Comment Re:No mention of local media support (Score 1) 116
That's a very fair point on stability. Boxee certainly could use something that can restart it when it crashes; mythtv frontend makes a nice place to do that.
Comment Re:No mention of local media support (Score 1) 116
Not sure why it fails for you, but I have a fully populated Movie and TV browsing in Boxee -- I never use Browse because everything is in either Movie or TV. You may want to look at the boxee forums on media naming conventions to ensure it can classify your local media correctly.
Comment Re:No mention of local media support (Score 2, Interesting) 116
Other than the livetv part, there isn't much to love in mythtv. Mythvideo is *horrible*. It doesn't have much in the way of automatically finding and acquiring metadata around your local media. The navigation menu assumes one big flat folder with everything in it. While it does work with directory trees, you end up having to click through that to get the video. Boxee really shines here -- it separates TV series from movies, and for tv shows, groups them according to season. This was exactly what I wanted. When you add new media, in myth you have to go an select scan from the setup screen while boxee is always watching for new media and it just shows up under the recently added section.
While the alpha does crash every now and then (the 0.12 has improved a lot for me) what I'm struggling with is the need for the fglrx -- the LTS fglrx support on my ati 9500 pro was horrible (freeze the screen, took 5 reboots to get stable from power on) -- I'm currently on 9.04 with xorg from 8.10 and that's been working out quite well now.
Comment No mention of local media support (Score 1) 116
I tend to agree that the "social" aspect of boxee is a bit in the way in the main interface, but what the reviewer didn't mention is whether zinc or hulu do anything with local media. From the zinc website it seems like it too can scan local media like boxee, what I would have liked in the review is some coverage over how well each one worked. In my experience, boxee does a really good job at this and includes a built-in interface for correcting the mistakes (aka Wrong Video link). I do agree that boxee could use a global search, however, I'm quite happy with boxee having just converted away from a mythtv setup.
How Do You Manage Your SD Card Library? 485
txmadman writes "Like a lot of my colleagues and all of my three children, I have several SD , mini-SD, and micro-SD cards for various purposes: cameras, cell phones, my laptop, etc. These things are handy to have around, offer easy and significant storage, but are very easily lost. We have also have run into some instances where it wasn't clear whose SD card was whose, and have also started to see a need for a storage mechanism. I have seen SD card 'wallets' and such, but have never seen anyone actually use one. So: How do you manage and keep track of your SD cards?"
Feds Tighten DNS Security On .Gov 140
alphadogg writes "When you file your taxes online, you want to be sure that the Web site you visit — www.irs.gov — is operated by the Internal Revenue Service and not a scam artist. By the end of next year, you can be confident that every U.S. government Web page is being served up by the appropriate agency. That's because the feds have launched the largest-ever rollout of a new authentication mechanism for the Internet's DNS. All federal agencies are deploying DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) on the .gov top-level domain, and some expect that once that rollout is complete, banks and other businesses might be encouraged to follow suit for their sites. DNSSEC prevents hackers from hijacking Web traffic and redirecting it to bogus sites. The Internet standard prevents spoofing attacks by allowing Web sites to verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses using digital signatures and public-key encryption."
Comcast Discontinues Customers' USENET Service 327
An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has discontinued its provided usenet service, once provided to all its high speed customers. First with the cap put on its customers several years ago on amount of traffic provided as part of the customer high-speed package, as of September 16, the service is no longer provided.
Without fanfare, this bastion of the internet is being removed from the mainstream."
Submission + - Scientists may have broken speed of light (telegraph.co.uk)
silver09 writes: A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light — an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.
Submission + - How much are ad servers slowing down the internet? 2
vipermac writes: Most the times I have a problem with a web page loading slow (or freezing temporarily), I look down at the status bar and see that it is waiting on an ad server, google analytics, or the like.
It seems to me on popular web sites the bottle neck is overwhelmingly on the ad servers now and not on the servers of the main web site itself. In my opinion it seems we need a better model for serving ads or else these services need to add more servers/bandwidth.
Are there any studies on the delay that 3rd party ad servers are creating, or any new models that are being introduced to serve ads?
Submission + - Scientists discover how to erase memories (pressesc.com) 1
amigoro writes: "Neuroscientists have discovered that long-term memories are not etched in a "clay tablet"-like stable form as once thought, but the process is much more dynamic, involving a miniature molecular machine that must run constantly to keep memories going, jamming the machine briefly can erase long-term memories."
Submission + - Organisations massaging Wikipedia entries (guardian.co.uk)
SimonGhent writes: "Story in the Guardian concerning a new website (The Wikipedia Scanner) that has uncovered details of organisations, including the Vatican, the CIA and the UK Labour party, editing Wikipedia entries in their favour.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/15/w ikipedia.corporateaccountability"
Submission + - Scientists Discover New Link in Ocean Currents (cnn.com)
an.echte.trilingue writes: CNN is running a story about the discovery of one of the last ocean currents near Tasmania. From the article:
New research shows that a current sweeping past Australia's southern island of Tasmania toward the South Atlantic is a previously undetected part of the world climate system's engine-room, said scientist Ken Ridgway.
The Southern Ocean, which swirls around Antarctica, has been identified in recent years as the main lung of global climate, absorbing a third of all carbon dioxide taken in by the world's oceans.
Submission + - Gorge W. Bush is a liar! (treatment-centers.net) 1
kgrohsman writes: "G.W. Bush supports Attorney General Gonzales as he lies to the Congress; Bush continues to lie to the public about the war in Iraq, as he lied to get support for the war in the first place; Bush and his administration are full of lies. When there was so much debate about Clinton when he overstepped the boundaries of his marriage, which put no one in harm's way, people were calling for his impeachment. Now Bush has lied to send our troops to Iraq, where thousands have died over the years, and now he seems to stand untouchable. He continues to lie about it and justify this needless loss of life, and no one is calling for his impeachment. America's "leadership" is a farce. The concept of the lies and betrayal the Americans have endured from G.W. Bush during his terms in office are outlined in the article, "In Bush We Distrust" at http://treatment-centers.net/blog/bush_lies/."
Submission + - Converting from XP to Ubuntu (ittoolbox.com) 1
madgreek writes: "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office.
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/madgreek/archives/o pen-source-and-microsoft-free-17339"
Submission + - Chernobyl Mushrooms Feeding on Radiation
cowtamer writes: According to a National Geographic Article certain fungi can use ionizing radiation to perform "radiosynthesis" using the pigment melanin (the same one in our skin that protects us from UV radiation). It is speculated that this might be useful on long space voyages where energy from the Sun is not readily available.
