Re: [GNHLUG] [DLSLUG-Announce] Mapping Party - DLSLUG Special Event - Saturday, 2009-06-06
On 05/29/2009 01:37 AM, Bill McGonigle wrote: 11:00 OpenStreetMap Mapping Party! lead by Russ Nelson As someone who went to Clarkson and made extensive use of the fruits of Russ' labor, I'd like to mention he's a great guy and this event should be great. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend. Will the classroom portions be recorded or otherwise available? -Mark ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
[GNHLUG] CentraLUG meeting POSTPONED to July
The June meeting of the Central NH Linux User Group has been POSTPONED to July 6th at the Hopkinton Public Library. We weren't able to secure a location for the meeting in time to promote it. Please join us on July 6th at the Hopkinton Public Library where Philip Sbrogna will make a presentation on WINE. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-announce mailing list gnhlug-annou...@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-announce/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [GNHLUG] [DLSLUG-Announce] Mapping Party - DLSLUG Special Event - Saturday, 2009-06-06
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Mark Komarinski mkomarin...@wayga.orgwrote: On 05/29/2009 01:37 AM, Bill McGonigle wrote: 11:00 OpenStreetMap Mapping Party! lead by Russ Nelson As someone who went to Clarkson and made extensive use of the fruits of Russ' labor, I'd like to mention he's a great guy and this event should be great. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend. Will the classroom portions be recorded or otherwise available? I'm interested as well and am also a Clarkson Grad. I remember using Galahad and Lancelot on Z100s (MS-DOS but not PC compatible) and PCs. FWIW, my roommate added the mouse stuff to Freemacs. Russ created lots of useful software for Clarkson. Galahad was eventually put up on Simtel20 if you have old .gal docs and a DOS computer. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Notes from PySIG, 28-May-2009
It was a dark and stormy night. Nonetheless, six members made it to the May meeting of the Python Special Interest Group, held as usual on the fourth Thursday of the month at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester. We had an Open Mike Night format, a round-table discussion where everyone shared what they were working on. I plugged upcoming meetings, available as always at http://gnhlug.org -- MonadLUG in particular, is to be praised for posting 4 months worth of meetings in advance. Mark has a client who's weaning off a proprietary OS and looking for a replacement document management system / word processing system, and is considering LyX, which might be a Python front end to LaTeX. Mark asked for suggestions for additional resources and the two Bills were able to come up with some ideas. Arc talked about some wireless technologies he's researching (neat stuff!). Arc also reported the Gaming SIG is coming along nicely: 5 people at the first meeting, 10 at the second. Details at gnhlug.org . Hoping to schedule a FPS (First Person Shooter) night soon. Coming up next Friday June 5th, the SIG will take a look at the awesome audio utility, Audacity, as it relates to gaming, and then engage in the Battle of Wesnoth. Gaming SIG meets at the Brady Sullivan building in the DynInc offices on the fifth floor - see http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/GamingSIG. Shawn O'Shea completed a course in Network Design and Planning at UMass Lowell (and got an 'A', congrats!) and showed us his lab work, written in Python! He very bravely showed us his code and we talked about some of his algorithms and looked at a couple of the modules he used, including optparse [1], netaddr [2] cmd [3] [1] http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html [2] http://packages.python.org/netaddr/netaddr-module.html [3] http://docs.python.org/library/cmd.html Bill Freeman reported he'd been working in Plone and Python 2.4 and missed some of the features available in later versions. He created some code to address the worst of the problems, and hopes to be able to release it freely soon. Stay tuned. Thanks to Bill for organizing the meeting, to the Amoskeag Business Incubator for the fine facilities, to Arc for bailing us out with an extension cord, to Janet for the awesome (!) cookies, and to all for attending and participating! -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers
A recent Mythtv user, I have been going through a lot of effort to get my (Comcast) channel lineup associated with the program data that I get from SchedulesDirect. Now there is help for people like me. Due to the fact that Comcast is distributing little Digital to Analog converters (along with their switchover to DTV broadcasts), they are now distributing the channel info in-band which makes it available to us. More specifically, there is a project on sourceforge with the tools for grabbing this info and putting it into your Mythtv database. See http://scte65scan.sourceforge.net/ From the website: Scans for in-band SCTE 65 tables. Allows automatic mapping of virtual channel numbers to callsigns and physical channels. Useful for the transition from analog CATV to digital CATV. Comcast is one such cable provider making these tables available. p.s. You'll see the acronym 'POD'. I had no idea what that stood for, so I looked it up. POD stands for Point Of Deployment and is an actual ANSI standard in the world of Cable Television ANSI/SCTE 28 2007 Host-POD Interface Standard http://www.scte.org/content/index.cfm?pID=59 for gory details on that. -- Greg Rundlett Web Developer - Initiative in Innovative Computing http://iic.harvard.edu camb 617-384-5872 nbpt 978-225-8302 m. 978-764-4424 -skype/aim/irc/twitter freephile http://profiles.aim.com/freephile ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
[OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: ... Comcast is distributing little Digital to Analog converters (along with their switchover to DTV broadcasts) ... I thought the DTV switchover was mainly a problem for people receiving TV via OTA broadcast (over-the-air, i.e., antennas). I thought the CATV companies could basically keep sending analog signals forever. Or are they jumping on the digital-only bandwagon, too? http://www.dtv.gov/topfaqs.html#faq3 -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)
On May 29, 2009, at 4:21 PM, Ben Scott wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: ... Comcast is distributing little Digital to Analog converters (along with their switchover to DTV broadcasts) ... I thought the DTV switchover was mainly a problem for people receiving TV via OTA broadcast (over-the-air, i.e., antennas). I thought the CATV companies could basically keep sending analog signals forever. Or are they jumping on the digital-only bandwagon, too? Bandwagon jumping for self-serving purposes. If I recall correctly, the digital version of a standard-def program actually consumes less bandwidth to transmit than the analog variant of the same, so they can cram more digital channels into a multiplexed QAM channel than they can analog channels. On top of that, they can encrypt the digital channels, making it harder for 3rd-party tuners to be useful (be they tuners in a mythtv box or the built-in tuner in an HDTV), thereby requiring subscribers to rent more cable boxes... My own Verizon FiOS TV service has been purely digital for quite a while now. But at least they provided digital-analog adapter thingies for free, so I can still record all my SDTV channels if I really want to (usually, I don't anyway though). -- Jarod Wilson ja...@wilsonet.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Jarod Wilson ja...@wilsonet.com wrote: If I recall correctly, the digital version of a standard-def program actually consumes less bandwidth to transmit than the analog variant of the same ... That much I know is accurate. You can compress a digital signal. I seem to recall that standard definition compresses at roughly a 5:1 ratio. So the bandwidth savings could be significant. I'm not surprised to hear the CATV providers want to do this. But I predict significant confusion, as much of the DTV transition guidance I've seen has been saying that if you've got cable, you don't have to worry. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Neil Joseph Schelly n...@jenandneil.com wrote: I've got 3 analog tuners and no plans to pay for digital cable anytime soon. Depending on what you want, you may not have to. FCC rules say that the cable provider has to provide all the local broadcast signals at no additional cost. That includes digital and high-definition. When I got the CableCARD for my TiVo, there was no additional charge unless I also wanted the cable channels (e.g., CNN, Discovery, ESPN) in high-definition. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Neil Joseph Schelly n...@jenandneil.com wrote: I've got 3 analog tuners and no plans to pay for digital cable anytime soon. Depending on what you want, you may not have to. FCC rules say that the cable provider has to provide all the local broadcast signals at no additional cost. That includes digital and high-definition. When I got the CableCARD for my TiVo, there was no additional charge unless I also wanted the cable channels (e.g., CNN, Discovery, ESPN) in high-definition. -- Ben Right. The DTA converters are given to subscribers on request (up to two per household). Additional ones are charged. Like Ben said, I think you can also get a cablecard for no fee. The DTA thingies bother me because it's one more thing you have to plug in, that is always on, and you need another remote, that uses another battery, and another receiver to place on top of your set/furniture. Free in this case means we pay for it in our service fees (there is a lot of cost and overhead to implement this), and we obviously pay for it in the above ways. btw, at least in Newburyport, Comcast has been advertising this heavily with automated calls, mailings, newspaper ads. Today they even called me live. In the process, they are also shifting some of the lineup (emphasizing the new channels you get, not the ones they're removing). ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ -- Greg Rundlett Web Developer - Initiative in Innovative Computing http://iic.harvard.edu camb 617-384-5872 nbpt 978-225-8302 m. 978-764-4424 -skype/aim/irc/twitter freephile http://profiles.aim.com/freephile ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers
More specifically, there is a project on sourceforge with the tools for grabbing this info and putting it into your Mythtv database. See http://scte65scan.sourceforge.net/ I forgot to mention, there is a very informative page about this on the MythTV wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Comcast_Users_And_scte65scan From the website: Scans for in-band SCTE 65 tables. Allows automatic mapping of virtual channel numbers to callsigns and physical channels. Useful for the transition from analog CATV to digital CATV. Comcast is one such cable provider making these tables available. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)
In message 51ab7d3a-d3ee-49db-b44f-70bca4f1b...@wilsonet.com, Jarod Wilson wr ites: thereby requiring subscribers to rent more cable boxes... You got it. Selling less and charging more for it has been this company's mantra since... well, when did they become Comcast? Last June (almost 1 year ago), I lost three channels (4, 40, and 58 if I recall correctly) because they moved them to the digital tier. I, personally, find it disgusting how Comcast is using the *OTA* DTV transition as an opportunity to rob analog *cable* TV subscribers of service in the name of digital programming. Most people don't understand that digital cable has nothing at all to do with what's digital on the air. As a result, the uninformed perception is that what Comcast's doing is government-mandated. It's patent deception. To drive the point home... the DTV transition began in February, and Comcast is *still* broadcasting commercials (on analog cable, mind you) urging people to be ready for the end of the transition in June. Let me ask you this: if you're watching that commercial on analog cable, don't you already have at least basic cable??! Clearly, the intent here is to mislead the uninformed. Comcast gets to cram more signal into less bandwidth... saving them money. At the same time, if I want the Hallmark Channel back (that was channel 58, I think), I have to rent one of their cable boxes. And, don't forget... Comcast's new TOS declare that their cable boxes, as well as ALL software and settings on them, are Comcast property. That means they can change settings, upgrade software, etc. on your box without your knowledge. (Someone on this list recently complained about surprise changes made to a cable modem.) IIRC, the TOS even grant Comcast explicit permission to come into your home and physically change out cards in their CPE. (No joke!) Because the digital boxes have channels back to Comcast, and they can change set-top software at will, it's possible for Comcast to track subscriber viewing habits. Warrantless set-top surveillance, anyone? No, I'm afraid I'll have to pass. I'm plenty ready with my analog tuner card, thank you! ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers
On Friday 29 May 2009 21:26:39 Christopher Rutter wrote: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: A recent Mythtv user, I have been going through a lot of effort to get my (Comcast) channel lineup associated with the program data that I get from SchedulesDirect. Now there is help for people like me. Due to the fact that Comcast is distributing little Digital to Analog converters (along with their switchover to DTV broadcasts), they are now distributing the channel info in-band which makes it available to us. More specifically, there is a project on sourceforge with the tools for grabbing this info and putting it into your Mythtv database. See http://scte65scan.sourceforge.net/ From the website: Scans for in-band SCTE 65 tables. Allows automatic mapping of virtual channel numbers to callsigns and physical channels. Useful for the transition from analog CATV to digital CATV. Comcast is one such cable provider making these tables available. p.s. You'll see the acronym 'POD'. I had no idea what that stood for, so I looked it up. POD stands for Point Of Deployment and is an actual ANSI standard in the world of Cable Television ANSI/SCTE 28 2007 Host-POD Interface Standard http://www.scte.org/content/index.cfm?pID=59 for gory details on that. Very interesting... I've been trying to get my MythTV setup off the ground and the reason for my procrastination has been this (getting my channel lineup configured). I have a HDHomeRun connected to comcast basic cable (no boxes), I read on the SilconDust forums [1] a while back that someone has figured out a way to get the lineup from SilconDust's resources website [2], I never pursude it because I thought it was a sloppy solution, and a few people on the forums said to avoid it if possible. After re-reading the forum thread it looks like SilconDust has built an API for their lineup server [3], so that we might be able to use that instead of the python scripts. Just curious Greg, are you using a HDHR? Anyone out there using a HDHR? Yes. If so have you tried setting up your channel lineup using this solution [1]? Nope, wasn't even aware of it. or the solution Greg mentioned? Results? I just use SchedulesDirect with MythTV. Hunt-n-peck to manually line up anything that doesn't have station identifiers in the stream. Dunno if fios does the scte65 thing, will have to take a peek... But once the manual mapping is done once, you're pretty much done (haven't had to do that in ~2+ years). -- Jarod Wilson ja...@wilsonet.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: [OT] DTV switch-over
virgins...@vfemail.net writes: In message 51ab7d3a-d3ee-49db-b44f-70bca4f1b...@wilsonet.com, Jarod Wilson wr ites: thereby requiring subscribers to rent more cable boxes... You got it. Selling less and charging more for it has been this company's mantra since... well, when did they become Comcast? Last June (almost 1 year ago), I lost three channels (4, 40, and 58 if I recall correctly) because they moved them to the digital tier. I, personally, find it disgusting how Comcast is using the *OTA* DTV transition as an opportunity to rob analog *cable* TV subscribers of service in the name of digital programming. Most people don't understand that digital cable has nothing at all to do with what's digital on the air. As a result, the uninformed perception is that what Comcast's doing is government-mandated. It's patent deception. To drive the point home... the DTV transition began in February, and Comcast is *still* broadcasting commercials (on analog cable, mind you) urging people to be ready for the end of the transition in June. Let me ask you this: if you're watching that commercial on analog cable, don't you already have at least basic cable??! Clearly, the intent here is to mislead the uninformed. More clearly than you know: I remember that, back before my wife and I cancelled our Comcast subscription, they were running advertisements that said: Worried about the DTV transition? Don't worry--Comcast's got you covered: people who receive television signals over the air will need to upgrade their televisions or else lose their ability to watch television. But, as a Comcast cable-television customer, your existing set will *continue to work*. I'm quoting from memory, so the exact wording is likely a little off, but I'm pretty sure they said something remarkably close to that in syntax, and identical to that in semantics. In other words, it's not merely a question of *intent* but of actual *action*, and the action was that they didn't merely `mislead' the *uninformed* by way of /suggestion/--they flat-out *lied*. But, on the up (or, at least, not-so-down) side, the only actual damage that I can see that they may have done anyone via that lie (ignoring things like the /prospective/ damage that may come in the form of vendor-locking encrypted signals, or whatever) would be new customers who signed extended-commitment-for-a-teaser-rate contracts with them because they figured they might as well finally go to cable (or something like that) now that their TV can't receive anything but cable without a separate converter with yet another remote control. -- Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
