Fri 7 Dec 2007
from Big Head DC
An Icelandic teen, MSNBC reports, figured out President Bush’s private phone number, and called it recently, leaving a message saying he was the president of Iceland and wanted Bush to call him back. When police visited the teen, after being alerted by Secret Service, he would not say how he learned the top-secret number. Big Head DC is speculating that he somehow deciphered the code from when Jenna Bush called her parents during a recent taping of the Ellen show.
Fri 7 Dec 2007
from Wired.com
Western Digital’s 1TB MyBook external hard drives won’t share media files over network connections (UPDATE: Don’t install the “required” client software! See workaround below). From the product page:
“Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common
audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using
WD Anywhere Access.”
It doesn’t matter what the files are: If you try to share these formats over a network, Western Digital assumes not just that you’re a criminal, but that it is its job to police users. You see, MP3, DivX, AVI, WMV and Quicktime files are copy-protected formats.
The list of banned filetypes includes more than thirty extensions. Some of them are bizarre: .IT files are banned — these are Amiga-style music modules composed with Impulse Tracker,
a particularly well-loved tracking sequencer that hasn’t been updated
in almost a decade. I composed with IT myself, back in the day, and
still have all my shitty compositions, none of which Western Digital would have me share. (Try MOD vs. Speak&Spell
masterpiece Eddie Dreams of Women, if you dare: IT, MP3)
Isn’t it cute how the only data it views as worthy of
policing are music and movies? These are the only copyrights that matter under corporate monkey law.
It’s the most astonishing example of crippled equipment I’ve ever
seen. A DRM’d hard drive! Whatever next?
Dreaming meat?
UPDATE: The manual’s appendix and online support site provide setup instructions for SAMBA, allowing access over IP instead of with the DRM-infested and poorly-reviewed client app, elsewhere claimed to be “required.”
Wed 5 Dec 2007
from komar.org
For the many that have asked (and those that haven’t yet), the
Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease are up for 2007:
http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/christmas_webcamThere are three live webcams and X10 powerline control technology system
so web surfers can not only view the action, but also *control* the 17,000 lights.
Heck, you can even inflate/deflate the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa,
SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson – D’OH!
While people around the world (157 countries last year) enjoy seeing the lights ON,
environmentalists will be happy to know that they can turn the lights OFF with a
click of the mouse. Better yet, this is the 4th year I’m using 100% Wind Energy
and even though that is “clean” energy, I even did a Carbon Offset contribution
for the 0.61 Tons of CO2 for the ~MegaWatt-Hour of power consumed;
that’s about the same as *one* cross-country airline trip. Finally, by providing viewing
via webcam, you don’t need to burn fossil fuels by driving around to see
christmas lights - Al Gore would be proud!But HEY, the $3/day in electrical costs are well worth the joy it brings to
people (especially the kids) when they see the display in person and/or on the web.
And new this year is a Hi-Def option, so gather your family around the large screen.The website is totally free (and totally fun) and is one of my zany ways of
raising awareness & soliciting donations for Celiac Disease:
http://www.celiaccenter.org/news_xmas.asp
my two sons have this condition, so it’s personal for me.If folks are so inclined, you can make an optional donation directly
to the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.
Over $20,000 has been raised with holiday lights - go figure!
So surf on by, tell your friends, blog about it, spread the word, etc.Merry Christmas and HO-HO-HO!
alek
Wed 5 Dec 2007
The Neuros OSD is getting a lot of press lately and is being touted as a device that can not only easily convert your television and satellite programs along with your favorite movies to a digital format that is completely DRM free, but play them back as well acting as your home media hub.
Now the thing that separates this device from others (besides not slathering its output in DRM) is that the hardware/firmware is mostly open-source and has a growing development community. With an open device and encouragement from the vendor, anyone can develop apps and features leading to a creative future for the Neuros OSD. As you are aware companies very rarely encourage custom development, much less document the process to do so.
As of the time of the publishing of this review, the Neuros OSD can be had around $230 (A bit less if you do some deal hunting). Check the Neuros website for authorized retailers.
–Full review after the jump
Tue 4 Dec 2007
from Gizmodo
The Xbox 360 supports DivX and XviD as of today, which may make some of you with big file collections (like us) as giddy as a kid in store with puppies made of candy. We threw our entire collection of movies, TV shows and random clips at it and found that the 360 can play back pretty much anything. Here are some notes.
You can play files off of a CD/DVD. This feature wasn’t listed on the Xbox Team’s website as one of the supported locations for playing back content, but this is fantastic for homes that have wireless networks (or no network at all). In fact, reading off a disc is probably the best way to ensure your movie won’t cut out in the middle due to network congestion (unlikely) or someone turning off the computer accidentally (fairly likely).
It supports almost all files. It played back all TV shows we threw at it, including My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Battlestar Galactica, and The Venture Bros.. Most of these, and most TV downloaded TV shows, are encoded in XviD format. As for DivX, that’s supported back to version 5.0, but it’s unlikely that you’re going to find any DivX 3 or DivX 4 online, unless you’re talking about old files you’ve saved for a couple years.
AC3 Audio is supported. Nice! AC3 support was added in the Spring Update, but it’s nice to see it working with DivX/XviD. Too bad it’s not 5.1 though. 5.1 is supported!
It supports Windows Home Server as well. Along with USB drives and WMP11 streaming, you can also stream DivX/XviD from Windows Home Server too. It makes sense to store all your videos on here, since videos are big and WHS has a lot of room. QED.
Video Stretching is kind of weird. The Xbox will try and auto-fit your video to the screen when it starts playing, but it gets confused easily with different video dimensions. You’ll want to manually change the playback mode to either letterbox or stretched, depending on what kind of content (widescreen, fullscreen, PAL) you’re playing back.
You can skip through a video with the bumpers. RB and LB let you skip forward and back through the movie, but might not be granular enough to get to the place you want to be. You’ll have to use the trigger buttons to FF or RW.
It’s fast. If your network connection is fast enough (my network is Gigabit Ethernet enabled, which isn’t a huge deal since the 360 is only 10/100), the video should play back without a hitch. It’s quite nice to be able to play back stuff on your 360, in HD, without having to transcode it into WMV first.
It doesn’t work in Windows Media Center Extender. You’re going to have to kick out of WMC and back to the dashboard in order to play your videos. Annoying for people who like to switch between live TV and downloaded content.
It’s not entirely perfect. It’s 90% of the way there, but 5.1 AC3 support, improved handling of different video dimensions, better playback controls and Windows Media Center Extender support will make this the perfect DivX/Xvid implementation.
Sat 1 Dec 2007
With the release of those pre-patched install DVD’s you don’t need to patch disks anymore. The only thing you have to do is create a HFS+ partition, burn the disk, install it and set some settings (all steps are well explained in the guide).
Sat 1 Dec 2007
from DVRupgrade TiVo Upgrade Forums
There are two bounties associated with this project. The first bounty relates to TiVo systems whose software cannot be easily modified and which also can be used with online services from TiVo and Yahoo for remote scheduling of recordings.
BOUNTY #1 - $1000
This part of the project relates to TiVo systems which can be remotely programmed from the TiVo web site in an area known as TiVo Central™ Online. If you have an active account with TiVo and any Series2 or Series3 DVR (you can identify your model here), you can schedule recordings on TiVo’s web site, and your TiVo will ultimately receive the data and save your recordings. Similarly, Yahoo also offers a service to synchronize selections you make from their TV listings, to your TiVo.
What we’d like to see, in order to be eligible for the bounty, is an application or script for the Neuros OSD that will allow it to record and appropriately name your programs when your TiVo is recording. We think the key may be accessing your recording selections from your Yahoo or TiVo Central Online account, but that may not be necessary to achieve your objective. It also may be necessary to have an application running on your PC to import and export the data, but if that is the case, we’d like to see an application that runs on both the PC AND the Mac (JAVA, perhaps?). But to put it simply: The Neuros OSD will need to record what your TiVo records and possibly be able to do so, selectively.
BOUNTY #2 - $2500
This part of the project relates to all Series1 TiVo systems, or Series2 DirecTV TiVo system which have been have been modified for what we call advanced networking functions. Typically, this is done with things like TurboNet and CacheCard bundles on Series1 systems, and PTVnet on Series2 DirecTV TiVo systems, or even using free tools such as The Zipper. We won’t go into great detail here, but some references will be provided below. To put it succinctly, if you have a TiVo DVR that has been modified so that you can access it via telnet, ftp, and most importantly, TiVoWebPlus, then you’ll understand the next part of this bounty.
Similar to the goal of the first project, we’d like the OSD to record at the same time that your TiVo is recording. Since your modified TiVo will be running TiVoWebPlus, we’d like to see a module for TiVoWebPlus that is easy to install, configure and use, and that will allow a user to select which Season Passes should also be recorded on the OSD. We’d also like to see provisions made so that other items, such as TiVo Suggestions, or manual recordings in the To Do list are also taken into consideration.
Although it is expected that some software may need to be initially installed and configured on the Neuros OSD, we’d like to see the solution to this problem be TiVo-centric enough so that a user can interact with TiVoWebPlus to make changes that are ultimately received by (or transmitted to) the Neuros OSD. This will allow users who are remotely accessing their TiVo units, whether from their desktops, or by using the GoToMyDVR service for remote access to their TiVo, the ability to choose what to record on their OSD.