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Tuesday, November 19, 2002
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 Tuesday, November 19, 2002
started 11/20/2002; 3:58:27 AM - last post 11/21/2002; 12:37:41 AM
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Doc Searls - Tuesday, November 19, 2002 
11/20/2002; 7:58:27 AM (reads: 5369, responses: 8)
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Like we said 
| | In retrospect, I should have made it clearer up front that licensing is one of those subjects I consider extremely important (kind of like gravity) yet deeply boring (kind of like, well, licensing). I fear I kind sound like I'm insulting the subject, which wasn't my intent. |
| | Anyway, Lisa did a very good job of holding me still long enough to get the thing together. Well done. |
Another scary truth
| | Michael Wolff: ...nobody is going to conferences anymore. Conferences -- people paying lots of money to go to a rarefied setting where they can meet people who are better than they are -- are part of the ever-receding boom culture. |
| | Thanks to Halley for the link. |
Domination is conversation
| | John Robb: Find a topic, blog it , own it. Great advice. |
Train on
| | A friend of mine attended a talk by Craig Newmark of Craig's List last night in San Francisco, and reports that Craig had kinds words about Cluetrain. |
To say the least
Meteor drizzle
| | The meteor storm of the century that arrived in the wee hours of yesterday morning was something of a dud, relatively speaking. Mary, Doug and I joined a few hundred other skywatchers parked as far as we could space ourselves from other cars on the roadside just over the first mountain east of Las Vegas on Lake Mead Drive. The moonlight was so bright you could risk driving without headlights and see color in the rocks. Maybe two dozen of the brightest stars were visible in the sky, and that's about how many meteors we saw in the hour we were out there. That's quite a lot under normal circumstances, but nothing like glorious spectacle we witnessed a year ago. |
| | By the way, I think Comdex was something of a dud, too. A shadow of its former self. And I hear Key3Media, which puts on the show, will be filing for bankruptcy. |
Intended consequences
| | Still in email hell here, though I'm hoping to have it worked out by the end of the day. Meanwhile there are over 1500 items sitting on the server (3/4 spam, I'm sure), and the pile is growing like an evil blob. |
| | Over the next week I'm hoping to get a new Net connection (slower but more reliable "business class," with real IP addresses and stuff), a new hosting service, one or more Linux boxes to play with (long overdue here)... plus other fun stuff, while I finally give the G4/500 laptop a rest. Watch the Linux Journal site for details as they develop. |
Somebody. Anybody. Eventually.
| | For a while I've been wondering why this comes up when I try to play a DVD on my laptop: |
| | DVD Player encountered a serious error. The current machine or system configuration is not supported. [-70013]. |
| | Now, after a long series of trials and errors, I can tell you it might mean Apple's DVD player (3.2) on a G4/500 Titanium Powerbook (under OS X 10.2) doesn't like it when you also have an external monitor hooked up. In my case I get that message when I have my Sony 21" Trinitron working as a second screen. |
| | Anyway, thought I'd put that information out where it can be found (since I came up with nothing the last couple times I tried, and the tech guys at one of Apple's stores last couldn't find any reference that might shed light on the issue). Even if it's not your problem (or mine anymore), we blog to please. |
Off the road again
| | Las Vegas and Santa Barbara aren't that far apart — less than three hundred miles, I'd guess. (Heck, why guess? Says here it's 283 miles.) Anyway, it took three planes to get from one to the other yesterday. Sat in seat 6A on all three, too. Got kinda tired of it. |
| | Anyway, I'm unpacked now (at about 1am), and ready to crash. |
discuss
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Jonathan Blocksom - we blog to please
11/20/2002; 10:21:27 AM (reads: 585, responses: 2)
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Tyromaniac - Re: DVD error
11/20/2002; 12:45:36 PM (reads: 590, responses: 1)
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Is the monitor in mirror mode? I can watch DVD's on my TV or a second monitor, but not in mirror mode...
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Doc Searls - Re: we blog to please
11/20/2002; 4:10:04 PM (reads: 635, responses: 1)
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Doc Searls - Re: DVD error
11/20/2002; 4:20:27 PM (reads: 693, responses: 0)
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For the last few months I've just thought my TiBook couldn't play DVDs, period. I'd insert them and get that error. Figured it was because it was a G4/500 and I had cloned everything over to it from a G4/800 I had been using while the /500 was getting a bigger drive (I put a 60Gb in there), and there was a driver/vfirmware/something-or-other mismatch. But while I was on the road I stuck a DVD in the bay for the heck of it and found it worked fine. Then when I got home it went back to its erroneous old ways. Suddenly I realized that at home I have it hooked up to the second monitor, in contiguous mode (arranged so the cursor slides from the TiBook screen over to the other one (a 21" Sony Multiscan 520GS). Sometime later this week I'll try playing a DVD on the new InFocus LC-130 projector in mirror mode and see what happens.
Meanwhile, the error condition (though not the cause) as been isolated, at least in my case.
Clearly, between your case and mine, the kinks have not been worked out.
FWIW, my wife's old Lombard laptop (G3/400) running OS 9.2 has no equivalent troubles, (using DVD Player 1.3, I think it is). It can drive the second monitor or mirror onto a projector without any problems at all. Other than speed. It's generally a slower box.
Anyway, that's one reason I've held off putting OS X on her machine.
Now I've got to go set up the new Linux boxen, whatever they'll be. Should be fun.
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Bret Fausett - Routing Around DVD Error
11/20/2002; 5:12:14 PM (reads: 594, responses: 0)
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I don't know what the Apple error message means, but I've experienced it myself when trying to use my TiBook (OS 10.2.2) as a DVD player for my television. (My suspicion is that it's a copyright protection bug designed to ensure that you can't make videotapes from DVDs.)
I've found that you can get around it by disconnecting the monitor/television, starting the DVD player, then reconnecting the monitor/television and using the monitors control panel to active the second monitor. Additional steps, I know, but it seems to work.
-- Bret
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Reed Laughlin - DVD error suggestions
11/20/2002; 8:51:02 PM (reads: 651, responses: 0)
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I found a similar problem report (Machine config not supported) at Mac OS X Hints, along with some suggestions that sound fairly useful. Here's the URL:
http://www.macosxhints.com/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20020219200617105&title=DVD+Playback+on+VGA+display+STILL+not+working&type=article&order=&pid=5532
My take:
Most likely, a lack of video memory or video chipset capability is preventing you from playing DVDs when you have an external monitor connected. Reducing resolution and/or bit depth might help here. As a quick test, you could try to play a DVD with the external monitor as the only active display (clamshell mode). If your wife's Powerbook is using DVD player 1.3, it is using hardware DVD decoding, which is an entirely different animal that the software decoder (V2.0 and up)
Another user in that thread suggested changing the permissions on the DVD player application, but I would say running the repair permissions feature of Disk Utility would be easier, and is good practice anyways.
Good Luck!
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lou josephs - XM vs Sirirus who wins
11/21/2002; 2:52:00 AM (reads: 845, responses: 0)
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I have test both of these services and the results are suprising. XM is like a bunch of radio guys in a room playing their favorite turntable hits. The quality is great. However the spoken word programmming blows. ABC and BBC World Service sound like a bad 5 k voice circuit. The other news and information programs are re-transmissions of tv audio.
Sirius on the other hand sounds just great. The WRN feed of international radio stations is awesome. BBC WS is studio quality as well. It's worth paying extra for. But looking at the modifications I can make to the Grundig YB 400 to make it a DRM machine, well I don't think either of these two services are worth it. XM blew out 90 people last week.
And can you belive the CC wants to do to UK radio what it's done in the US. No more nightime or all night talent for starters and then the total blanding of stations like Capitol 1 and Capitol Gold.
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Hamish MacEwan - Re: Tuesday, November 19, 2002
11/21/2002; 4:37:41 AM (reads: 640, responses: 0)
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Door-to-door, a flight of 500 miles or less (the majority of American flights) is no faster than driving a car. Why? Because, Mr Fallows argues, of the hub-and-spoke system, developed by the airlines since deregulation to cut their costs and fill their seats. More than 80% of America’s airline travel now takes off from or lands at the busiest 1% of airports.
Hubs make the whole system more cumbersome and vulnerable to delays. When a problem hits a big hub, it ripples out through the network. The answer, says Mr Fallows, is one that NASA, America’s space agency, has been looking at: many more flights by small aircraft into the myriad airports scattered across the country.
Hamish.
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