That timeframe is debatable (even if it is legislated), but in any case, it won't matter to people who receive satellite signals. The satellite receiver itself may change, but my Series 1 Tivo will still be getting the output from there.
..makes setup a royal pain.
I don't understand why you think it's so difficult. All it takes it plugging in one end of the IR blaster into the back of the Tivo, and placing the other end in front of the tuner, and telling Tivo to use the blaster. I had to do this one time several years ago - not much of a problem.
I think it's too bad they are dropping new lifetime subscriptions. I got one when I first got my Tivo back in 2000, and figured I'd do it again well *after* the HD stuff works itself out (with widespread HD broadcasts & less expensive TVs). The lifetime subscription makes better sense financially as long as you keep the unit long enough.
I'm not an early adopter, but I'm glad I jumped on Tivo pretty quickly.
With a hard drive case made of LEGOs and under a dozen computers google managed to become the world's most powerful search tool.
That, and funding from the NSF, NASA & DARPA, which I imagine helps a bit.
(From About Google, according to Archive's cache of google.stanford.edu)
No matter, their technology is damn impressive, and they seem to always keep improving. Google!
Re:A contrarian to this thread...
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 1
..but as Teddy Roosevelt said, lets "walk softly and carry a big stick".
That's "talk softly and carry a big stick".
Otherwise, it sounds like one is sneaking around looking for somebody to whack.
Of course, you can find either quote all over the net.
Google finds one page with both quotes on it, here.
Re:currency tracking hardly needs rfids
on
Greenbacks No More
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
..have a unique serial number checked against a national database. Money being used at multiple locations at the same time can be flagged as counterfeit, and refused by the stores.
That doesn't seem to make any sense. Say I am at Walmart and the guy in front on me uses a $5 bill to make a purchase, then I receive his $5 bill at part of my change. As I'm walking out, I see a display of batteries that I remember I need, so I pick some up and go to the next checkout counter. I might use the $5 bill to pay for them. Now, that same $5 bill was used just a minute ago, but that doesn't mean it's counterfeit.
Or I could receive a $5 bill at an airport shop, just before I get on a plane. If I use that $5 bill in another part of the country in another hour or three, that still doesn't mean it's counterfeit.
And if "being used in multiple locations at the same time" means "at the exact same time", then they are probably not going to catch too many counterfeit bills.
If it means "within a few hours" (or whatever time period, really), then they are going to be getting a whole lot of false positives.
They bought a bunch of spare inventory when Gottlieb went out of business, although you can get parts, manuals, and kits for all other kinds of brands too.
I was surprised and relieved they had in stock a miniature cue stick for the Cue Ball Wizard pinball my wife got me for Christmas last year. I didn't figure I would be able to find a specialized part like that easily. Cheap, too.
Anyway, highly recommended. Good prices, quick turnaround and easy to deal with.
(RelliK:) Staring at an object so close to your eyeballs can't be good. Wouldn't it strain your eyes a lot more than conventional monitor?
(Tekmage:) The focal point is actually far in front of you..
As a bonus with these displays, make the focus point of the text vary slowly over time, so your eyes aren't always set to a particular distance.
Hey, it's a selling point too.. Exercise for your eyes, while you work!
Seriously, it seems pretty obvious that it would be very beneficial for your eyes to not have to be set to the same focus all day, like it may be right now, if your work involves staring at your monitor all day long.
Umm, the terrorist attack is all over the news. Watch CNN or any other newscast, and you're very likely to see video of planes crashing, buildings tumbling down, and even people falling to their death.
And ClearChannel thinks we're going to be somehow terribly affected if we hear Don McLean's "American Pie"?!?
I'm sure that at every radio newsbreak, they are discussing the tragedy, the latest body counts, and broadcasting tearful interviews with those who have lost family members.
But they don't think it's "safe" to play Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner"?
It's all over the news, ClearChannel!
Maybe they should suggest to their member stations that all news coverage talk about only good stuff, no bad news at all..
The DirectTiVo has dual tuners, but lacks MPEG compression chips, so you can't record from any source other than DirectTV.
That's exactly why I bought a stand-alone Tivo, instead of the DirecTivo recorder - because the DirecTivo unit wouldn't record anything but satellite feeds - no local channels for lots of people (most?) that only have a satellite dish, but no cable.
Since a lot of what I like to record are on the major networks, during Prime Time (usually when I'm working too late coding), I definitely need the Tivo to be able to record the OTA broadcast channels.
The dual tuner feature is a great idea, but why can't these units include a UHF/VHF tuner, or whatever would be required to receive antenna feeds?
That said, after having a Tivo for a year now, my wife and I can't imagine not being able to *pause* (phone call), *replay/rewind* (how'd he catch that!), or simply watch programs whenever we want.
I'm just waiting for a 8 second back-skip button for my car radio.. "What'd he say there?"
Audio doesn't take up nearly as much memory as video - seems like it would be easy enough to fit a car stereo with a 20 or 30 second memory stick or something.
Internet Explorer 5.0 briefly supported an element in its beta 2 release called HTMLAREA. This element was very much like TEXTAREA, but it allowed rich HTML markup to be included and manipulated in the editing control area. This content, along with its rich markup, would be passed to the form's processing script. Support for this element was retracted in the final version of Internet Explorer 5.0.
I wonder why they got rid of it, although your idea seems to make better sense anyway.
I got the nickname Keg Dude from a guy named Bubba.
In high school and college, I was very likely to be either throwing or attending keg parties. A lot. It's a little hobby of mine.:) I have a collection of keg lids that numbers in the hundreds.
During college in the mid 80's, several of us took a roadtrip to a little cabin on Lake Norris in Tennessee. Bubba and I didn't know each other, and when I bought the keg for the weekend, he just started calling me Keg Dude. It stuck immediately and consistently. From that point on, I was always introduced to others as Keg Dude. There were a lot of people at school who never heard or knew my "real" name.
The nickname followed me home from school, too. My family got used to it, although they don't call me that. At my wedding, the napkins had Keg Dude and Betty Love imprinted on them. (Betty Love is my wife's college nickname - another story entirely). The first place we lived, out on this little farm, we painted ourselves up a sign and christened the place the Keg Dude Ranch.
So, after more than 15 years of being Keg Dude, it certainly wasn't hard to figure out what my login name would be for Slashdot!
..I'm gonna upgrade to the Sony SAT-T60 receiver with TiVo -- recording the MPEG streams straight off the satellite is very cool, and I'm dying for that 14-day advance program guide.
Watch out - the DirecTivo does not record your OTA broadcast signals. It only records the channels you get from the satellite. So, if you don't get the network channels from your dish, then you won't be able to Tivo them (or, I assume, use the Tivo remote to change to the OTA channels).
Once I found that out, I ended up getting the Sony DNR Tivo system. It interacts perfectly with the Sony SAT-B2 receiver, and my OTA channels. In fact, there is a cable that plugs from the Sony Tivo unit into the Sony sat receiver to control it. My one Tivo remote is thus the only one I have to use to get all the channels. Works perfectly.
I had thought that having the satellite receiver and Tivo all in one unit would be a good thing, but I've had absolutely no problems with the setup I've got. If you don't yet have a Tivo system, get it! My wife thought we didn't need it at all, but she is totally convinced now.
Products like the integrated DirecTV/Tivo, which can record DirecTV at full-resolution, without the extraneous decode/encode cycle that occurs with a seperate unit
One thing to be aware of regarding the DirecTivo unit is that you can only record the programs that come in through your satellite receiver. It will not record shows that you receive through your antenna.
There's no cable where I'm living, so I view the local channels through the antenna on my roof, and a bunch of other channels through the dish. However, this means that I am not eligible to receive the network channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) through the DirecTV service.
Since a lot of the shows that I want to watch are on the networks, the DirecTivo system wouldn't be able to record them. Instead, I bought a standard Tivo system, and I have both the antenna and the satellite receiver plugged into it. I got all Sony equipment, hoping everything would interoperate well, and it certainly does.
The Tivo unit controls the satellite receiver through a serial port connection, and it also tunes in the over-the-air broadcasts. When changing channels with the Tivo, I wouldn't even know if each channel was from the satellite or the antenna, if it weren't for the quality of the reception.
This looks like a VERY blatant attempt to get people to click onto Processtree. Has nothing to do with the article! Moderators?
Maybe it's the beer, but it looks to me like Idaho's post has everything to do with the article, especially since other posters have said that a monitor like this would need to be distributed to many points, just like ProcessTree apparently wants to do.
Yes, he's linking there with his Sponsor ID, but why is that so bad? And how in the world is it offtopic?
The Slashdot question is about Tracking the Status of Popular Websites and the ProcessTree project is about (as noted by Idaho) "a quality-of-service monitoring system that provides real-time updates on the performance and availability of websites."
I've been lobbying for a couple of months now for us to use a SQL/XML web based solution that does the same thing. It will lower our costs (one server and no software expenses - we could just use a browser as the interface).
Anybody have any ideas as to what might be better?
It's only for Windows, but if you use a browser as the interface, only the fileserver and webserver have to be Windows - the people accessing it can use any browser on any platform. This works out really well for our foreign clients, because there is no application to be installed anywhere. Their users just have to have a browser and an internet connection.
They can log in, enter orders, update information, view reports - all the pages are generated on-the-fly from the live database running at the client's office, served up by our Web Connection apps.
However, this is not for everyone - you definitely need to be a database programmer who understands stateless access, HTML, etc.
On his Web site, the Utah high teenager allegedly called school personnel "drunks" and some female classmates "sluts." He also cast doubt on the work ethic and competency of several faculty members
So, in order for him to be found guilty of libel, doesn't the court have to first determine that what he wrote was not true. Shouldn't there be hearings to find out whether the particular school personnel are drunks, and if the cited classmates are "sluts". Maybe several of the faculty members are incompetent, and this guy is upset about the situation.
Just because a kid writes something bad about someone doesn't make it untrue or libelous.
But in a solution that required multiple tables, I just don't see how you could realistically improve on SQL.
How about Visual FoxPro?
There's a great framework called WebConnection from West Wind Technologies. Except for the little dll (written in C++) that handles the interaction between the webserver and your app, the whole framework is written in FoxPro (and the source code is included).
It's written specifically for performance and stability. There's a very active support board, and features are constantly being added. The site has a lot of information and documentation, and a downloadable demo and sample code.
WebConnection has support for XML, DHTML, email, FTP, SQL and stored procedures, PDF generation, session management, client side apps with HTTP data transfer, remote COM calls, and on and on.
Sorry for the blantant ad plug here, but I work with this every day, and have for the last couple of years. It really works and it works well. The performance and reliability are great.
If you are working with databases and the web, (and you are a database programmer), you really need to check out it's features. Of course, as with any programming, you still have to write efficient code.
"We survived their brute force. It's minds over money."
Actually, it's probably the money that made eToys change their mind. Their stock chart shows a pretty good slide down, from the 60's and 70's to the 20's, in the last couple of months. Ouch.
...I need to include an accounting system written in Visual Foxpro.
If you are going to do anything involving both Visual FoxPro and the internet, you should really check out Web Connection. It's a framework that allows you to create HTML pages on the fly directly from VFP code. It's really fast and the toolkit is highly scalable and very well supported.
Visual FoxPro doesn't get much press from Microsoft because they want to push SQL and seat licenses. But people who use it know that VFP is very fast and reliable. If you are going to mess with databases, you should be coding with a database language.
WebConnection runs Egghead's SurplusDirect site (among others), which gets up to 55,000 hits an hour during peak bidding times. VFP can handle it, as long as you're not writing crappy and inefficient code.
There is support for XML, MSMQ, COM, sending data using HTTP (with a VFP app on the client side), email generation, PDF doc creation, etc. You can also access other databases from within FoxPro using ODBC.
At work, I developed an e-commerce project that does all the online work for several clients that we support, all running from one base class, all coding done in FoxPro. One of the best things is that you can debug it just like a regular VFP app.
I'm not associated with this company but I have used the products and can tell you it's very powerful. The price is way cheap and a shareware version is available for downloading. Check it out. Note: This is for Windows only, but you are not tied to IIS.
Slashdot Mirror
That timeframe is debatable (even if it is legislated), but in any case, it won't matter to people who receive satellite signals. The satellite receiver itself may change, but my Series 1 Tivo will still be getting the output from there.
I don't understand why you think it's so difficult. All it takes it plugging in one end of the IR blaster into the back of the Tivo, and placing the other end in front of the tuner, and telling Tivo to use the blaster. I had to do this one time several years ago - not much of a problem.
I think it's too bad they are dropping new lifetime subscriptions. I got one when I first got my Tivo back in 2000, and figured I'd do it again well *after* the HD stuff works itself out (with widespread HD broadcasts & less expensive TVs). The lifetime subscription makes better sense financially as long as you keep the unit long enough.
I'm not an early adopter, but I'm glad I jumped on Tivo pretty quickly.
That, and funding from the NSF, NASA & DARPA, which I imagine helps a bit.
(From About Google, according to Archive's cache of google.stanford.edu)
No matter, their technology is damn impressive, and they seem to always keep improving. Google!
That's "talk softly and carry a big stick".
Otherwise, it sounds like one is sneaking around looking for somebody to whack.
Of course, you can find either quote all over the net.
Google finds one page with both quotes on it, here.
That doesn't seem to make any sense. Say I am at Walmart and the guy in front on me uses a $5 bill to make a purchase, then I receive his $5 bill at part of my change. As I'm walking out, I see a display of batteries that I remember I need, so I pick some up and go to the next checkout counter. I might use the $5 bill to pay for them. Now, that same $5 bill was used just a minute ago, but that doesn't mean it's counterfeit.
Or I could receive a $5 bill at an airport shop, just before I get on a plane. If I use that $5 bill in another part of the country in another hour or three, that still doesn't mean it's counterfeit.
And if "being used in multiple locations at the same time" means "at the exact same time", then they are probably not going to catch too many counterfeit bills.
If it means "within a few hours" (or whatever time period, really), then they are going to be getting a whole lot of false positives.
I just don't see how this could work at all.
I can recommend Steve Young's The Pinball Resource very much.
They bought a bunch of spare inventory when Gottlieb went out of business, although you can get parts, manuals, and kits for all other kinds of brands too.
I was surprised and relieved they had in stock a miniature cue stick for the Cue Ball Wizard pinball my wife got me for Christmas last year. I didn't figure I would be able to find a specialized part like that easily. Cheap, too.
Anyway, highly recommended. Good prices, quick turnaround and easy to deal with.
TILT!
(Tekmage:) The focal point is actually far in front of you..
As a bonus with these displays, make the focus point of the text vary slowly over time, so your eyes aren't always set to a particular distance.
Hey, it's a selling point too.. Exercise for your eyes, while you work!
Seriously, it seems pretty obvious that it would be very beneficial for your eyes to not have to be set to the same focus all day, like it may be right now, if your work involves staring at your monitor all day long.
Umm, the terrorist attack is all over the news. Watch CNN or any other newscast, and you're very likely to see video of planes crashing, buildings tumbling down, and even people falling to their death.
And ClearChannel thinks we're going to be somehow terribly affected if we hear Don McLean's "American Pie"?!?
I'm sure that at every radio newsbreak, they are discussing the tragedy, the latest body counts, and broadcasting tearful interviews with those who have lost family members.
But they don't think it's "safe" to play Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner"?
It's all over the news, ClearChannel!
Maybe they should suggest to their member stations that all news coverage talk about only good stuff, no bad news at all..
That's exactly why I bought a stand-alone Tivo, instead of the DirecTivo recorder - because the DirecTivo unit wouldn't record anything but satellite feeds - no local channels for lots of people (most?) that only have a satellite dish, but no cable.
Since a lot of what I like to record are on the major networks, during Prime Time (usually when I'm working too late coding), I definitely need the Tivo to be able to record the OTA broadcast channels.
The dual tuner feature is a great idea, but why can't these units include a UHF/VHF tuner, or whatever would be required to receive antenna feeds?
That said, after having a Tivo for a year now, my wife and I can't imagine not being able to *pause* (phone call), *replay/rewind* (how'd he catch that!), or simply watch programs whenever we want.
I'm just waiting for a 8 second back-skip button for my car radio.. "What'd he say there?"
Audio doesn't take up nearly as much memory as video - seems like it would be easy enough to fit a car stereo with a 20 or 30 second memory stick or something.
From the "Index Dot HTML" writeup on TEXTAREA..
I wonder why they got rid of it, although your idea seems to make better sense anyway.
In high school and college, I was very likely to be either throwing or attending keg parties. A lot. It's a little hobby of mine. :) I have a collection of keg lids that numbers in the hundreds.
During college in the mid 80's, several of us took a roadtrip to a little cabin on Lake Norris in Tennessee. Bubba and I didn't know each other, and when I bought the keg for the weekend, he just started calling me Keg Dude. It stuck immediately and consistently. From that point on, I was always introduced to others as Keg Dude. There were a lot of people at school who never heard or knew my "real" name.
The nickname followed me home from school, too. My family got used to it, although they don't call me that. At my wedding, the napkins had Keg Dude and Betty Love imprinted on them. (Betty Love is my wife's college nickname - another story entirely). The first place we lived, out on this little farm, we painted ourselves up a sign and christened the place the Keg Dude Ranch.
So, after more than 15 years of being Keg Dude, it certainly wasn't hard to figure out what my login name would be for Slashdot!
Watch out - the DirecTivo does not record your OTA broadcast signals. It only records the channels you get from the satellite. So, if you don't get the network channels from your dish, then you won't be able to Tivo them (or, I assume, use the Tivo remote to change to the OTA channels).
Once I found that out, I ended up getting the Sony DNR Tivo system. It interacts perfectly with the Sony SAT-B2 receiver, and my OTA channels. In fact, there is a cable that plugs from the Sony Tivo unit into the Sony sat receiver to control it. My one Tivo remote is thus the only one I have to use to get all the channels. Works perfectly.
I had thought that having the satellite receiver and Tivo all in one unit would be a good thing, but I've had absolutely no problems with the setup I've got. If you don't yet have a Tivo system, get it! My wife thought we didn't need it at all, but she is totally convinced now.
One thing to be aware of regarding the DirecTivo unit is that you can only record the programs that come in through your satellite receiver. It will not record shows that you receive through your antenna. There's no cable where I'm living, so I view the local channels through the antenna on my roof, and a bunch of other channels through the dish. However, this means that I am not eligible to receive the network channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) through the DirecTV service.
Since a lot of the shows that I want to watch are on the networks, the DirecTivo system wouldn't be able to record them. Instead, I bought a standard Tivo system, and I have both the antenna and the satellite receiver plugged into it. I got all Sony equipment, hoping everything would interoperate well, and it certainly does.
The Tivo unit controls the satellite receiver through a serial port connection, and it also tunes in the over-the-air broadcasts. When changing channels with the Tivo, I wouldn't even know if each channel was from the satellite or the antenna, if it weren't for the quality of the reception.
Maybe it's the beer, but it looks to me like Idaho's post has everything to do with the article, especially since other posters have said that a monitor like this would need to be distributed to many points, just like ProcessTree apparently wants to do.
Yes, he's linking there with his Sponsor ID, but why is that so bad? And how in the world is it offtopic?
The Slashdot question is about Tracking the Status of Popular Websites and the ProcessTree project is about (as noted by Idaho) "a quality-of-service monitoring system that provides real-time updates on the performance and availability of websites."
The post has nothing to do with the article???
Yes - Visual FoxPro and Web Connection.
It's only for Windows, but if you use a browser as the interface, only the fileserver and webserver have to be Windows - the people accessing it can use any browser on any platform. This works out really well for our foreign clients, because there is no application to be installed anywhere. Their users just have to have a browser and an internet connection.
They can log in, enter orders, update information, view reports - all the pages are generated on-the-fly from the live database running at the client's office, served up by our Web Connection apps.
However, this is not for everyone - you definitely need to be a database programmer who understands stateless access, HTML, etc.
So, in order for him to be found guilty of libel, doesn't the court have to first determine that what he wrote was not true. Shouldn't there be hearings to find out whether the particular school personnel are drunks, and if the cited classmates are "sluts". Maybe several of the faculty members are incompetent, and this guy is upset about the situation.
Just because a kid writes something bad about someone doesn't make it untrue or libelous.
How about Visual FoxPro?
There's a great framework called WebConnection from West Wind Technologies. Except for the little dll (written in C++) that handles the interaction between the webserver and your app, the whole framework is written in FoxPro (and the source code is included).
It's written specifically for performance and stability. There's a very active support board, and features are constantly being added. The site has a lot of information and documentation, and a downloadable demo and sample code.
WebConnection has support for XML, DHTML, email, FTP, SQL and stored procedures, PDF generation, session management, client side apps with HTTP data transfer, remote COM calls, and on and on.
Sorry for the blantant ad plug here, but I work with this every day, and have for the last couple of years. It really works and it works well. The performance and reliability are great.
If you are working with databases and the web, (and you are a database programmer), you really need to check out it's features. Of course, as with any programming, you still have to write efficient code.
It's got some nice looking drop down menus and apparently lots of reporting options.
It's not free, but there's a 2 week trial period, and then you pay month by month as long as you're using it.
- Keg Dude
Actually, it's probably the money that made eToys change their mind. Their stock chart shows a pretty good slide down, from the 60's and 70's to the 20's, in the last couple of months. Ouch.
If you are going to do anything involving both Visual FoxPro and the internet, you should really check out Web Connection. It's a framework that allows you to create HTML pages on the fly directly from VFP code. It's really fast and the toolkit is highly scalable and very well supported.
Visual FoxPro doesn't get much press from Microsoft because they want to push SQL and seat licenses. But people who use it know that VFP is very fast and reliable. If you are going to mess with databases, you should be coding with a database language.
WebConnection runs Egghead's SurplusDirect site (among others), which gets up to 55,000 hits an hour during peak bidding times. VFP can handle it, as long as you're not writing crappy and inefficient code.
There is support for XML, MSMQ, COM, sending data using HTTP (with a VFP app on the client side), email generation, PDF doc creation, etc. You can also access other databases from within FoxPro using ODBC.
At work, I developed an e-commerce project that does all the online work for several clients that we support, all running from one base class, all coding done in FoxPro. One of the best things is that you can debug it just like a regular VFP app.
I'm not associated with this company but I have used the products and can tell you it's very powerful. The price is way cheap and a shareware version is available for downloading. Check it out. Note: This is for Windows only, but you are not tied to IIS.