100% load. It's just too old to do anything I want it to (sucks at gaming, too small to triple-OS it, etc) and thus I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop in the near future. The support I've had from Dell has been fantastic to say the least (best repair policy I've ever dealt with), and I would never consider any other laptop maker... oh yeah, except for one thing.
WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO START MAKING AMD LAPTOPS?
I'm all for their power line with the Geforce2, too much RAM and HD, etc... but I would MUCH rather purchase an AMD-based laptop for oh-so-many reasons (not the least being performance-per-$$). I'm sure they're bound by some piece of paper they signed at some point in the past... but this is the main reason I haven't ALREADY bought a new laptop from Dell.
I don't consider Dell not including Linux on laptops a big story... I'd much rather do it myself so I can triple-partition and get WinNT, Win9x and Linux on the same laptop. But when are they ever going to wise up and start including AMD processors in their laptops? Is there something fairly obvious I'm missing here?
PVRs are a godsend. I've had my TiVo for about half-a-year, and I almost refuse to watch TV without it. I watch twice as many programs as I used to, and I do it all in the same amount of time I've always had.
:)
TiVo's suggestions and season passes are fantastic. I have a very intrusive work schedule, and I used to have a hard time keeping up with a lot of the shows I like to watch on a daily basis. With my modified 144hr TiVo, I literally set season passes up for every show I like to watch - and view them whenever it's convenient. Skipping commercials saves a good 1/4 of my time, and it's ideal for watching time-shifted sports. Wrastlin' for example (ok ok, sports entertainment... whatever) is awesome on TiVo... 60x FF through commercials and "reviews", 2x FF through matches you don't care too much about (since you can still see all the action), and watch all of the rest of the program. I nuke a 1:07 WWF RAW in 31min. I also will purposely start watching shows late, just to have the ability to burn through any TV show. I can watch yesterday's and today's Simpsons episode in just about the same half-hour.
Probably the best feature of TiVo is the instant replay. I use it often for catching those commercials that are absolutely hysterical, or even more for "live TV mishaps"... when someone accidently cuts to a backstage camera or puts something on the screen that certainly shouldn't be there. It's perfect for that flasher that walks up behind your local news guy's stand-up.