I live in south King County and logged into my Comcast account to see what all the fuss was about. Because I have a separate router running DD-WRT and it is connected to my Arris cable modem I do not have the Xfinity WiFi option; or perhaps it is because my Arris cable modem does not have WiFi available when checking it's IP address of 192.168.100.1. Using their online Xfinity WiFi finder, one person near me has Xfinity WiFi and one person near where my dad lives does as well.
WTF, that is a TV tuner. We don't need a TV tuner, we just need a VCR to PC adapter. Where do I get one? I don't even know where to start.
The WinTV PVR has analog input for recording from analog sources. It does happen to have both analog and digital tuners but I do not use them. Their analog capture is the best that I have ever seen.
2 head VCRs are SP only. 4 head VCRs add two heads for EP. If all of your content is SP then a 2 head VCR should suffice. Depending upon the quality of the audio you want to present you might consider either stereo or Hi-Fi. Whatever VCR you choose should have manual tracking adjustment.
For capturing content on a Windows box I cannot recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 highly enough. That capture card should also be compatible with MythTV.
The output from my current consumer grade 4 head Panasonic Omnivision (mono audio) VCR was friggin amazing. My wife had a selection of out of print VHS tapes and I captured them with that card. She was missing one tape and while searching for it I found a three pack of DVDs, one of which matched what she was missing and two of which matched what she had. I had to look at the output frame by frame to see if there was any perceptible difference between the Hauppauge output and the DVD. There was none.
Even with normal recordings from home there can be issues with the picture quality. If you have problems with the video becoming lighter and darker that my not be a copy protection issue (obviously as you are working with home movies). Consider purchasing a Digital video stabilizer. The guys at the electronics repair shop nearby recommend ones by MCM Electronics to help mitigate transfer issues.
Tossing your MPEG-2 output from the Hauppauge through the NLE of your choice might help with noise reduction (I use NeatVideo> and color skew. YMMV.
The path out of depression has been well documented in Dr. Martin Seligman's book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. He has spent 30 years of his life in the field of positive psychology and has multiple case studies showing how people can get over "learned helplessness" in all three realms of personal, pervasive and permanent.
To use Chris Farley, who unfortunately committed suicide due to depression, as an example I provide three typical phrases that he would use in his work:
Personal: I suck!
Pervasive: Everything sucks!
Permanent: It will always suck!
Please note that motivational speakers are typically all optimists and people who are unmotivated go to them for a "motivational fix" which lasts for about two weeks without optimism to back it. See also the typical person who starts a diet, exercise regimen or other self improvement plan.
It may be too late, but perhaps someone could talk with Viva Computing, LLC who now owns the assets of Star Bridge Systems. It was not specified in the news release if they also own the intellectual property.
the new product line that should be available next week.
I am fighting the urge to head down to Puget Systems in Auburn, WA and see if they really have the SSDSA2MH160G2 for sale for $490.55. My guess is it isn't quite ready to be sold yet and was merely indexed by Google.
At some point every person needs tech support. They don't know how to do something, their computer died, they lost data, are infected by a virus or some basic functionality has been lost.
Tech support would be number one on my list of helpful services.
The other thing that would be helpful is basic computer education. Yes, I know that most people in college already know how to work on the computers, however some, possibly older students, might be embarrassed to admit they don't know everything they feel that they should know. Confidential, one on one tutoring can eliminate the fear of admitting they aren't fully up to speed.
How does Comcast help its customers track their usage so they can avoide exceeding the limit?
There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account.
When the Final Duke goes gold, the seventh seal shall be broken and all the gamers shall cry out and lament that their RAM is insufficient and their video cards unworthy.
Make certain that the advertisers that spend millions of dollars on advertising during the upcoming Super Bowl understand that NBC's use of the Broadcast Flag will cause us to boycott their products.
If they do this I will feel compelled to download * from the internet, just because. Things on my list to download would be:
Every damn Metallica album. Why? Because it would piss them off badly.
And then I would buy the new NiN CD.
Every version of MS Windows ever made. Why? To piss off the BSA.
And then I'd switch full time to my Linux partition.
Mac OS X, and I don't even own a Mac yet.
Every song on iTunes. Even if I hated it.
And once that is all done I'll only surf the internet at work.
Will business be exempt from the taxes because they are not consumers and supposedly don't pirate stuff? If they have to pay I'm using work's OC3 till my hard drive explodes.
The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule and were originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Anatolia.
In case you are unclear, the church was attempting to "take back" what was theirs. To "take back" something it first must have been taken from you. Equating that to invasion would be like me stealing your car and then blaming you for taking it back.
Round One: The immediate cause of the First Crusade was Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire was defeated, which led to the loss of all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) save the coastlands. Although attempts at reconciliation after the East-West Schism between the Catholic Western Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church had failed, Alexius I hoped for a positive response from Urban II and got it, although it turned out to be more expansive and less helpful than he had expected.
Round Two: After a period of relative peace in which Christians and Muslims co-existed in the Holy Land, Muslims conquered the town of Edessa. A new crusade was called for by various preachers, most notably by Bernard of Clairvaux. French and South German armies, under the Kings Louis VII and Conrad III respectively, marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any major victories, launching a failed pre-emptive siege of Damascus, an independent city that would soon fall into the hands of Nur ad-Din, the main enemy of the Crusaders.
Round Three: , Sultan of Egypt, recaptured Jerusalem, following the Battle of Hattin. Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe's most important leaders: Philip II of France, Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart), and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Round Four: The Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. Remember that it was originally invaded by Muslims. this is the church trying to recapture it.
Round Five: By processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set another crusade afoot, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Round Six: Emperor Frederick II had repeatedly vowed a crusade but failed to live up to his words, for which he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1228. He nonetheless set sail from Brindisi, landed in Palestine, and through diplomacy he achieved unexpected success: Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were delivered to the crusaders for a period of ten years.
I hope you get the point. The Crusades were not a proactive attack but rather they were a defense and recapture of previously held territory.
Yes, WoW does use Bittorrent for it's updates. I'd be rather unhappy if it were to be further restricted.
I was quoted in the Ars Technica article. Here is the text of my FCC comment.
Dear Commissioners,
As a longtime customer of the Comcast Corporation (CMCSA) I feel it is necessary for me to provide you with my views and opinions regarding their use of throttling bandwidth for point to point (P2P) users that access their network.
File sharing is a gray area with regards to the law. It can be used for not only illegal purposes, such as the sharing of copyrighted material like music and movies, but for sharing of information that is perfectly legal such as software updates, free operating system distribution, free movie and movie preview distribution plus free music distribution. I will cite examples of each accordingly.
The most widely publicized use of P2P file sharing is illegal music and movie distribution. As this review for comment does not touch upon the legal issues surrounding the data being shared I shall focus my attentions to those legal methods that are affected.
Blizzard Entertainment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Games (Euronext: VIV), uses the Bittorrent P2P file sharing protocol to distribute updates and patches to the players of the very popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft. If their data is interrupted for any reason, even for a short time, then thousands, perhaps even millions, of users will be unable to play their game. This will directly cut into their profit margin.
The Linux operating system is a freely available alternative to both Microsoft Windows and the Apple Mac OS. As the Linux operating system is free they rely solely on donations of both time and money from people across the planet. That money, however, is not unlimited. To reduce the high cost of bandwidth they use the Bittorrent protocol for much of their software distribution. Interrupting their distribution channel would only benefit Microsoft, an already proven monopoly. To help ensure competition I feel that Bittorrent should not be interrupted.
To give but one example of free video entertainment you may want to look at the TV Guide 2007 Online Video Award winner Star Trek New Voyages. They are a very high quality non-profit production that was able to beat out contenders such as the 4400 and Battlestar Galactica. Their preferred method of distribution is bittorrent as they have a very limited bandwidth.
Many movies distribute their previews via bittorrent. This would damage not only their advertising structure but limit the consumer to one method of retrieval.
To see that Bittorrent and the movie industry, music industry and gaming industry are working TOGETHER and that they are seeking to create a strategic partnership please view the following URL for more information:
Of course now that you know that Bittorrent is a popular, legal, and economically feasible method of content distribution let me explain a little bit of how it works.
Let us say that the makers of Star Trek New Voyages come out with a new episode. They have a few options at their disposal. One of them is to create a simple link to a file and have everyone who is interested in the file download it from one single location. The downside to this is that the single location will be paying a fortune to accommodate the high volumes of traffic.
The other option is Bittorrent. By having people connect to what is referred to as a "tracker" they can find out who else is downloading the same file and start taking pieces from multiple different users. Essentially everyone is
The common, simplistic explanation of nutrition is that you consume food, which your body then breaks down, releasing the energy of chemical bonds, which your body then uses as fuel. We measure the energy released in a unit called calories.
This description is fine, and it suffices for most day-to-day discussions of food, with one caveat: It's fiction, almost from top to bottom.
Funny. Simple calorie counting worked wonders for me. I lost 45 pounds and was ahead of schedule by two days when I reached my goal. I call it my "Stop Eating so God Damned Much Diet."
Don't tell me that calories are irrelevant when I followed my proposed trend line perfectly using the modern wonder called math, something people here at slashdot seem to agree with.
Although a stellarator is therefore a little simpler in that regard, the geometry and plasma modelling is much more complex, and this in turn creates problems for designing the coils and the exhaust diverter.
That's a relief. Now we know for certain that the exhaust ports are a weakness we can exploit when the government builds their Death Star.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in south King County and logged into my Comcast account to see what all the fuss was about. Because I have a separate router running DD-WRT and it is connected to my Arris cable modem I do not have the Xfinity WiFi option; or perhaps it is because my Arris cable modem does not have WiFi available when checking it's IP address of 192.168.100.1. Using their online Xfinity WiFi finder, one person near me has Xfinity WiFi and one person near where my dad lives does as well.
WTF, that is a TV tuner. We don't need a TV tuner, we just need a VCR to PC adapter. Where do I get one? I don't even know where to start.
The WinTV PVR has analog input for recording from analog sources. It does happen to have both analog and digital tuners but I do not use them. Their analog capture is the best that I have ever seen.
2 head VCRs are SP only. 4 head VCRs add two heads for EP. If all of your content is SP then a 2 head VCR should suffice. Depending upon the quality of the audio you want to present you might consider either stereo or Hi-Fi. Whatever VCR you choose should have manual tracking adjustment.
For capturing content on a Windows box I cannot recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 highly enough. That capture card should also be compatible with MythTV.
The output from my current consumer grade 4 head Panasonic Omnivision (mono audio) VCR was friggin amazing. My wife had a selection of out of print VHS tapes and I captured them with that card. She was missing one tape and while searching for it I found a three pack of DVDs, one of which matched what she was missing and two of which matched what she had. I had to look at the output frame by frame to see if there was any perceptible difference between the Hauppauge output and the DVD. There was none.
Even with normal recordings from home there can be issues with the picture quality. If you have problems with the video becoming lighter and darker that my not be a copy protection issue (obviously as you are working with home movies). Consider purchasing a Digital video stabilizer. The guys at the electronics repair shop nearby recommend ones by MCM Electronics to help mitigate transfer issues.
Tossing your MPEG-2 output from the Hauppauge through the NLE of your choice might help with noise reduction (I use NeatVideo> and color skew. YMMV.
The path out of depression has been well documented in Dr. Martin Seligman's book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. He has spent 30 years of his life in the field of positive psychology and has multiple case studies showing how people can get over "learned helplessness" in all three realms of personal, pervasive and permanent.
http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-Mind/dp/1400078393/
He has a talk on Ted:
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html
And a website with some questionnaires:
http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx
To use Chris Farley, who unfortunately committed suicide due to depression, as an example I provide three typical phrases that he would use in his work:
Personal: I suck!
Pervasive: Everything sucks!
Permanent: It will always suck!
Please note that motivational speakers are typically all optimists and people who are unmotivated go to them for a "motivational fix" which lasts for about two weeks without optimism to back it. See also the typical person who starts a diet, exercise regimen or other self improvement plan.
It may be too late, but perhaps someone could talk with Viva Computing, LLC who now owns the assets of Star Bridge Systems. It was not specified in the news release if they also own the intellectual property.
MSN Careers has an article titled You Said What?! - 43 Things Actually Said in Job Interviews.
Yeah, everyone can be stupid in an interview. Learn and laugh from their mistakes so you don't make one.
the new product line that should be available next week.
I am fighting the urge to head down to Puget Systems in Auburn, WA and see if they really have the SSDSA2MH160G2 for sale for $490.55. My guess is it isn't quite ready to be sold yet and was merely indexed by Google.
Must. Control. Checkbook.
At some point every person needs tech support. They don't know how to do something, their computer died, they lost data, are infected by a virus or some basic functionality has been lost.
Tech support would be number one on my list of helpful services.
The other thing that would be helpful is basic computer education. Yes, I know that most people in college already know how to work on the computers, however some, possibly older students, might be embarrassed to admit they don't know everything they feel that they should know. Confidential, one on one tutoring can eliminate the fear of admitting they aren't fully up to speed.
If your ISP has accounts with caps, then the chances are they'll have a page where people can go check the usage on their accounts.
No monitoring available on Comcast.
How does Comcast help its customers track their usage so they can avoide exceeding the limit?
There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account.
A company local to me, Puget Systems, has a PC that is cooled by mineral oil.
Nonconductive, cheap and easy to set up.
Having used RealNetworks Helix Servers it is easy to protect your RealMedia files. Just add:
<Var ContentMarker="1"/>
to the mount points in your rmserver.cfg file. It does nothing, though, to protect your other media types.
When the Final Duke goes gold, the seventh seal shall be broken and all the gamers shall cry out and lament that their RAM is insufficient and their video cards unworthy.
Oh. It runs on the Crysis engine then. Got it.
Yes. Vote with your dollars.
Make certain that the advertisers that spend millions of dollars on advertising during the upcoming Super Bowl understand that NBC's use of the Broadcast Flag will cause us to boycott their products.
Money speaks louder than words. Talk loudly.
If they do this I will feel compelled to download * from the internet, just because. Things on my list to download would be:
Every damn Metallica album. Why? Because it would piss them off badly.
And then I would buy the new NiN CD.
Every version of MS Windows ever made. Why? To piss off the BSA.
And then I'd switch full time to my Linux partition.
Mac OS X, and I don't even own a Mac yet.
Every song on iTunes. Even if I hated it.
And once that is all done I'll only surf the internet at work.
Will business be exempt from the taxes because they are not consumers and supposedly don't pirate stuff? If they have to pay I'm using work's OC3 till my hard drive explodes.
Destroy the CCD. Problem solved.
prepare to be derided as one who will "tax the country into poverty".
I'll be willing to listen to your reasoning as soon as you can find one country who has taxed themselves into prosperity.
Is the RIAA going to sue people for pirating their anti-piracy video?
Ever heard of the crusades?
Yeah. Have you ever read about them? Quoth the article:
The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule and were originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Anatolia.
In case you are unclear, the church was attempting to "take back" what was theirs. To "take back" something it first must have been taken from you. Equating that to invasion would be like me stealing your car and then blaming you for taking it back.
Round One:
The immediate cause of the First Crusade was Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire was defeated, which led to the loss of all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) save the coastlands. Although attempts at reconciliation after the East-West Schism between the Catholic Western Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church had failed, Alexius I hoped for a positive response from Urban II and got it, although it turned out to be more expansive and less helpful than he had expected.
Round Two:
After a period of relative peace in which Christians and Muslims co-existed in the Holy Land, Muslims conquered the town of Edessa. A new crusade was called for by various preachers, most notably by Bernard of Clairvaux. French and South German armies, under the Kings Louis VII and Conrad III respectively, marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any major victories, launching a failed pre-emptive siege of Damascus, an independent city that would soon fall into the hands of Nur ad-Din, the main enemy of the Crusaders. Round Three:
, Sultan of Egypt, recaptured Jerusalem, following the Battle of Hattin. Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe's most important leaders: Philip II of France, Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart), and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Round Four:
The Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. Remember that it was originally invaded by Muslims. this is the church trying to recapture it.
Round Five:
By processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set another crusade afoot, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Round Six:
Emperor Frederick II had repeatedly vowed a crusade but failed to live up to his words, for which he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1228. He nonetheless set sail from Brindisi, landed in Palestine, and through diplomacy he achieved unexpected success: Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were delivered to the crusaders for a period of ten years.
I hope you get the point. The Crusades were not a proactive attack but rather they were a defense and recapture of previously held territory.
Yes, WoW does use Bittorrent for it's updates. I'd be rather unhappy if it were to be further restricted.
I was quoted in the Ars Technica article. Here is the text of my FCC comment.
Dear Commissioners,
As a longtime customer of the Comcast Corporation (CMCSA) I feel it is necessary for me to provide you with my views and opinions regarding their use of throttling bandwidth for point to point (P2P) users that access their network.
File sharing is a gray area with regards to the law. It can be used for not only illegal purposes, such as the sharing of copyrighted material like music and movies, but for sharing of information that is perfectly legal such as software updates, free operating system distribution, free movie and movie preview distribution plus free music distribution. I will cite examples of each accordingly.
The most widely publicized use of P2P file sharing is illegal music and movie distribution. As this review for comment does not touch upon the legal issues surrounding the data being shared I shall focus my attentions to those legal methods that are affected.
Blizzard Entertainment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Games (Euronext: VIV), uses the Bittorrent P2P file sharing protocol to distribute updates and patches to the players of the very popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft. If their data is interrupted for any reason, even for a short time, then thousands, perhaps even millions, of users will be unable to play their game. This will directly cut into their profit margin.
The Linux operating system is a freely available alternative to both Microsoft Windows and the Apple Mac OS. As the Linux operating system is free they rely solely on donations of both time and money from people across the planet. That money, however, is not unlimited. To reduce the high cost of bandwidth they use the Bittorrent protocol for much of their software distribution. Interrupting their distribution channel would only benefit Microsoft, an already proven monopoly. To help ensure competition I feel that Bittorrent should not be interrupted.
To give but one example of free video entertainment you may want to look at the TV Guide 2007 Online Video Award winner Star Trek New Voyages. They are a very high quality non-profit production that was able to beat out contenders such as the 4400 and Battlestar Galactica. Their preferred method of distribution is bittorrent as they have a very limited bandwidth.
Many movies distribute their previews via bittorrent. This would damage not only their advertising structure but limit the consumer to one method of retrieval.
To see that Bittorrent and the movie industry, music industry and gaming industry are working TOGETHER and that they are seeking to create a strategic partnership please view the following URL for more information:
http://www.bittorrent.com/about/press/bittorrent-inc-launches-the-bittorrent-entertainment-network
Of course now that you know that Bittorrent is a popular, legal, and economically feasible method of content distribution let me explain a little bit of how it works.
Let us say that the makers of Star Trek New Voyages come out with a new episode. They have a few options at their disposal. One of them is to create a simple link to a file and have everyone who is interested in the file download it from one single location. The downside to this is that the single location will be paying a fortune to accommodate the high volumes of traffic.
The other option is Bittorrent. By having people connect to what is referred to as a "tracker" they can find out who else is downloading the same file and start taking pieces from multiple different users. Essentially everyone is
Sadly, this hilarious joke will be too old a reference for most of you kids. *sigh*
Wrong! It was the first thing that I thought of when I read the headline.
Bill Cosby = Wonderfulness.
I can just see it now. Tanks with turbans. Tent bunkers. The list is endless.
They should try some.
The common, simplistic explanation of nutrition is that you consume food, which your body then breaks down, releasing the energy of chemical bonds, which your body then uses as fuel. We measure the energy released in a unit called calories.
This description is fine, and it suffices for most day-to-day discussions of food, with one caveat: It's fiction, almost from top to bottom.
Funny. Simple calorie counting worked wonders for me. I lost 45 pounds and was ahead of schedule by two days when I reached my goal. I call it my "Stop Eating so God Damned Much Diet."
Don't tell me that calories are irrelevant when I followed my proposed trend line perfectly using the modern wonder called math, something people here at slashdot seem to agree with.
So this is why the other side in the [insert heated political debate] is wrong.
And here I thought that they were just stupid.
Although a stellarator is therefore a little simpler in that regard, the geometry and plasma modelling is much more complex, and this in turn creates problems for designing the coils and the exhaust diverter.
That's a relief. Now we know for certain that the exhaust ports are a weakness we can exploit when the government builds their Death Star.