moonlit

I dunno, this thing does get pretty hot... but thanks... *grabs petrol, drops some on the floor and accidentally drops his lit cigarette... then runs around in a circle getting slightly warm... then uses his Deadly DIY Desk Fan to blow himself out...* ... *slowly meanders back towards the topic...*

ahh gotcha :D Personally I prefer 7eleven... ;)

that's quite a plan, that... I'll wire the red, white and yellow randomly and see if it catches fire... then it'll melt the solder for me... and everything else... but mostly the solder...

...

I think I almost already did...

haha I could melt it into an ergonomic shape :D

or 673 ;)

why thank you melodic :)

yeah I despise that - and the only way around it is a no-cd crack and even if you have a legit copy, they would say that it's a circumvention of copyright protection methods and is therefore illegal... grr...

I just learnt a valuable lesson - if you're gonna build a desk fan, don't use paper to direct the air flow unless you're gonna stick it down... I have 2 120mm case fans together running off a 12v wall wart... with a paper tube and a paper funnel wedged in the end with a piece of plastic from something I destroyed to direct the air and the funnel just fired itself at me and scared me half to death... it's a 'cool' mod though if you have a couple spare fans lying about and you'll be 'blown away' by the results of something so quick and easy! Great to 'chill' in front of while watching your favourite IPTV show... I'm quite a 'fan' of this Hak.5 myself, since some of the others I've come across just seem to 'blow hot air'... *bad joke sfx*

hahahah :D I was waiting to see what the next person to post was gonna say - it looks awesome, doesn't it?

The connection speed looks good? ;) Just kidding... :D

What, that it looks good? ;)

This one's not quite so half-assed as the one I posted a moment ago - it's quite different, that's why it's got it's own thread... I have sitting in front of me now: (yeah I know, I recycled that line...) 1 x 8v Wireless camera, 1 x 9-12v Receiver w/Composite Out for aforementioned camera. (The receiver is no longer in it's case - I took it out to mod it into my rig but then I decided to remove it again... it's now a bunch of circuits on my desk). Now, the thing is, the camera's power socket came loose because it was cheap and tacky... I cut the socket off of the little power cable and what do I see? Erm... 3 wires... A red one, a white one and a yellow one... The problem is that I don't know how this works... I'm used to having a + and a - and maybe some data wires in there somewhere - but there's nowhere for data to go, 'cos it's wireless! The data goes out of the antenna... now, I know transmitters have odd circuits because you can't just have one end of a circuit going nowhere, but I can't figure out which wire is which... I'm rather hoping I haven't killed the poor little thing by reversing the polarity of the power (for too long)... It's a bit difficult to use trial and error because whilst trying to test which wires go where, I have to also make sure that the receiver is tuned... it has a manual tuning dial just to make things difficult! If anyone has any ideas, do yell, and when I get it figured out I will decide what to mod it into... it's gotta go somewhere... *thinks*... Cheers guys, MLOIOTN

Meh... if people watch the show, I doubt they've got 56k lol That does look good though :D

Likewise! Hope there's no hungry 56k-ers on here ;)

Crazyness! I want one!

I just had a dumb, but possibly fun to do idea... I have sitting in front of me now: 1 x (Internal workings of) a Mini USB digital webcam/digital camera - max. res. 320x240 1 x Cheap LeClic 35mm Camera Now, my thoughts are - what if I combine the two? I would then have a home-made digital camera, right? I could replace the li'l wierd USB connector with a real USB female connector, I could keep the 35mm's flash unit and then it'd have a flash (it didn't before), It would have a real viewfinder (compared to it's pathetic and somewhat useless viewfinder in it's previous life as a cheapo digi-cam), It would be nicer to hold, it'd feel like a real camera. On the downside, the little diddy LCD it had went for a flying lesson when I dremelled/prized it open... erm... so I don't know where that went... it still seems to function ok though... oh, and the little piezo-electric speaker? that's gone too... What do you guys think... worth spending an hour or so on? Edit: I did think of modding it into my old (but only) lappy but there's very little room around the LCD so it probably wouldn't fit... plus it would draw all of the current from the only USB port (unless I hook the power to the serial port or PS/2 port or something not sure if the PS/2 port carries that much current though...)

I personally find that WinXP does the job for me... it does pretty much everything I need media-wise, but I guess it's down to personal taste...

I guess this is kinda off topic, but since we're on the subject of Canada... I went last yeah and man was it great! Seriously, the scenery (I went to Castlegar, BC) was simply awesome! Just... gah! I don't even have words for it - just... wow! The people were cool, and so much more accepting that us Brits (though it could've been the accent ;)) ... and 7eleven!! 7eleven RULES! DOUBLE GULP! *cough* Yeah, seriously though, I recommend going there - it's... well the scenery is breathtaking, the people are cool, the fact that you drive on the wrong ... err ... right side of the road and... well... it's just great! That accent! w00t!

Yeah it surely doesn't make business sense to do that, does it? I guess people's ignorance is the issue, but absurd though it sounds, it's like this slightly OTT example: 'this car is great! they gave me the colour I wanted, it's great with fuel consumption - but it doesn't work in the town/city you live in... I'll sell it to you for twice what it's worth...' 'sure! I'll take 2 of 'em!' ...it sounds stupid but it's how it's going at the moment... oh, and I'm going for HD-DVD - but not for a while yet, I'm sticking with SL-DVD±R/RW ... I don't even use DVD-RAM because it doesn't do what I want...

Yeah it's ridiculous... as you say, the actual media itself (the physical distrobution media, that is) costs very little to make... which leaves production, the artist or cast's pay and the advertising... now, advertising shouldn't cost all that much for a well established popular artist especially when you consider the volume of CDs that would be sold -especially if they were to cost less. The artist should get enough money to count as a wage suitable for the effort they have put into creating their music and a 'being famous' fee... the production costs should cover just that - the production costs... ok, so you have agents and whatever in between but if the money was fair, then why do loads of pop stars (however talented they /really/ are) end up eventually owning more money than they have sense and cars, clothes etc that royalty would have trouble affording?!

Yeah I agree... the amount of music CDs I have is ridiculous but despite the fact I've paid for them I can't play them... for the first reason, I have no idea where a given CD is at a given time (so I should be more organised, but I don't think my situation is much different from other people) and also they are easily damaged... so if my CDs are scratched and I have to buy it again then why shouldn't I download it? I had a CD broken some time back which I would find it quite difficult to get hold of and according to some people, despite this I shouldn't be allowed to download the content that was on that CD... Same would go for DVDs if I bought them...

True, but then we get to the VHS vs TiVo/Sky+ thing - why use TiVo or Sky+ when you can use a free method of recording shows like VHS or home-brew PVR...? It does the same thing, it's the same content - but without these recording devices we still see the same content... for free... it's just with a VCR or TiVo or whatever, we get to watch them whenever we choose rather than when the TV listings (or rather stations) say. Of course, this is what makes Hak.5 and all of the rest of the free independant media so great - we get to watch content we choose and like, while we're fed things we're supposed to like by mainstream media and often get charged for it... Ok, so I'm aware that free media is often far from free behind the scenes and that the level of work that goes into free and mainstream media alike is very high (sometimes, anyhow) but how is it that indie media can work while the mainstream media claims to require millions to operate?

@armadaender: I quite agree, but it's greed... Kinda in relation to what VaKo said about people wanting more money that they deserve for whatever they're creating, people want much money as they can possibly get though watever means they can. This includes trying to squeeze every last penny out of us by way of DRM etc. It's the same with hacking and virus writing and such - there's no way you could eradicate that from a network any more than you could've stopped people lending others their cassettes to copy on their 2 deck stereo of the pre-CD era. @VaKo: I also create things (my avatar is a very very poor example btw lol) and would rather like to get paid something for it... and even though I don't get paid, I'd rather prefer if my content and creative output didn't get strewn around where everyone can get hold of it if it. If it's worth having, surely it's worth paying for, right? But then on saying that, I also agree with your point where you use Lost as an example - if it's TV, why should we pay to own it if we can legally see it for free elsewhere?! I like your idea of using regional adverts, that would in theory work nicely I think... I also like watching things from around the world and disagree that we should pay for that if the place it came from provides it for free... You mention that the world is becomeing more expensive to live in and that we are being pushed to want everything we see... it is a great shame that besides their bank balance and credit card overdraft, people don't see it... they see that they spend but they don't see why - that they're being /told/ what they want... We can't afford everything, so yes as you say it's a reasonable situation to see people downloading things left right and centre wherever possible - the media have become a victim of their own brainwashing - they've created an army that's now turning against them.