Re: Interesting

> Did you not read the list of normal things that just do not work on this Linux box? That is why people don't buy Linux. Instead they buy Windows because it works better.

No. That's why people shouldn't buy Dell.

It's their job to set this stuff up right. It's their job to make sure that their choices actually work.

This nonsense makes me glad that I didn't buy a Dell X51 for my last HTPC despite the fact that I was seriously considering it. It's far better to support a real Linux vendor.

Re: @HereWeGoAgain

> Nvidia? The worst and least reliable crap ever.

...a weak attempt at disparaging the best kit and drivers out there.

Nvidia is what you install when you don't want to suffer with the onboard shovelware anymore.

A cheap trailing edge nv card can turn a relic into a proper game machine. Works well for Linux or Windows.

The benefits to streaming

Considering how much of a gap there is between streaming and BluRay, a mere 50% improvement in bandwidth may not be good enough. If you are the sort to opt for the spinny disk instead, it's probably not going to be a worthwhile improvement.

(too dang long)/2 is probably still (too dang long).

Re: Math problems

> Who outside of a movie theater even WANTS 2k or 4k video

I have my own.

The requirements aren't really even that cumbersome. Get yourself a decent sized room with squared off walls and you're half way there. It doesn't even need to be a dedicated space.

The necessary gear is cheap and getting cheaper.

Re: Huh?

Google doesn't prevent you from removing apps, your phone carrier does. If you got some crappy bundle ware on your phone, chances are that it's not Google's fault at all.

The whole "app store" thing makes it an entirely different world between now and the 90s. So does pervasive and easy networking. Replacing default apps on any OS with a modern package manager is not quite the same thing anymore.

Things that are intolerable from anyone but the monopoly.

> 10000K is the sum required to pay off all of your workers because you couldn't get things running correctly.

If you're workers are that stupid, they are already costing you that kind of money.

It's like the "Linux migration problem". Just wait and Microsoft will create one of it's own for you. (Win8/Vista/Ribbon)

Re: Are these the same people...

Sure. It's a toy.

Toys don't necessarily displace tools. They're certainly not going to displace tools for those that actually need something more than a toy.

Jobs even made his little truck analogy. Except plenty of people drive trucks and find them indispensable.

PCs have become durable goods.

Re: PCs are being SNUFFED by crass pre-installed operating systems

Nonsense.

Dell sold Linux on netbooks for as long as they sold netbooks.

All you're doing is repeating refuted FUD about another vendor entirely. That vendor denied the whole thing.

Re: PCs are being SNUFFED by crass pre-installed operating systems

> Or just wiping the feetardware

Sure. That makes perfect sense.

Remove a free product so that you can replace it with something you have to pay for when you are awash in a sea of alternatives where the payware replacement is already bundled for free.

Re: Not so much

...except that tablets aren't PC replacements. They can manage some of the light duty media consumption that were exclusively the domain of PCs. Once you start pushing any kind of boundaries though, tablets quickly fall apart.

Smart TVs are just a joke.

What we have here is a lot of sales churn caused by immature tech. That is being mistaken for success. Last years tablet or Roku is missing key features or performance. Meanwhile, 6 year old PCs can manage to run circles around ARM based equivalents.

Tablets are in the same part of their life cycle that PCs were in during the early 90s.

Re: Nope

> Comparatively slow to some desktop PCs perhaps but it's still an i3-3217U, HD Graphics 4000.

Slow core coupled with the worst graphics vendor in the industry.

When you have to fallback to software, it takes quite a bit of computing power. That's why something like an ION or a PI is a problem. If you have to depend on the included CPU, you're toast.

It takes a LOT of of computational power to make up for the lack of good specialty silicon.

Modern codecs, High definition. High bit rates.

Re: Nope

The NUC is also comparatively slow. Given the general weakness of Intel GPUs, I would be worried that this thing can even manage to be an HTPC at all. Although the PI was a bit of a surprise in that regard.

If space is not a premium, you can get so much bang for the buck.

Re: Yet the NUC’s CPU is actively cooled

>> Yet the NUC’s CPU is actively cooled

>

> I stopped reading at that point.

If you are doing anything remotely interesting, you will need that cooling or else the unit will cook itself. Fanless is a nice idea in theory but once you do some computing or employ a decent GPU, you quickly realize the value in effective heat management.

Ignoring heat issues really isn't a bright idea.

My nv based Mac Mini did itself in like that. Cooked itself.

My Asrock machines will outlive everything (Zotac, Apple, Asus, Giada, NUC) and all because of an ability to cool themselves off.

Re: Nope

Continuing to play a movie while going back to the menus is just poor design or configuration. The fact that this goes tits up is really not terribly relevant to the usability of an HTPC in general. I always found that feature of XBMC a little annoying really.

The "as long as it's not really busy" problem is an issue for any cheap HTPC. It's not just a limit of the PI.

The NUC may very well suffer from the same "feature" when running XBMC.

The NUC is going to have the same disadvantages as any other cheap low profile box.

Re: First time in a long time.

> 1) Install it in wine and piss around trying to get the bugger to work. I don't care what anyone else says I've never found wine reliable.

This is pretty much automagical in any recent variation of wine including the commercial ones they sell in the Mac section of Best Buy or the one you can get from the Ubuntu repository.

That's not a very interesting example of wine really.

Re: Google winning the browser wars - not as scary as the dark days of IE

> There are HACMP features in AIX that ost Linux users can only dream about.

IBM itself is pretty agnostic when it comes to tech. They are far less enthusiastic about pushing AIX then you are. Same goes for PPC kit.

Re: Google winning the browser wars - not as scary as the dark days of IE

The problem with Microsoft isn't that they're proprietary, it's that they're crap.

Although all monopolies are annoying, even those run by competent engineers (AT&T, IBM).

Re: AC @ 12:49 - Google vs Microsoft

> MS big contribtuion was a general operating system that was not tied to proprietary hardware

AT&T and Digital Research already had that one covered.

Re: Interesting article

One thing that is different now is that virtual machine technology is commonplace. You can encapsulate your entire decoding envrionment into a nicely encapuslated format. It's been done for DOS games from the age of AutoCAD 1.3, so it can probably be done for any other format you care to mention.

Output to some common standardized format like PS and you've solved a big bulk of the problem right there.

Having documents in a print-ready format that's not vulnerable to client sabotage is a pretty good first step actually. Those formats are a bit more stable and much more standardized.

Re: Won't somebody think of the history?

> all the analogue pictures were pin sharp

Spoken like someone that's never taken or looked at an analog photograph.

Chemical film is no protection from incompetent photography. What you are attempting to describe sounds more like the pre-snapshot era that existed before Kodak made (analog) photography accessible to every incompetent and tasteless amateur.

Snapshot photography really hasn't changed much. If anything, these days you can cheaply take 100 pictures and discard 99 of them. Even with "cheap" film, any analog print was far more dear.

Re: @Lusty

More than just storage technology has improved since 1920.

Any information that's 100 years old is suspect. It doesn't matter what kind of condition the media is in. The more sophisticated the information, the more likely it is to become obsolete before the computer storage format it resides on becomes unusable.

Re: Nudity-free Playboy?

Apple managed to achieve what decades of social conservatives and feminists couldn't accomplish.

Re: This Drone

Why shouldn't the farmer shoot at trespasser? It doesn't matter if the perpetrator is on the ground, in the skies, or in some sort of tunneling machine.

This sort of "you peasants have no rights" attitude might be fine for the old world.

It is fashion nonsense....

Yes, it is all fashion nonsense. The problem though is that Apple caters to that kind of person. Apple customers are the kind that are going to buy that nonsense because they are self selecting. You can't project what Apple users will do and apply that to the industry at large.

A Mac-wannabe may fail in the general PC market because non-Apple users likely don't want to buy from Lenovo what they aren't buying from Apple.

PC users care about practical concerns like cost and features and maintainability. They are less willfully ignorant than their Apple counterparts. They are less interested in engaging in conspicuous consumption than their Apple counterparts.

As someone that hasn't bought into the Apple group think, I am much more likely to employ a 5 year old Compaq in place of a brand new Mac Mini. That 5 year old Compaq can be tweaked in ways that makes it much more effective than newer inflexible designs.

That also means that I may not buy a new PC either.

Re: The Tree is Dead

I have a number of machines that do quite well with only 2G. Unless someone wants to say something extreme like claiming that Windows by itself needs 8G or 16G, then I don't see what the fuss is about here. Not everyone is trying to launch Salvage 1 in their back yard.

Re: The Tree is Dead

> Since I am past the age where spending my weekends recompiling the kernel to get sound working, that should tell you something.

It certainly demonstrates your laziness but perhaps not in the way you thought.

Re: Add / Remove disks?

> Oh, and never ever forget the mantra "RAID is not Backup" - checksums and snapshots are all very good, but no backup means no safe data!

That kind of undermines much of the point of having the newest and shiniest FS available now doesn' t it?

Re: License madness

> Sun didn't want that constraint

Well then that's on Sun. The idea of releasing the source and being specifically hostile to the GPL is a bit of a contradiction. You either are for end user freedom or you aren't. GNU was already here. Linux was already here. Sun chose to be antagonistic to it.

It's not up to the oldest libre projects to pander to the pro-corporate inclinations of the latest shiny thing.

Re: and this is why I only run Ubuntu on my desktop

As a home owner, Windows can be serious business. I am talking about the real kind that you look through. The ones that tract home builders put in tend to be crap. Plus you've got house settling. Being a miser when it's time to finally replace them can lead to unsatisfactory results.

Talking about my experiences with real Windows can be entertaining enough for suburbanites. They're into that sort of thing. More than computers actually.

Re: This is all too familiar.

> And I just point out that I write code, and I use a Mac to do i

Yeah. I tell people that I don't do Windows. I don't run it for myself therefore I'm not in a good position to debug it for anyone else.

I tell them that if they decide they want to run some form of Unix, then I'm their man.

Re: Replacing an ancient workstation

Are you kidding?

A Mac Mini is expensive, slow, and unmaintainable. I have an older Mac Mini sitting collecting dust because it's not much good for running anything but Linux. Unlike an older PC, I can't really fix or improve anything on it. It's difficult to get into and back together again. I can't modernize it with a better video card or fix it's busted internal NIC. Replacing an old drive would also be an exercise in pain.

PCs aren't as noisy or as big as they used to be. They aren't usually as tiny as a Mini but they don't really need to be. Fawning over an unmainable form factor is strictly an Apple fanboy passtime.

Disposable PCs are great for Apple's bottom line but not much else.

Re: No push to upgrade business machines anymore

Nonsense. The tech has just gotten mature. Your old device doesn't suck so bad that you need a new one.

This is where tablets are now.

5 year old trailing edge PCs can still run circles around new ARM devices and do everything end users would request of them. If anything is wanting you can actually upgrade the old thing and keep it running even longer.

A 5 year old craptacular bought-it-because-it-was-the-cheapest-thing-I-could-find-at-the-time can even keep up with more modern machines that have nothing else going for them besides poor heat dissipation and a fruity logo.

Re: Completely right on all accounts

The cost of textbooks was never about the paper. It was always about minor revisions forced down your throat every semester. A lot of subjects could be taught out of 50 year old books and you might actually find that it's an improvement. As long as you have middlemen trying to take a thick percentage, it will always be a scam perpetrated upon public school boards and debt ridden college students.

Re: Necessary Evil

> Unless we want to go the way of subscribed services for everything - and believe me that will drive the cost of watching TV through the roof - then some sort of advertising is necessary

No it won't. You will just have to be picky about what you consume. It's pretty easy to replace an overpriced cable subscription with a much cheaper set of streaming video subscriptions from Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix. First run material really isn't that expense and a lot of reruns are dirt cheap an nearly free (as they should be).

This isn't just theoretical anymore. You can take your collection of Tivo Watchlists to Amazon RIGHT NOW and see what the pricing would be like. It's no great mystery.

You kind of have it backwards...

Based on the image in the article, it seems that the real problem is not new material but old stuff. Now not only will old shows be mangled to allow for more commercials, they will be themselves altered to allow for product placement. You may see brands in the Huxtable brownstone that aren't available anywhere near Brooklyn.

That there seems to be a good reason to avoid video streaming entirely.

Buy pristine copies of stuff when you can, skip everything else.

Next thing you know there will be product placements for TESLA in Downton Abbey.

Re: De Icaza? The Microsoft employee?

Well, the article itself admits that he "went off script" way back in 2001. Why is anyone even giving him a sounding board now? He has clearly been fixated on Microsoft and other non-Unix tech for over a decade now. He's been a Microsoft cheerleader for far longer than he's been anything else.

It would be like any one of us fixating on what we were doing 10+ years ago.

That ship sailed already.

Re: People in denial

Nope. We understand just fine.

What we understand is that a "hack" like this is so bad that anyone associated with it should put a bag over their heads and never be seen in public again. Its' a situation so bad that it calls for Puritan style public shaming complete with stocks and rotten produce.

If you build trash that makes the rest of us look bad, don't expect any sympathy.

Re: Its a fair sentence.

He didn't deprive anyone of anything. AT&T did. He merely pointed out that AT&T was doing the equivalent of sending around customer's personal details on postcards.

What he did deprive people of was their false sense of security.

He poked his head through your unlocked front door and told you you forgot to lock it.

AT&T was perpetrating the real harm here and they're the ones who's heads should be on the block. They should be looking at a 7 or 8 figure tort judgement right about now.

Re: Contrition is a religious concept,

No. You're just kidding yourself. You're assuming that the corporation will act in good faith when that is the least likely thing to happen. Even multiple public shamings and large jury awards don't always encourage corporations to do the right thing. Assuming that they would mend their ways because of a polite little note is absurd bordering on being a diagnosable psychological disorder.

Despite his other conduct, exposing this to the world was a valuable public service. We would never have known otherwise and AT&T would never have any motivation to clean up their act.

Can't let a merchant do your thinking for you...

Building the PC is the easy part really. Regardless of what form you are buying the parts in, you still need to be familiar with those parts. Otherwise, you won't know if they are suitable or overpriced. You just can't get away with letting some merchant do your thinking for you.

PC salesmen and used card salesmen...

Re: @LarsG Given

New OS hard on old hardware? As if that should be a great revelation around here...

It's a general problem. Even Apple products suffer from it (namely iPhones).

Re: Is that it? @Jason

PCs are typically small or cheap but not both. The PI takes both to a new level. It's like an AppleTV or Roku in this regard. You can try to make PCs smaller but then you end up with a $1000 Steam Box or a Mac Mini. It's also nice that the PI achieves it's cheapness without being some ancient thing you retrieved from a dumpster.

Who wants their cool project to fail because it's made of parts that finally decided to die of old age?

Re: RAID 5 shouldn't even be named unless living under the bridge

It helps to make sense of a post if you don't completely mangle it first.

Re: Plenty of hardware available.

There's a lot of old gear out there. All of the various iThings have already been through several iterations of updated product. You can't say the same for Microsoft's flavor of the month.

The Apple based comparison would be more like pawn shops being full of iPhone 5's and iPad 3's.

Otherwise you're trying to pretend that an Apples an oranges comparison is relevant.

Re: RAID 5 shouldn't even be named unless living under the bridge

RAID5 is only a problem if you are trying to artificially constrain yourself with a system that is itself a single point of failure. At least when a rube thinks like that (all eggs in one basket) they have an excuse as they don't know any better.

...and yes, my storage setup can take a bullet and live.

Re: Macs are a rich man's toy

> If you use a PC until it's obsolete...

Then I probably took advantage of the modular nature of that PC to turn it into something else once it was no longer suited (or wanted) for it's original purpose. The problem with Macs is that they are intended to be closed boxes that are difficult if not impossible to maintain. So a slightly used Mac may become obsolete more quickly than it's PC counterpart.

Not enough RAM. Tiny hard drive. GPU that really really sucks.

So instead of getting a new Mini, I can use that P3 and just buy a new video card.

Not everyone needs to prove how quickly they can waste money.

Re: Minority Report

The advantage of the command line is not the syntax of individual commands but how you can string them together in an arbitrary fashion and then package them up. This is a concept that doesn't generally exist in GUIs because GUIs are designed for morons. Everyone is so busy running around preventing people from needing to think that shiny happy interfaces focus on the stupid first use rather than the grind of your daily routine.

It's AUTOMATION, not "ease of use".

Re: Totally missing the point

> And there you have the root of the problem.

What? That most people won't easily tolerate fools unless it's family or they are being PAID?

If you are an annoying jack*ss that likes to take things out of context, you just might get flamed.

Re: Language wars

My Uni's language for the introductory courses was Modula-2. I really hated it until I had a chance to do assignments in COBOL. It turns out I didn't hate Modula-2 nearly as much as I thought I did.