Better yet ask why no one has ever marketed a VCR that edits out the commercials. If I recall correctly, there used to be an electronic kit to detect some change in the signal from show to commercial and back and it would use the old mini plug jack (only available on really old VCR's) for pausing recording to stop the VCR from recording the commercial. Someone's seriously protecting their advertising revenue.
Sorry but last time I looked we were talking about building a server / cases and Lian Li specifically. Compaq Proliant servers are in that class and I can buy parts to build an equivelent machine, have you built a Sun Server lately?
You can easily pay over $16,000 for a high end dual cpu Compaq Proliant server, $600 for a fabulous server case is not that bad. I've built three systems using the Lian Li PC-60 USB case and I've never been happier with any case. The newer model has an internal bracket that mounts five hard drives right behind two front mounted fans with dust filter and four front mounted USB ports for motherboards like the Asus A7A266 which has headers on the board for the four ports. It's an expensive case (now $159 from Directron.Com) but it's a joy to work with and it does keep the components cool.
I'd certify as crazy anyone who put out that kind of bucks today for something that'll cost half the price in six months. I took a quick look at CPU prices and you can get a PIII FCPGA 133mhz FSB cpu for under $220, who in the world needs more horsepower than that on their desktop. If I remember June 1999 we were buying a few PIII 500mhz cpu's for around $500 for some of the programming staff, now I don't think Intel even makes that speed anymore. All these cpu interations and the cost are just insane.
Having read a lot of the messages here, it seems like there are more than a few people who are VPNing from home to work using the Comcast@Home service. But for all the dissatisfaction with this change in the subscriber agreement I didn't see anyone ask this question, is the @Home network regulated by the FCC and are there any grounds for a complaint or appeal of this restriction? If the sole purpose of this is to force residential customers to pay the business rate for the same service isn't that illegal? For example if I were in business selling widgets and Joe from 111 Smart St. came in and I sold him one for $20, then right behind him Jim from Acme Accounting came in and I sold him the same widget for $80 just because he's a business isn't there something illegal about that?
What's really unfortunate is that for the most part elected offcials don't honestly represent the people who've elected them. How many campaign promises do they make and how many do they actually keep? The answer is very few in my experience. I've come to believe that all politicians running for office have their own agenda which has very little to do with representing the people who voted for them.
I never really saw any show stoppers with RH 6.1 but the couple of things I remember were that if you selected to install KDE workstation you still got Gnome at startup and if you selected 'Use Graphical Login' you still got the text login. Both easy to fix if you know what and where to edit but still significant problems in the eye's of people who are trying Linux for the first time.
I think your right on target there. Just for example, I heard a song on the radio that I liked a lot so I went to CDNow and ordered the CD single for $2.99. About two weeks later I got an email saying the item had been removed from their catalog? (as if that told me what the deal was) So I tried ordering it from CD Universe, Tower Records etc. and within a month I got a notice from all that the item had been discontinued by the manufacturer. So what did I do, installed Napster of course.. and there you go. Some people here would brand me a thief but what other choice did the recording company give me? Buy the whole album for $12-$13 just to get one song? Like you I'd be happy to pay $1.50 to be able to download the MP3, but if this ever happens it's going to be a long time coming.
Just a note, if you really want The Phantom Menace that bad a whole lot of people are auctioning off the VCD version on EBay. Also a few people seem to be auctioning a wide screen DVD version from Hong Kong, in English with Janpanese and Chinese subtitles. I just happened to be browsing and was suprised to see this since I didn't think is was available on anything except VHS. According to the notes VCD only holds about 70 minutes so it has to come on two disc's instead of one. Also I'm not sure of the quality compared to DVD but if you've got to have it on disc now bidding seems to be about on average running about $40 for the VCD who knows how high it'll go for the DVD version.
I'm most likely going to get a barrage of negative responses on this, but here goes anyway. Having two parents who are former high school teachers (retired a few years now), and one of the two a math teacher, you should have heard some of the stories. They taught in what is a mostly middle / upper class town but the percentage of students that they had who would have failed a basic skills math / reading test was alarming. And every year there would be at least one or two children found that couldn't read period. You see reports on the news that in math skills children in the US are falling way behind the children in similar industrialized countries. This is a major problem and due in part to a heavy reliance on calculators. Calculators should not be allowed until after a certain grade where the students have mastered math skills manually. Of course there are some advanced high school math courses where a graphing calculator is necessary and should be allowed.
I happen to have a Hollywood Plus decoder that came with my Pioneer DVD drive but I've never installed it. If this Linux driver for it works and you want to install it, more power to you but my question is why would you want to? I can understand wanting to play DVD's on your linux box if you have a DVD drive but from reading the manual on the card (unless I'm very mistaken, if so please correct me) it seems like no matter what resolutions your display adapter is capable of after hooking up the decoder and wiring the pass through you then limit your display to 1024x768xXXX only? I waited too many years to get to 1600x1200xXXX to go back to 1024x768 and I'm not wiring and unwiring those video cables every time I want to watch a DVD!
The ACLU web site has a way to look up your specific elected representatives it'll even tell you if they have an email address, if this "measure" or law frightens all here as much as it does me I strongly urge you to write your representatives and voice your opinion. No disrespect to anyone here but it seems like I hear people nonstop complaining about taxes, insurance (in NJ we have the highest auto insurance in the country), and in general things that the government does that no one that I talk to approves of. But when it comes to taking action, as in spending the time to find out who your representatives are and to actually write them, people just can't be bothered. In my humble opinion that's one of the biggest problems in the US today, almost complete and total apathy and an unwillingness to be involved in public affairs. Though on the other hand I will admit that it seems like the government makes it as hard as it possibly can for the people to be involved. Half the time it seems like laws are passed without people being aware that they are even in the works, and once a law is on the books try to get it removed. Especially if it was lobbied by some very powerful special interest group like the insurance industry.
As someone else pointed out nobody is going to look good at this hearing and the web as a whole has a lot to lose. The thing that concerns me the most is the judge, most judges that I've seen are middle age or older. How computer literate and familier with the actual issues is the judge, does he even know what a link is? How can someone make a decision on this important an issue if he or she is not fully conversant in the technology involved. This whole thing is really frightening and the implications far too wide ranging.
What A Way To End The Year
on
Good Bye Q
·
· Score: 2
Like many people here I found the character of Q to be so genuine and likeable his appearance and interplay with Bond's character was always one of the highlights of each movie. I remember thinking how nice it was in the two movies Octopussy And Licence To Kill to see him have a part that was more than just the usual few minutes. The night before I read the notice here about the accident I saw Desmond on either Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood saying how much he enjoyed doing the movies and that he wanted to continue to play the character for as long as the producers wanted him. That made this all that much more sad, all in all what a way to end the year.
I agree that this is ridiculous. But as far as the any company who did do it, how would the average person know? I had no idea that some companies already did something like this until I read this. As for a reason to vigorously fight this type of thing, let me pose a hypothetical situation. For example say person X had serious moral objections to Scientology (just for the sake of argument, no disparagement implied) and waged an anonymous campaign against what he perceived to be wrong. Some people could agree with him others maybe not. But the Scientologist's having a lot of money and power use the watermark etc on his copied fliers to track him down and either sue him or whatever. Is the fact that they located person X and possibly shut him down a breach of free speech? I think that this sort of thing has very serious implications much wider than what it appears to be on the surface.
I've only been reading slahdot for a couple of months now (this is really most first post here) but it seems to me that there have been more than a few privacy / free speech issues that warrant some serious action. I don't think the issue is detection but taking action against the offenders. I'd start by writing your elected officials and letting them know your concerns. If you don't happen to know who they are (don't be embarassed I'd didn't either until a few years ago) and where you can write to them there's a lookup feature somewhere on the ACLU website (www.ACLU.Org). I think only one out of my three has an email address, the others you've got to use snail mail. On free speach issues it could be worthwile to get together as a group and petition the ACLU to step in and do something in the cases of free speach infrinegment like that instance of the Scientology people getting that anti Scientology web site shut down.
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet ask why no one has ever marketed a VCR that edits out the commercials. If I recall correctly, there used to be an electronic kit to detect some change in the signal from show to commercial and back and it would use the old mini plug jack (only available on really old VCR's) for pausing recording to stop the VCR from recording the commercial. Someone's seriously protecting their advertising revenue.
Sorry but last time I looked we were talking about building a server / cases and Lian Li specifically. Compaq Proliant servers are in that class and I can buy parts to build an equivelent machine, have you built a Sun Server lately?
You can easily pay over $16,000 for a high end dual cpu Compaq Proliant server, $600 for a fabulous server case is not that bad. I've built three systems using the Lian Li PC-60 USB case and I've never been happier with any case. The newer model has an internal bracket that mounts five hard drives right behind two front mounted fans with dust filter and four front mounted USB ports for motherboards like the Asus A7A266 which has headers on the board for the four ports. It's an expensive case (now $159 from Directron.Com) but it's a joy to work with and it does keep the components cool.
So sorry, didn't you hear.. he's dead Jim! :-)
I'm with you on this, Stranger was an Ok book but I think I've read it once for every ten times I've read The moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
I'd certify as crazy anyone who put out that kind of bucks today for something that'll cost half the price in six months. I took a quick look at CPU prices and you can get a PIII FCPGA 133mhz FSB cpu for under $220, who in the world needs more horsepower than that on their desktop. If I remember June 1999 we were buying a few PIII 500mhz cpu's for around $500 for some of the programming staff, now I don't think Intel even makes that speed anymore. All these cpu interations and the cost are just insane.
Having read a lot of the messages here, it seems like there are more than a few people who are VPNing from home to work using the Comcast@Home service. But for all the dissatisfaction with this change in the subscriber agreement I didn't see anyone ask this question, is the @Home network regulated by the FCC and are there any grounds for a complaint or appeal of this restriction? If the sole purpose of this is to force residential customers to pay the business rate for the same service isn't that illegal? For example if I were in business selling widgets and Joe from 111 Smart St. came in and I sold him one for $20, then right behind him Jim from Acme Accounting came in and I sold him the same widget for $80 just because he's a business isn't there something illegal about that?
What's really unfortunate is that for the most part elected offcials don't honestly represent the people who've elected them. How many campaign promises do they make and how many do they actually keep? The answer is very few in my experience. I've come to believe that all politicians running for office have their own agenda which has very little to do with representing the people who voted for them.
I never really saw any show stoppers with RH 6.1 but the couple of things I remember were that if you selected to install KDE workstation you still got Gnome at startup and if you selected 'Use Graphical Login' you still got the text login. Both easy to fix if you know what and where to edit but still significant problems in the eye's of people who are trying Linux for the first time.
I think your right on target there. Just for example, I heard a song on the radio that I liked a lot so I went to CDNow and ordered the CD single for $2.99. About two weeks later I got an email saying the item had been removed from their catalog? (as if that told me what the deal was) So I tried ordering it from CD Universe, Tower Records etc. and within a month I got a notice from all that the item had been discontinued by the manufacturer. So what did I do, installed Napster of course.. and there you go. Some people here would brand me a thief but what other choice did the recording company give me? Buy the whole album for $12-$13 just to get one song? Like you I'd be happy to pay $1.50 to be able to download the MP3, but if this ever happens it's going to be a long time coming.
Just a note, if you really want The Phantom Menace that bad a whole lot of people are auctioning off the VCD version on EBay. Also a few people seem to be auctioning a wide screen DVD version from Hong Kong, in English with Janpanese and Chinese subtitles. I just happened to be browsing and was suprised to see this since I didn't think is was available on anything except VHS. According to the notes VCD only holds about 70 minutes so it has to come on two disc's instead of one. Also I'm not sure of the quality compared to DVD but if you've got to have it on disc now bidding seems to be about on average running about $40 for the VCD who knows how high it'll go for the DVD version.
I'm most likely going to get a barrage of negative responses on this, but here goes anyway. Having two parents who are former high school teachers (retired a few years now), and one of the two a math teacher, you should have heard some of the stories. They taught in what is a mostly middle / upper class town but the percentage of students that they had who would have failed a basic skills math / reading test was alarming. And every year there would be at least one or two children found that couldn't read period. You see reports on the news that in math skills children in the US are falling way behind the children in similar industrialized countries. This is a major problem and due in part to a heavy reliance on calculators. Calculators should not be allowed until after a certain grade where the students have mastered math skills manually. Of course there are some advanced high school math courses where a graphing calculator is necessary and should be allowed.
I happen to have a Hollywood Plus decoder that came with my Pioneer DVD drive but I've never installed it. If this Linux driver for it works and you want to install it, more power to you but my question is why would you want to? I can understand wanting to play DVD's on your linux box if you have a DVD drive but from reading the manual on the card (unless I'm very mistaken, if so please correct me) it seems like no matter what resolutions your display adapter is capable of after hooking up the decoder and wiring the pass through you then limit your display to 1024x768xXXX only? I waited too many years to get to 1600x1200xXXX to go back to 1024x768 and I'm not wiring and unwiring those video cables every time I want to watch a DVD!
The ACLU web site has a way to look up your specific elected representatives it'll even tell you if they have an email address, if this "measure" or law frightens all here as much as it does me I strongly urge you to write your representatives and voice your opinion. No disrespect to anyone here but it seems like I hear people nonstop complaining about taxes, insurance (in NJ we have the highest auto insurance in the country), and in general things that the government does that no one that I talk to approves of. But when it comes to taking action, as in spending the time to find out who your representatives are and to actually write them, people just can't be bothered. In my humble opinion that's one of the biggest problems in the US today, almost complete and total apathy and an unwillingness to be involved in public affairs. Though on the other hand I will admit that it seems like the government makes it as hard as it possibly can for the people to be involved. Half the time it seems like laws are passed without people being aware that they are even in the works, and once a law is on the books try to get it removed. Especially if it was lobbied by some very powerful special interest group like the insurance industry.
As someone else pointed out nobody is going to look good at this hearing and the web as a whole has a lot to lose. The thing that concerns me the most is the judge, most judges that I've seen are middle age or older. How computer literate and familier with the actual issues is the judge, does he even know what a link is? How can someone make a decision on this important an issue if he or she is not fully conversant in the technology involved. This whole thing is really frightening and the implications far too wide ranging.
Like many people here I found the character of Q to be so genuine and likeable his appearance and interplay with Bond's character was always one of the highlights of each movie. I remember thinking how nice it was in the two movies Octopussy And Licence To Kill to see him have a part that was more than just the usual few minutes. The night before I read the notice here about the accident I saw Desmond on either Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood saying how much he enjoyed doing the movies and that he wanted to continue to play the character for as long as the producers wanted him. That made this all that much more sad, all in all what a way to end the year.
I agree that this is ridiculous. But as far as the any company who did do it, how would the average person know? I had no idea that some companies already did something like this until I read this. As for a reason to vigorously fight this type of thing, let me pose a hypothetical situation. For example say person X had serious moral objections to Scientology (just for the sake of argument, no disparagement implied) and waged an anonymous campaign against what he perceived to be wrong. Some people could agree with him others maybe not. But the Scientologist's having a lot of money and power use the watermark etc on his copied fliers to track him down and either sue him or whatever. Is the fact that they located person X and possibly shut him down a breach of free speech? I think that this sort of thing has very serious implications much wider than what it appears to be on the surface.
I've only been reading slahdot for a couple of months now (this is really most first post here) but it seems to me that there have been more than a few privacy / free speech issues that warrant some serious action. I don't think the issue is detection but taking action against the offenders. I'd start by writing your elected officials and letting them know your concerns. If you don't happen to know who they are (don't be embarassed I'd didn't either until a few years ago) and where you can write to them there's a lookup feature somewhere on the ACLU website (www.ACLU.Org). I think only one out of my three has an email address, the others you've got to use snail mail. On free speach issues it could be worthwile to get together as a group and petition the ACLU to step in and do something in the cases of free speach infrinegment like that instance of the Scientology people getting that anti Scientology web site shut down.