American Pie also has both "R" and "Unrated" versions and Showgirls I think is "R" and "NC-17".
The problem with these two examples, IIRC, is that BOTH of them are using separate one-sided discs! Which, IMHO, is the ultimate side for movie studios.
I mean, come on...I shell out $18 for a movie and you want me to pay another $18 just because you are too greedy/cheap to stick it on the other side? That is unforgivable and I have no problem with downloading a pirate copy of the version that I don't have, and hopefully being able to someday put them on either side of a single DVD.
Sick sick sick...soon we will have to pay for every single variation and iteration separately unless we put a stop to this. How many people feel cheated about paying $7.50 to see Toy Story 2 and then having to pay anouther $7.50 just to see the outtakes they added a month after the release???
That's because some DVD discs (like I think Payback is an example) put the copyright notice before the movie itself, while others put the copyright notice at the very beginning of the disc.
IE -
Mulan = Copyright, menu, movie Payback = Menu, copyright, movie.
For those discs, the copyright is just a chapter like any other chapter and you can skip it. But for disc with the copyright notice at the beginning, it often has its own title, so you can't just skip to the next chapter (there are none). And of course the DVD players know not to let you change title nor bring up the menu until after it finishes playing.
The problem is either a) bad DVD design by stupid companies (Disney = awful, Warner = great) or b) DVD player cannot or will not allow a viewer to control his or her own movie experience! Since this feature is nothing but a thorn in the user's side, I imagine it is a requirement of DVD licensing and not just all brands thinking the same way.
Does MPEG2 playback allow for branching in a video stream? What I mean is, with every player/movie combination I have seen, you can't change the angle during playback...only from the main menu.
Example...Mulan DVD has both widescreen and standard versions on one disc. They make you pick every time you initiate playback. There is now way to set it to default to one or the other (since DVD players all seem to forget everything the second you eject a disc). Nor can you start playback in one mode (like widescreen) then decide to switch to standard half-way through. You have to stop playback and then start over with the new stream.
Is this a limitation with software or with the DVD design? The main reason I ask is that one of the features being advertised back in the early DVD days was the idea of having several different ratings on a single disc. You could have a movie with both "R" and "PG" ratings.
In looking at over 5000 DVD titles, I have NEVER seen a single disc that does this...I would love to be able to have my younger siblings watch certain movies with me, but I often have to wait for them to come out on TV with badly-editted patches and scene cuts.
So, my question is...are multi-rating discs simply not being sold, or is it technically impossible for a DVD stream to switch right in the middle (to cut out a nude scene, for example).
I'd like to know if there is someway I can modify the content of a DVD disc to get rid of those annoying copyright notices.
They used to be a minor irritation back in the VHS days because you had to fast-forward through them, but now it seems that part of the requirement for being a licensed DVD decoder is that you block people from fast-forwarding or skipping these #@$@!#$ notices. The worst offender is Disney, who makes you sit through about five minutes worth of crap in both French and Engligh EVERY TIME YOU USE THE DISC. My Toshiba player automatically shuts off after 20 minutes (as do many others) so I have to sit through this crap every time I turn on the player (since it autoplays discs).
Can DeCSS pull out just the A/V content and leave all the copyright/menu crap behind? If so, that's another reason to use DeCSS. There is not damn reason why I should have to endure that for the "privaledege" of watching a movie I paid $30 to own.
Thank god Warner Brothers movies just go right to the main menu when they turn them on. Bravo!
You are bootlegged. Check out any of the ASF/VIV channels on IRC and you will know doubt find a few bootlegged Simpsons episodes...right next to SouthPark and the ever-present "Jerry Springer: Too Hot for TV".
Speaking of which...what exactly is the pattern to the show labels they use (e.g. - 4f15). Is the first number the season? How come the recent episodes I have seen are only 6 or something? Is it a hexadecimal number? What? Maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention...
I've always thought it would be a good idea to rig some kind of hydralic pump and then put one of those Jaws of Life (capable of 10,000 PSI or whatever) to just snip the competition in half.
I haven't read the rules thoroughly, but perhaps that is as illegal as generating an EMP to short out the opponents controller. I figure they banned electrical warfare because it just sucks to watch (talk about an anti-climax) but I think the Jaws would be a big crowd pleaser.
There was an AOL keyword for HAL back in '97
on
Happy Birthday, HAL!
·
· Score: 1
I remember back in 1997 (on HAL's real birthday) some AOL tech with a sense of humor created a little birthday card for HAL at something like keyword HAL or whatever. Probably the same joker that made keyword BITE ME a backdoor to keyboard WEB. I wonder if it is still there?
It's the Carver Global Media Network
on
AOL Nation
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· Score: 1
Starring Steve Case. Now, who get to play Bond and let Case fall at the hands of his own devices?
Bond: "You forgot one thing, Case..."
case: "What's that?"
Bond: "Give the people what they want."
Bond presses the button that causes an auto-forwarding e-mail virus to send free AOL software to everyone on the planet at the same time, causing servers to spark, explode and collapse in a pile on top of Case.
Yes, you always have your watch with you because it's primary use is a timepiece and secondary function is a PIM. On a Palm, the primary use is PIM and secondary is timepiece.
I may not carry my Palm around on my wrist, but I keep it in my briefcase so when an alarm goes off, I am nearby. The only time I don't have my Palm near me is when I'm at home and don't have any appointments anyway!
Now that I think about it, it must be a real pain to enter information on the watch (scroll through letters one at a time, etc) so maybe this is design to enter information on Palm where it is much easier then send it to your watch. If that is the case, I sure hope that it is an IR transfer and not some funky wire or worse a Palm-to-PC-back-to-Watch method.
I don't understand why Casio is advertsising their PIM watch as "being able to syncronize with a Palm device". Aren't the functions of these devices identical? I mean, either you carry around the watch or you carry around the Palm...but never both. How annoying would it be to have to mute two alarms every time you had an appointment?
And as far as the MP3 watch goes, I don't understand the point of having rechargeable batteries. I have owned Casio watches for years, and the main reason I buy the waterproof ones is so I never have to take it off. If I have to take the MP3 watch off my wrist every night to recharge the batteries, then I'm going to be walking around my house staring at the blank wrist where my watch is supposed to be.
The wrist camera, however, is a totally cool idea that has almost 1000 possible abuses. It's small enough for perverts to embed in their shoes for crystal clear upskirts. Take off the bands and then you can wedge it into a crack in a changing room. If Casio is truly sick, they'll link the timer to the camera so you can program the watch to take pictures in X minute intervals.
One of the stupidest ideas, IMO, is that companies think they should be able to charge me over and over for the same content. If I go to a movie and some idiot talks or laughs during a critical part of the dialog, I'm expected to fork over another $7 to hear what I missed. On the other hand, if I buy the tape then magically I can watch it as often as I want.
Of course, this is only because the technology doesn't allow them to charge me each time I see that tape...but we are heading that way. Divx was a prime example. Streaming media is another. We are moving into new Dark Age; a period when any time we see or hear anything educational or entertaining, it will cost us. Someday when mental interfaces have been perfected, we will probably be charged just for remembering part of a concert or movie that previously experienced. [/cynical]
I say fight. This program is my new favorite tool to take back my rights as a consumer. "If I can hear it, I can record it" as the saying goes. The idea behind this program is a perfect exmaple of that. RIAA is going to have to convince me to install some new hardware in my machine if they want to be able to stop me.
2) Find a good idea (hint: watch the little numbers...good ideas have 4's and 5's!)
3) Run, don't walk, down to the patent office and file for a patent on that idea (be sure to use key patent terms like "process", "method" and "system" to make it as broad as possible).
4) Wait six to ten months for the patent office to stare cluelessly at the patent and eventually give up on "seeking prior art" (patent employees do not read SlashDot...lucky for you!)
5) Take fresh patent and go beat several companies over the head with it. As long as the amount you demand is less than the cost of defense, you'll get paid.
I have often played with this idea in my mind and have figured out that the most realistic solutions is as follows:
Have the person wear a suit that is suspended by wires. The wires would both provide lift (to keep the person upright) and register joint motion (bending and turning).
The foot would be placed in a cradle that has a stilt attached to both the ball and heel of the foot. The tips of the stilts would have ball and socket connections to allow for free rotation. The stilts will be connected by cross-braces to allow for tilt and pitch.
Servos would either apply resistance to provide lift and simulate contact. When the program calculated the foot had hit ground, the servo would apply enough force to prevent the foot from moving any lower. When the person lifted his or her foot (detected by weight sensors in the foot cradle) the serve would feed enough force to counter the weight of the device.
With enough tuning, this system could be configured to feel just like a pair of combat boots. It would also have an extra advantage: terrain. You can't simulate changes in terrain with bearing meshes and spheres. This means you've gone from a situation where you can only simulate combat vehicles to a situation where you can only simulate building combat.
With the stilt system, each foot have have separate heights. Even if it were pitch black, the user could feel his way around with just his feet. If the user were at the edge of a cliff, he would put his foot in front of him and find that the servos give no support whatsoever.
Anyway, I doubt this would be practical enough that Logitech could come out with a home version, but in cases where money is no object, it is very doable. Still, I think it is rather obvious. If it isn't already patented well...oops. I guess now it will be. =P
I think you'll be best off going with rackspace.com for several reasons:
1) Buying hardware means you have to spend a lot to get a system that can scale up to the maximum capacity you anticipate, or go the cheap route and risk having to replace the system rather quickly. RackSpace offers leased solutions that you can scale up by just adding a few dollars to the monthly fee. Start with the single processor 300MHz/32MB machine while your site is growing and audience, and when it starts lagging, just pay an extra $50/month and you move to a nice 450MHz/64MB machine.
2) They have three separate T3 connections to the three major backbone providers. The are located in the middle of the United States which means they can avoid most of the MAE lag points. They only charge about $6/month for 2 gigabytes of transfer, which is all a startup web company is going to be using. DSL can easily handle this traffic, but what happens if your site gets SlashDotted? It'll get taken out quick. And you'll have to scramble to find the money to pay for a T1 in case it happens again. RackSpace can give you the whole damn T3 is you need it, and simply charge you for the data transfers.
3) Their facility is located in a geologically stable area, unlike the West and East Coast. The only think they worry about is power failure, and they have giant UPS systems and backup generators. Your hardware will be kept cool and safe, and if something breaks, all the hardware is identical so they just pull your drive and put it in another box and away you go. They can even do tape backup for you and rebuild a box if the drive dies.
4) They offer Cobalt products, which are incredibly easy to setup and manage. You could literally be in the ISP business for around $200/month with maybe an hour setup time.
Both Cobalt and RaskSpace are SlashDot sponsors, and they are both Linux solution providers (although RackSpace can really put any OS you want on your box, *BSD or NT).
I'm also starting a web business and after months of investigating, I decided that leasing a RackSpace solution and getting myself a decent DSL connection to remotely administer it was the best way to go. Oh, you don't have to do everything by remote...if you send RackSpace a CD, they can load it for you. That'll save you about 650MB worth of transfer costs.
I am primarily a Windows user (hey, it's a living) so I'd like to suggest an alternative: pcAnywhere
Everyone who has to support remote facilities with Windows box knows pcAnywhere, but a lot of people forget it works just as well two feet away.
I have about six different computers on a hub running various flavors of Windows (95, 98, NT, 2K) and I have pcAnywhere host running 24-7 on all of them. My primary workstation is a 98 box with two monitors. This works great because I can run a pcAnywhere session in full screen on one monitor and still have access to the workstation itself.
So I have one good keyboard, one good scrollmouse, one good 21" monitor and one decent 15" monitor. I can get to any of my six computers and put them in any combination on either monitor. It works quite well. I do have to tone down the color scale a bit, since pcAnywhere is a bit sluggish sending 1024 x 768 hi-color images around a 10Mbps LAN.
Since my 21" is 1600 x 1200, if I need to work with multiple computers, I can fit their entire desktop (800 x 600 or 1024 x 768) in a window and then ALT-TAB between them. Much better than arcane keyboard sequences.
I like it. I think SlashDotters should pressure Symantec for a Linux version. I mean, they support DOS so it's obviously a console-friendly product. Maybe someone can even creat an open source alternatice or figure out the protocol (it's just sending graphic images and capturing keyboard/mouse activity).
Censorship is not the way to end first posting, especially not the "banned words" kind.
Or did you miss the recent story about New York schools?
Let me remind you that censoring "first post" and "37337" would have dumped your post off the system! I myself like to make the occastion joke about 37337 d00dz so I am quite content to just set my threshold to 0 and let the moderators do their jobs. If you watch, you'll notice that 90% of the first posts are moderated down to -1 within minutes. The system, in my opinion, works.
I think what Microsoft considers "operating system" is anything that shows up on the "Windows Setup" tab of the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel and any hardware drivers.
Considering how much those categories (Accessories, Communication, System Tools, etc) have grown over the various versions, and considering that Windows continues to support obsolete hardware, I have no doubt that they have stuff 40 million lines worth of stuff into Windows 2000.
To mean, the definition of an operating system is the code that must execute on a day-to-day basis to perform the tasks I request. This would exclude networking code (since the system could easily be standalone) and especially most of the driver code (since I have, at most, six or seven hardware vendors). I mean, Windows still has drivers for 9-pin dot matrix printers, and when was the last time you saw one of those? I counted at least 50MB worth of DLLs in Windows NT 4.0 that I'll never use, simply because my only printer is an HP.
As much as I admire the goal of hardware detection, I would at least like to be able to prune the drive list. I may not know WHICH S3 chipset I have installed, but I know it's not Cirrus Logic or Matrox or Diamond...so what the hell am I doing warehousing those never-to-be-used DLLs?
Most people (unless they are insanely addicted to digging around for installation CDs) are going to put a copy of the i386 directory on the local drive. With NT4, this cost you 150MB or so. What's it cost now for Win2000? 500MB? I think there is 120MB of stuff that is only there to provide foreign language support I NEVER plan to use.
All I want is the amount of code necessary to boot the system, log me in, and give me VGA mode. I can install the specific drivers I need myself, as well as better versions of any program Microsoft is going to include for free.
You know, whenever I read some really good piece of science fiction, the terror is never caused by something called BubbleBoy...or Melissa, or Good Times, or any of these other stupid names.
At this rate, when some genetic mutagen is released that destroys all of mankind, it'll probably be called the Pokemon virus.
You, the elite Allied moderator, are trapped in a forum full of Nazi first posters, Beowulfers, and El33t D00dz. Pull out that trusty sidearm and fire them into -1 oblivion.
In theory, the cost of a patent should be the cost that the US Patent and Trademark Office charges you for all the filing fees. I think it was like $2000 last time I checked their website.
The problem is that patents (especially intellectual property patents) are not something that you want to do yourself. Nor are they something you want to hire small-time lawyers (paralegals or your law-school buddies) to do. The reason is that if you screw something up, you might have your patent thrown out in court if some big company challenges it.
Think about it, do you really want to bank your entire company on something that you had done by the lowest possible bidder? You need a good foundation to build a company and that means you need to make your patent rock-solid.
Find a patent attorney that works for a major law firm. Those firms pay a lot for extensive malpractice insurance. That means if they mess it up and you end up losing financially, they can probably cover it. Small time firms are probably going to be more like "Gee, sorry I screwed up."
I don't know where this $20,000 price quote is coming from. I recently talked with a couple medium sized firms that specialize in patent law. I was told it would cost around $900 to have a patent agent (someone registered with the patent office and therefore anything you show them is kept confidential) to run a patent search. That's a great starting point. The patent search compares your idea to all the existing patents to see if there are any obvious overlaps. If there are bits and pieces of your idea already in the patent database, then it decreases the chance of getting your patent approved.
OF course, anything that isn't in the database yet (pending) isn't going to be found, so this is not an absolute yes or no (few things are in life). But, it helps prepare you for when you actually submit your patent application.
I was quoted a price of around $4,000 for the actual patent (not including filing fees). The law firms I spoke with were very clear that it could turn out that I submit my patent, and the patent office says "I took X from patent 123 and Y from 234 and created your idea, therefore it's not unique enough to be awarded a patent." At this point, hopefully I'd already know this from the patent search and now be ready to counter with reasons why it's not such an obvious connection or why it's not the same thing.
It all comes down to confidence in your idea. If you think you have a good idea, it makes sense to borrow the money to get the patent. At that point you can rest easy and not wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming that someone beat you to it.
Just my non-lawyer observations based on personal experience.
I wish I could remember the name, but there is a terrific system that is used in a lot of the conference rooms where I work.
Basically, you have a touch-screen pad that has an RF transmitter. The RF transmitter communicates with a box that you put near your A/V equipment. The box has a series of wires running out of it. At the end of each wire is an IR transmitter. You velcro the transmitter near the IR window on the device you want to control and run the wire back to the RF box.
To program the device, you basically point a remote at the IR window on the RF receiver and on the touchpad, a new button will appear. You tap out out the function name and file it under a device category.
Now, when you tap the touchpad, it sends a RF singal back to the box which then replays the stored IR signal out through the wire to the appropriate device.
RF means you can control pretty much everything in your house. You can also get multiple receivers for different A/V equipment. Where I work, the secretary for the high mucky-mucks has the touchpad that controls the equipment in all four of the executive conference rooms. You can even control lights with modules that wire into the receiver.
Slick slick system, but it costs at least a couple thousand. I'm know this post doesn't really have a whole lot of useful information, but my main point is to avoid consumer products. You are going to get crap. I've seen every consumer remote out there and they are all horrible.
Search the Internet for A/V dealers that sell high-end equipment for businesses. You will end up paying for it, but you can pretty much get a system that is perfect.
I'll shut up now and let people post the names of such high-end A/V suppliers, or even the name of the system I just described.
Ugh. If they are going to be this lazy, the least they can do is put out a call for name suggestions. I'm sure slashdotters could think up something better.
I've never really know the origin of Packard Bell...at a first glance it would seem a combination of Hewlett-Packard and Bell Laboratories but maybe they they were banking on just such an assumption to market their product.
Sorta like me selling computers under the Torvalds Malda brand name. (shamelessly kissing up to moderators).
What exactly spawned Packard Bell, and weren't they the company that was buying used parts and putting them in new computers?
Slashdot Mirror
American Pie also has both "R" and "Unrated" versions and Showgirls I think is "R" and "NC-17".
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The problem with these two examples, IIRC, is that BOTH of them are using separate one-sided discs! Which, IMHO, is the ultimate side for movie studios.
I mean, come on...I shell out $18 for a movie and you want me to pay another $18 just because you are too greedy/cheap to stick it on the other side? That is unforgivable and I have no problem with downloading a pirate copy of the version that I don't have, and hopefully being able to someday put them on either side of a single DVD.
Sick sick sick...soon we will have to pay for every single variation and iteration separately unless we put a stop to this. How many people feel cheated about paying $7.50 to see Toy Story 2 and then having to pay anouther $7.50 just to see the outtakes they added a month after the release???
- JoeShmoe
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That's because some DVD discs (like I think Payback is an example) put the copyright notice before the movie itself, while others put the copyright notice at the very beginning of the disc.
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IE -
Mulan = Copyright, menu, movie
Payback = Menu, copyright, movie.
For those discs, the copyright is just a chapter like any other chapter and you can skip it. But for disc with the copyright notice at the beginning, it often has its own title, so you can't just skip to the next chapter (there are none). And of course the DVD players know not to let you change title nor bring up the menu until after it finishes playing.
The problem is either a) bad DVD design by stupid companies (Disney = awful, Warner = great) or b) DVD player cannot or will not allow a viewer to control his or her own movie experience! Since this feature is nothing but a thorn in the user's side, I imagine it is a requirement of DVD licensing and not just all brands thinking the same way.
- JoeShmoe
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Does MPEG2 playback allow for branching in a video stream? What I mean is, with every player/movie combination I have seen, you can't change the angle during playback...only from the main menu.
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Example...Mulan DVD has both widescreen and standard versions on one disc. They make you pick every time you initiate playback. There is now way to set it to default to one or the other (since DVD players all seem to forget everything the second you eject a disc). Nor can you start playback in one mode (like widescreen) then decide to switch to standard half-way through. You have to stop playback and then start over with the new stream.
Is this a limitation with software or with the DVD design? The main reason I ask is that one of the features being advertised back in the early DVD days was the idea of having several different ratings on a single disc. You could have a movie with both "R" and "PG" ratings.
In looking at over 5000 DVD titles, I have NEVER seen a single disc that does this...I would love to be able to have my younger siblings watch certain movies with me, but I often have to wait for them to come out on TV with badly-editted patches and scene cuts.
So, my question is...are multi-rating discs simply not being sold, or is it technically impossible for a DVD stream to switch right in the middle (to cut out a nude scene, for example).
- JoeShmoe
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I'd like to know if there is someway I can modify the content of a DVD disc to get rid of those annoying copyright notices.
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They used to be a minor irritation back in the VHS days because you had to fast-forward through them, but now it seems that part of the requirement for being a licensed DVD decoder is that you block people from fast-forwarding or skipping these #@$@!#$ notices. The worst offender is Disney, who makes you sit through about five minutes worth of crap in both French and Engligh EVERY TIME YOU USE THE DISC. My Toshiba player automatically shuts off after 20 minutes (as do many others) so I have to sit through this crap every time I turn on the player (since it autoplays discs).
Can DeCSS pull out just the A/V content and leave all the copyright/menu crap behind? If so, that's another reason to use DeCSS. There is not damn reason why I should have to endure that for the "privaledege" of watching a movie I paid $30 to own.
Thank god Warner Brothers movies just go right to the main menu when they turn them on. Bravo!
- JoeShmoe
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You are bootlegged. Check out any of the ASF/VIV channels on IRC and you will know doubt find a few bootlegged Simpsons episodes...right next to SouthPark and the ever-present "Jerry Springer: Too Hot for TV".
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Speaking of which...what exactly is the pattern to the show labels they use (e.g. - 4f15). Is the first number the season? How come the recent episodes I have seen are only 6 or something? Is it a hexadecimal number? What? Maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention...
- JoeShmoe
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I've always thought it would be a good idea to rig some kind of hydralic pump and then put one of those Jaws of Life (capable of 10,000 PSI or whatever) to just snip the competition in half.
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I haven't read the rules thoroughly, but perhaps that is as illegal as generating an EMP to short out the opponents controller. I figure they banned electrical warfare because it just sucks to watch (talk about an anti-climax) but I think the Jaws would be a big crowd pleaser.
[CHOMP]
- JoeShmoe
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I remember back in 1997 (on HAL's real birthday) some AOL tech with a sense of humor created a little birthday card for HAL at something like keyword HAL or whatever. Probably the same joker that made keyword BITE ME a backdoor to keyboard WEB. I wonder if it is still there?
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- JoeShmoe
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Starring Steve Case.
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Now, who get to play Bond and let Case fall at the hands of his own devices?
Bond: "You forgot one thing, Case..."
case: "What's that?"
Bond: "Give the people what they want."
Bond presses the button that causes an auto-forwarding e-mail virus to send free AOL software to everyone on the planet at the same time, causing servers to spark, explode and collapse in a pile on top of Case.
Case: "Noooooodaodas.dsa.df,safdnlsKg...."
[/satire]
- JoeShmoe
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Yes, you always have your watch with you because it's primary use is a timepiece and secondary function is a PIM. On a Palm, the primary use is PIM and secondary is timepiece.
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I may not carry my Palm around on my wrist, but I keep it in my briefcase so when an alarm goes off, I am nearby. The only time I don't have my Palm near me is when I'm at home and don't have any appointments anyway!
Now that I think about it, it must be a real pain to enter information on the watch (scroll through letters one at a time, etc) so maybe this is design to enter information on Palm where it is much easier then send it to your watch. If that is the case, I sure hope that it is an IR transfer and not some funky wire or worse a Palm-to-PC-back-to-Watch method.
- JoeShmoe
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I don't understand why Casio is advertsising their PIM watch as "being able to syncronize with a Palm device". Aren't the functions of these devices identical? I mean, either you carry around the watch or you carry around the Palm...but never both. How annoying would it be to have to mute two alarms every time you had an appointment?
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And as far as the MP3 watch goes, I don't understand the point of having rechargeable batteries. I have owned Casio watches for years, and the main reason I buy the waterproof ones is so I never have to take it off. If I have to take the MP3 watch off my wrist every night to recharge the batteries, then I'm going to be walking around my house staring at the blank wrist where my watch is supposed to be.
The wrist camera, however, is a totally cool idea that has almost 1000 possible abuses. It's small enough for perverts to embed in their shoes for crystal clear upskirts. Take off the bands and then you can wedge it into a crack in a changing room. If Casio is truly sick, they'll link the timer to the camera so you can program the watch to take pictures in X minute intervals.
Way to go, Casio!
- JoeShmoe
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The above post needs serious upward moderation.
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One of the stupidest ideas, IMO, is that companies think they should be able to charge me over and over for the same content. If I go to a movie and some idiot talks or laughs during a critical part of the dialog, I'm expected to fork over another $7 to hear what I missed. On the other hand, if I buy the tape then magically I can watch it as often as I want.
Of course, this is only because the technology doesn't allow them to charge me each time I see that tape...but we are heading that way. Divx was a prime example. Streaming media is another. We are moving into new Dark Age; a period when any time we see or hear anything educational or entertaining, it will cost us. Someday when mental interfaces have been perfected, we will probably be charged just for remembering part of a concert or movie that previously experienced. [/cynical]
I say fight. This program is my new favorite tool to take back my rights as a consumer. "If I can hear it, I can record it" as the saying goes. The idea behind this program is a perfect exmaple of that. RIAA is going to have to convince me to install some new hardware in my machine if they want to be able to stop me.
And that just ain't gonna happen...
- JoeShmoe
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Damn, that made me shoot soda out my nose but it was totally worth it.
I wish I had moderator points right now...
1) Read SlashDot regularly
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2) Find a good idea (hint: watch the little numbers...good ideas have 4's and 5's!)
3) Run, don't walk, down to the patent office and file for a patent on that idea (be sure to use key patent terms like "process", "method" and "system" to make it as broad as possible).
4) Wait six to ten months for the patent office to stare cluelessly at the patent and eventually give up on "seeking prior art" (patent employees do not read SlashDot...lucky for you!)
5) Take fresh patent and go beat several companies over the head with it. As long as the amount you demand is less than the cost of defense, you'll get paid.
6) Repeat as necessary.
- JoeShmoe
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I have often played with this idea in my mind and have figured out that the most realistic solutions is as follows:
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Have the person wear a suit that is suspended by wires. The wires would both provide lift (to keep the person upright) and register joint motion (bending and turning).
The foot would be placed in a cradle that has a stilt attached to both the ball and heel of the foot. The tips of the stilts would have ball and socket connections to allow for free rotation. The stilts will be connected by cross-braces to allow for tilt and pitch.
Servos would either apply resistance to provide lift and simulate contact. When the program calculated the foot had hit ground, the servo would apply enough force to prevent the foot from moving any lower. When the person lifted his or her foot (detected by weight sensors in the foot cradle) the serve would feed enough force to counter the weight of the device.
With enough tuning, this system could be configured to feel just like a pair of combat boots. It would also have an extra advantage: terrain. You can't simulate changes in terrain with bearing meshes and spheres. This means you've gone from a situation where you can only simulate combat vehicles to a situation where you can only simulate building combat.
With the stilt system, each foot have have separate heights. Even if it were pitch black, the user could feel his way around with just his feet. If the user were at the edge of a cliff, he would put his foot in front of him and find that the servos give no support whatsoever.
Anyway, I doubt this would be practical enough that Logitech could come out with a home version, but in cases where money is no object, it is very doable. Still, I think it is rather obvious. If it isn't already patented well...oops. I guess now it will be. =P
- JoeShmoe
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I think you'll be best off going with rackspace.com for several reasons:
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1) Buying hardware means you have to spend a lot to get a system that can scale up to the maximum capacity you anticipate, or go the cheap route and risk having to replace the system rather quickly. RackSpace offers leased solutions that you can scale up by just adding a few dollars to the monthly fee. Start with the single processor 300MHz/32MB machine while your site is growing and audience, and when it starts lagging, just pay an extra $50/month and you move to a nice 450MHz/64MB machine.
2) They have three separate T3 connections to the three major backbone providers. The are located in the middle of the United States which means they can avoid most of the MAE lag points. They only charge about $6/month for 2 gigabytes of transfer, which is all a startup web company is going to be using. DSL can easily handle this traffic, but what happens if your site gets SlashDotted? It'll get taken out quick. And you'll have to scramble to find the money to pay for a T1 in case it happens again. RackSpace can give you the whole damn T3 is you need it, and simply charge you for the data transfers.
3) Their facility is located in a geologically stable area, unlike the West and East Coast. The only think they worry about is power failure, and they have giant UPS systems and backup generators. Your hardware will be kept cool and safe, and if something breaks, all the hardware is identical so they just pull your drive and put it in another box and away you go. They can even do tape backup for you and rebuild a box if the drive dies.
4) They offer Cobalt products, which are incredibly easy to setup and manage. You could literally be in the ISP business for around $200/month with maybe an hour setup time.
Both Cobalt and RaskSpace are SlashDot sponsors, and they are both Linux solution providers (although RackSpace can really put any OS you want on your box, *BSD or NT).
I'm also starting a web business and after months of investigating, I decided that leasing a RackSpace solution and getting myself a decent DSL connection to remotely administer it was the best way to go. Oh, you don't have to do everything by remote...if you send RackSpace a CD, they can load it for you. That'll save you about 650MB worth of transfer costs.
- JoeShmoe
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I am primarily a Windows user (hey, it's a living) so I'd like to suggest an alternative: pcAnywhere
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Everyone who has to support remote facilities with Windows box knows pcAnywhere, but a lot of people forget it works just as well two feet away.
I have about six different computers on a hub running various flavors of Windows (95, 98, NT, 2K) and I have pcAnywhere host running 24-7 on all of them. My primary workstation is a 98 box with two monitors. This works great because I can run a pcAnywhere session in full screen on one monitor and still have access to the workstation itself.
So I have one good keyboard, one good scrollmouse, one good 21" monitor and one decent 15" monitor. I can get to any of my six computers and put them in any combination on either monitor. It works quite well. I do have to tone down the color scale a bit, since pcAnywhere is a bit sluggish sending 1024 x 768 hi-color images around a 10Mbps LAN.
Since my 21" is 1600 x 1200, if I need to work with multiple computers, I can fit their entire desktop (800 x 600 or 1024 x 768) in a window and then ALT-TAB between them. Much better than arcane keyboard sequences.
I like it. I think SlashDotters should pressure Symantec for a Linux version. I mean, they support DOS so it's obviously a console-friendly product. Maybe someone can even creat an open source alternatice or figure out the protocol (it's just sending graphic images and capturing keyboard/mouse activity).
- JoeShmoe
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Censorship is not the way to end first posting, especially not the "banned words" kind.
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Or did you miss the recent story about New York schools?
Let me remind you that censoring "first post" and "37337" would have dumped your post off the system! I myself like to make the occastion joke about 37337 d00dz so I am quite content to just set my threshold to 0 and let the moderators do their jobs. If you watch, you'll notice that 90% of the first posts are moderated down to -1 within minutes. The system, in my opinion, works.
- JoeShmoe
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I think what Microsoft considers "operating system" is anything that shows up on the "Windows Setup" tab of the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel and any hardware drivers.
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Considering how much those categories (Accessories, Communication, System Tools, etc) have grown over the various versions, and considering that Windows continues to support obsolete hardware, I have no doubt that they have stuff 40 million lines worth of stuff into Windows 2000.
To mean, the definition of an operating system is the code that must execute on a day-to-day basis to perform the tasks I request. This would exclude networking code (since the system could easily be standalone) and especially most of the driver code (since I have, at most, six or seven hardware vendors). I mean, Windows still has drivers for 9-pin dot matrix printers, and when was the last time you saw one of those? I counted at least 50MB worth of DLLs in Windows NT 4.0 that I'll never use, simply because my only printer is an HP.
As much as I admire the goal of hardware detection, I would at least like to be able to prune the drive list. I may not know WHICH S3 chipset I have installed, but I know it's not Cirrus Logic or Matrox or Diamond...so what the hell am I doing warehousing those never-to-be-used DLLs?
Most people (unless they are insanely addicted to digging around for installation CDs) are going to put a copy of the i386 directory on the local drive. With NT4, this cost you 150MB or so. What's it cost now for Win2000? 500MB? I think there is 120MB of stuff that is only there to provide foreign language support I NEVER plan to use.
All I want is the amount of code necessary to boot the system, log me in, and give me VGA mode. I can install the specific drivers I need myself, as well as better versions of any program Microsoft is going to include for free.
- JoeShmoe
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And will they call it Communix?
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[rimshot]
- JoeShmoe
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You know, whenever I read some really good piece of science fiction, the terror is never caused by something called BubbleBoy...or Melissa, or Good Times, or any of these other stupid names.
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At this rate, when some genetic mutagen is released that destroys all of mankind, it'll probably be called the Pokemon virus.
[/tongue in cheek]
- JoeShmoe
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You, the elite Allied moderator, are trapped in a forum full of Nazi first posters, Beowulfers, and
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El33t D00dz. Pull out that trusty sidearm and fire them into -1 oblivion.
- JoeShmoe
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In theory, the cost of a patent should be the cost that the US Patent and Trademark Office charges you for all the filing fees. I think it was like $2000 last time I checked their website.
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The problem is that patents (especially intellectual property patents) are not something that you want to do yourself. Nor are they something you want to hire small-time lawyers (paralegals or your law-school buddies) to do. The reason is that if you screw something up, you might have your patent thrown out in court if some big company challenges it.
Think about it, do you really want to bank your entire company on something that you had done by the lowest possible bidder? You need a good foundation to build a company and that means you need to make your patent rock-solid.
Find a patent attorney that works for a major law firm. Those firms pay a lot for extensive malpractice insurance. That means if they mess it up and you end up losing financially, they can probably cover it. Small time firms are probably going to be more like "Gee, sorry I screwed up."
I don't know where this $20,000 price quote is coming from. I recently talked with a couple medium sized firms that specialize in patent law. I was told it would cost around $900 to have a patent agent (someone registered with the patent office and therefore anything you show them is kept confidential) to run a patent search. That's a great starting point. The patent search compares your idea to all the existing patents to see if there are any obvious overlaps. If there are bits and pieces of your idea already in the patent database, then it decreases the chance of getting your patent approved.
OF course, anything that isn't in the database yet (pending) isn't going to be found, so this is not an absolute yes or no (few things are in life). But, it helps prepare you for when you actually submit your patent application.
I was quoted a price of around $4,000 for the actual patent (not including filing fees). The law firms I spoke with were very clear that it could turn out that I submit my patent, and the patent office says "I took X from patent 123 and Y from 234 and created your idea, therefore it's not unique enough to be awarded a patent." At this point, hopefully I'd already know this from the patent search and now be ready to counter with reasons why it's not such an obvious connection or why it's not the same thing.
It all comes down to confidence in your idea. If you think you have a good idea, it makes sense to borrow the money to get the patent. At that point you can rest easy and not wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming that someone beat you to it.
Just my non-lawyer observations based on personal experience.
- JoeShmoe
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I wish I could remember the name, but there is a terrific system that is used in a lot of the conference rooms where I work.
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Basically, you have a touch-screen pad that has an RF transmitter. The RF transmitter communicates with a box that you put near your A/V equipment. The box has a series of wires running out of it. At the end of each wire is an IR transmitter. You velcro the transmitter near the IR window on the device you want to control and run the wire back to the RF box.
To program the device, you basically point a remote at the IR window on the RF receiver and on the touchpad, a new button will appear. You tap out out the function name and file it under a device category.
Now, when you tap the touchpad, it sends a RF singal back to the box which then replays the stored IR signal out through the wire to the appropriate device.
RF means you can control pretty much everything in your house. You can also get multiple receivers for different A/V equipment. Where I work, the secretary for the high mucky-mucks has the touchpad that controls the equipment in all four of the executive conference rooms. You can even control lights with modules that wire into the receiver.
Slick slick system, but it costs at least a couple thousand. I'm know this post doesn't really have a whole lot of useful information, but my main point is to avoid consumer products. You are going to get crap. I've seen every consumer remote out there and they are all horrible.
Search the Internet for A/V dealers that sell high-end equipment for businesses. You will end up paying for it, but you can pretty much get a system that is perfect.
I'll shut up now and let people post the names of such high-end A/V suppliers, or even the name of the system I just described.
- JoeShmoe
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First RoboFly and now SlugBot.
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Ugh. If they are going to be this lazy, the least they can do is put out a call for name suggestions. I'm sure slashdotters could think up something better.
- JoeShmoe
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I've never really know the origin of Packard Bell...at a first glance it would seem a combination of Hewlett-Packard and Bell Laboratories but maybe they they were banking on just such an assumption to market their product.
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Sorta like me selling computers under the Torvalds Malda brand name. (shamelessly kissing up to moderators).
What exactly spawned Packard Bell, and weren't they the company that was buying used parts and putting them in new computers?
- JoeShmoe
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