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There are literally thousands of free streaming music stations covering every nook and cranny of music tastes.
Google it... here are just a few:
http://streema.com/
http://www.jango.com/
http://www.pandora.com/
http://www.live365.com/
http://www.slacker.com/

It's foolish to pay for streaming music when there is so much available free.

I use Slacker. It's a little bit Pandora, a little bit Spotify (w/out the FB requirement).

It's basically an iPod but it's programmed by professional DJs. You pick a station you like (say 80s,90s,today) and then they download all the music to the portable player's hard drive. It plays back in a preset pattern just like an actual FM station, except you have the option to skip songs you don't like.

It's an MP3 player for people who enjoy Radio, and don't want to make playlists themselves. Instead the Program Director creates the playlist for you. I thought about joining myself but decided I'd just listen to AM, FM and HD Radio directly (it's free).

http://www.slacker.com/

I used to wonder how Slacker made money. Then one day, I got a new job, and went there using my virgin install of Firefox.

I don't know how anyone can use that site without Adblock.

Or Tylenol.

There are many music download and music access services available. Just go elsewhere. Like so many "firsts" on the Net - e.g. eBay, Yahoo, etc. - iTunes seems old in the tooth. Couple that with egregious DRM policies and attempts to choke interoperability. Why bother. I like Apple products, but who really needs iTunes for music. Other than as a software platform for playback, I could care less about the iTunes music store. Try these: http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011 http://pandora.com/ http://www.emusic.com/ http://www.slacker.com/ http://www.napster.com/ http://music.myspace.com/ www.youtube.com http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html http://www.walmart.com/music http://www.last.fm/ http://social.zune.net/music/ http://www.seeqpod.com/

Do none of you use http://www.slacker.com/? I started with Pandora, but I find Slacker far superior. It is free with ads and has a paid subscription with no ads. The channels are more professionally programmed, so I don't get the odd song thrown in that just doesn't fit the chosen genre in the least.

Only way I'd consider even paying for this service is if they gave me some option to listen in my car, but with the same user preferences as my PC, automatically determining which artists I like listening to, rather than selecting a certain genre specific radio station like Sirius.

http://slacker.com/ does something similar. You choose artists, and based on that it chooses similar artists to play. They offer a portable that does a good job of recreating that experience on the go.

And in the 3rd millennium, I have an mp3 player that updates the songs on it automatically. (Try out the slacker.com web player, the portable is very close to that)

if you are listening inside a big building, chances are you're really using WiFi radio, not satellite, which requires line-of-sight to the sky

WiFi radio? Does Statesman mean internet radio?

Sirius has terrestrial repeaters of their signal in large cities, so even in a building in Denver, for example, a Sirius receiver would get full signal strength from their transmitter on the ground. The transition from satellite to terrestrial is seamless, it is the same signal.

My main problem with Sirius is that even on the "commercial free" channels, the DJ would ... advertise for stuff going on related to Sirius, on other channels. Also, they would repeat songs at least once per day on more than a few channels, which got aggravating if you listened to it all day long.

I recently got rid of my Sirius radios and went with Slacker, getting their G2 portable as well. Big advantages: they will stream internet radio to a Linux computer, something that Sirius will not do. Also, Slacker's selection is much better, and the "Ban" and "Next" buttons are something that you couldn't even dream of with satellite radio. The G2 will download songs over wifi to the 4 or 8 GiB of storage, and it attempts to create an internet radio experience on the go, and it really does succeed.

i was going to look for a different brand

If you are looking for something like an MP3 player, an interesting one I got recently is the Slacker G2.

It doesn't interact with my Ubuntu computer at all, and only works with Windows computers for transferring songs.

But, it will automatically download songs over wifi based on stations I add to it through the Slacker.com website, and then it keeps track of what I played, what I like and don't like, and will change the songs automatically based on that. The free service has a few ads, but the ads are honestly less than on most of the "commercial free" Sirius channels. Custom channels can be made and sent to the G2 as well.

Basically they tried to replicate their internet radio experience on a handheld mp3 player, and they pretty much succeeded, with wifi required only every 30 days. (It isn't a wifi radio, it is an automatically updating mp3 player)

Just keep trying out rationalizations until you've found a way to justify one. At $2499 it's now even easier to do so.

I've never been comfortable with multi-head setups, for all the reasons people have mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The Apple 30" is a great solution for people who prefer just a single display.

Maybe things have changed a lot with the new firmware version, but Nugget of distributed.net fame really doesn't like his:

http://slacker.com/~nugget/asterisk3.php

Keep reading past that page, and he says he doesn't use it at all anymore due to it being so terrible.

Because the Zyxel Prestige 2000W appears to suck.

I haven't read about the Cisco phones, but they're priced even higher -- unreasonably high compared to a simple DECT phone and a Quicknet Internet PhoneJack card. Although I haven't tried this either, but it looks pretty sweet.

The idea of a Zyxel Prestige 2000W was pretty cool though, and I wish it were good. The idea is cool, and I actually considered it instead of a DECT cordless myself. But that review pretty much put me off.

My own experiences with the WiSIP match yours. It's a terrible bit of firmware in an underpowered phone. I recently saw this phone which might be a better option, but I haven't picked one up yet.

I would hope not, for their sake. That phone is a zyxel, not a pulver -- pulver is just another one of the rebadgers. It's also one of the shittiest pieces of equipment I've ever owned. I documented my experiences with it at http://slacker.com/~nugget/asterisk3.php

One of my pet peeves, and definitely one for the pullet surprise list. Grrrr...

EISA was so awful. A classic example of "sounds like a great idea on paper" that proved, in reality, to be way worse than what it hoped to replace.

1. If you installed some other UNIX it might have been equally cryptic. Ever installed AIX, IRIX, or Solaris?

2. apache's not part of the base OS. thus these applicatoins live in /usr/local. There is a UNIX historical precedent for this, and for good reasons too. (Other OSes have the same theoretical layout, MacOS with "System Folder" and "Applications", Windows with "Windows" and "Program Files" although these examples tend have many internal inconsistencies.)

Just an infinitesimal correction to the grandparent post. It's "with prejudice".

I'm laughing because I just saw this site.

Such errors are pardon parcel with people who learn the language through speech and not through reading. I could of made that same mistake had I not encountered the phrase in print before hearing it. Sadly, people who don't read just can't cut the muster. I'd just assume watch a movie instead of read a book.

you're on the list

It's a start...

Neat-o, but the entities (Microsoft, SCO, etc.) that are attacking the GPL as liberal/socialist/communist are in the US, and **THEY**, not me, **THEY** are doing so in that context. I didn't make up the words, so if you have a gripe about semantics, talk to somebody else. I was trying to head off this argument because It - appears - to - be - an - issue, and it shouldn't be.

I am sorry I failed.

By linking to him you just killed his little box See how the temperatore is now about 46 degrees. And the FAN has died!! Completely. OMG. /. posts bogus story, then retracts the story while posting it, and then fscks this guy up his ass! OMG.

</troll>

This comparison had been completed in 1989.

Nugget's Law: 5% of the time when a Linux user says "Linux" they really mean "Unix". The other 5% of the time they're referring to an aspect that only applies to their particular distribution.

Nuff said.

God fucking damnit: /stand/sysinstall will install binaries from the freebsd ftp mirror sites.

And stop giving me this "I like FreeBSD, but linux is better" shit, retards. Lets be honest, you tried FreeBSD once, but it was so strange not to have everything in /usr, and the simplicity and control rc gave you over that retarded init.d setup was just too much for you. So now you wither away, browsing at -1 being bitter about your small, flacid, linux powered dick.

Now, shut your fucking ignorance holes.

This rant perfectly captures usenet as a community, it's simply a must read.