Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ...

Links for 2011-12-30 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST

Does wealth equal power?

Links for 2011-10-13 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 PDT

More on GOP Obstruction
So, Republicans opposed stimulus under Bush, yet are someone obstructing Obama for political points. I don't get it.

XBMC Issues Pausing With Remote SMB

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:37:00 +0000

I love my XBMC and have had great success sharing a single datasource and database across multiple clients.

With one exception – my linux box doesn’t like it when you pause TV and movies when the video file is on a remote SMB share – whenever you try the videos stop playing. Manageable, but it annoys my wife.

I think I finally fixed it. I created a symbolic link on both the Windows and Linux clients so that XMBC thinks that the file is a local path. This is necessary because all of the clients need identical paths to the video files in order to share the common database.

So far so good, I can fast forward, rewind, pause and the videos seem to handle it fine.

Technorati Tags: XBMC,MDL,linux

Links for 2011-09-14 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 PDT

The Terrorists Have Won
Sometimes I get sick.

Links for 2011-09-13 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 PDT

The Terrorists Have Won
Sometimes I get sick.

Links for 2011-09-09 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:00:00 PDT

Office of the Repealer

MDL: Optimizing XBMC

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 03:05:00 +0000

There are a number of tweaks that I had to make on XBMC to make it work a little better with my setup.

First – since I am using MySQL I had to add some indexes and make a small change to the MySQL server.

By default it appears that MySQL wants to do a reverse DNS lookup to all client connections. This makes the initial connection very slow, to disable this behavior add the following to my.ini in the [mysqld] section:

skip-name-resolve

The following indexes also improve performance:

use XBMC_video;
ALTER TABLE movie ADD INDEX idMovie(idMovie);
ALTER TABLE movie ADD INDEX idFile(idFile);

Another change that is essential because of the shared MySQL database is the sharing of the thumbnail directory – otherwise the thumbnails will only appear on the XBMC client that discovers the media. To get around this I created a symbolic link on the Linux box to the shared Thumbnail directory on Windows.

Connecting to Windows shares from Linux has caused me all sorts of issues. I initially tried mounting shares in fstab, but if the Windows box wasn’t available during Linux boot the shares were unavailable. I switched to automounter which resolved the issue.

There are some other SAMBA tweaks to improve performance – in theory this was supposed to prevent video from stopping if it was paused or looking at info. So far it is only partially successful.

socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

Finally, ever time I upgrade something in XBMC or a supporting component the autostart fails to actually, you know, autostart XBMC. To fix this edit the /etc/uxlaunch/uxlaunch file with the correct home directory.

Technorati Tags: XBMC,HTPC,linux

MDL: Backing Up to Flickr Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:46:00 +0000

For better or worse I’ve decided that I would use flickr as my photo backup solution. For one, it’s not terribly expensive – around $30 for unlimited storage – and it makes picture sharing pretty easy. There are privacy concerns for some, but I’m simply not sure that I care.

The downside is that there aren’t really any tools out there that automate sending the pictures to flickr. Foldr Monitr comes close, but its buggy, isn’t updated anymore and I just don’t like the choices that it has made.

After about two years of complaining I guess I’ll just have to handle the problem myself. Odds are that you won’t like the choices that I’ve made, but hopefully I’ve given you enough pieces that you can make the necessary modifications without having to start from scratch the way that I did.

You are going to need a database of some kind to keep track of everything – I have a copy of MySQL running already for XBMC so that’s what I’ll use. I’m also going to use PowerShell since that is what I know which means that I’ll have to install the ODBC driver for MySQL.

Finally, I suck as a programmer. Don’t use any of this code with the expectations that you’ll learn how to get better at scripting. Also, don’t point out how if I changed some bit of code around it would be SOOO MUCH BETTER! I don’t care – if my code functions for me, inefficient or not, I am quite content.

So be warned – this thing works for me and my needs 95% of the time. And if I run across an anomaly where it doesn’t do what is expected if x & y are true – I stop doing both x & y at the same time. The chances that I’ll update the script to accommodate your special circumstances are pretty damn rare. And adding any functionality at all is all but unthinkable.

All that being said, feel free to borrow the code and adapt it to your own purposes – you just can’t take this and put it into something that you are going to sell. And if you update the scripts for public consumption – please give me my due by linking back here. Obviously while noting how crappy the code is and how much work you had to put into it to make it semi-functional for a normal human being.

Part II will get into the script and perhaps the database – assuming that I actually finishing writing the god damned thing.

Technorati Tags: mySQL,flickr,MDL,PowerShell

How Microsoft Can Become More Interesting

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 22 May 2011 16:56:00 +0000

Paul Thurrott asked the question “How Can Microsoft Fix Microsoft?” - here is my take.

I believe that one of the things that makes Microsoft less 'interesting' than other tech companies is the reliance on being predictable for businesses. Large organizations simply can’t tolerate constant churn in its core technologies – they have a hard enough time simply keeping up with the plodding pace of change as it exists today. I think that Microsoft can take a lesson from open source projects and offer frequent innovations while maintaining the predictability that large organizations need.

The key is to offer frequent updates, say every six months but only offer long term support on a subset of those releases - every four releases for example. This would allow Microsoft to try more experimental features and observe how well they are received in a community that is more forgiving of constant churn while maintaining predictability for its largest customer base.

This approach would avoid forcing Microsoft into splitting its products into separate governance models for different product lines (one of the things that I think slow down development cycles on products like Live Essentials and Windows Phone) and hopefully speed up the rollout of interesting technology for those of us that are enthusiasts.

Technorati Tags: technology,Microsoft

Links for 2011-05-21 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 22 May 2011 00:00:00 PDT

Reasons Why You Might Want To Run For President

Links for 2011-05-20 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 PDT

Capitalists never liked capitalism
Consumers like capitalism, not business people.
What if Our National Budget Belonged to a Typical Household?
What would happen if someone that made $55K/year was spending $96K/year?

Why Students Hate School

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:10:00 +0000

Most students hate school because they believe that it is intended to build human capital but all of their classes have near zero real world application.

Since the classes are worthless they feel like they are wasting their time learning things that they don't need.

If students understood more clearly that the goal of school is to get through school they would have an easier time putting up with the nonsense. But, if too many understood this the value of the signal would likely diminish.

Technorati Tags: education,school,economics

MDL: Script to Convert MPG to AVIs

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 09 May 2010 02:14:00 +0000

The MPG videos that I have are not getting along with XBMC. To get around this I need to convert them all to AVI format.

avidemux has a great command utility and PowerShell has the power to batch the process.

$avidemux = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$avidemux.FileName = "D:\avimux\avidemux2_cli.exe"
$avidemux.windowStyle ="Hidden"

foreach
($SourceVideoFile in (Get-ChildItem @("D:\videos\") -recurse -include @("*mpg", "*.mpeg") | sort-object name))
{
    $SourceVideoFile.fullname
    $avidemux.arguments = "--autoindex --load ""{0}"" --save ""{1}"" --output-format AVI --quit" -f $SourceVideoFile.fullname, ($SourceVideoFile.directoryname + "\" + $SourceVideoFile.basename +".avi")
    $avidemuxProcess = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($avidemux)
    $avidemuxProcess.WaitForExit()
}

All done! The videos all converted in a couple of hours.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,HTPC,XBMC

MDL: How to Share Databases with Multiple XBMC HTPCs

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:04:00 +0000

I’ve raved about how great XBMC is already. Just to demonstrate how truly great it is, I went out and bought a Nettop so that I could install XBMC on my primary TV.

The one problem with this setup is that each install of XBMC maintains a separate database of content. This is problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, I have OCD really bad and it bugs me beyond belief if the pictures, posters and details associated with all of the music, movies and TV shows are out of whack.

Second, XBMC keeps track of what you have already watched and you can choose to hide that content if you wish. This feature isn’t all that useful if it only tracks watched content on a TV by TV basis.

So what is the solution? It turns out that XBMC can be configured to run off of MySQL. And since MySQL is designed for use by more than one connection, more than one XBMC can be setup to use a single database!

I am well adept at Google-Fu but couldn’t find any decent documentation on how to set this up so it took me some time. But don’t fret, my sweat is your gain.

Step 1: Download and install MySQL (default everything is fine). I’m running Windows so downloaded the Windows Community version 5.1.45. The instructions will reflect this setup, but if you are running linux you should be smart enough to translate from Windows to *nix anyway.

Step 2: Once MySQL is installed and running, log into the database by opening a command prompt and typing: ‘mysql –u root –p’

Step 3: Create a user xbmc with password xbmc: ‘CREATE USER 'xbmc' IDENTIFIED BY 'xbmc';’

Step 4: Create a couple databases:

“CREATE database xbmc_video”
“CREATE database xbmc_music”

Step 5: Grant the new user access to create and modify a new database: “GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'xbmc';”

note: yes, I am fully aware that there are more secure ways to accomplish this, but its a media database for Christ’s sake!

Step 6: Create a file called advancedsettings.xml and place it in %appdata%\xbmc\userdata\

Step 7: setup advancedsettings.xml to look just like this. Note, if you didn’t follow my directions exactly you will need to modify the details to make your setup.

<advancedsettings>
    <videodatabase>
        <type>mysql</type>
        <host>localhost</host>
        <port>3306</port>
        <user>xbmc</user>
          <pass>xbmc</pass>
          <name>xbmc_video</name>
    </videodatabase>
    <musicdatabase>
        <type>mysql</type>
        <host>localhost</host>
        <port>3306</port>
        <user>xbmc</user>
          <pass>xbmc</pass>
          <name>xbmc_music</name>
    </musicdatabase>
</advancedsettings>

Step 8: Start XBMC and it will create the database for you.

Step 9: Configure advancedsettings.xml on your second copy of XBMC making sure to change the ‘host’ entry to be the IP address of the computer hosting MySQL.

And there you go, a single copy of the database that can be shared by many computers running XBMC!

If you have spent a lot of time getting all of your metadata setup exactly the way that you want it, you can export the library before you start and import it when you are complete so that you don’t have to start over.

I also discovered one last benefit to sharing a DB on multiple computers. The ‘New Content’ is synced on all of the hosts if you have that feature turned on.

One final gotcha – if you are using Windows you have to setup your content using SMB shares and not local drives. XBMC doesn’t handle the ‘/’ characters correctly yet in MySQL.

Enjoy! Hopefully I saved you a little time.

Technorati Tags: XBMC,HTPC,MySQL

Healthcare Predictions

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:44:00 +0000

With ObamaCare ready to pass here are my predictions on what its effects will be:

Higher Insurance Premiums
10s of millions of people still uninsured
It will cost more than initially claim leading to spiraling government debt
Zero change in the rate of change for life expectancy

I know the above will happen, I only suspect the following:

Decreased innovation (measured by fewer patents)
Medical clinics legislated into oblivion
Increased regulation: limiting competition for doctors, pharma and hospitals

Even with the above failures, proponents will demand more government interventions, failing to admit fault and rolling back their mistakes.

Anyone care to make a wager?

Technorati Tags: hcr,healthcare,ObamaCare

Screw You EU

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:24:00 +0000

In the great wide world of the web does Google have to respond to an EU anti-trust investigation?

Can it just flip them the bird, close down any offices it has in Europe and call it a day? Or does Google rely too much on European based datacenters and content caching mechanisms?

MDL: Home Theater Meet PowerShell

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:47:00 +0000

Intro – Part I – Part II

As I mentioned in the last post, getting video to my wide array of end points can be a little challenging. You may have been surprised when I said that getting video on a Zune was a challenge.

Well, it’s not that it is hard per se – after all the Zune software will go discover all that media from any Windows share just like it does for music. The problem is that it needs to transcode all of that media before it can copy it to the Zune.

The other issue is those large video files aren’t optimized for playing on such a small screen. It all works, but waiting for an hour or more to copy a single movie to your Zune isn’t my idea of a good time. And I’m not always prepared enough to do it ahead of time.

So my solution was to couple HandBrake – a fantastic program for converting video files – with PowerShell. I had to teach myself PowerShell along the way, but in the end I have a powerful script that converts all of my video files to smaller formats optimized for the Zune. The good news for you is that the exact same process will work for iPods or any device that can play video with a couple small tweaks.

Step one is to download Handbrake and the Handbrake CLI (command line interface). Launch Handbrake and create a profile that will convert videos into a format that your portable device can play.

There are a couple of items in this script that will need to be modified for your particular situation.

Your preset – on Line 4 I’ve called mine simply ‘Zune’, change this to whatever profile you created for your device.
The location of the Handbrake CLI on Line 2.
The location of your source videos – you can have as many as you want, just make sure that they are separated by a comma – Line 7.
The destination for your converted movies – Line 9.

        1: $HandBrake = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo

       2: $HandBrake.FileName = "C:\Program Files\Handbrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe"

       3: $HandBrake.windowStyle ="Hidden"

       4: $HandBrakeOptions = " --preset='Zune' "

       5:  

       6: foreach 

       7: ($SourceVideoFile in (Get-ChildItem @("D:\movies\", "D:\TV\") -recurse -include @("*mpg", "*.mp4", "*.mkv", "*.avi", "*.mpeg") | sort-object name)) 

       8: {

       9:     $ZuneOutputFile = "D:\Zune\" + ($SourceVideoFile |% { [IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_) }) + ".mp4"

      10:     if (!(test-path $ZuneOutputFile))

      11:     {

      12:         

      13:         $HandBrake.arguments = $HandBrakeOptions + "-i " + '"' + $SourceVideoFile.fullname + '"' + " -o " + '"' + $ZuneOutputFile +'"'

      14:         $HandBrakeProcess = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($HandBrake) 

      15:         $HandBrakeProcess.WaitForExit() 

      16:     }

      17: }

In short, the script:

Compiles a list of all video files in the locations specified (and, conveniently, all of the subfolders too).

Checks to see if the file exists in the destination.

If it doesn’t already exist it converts it based on the profile that you set up.

Some items of note: the script hides all of the conversion process so that it can be scheduled without interrupting any other activity on the computer it is running on.

It will also take forever to run the first time since it needs to convert all of that video. But if you schedule it on a routine basis it shouldn’t take too long.

Pretty cool, huh?

Technorati Tags: HTPC,PowerShell

My Digital Life – Part 2: Video Distribution

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:23:00 +0000

Intro – Part 1

A brief recap:

I hate physical media.
The world is moving to digital anyway.
Just not fast enough for me.
So I have to figure out how to make all this stuff work together since no one is doing it for me.

That wasn’t so bad. Now ripping a crap-ton of media isn’t the most glamorous exercise in the world, but it isn’t exactly rocket science either – so I’m not going to explain how to do that. Let’s just assume that all of my music and video is all in a central location.

Which is good, because it is all in a central location. I have everything stored on a Windows 7 computer with Windows file shares.

Cool, but how do I get everything to Zunes, Tivos and XBMCs?

Well, XBMC and music on the Zune are easy since they both recognize and can consume Windows file shares. As an added bonus the XBox 360 can consume everything as well – though the experience is simply awful. But the Tivo isn’t so straight forward and video on the Zune isn’t as easy as it should be.

First the Tivo. Newer generation Tivo devices support multi-room content sharing (something Tivo calls “Multi-Room Viewing” (MRV)). This along with Tivo Desktop provides most of the functionality I was looking for – but not all.

Open Source to the rescue! Some enterprising gentlemen backwards engineered the protocol that Tivo uses for MRV and created an application called PyTivo that shares content across the network with any Tivo that supports MRV.

PyTivo is very straightforward to install and use. It isn’t 100% point and click, but its close and the forums are friendly and helpful.

The main advantage that PyTivo has over something like Tivo Desktop is that it will transcode content on the fly whereas Tivo Desktop requires that all of the content be stored in Tivo acceptable format. Pytivo also can push metadata along with the video so that you can get names, descriptions, dates, etc populated which makes the viewing more seamless.

MRV isn’t the most fully functional method for consuming content, but it is acceptable. The text only navigation is bland – especially after being spoiled with XBMC. MRV doesn’t support subtitles either which comes up more often than I would have guessed. But I can live with it, at least until I can get Live TV by some other method.

Continued – Home Theater Meet PowerShell

Technorati Tags: HTPC,XBMC,Tivo,PyTivo

End of a Decade

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:12:00 +0000

No need to write anything new. It’s all been said before.

With this record during the past decade, it would be foolhardy to look forward … with anything more than restrained hope. Perhaps we shall yet develop the wisdom to achieve a livable environment, a world of peace and order, a stable economy as free of inflation as of recession, a government brought under control both as to size and to extravagance, and a social order governed by justice and equality.

But, given the halting progress of the last 10 years, that would be quite a big order.

-Chicago Tribune, Dec. 31st 1969.

You know, those dreadful days when budget deficits soared to unprecedented levels of 20 billion dollars.

What Do You Consider Speech?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:44:00 +0000

Can the government ban pornography?

Can the government impose morality laws on Hollywood?

Can the government prevent the Metropolitan Museum of Art from displaying Robert Mapplethorpe?

Can the government stop the publication of The Pentagon Papers?

Can the government outlaw donations to the Communist Party?

Can the government ban the showing of Hillary the Movie 30 days before an election?

Can the government ban Fahrenheit 9/11 30 days before an election?

Can the government control what 3 brothers say about a politician?

What if those three brothers are a union?

What if those three brothers are a cult?

What if those three brothers are an LLC?

What if those three brothers are a Corporation?

If your answer to those questions isn’t either all ‘yes’ or all ‘no’ I would love to hear a rationale explanation as to what the difference is – because they all seem the same to me.

Technorati Tags: free speech,Citizens United

Why Blackface is Still Funny

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:51:00 +0000

Buster Keaton appears in blackface in several movies, including one that I have seen recently College. I have to admit that it was a bit jarring as I wasn’t expecting it.

However, when Downey appear in blackface for Tropic Thunder it’s pretty funny. So this poses an interesting dilemma – why do I act with shock at one depiction of blackface and amusement at another depiction of blackface?

While the scenes of Buster Keaton in blackface were funny, it wasn't caused by the appearance of blackface. Keaton is the Butt of the joke - so desperate to find a job to support his college career that he is willing stoop so low as to pretend being 'colored' to get a waiter job.

However, this comes into conflict with modern sensibilities - there is no shame in ethnicity, so the tension between what the Butt is implying ('colored' people are inferior) and our notions of what is acceptable ('colored' people could be waiters, customers or restaurateurs) prohibit the gag from succeeding in the way that was intended.

In Tropic Thunder Downey's character is also the Butt of the joke, but it is not because he is having to degrade himself. In fact, the intent is the opposite - the character is so conceited that he surgically alters his appearance. Downey feels that this simple act of reconstruction actually gives him the full past experience to actually make him black and understand the difficulties that a minority may actually have to endure.

We laugh at Downey because he believes that appearing in 'blackface' makes him more than he is. We fail to laugh at Keaton because he believes that appearing in blackface makes him less than he is.

Technorati Tags: film

Thoughts On Citizens United

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:53:00 +0000

Several random thoughts on this wonderful case:
Nothing about this case says anything about corporations as individuals. The first amendment reads: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.

If me, my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl decide to take out an ad on TV saying that politician Bob is a douche and you shouldn't vote for him that's OK. If we own a private business - that's OK. If we have incorporated - that's not OK? I don't get the distinction. I certainly don't agree with giving Congress the ability to decide who can and who cannot speak or what they can say during certain portions of the year.

This specific case was the showing of an anti-Hillary movie within 100 days of an election. I assume that people that are upset about this ruling would be OK if it were illegal to show Fahrenheit 9/11 within 100 days of an election? That seems more than a little odd to me. Where does the line get drawn? Does Wag the Dog count as campaign speech? Or Inconvenient Truth? Why does GE get to say anything it wants, but Microsoft can't? Do blogs count as media now? Or is it only 'traditional' media that should be exempted from barriers to political speech during a campaign?

Once you decide that it is OK to draw lines on who can and cannot speak you have to give someone the power to decide who and what those things are. And guess what? Those rules are more likely to benefit the well connected than the average Joe.

Big corporations don't need help influencing the process - they already are. The barriers are only really effective against those that don't already have power.

Technorati Tags: free speech,liberty

My Digital Life – Part I: Video

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:25:00 +0000

I start with video because it is the most difficult and due to this difficulty has forced my hand in a couple of different ways.

To recap this is what I’m trying to accomplish:

No physical media. Period.
Access all video from any device.

Zune
TVs
PSP
Laptops

Rich metadata associated with the video.

That’s not a very long list but requires a metric crap-ton of software to accomplish.

I 0nly have two TVs and two different personal devices (Zune and PSP), so you would think that this would be easy. But there are some severe challenges.

First, internet video isn’t very good yet. Netflix is the best of the options available, but its catalog is still pretty limited. Hulu has a pretty wide selection of content, but the catalog is really shallow – only a handful of episodes are available at any particular point in time. This really sucks if you discover a show late and want to get caught up. All of the other options are worse than terrible. The network sites have all of the problems of Hulu – only a handful of episodes – but none of the positives.

This forces me to use either traditional cable television or satellite. As much as I hate my local cable provider and I didn’t really have an option.

Which brings me to severe challenge number two – a set-top box is usually pretty limiting and my first requirement I said no physical media so I need to figure out how to stream my digital content to whatever set-top box I decided to use.

In order to accomplish everything that I wanted to accomplish I needed flexibility which means CableCard, so I bit the bullet and bought a TivoHD and subscribed to [insert evil cable company here].

I considered several options for my set-top box:

1) An HTPC. This was actually my first choice. I really wanted to make this work. Mostly because it offers the ultimate in flexibility. Whatever you wanted to do should ultimately be possible with a full PC, right? Just one problem – there aren’t any CableCard cards available for PC (is that unnecessarily redundant?) if you do-it-yourself. Kinda bullshit in my opinion, but whatever. No HTPC for me.

2) [Insert evil cable company here] provided equipment. Just kidding, I never considered it. They have crap for interfaces, they are slow and overall – just suck.

3) Tivo. The first and best DVR. The interface is so intuitive that my father-in-law had absolutely no problems just figuring it out. The remote is the epitome of elegant design. Plus:
*Tivo is aggressively adding internet based content like Amazon Unbox, Netflix, YouTube, Rhapsody.
*There is a well established online community doing third party development to add functionality to the platform (this becomes important later).
*They have a take-it-with-you option with TivoToGo that fits into my everywhere on any device concept.

For my second TV I considered multiple options:

1) First was the XBox 360. Seemed to be a logical choice, after all I was using:
*Windows 7 for a media server.
*It’s a decent Media Center Extender.
*It does HDTV natively.
*It also does Netflix natively with Zune content and other services (I’m certain) to come.

On paper it looks like the perfect option - however, it sucks. Every time you start up the extender service it has to rediscover the whole library before you can actually watch/listen to anything. Media Center is pretty, but that just isn’t enough.

2) Windows Media Center directly connected from the my media server. Another seemingly logical choice, especially since it cuts out the middleman of the 360 as described above.

Oddly, I liked it even less than the XBox and I’m not 100% certain that I can explain why. I think that the primary reason is that it does not do a very good job of handling ripped television shows. They are displayed in the same flat format that movies are shown as. It’s options in the realm of internet video are also pretty limited, though better than the 360.

The other major shortfall is the lack of control around metadata. You have to just trust that Media Center is going to correctly identify the movie and pick the right pictures, descriptions, etc.

3) Boxee, again directly connected to my TV. Again, I didn’t like it, but have a hard time explaining exactly why. It’s got a nice interface, but it doesn’t handle multi-episode content all that well. The internet video plugins work seamlessly with the rest of the interface. It has tie-ins with social networking if you feel compelled to tell everyone immediately exactly what you are watching and/or listening to. But it’s missing a certain something.

4) XBMC. One thing that you have to admit about XBMC – its gorgeous. Seriously, check out the screenshots and they don’t even do it justice. If you like eye candy then there is really no choice other than XBMC. Both XBMC and Boxee offer total control over your metadata, but XBMC is far better at automatically detecting your content and giving your some control over fine tuning the details.

XBMC also does an amazing job of handling multi-episode content by sorting shows into shows – seasons – then episodes. It keeps track of what you have already seen and can even hide descriptions for stuff that you haven’t seen so that it isn’t spoiled.

While XBMC does offer an almost unlimited supply of internet content the integration sucks. It is so bad as to be almost unusable. Using the plugins that allow streaming off of sites like NBC and CBS completely destroys the continuity of the the eye candy. Its like losing yourself in the beauty of Avatar and having jack Black wonder onscreen to tell a fart joke. The rest of the experience more than makes up for this lacking so I’ll overlook it for now. But at some point I may have to switch to another product just so that I don’t ever have to experience XBMC’s implementation of internet TV.

So that’s it – all of that work just to figure out that I need a Tivo and an HTPC running XBMC. If you have noted that I haven’t gotten to gigantic challenge number 3 – making it all work together – you can tell that this is going to be a huge pain in the ass.

Technorati Tags: HTPC,XBMC,Tivo

My Digital Life

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:48:00 +0000

I’ve been predicting for almost three years that the age of media (DVD, CD, etc) is coming to an end. Digital is the way to go – and not just for music.

Streaming video content is becoming more than adequate for most users and fairly mainstream. Unfortunately, nothing really works together the way that it should. In my perfect world my home would have one device that serves all of my content to any device.

This isn’t really possible today – certainly not easily – but its getting close. This post is going to serve as an anchor for a series of posts on how I make it all work together.

Here is the scope of what I am trying to do:

Everything digital – no media and make all of the video, documents, music and pictures available from:

All four laptops (his, hers and 2 kids)
All digital music players
TVs
Speakers (inside & outside)
Social networks

Oh, and I want to protect the most important stuff from a home disaster and the less important stuff from physical failure.

Doesn’t sound too hard does it?

At some point, I’d like to tie in some home automation stuff too (turn off/on lights, close blinds, etc, etc). Some kitchen automation could potentially be interesting as well.

To start with here are some of the devices/services that I am trying to make work together:

Tivo
Windows 7
XBox 360
Wii
PSP
Zune
SanDisk MP3
XBMC
Flickr (only one account, but multiple people need to manage)
Facebook (at least 3 accounts)
Twitter
Comcast voice
Google Voice

Did, I mention that I also wanted all of our phone numbers to kinda work together too?

Technorati Tags: HTPC,Social Media

It’s Getting Better All the Time

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:31:00 +0000

Whether or not you think 2010 is the start of a new decade, one thing that we can agree on is the explosion of editorials proclaiming that the last decade has been the ‘Worst. Decade. Ever.’

And I admit that there was a lot to be depressed about: 9/11 and the ensuing loss of civil liberties, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq & Afghanistan wars and general TSA nonsense.

The ever escalating War on Drugs and the militarization of the police.

Bush. Medicare part D. Exploding deficits. TARP. NCLB.

Obama. TARP. Exploding deficits. Basically Bush Part II, only more so.

Kelo and continued erosion of property rights.

Yet in spite of the constant encroachment of government into every aspect of our lives are lives have gotten immeasurably better.

The explosion of digital media: iPods, Netflix, streaming video, Kindle.

Ubiquitous cellular service and smart phones so that we can be connected everywhere all the time (unless, of course, you are an AT&T customer).

Social networks allowing us to keep in contact with those that we care about all the time.

Blogs – which for me, has given me a far better education that anything I have gotten in formal schooling.

Hybrid cars, long last batteries, $300 computers, high speed internet, HDTV, game consoles, self-checkout, Bluetooth, cheap storage, the emergence of Google, the re-emergence of Apple, medical advances too numerous to mention.

The list really just goes on and on. So the next time you read one of those stories telling you how crappy the last ten years has been ask yourself – do you really want to go back and live with the stuff that was available in 2000?

I know that my answer is a resounding ‘No!

Regulation Theater

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:57:00 +0000

Bruce Schneier introduced, to me, the concept of security theater. The idea that much of what we see in terms of ‘security’ – TSA, Homeland Security, etc – gives us the illusion that something is ‘being done’ to make us more secure, but in reality does nothing – or at worst – makes us less secure.

I have grown to understand that regulation does much the same thing. And this has nothing to do with “government bad, markets good.” This is true because written rules are brittle, vague and unable to adapt to fluid situations.

I work for an organization that is bound by PCI guidelines – a private consortium of credit card providers that create security rules for companies that accept credit cards. (I told you that this wasn’t an anti-government screed.)

The concept behind the guidelines are well intentioned. Credit card companies are liable for losses due to the theft of credit card companies. Unfortunately, they don’t have control over the entire transaction. Retailers accept and store credit card numbers and have been one of the primary source for theft over the years.

But I can tell you with absolute certainty that these rules are not making retailers more secure. We spend a lot of time and money so that we can pass the audits. But little of this activity is actually making it less likely that credit cards can be stolen.

This isn’t to say that none of their rules should be followed – quite the contrary – most of them are simply common sense. But, some of them are:

a) Simply not applicable in our environment – but the rules do not distinguish between risk and no risk, they say that you must do X

b) Less risky than other holes in the environment. Every company has limited funds that they can spend on security (security is always a trade off between costs and benefits) and if we have a hole Y that has a 10% chance of loss and one Z that has a 1% chance of loss we will ignore Y in favor of Z if PCI hasn’t addressed Y.

The PCI – or any regulator for that matter – simply cannot know the details of every environment. We have a pretty good idea what our risks are, but we can’t address them because we are too busy engaging in the theater of making PCI think its all OK.

If the card issuers really want the retailers to take the risks seriously they need to create the incentives for us to really care. Make a retailers partially responsible for a breach. Let us decide where the risks and rewards are – if we have skin in the game we are going to be much more successful than you trying to guess what is likely going to be a problem.

This is true for other areas as well – don’t create rigid rules like SOX & HIPAA with rules that don’t actually address the problem you trying to solve. Make the failures expensive and the perpetrators culpable. The results will be far more successful.

Technorati Tags: regulation,economics

POSTSCRIPT: Even knowing how many holes there are in most companies I fell safe using a credit card at almost any company. The breaches require several steps of compromise and are unlikely more often than not. Not impossible – but improbable.

Is This Called Reverse Rescission?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:09:00 +0000

My father-in-law passed away early this spring after a very long, very painful battle with cancer. The last 6 months or so of his life was spent in a cancer clinic receiving chemo treatments 2 or 3 times per week.

I can say pretty definitely that medicine prolonged his life, I have a really hard time deciding whether it was worth it – but those aren’t really conversations you can have with anyone can you?

After he passed away his wife spent months going through all of the medical bills trying to make sense of them. He typically took care of these things, but those last two years were really tough and I think that he was getting a bit addled.

It took her awhile – maybe three months – to organize all of the bills and get them filed for payment. But she finally completed that herculean task. And then the worst happened. The claims came back one by one with DENIED written across the top.

Not only had my mother-in-law lost her husband of almost forty years but the insurance that they had been counting on to cover hundreds-of-thousands of dollars was being denied to her. Needless to say she was more than a little distressed.

To many of you this comes as no surprise – in fact you were probably expecting this outcome as soon as you started reading. To the family, this was completely unexpected.

So she called the insurance company to find out why all of the claims were being denied. It turns out that my father-in-law had changed his coverage about two years ago. He changed that coverage to the most basic coverage that Illinois law allows.

Needless to say that the minimum coverage doesn’t cover extensive chemotherapy, frequent doctor visits, huge regimes of drugs and specialists that were used very liberally to keep the man alive.

I doubt that this is what he had intended to do. Like I said, he was very sick – and very proud. Too proud to turn the increasingly burdensome task of handling medical bills to his wife or anyone else in the family. His wife felt the same way.

So she called the insurance company and pled her case. Needless to say they were sympathetic to her story. They had signed documents, the law and a case history of at least two years on their side. My father-in-law did not have – nor did he pay for – insurance coverage that would pay for this massive set of bills.

But she never gave up. She kept calling different departments at different levels of responsibility until someone finally relented. Whether it was to get her to leave them alone or because they were persuaded that it was simply illogical that a very sick man would voluntarily cancel insurance that were paying for services that he was already using I don’t know.

But in the end they agreed to cover over $200K of bills – minus the missed premium payments.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear that all insurance companies simply drop coverage as soon as their customers get expensive. I’m claiming that this practice is wide spread. After all companies don’t stay in business if they simply give money away to everyone that asks for it. But they aren’t necessarily the cold-hearted, money-grabbing bastards that they are often portrayed to be.

Technorati Tags: healthcare

How Free-Marketers Can Win the Healthcare Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:58:00 +0000

It’s simple – make the following proposal:

Eliminate tax preferences for employer-provided healthcare.
Allow individuals to purchase health insurance under a federal charter bypassing state laws limiting competition and choice.
Expand the role that nurse practitioners have in providing care.

If that bill does not result in lower health care spending and a reduction of the number of uninsured (controlled for people eligible for welfare but don’t sign up and illegal immigrants) then they would pass some pre-determined single payer plan.

Heck, the plan could be written directly into the bill with a sunset clause. Its time politicians put their money where their mouth is – make a bet on which system will work and end the stupid debate.

Technorati Tags: healthcare,politics,free market

Propaganda Anyone?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Go read this and come back – I’ll wait.

You didn’t follow the link – try again. My comment isn’t going to make any sense until you read it.

You didn’t listen, whatever.

Wait a minute - things got SO bad that he had to quit his practice and at no time prior to that point he thought maybe a blood test would tell him what was wrong? A blood test that would potential mean that he wouldn’t lose everything?

Or that selling his Porsche might pay for the blood test before things got so bad he was destitute?

How does this story even pass the smell test? Oh wait, anecdotal terror stories are what amounts to honest discussion these days.

Technorati Tags: healthcare,stupidity

Profit Opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Fiscally conservative/socially liberal folks seem to be disenchanted with Obama.

President Obama is exceeding all their fears on fiscal and economic issues. After promising a “net spending cut” during the campaign and denouncing “the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history,” he has sent federal spending and the deficit soaring into the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, he’s not delivering what some of his voters hoped for on social issues. No gay marriage, even as Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, conservative superlawyer Ted Olson, and the legislature of crusty New Hampshire sign on.

No end to the drug war, even though he’s the third president in a row to have acknowledged using drugs. He even mocked a question about drug legalization at his online town hall. (“Dude, we elected that guy, what’s up with that?” is Reason editor Matt Welch’s summary of the blogosphere’s reaction.) No pullout from Iraq.
So once again fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters are starting to wonder if they made a bad bargain.

Independents who turned against the Republicans are likely to become equally disillusioned with Obama, and there’s already some evidence of that in the polls. Support for “smaller government with fewer services” has risen in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, and independents prefer it by 61 to 35 percent, a margin three times as large as a year ago. The number of people who see Obama as an “old-style tax and spend Democrat” has risen by 11 percentage points.

In a USA Today poll, a majority oppose Obama’s health care efforts and 59 percent say he’s spending too much. In another ABC/Washington Post poll, only 25 percent “strongly approve” of his health care plans, and 33 percent strongly disapprove. His honeymoon may turn out to be as passionate, yet brief, as Britney Spears’ Las Vegas marriage.

It’s hard out here for a fiscally conservative, socially liberal voter. But at least there’s always the other party to try again.

“Well, duh” is the best response that I can think of. Of course the Democrats aren’t going to give this electorate what they want. Neither are the Republicans. There is a true opportunity for a third way to take advantage of the situation – who is going to step up? I don’t think it’s the LP.

HatTip: Below the Beltway

Technorati Tags: libertarian,politics

Libertarian Prospects for Office

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:16:00 +0000

Underneath the Beltway has an interesting post on the impact of the Barr Presidential run on long term Libertarian Party prospects for relevance.

with the selection of Bob Barr as it’s nominee, the Libertarian Party received more mainstream media news coverage than at any other point in it’s history. And it was specifically because of who the candidate was. Not only was it due to the fact that there was no small degree of media fascination with the idea of a former Republican Congressman (and not just any Congressman, but one who had led the Clinton Impeachment drive) was running as a third-party candidate, it was also due to the fact that Ron Paul’s candidacy had brought attention to libertarian ideas, and the LP had selected a candidate that was both media- and politically savvy. It was, as many observed at the time, a smart choice for the LP

As long as the LP keeps embracing an all-or-nothing approach to policy they will continue to be marginal fringe has-beens.

Too many people see too many libertarian ideas as wacky, especially from a policy standpoint.

The only way that a libertarian-like party can ever gain any relevance is to approach marginal changes to mainstream views.

Run on a platform that takes the best of the right and the best of the left, perhaps throw in something that is new. But adopt something too radical and no one will take them seriously.

What they really need to do is adopt a populist rhetoric around libertarian ideals. Denounce corporate welfare. Frame regulation as monopoly enhancing. Create villains that can be rallied around. But that isn't every going to happen because most LPers are nutjobs.

Saving Money on Obamacare is a Pipe Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:43:00 +0000

If you want to know why Obamacare will never reduce spending on healthcare you don’t have to look any farther than California.

Medi-Cal doctors, meanwhile, this year have managed to roll back a $1.1-billion cut in their reimbursements. A federal appeals court declared illegal a 10% cut in what physicians are paid by Medi-Cal, the government healthcare program for the poor, that was implemented in July 2008. The court ruled the cut would drive doctors out of the program, endangering the ability of patients to get care and thereby violating minimum federal standards for the program.

Once the government gets involved decisions aren’t made on the basis of common sense, logic or even what is best for Everyone (whoever that person is).

Decisions are based on politics and the temperament of the bureaucrat or judge that is sitting on the other side of the bench (or 40 page form or the impersonal telephone line).

I can’t wait.

Technorati Tags: politics,California,healthcare