So long, and thanks for all the fish

[barnabas1969]

That blog was a very interesting read, and also 2 years old. The guy is a software engineer who works at Google, according to his bio page on Github. There has been recent activity on his Github project, but it still doesn't actually work.

It would be awesome if someone made a working 360 emulator that would actually work as an extender for Media Center.

[kingwr]

UPDATE: UVerse TV is still pretty good. haven't seen any "All TV services are in use" messages again and I have gotten use to the quality.

But the Internet connectivity SUCKS! I can't watch a whole Breaking Bad on AppleTV without multiple minute pauses or, worse, the message that says "Your show will be ready to watch in 2 hours and 27 minutes." I still run my PC and my AppleTV on may cable modem (which is not disconnected yet pending home number port).

And the UVerse gateway is really not good on the home network. Recorded TV from the DVR to the STBs is unicast, but any incoming streams (recorded or live TV) are multicast. I am assuming this is to support 4 incoming streams no matter how many viewers there are. However, at around 8Mbps a piece, that puts me around 35% utilization on EVERY 100Mbps segment of the LAN with 4 streams going. I wonder if I can use VLANS to stop this?

EDIT: Don't know why I am sharing this information here. Probably because this and the Universal-Devices forums are the only ones I have really ever participated in. You guys are my only friends.

[holidayboy]

Post away mate, I'm betting that a lot of folks around here will welcome stories of the greener grass

I'm always interested in hearing about alternatives (whilst I cling to my MS remote for comfort!).

Once a TGB'er always a ............

[adam1991]

I'm in WOW territory, and a couple years ago they rolled out their Ultra TV. It's the old Moxi guts that Arris bought and re-purposed for the mainstream cable providers to rent to their customers. 6 streams into one gateway, with little players at each TV--all connected via coax.

The gateway is the main component for everything in the house--TV, broadband, phone, and wireless.

And by all reports, it sucks. Big time. Wireless sucks, access to VPNs sucks. User has no access to configuring it. Even turning wireless off is almost impossible. First level tech support knows next to nothing about it (although they are the most helpful hotline around, they're not trained on or tasked with help you in the finer points of home networking).

But what do you expect for a product bought by cableco owners? They don't know anything themselves.

So, whatever stories you have about your U-verse supplied gateway will not surprise me one bit.

However, one nice thing about U-verse: they split duties, with the gateway holding your recording schedule and the set top box housing the hard drive and the recordings themselves. When the three dollar set top box dies--inevitably, and regularly--at least the U-verse customer doesn't lose his recording schedule. Not so with WOW or 7MC, where it's all in one box.

[kingwr]

Fixed the Internet problem. Embarrassingly, one of the PCs on the network was backing everything from the network anew (I guess because of new DNS extension, new IP addresses, new provider, whatever). With all the rebooting and changing of the network, it would just fail and then pick back up later. After 4 days of this, it managed to complete the backup and everything settled in. I tore apart my whole infrastructure trying to figure this out. Still 12/1.5 is noticeably slower than the 35/5 I was getting from Charter.

[barnabas1969]

I just have one question... What fish?

[bmblank]

Recently on shirt.woot i saw a t shirt that had a dolphin saying the same thing, "so long and thanks for all the fish!"
I was confused, to say the least. Granted, I'm not some super-hipster up on the latest and inventing my own internet memes, but i can usually figure out where they originate by inference or checking them out somehow... This one i don't get.

[kingwr]

It's the name of the fourth book in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. The dolphins on Earth have been conducting experiments on the human inhabitants by performing flips and other tricks to see how the humans will react. When the dolphins hear that an alien race is coming to destroy the Earth to make room for a Galactic bypass, one dolphin performs one last trick which the humans interpret as a triple reverse somersault but really meant to communicate "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

[bmblank]

Damn, a triple reverse somersault? Sweet!

[STC]

I have been called Marvin in the past

[kingwr]

My favorite is the infinite improbability drive -- "a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace." It is infinitely improbable (but permissible) to be in every spot in the universe at the same time, so you turn it on and ...poof... you are there. Of course, since you pass through every possible point in every possible universe simultaneously, you are "never sure where you'll end up or even what species you'll be when they get there" and "therefore, it's important to dress accordingly."

Scientists had long understood finite probability drives but after years of failure they declared the infinite improbability drive virtually impossible. However, a young student decided to calculate the improbability of the infinite improbability drive, plugged it into one of the finite probability drives, and turned it on. Voila! Of course, instead of being heralded as the inventor of the infinite improbability drive, the young student was lynched by the other scientists because the one thing scientists hate more than failure is a smart a $ $.

I loved these books. Of course I was 13 when they came out.

[barnabas1969]

Ah. 42.

[bmblank]

Shirt.woot today. 42 in ascii.

[STC]

Stolen from Wikipedia:


Babel fish
For other uses, see Babel fish (disambiguation).

"The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix."

It is a universal translator that neatly crosses the language divide between any species. The book points out that the Babel fish could not possibly have developed naturally, and therefore it both proves and disproves the existence of God:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could evolve purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys. But this did not stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme for his best selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up for God. Meanwhile the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different cultures and races, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

[kingwr]

Just got a letter from DirecTV: "We know you just disconnected but comeback and get $29 a month for 12 months plus a free Genie whole home upgrade for 4 rooms, free HBO/Cinemax and up to $200 to break your current contract."

I called these idiots, told them I was going to switch, and told them that all I wanted to stay a customer after 19 years of being a loyal customer was a free Genie. But they wouldn't budge. How is it that this strategy works for them (or anybody for that matter). I will ride out my year of Uverse for spite, if for no other reason. But all these telcos and cable/satellite providers have created an industry where customer loyalty means exactly squat!

[barnabas1969]

Yeah, the cellular companies too. If I were you, I would take the offer. You probably won't get it next year.

[kingwr]

Saw a new message on the UVerse last night "All HD services are in use." Before that, it was always "All TV services are in use." In addition, I had one HD stream recording and 2 HD streams being watched on other TVs. It appears that not all HD streams are equal, so 4 simultaneous HD streams (as promised and achieved in testing) may depend on the "HDiness" of the streams. In addition, during this time, my Internet speed cut in half (around 5MB). The Sync rate on my gateway stayed at 25310 bonded. So not quite as robust as it first appeared, ... or I was told, ... or our best testing indicates.

I guess if I up my Internet service to 25MB, then they would have to up the bonded channel synch rate to 38000 (out of a possible 55000, according to the gateway), and I could get those 4 HD streams, but at what cost? OLD MEMORIES... OF AT&T.... HATRED .... STARTING TO .... SURFACE!

[RyC]

How does the HD picture quality compare to cable/DirecTV? I've always heard it's not as good, but are you able to notice a difference?

[staknhalo]

Yeah, my friend had U-verse for a short while in between Comcast deals - there was definitely more compression going on that was obvious to both of us.

[mcewinter]

This song gets in my head everytime I come across this thread so now it's your turn...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG6b3V2MNxQ