What are you talking about? That looks no worse than your typical Slashdot article. I mean come on, their titles as "editors" have always been a bit suspect at best.
I'm on the edge of my seat. Why would I want to read a book about Pivot Tables? It could be the best book every written in the history of Pivot Tables, but it may as well be a book on Gorglemopenchausers. I mean, I realize it's a book review, but even a sentence or a short paragraph saying, "A pivot table is basically XYZ" would have added a great deal of value to me as a reader.
As WIPO creates new rights for broadcasters, documents critical of these rights created by EFF and IP Justice were stolen and recovered in a bathroom trashcan.
Damn, I never thought they'd check the men's bathroom trashcans. Maybe I should try the women's bathroom trashcans next time.
Perhaps I should have been more clear. I'm aware that Asimov is dead. I meant to imply authors of their stature.
That's his only real qualification, and it's enough for what basically is an honorific post.
An honorific post? Really? Do you actually know anything about the NASA Advisory Coucil? Are you aware that it's the senior external advisory source to NASA? Senior. That means they trump EVERY outside advisory source. That's a bit more than honorific.
If there were several hundred members, maybe I'd call it honorific, but considering the breadth of the topics they cover and the handful of members, I don't think so.
Apart from making blockbuster films, Cameron explores the depths of the oceans and is a member of the NASA Advisory Council and the Mars Society
I'm sure James Cameron is a smart guy and everything, but I'm curious what makes him more qualified to be on the NASA Advisory Coucil than say, 50% of Slashdot readers who I'm sure are just as scientifically knowledgeable, if not a few hundred times as knowledgeable on the topics important to NASA. I mean, other than his bucket-loads of money, of course.
I'm not saying NASA should come recruit their Advisory Council on Slashdot, but I would certainly question the quality of the advice when movie directors are providing it. I mean, check out his resume on their site. It's a good resume for a movie director, but for an advisor to NASA?
And don't get me wrong, I don't think someone should be excluded because they're in a profession. I mean, I'm sure Asimov, Clarke and some other Sci-Fi authors would be able to provide valuable advice in the area of space exploration because, if nothing else, they tend to spend a lot of time thinking of the realism of the ideas in their books (something movie directors aren't particularly noted for).
I mean really, go look at all the resumes of the members on the site and then play the Sesame Street game of "Which of these things doesn't belong?"
The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake.
Yeah, I have to chime in here. It was a HUGE mistake. In fact, there are a few people like me who are so pissed, we'll never buy from RIAA members ever again because of what they did to Napster. That may sound stupid or an excuse to illegally copy music. The fact is, I own cases and cases of legally purchased CDs and roughly 99% of my MP3 downloads were songs I already had in my collection but downloading was faster and easier than ripping myself.
On top of which, a good number of the downloads that weren't in my collection led to purchases of CDs.
If the music industry had found a way to work with its customers, who clearly wanted this medium, I would have been happy to pay for online music. But instead, they sued their customers and they sued Napster.
So, my feeling now is FUCK THEM. They won't get another penny out of me. They want to make things right with me, they can send me a check for all the crappy quality cassette tapes that stuck to tape heads and got eaten up, or for all the CDs (you know, the media that's supposed to last forever), that got eaten by (Slashdot won't take my link to: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_328113.html) Geotrichum fungus while I lived in Mexico.
Yeah, that'll fucking happen. Fuck 'em. I suspect the RIAA will have a much shorter lifespan than I will. I think they've outlived their usefulness and that's going to become readily apparent over the next decade. The music industry business model will change, the power and the money will go to the individual artists, where it belongs, and the RIAA will be but a bad memory.
And even if it doesn't happen, I'll keep hoping for it and I certainly won't help those assholes out.
It was pretty clear from the article that these guys were also guilty of fraud. They had a 30% chargeback rate and from the description of what was involved in the chargebacks, I'm surprised 30% were that persistent.
I'm curious why fraud charges weren't stacked on top of all this.
I'm not complaining. 9 years for spamming. I just hope this guy isn't the last. I really want to see them go after as many of these guys as they can. Going after 1 isn't much of a deterrant. Going after dozens could be. It's not like there are as many big-time spammers as there are file sharers. You don't have to get that many convictions to start scaring them.
There are a ton of reasons why this is all happening. There's obviously the.COM implosion. Then there's the outsourcing. Then there's the poorer economy overall.
I went over a year without a steady job. Granted, I quit my last job. I just didn't expect finding a new one to be so damn difficult.
I was lucky that two old co-workers of mine invited me to contract full time with the company they work for and I'm back to making old wages (without benefits, of course). Hell, I'm happy to be employed again.
I'm getting pretty close to done with programming for a living, though. I've been doing it for about 18 years (and another 8 or so as a hobby before then), and it's just a long time to be doing the same thing. Bringing in this kind of income is nice, but I lived on a lot less for several years and got by just fine, and I guess I just realize that I'll be happier with a lot less stress in my life.
But this contracting job is about as good as it gets in this field, as far as I'm concerned (your desires may be different). I work from home and make good money. I'm living in a friendly, small town without much stress or traffic. What more could I need?
Really, I don't suspect the industry will ever come close to what it was for a few years there. Kinda wish I had come up with a golden.COM idea and cashed out, but instead I picked those years to live on the beach in Mexico. Again, not really complaining. I really enjoyed the time in Mexico.
"I don't know how many years this volcanic winter was supposed to have lasted, but I could easily see a big hive with a lot of honey surviving a decade of less-than-optimal weather."
It wasn't a "volcanic" winter. It was caused by an asteroid impact, not a volcano. And it lasted a few THOUSAND years, not a decade, a few decades, a century, or even a few centuries. A few THOUSAND years. I smoked a bit of pot as a kid (maybe I should have been keeping bees instead), and maybe my perception of time isn't what it used to be, but a few thousand years of living pretty far outside of your normal survival temperature range seems like a bit of stretch.
of which this is one, but several people have posted things like, "bees can survive a winter," and "you can toss 'em in the freezer and they'll be okay in a few days."
The woman's an EXPERT in the field. You think she hasn't considered this? If you read the article, it discusses, specifically a range that this TROPICAL honey bee survives in. Tropical honey bees probably don't need to adapt to survive to very cold temperatures, as it DOESN'T TEND TO GET COLD IN THE TROPICS!!!! If you're comparing them to your common honey bee that lives in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, it's quite possible they've adapted to cold weather since it DOES GET COLD THERE.
Sorry, I don't mean to scream, but it's kind of like having a paleontologist try to tell you why your code isn't running? Thanks, but I don't need the help of a paleontologist.
Unless you have at least a hobbyist background in paleontology, you're probably not qualified to even speculate. I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to question her findings.
Also, keep in mind, we're not talking about a winter that lasted a few months. We're talking about a winter that lasted a few THOUSAND years. It's a lot to ask of any creature to live outside of its normal survival temperature for a few months, let alone a few THOUSAND years. So, sticking a bee in your freezer for a few days is hardly a valid comparison.
First of all, with so few specifics in the article, one is left with speculating. Speculating tells me that a hard drive with a lot of heads is MUCH more expensive than a regular hard drive. The heads, and the mechanisms for controlling them are probably the most expensive part of a hard drive. So I would think and sheet like drive with a whole lot of heads and a mechanism for controlling the sheet is going to be ridiculously expensive.
Of course, they might have a solution for this, but the post, the article, and the company's web sites leave so much unsaid, we may never know. My guess is we'll never see this. There are many other storage technologies that sound signifcantly more promising than this. And solid state still has a long way to go as well, and as a nother poster pointed out, no moving parts... Sorry if I don't leave a post-it note on my monitor about this one.
Just to clear this up a bit, because the article is misleading and I didn't see any posts clarifying this. It will not be illegal to own or possess these cards (HDTV receivers that ignore the broadcast flag). It will simply be illegal to sell them in the U.S.
I suggest people stock up on them. I don't even have an HDTV at this point, but I'm going to grab a card just so I'm covered...
Why is it when people link New York Times, people rant and rave about the registration requirements and you get the snide comments in the post like, "Registration and first born child required." But when it's GamaSutra, nobody says anything?
I mean, seriously, is GamaSutra's registration really so much more ethical than the NY Times registration?
Go ahead and mark me off topic and troll, but I think it's a legitimate gripe. 5 years down the road, I want to continue to get my NY Times free of charge and if all that requires from me is registration, I'll happily make the trade.
Why does Microsoft need to catch up? Anyone can write an Asynchronous Pluggable Protocol (the handlers for different url monikers). I've written two of them for different applications I've written. It's a great way to tie browsers to HTML not stored on a web server.
mk-its: is used in the HTML help system, and ms-help: is used with the MSDN, and there are probably a few others that most people have never heard of.
But like I said, why is it up to MS? Anyone in the open source community could write APPs for Windows to add this kind of functionality if there were a demand for it, so I suspect there's little or no demand for it.
I recently bought the D-Link DSM-320, which isn't a tuner, but allows you to play movies and music as well as view images from your computer, onto your TV via ethernet or 802.11b/g.
It doesn't use SMB shares, however. You run a server app on your Windows machine and tell it the directories you want to share.
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with it so far. The biggest problem is that using the wireless, a lot of movies don't have sound. From what I have read, this is a bandwidth issue and should go away if I go with wired ethernet, but I haven't tried that yet.
It also has a number of small usability issues. It doesn't respond to the remote control very well and you need pretty direct aim and also need to sometimes press a button multiple times. It sometimes hangs and responds late to button presses, so you end up hitting a button over and over again thinking it's not getting it, only to get all the button hits several seconds later.
On the other hand, the system allows for automatic firmware upgrades (which it did the first time I connected) and it appears to have improved significantly from earlier versions, so I'm hoping it will continue to improve. I considered taking it back, but I'm going to hold onto it and just hope that the firmware upgrades will eventually remedy most of these problems.
It's nice to see more of these types of devices coming out. My real goal is to build a MythTV box because I think that's going to be more of what I'm looking for. I have a DirectTV receiver with TiVo and the TiVo is great with the exception that I can't store the movies offline and I can't access my substantial collection of TV shows from my computer with it. So I think at this point MythTV is the only way to go.
I wonder how tough it could be to piece the documentation together in a non-protected document? I mean, if you can see it, then you can take screenshots of it in IE. The text can go through OCR. Images can be print-screened and saved. How difficult would it really be for someone who wanted it bad enough to simply piece the document back together in say, Word?
I have to say it. C# does rock and I'm so happy about Mono doing so well.
There are mistakes in how the C# language has been designed that really bug me at times, but I've been developping in C# for about 2 years now and I've never been so productive in my life.
It has a lot of the advantages of Java, but with a better UI (and by better, I mean better looking AND better performance. The Java ones seem to be one or the other: Fast and Ugly or Slow and Pretty, and maybe even some slow and ugly ones).
I really hope Mono can keep up with the Longhorn development because I really expect the library design to be better. There are a lot of aspects of the.NET framework that are clearly hacked together just to make it work. Others were clearly designed by developers with very little understanding of object oriented development principles.
But complaints aside, overall it's excellent and as I said, I've never been so productive! As an independent contractor, that means a lot to me.
Federal laws and regulations trump state law, via the "supremacy clause" of the US constitution.
Normally, yes, but just as a university can ban alcohol on their premises, they can also ban the use of other items, on university property. It's their property, so they set the rules.
Just as a store can disallow the use of cell phones, a university can say that you can't use certain wireless equipment on their property. You're not breaking a law by doing so, but you're breaking the "rules" of the institution and they're within their rights to remedy the situation if someone breaks the rules.
This isn't a legal issue, so don't confuse it. This follows along with other "rules". Perhaps they have a rule that you have to attend a certain number of classes to pass. If you don't, you fail the class. That's rule, not law. There is no law that affects it. Just as there are no laws preventing them from using wireless equipment. Simply rules.
First of all, the law itself isn't secret. The government is asking that their argument for its need be kept secret. Please be more accurate in posting stories.
Second of all, if they stop requiring IDs for flights, I'm going to stop flying. All you privacy advocates say what you want, but I'm comforted to some degree (though not a great deal) by the fact that ID is required to fly and I sure as hell would feel less comfortable if they removed that requirement. I want the airlines and the government to take at least the most minimal steps to figure out who the hell is on my flight.
If you value your privacy more than your life, don't fly.
Personally, I don't know that many people who care that they have to show ID to get on a flight. On the other hand, I know a LOT of people who would be up in arms if the government and airlines removed the requirement.
Why are you guys so paranoid that the government might know where you're flying? Do you think they're following you? Don't you know you'll be safe as long as you keep your tin foil hat on?
I just got a DirectTiVo a couple of weeks ago, and I love, but I'm still building my MythTV box in the next couple of months.
But as additional information, I got the TiVo receiver and a regular satellite receiver for $89.99. But this included a 1 year DirecTV contract (new service), so you can get it cheaper if you're a new customer.
MythTV has a few other advantages that I think make it a much better choice. For one, you can watch stuff you've downloaded. For another, you can save stuff you've recorded onto CD or DVD for later viewing.
The inability to save things on another media is a real minus for the TiVo, in my book.
And of course, the big advantage of MythTV, if you're a programmer, is you can hack it. I have some very definite ideas about things I would like to see in a PVR and MythTV gives me the option to do that myself.
It's encouraging that he owns a Tivo? Why? Because he wants you to do as he says and not as he does? Sorry, but I don't see that as anything encouraging. He's just plain wrong. As consumers. at the price they charge for CDs and DVDs, you're damn right we're entitled to a backup copy, and it's specifically in copyright law that we're entitled to it.
I can see the end of the major record companies in sight. That will definitely happen in my lifetime, and I can't be happier about it. The new order will probably involve online distribution of music and musicians hiring individual promoters to get their music out there. The huge advantage of this is that the enormous cut the record companies get will be gone. Cost of production will be very low, so the music will be reasonably priced. I honestly believe that's the future of the music industry.
What concerns me is that I can't see an equivalent for the film industry. I just can't see any way that you'll be able to do a lot of the more popular types of movies, with their casts and production costs, without the backing of major studios. That's a shame.
Sure, there are low budget movies out there that occasionally get through, but you can't do, say Terminator, on a low budget. And while Terminator may not be my cup of tea or even yours, those kinds of movies appeal to a mass market that will continue to pay for it.
That's distinctly different from music where it doesn't take a great deal of money to record great music. It's just as expensive to record really crappy music. The advantage with this system for music is that it's much more likely that bands with quality music will get noticed whereas flashy, over-produced, non-musicians, like Britney Spears and many others that are popular today, will have a tough time breaking out. So, I personally see that as a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you talking about? That looks no worse than your typical Slashdot article. I mean come on, their titles as "editors" have always been a bit suspect at best.
Many, many people live and die by pivot tables,
And I would suspect many more die trying to figure out what they are.
I'm on the edge of my seat. Why would I want to read a book about Pivot Tables? It could be the best book every written in the history of Pivot Tables, but it may as well be a book on Gorglemopenchausers. I mean, I realize it's a book review, but even a sentence or a short paragraph saying, "A pivot table is basically XYZ" would have added a great deal of value to me as a reader.
As WIPO creates new rights for broadcasters, documents critical of these rights created by EFF and IP Justice were stolen and recovered in a bathroom trashcan.
Damn, I never thought they'd check the men's bathroom trashcans. Maybe I should try the women's bathroom trashcans next time.
Asimov is dead
Perhaps I should have been more clear. I'm aware that Asimov is dead. I meant to imply authors of their stature.
That's his only real qualification, and it's enough for what basically is an honorific post.
An honorific post? Really? Do you actually know anything about the NASA Advisory Coucil? Are you aware that it's the senior external advisory source to NASA? Senior. That means they trump EVERY outside advisory source. That's a bit more than honorific.
If there were several hundred members, maybe I'd call it honorific, but considering the breadth of the topics they cover and the handful of members, I don't think so.
Apart from making blockbuster films, Cameron explores the depths of the oceans and is a member of the NASA Advisory Council and the Mars Society
I'm sure James Cameron is a smart guy and everything, but I'm curious what makes him more qualified to be on the NASA Advisory Coucil than say, 50% of Slashdot readers who I'm sure are just as scientifically knowledgeable, if not a few hundred times as knowledgeable on the topics important to NASA. I mean, other than his bucket-loads of money, of course.
I'm not saying NASA should come recruit their Advisory Council on Slashdot, but I would certainly question the quality of the advice when movie directors are providing it. I mean, check out his resume on their site. It's a good resume for a movie director, but for an advisor to NASA?
And don't get me wrong, I don't think someone should be excluded because they're in a profession. I mean, I'm sure Asimov, Clarke and some other Sci-Fi authors would be able to provide valuable advice in the area of space exploration because, if nothing else, they tend to spend a lot of time thinking of the realism of the ideas in their books (something movie directors aren't particularly noted for).
I mean really, go look at all the resumes of the members on the site and then play the Sesame Street game of "Which of these things doesn't belong?"
The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake.
Yeah, I have to chime in here. It was a HUGE mistake. In fact, there are a few people like me who are so pissed, we'll never buy from RIAA members ever again because of what they did to Napster. That may sound stupid or an excuse to illegally copy music. The fact is, I own cases and cases of legally purchased CDs and roughly 99% of my MP3 downloads were songs I already had in my collection but downloading was faster and easier than ripping myself.
On top of which, a good number of the downloads that weren't in my collection led to purchases of CDs.
If the music industry had found a way to work with its customers, who clearly wanted this medium, I would have been happy to pay for online music. But instead, they sued their customers and they sued Napster.
So, my feeling now is FUCK THEM. They won't get another penny out of me. They want to make things right with me, they can send me a check for all the crappy quality cassette tapes that stuck to tape heads and got eaten up, or for all the CDs (you know, the media that's supposed to last forever), that got eaten by (Slashdot won't take my link to: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_328113.html)
Geotrichum fungus while I lived in Mexico.
Yeah, that'll fucking happen. Fuck 'em. I suspect the RIAA will have a much shorter lifespan than I will. I think they've outlived their usefulness and that's going to become readily apparent over the next decade. The music industry business model will change, the power and the money will go to the individual artists, where it belongs, and the RIAA will be but a bad memory.
And even if it doesn't happen, I'll keep hoping for it and I certainly won't help those assholes out.
It was pretty clear from the article that these guys were also guilty of fraud. They had a 30% chargeback rate and from the description of what was involved in the chargebacks, I'm surprised 30% were that persistent.
I'm curious why fraud charges weren't stacked on top of all this.
I'm not complaining. 9 years for spamming. I just hope this guy isn't the last. I really want to see them go after as many of these guys as they can. Going after 1 isn't much of a deterrant. Going after dozens could be. It's not like there are as many big-time spammers as there are file sharers. You don't have to get that many convictions to start scaring them.
There are a ton of reasons why this is all happening. There's obviously the .COM implosion. Then there's the outsourcing. Then there's the poorer economy overall.
.COM idea and cashed out, but instead I picked those years to live on the beach in Mexico. Again, not really complaining. I really enjoyed the time in Mexico.
I went over a year without a steady job. Granted, I quit my last job. I just didn't expect finding a new one to be so damn difficult.
I was lucky that two old co-workers of mine invited me to contract full time with the company they work for and I'm back to making old wages (without benefits, of course). Hell, I'm happy to be employed again.
I'm getting pretty close to done with programming for a living, though. I've been doing it for about 18 years (and another 8 or so as a hobby before then), and it's just a long time to be doing the same thing. Bringing in this kind of income is nice, but I lived on a lot less for several years and got by just fine, and I guess I just realize that I'll be happier with a lot less stress in my life.
But this contracting job is about as good as it gets in this field, as far as I'm concerned (your desires may be different). I work from home and make good money. I'm living in a friendly, small town without much stress or traffic. What more could I need?
Really, I don't suspect the industry will ever come close to what it was for a few years there. Kinda wish I had come up with a golden
"I don't know how many years this volcanic winter was supposed to have lasted, but I could easily see a big hive with a lot of honey surviving a decade of less-than-optimal weather."
It wasn't a "volcanic" winter. It was caused by an asteroid impact, not a volcano. And it lasted a few THOUSAND years, not a decade, a few decades, a century, or even a few centuries. A few THOUSAND years. I smoked a bit of pot as a kid (maybe I should have been keeping bees instead), and maybe my perception of time isn't what it used to be, but a few thousand years of living pretty far outside of your normal survival temperature range seems like a bit of stretch.
of which this is one, but several people have posted things like, "bees can survive a winter," and "you can toss 'em in the freezer and they'll be okay in a few days."
The woman's an EXPERT in the field. You think she hasn't considered this? If you read the article, it discusses, specifically a range that this TROPICAL honey bee survives in. Tropical honey bees probably don't need to adapt to survive to very cold temperatures, as it DOESN'T TEND TO GET COLD IN THE TROPICS!!!! If you're comparing them to your common honey bee that lives in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, it's quite possible they've adapted to cold weather since it DOES GET COLD THERE.
Sorry, I don't mean to scream, but it's kind of like having a paleontologist try to tell you why your code isn't running? Thanks, but I don't need the help of a paleontologist.
Unless you have at least a hobbyist background in paleontology, you're probably not qualified to even speculate. I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to question her findings.
Also, keep in mind, we're not talking about a winter that lasted a few months. We're talking about a winter that lasted a few THOUSAND years. It's a lot to ask of any creature to live outside of its normal survival temperature for a few months, let alone a few THOUSAND years. So, sticking a bee in your freezer for a few days is hardly a valid comparison.
First of all, with so few specifics in the article, one is left with speculating. Speculating tells me that a hard drive with a lot of heads is MUCH more expensive than a regular hard drive. The heads, and the mechanisms for controlling them are probably the most expensive part of a hard drive. So I would think and sheet like drive with a whole lot of heads and a mechanism for controlling the sheet is going to be ridiculously expensive.
Of course, they might have a solution for this, but the post, the article, and the company's web sites leave so much unsaid, we may never know. My guess is we'll never see this. There are many other storage technologies that sound signifcantly more promising than this. And solid state still has a long way to go as well, and as a nother poster pointed out, no moving parts... Sorry if I don't leave a post-it note on my monitor about this one.
Just to clear this up a bit, because the article is misleading and I didn't see any posts clarifying this. It will not be illegal to own or possess these cards (HDTV receivers that ignore the broadcast flag). It will simply be illegal to sell them in the U.S.
I suggest people stock up on them. I don't even have an HDTV at this point, but I'm going to grab a card just so I'm covered...
What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of Apple's Quartz rendering.
Now, porting that to Windows and keeping the above statement true: That'll be impressive!
Why is it when people link New York Times, people rant and rave about the registration requirements and you get the snide comments in the post like, "Registration and first born child required." But when it's GamaSutra, nobody says anything?
I mean, seriously, is GamaSutra's registration really so much more ethical than the NY Times registration?
Go ahead and mark me off topic and troll, but I think it's a legitimate gripe. 5 years down the road, I want to continue to get my NY Times free of charge and if all that requires from me is registration, I'll happily make the trade.
I thought I'd tag on a little additional information. Here are the protocol handlers on my Win 2K system. Yours may vary:
about:, cdl:, file:, ftp:, gopher:,
http:, https:, ipp:, javascript:, local:,
mailto:, mhtml:, mk:, msdaipp:, ms-help:,
ms-its:, ms-itss:, res:, sysimage:, vbscript:, and
vnd.ms.radio:
I don't know what all of them are, but I think there's probably more there than the original submitter of the article probably realized.
Why does Microsoft need to catch up? Anyone can write an Asynchronous Pluggable Protocol (the handlers for different url monikers). I've written two of them for different applications I've written. It's a great way to tie browsers to HTML not stored on a web server.
mk-its: is used in the HTML help system, and ms-help: is used with the MSDN, and there are probably a few others that most people have never heard of.
But like I said, why is it up to MS? Anyone in the open source community could write APPs for Windows to add this kind of functionality if there were a demand for it, so I suspect there's little or no demand for it.
I recently bought the D-Link DSM-320, which isn't a tuner, but allows you to play movies and music as well as view images from your computer, onto your TV via ethernet or 802.11b/g.
It doesn't use SMB shares, however. You run a server app on your Windows machine and tell it the directories you want to share.
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with it so far. The biggest problem is that using the wireless, a lot of movies don't have sound. From what I have read, this is a bandwidth issue and should go away if I go with wired ethernet, but I haven't tried that yet.
It also has a number of small usability issues. It doesn't respond to the remote control very well and you need pretty direct aim and also need to sometimes press a button multiple times. It sometimes hangs and responds late to button presses, so you end up hitting a button over and over again thinking it's not getting it, only to get all the button hits several seconds later.
On the other hand, the system allows for automatic firmware upgrades (which it did the first time I connected) and it appears to have improved significantly from earlier versions, so I'm hoping it will continue to improve. I considered taking it back, but I'm going to hold onto it and just hope that the firmware upgrades will eventually remedy most of these problems.
It's nice to see more of these types of devices coming out. My real goal is to build a MythTV box because I think that's going to be more of what I'm looking for. I have a DirectTV receiver with TiVo and the TiVo is great with the exception that I can't store the movies offline and I can't access my substantial collection of TV shows from my computer with it. So I think at this point MythTV is the only way to go.
Thanks for using ARexx. My knowledge of Rexx allowed me to escape.
I wonder how tough it could be to piece the documentation together in a non-protected document? I mean, if you can see it, then you can take screenshots of it in IE. The text can go through OCR. Images can be print-screened and saved. How difficult would it really be for someone who wanted it bad enough to simply piece the document back together in say, Word?
I have to say it. C# does rock and I'm so happy about Mono doing so well.
.NET framework that are clearly hacked together just to make it work. Others were clearly designed by developers with very little understanding of object oriented development principles.
There are mistakes in how the C# language has been designed that really bug me at times, but I've been developping in C# for about 2 years now and I've never been so productive in my life.
It has a lot of the advantages of Java, but with a better UI (and by better, I mean better looking AND better performance. The Java ones seem to be one or the other: Fast and Ugly or Slow and Pretty, and maybe even some slow and ugly ones).
I really hope Mono can keep up with the Longhorn development because I really expect the library design to be better. There are a lot of aspects of the
But complaints aside, overall it's excellent and as I said, I've never been so productive! As an independent contractor, that means a lot to me.
Federal laws and regulations trump state law, via the "supremacy clause" of the US constitution.
Normally, yes, but just as a university can ban alcohol on their premises, they can also ban the use of other items, on university property. It's their property, so they set the rules.
Just as a store can disallow the use of cell phones, a university can say that you can't use certain wireless equipment on their property. You're not breaking a law by doing so, but you're breaking the "rules" of the institution and they're within their rights to remedy the situation if someone breaks the rules.
This isn't a legal issue, so don't confuse it. This follows along with other "rules". Perhaps they have a rule that you have to attend a certain number of classes to pass. If you don't, you fail the class. That's rule, not law. There is no law that affects it. Just as there are no laws preventing them from using wireless equipment. Simply rules.
First of all, the law itself isn't secret. The government is asking that their argument for its need be kept secret. Please be more accurate in posting stories.
Second of all, if they stop requiring IDs for flights, I'm going to stop flying. All you privacy advocates say what you want, but I'm comforted to some degree (though not a great deal) by the fact that ID is required to fly and I sure as hell would feel less comfortable if they removed that requirement. I want the airlines and the government to take at least the most minimal steps to figure out who the hell is on my flight.
If you value your privacy more than your life, don't fly.
Personally, I don't know that many people who care that they have to show ID to get on a flight. On the other hand, I know a LOT of people who would be up in arms if the government and airlines removed the requirement.
Why are you guys so paranoid that the government might know where you're flying? Do you think they're following you? Don't you know you'll be safe as long as you keep your tin foil hat on?
I just got a DirectTiVo a couple of weeks ago, and I love, but I'm still building my MythTV box in the next couple of months.
But as additional information, I got the TiVo receiver and a regular satellite receiver for $89.99. But this included a 1 year DirecTV contract (new service), so you can get it cheaper if you're a new customer.
MythTV has a few other advantages that I think make it a much better choice. For one, you can watch stuff you've downloaded. For another, you can save stuff you've recorded onto CD or DVD for later viewing.
The inability to save things on another media is a real minus for the TiVo, in my book.
And of course, the big advantage of MythTV, if you're a programmer, is you can hack it. I have some very definite ideas about things I would like to see in a PVR and MythTV gives me the option to do that myself.
It's encouraging that he owns a Tivo? Why? Because he wants you to do as he says and not as he does? Sorry, but I don't see that as anything encouraging. He's just plain wrong. As consumers. at the price they charge for CDs and DVDs, you're damn right we're entitled to a backup copy, and it's specifically in copyright law that we're entitled to it.
I can see the end of the major record companies in sight. That will definitely happen in my lifetime, and I can't be happier about it. The new order will probably involve online distribution of music and musicians hiring individual promoters to get their music out there. The huge advantage of this is that the enormous cut the record companies get will be gone. Cost of production will be very low, so the music will be reasonably priced. I honestly believe that's the future of the music industry.
What concerns me is that I can't see an equivalent for the film industry. I just can't see any way that you'll be able to do a lot of the more popular types of movies, with their casts and production costs, without the backing of major studios. That's a shame.
Sure, there are low budget movies out there that occasionally get through, but you can't do, say Terminator, on a low budget. And while Terminator may not be my cup of tea or even yours, those kinds of movies appeal to a mass market that will continue to pay for it.
That's distinctly different from music where it doesn't take a great deal of money to record great music. It's just as expensive to record really crappy music. The advantage with this system for music is that it's much more likely that bands with quality music will get noticed whereas flashy, over-produced, non-musicians, like Britney Spears and many others that are popular today, will have a tough time breaking out. So, I personally see that as a good thing.