I suspect inertia has a lot to do with it. The northeast US was probably among the first, if not the first, major region in the world to have a 'modern' electric distribution system. As a result, there is likely a strong sense of the power lines have always been on utility poles, so they always should be.
Newer phone/cable/fios lines are buried because the public doesn't want more lines on poles, those companies want to ensure lower operating costs/higher-reliability, and, most importantly, I'm sure that burying low-voltage phone and fiber optic cables is a LOT safer, and therefore cheaper, than attempting to do the same for existing high-voltage power transmission lines which would have to be buried even deeper. If somebody accidentally cuts a fiber, some people lose service. If the same happens to a buried power line, somebody gets electrocuted.
If that is the case, I don't understand why it's the individual Linux distros that are buying the signature for the bootloader. Wouldn't it make more sense for w/e foundation is maintaining the bootloader of choice (which works with all Linux distros without tweaking), to compile and sign their own binaries that the smaller distros could then distribute?
Yes, it violates a distros ideals of compiling everything from source internally (or the Gentoo philosophy of the user compiling everything), but the bootloader isn't really a part of the core distribution anyway, just a tool necessary to boot it.
How about the (admittedly unlikely) case of a known bomb threat in a given region with a cell phone as its remote detonator? Or perhaps a known threat/disaster in an enclosed and highly crowded space where controlling information is necessary to prevent panic and facilitate an orderly evacuation?
The key is that such capabilities should only be exercised under extreme conditions where lives are in danger -- but never for mere political expediency (ie: impeding a legitimate protest).
My thoughts exactly. In fact, things would be far simpler if we actually had our homes wired up with DC power. Except for the appliances and legacy light fixtures, I doubt there's a single device left that's not using an AC->DC adapter of some form, though of course there's still quite a range of voltages coming out of those adapters.
I've recently started experimenting with various forms of the cheap LED strips myself. A single strip isn't quite as bright as a traditional fixture, but combining a few together and distributing them around the room can be quite effective.
My current project involves placing a strip on the inside of a wood trim that I mounted over my bar-counter (using custom brackets made on a friend's 3D printer). A single indirect strip provides adequate light for eating, and I suspect that will be enough to read by once I add the second direct-view strip. As a bonus, it looks great to - or at least it will once I finish hiding the power supply/cable.
For those that are interested, just search for "led strip" on Amazon. Average price is $35 for the RGB Kit (/w remote + power supply), or $15 for a single-color bright strips (power supply not included).
+1, though I was ~13 when I started learning Perl myself and it remains my favorite (if sometimes under-appreciated) language.
More important than the language though is the end goal. For me, I had no interest in Perl at that age, it was merely a means to an end-- in my case a login system for my Starcraft Clan.
Start by identifying what the kid is interested in and/or wants to build, then find the right tool that they can learn in order to achieve their goal.
Unfortunately that's one issue outside the scope of the mythtv project.
The HDHomeRun Prime technically does support CableCARD usage with Linux - but only for stations marked as "copy freely." If your cable provider decides to place any more restrictive copy flags on it (now or later), then your out of luck.
To make things even more annoying, even if you have an Xbox360 to use as a supplement for those premium channels, it can't tune the encrypted stations live without a Win7 box to serve as a pass-through.
Cable companies want above else for you to use their hardware and their services (DVR, cable box, etc) and are still fighting tooth and nail to cripple competing services on every front.
If they can send a firmware update to the phone, then they can brick it. All they'd need to do is push a special (invalid) update only to that one user, who would then need to be dumb enough to accept it if the update can't be remotely forced.
Realistically though, I think bricking is overkill in this case - by definition if its bricked, the phone should not be recoverable if there was a mistake.
All they need to do is log the phones unique ID, add it to a list shared by all carriers using compatible technology and prevent any such phone from being activated on their network. I believe the Europeans have already been doing this for years - with both smart and dumb phones. Some non-GSM US carriers will do this as well (except for the sharing-the-lists part).
Bonus points if they go to the effort of (with a court warrant) letting the phone on anyway as a type of "honeypot" while they remotely activate the GPS to track the thief.
This might be a crackpot idea but it just popped into my head so I haven't thought it through...
As a compromise to combat patent trolls, litigation, the stifling of innovation, etc., how about changing the law so that once a patent changes hands it enters the public domain or ceases to be. It's imperfect, but has many benefits.
It would protect the initial inventor/patentor. You wouldn't have the same outcry as if you banned patents all together. However, is also a limitation as it would not stop litigation brought on by the original inventor. But it would put an end to patent trolls and would enable patents to enter the public domain at a much quicker rate. Sure, patent transactions would slow, but it's not unthinkable that a company would purchase a patent to protect itself from a lawsuit knowing that that very purchase will destroy the patent.
I like that idea, though having it expire immediately upon changing hands would just prevent them from being sold in the first place. I think a far better solution (as in easier to get legislated) would be to impose a "half-life" on patents. Each time a Patent is sold/transferred the remaining time until the patent expires is cut in half. A win-win all around.
For that matter, such a rule would work nicely for copyrights to. Particularly if the half-life rules are crafted to apply to biological people and not corporations. So if an author/artist passes away and the copyright is passed on instead of entering the public domain, the remaining duration is at least cut in half.
Actually, Netflix Streaming does support 5.1 DD sound now. They added support to it for the PS3 early last year, and supposedly added it to the Xbox with the last major dashboard update (though I haven't actually tested that yet).
But yes - BD always looks better than Netflix streaming, even at its highest quality, and in theory can also give better sound quality if you have a 7.1 DTS-HD system. They'll match it eventually, but the bandwidth isn't there just yet. That said, some of their HD content is comparable to BD and you have to look very hard to notice a difference.
If you just want to teach new developers command-line Unix tools, Cygwin is definitely the way to go. If you just want to give them a taste of Linux, distribute some VMs with a distro of choice on it. I've always preferred Ubuntu as the newbie distro of choice, but I haven't really taken a good look at the current state of distros from that perspective in a while.
Realistically for the average user, once you install the OS for them and choose a desktop environment, the choice of distribution is almost irrelevant. More importantly however, if you suspect you can turn a fair number of users in your company to Linux (and your company is large enough), get a site license for an enterprise-grade version to simplify support and management -- you know 'average' users will be asking questions, so better to standardize where possible.
The Motorola Atrix was launched last year, and this was supported out of the box. It was the major selling point of the phone
The Atrix was launched with Android, HDMI output and Webtop, which is certainly not a full-featured desktop Operating System. If Motorola said it was running Ubuntu or any other full-featured GNU/Linux desktop OS, they were lying.
And within a few months of its release the fine hackers at xda-developers.com unlocked the webtop to work as a fully-featured desktop operating system. Hence, this is not new. This is simply Canonical claiming credit for re-packaging what's already been done.
OT: Come to think of it, what has Canonical done in Ubuntu Desktop lately besides forcing Unity, adding an installer and a few configuration GUIs that isn't already in Debian? (Note: I do think Ubuntu does a great job of neatly packaging Linux for new users with user-friendly installers and such, but for myself I've been a lot happier since I switched over to Debian Squeeze.)
The selection of DRM-free books (and specifically Android-compatible audiobooks) is highly limited on OverDrive, but they otherwise have a reasonably large selection now.
While all of MD uses OverDrive though, the availability of books does vary based on county. You must register at your local library, and that gives you access only to those books licensed by that County's library system.
More importantly, the interface for actually sorting through the books on OverDrive is still horrible. In particular, it gets annoying when you browse through and find for example books 3 and 5 of some series (on different pages of results), but books 1 and 2 are not in the system. Or at least that's what I routinely find with the audiobooks (great for long drives), even when I include the Windows-only file formats.
I recall taking one or two CS classes with a similar methodology.
Basically, the class was broken up into teams of 3-5 students and given a problem to solve. The final grade was a combination of the groups final answer, and individual write-ups by each student explaining the solution. Those write-ups may include a description of what you agree/disagree with in the overall group answer, and a description of what parts you specifically contributed to.
This, particularly with larger classes and randomly-chosen teams, does a good job of fairly testing students abilities as a group and as an individual at the same time. Those that don't understand the work or do not participate fully will easily stand out when the individual contributions are read.
Come to think of it, the same professor also occasionally walked out of the classroom for several minutes during regular (non-group) exams knowing full-well that a majority of the class would start talking/collaborating as soon as she left. In those cases, the nature of the test, and the teacher's implicit compliance, still made it more of an impromptu collaboration than actual cheating.
Simple, it's roughly e*x*s, where e=the mass of an electron, s=the size of the file in bits, and x is the average number of electrons needed to store each bit on the chosen storage medium. In this case, mass may appear to vary based on the density of the chosen storage medium.
Alternatively, mass approaches infinity as the file is moved across fiber optic links at the speed of light. WARNING: Attempting to duplicate a file in this state may create a rift in the profit-time continuum.
I'd love to have one with more than 128 or 256MB ram. I wonder if the Broadcom SOC design allows for piggybacking a larger chip on top? I'm sure a model B with 1GB of RAM wouldn't be out of the question at a price point of $50. I realize we're just going more and more "I want" in price but I think it would be nice to have that extra headroom
+1
Even 512MB RAM would be better. I still plan on getting (at least) one, but more RAM + MPEG-2 support would make its usage as an HD MythFrontend a lot more practical.
Kinect in the living room makes sense - voice/gesture commands in place of a remote control is surprisingly useful (when it works). On a laptop though -- what does the Kinect give that a touch screen can't do better? I mean outside of adult entertainment...
On the other hand, if it can support gestures with your eyes, then it might be useful. For example, gaze at a specific window/monitor and having it automatically come into focus could be quite a convenience... but I don't think we'll see that for a while.
You mean to say there are still people that watch commercials on TV? Or are you referring to those annoying ads in Hulu?;-)
Between Online Sreaming (Netflix,Hulu) and DVRs (MythTV with auto-flag+skip commercials) TV commercials are quickly losing their relevance as the best place to be "seen and heard." News outlets, social media, retail stores - that's where the real PR action is nowadays.
Same here, though I kind of knew they were still around from a few random encounters with their website or magazine in the store (on average once every other year...).
Anyone remember SwatPro, their spinoff magazine printing just game cheat codes? Short-lived, but memorable in the days before the net took over.
I also recall at some point in the late 90s losing interest in GamePro when I realized that 3/4 of the magazine seemed to be nothing but ads...
The same thing is true for the MP3-based audio books from OverDrive. Overdrive has a nice little quirk in it though that you can't actually renew items - only delete them and check them out again. If downloading to a mobile device, this can be slow and also seems to delete any reference to where you left off in it.
I now just use OverDrive to download the books, but then open the MP3s in my phones native app to listen to them - which has a better interface when driving to. Now, is it still a violation of the rules if I don't re-open the OverDrive app to delete them until after I finished listening to it... which may or may not be a few days past the original "due" date.
Of course, I haven't used the OverDrive system in a while now because it doesn't support DRM on Android, and the collection of non-DRMed audi-books is abysmally small . . .
Bullying has been around since time immemorial, and will be so for the foreseeable future - it's part of the darker side of human nature. The only difference today is that now its "cyber", utilizing digital tools that have a potentially greater reach. There are other options here besides curtailing free speech - cyberbullying is one of those things that should be handled internally by the school. (And if parents are involved in said matter, then refer it to the police under existing laws: wouldn't some of the child endangerment laws imply under the category of verbal/emotional harm?).
What's next, are they going to ban the kids on the block from forming the "No Homers" club, or equivalent.
Homer: But you let in Homer Glumplich. Homer G.: [pops head out window] Hyuck hyuck! Boy: It says no Homer_s_. We're allowed to have one. Homer: Oh...
Precisely. My understanding of Marx's communism is that it is a description of the utopian (perfect/ideal) society. It is meant to be an ideal that we (as a species) endeavor to reach, not an actual government to implement today (for that, we have Marx's Socialism). Humanity needs to evolve a bit more to eliminate (or control) greed before the ideal can even be contemplated as attainable - but as the ancient proverb goes, it is not the destination that's important, but the journey there (which in this case may take millenia).
There is... at least if your watching as a "Party" using the silly add-ons in the M$ Xbox Live Netflix application. It also lets you do live voice chat in the same interface, though I've yet to use it myself.
Slashdot Mirror
Airlocks? Docking a train in a near-vacuum tunnel to a station has to be considerably easier than docking two spacecraft in a vacuum.
I suspect inertia has a lot to do with it. The northeast US was probably among the first, if not the first, major region in the world to have a 'modern' electric distribution system. As a result, there is likely a strong sense of the power lines have always been on utility poles, so they always should be.
Newer phone/cable/fios lines are buried because the public doesn't want more lines on poles, those companies want to ensure lower operating costs/higher-reliability, and, most importantly, I'm sure that burying low-voltage phone and fiber optic cables is a LOT safer, and therefore cheaper, than attempting to do the same for existing high-voltage power transmission lines which would have to be buried even deeper. If somebody accidentally cuts a fiber, some people lose service. If the same happens to a buried power line, somebody gets electrocuted.
That's my understanding as well.
If that is the case, I don't understand why it's the individual Linux distros that are buying the signature for the bootloader. Wouldn't it make more sense for w/e foundation is maintaining the bootloader of choice (which works with all Linux distros without tweaking), to compile and sign their own binaries that the smaller distros could then distribute?
Yes, it violates a distros ideals of compiling everything from source internally (or the Gentoo philosophy of the user compiling everything), but the bootloader isn't really a part of the core distribution anyway, just a tool necessary to boot it.
How about the (admittedly unlikely) case of a known bomb threat in a given region with a cell phone as its remote detonator? Or perhaps a known threat/disaster in an enclosed and highly crowded space where controlling information is necessary to prevent panic and facilitate an orderly evacuation?
The key is that such capabilities should only be exercised under extreme conditions where lives are in danger -- but never for mere political expediency (ie: impeding a legitimate protest).
My thoughts exactly. In fact, things would be far simpler if we actually had our homes wired up with DC power. Except for the appliances and legacy light fixtures, I doubt there's a single device left that's not using an AC->DC adapter of some form, though of course there's still quite a range of voltages coming out of those adapters.
I've recently started experimenting with various forms of the cheap LED strips myself. A single strip isn't quite as bright as a traditional fixture, but combining a few together and distributing them around the room can be quite effective.
My current project involves placing a strip on the inside of a wood trim that I mounted over my bar-counter (using custom brackets made on a friend's 3D printer). A single indirect strip provides adequate light for eating, and I suspect that will be enough to read by once I add the second direct-view strip. As a bonus, it looks great to - or at least it will once I finish hiding the power supply/cable.
For those that are interested, just search for "led strip" on Amazon. Average price is $35 for the RGB Kit (/w remote + power supply), or $15 for a single-color bright strips (power supply not included).
+1, though I was ~13 when I started learning Perl myself and it remains my favorite (if sometimes under-appreciated) language.
More important than the language though is the end goal. For me, I had no interest in Perl at that age, it was merely a means to an end-- in my case a login system for my Starcraft Clan.
Start by identifying what the kid is interested in and/or wants to build, then find the right tool that they can learn in order to achieve their goal.
Unfortunately that's one issue outside the scope of the mythtv project.
The HDHomeRun Prime technically does support CableCARD usage with Linux - but only for stations marked as "copy freely." If your cable provider decides to place any more restrictive copy flags on it (now or later), then your out of luck.
To make things even more annoying, even if you have an Xbox360 to use as a supplement for those premium channels, it can't tune the encrypted stations live without a Win7 box to serve as a pass-through.
Cable companies want above else for you to use their hardware and their services (DVR, cable box, etc) and are still fighting tooth and nail to cripple competing services on every front.
If they can send a firmware update to the phone, then they can brick it. All they'd need to do is push a special (invalid) update only to that one user, who would then need to be dumb enough to accept it if the update can't be remotely forced.
Realistically though, I think bricking is overkill in this case - by definition if its bricked, the phone should not be recoverable if there was a mistake.
All they need to do is log the phones unique ID, add it to a list shared by all carriers using compatible technology and prevent any such phone from being activated on their network. I believe the Europeans have already been doing this for years - with both smart and dumb phones. Some non-GSM US carriers will do this as well (except for the sharing-the-lists part).
Bonus points if they go to the effort of (with a court warrant) letting the phone on anyway as a type of "honeypot" while they remotely activate the GPS to track the thief.
This might be a crackpot idea but it just popped into my head so I haven't thought it through...
As a compromise to combat patent trolls, litigation, the stifling of innovation, etc., how about changing the law so that once a patent changes hands it enters the public domain or ceases to be. It's imperfect, but has many benefits.
It would protect the initial inventor/patentor. You wouldn't have the same outcry as if you banned patents all together. However, is also a limitation as it would not stop litigation brought on by the original inventor. But it would put an end to patent trolls and would enable patents to enter the public domain at a much quicker rate. Sure, patent transactions would slow, but it's not unthinkable that a company would purchase a patent to protect itself from a lawsuit knowing that that very purchase will destroy the patent.
I like that idea, though having it expire immediately upon changing hands would just prevent them from being sold in the first place. I think a far better solution (as in easier to get legislated) would be to impose a "half-life" on patents. Each time a Patent is sold/transferred the remaining time until the patent expires is cut in half. A win-win all around.
For that matter, such a rule would work nicely for copyrights to. Particularly if the half-life rules are crafted to apply to biological people and not corporations. So if an author/artist passes away and the copyright is passed on instead of entering the public domain, the remaining duration is at least cut in half.
Actually, Netflix Streaming does support 5.1 DD sound now. They added support to it for the PS3 early last year, and supposedly added it to the Xbox with the last major dashboard update (though I haven't actually tested that yet).
But yes - BD always looks better than Netflix streaming, even at its highest quality, and in theory can also give better sound quality if you have a 7.1 DTS-HD system. They'll match it eventually, but the bandwidth isn't there just yet. That said, some of their HD content is comparable to BD and you have to look very hard to notice a difference.
+1
If you just want to teach new developers command-line Unix tools, Cygwin is definitely the way to go. If you just want to give them a taste of Linux, distribute some VMs with a distro of choice on it. I've always preferred Ubuntu as the newbie distro of choice, but I haven't really taken a good look at the current state of distros from that perspective in a while.
Realistically for the average user, once you install the OS for them and choose a desktop environment, the choice of distribution is almost irrelevant. More importantly however, if you suspect you can turn a fair number of users in your company to Linux (and your company is large enough), get a site license for an enterprise-grade version to simplify support and management -- you know 'average' users will be asking questions, so better to standardize where possible.
The Motorola Atrix was launched last year, and this was supported out of the box. It was the major selling point of the phone
The Atrix was launched with Android, HDMI output and Webtop, which is certainly not a full-featured desktop Operating System. If Motorola said it was running Ubuntu or any other full-featured GNU/Linux desktop OS, they were lying.
And within a few months of its release the fine hackers at xda-developers.com unlocked the webtop to work as a fully-featured desktop operating system. Hence, this is not new. This is simply Canonical claiming credit for re-packaging what's already been done.
OT: Come to think of it, what has Canonical done in Ubuntu Desktop lately besides forcing Unity, adding an installer and a few configuration GUIs that isn't already in Debian? (Note: I do think Ubuntu does a great job of neatly packaging Linux for new users with user-friendly installers and such, but for myself I've been a lot happier since I switched over to Debian Squeeze.)
The selection of DRM-free books (and specifically Android-compatible audiobooks) is highly limited on OverDrive, but they otherwise have a reasonably large selection now.
While all of MD uses OverDrive though, the availability of books does vary based on county. You must register at your local library, and that gives you access only to those books licensed by that County's library system.
More importantly, the interface for actually sorting through the books on OverDrive is still horrible. In particular, it gets annoying when you browse through and find for example books 3 and 5 of some series (on different pages of results), but books 1 and 2 are not in the system. Or at least that's what I routinely find with the audiobooks (great for long drives), even when I include the Windows-only file formats.
I recall taking one or two CS classes with a similar methodology.
Basically, the class was broken up into teams of 3-5 students and given a problem to solve. The final grade was a combination of the groups final answer, and individual write-ups by each student explaining the solution. Those write-ups may include a description of what you agree/disagree with in the overall group answer, and a description of what parts you specifically contributed to.
This, particularly with larger classes and randomly-chosen teams, does a good job of fairly testing students abilities as a group and as an individual at the same time. Those that don't understand the work or do not participate fully will easily stand out when the individual contributions are read.
Come to think of it, the same professor also occasionally walked out of the classroom for several minutes during regular (non-group) exams knowing full-well that a majority of the class would start talking/collaborating as soon as she left. In those cases, the nature of the test, and the teacher's implicit compliance, still made it more of an impromptu collaboration than actual cheating.
Simple, it's roughly e*x*s, where e=the mass of an electron, s=the size of the file in bits, and x is the average number of electrons needed to store each bit on the chosen storage medium. In this case, mass may appear to vary based on the density of the chosen storage medium.
Alternatively, mass approaches infinity as the file is moved across fiber optic links at the speed of light. WARNING: Attempting to duplicate a file in this state may create a rift in the profit-time continuum.
I'd love to have one with more than 128 or 256MB ram. I wonder if the Broadcom SOC design allows for piggybacking a larger chip on top?
I'm sure a model B with 1GB of RAM wouldn't be out of the question at a price point of $50. I realize we're just going more and more "I want" in price but I think it would be nice to have that extra headroom
+1
Even 512MB RAM would be better. I still plan on getting (at least) one, but more RAM + MPEG-2 support would make its usage as an HD MythFrontend a lot more practical.
Kinect in the living room makes sense - voice/gesture commands in place of a remote control is surprisingly useful (when it works). On a laptop though -- what does the Kinect give that a touch screen can't do better? I mean outside of adult entertainment...
On the other hand, if it can support gestures with your eyes, then it might be useful. For example, gaze at a specific window/monitor and having it automatically come into focus could be quite a convenience ... but I don't think we'll see that for a while.
It's American Circa 1900 in terms of work conditions. "harsh tones poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of those in power"
You mean to say there are still people that watch commercials on TV? Or are you referring to those annoying ads in Hulu? ;-)
Between Online Sreaming (Netflix,Hulu) and DVRs (MythTV with auto-flag+skip commercials) TV commercials are quickly losing their relevance as the best place to be "seen and heard." News outlets, social media, retail stores - that's where the real PR action is nowadays.
Same here, though I kind of knew they were still around from a few random encounters with their website or magazine in the store (on average once every other year...).
Anyone remember SwatPro, their spinoff magazine printing just game cheat codes? Short-lived, but memorable in the days before the net took over.
I also recall at some point in the late 90s losing interest in GamePro when I realized that 3/4 of the magazine seemed to be nothing but ads...
"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that" - the Immortal words of Homer Simpson
The same thing is true for the MP3-based audio books from OverDrive. Overdrive has a nice little quirk in it though that you can't actually renew items - only delete them and check them out again. If downloading to a mobile device, this can be slow and also seems to delete any reference to where you left off in it.
I now just use OverDrive to download the books, but then open the MP3s in my phones native app to listen to them - which has a better interface when driving to. Now, is it still a violation of the rules if I don't re-open the OverDrive app to delete them until after I finished listening to it ... which may or may not be a few days past the original "due" date.
Of course, I haven't used the OverDrive system in a while now because it doesn't support DRM on Android, and the collection of non-DRMed audi-books is abysmally small . . .
Bullying has been around since time immemorial, and will be so for the foreseeable future - it's part of the darker side of human nature. The only difference today is that now its "cyber", utilizing digital tools that have a potentially greater reach. There are other options here besides curtailing free speech - cyberbullying is one of those things that should be handled internally by the school. (And if parents are involved in said matter, then refer it to the police under existing laws: wouldn't some of the child endangerment laws imply under the category of verbal/emotional harm?).
What's next, are they going to ban the kids on the block from forming the "No Homers" club, or equivalent.
Homer: But you let in Homer Glumplich.
Homer G.: [pops head out window] Hyuck hyuck!
Boy: It says no Homer_s_. We're allowed to have one.
Homer: Oh...
Precisely. My understanding of Marx's communism is that it is a description of the utopian (perfect/ideal) society. It is meant to be an ideal that we (as a species) endeavor to reach, not an actual government to implement today (for that, we have Marx's Socialism). Humanity needs to evolve a bit more to eliminate (or control) greed before the ideal can even be contemplated as attainable - but as the ancient proverb goes, it is not the destination that's important, but the journey there (which in this case may take millenia).
There is ... at least if your watching as a "Party" using the silly add-ons in the M$ Xbox Live Netflix application. It also lets you do live voice chat in the same interface, though I've yet to use it myself.