Right. That's what I was thinking. When I say it's a software issue, I mean mainly software drivers to support the USB tuner/capture hardare... anyone know if that's been done?
I also found that people have successfully used a usb keyboard with an xbox. It seems that the hardware support is not the problem... I wonder how difficult it would be to add software support for a tuner card? Now that would be ideal-- an xbox running XBMC and with a usb tv tuner card (since PCI is not an option). You would essentially have a Tivo that plays xbox games:-) Plus it would be a more open system (at least if you were running free software on it)
OK, I RTFA. Interesting as hell... I read a few posts here that say something along the lines of "well it'd be ultimate IF it had a TV capture/tuner card on it."
I agree...
What would the possibilities of taking something like this and hooking it up to the xbox with a reverse one of these?
IANAP (Programmer), but it seems like the hardware part is certainly feasible. I did a quick google to see if anyone has done something like this, and I did find something about the xbox USB stack being proprietary, but that's not exactly stopped people before. Does anyone here on slashdot know of a project to do something along these lines?
You know, this is getting ridiculous. When you buy a movie (DVD), ~$1.50 is going towards the actual cost of the media. The remaining ~$18.50 is you, the consumer, purchasing in-home viewing rights from the creator, the studio. You are not allowed to show it in a movie theater, etc etc... The thing that I don't understand is that, if you ruin your movie (sunlight, scratches, etc), you have to repurchase the movie including the rights to view it. I already paid for those rights. If anything, there should be a system where you return a ruined movie, and all you have to pay for is the cost of the media. That should be the worst case scenario. Even that, in my opinion, is a bit draconian.
The RIAA and MPAA need to realize that there is nothing wrong with making a backup copy of something. It is the way the world works-- important things are archived and backed up. I do think that allowing backups does lend itself to piracy, but that is a side-effect that will not go away. People will pirate movies and music no matter what you do. You have to allow for people to make copies of things they have already purchased personal rights to, because you can't guarantee that that movie or CD will last forever (in fact, we know they won't). DRM attempts to nullify this to a degree by allowing (mostly) songs at this point to be kept in digital format, but they limit the amount of copies that can be made. I think that is ridiculous as well-- if I want to make 10 copies of a CD I should be allowed to with no questions asked. I want one for the CD players in my bathroom, bedroom, home office, basement, kitchen, car, bike, office, and hell I want one as a frisbie.
But they disagree with us, and they will be the ones winning unless more people like Rep Rick Boucher take the plate for the "little guys."
But I agree, what the hell is up with that site? It's really hot chicks, and their cars are stuck... you can see pictures and buy videos... here's a description of a video you can buy:
Description: Melanies's "Mercedes Stuck" (33 min.) - Mercedes C-Class C180 K (RWD) - wearing short skirt and sexy boots - first stuck in snow, later in mud !!! - a lot of "fishtailing", rocking and spinning - she got stuck 3 times !!!
... one of our best videos !!!
WTF?!?! If that is one of their best videos, can you imagine what the other videos are like? "In this video, [cute german girl] gets bored and listens to her radio!!!"
It's just so weird. I am so awestruck that anyone would spend money on it. It is certainly weird, so I guess I do at least agree with the decision of the Webby folks.
I don't view it as a "me-too" post, I appreciate your perspective. One thing that really bothers me is that, when Flash originally came out, it was my understanding it was meant to be a way to deliver multimedia/animated content with a small footprint. Now it seems that I (with a 2 megabit net connection) have to wait several minutes sometimes to load a flash site. That is highly ridiculous. Those type of sites normally do not have a non-flash option, either...
But I will think we all agree that the only thing worse than a site that does not provide a non-flash alternative is a site that reads your user agent string and will not let you access it unless you run IE. While I do run Windows, I do not run IE, and this makes me so mad I want to scream sometimes!
I wonder if any of the sites awarded Webbys lock out non-IE users?
Well I will admit that it has been a long time since I have run Linux (long story, wife is not a computer person can't "understand" Linux blah blah blah), but I never had any problems with flash animations between platforms. Now, when I last used Linux the only browsers available were Netscape or Opera, so I have no experience with Mozilla/Konq/Foo Browser under Linux... In the past, I never had an issue between IE/Windows and Netscape/Linux as far as rendering the animation. Granted, both versions of Flash were version 4.0 (I believe). I do not know what the status of Flash releases are these days, and it may be an issue where version releases are not kept consistent across OS platforms, although I could be wrong.
Also, I think you misunderstood my point about CSS/HTML. You said when valid HTML is "displayed on a standards compliant browser, it will be the same." I agree, but the point that I was trying to make is that IE is not exactly compliant with W3C standards. That was the only point I was trying to get across.
Out of curiousity, is there an OSS alternative for Flash? A quick Google search did not provide anything that stuck out to me, maybe a fellow slashdotter can fill us in!
Not trying to be adversarial, but we have had company sponsored events/parties, on company proper (in the lunchroom, conference room, and at our desks), where beer/wine was provided. It may not be gin or mezcal, but it's hardly what the parent post was describing.
I LOVEWikipedia, but I find myself staying away from it due to the tangents that the parent post mentions. Maybe it is my adult ADD (ha), but I can't keep focused when I am there. I start by looking something up about Alan Turing and then all of a sudden I am reading about the Republic of China (yes, this topic is ~5 jumps from the page on Alan Turing). It kind of reminds me of Everything2.com... i just wish I could keep myself more focused!
I know that Flash is not popular here on Slashdot. No flamebait or trolling intended, but you gotta realize we are no longer in the world of lynx. You may still use it, I may still use it on occasion (just like you and I may still use vi or emacs), but the general public wants multimedia content. While it is true that Flash requires a plugin, so do many other things (such as java on mozilla). The necessity of a plugin does not make something inherently bad (IMO).
Flash allows for cross-browser, cross-platform web development. If I create a Flash animation I do not have to worry about how it will appear on Mac/Linux/Windows/Netscape/Mozilla/IE/Opera. It will be consistent across all platforms. The same cannot be said for HTML and CSS. Even though standards have been set, rendering software does not always abide by those standards (mainly this only applies to MS).
Long story short, and I know it's slightly OT, I think Flash is a great way to present good looking multimedia content with a (relatively) small footprint. What does bother me are websites that do flash-only, or use flash unnecessarily. You should not design an ENTIRE site in flash, and if you do you should at least provide a non-flash site for your users.
I work in the financial industry. Presently I work for JPMorganChase (you know, the giant freakin bank). Our office parties consist of the company renting out a giant room and having bad catered food AND an open bar. I have worked for a few other major financial institutions (mostly credit-card related), and their parties are the same. I don't know what corporate parties you went to in the US, but I think we know how to party just as much as our friendly maple leaf neighbors up north.
damnit. I knew something didn't look right when I was typing that. See, that's why we need star trek-ish computer systems. In a perfect world, I would have hit the submit button and heard a wonderful female voice saying "Who's MABEL?!?", at which point I would curse the creators of this computer system for creating a silicon version of my meatspace wife.
Ah yes! It has been a long time since I've read that book. Was I correct about their primary purpose? If I recall, they were kind of an indy media organization of sorts-- kind of like hitmen reporters for hire?
"Aggregate Nesting Node of Outrageous Yuppies and Ignorant Goofballs (ANNOYING)" should read Aggregate Nesting Node of Outrageous Yuppies and Ignorant Nonsensical Goofballs (ANNOYING)
The first would actually be "ANNOYIG" which the focus group respondents said sounded far too similar to someone who had a cold.
As a pet owner, I agree with you. I can't say I have children, but it seems to be the same way. I mean, when my cat is being bitchy, he either needs food, water, or attention. I don't need a translator to tell me that. I have seen some products that claim to translate the cries of a child. I imagine that there is/could be a market for a product like that, but that is a saddening prospect. Your child is crying. Gee, maybe he/she is hungry, needs a new diaper, or just plain misses you. Do you need a translator to figure that out? It seems to me that the world is moving away from a "hands on" approach to parenting (either a child or a pet), and these things maybe are not so obvious anymore. If you're getting that quality time (and yes, you can have quality time with a pet), you don't need a dang cell phone to translate anything for you.
If you are going to build translation capabilities into a cell phone, why not make it something useful, like japanese to english and vice versa. I would certainly appreciate something like that, even if it only worked for basic phrases. Put an SD slot in there, and you can switch out the language cards when you are going to a different country!
I feel kind of like a Karma whore for bringing this up, but your post reminded me of the characters in Snow Crash... I can't remember what they were called, was it gnomes? They went around and just recorded stuff... I think that there is a real possibility that we may be headed down that road-- especially as our privacy is slowly eroding because of technology being used against us. It seems only a natural evolution that people will begin to use pervasive technology in ways like what you describe.
Well several alternatives have been proposed, such as:
Cellular Relaying Antenna Point (CRAP)
and
Aggregate Nesting Node of Outrageous Yuppies and Ignorant Goofballs (ANNOYING)
and
Standardized TDMA Focusing Umbrella (STFU)
However, all these names were rejected by focus groups. The first two were classified as vaguely insulting (although the respondents could not quite say why). The respondents also said that STFU made them feel like they had made a stupid post on slashdot (kind of like this one....)
Please note that I am (obviously) not a professional creator of acronyms.
This is a typical slashdot comment. There is nothing WRONG with that, but it's funny because there was a cell phone story earlier today and I read about 25 comments somewhere along these lines. I don't know about you guys (or gals), but I want a cell phone that has all those features listed by Vondo, but also with a ton of bells and whistles. However, I don't like it when my battery dies either.
The solution? Fuel Cell Batteries! I mean, come on, I've been reading about them for years-- how they're going to give us weeklong battery life for cell phones, and a few days of laptop battery time... why aren't these things hitting the consumer market yet? It will really be the best of both worlds: all the bells and whistles for the "toy" geeks (you know, they're the ones who use KDE or GNOME), but all the battery life required by the "shell" geeks (they sneer at the mention of a GUI).
I know a lot of people who watch TechTV. While I won't be so rude as to say they have the mentality of 3rd graders, I will say that most 3rd graders that I know have better computer skills than most of the people who watch TechTV. I've watched it a few times, and I can say that it bores me, because it does pander to the lowest common denominator. I am hardly uber-l337, and it still seems pretty dumbed down to me.
But I am not a big TV watcher... I have, however, heard of TechTV... I've seen TechTV. I wonder if this will help G4's viewer audience, or if there are going to be people who defect because they are pissed that their favorite TechTV/G4 show got cancelled... I know a lot of people who really like Leo (I think his last name is Laporte or something?), and if he gets dropped I think a lot of them will stop watching the channel.
To address one of the issues in your post: I was looking for a used BMW Z3 Roadster on eBay about a month ago. I found an auction that had a '97 Z3 listed by a private party for about $3K less than comparable auctions. The seller had very good positive feedback (over 5k), but I was wary nonetheless. A few things stuck up a red flag: All his previous auctions were for electronic parts (but I could overlook that, how many people have multiple Z3's sitting around to sell?) and all of his previous auctions were written in capital letters, but the Z3 was not (maybe he learned about the "CAPS Lock"?)... Most importantly, I sent the seller an email and he responded saying he would need a "down payment" sent via western union to prove that I was serious about buying the car. This did not sit well with me, especially with the other things I mentioned that were off about the auction. I contacted the eBay fraud department late on a Friday night. By Sunday morning, I had a reply stating that the account had been hijacked, and that eBay had removed the fraudulent listing and was in the process of contacting the rightful owner of the eBay ID to turn the account back over to him.
Sometimes the system works... in this case it did. The only thing I have a problem with is how difficult it was to contact the fraud division of eBay... I am more computer literate than most people (maybe not the slashdot crowd, but definitely more computer literate than your average Joe) and it took me about 20 minutes to find an email address for them. I agree that there needs to be a more clear and defined way to report fraud, although I wonder how much it would be abused (ie: you are selling the same thing as I am, and I want to make sure I get a better price for my item so I report your auction, and they temporarily remove it from listing which helps my auction close at a better price).
I just don't understand why it is not offered as an option on customization packages... it would help save the consumer money. Just like if you have the option between a onboard sound card, or a pci add on. If you choose the PCI addon card (say a audigy), you would pay $100 (or so) more. Same thing with Windows and Linux OEM installs... have it default to Linux (the cheapest configuration) and then have Windows as a selectable option that would add $100 to the price of the overall package.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. That's what I was thinking. When I say it's a software issue, I mean mainly software drivers to support the USB tuner/capture hardare... anyone know if that's been done?
well a further googling produces ...
:-)
I also found that people have successfully used a usb keyboard with an xbox. It seems that the hardware support is not the problem... I wonder how difficult it would be to add software support for a tuner card? Now that would be ideal-- an xbox running XBMC and with a usb tv tuner card (since PCI is not an option). You would essentially have a Tivo that plays xbox games
Plus it would be a more open system (at least if you were running free software on it)
OK, I RTFA. Interesting as hell... I read a few posts here that say something along the lines of "well it'd be ultimate IF it had a TV capture/tuner card on it."
I agree...
What would the possibilities of taking something like this
and hooking it up to the xbox with a reverse one of these?
IANAP (Programmer), but it seems like the hardware part is certainly feasible. I did a quick google to see if anyone has done something like this, and I did find something about the xbox USB stack being proprietary, but that's not exactly stopped people before. Does anyone here on slashdot know of a project to do something along these lines?
You know, this is getting ridiculous. When you buy a movie (DVD), ~$1.50 is going towards the actual cost of the media. The remaining ~$18.50 is you, the consumer, purchasing in-home viewing rights from the creator, the studio. You are not allowed to show it in a movie theater, etc etc... The thing that I don't understand is that, if you ruin your movie (sunlight, scratches, etc), you have to repurchase the movie including the rights to view it. I already paid for those rights. If anything, there should be a system where you return a ruined movie, and all you have to pay for is the cost of the media. That should be the worst case scenario. Even that, in my opinion, is a bit draconian.
The RIAA and MPAA need to realize that there is nothing wrong with making a backup copy of something. It is the way the world works-- important things are archived and backed up. I do think that allowing backups does lend itself to piracy, but that is a side-effect that will not go away. People will pirate movies and music no matter what you do. You have to allow for people to make copies of things they have already purchased personal rights to, because you can't guarantee that that movie or CD will last forever (in fact, we know they won't). DRM attempts to nullify this to a degree by allowing (mostly) songs at this point to be kept in digital format, but they limit the amount of copies that can be made. I think that is ridiculous as well-- if I want to make 10 copies of a CD I should be allowed to with no questions asked. I want one for the CD players in my bathroom, bedroom, home office, basement, kitchen, car, bike, office, and hell I want one as a frisbie.
But they disagree with us, and they will be the ones winning unless more people like Rep Rick Boucher take the plate for the "little guys."
But I agree, what the hell is up with that site? It's really hot chicks, and their cars are stuck... you can see pictures and buy videos... here's a description of a video you can buy:
WTF?!?! If that is one of their best videos, can you imagine what the other videos are like? "In this video, [cute german girl] gets bored and listens to her radio!!!"
It's just so weird. I am so awestruck that anyone would spend money on it. It is certainly weird, so I guess I do at least agree with the decision of the Webby folks.
I don't view it as a "me-too" post, I appreciate your perspective. One thing that really bothers me is that, when Flash originally came out, it was my understanding it was meant to be a way to deliver multimedia/animated content with a small footprint. Now it seems that I (with a 2 megabit net connection) have to wait several minutes sometimes to load a flash site. That is highly ridiculous. Those type of sites normally do not have a non-flash option, either...
But I will think we all agree that the only thing worse than a site that does not provide a non-flash alternative is a site that reads your user agent string and will not let you access it unless you run IE. While I do run Windows, I do not run IE, and this makes me so mad I want to scream sometimes!
I wonder if any of the sites awarded Webbys lock out non-IE users?
Dan
Well I will admit that it has been a long time since I have run Linux (long story, wife is not a computer person can't "understand" Linux blah blah blah), but I never had any problems with flash animations between platforms. Now, when I last used Linux the only browsers available were Netscape or Opera, so I have no experience with Mozilla/Konq/Foo Browser under Linux... In the past, I never had an issue between IE/Windows and Netscape/Linux as far as rendering the animation. Granted, both versions of Flash were version 4.0 (I believe). I do not know what the status of Flash releases are these days, and it may be an issue where version releases are not kept consistent across OS platforms, although I could be wrong.
Also, I think you misunderstood my point about CSS/HTML. You said when valid HTML is "displayed on a standards compliant browser, it will be the same." I agree, but the point that I was trying to make is that IE is not exactly compliant with W3C standards. That was the only point I was trying to get across.
Out of curiousity, is there an OSS alternative for Flash? A quick Google search did not provide anything that stuck out to me, maybe a fellow slashdotter can fill us in!
Dan
Not trying to be adversarial, but we have had company sponsored events/parties, on company proper (in the lunchroom, conference room, and at our desks), where beer/wine was provided. It may not be gin or mezcal, but it's hardly what the parent post was describing.
I LOVE Wikipedia, but I find myself staying away from it due to the tangents that the parent post mentions. Maybe it is my adult ADD (ha), but I can't keep focused when I am there. I start by looking something up about Alan Turing and then all of a sudden I am reading about the Republic of China (yes, this topic is ~5 jumps from the page on Alan Turing). It kind of reminds me of Everything2.com... i just wish I could keep myself more focused!
I know that Flash is not popular here on Slashdot. No flamebait or trolling intended, but you gotta realize we are no longer in the world of lynx. You may still use it, I may still use it on occasion (just like you and I may still use vi or emacs), but the general public wants multimedia content. While it is true that Flash requires a plugin, so do many other things (such as java on mozilla). The necessity of a plugin does not make something inherently bad (IMO).
Flash allows for cross-browser, cross-platform web development. If I create a Flash animation I do not have to worry about how it will appear on Mac/Linux/Windows/Netscape/Mozilla/IE/Opera. It will be consistent across all platforms. The same cannot be said for HTML and CSS. Even though standards have been set, rendering software does not always abide by those standards (mainly this only applies to MS).
Long story short, and I know it's slightly OT, I think Flash is a great way to present good looking multimedia content with a (relatively) small footprint. What does bother me are websites that do flash-only, or use flash unnecessarily. You should not design an ENTIRE site in flash, and if you do you should at least provide a non-flash site for your users.
Just my $.02
I work in the financial industry. Presently I work for JPMorganChase (you know, the giant freakin bank). Our office parties consist of the company renting out a giant room and having bad catered food AND an open bar. I have worked for a few other major financial institutions (mostly credit-card related), and their parties are the same. I don't know what corporate parties you went to in the US, but I think we know how to party just as much as our friendly maple leaf neighbors up north.
damnit. I knew something didn't look right when I was typing that. See, that's why we need star trek-ish computer systems. In a perfect world, I would have hit the submit button and heard a wonderful female voice saying "Who's MABEL?!?", at which point I would curse the creators of this computer system for creating a silicon version of my meatspace wife.
Just as long as it has Mabel's voice!
kitchen sink.
Ah yes! It has been a long time since I've read that book. Was I correct about their primary purpose? If I recall, they were kind of an indy media organization of sorts-- kind of like hitmen reporters for hire?
"Aggregate Nesting Node of Outrageous Yuppies and Ignorant Goofballs (ANNOYING)" should read
Aggregate Nesting Node of Outrageous Yuppies and Ignorant Nonsensical Goofballs (ANNOYING)
The first would actually be "ANNOYIG" which the focus group respondents said sounded far too similar to someone who had a cold.
As a pet owner, I agree with you. I can't say I have children, but it seems to be the same way. I mean, when my cat is being bitchy, he either needs food, water, or attention. I don't need a translator to tell me that. I have seen some products that claim to translate the cries of a child. I imagine that there is/could be a market for a product like that, but that is a saddening prospect. Your child is crying. Gee, maybe he/she is hungry, needs a new diaper, or just plain misses you. Do you need a translator to figure that out? It seems to me that the world is moving away from a "hands on" approach to parenting (either a child or a pet), and these things maybe are not so obvious anymore. If you're getting that quality time (and yes, you can have quality time with a pet), you don't need a dang cell phone to translate anything for you.
If you are going to build translation capabilities into a cell phone, why not make it something useful, like japanese to english and vice versa. I would certainly appreciate something like that, even if it only worked for basic phrases. Put an SD slot in there, and you can switch out the language cards when you are going to a different country!
I feel kind of like a Karma whore for bringing this up, but your post reminded me of the characters in Snow Crash... I can't remember what they were called, was it gnomes? They went around and just recorded stuff... I think that there is a real possibility that we may be headed down that road-- especially as our privacy is slowly eroding because of technology being used against us. It seems only a natural evolution that people will begin to use pervasive technology in ways like what you describe.
Well several alternatives have been proposed, such as:
Cellular Relaying Antenna Point (CRAP)
and
Aggregate Nesting Node of Outrageous Yuppies and Ignorant Goofballs (ANNOYING)
and
Standardized TDMA Focusing Umbrella (STFU)
However, all these names were rejected by focus groups. The first two were classified as vaguely insulting (although the respondents could not quite say why). The respondents also said that STFU made them feel like they had made a stupid post on slashdot (kind of like this one....)
Please note that I am (obviously) not a professional creator of acronyms.
This is a typical slashdot comment. There is nothing WRONG with that, but it's funny because there was a cell phone story earlier today and I read about 25 comments somewhere along these lines. I don't know about you guys (or gals), but I want a cell phone that has all those features listed by Vondo, but also with a ton of bells and whistles. However, I don't like it when my battery dies either.
The solution? Fuel Cell Batteries! I mean, come on, I've been reading about them for years-- how they're going to give us weeklong battery life for cell phones, and a few days of laptop battery time... why aren't these things hitting the consumer market yet? It will really be the best of both worlds: all the bells and whistles for the "toy" geeks (you know, they're the ones who use KDE or GNOME), but all the battery life required by the "shell" geeks (they sneer at the mention of a GUI).
I know a lot of people who watch TechTV. While I won't be so rude as to say they have the mentality of 3rd graders, I will say that most 3rd graders that I know have better computer skills than most of the people who watch TechTV. I've watched it a few times, and I can say that it bores me, because it does pander to the lowest common denominator. I am hardly uber-l337, and it still seems pretty dumbed down to me.
But I am not a big TV watcher... I have, however, heard of TechTV... I've seen TechTV. I wonder if this will help G4's viewer audience, or if there are going to be people who defect because they are pissed that their favorite TechTV/G4 show got cancelled... I know a lot of people who really like Leo (I think his last name is Laporte or something?), and if he gets dropped I think a lot of them will stop watching the channel.
To address one of the issues in your post:
I was looking for a used BMW Z3 Roadster on eBay about a month ago. I found an auction that had a '97 Z3 listed by a private party for about $3K less than comparable auctions. The seller had very good positive feedback (over 5k), but I was wary nonetheless. A few things stuck up a red flag: All his previous auctions were for electronic parts (but I could overlook that, how many people have multiple Z3's sitting around to sell?) and all of his previous auctions were written in capital letters, but the Z3 was not (maybe he learned about the "CAPS Lock"?)... Most importantly, I sent the seller an email and he responded saying he would need a "down payment" sent via western union to prove that I was serious about buying the car. This did not sit well with me, especially with the other things I mentioned that were off about the auction. I contacted the eBay fraud department late on a Friday night. By Sunday morning, I had a reply stating that the account had been hijacked, and that eBay had removed the fraudulent listing and was in the process of contacting the rightful owner of the eBay ID to turn the account back over to him.
Sometimes the system works... in this case it did. The only thing I have a problem with is how difficult it was to contact the fraud division of eBay... I am more computer literate than most people (maybe not the slashdot crowd, but definitely more computer literate than your average Joe) and it took me about 20 minutes to find an email address for them. I agree that there needs to be a more clear and defined way to report fraud, although I wonder how much it would be abused (ie: you are selling the same thing as I am, and I want to make sure I get a better price for my item so I report your auction, and they temporarily remove it from listing which helps my auction close at a better price).
I just don't understand why it is not offered as an option on customization packages... it would help save the consumer money. Just like if you have the option between a onboard sound card, or a pci add on. If you choose the PCI addon card (say a audigy), you would pay $100 (or so) more. Same thing with Windows and Linux OEM installs... have it default to Linux (the cheapest configuration) and then have Windows as a selectable option that would add $100 to the price of the overall package.
It's called being "slashdotted"
;-)
As defined by Webster:
Slashdotted: the effect of 1 million geeks querying a webserver during the same half of a second.
You must be new here