I second XXCopy. I have it scheduled on my file server, as a free once-a-day mirroring utility from drive D: to drive E:. It works great, and outputs what it did in a very nice manner.
A new search engine is being built. This will get it's results from Google and display it as an MSN offering, with our ads. Beta for this expected in a week's time!
Those cameras are far enough apart to provide 3d playback. So not only does he record events, but he records events that can be full 3D with the right VR goggles.
I guessing on this, but it's the only explanation for 2 cameras....
I considered FLAC, but went with WAV because everything can play it, and as a hobbyist coder, WAV is easier to program for (built in APIs in Windows etc).
As the code is mostly my own, I can always update and convert the master library at a later date. So if FLAC or Lossless WMA (LOL!) becomes a better standard, I'll switch to that.
What I forgot to mention was the complete app list and it's dependencies.
Ripper: My Own Tool, CDRipper.EXE
-Querys CDDB
-Querys Amazons XML feed
-Uses Windows API for CDA control and track ripping
-Can run 'hands free', pops the drive tray when done, plays a sound, waits for new cd.
mp3Encoder: My Own Tool, MusicSync.EXE
-Internal code to work out what to sync.
-uses cmd line encoder (LAME at the moment*) to create mp3s
-uses AudioGenie.OCX (google it) to embed ID3 tags including APIC
(*I'm looking for a command line WMA encoder - does anyone know of one?)
'Ripped' isn't really the right word. 'Copied' is more accurate. Each track is copied as an uncompressed WAV file. Each CD consumes approx 400mb of disk space. The WAVs are the same bit rate as the CD Audio; Nero will just copy them back without any conversion if I was to burn an audio CD.
The folder structure is as follows:
L:\Music\
Artist Name\
Album Name\
01 Track Name.WAV
There is also an XML file with all the album info in it including the CDDB query ID in case I need to requery CDDB without needing the actual CD. Additionally both.m3u and.pls playlist files are auto created. Finally a album cover photo (from Amazons XML feed) is auto downloaded and placed into the folder as folder.jpg
Why did I do it like this ? I'm lazy. I don't want to re-rip my collection. Ever. As disks get bigger, at some point ~7mb 256k mp3s are going to look tiny. On a good system ($2000 amp + speakers) mp3s DO NOT sound as good as the original CDs. My WAVs however, sound identical.
For my portable mp3 player (see, I'm not totally anti-mp3) I have an ActiveSync-type tool which converts selected albums from the Music Library to 256k mp3s. If I decided I want 384k or even 160k mp3s instead, I can just alter a setting in the tool, and batch re-encode to the player. As part of the mp3 encoding process the folder.jpg album cover is embedded into the mp3 using the IDv2 tag 'APIC' (my mp3 player displays these on screen).
For ripping the CDs originally, I wrote a tool that rips at the max speed of your optical drive. In my system it rips a CD in about 3 minutes. I can run 2 copies of the tool, and have each one ripping from a different drive simultaneously, although I think this saturates the IDE channel, as rip speeds decrease. This tool can also defeat 'most' DRMd CDs (not the latest batch tho).
Overall the system works great, this is the first time I've written up how it all works, so apologies if bits aren't clear. If anyones interested in the tools I use, feel free to contact me.
Yes, very true. However the Internal Web Services team, are rarely the Desktop Updates Team, and in my experience (15 years in Financial IT) the two never talk. Also a lot of web apps are 'off the shelf' and the people that maintain them internally don't have the skills to rejigg the HTML - and also may not be aware that the vendor has or hasn't provided a workaround patch.
Either way, this patch release _must_ be managed correctly within the corporate IT space.
The bigger problem here is that this update enforces the ActiveX patch that was released a while back, y'know the one that causes inline ActiveX controls to not fire up, but to display that 'Click Here to Active This Control' message instead.
Not a major problem out on the Internet, but many Corporates have internal web apps where this patch is going to screw things up royally.
But this is the whole point. Even after all their protestations to the contrary, the US is far LESS integrated racially and culturally than the UK. The UK has had a mix of different cultures since the dawn of time, millenias before the discovery of the 'New World'. As such, when the european borders were opened up, and we started getting eastern european migrants arriving, to do all manner of blue collar work, we took in our stride, and in the most instance, absorbed them into the community.
From a non-US point of view, the US is inherently racist. Yes it's got lots of cultures, but they are all ghettoised, blacks hang with blacks, latinos with latinos, and WASPs just sit in their big New-England houses sneering at everyone else.
It is for all intents and purposes a defect, if you thought the product you were buying was a movie/music that you could use however you like.
Except you can't. Re-read the copyright disclaimer when you play a DVD. By buying it, you have paid for the right to watch it, that is all. Even then you can only watch it in certain circumstances (less than 20 of you, not on an oil rig or in a pub etc...). The DVD disc may be be yours to do with what you want, but the data on it is not, and never has been. DRM is simply one step further in enforcing those already existing rights.
I don't agree with DRM, but then I don't agree with Piracy. However I also feel that most movies and music certainly arn't even worth the blank media they are printed on. So what do I do ? I vote with my wallet - I don't buy the disc. At some point down the line I'll watch the movie on Sky, and with the music - well there's plenty of other music out there that isn't DRMd and is far better quality (as in ability not bit rate).
-Jar.
NB. Is the new Slashdot CSS for myopic people? I'm sure everything is now 30% bigger? Plus this input comment box is too shallow.
You have to pay for a Season Pass? I'm not a TiVo owner so I don't know how it works.
In the UK, Sky (the monopolistic satellite TV operator), upgraded their set top boxes to 'Sky+' which included a DVR (or PVR). As part of this upgrade the OS added a 'series link' button which tags a show for record, and if that record is successful, then the next episode gets auto tagged for record too, this then repeats until the end of the season, ensuring that you get the whole season recorded automatically. I believe it's the same as TiVo season pass, but it's free (ie. no extra surcharge).
Sky didn't need a licence change for the DVR bit (iirc), they just updated their boxes.
I boot a new dell machine, just once, so that I can see ALL the crap thats installed! You just have to do it, just to a apprecieate the effort thats been put in by the dell build designers to well and truly foobar up what is essentually good hardware, for an even better price.
Once i've the got the 'htf can they sleep after putting all this crap on the desktop' rant out of my system, I slide in my WinXPSP2 CD, and put the world right again.
Extending on from this - Don't forget about accessability. A correctly placed well named button is only half as good as a correctly placed well named button with a shortcut key. If your application is more than just a use-occasionally tool, and is something users are expected to use on a regular basis, ensure that they have many (standard) ways of accessing each function. Also although you think you've found a really nice way to render dialogs, or buttons, or toolbars, think about whether partially sighted people can use them, and whether yout custom widgets are screen-reader compatible or not.
My UI pet hates: Windows Media Player (we're all agreed on this one I think), Lotus Notes (So many chances to get it right, and they fail), and at the moment, Windows Vista (waaay to much eye candy).
My IU pet loves: Firefox (it just works), Windows Messenger 4.7 (MSN messenger on the other hand is unusable now), and Microsoft Word 2003 (for such a complex app, a lot of it is quite logical)
However, modifying %ProgramFiles% is fine for us SysAdmins, but your average Joe User isn't going to have a clue on how to do it - The application will barf, and Mr Dad will say 'Sod it. I'll give myself Admin', because life is simply too short to faff about with these things.
Vista's approach, while not perfect does redress problem somewhat. If an app needs admin, Vista pops up a dialog asking for User/Pass of an admin account (a bit like an automatic SU) - I'm not sure if Vista knows each app and what it need via some list, or if code analysis is at play (I doubt it), but my experience of the Vista betas, seems to indicated that this system CAN work.
Now, the real question is, why can't MS add that functionality to XP ?
Being honest about it, the majority of people who 'buy' pirated movies don't care about it being in the highest definition. The sheer fact that they got 'The Da Vinci Code' from a small oriental woman in the pub last night for only 3 quid, on a shiny DVD-R in a paper slip case is good enough for them - even if it's only standard DVD quality.
Think back to how many people had pirate copies of ET? Well all did. And it was horrible. All grainy and very dark and very green. However, the sheer buzz of actually having a copy you could watch totally outweighed that.
If I were a commercial pirate, (and I'm not, just to make it clear) - I'd happily burn the 540p downscaled HD content onto DVD - it'd look as good as DVD and most of my punters will be overjoyed at this fact.
Yet again NASA prove that they should no longer be in charge of the western worlds space exploration. This is another example of why the private sector should be allowed prosper with it's own plans and designs. As the X-prize has shown, NASA is a dinosaur and should either be put down or evolve by embrace privately funded initiatives.
Allowing them to just grow rice that can save lives (children die of dehydration there) is pretty worthwhile.
Is it?
Then what do we do when they continue to have 15 children each, all of which now survive to adulthood because of the super-rice, and those children have a further 15 more children etc?
The developing world will become more and more of a burden than it already is - There's a reason nature kills off so many of the population in these areas - it's because places like (poor) asia, and africa cannot sustain large self sufficient populations. This is why first-world charity events to aid the poor of the third-world is a pointless act of chasing ones tail.
Slashdot Mirror
You must be new here. :)
I second XXCopy. I have it scheduled on my file server, as a free once-a-day mirroring utility from drive D: to drive E:. It works great, and outputs what it did in a very nice manner.
-Jar.
Update: The beta is now available at http://www.live.com/
Those cameras are far enough apart to provide 3d playback. So not only does he record events, but he records events that can be full 3D with the right VR goggles.
I guessing on this, but it's the only explanation for 2 cameras....
-Jar.
Thanks for that. Exactly what I need. I had looked on MS's site before, but for some reason I never found that page.
I'll mod you up, on one of your other posts.
-Jar.
I considered FLAC, but went with WAV because everything can play it, and as a hobbyist coder, WAV is easier to program for (built in APIs in Windows etc).
As the code is mostly my own, I can always update and convert the master library at a later date. So if FLAC or Lossless WMA (LOL!) becomes a better standard, I'll switch to that.
What I forgot to mention was the complete app list and it's dependencies.
Ripper: My Own Tool, CDRipper.EXE
-Querys CDDB
-Querys Amazons XML feed
-Uses Windows API for CDA control and track ripping
-Can run 'hands free', pops the drive tray when done, plays a sound, waits for new cd.
mp3Encoder: My Own Tool, MusicSync.EXE
-Internal code to work out what to sync.
-uses cmd line encoder (LAME at the moment*) to create mp3s
-uses AudioGenie.OCX (google it) to embed ID3 tags including APIC
(*I'm looking for a command line WMA encoder - does anyone know of one?)
-Jar.
I have 'ripped' them to a 250GB USB2 drive.
'Ripped' isn't really the right word. 'Copied' is more accurate. Each track is copied as an uncompressed WAV file. Each CD consumes approx 400mb of disk space. The WAVs are the same bit rate as the CD Audio; Nero will just copy them back without any conversion if I was to burn an audio CD.
The folder structure is as follows:There is also an XML file with all the album info in it including the CDDB query ID in case I need to requery CDDB without needing the actual CD. Additionally both
Why did I do it like this ? I'm lazy. I don't want to re-rip my collection. Ever. As disks get bigger, at some point ~7mb 256k mp3s are going to look tiny. On a good system ($2000 amp + speakers) mp3s DO NOT sound as good as the original CDs. My WAVs however, sound identical.
For my portable mp3 player (see, I'm not totally anti-mp3) I have an ActiveSync-type tool which converts selected albums from the Music Library to 256k mp3s. If I decided I want 384k or even 160k mp3s instead, I can just alter a setting in the tool, and batch re-encode to the player. As part of the mp3 encoding process the folder.jpg album cover is embedded into the mp3 using the IDv2 tag 'APIC' (my mp3 player displays these on screen).
For ripping the CDs originally, I wrote a tool that rips at the max speed of your optical drive. In my system it rips a CD in about 3 minutes. I can run 2 copies of the tool, and have each one ripping from a different drive simultaneously, although I think this saturates the IDE channel, as rip speeds decrease. This tool can also defeat 'most' DRMd CDs (not the latest batch tho).
Overall the system works great, this is the first time I've written up how it all works, so apologies if bits aren't clear. If anyones interested in the tools I use, feel free to contact me.
-Jar.
Yes, very true. However the Internal Web Services team, are rarely the Desktop Updates Team, and in my experience (15 years in Financial IT) the two never talk. Also a lot of web apps are 'off the shelf' and the people that maintain them internally don't have the skills to rejigg the HTML - and also may not be aware that the vendor has or hasn't provided a workaround patch.
Either way, this patch release _must_ be managed correctly within the corporate IT space.
-Jar.
The bigger problem here is that this update enforces the ActiveX patch that was released a while back, y'know the one that causes inline ActiveX controls to not fire up, but to display that 'Click Here to Active This Control' message instead.
Not a major problem out on the Internet, but many Corporates have internal web apps where this patch is going to screw things up royally.
-Jar.
But this is the whole point. Even after all their protestations to the contrary, the US is far LESS integrated racially and culturally than the UK. The UK has had a mix of different cultures since the dawn of time, millenias before the discovery of the 'New World'. As such, when the european borders were opened up, and we started getting eastern european migrants arriving, to do all manner of blue collar work, we took in our stride, and in the most instance, absorbed them into the community.
From a non-US point of view, the US is inherently racist. Yes it's got lots of cultures, but they are all ghettoised, blacks hang with blacks, latinos with latinos, and WASPs just sit in their big New-England houses sneering at everyone else.
Just my 2p on this, but I bet I get modded down.
-Jar.
At the bottom of the article it clearly says:
Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
However the Slashdot summary was a direct cut and paste of the opening paragraph of the article.
I get it now, the secret to getting submissions published on Slashdot is to just rape the text of the originating article for your summary.
-Jar.
Because then, no-one would upgrade. Upgrading = More Money for MS/Intel/Dell
Hell I'd love to try out Windows 3.1 with the abstraction layer that emulates Aero Glass! Watch my i386 become l33t before your very eyes!
-Jar.
Way to go! You've just guaranteed that the owners of your-site.com now have thousands of 404s in their web logs, with slashdot referers ;)
-Jar.
It is for all intents and purposes a defect, if you thought the product you were buying was a movie/music that you could use however you like.
Except you can't. Re-read the copyright disclaimer when you play a DVD. By buying it, you have paid for the right to watch it, that is all. Even then you can only watch it in certain circumstances (less than 20 of you, not on an oil rig or in a pub etc...). The DVD disc may be be yours to do with what you want, but the data on it is not, and never has been. DRM is simply one step further in enforcing those already existing rights.
I don't agree with DRM, but then I don't agree with Piracy. However I also feel that most movies and music certainly arn't even worth the blank media they are printed on. So what do I do ? I vote with my wallet - I don't buy the disc. At some point down the line I'll watch the movie on Sky, and with the music - well there's plenty of other music out there that isn't DRMd and is far better quality (as in ability not bit rate).
-Jar.
NB. Is the new Slashdot CSS for myopic people? I'm sure everything is now 30% bigger? Plus this input comment box is too shallow.
Woah, Deja Vu.
Dude, it was too subtle. We didn't get it ;)
-Jar.
You have to pay for a Season Pass? I'm not a TiVo owner so I don't know how it works.
In the UK, Sky (the monopolistic satellite TV operator), upgraded their set top boxes to 'Sky+' which included a DVR (or PVR). As part of this upgrade the OS added a 'series link' button which tags a show for record, and if that record is successful, then the next episode gets auto tagged for record too, this then repeats until the end of the season, ensuring that you get the whole season recorded automatically. I believe it's the same as TiVo season pass, but it's free (ie. no extra surcharge).
Sky didn't need a licence change for the DVR bit (iirc), they just updated their boxes.
-Jar.
I boot a new dell machine, just once, so that I can see ALL the crap thats installed! You just have to do it, just to a apprecieate the effort thats been put in by the dell build designers to well and truly foobar up what is essentually good hardware, for an even better price.
Once i've the got the 'htf can they sleep after putting all this crap on the desktop' rant out of my system, I slide in my WinXPSP2 CD, and put the world right again.
-Jar.
Extending on from this - Don't forget about accessability. A correctly placed well named button is only half as good as a correctly placed well named button with a shortcut key. If your application is more than just a use-occasionally tool, and is something users are expected to use on a regular basis, ensure that they have many (standard) ways of accessing each function. Also although you think you've found a really nice way to render dialogs, or buttons, or toolbars, think about whether partially sighted people can use them, and whether yout custom widgets are screen-reader compatible or not.
My UI pet hates: Windows Media Player (we're all agreed on this one I think), Lotus Notes (So many chances to get it right, and they fail), and at the moment, Windows Vista (waaay to much eye candy).
My IU pet loves: Firefox (it just works), Windows Messenger 4.7 (MSN messenger on the other hand is unusable now), and Microsoft Word 2003 (for such a complex app, a lot of it is quite logical)
-Jar.
However, modifying %ProgramFiles% is fine for us SysAdmins, but your average Joe User isn't going to have a clue on how to do it - The application will barf, and Mr Dad will say 'Sod it. I'll give myself Admin', because life is simply too short to faff about with these things.
Vista's approach, while not perfect does redress problem somewhat. If an app needs admin, Vista pops up a dialog asking for User/Pass of an admin account (a bit like an automatic SU) - I'm not sure if Vista knows each app and what it need via some list, or if code analysis is at play (I doubt it), but my experience of the Vista betas, seems to indicated that this system CAN work.
Now, the real question is, why can't MS add that functionality to XP ?
-Jar.
Being honest about it, the majority of people who 'buy' pirated movies don't care about it being in the highest definition. The sheer fact that they got 'The Da Vinci Code' from a small oriental woman in the pub last night for only 3 quid, on a shiny DVD-R in a paper slip case is good enough for them - even if it's only standard DVD quality.
Think back to how many people had pirate copies of ET? Well all did. And it was horrible. All grainy and very dark and very green. However, the sheer buzz of actually having a copy you could watch totally outweighed that.
If I were a commercial pirate, (and I'm not, just to make it clear) - I'd happily burn the 540p downscaled HD content onto DVD - it'd look as good as DVD and most of my punters will be overjoyed at this fact.
-Jar
You're not alone. I always wondered why the movie was called that! Now I know!
-Jar.
Yet again NASA prove that they should no longer be in charge of the western worlds space exploration. This is another example of why the private sector should be allowed prosper with it's own plans and designs. As the X-prize has shown, NASA is a dinosaur and should either be put down or evolve by embrace privately funded initiatives.
-Jar.
Allowing them to just grow rice that can save lives (children die of dehydration there) is pretty worthwhile.
Is it?
Then what do we do when they continue to have 15 children each, all of which now survive to adulthood because of the super-rice, and those children have a further 15 more children etc?
The developing world will become more and more of a burden than it already is - There's a reason nature kills off so many of the population in these areas - it's because places like (poor) asia, and africa cannot sustain large self sufficient populations. This is why first-world charity events to aid the poor of the third-world is a pointless act of chasing ones tail.
-Jar.
There's always the AOpen 'Mac Mini' intel-x86 clone ?
It's a 2ghz intel-proc in a box no bigger than the mac mini.
-Jar.