You can also tie a shell script to a button on the remote for this. I named that key the Wife Acceptance Key (it's the Start button on our PlayStation 2 remote that I repurposed for my Myth box).
That said, I agree with the GPP on Myth eventually becoming too finicky for something I used every day. Everything was great until an update hosed the ATI drivers - which required buying a new video card. Which required rebuilding the whole setup. Which wasn't what I'd call 'fun'. Then we upgraded to a new LCD and HD and it's basically game over. I can plug in via the FireWire port, but then you HAVE to use Myth as the tuner (-2 points for Wife Acceptance) - but that's a moot point since the new graphics card won't handle the HD anyway.
In short, every time anything changed, it's resulted in me having to drop even more money on the box. It started simple enough, and the promise of no commercials (automatic commercial skip works REALLY well) combined with burning shows off to DVD garnered enough Wife Acceptance Factor to cover it. But it's becoming harder and harder to justify spending any money to keep up when that cash could be simply thrown at TiVo for a FINISHED solution - no hours of dicking around necessary. As it stands, I'd basically have to replace every component in the pipeline to handle the HD playback. So it sits idle.
I also really wanted to have Myth be the ultimate answer, but there really are too many shortcomings involved. Playing the upgrade/hardware game is lame. No integration with my existing (iTunes based) music library is lame. Taking THREE HOURS to burn 2 hours of video content to a disk is lame. No simple card based capture support is lame (though this is Comcast's fault). Commercial skip sure is cool, but it's not worth all of the other tradeoffs.
Also remember that Amazon has DRM free MP3 files for a dime cheaper and has a better selection of independent label musicians. I'm not affiliated at all - just a happy customer.
When I come home I want to toss my computer on my desk like I do with my keys and wallet. After I've surfed a while I want to toss my computer on the coffee table like I do with magazines. The whole "holy laptop" approach where you have to carry it around on a silk cushion and press the keys one at a time so as not to hurt its feelings is the reason I've never bothered buying one.
You know, there are degrees of ruggedness between carrying it on a pillow and beating the shit out of it. I've had a laptop at my side pretty much constantly for upwards of 10 years now. At no time have I ever treated it as anything other than a tool. I don't baby my tools. I don't coo to it wistfully at the end of the day. I don't 'press the keys one at a time'. I also don't fling it across the house - but I don't do that to my socket wrenches either.
In all those 10 years of laptop lugging, I have never required any repairs or replacement due to mishaps. If you truly haven't bought a laptop because you picture them as fragile, I highly recommend you pick one up and give it a try. There is something to be said for carrying around a fully functional workstation wherever you go. Just remember that there is a continuum between 'holy laptop' and 'throw it across the room' - it's not a quantum step.
Or, unlike you, he's actually seen security briefings detaling the threats we face. Let's not boil this down to "those who agree with you" and "stupid people".
If there were a 'security briefing' that said there was 'a terrorist' standing outside the fucking white house with a nuclear bomb, the unconstitutional reactions taken by this administration and the cronies in Congress who cover it up would STILL not be justified. If you have that kind of information, you get a goddamned warrant, move in and deal with it. You DO NOT go about dismantling everything this country stands for under the guise of 'national security'. I don't understand where the fuck people come off with this attitude. It's against the very fabric of what this country is made of, and I don't fucking care what boogie man you wave your fingers at to justify it.
I completely disagree with you on how readable ObjC is. I find that embedding the parameters directly within the method names to be extremely concise when trying to figure out what the call will do. Putting the parameter DIRECTLY next to the relevant descriptive text in the method name makes sense.
In my mind, the call convention of ObjC forces you to write good method names and disambiguates the order of the parameters explicitly. It just reads like a sentence, which is wonderful.
More to the point, the collector's fun is only possible because of everyone like you that played with the toys. It's a symbiotic relationship: If everyone collected, there'd be no scarcity!
I am going to go out on a limb here and even argue on MS's side, in that IMO, this is not an IE flaw at all. No one should give a rat's ass what the working directory of any application is because it can be changed at will anyway - that is the whole point of a "working directory". If your security model relies on the fact that an application never has the working directory set to an alternate location, then you have big problems.
I agree 100%. In fact, I'll go one step further and say that any application that blindly loads and executes code from the current working directory is a security nightmare waiting to happen.
Does that include the title sequences and credits? Those tend to pad it out a couple minutes longer for me. The actual content for a half hour show is still about 22 minutes, though, sometimes a bit longer.
That includes the opening credits, but nothing after the show is actually 'over'. The time readout on the DVD player consistently shows 22:00 (for a 30 minute show) when the show proper is done. Even still, including closing credits means there are even fewer minutes left per slot for commercials.
I can handle advertisements to a point, but when they abuse the 'agreement' it really irks me. I can handle the standard 25% advertising rate, but just barely. Any show that goes OVER that limit makes me want to kill puppies, and it's VERY noticeable when they cross that line. More often than not, this will prompt me to shut off the broadcast and head to the torrent trackers in a couple of hours.
Really though, my largest pet peeve is the abuse of trust the advertisers have via the audio channel. It was bad enough in two channel to have the volume leap from the level I set it for the show to 'BUY BUY BUY NOW NOW NOW', but it has been taken to a whole new level since I switched to HD with 5.1 surround. For some reason, the advertisers feel it is OK to push the entire soundtrack to the rear two channels and crank the gain all the way up. This is a LOT louder than you expect, and it's a plain violation of the gentlemen's agreement we have about how those 6 channels of audio are to be used.
With every aggressive move the advertisers make, I look a little closer at how much I'm paying per month for the service. By trying to squeeze another penny out of me, they're going to lose several dollars of easy recurring revenue.
IIRC, a 30-minute broadcast typically contains 22 minutes of programming, 6 minutes of national advertising, and 2 minutes of local ads.
Based on the length of TV shows I get through NetFlix, this is correct. Commercial free variants of shows run 22ish minutes for 30 minute episodes and 44ish minutes for 60 minute episodes.
Well-seasoned cast iron also has other advantages other than being non-stick (not relatively, but most definitely) that include more even and higher temperatures (for superiour browning), requiring no soap and water to clean, and being oven-safe (oven-friendly, actually) so you can cook using using any method or methods you choose.
I fully endorse this comment. Of all the fancy pans I've used over the years, my 10" cast iron has proven to be the best workhorse and provides the most consistent results every time. I've never had to scrub it, it actually helps when you're stuck on a shitty electric burner if you're patient enough to let it come up to temp, you don't have to worry about the toxicity of the 'magic coating' and you get trace amounts of iron in your diet for free. Do yourself a favor and try one out - they cost a fraction of what those fancy pans cost, and they'll last you a lifetime.
Then again, cast iron went out of fashion years ago when women started working in professional kitchens and found them too heavy for regular use
I was going to ding you for making a sexist comment, but my wife refuses to use it because it's unwieldy and heavy;)
right, instead of 10 or 20 bucks maybe twice a year for software upgrades, you only have to pay $60 bucks a month for at least 2 years to get those upgrades FOR FREE!!!!
Don't be a dolt. $60/month is for the voice and unlimited data service - and without even considering the phone, it's a good deal.
If you've seen pictures of the Fail Boat around the internet, you might be interested to know the story behind it (link is to printer version). In short, the whole ordeal happened as a result of the requirement that they dump ballast water before entering US waters. The story on Wired covers the accident as well as the salvage operation and is an excellent read.
It appears that this is a dangerous enough process that it was worth eliminating it. That, or they're just trying to cut down on travel time by not having to stop - but that's just the cynic in me talking.
The property owner in your scenario does NOT have to provide FREE access to the lake. He's free to charge you for that right. However, once you've paid for the right to cross his property, he cannot dictate that you must hop the whole way instead of walking.
Re:For those of you that are going to ask
on
eBay Sues Craigslist
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So, what you're saying is that Craigslist has managed to provide nominally the same service as the newspaper classifieds for less cost, is passing that savings on to the consumer, and that you find that 'wonky'?
Tiered pricing is no different than tiered pricing in any other arena. Prime office space on the top floor in downtown San Francisco, California is going to cost you a lot more than the shack behind Pete's Tacos. A Rodeo Drive storefront costs more than your mom's basement.
Except my ISP sold me 'top floor office space' but is actually providing me 'a shack behind Pete's Tacos' unless my customers pay them an additional rent.
You're an idiot. Store it all on one computer and share it. That old server/client thing. This works just fine, even in iTunes.
And that pushes my play count, skip count, ratings, volume adjustments and other meta data back to the server, does it? There's more to the equation than just having access to the bits over the network, you know. It's easy enough to get access to playing the songs. It's NOT easy to manage a library.
You're an idiot. You don't need FairPlay to play a CD. In fact, iTunes lets you burn your personal or DRMed songs to AIFF or MP3 format, and removes any DRM as a bonus.
Yes, I can transcode to MP3 with the corresponding loss of quality. I can also burn off to CD and get one tenth the capacity on the same disk. Neither of those options would be necessary at all if DRM didn't exist. It's an inconvenience that I must endure because 'I might be a pirate'. You're suggesting I'm an idiot because I don't like that?
My point is that I shouldn't have to jump through hoops do do what is specifically covered by copyright law as fair use. Period. Anyone defending the position that because some people abuse the law the rights holders are justified in removing MY rights can suck a chubby.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you crazy? Have you priced a pony lately?!
You can also tie a shell script to a button on the remote for this. I named that key the Wife Acceptance Key (it's the Start button on our PlayStation 2 remote that I repurposed for my Myth box).
That said, I agree with the GPP on Myth eventually becoming too finicky for something I used every day. Everything was great until an update hosed the ATI drivers - which required buying a new video card. Which required rebuilding the whole setup. Which wasn't what I'd call 'fun'. Then we upgraded to a new LCD and HD and it's basically game over. I can plug in via the FireWire port, but then you HAVE to use Myth as the tuner (-2 points for Wife Acceptance) - but that's a moot point since the new graphics card won't handle the HD anyway.
In short, every time anything changed, it's resulted in me having to drop even more money on the box. It started simple enough, and the promise of no commercials (automatic commercial skip works REALLY well) combined with burning shows off to DVD garnered enough Wife Acceptance Factor to cover it. But it's becoming harder and harder to justify spending any money to keep up when that cash could be simply thrown at TiVo for a FINISHED solution - no hours of dicking around necessary. As it stands, I'd basically have to replace every component in the pipeline to handle the HD playback. So it sits idle.
I also really wanted to have Myth be the ultimate answer, but there really are too many shortcomings involved. Playing the upgrade/hardware game is lame. No integration with my existing (iTunes based) music library is lame. Taking THREE HOURS to burn 2 hours of video content to a disk is lame. No simple card based capture support is lame (though this is Comcast's fault). Commercial skip sure is cool, but it's not worth all of the other tradeoffs.
That's all well and good - and I have no problem with that. It's the lack of any due process (eg, getting a warrant) that is troubling in this case.
Farnsworth: "Damn straight! Today the mad scientist can't get a doomsday device, tomorrow it's the mad grad student! Where will it end?!"
NRA Guy: "Amen, brother. I don't go anywhere without my mutated anthrax. For duck huntin'."
Also remember that Amazon has DRM free MP3 files for a dime cheaper and has a better selection of independent label musicians. I'm not affiliated at all - just a happy customer.
You know, there are degrees of ruggedness between carrying it on a pillow and beating the shit out of it. I've had a laptop at my side pretty much constantly for upwards of 10 years now. At no time have I ever treated it as anything other than a tool. I don't baby my tools. I don't coo to it wistfully at the end of the day. I don't 'press the keys one at a time'. I also don't fling it across the house - but I don't do that to my socket wrenches either.
In all those 10 years of laptop lugging, I have never required any repairs or replacement due to mishaps. If you truly haven't bought a laptop because you picture them as fragile, I highly recommend you pick one up and give it a try. There is something to be said for carrying around a fully functional workstation wherever you go. Just remember that there is a continuum between 'holy laptop' and 'throw it across the room' - it's not a quantum step.
If there were a 'security briefing' that said there was 'a terrorist' standing outside the fucking white house with a nuclear bomb, the unconstitutional reactions taken by this administration and the cronies in Congress who cover it up would STILL not be justified. If you have that kind of information, you get a goddamned warrant, move in and deal with it. You DO NOT go about dismantling everything this country stands for under the guise of 'national security'. I don't understand where the fuck people come off with this attitude. It's against the very fabric of what this country is made of, and I don't fucking care what boogie man you wave your fingers at to justify it.
I completely disagree with you on how readable ObjC is. I find that embedding the parameters directly within the method names to be extremely concise when trying to figure out what the call will do. Putting the parameter DIRECTLY next to the relevant descriptive text in the method name makes sense.
[containerTarget putElement: anElement intoStorageNamed: storageName];
is much clearer to me in an overview than something like:
containerTarget->putElementIntoStorageNamed( anElement, storageName );
In my mind, the call convention of ObjC forces you to write good method names and disambiguates the order of the parameters explicitly. It just reads like a sentence, which is wonderful.
More to the point, the collector's fun is only possible because of everyone like you that played with the toys. It's a symbiotic relationship: If everyone collected, there'd be no scarcity!
I can handle advertisements to a point, but when they abuse the 'agreement' it really irks me. I can handle the standard 25% advertising rate, but just barely. Any show that goes OVER that limit makes me want to kill puppies, and it's VERY noticeable when they cross that line. More often than not, this will prompt me to shut off the broadcast and head to the torrent trackers in a couple of hours.
Really though, my largest pet peeve is the abuse of trust the advertisers have via the audio channel. It was bad enough in two channel to have the volume leap from the level I set it for the show to 'BUY BUY BUY NOW NOW NOW', but it has been taken to a whole new level since I switched to HD with 5.1 surround. For some reason, the advertisers feel it is OK to push the entire soundtrack to the rear two channels and crank the gain all the way up. This is a LOT louder than you expect, and it's a plain violation of the gentlemen's agreement we have about how those 6 channels of audio are to be used.
With every aggressive move the advertisers make, I look a little closer at how much I'm paying per month for the service. By trying to squeeze another penny out of me, they're going to lose several dollars of easy recurring revenue.
So I should write a program that knows how to compile my program then? This is an improvement over Xcode how?
I fully endorse this comment. Of all the fancy pans I've used over the years, my 10" cast iron has proven to be the best workhorse and provides the most consistent results every time. I've never had to scrub it, it actually helps when you're stuck on a shitty electric burner if you're patient enough to let it come up to temp, you don't have to worry about the toxicity of the 'magic coating' and you get trace amounts of iron in your diet for free. Do yourself a favor and try one out - they cost a fraction of what those fancy pans cost, and they'll last you a lifetime.
I was going to ding you for making a sexist comment, but my wife refuses to use it because it's unwieldy and heavy ;)
Don't be a dolt. $60/month is for the voice and unlimited data service - and without even considering the phone, it's a good deal.
True - but you also don't have to pay ten bucks a pop for firmware upgrades for the iPhone ;)
The 8GB iPod Touch is currently listed at $299 on the store. SWEET DEAL!
You laugh, but you're not the first to think of this.
Your markup is incorrect - you left the slash off your closing Pffft. tag.
If you've seen pictures of the Fail Boat around the internet, you might be interested to know the story behind it (link is to printer version). In short, the whole ordeal happened as a result of the requirement that they dump ballast water before entering US waters. The story on Wired covers the accident as well as the salvage operation and is an excellent read.
It appears that this is a dangerous enough process that it was worth eliminating it. That, or they're just trying to cut down on travel time by not having to stop - but that's just the cynic in me talking.
The property owner in your scenario does NOT have to provide FREE access to the lake. He's free to charge you for that right. However, once you've paid for the right to cross his property, he cannot dictate that you must hop the whole way instead of walking.
So, what you're saying is that Craigslist has managed to provide nominally the same service as the newspaper classifieds for less cost, is passing that savings on to the consumer, and that you find that 'wonky'?
What a bunch of jerks!
Except my ISP sold me 'top floor office space' but is actually providing me 'a shack behind Pete's Tacos' unless my customers pay them an additional rent.
Yes, I can transcode to MP3 with the corresponding loss of quality. I can also burn off to CD and get one tenth the capacity on the same disk. Neither of those options would be necessary at all if DRM didn't exist. It's an inconvenience that I must endure because 'I might be a pirate'. You're suggesting I'm an idiot because I don't like that?
My point is that I shouldn't have to jump through hoops do do what is specifically covered by copyright law as fair use. Period. Anyone defending the position that because some people abuse the law the rights holders are justified in removing MY rights can suck a chubby.