[mythtv] Paid for Plugin dev?

[Peter Schachte]

Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 09:48 -0400, K Stanton wrote:   
>> I think discussion of this architectural foundation is necessary while 
>> discussing the scope of the idea.  To clarify my initial post - and to 
>> be mindful of keeping chatter down in the dev list - the value of this 
>> feature would be greatly (exponentially?) increased by harvesting 
>> behavior by _user_ on a given machine.  [snip]
> 
> KS, I think most people following this discussion are aware that user
> info could make a recommendation system more accurate for any particular
> user of MythTV. But ... [snip] ... even if
> implemented few if any households would use it religiously; people watch
> television communally while there often there are just one or two people
> in the household who setup all the recording rules.  [snip]

Daniel, I agree with your points 1 and 3, but I think a fair proportion of 
the Myth users in households with users with disparate tastes probably would 
trouble to use a multi-user facility if it were implemented well, because the 
benefits could be quite significant, and the inconvenience could be kept low. 
  Just being able to exclude the recordings you are uninterested in when 
looking at the available recordings would be well worth a few button presses 
to "sign on."

But I think modelling a multi-user Myth system after multi-user operating 
systems is probably not the right idea.  For one thing, unlike an operating 
system, many people may be using/watching Myth at a time.  Ie, multiple users 
should be able to log in to a single session at once.  Also, unlike an what 
an operating system would allow, it would be convenient for Myth users to be 
able to schedule a recording for others to watch, or to mark one of "their" 
recordings as being of interest to other family members.  An operating system 
thinks of each file as being owned by a single user, and won't allow a user 
to give ownership of a file to another user, but for myth, it would make more 
sense for each recording to have a set of owners, and to only actually remove 
a file when all its owners have deleted it, so "delete recording" actually 
means "this recording can be deleted, as far as I'm concerned."

-- 
Peter Schachte              Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions for a 16 bit
University of Melbourne     patch to an 8 bit operating system originally
schachte at unimelb.edu.au     coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2
www.cs.mu.oz.au/~schachte/  bit company that can't stand 1 bit of
Phone: +61 3 8344 1338      competition. -- Fabian Jimenez <fabian at cais.com>