I know a group of users who have been using xawtv for several years on Fedora Core 4. Now they want to update the desktop and need a new viewer/DVR which works with their new hardware (Happage USB and dual input PCI cards). The backend stuff for MythTV stopped them, they don't want to take over running a database, having a trained DBA, etc, etc.

Can't find anything any simpler for Linux, I think they're going back to Windows next year, because video is a requirement. Watching normal TV is a bonus, of course. Local cable has NTSC analog and clear QAM digital, internal is S-video. The old setup did the analog and S-video just fine, HDTV is a "nice but not required" at this point. Too many "experts only" software, nothing, even commercial, for end users.

Sure would be nice to see this for US paper currency. Many cash registers are PC based at the motherboard level, and could support an optical mouse just fine. What a great bit of Open Source software it would be to create and release a program people could run in business, etc.

People were mixing "read and test" with recreational content in the early 70s, letting people play tic-tac-toe on a Model 33 Teletype. I have to wonder how this patent is new.

I suggest getting a credit report from each of the three reporting companies, and staggering your requests by four months. I do that and get a picture of the report on a regular basis. I wish the law required them to provide a convenient way to lock your report, I see 50-60 requests a year from people I never heard of or dealt with, they're in a "just looking" report, and I'm sure they're people trying to pick identities worth stealing.

FOIL allows reasonable copying costs, and the city is (and was) in the process of making the laws available online. The company doing the conversion will also sell a copy of the laws, annotated and indexed, with their software. That copy is copyright automatically at the instant of creation, as is anything else they or you create. I see no credible report that reasonable access was denied, and the laws in open format will be online when the conversion is complete.

The local paper, which spent many $100k on naming rights to the local arena, thought that $200 for a copyright copy of laws, with software, was worth a story. And since "City putting laws online for better public access" doesn't have much buzz, the story was spun to imply that people couldn't see the laws without spending hundreds. I really thought they were a better paper than that.

Full disclosure, I live three blocks from city hall, the laws are there during business hours, are at the libraries noted about 80 hours/week, and are as readily available as is typical for a small town. Having the laws online is an indication of more open government, not less.

I'm with you, I'm trying to find a Linux TV application for a group (I support their servers to some extent), and the need to do database work is a stopper. Office workers do not want to hear have your dba create... These folks have been using xawtv and tvtime, but since the analog sound vanished they need a new application. They're even talking about going back to that other operating system on their desks.

They have a feed which is mixed analog and digital, with the digital requiring a SIM. Their hardware supports it, but they need an application. They want something their in-house support can install, and that pretty much means install a few RPMs, not database stuff.

Somehow I don't see that as reassuring, assuming it can be done in some practical vs. theoretical way, the people we most don't want to do that are unlikely to hold off use once it's built.

Randi is (was?) an entertainer, not a scientist. His public "debunkings" have included such science as "if I can duplicate the effect through trickery it's fake" regardless of zero evidence that any such trickery was originally used. That's not a "controlled study," he starts with a known result.

I knew Delbert Merrill socially, he was an inventor and engineer who had a long career in industry. He tried dowsing when water couldn't be found on a property, and was successful. He developed a method swinging a pendulum over a map, and it seemed to work for him.

One night we were visiting him, and he showed us his rod. Two nylon rods, about two feet long and 0.1 inch diameter, similar to the nylon rods used to bind computer listings in those days. The business end was bound with non-metalic material, I think fishing line, and the hand grips were 1/4 inch bakelite (or similar) rigid non-conducting tubing, and the ends of the nylon had just been kinked 90 degrees to keep the handles from falling off. There was no way someone holding those bakelite handles could apply bend or torsion to those rods.

He walked across the property, saying that there was a stream in the area, and as he walked along the rods visibly bent. He offered to let us try it, and two of three people felt the tug, including me. The other person who had success was blind, could not have seen where the rods bent, and also got a strong bend at the same spot.

I never tried dowsing again, but Delbert Merrill did locate water on some property I was trying to buy, after three dry wells had been drilled. He predicted slight sulpher in the water, in an area not known for that, and predicted the depth within five feet and the flow within three gal/min.

I see that in upstate NY National Grid finds gas lines by dowsing as well as their little meters, the meters have false positives on any metal, not just gas lines. The sum of these experiences strongly suggests that there is an effect, sensible people like gas companies and engineers seem to find it usefully reliable, I wouldn't discard their experience casually.

Finally, Randi is an entertainer, some of the televised "debunkings" are far from scientific method:
- everyone can't reproduce the effect
- it doesn't work every time
- the effect can be created as an illusion by a professional

If those are valid criteria, they prove that pitchers can't throw a curve. Personally I'll put it in the "there's something there" category, since the people I have met who have produced measureable success make no money at it, don't care if people believe in it, and don't publicize the ability, I find profit, zeal, or fame to be unlikely motivation for trickery.

I have the feeling that in Australia using a phone as a GPS is illegal And it seems to me that having the maps actually in the device is a requirement, Internet is not that omnipresent.

GPS and computer maps are still only "best effort" information, there was an article about both Google and Mapquest routing people down a flight of stairs, and Google in NJ had us following a road which ended at a cow pasture. The tech to match satellite photos to map data, as a sanity check, seems to have a way to go.

livecdtools will take bootable install media and put them on USB flash nicely. At least for the distributions I use.

At least not that my hardware, home improvement, or lighting store can find. What I need is a 1:1 replacement for common 40/60w bulbs, and all I find is incompatible odd shapes which are only "compatible" in base size. I have spent a great deal of time and money keeping the original 1880s Victorian fixtures going, and many have original shades which clip on the bulb itself.

"Looks sorta like a light bulb" doesn't cut it, I use CFL where I can, and halogen floodlights in some places, but most of my bulbs are regular incandescent. The new GE high efficiency, long life, incandescents may very well serve, they are close to CFL in performance.