Personal preference. Itunes where ok in the beginning, but they've kept adding useless features, making it a huge piece of software with a GUI that I think suck. And to top it all, it installs services for the ipod even though I don't have one and it requires me to install quicktime. That was the drop.
There aren't many good music-players out there today, in my opinion. Itunes and MS Mediaplayer started a trend with big bloated interfaces and lots of useless stuff integrated that too many seems to follow. =/
I've used it for most mp3-players I've had. Had the original Archos 6000, the one Rockbox was first developed for, and Rockbox-compatibility has been a requirement for every mp3-player I've bought since.
Advantages: - Really good file-handling. You can choose a song by selecting the actualfile. A rare functionality in media-players, even after more than 10 years of development. - Really good random play. - Gapless play. Only important for certain albums. - Does not require special software to transfer media. Anything that can copy/move a file is enough.
Disadvantages: - If you're using a media player by Apple, and actually like itunes or the ipod GUI, this isn't for you. - If you want a GUI that's filled with useless eyecandy, this isn't for you. - Probably voids your warranty.
Well, if you go out and specifically buy a smartphone, you probably are part of the group that actually want and use the features your phone offers you. You probably also want to connect it to your computer and will bother to learn how to use most or all the features of your phone.
This might even be the case if you buy a regular mobile phone. But, especially if you buy a cheap regular phone, chances are that most of it's features, like the mp3-player, song-id, syncable calendar and phonebook, movie-editor, games, camera, mms, video-calls or whatever, are something that is there because they're basic features that you can't buy a phone without, unless you specifically look for one without. Chances are also that you'll never bother to ever connect your phone to a computer, or maybe doesn't even own a computer at all.
It's the same with other devices. If you buy a cheap "point and shoot" digital camera, you'll probably not tamper much with things like manual aperture control, manual shutter control, etc, even though lots of cheap cameras give you these options too. If you buy an expensive pro or semi-pro digital camera, you'll probably bother to learn every nook and cranny of if.
Now you can't fully uninstall QuickTime as some of the basic libraries of QuickTime are used in their Quartz rendering engine. But nothing stops you from using another movie player.
Yes, you can easily install and run other software on OS X. You can do this on XP or Vista too. But would Apple allow someone to sell Macintoshes with, for instance, Itunes, Safari and Mail removed and replaced with Firefox, Thunderbird and VLC as default applications and a big corporate logo as default wallpaper? Especially if said Mac shipped with a custom install-dvd that didn't install a standard OS X, but instead installed with said modifications.
BTW: Another thing that is hard to uninstall is from OS X, is time-machine.
With Linux, everything outside of the Kernel can be removed, usually without even restarting.
Well, in all honesty, there usually are lots of strange, seemingly unnecessary dependencies in lots of Linux software too. =) Removing low level stuff if you've made a default installation with lots of crap you don't want can have huge traps that'll render your system virtually unusable. The ones capable of resolving these things in Linux is probably the same kind of people (though not necessarily the same people) who can fix a lean Windows-installation while keeping it usable.
In a way, maybe. =) Since most problems with Vista isn't related to the kernel itself, a repackaging of Vista might actually be all that is needed. Even drivers have become less of a hassle, unless you run old or niche-hardware.
Compare, for instance, with Linux. One distribution of Linux can totally suck, another one, with the exact same kernel and software, can be excellent simply due to different choices made in packaging and configuration.
I don't think MS will be able to make a good repackaging of Vista kernel though. They're too blinded by their desire to control the users and to beat Apple at having crappy, useless eyecandy embedded in the GUI.
Apples might be nice in a home environment, especially if you can afford/can stand to use only Apple stuff.
In a managed environment running with an Apple server, though, they're horrible. They talk like hell on the network, they're hard to manage in a sensible way, if you have more than a few hundred users is a nightmare to administrate them and most software uses the home-directory on the server for temporary files, scratch space and such.
DRM and copyright are permanently intertwined, while chmod/passwords/etc. have never been about protecting copyright.
I think what the he meant was this: DRM means "Digital Rights Management". Managing what rights a user has to a digital file is digital rights management. Thus, DRM in it self isn't copyright protection but copyright protection schemes usually uses some kind of DRM.
If you want to make money out of something (legal) that you do a few times a week in the evenings and weekends, you must first of all realize that you probably won't earn neither fast nor much money. Also, this will probably be something that you aren't very good at yet, especially since you want it to be different from your profession. Expect a lot of time spent simply learning new skills in the beginning.
You might, for an example, get into woodwork, if you've got a big enough garage and don't have to use it for a car or if you happen to have an extra shed or such. Making chairs, tables and such. It's quite relaxing, it's very different from any kind of work where you use a computer as you main tool and some people are willing to pay quite a lot for locally hand-made furniture. The tools and skills you acquire can also be put in use to fix that house of yours. =)
Personally, I live in an apartment, so I currently do electronic music in my spare time. I can sit down a few minutes or hours a day and stop in an instant if I must do something else. While away from home, I can work with Reason and Sonar on a laptop and at home I only need about two square meters extra space beside my desk for my synthesizers and such. About a year and a half ago a friend and I thought "Hey, why don't we try to commercialize some of our music?", so we've been working on finishing songs, getting to know people in local studios and stuff like that. Hopefully, we'll be in a position where we potentially could make some money out of it within a year or so, of course depending on if anyone actually likes our music enough to pay for it. The downside is that I spend lot's of time in front of a computer at work and while making music, I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at home too. =P
They don't have a theory. They don't have a hypothesis. They don't even have a conjecture, since that is something that is unproven but deemed likely to be true
All the creationists have is a set of guesses. Hmm... In the eyes of a creationists, their guesses probably are likely to be true, so they can say that creationism is a conjecture.
It probably never will. There are too many people who want people with "their" belief to be in power in order to get favourable treatment of their own "kind".
In order to avoid corruption and have a just and sane government and legal system, it must be illegal to belong to any kind of religion, cult, sect or any kind of "secret" society when working in the government or legal system.
The law is the law. A judge belonging to the Scientology cult, who don't judge objectively in cases involving Scientologists, isn't fit to work as a judge.
This makes it sound like 'peering' and 'transit' mean the same thing,
The article clearly describes the difference between the two, why some networks peer with some and why they buy transit from others and a bit about how the economics governing transits work.
In any case, both concepts, though different from each other, are inter-ISP arrangements.
Just because something takes up more resources doesn't mean it has to be slower.
Not if you're not using those resources, no. Chugging along at 1-2% per core and 30% RAM usage, like I do while doing everyday web-browsing using Firefox 3, is basically a waste of resources, unless you count the small amount of energy saved by not using 100%.
If I want to browse while using, say, Reason and Sonar or a game, a browser that uses lot's of resources will definitely make things go slower.
ISP's oversubscribe their upstream links. That's how they can make a living.
Exactly. Like most networks, it's simply not cost effective to build it to handle the maximum peak traffic. For an example, we have around 800 computers with gigabit ethernet connected to 40 gigabit edge switches connected to one central gigabit switch. Most applications are run directly from an application server that has two 1 gigabit ethernet connections to this central switch. This link is thus hugely oversubscribed. But having gigabit all the way to the workstations cut the time to start applications down to between a fifth and a tenth compared to having 100mbit edge switches with gigabit uplink, since it is unusual for people to start the same applications at the exact same time and using the same functions at the exact same time.
It's the same with low cost, high speed internet services. You get the benefit of fast response and short load times, but at a much, much lower cost-level than a service that could offer this speed 100% of the time to 100% of the customers.
As long as the ISP's upfront and honest with the fact that they can't offer all its customers 100% utilization 24/7, thus having a cap, it should be alright. If they have a cap but don't tell you about it, that's when you should start looking for another ISP.
F1, and other races, can be fascinating and interesting, whey they shoot the race from helicopter.
Seeing it from above so that you see the whole track and all the racers at once is interesting. Seeing a few cars take a corner, or following same two or three cars as they battle for first position for half an hour, isn't. The boring ground level shots are totally worthless, but for some reason that's what they show 99.9% of the time when they show a race of any kind on TV.
For this same reason, I'd never go and actually see a race, unless I can afford to hire a helicopter for the duration. =P
Cut back on the military budget 5 - 10 percent, use the annual savings on putting solar-cells, wind-turbines, etc where appropriate. The people who loose their jobs due to the military cutback can apply for jobs producing and installing solar-cells, wind-plants and in the logistics needed to handle them. To start with, put the new plants as far away from the big power-plants as possible to achieve maximum power savings from lessening energy loss in the power grid.
After a few decades, you'll have most of your power produced locally, with a few big plants producing backup power and power for heavy industry like steel-plants and such, who'll probably not go off nuclear or coal until we have fusion power.
Problem is, something like that is close to impossible in a non-dictatorship. There's a certain category of people who will scream and bitch about how they don't want a wind-plant where they can see it, or how it is unfair that city X got solar power when city Y didn't, or how they don't want their tax to pay for a power plant that someone else use, or a thousand other random complaints. =P
One of the biggest benefits of wind/solar/wave/etc power is that it's localized, so that while it operates, it lessens the amount of energy that has to be transported over long distances. Transporting electricity long distances is coupled with huge amounts of energy being wasted in transport.
however natural gas plants are able to do this, which is why they're used for supplemental power despite being more expensive than coal.
There's also the bit that coal power is the reigning king of the most polluting power sources we have ever utilized. The modern plants equipped with expensive filtering cut back on their particle pollution, but there's still the ash to handle, which contains heavy metals and radioactive materials. In many ways, the ash is more dangerous than waste from nuclear power plants. Any way of lessening our (the human species) dependence on coal as a power source is good.
Wonder how long after this becomes a relatively safe operation it will be before the first rich but ageing or ugly woman buy the face of a poor but beautiful young woman...
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Exactly. One of the reasons why I don't use itunes.
Which brings us back to the benefits of rockbox on an ipod.
Apple-firmware + ipod = not easy to use without itunes.
Rockbox-firmware + ipod = easy to use without itunes.
Personal preference.
Itunes where ok in the beginning, but they've kept adding useless features, making it a huge piece of software with a GUI that I think suck.
And to top it all, it installs services for the ipod even though I don't have one and it requires me to install quicktime. That was the drop.
There aren't many good music-players out there today, in my opinion.
Itunes and MS Mediaplayer started a trend with big bloated interfaces and lots of useless stuff integrated that too many seems to follow. =/
There are lots of quite informative pictures on wikipedia too. =)
iTunes and iPod do everything you just listed!
With the disadvantages that I would have to use itunes, which is an application that I do not let onto my computer. Even removed it from my Mac.
I've used it for most mp3-players I've had.
Had the original Archos 6000, the one Rockbox was first developed for, and Rockbox-compatibility has been a requirement for every mp3-player I've bought since.
Advantages:
- Really good file-handling. You can choose a song by selecting the actualfile. A rare functionality in media-players, even after more than 10 years of development.
- Really good random play.
- Gapless play. Only important for certain albums.
- Does not require special software to transfer media. Anything that can copy/move a file is enough.
Disadvantages:
- If you're using a media player by Apple, and actually like itunes or the ipod GUI, this isn't for you.
- If you want a GUI that's filled with useless eyecandy, this isn't for you.
- Probably voids your warranty.
Well, if you go out and specifically buy a smartphone, you probably are part of the group that actually want and use the features your phone offers you.
You probably also want to connect it to your computer and will bother to learn how to use most or all the features of your phone.
This might even be the case if you buy a regular mobile phone.
But, especially if you buy a cheap regular phone, chances are that most of it's features, like the mp3-player, song-id, syncable calendar and phonebook, movie-editor, games, camera, mms, video-calls or whatever, are something that is there because they're basic features that you can't buy a phone without, unless you specifically look for one without.
Chances are also that you'll never bother to ever connect your phone to a computer, or maybe doesn't even own a computer at all.
It's the same with other devices.
If you buy a cheap "point and shoot" digital camera, you'll probably not tamper much with things like manual aperture control, manual shutter control, etc, even though lots of cheap cameras give you these options too.
If you buy an expensive pro or semi-pro digital camera, you'll probably bother to learn every nook and cranny of if.
Now you can't fully uninstall QuickTime as some of the basic libraries of QuickTime are used in their Quartz rendering engine. But nothing stops you from using another movie player.
Yes, you can easily install and run other software on OS X.
You can do this on XP or Vista too.
But would Apple allow someone to sell Macintoshes with, for instance, Itunes, Safari and Mail removed and replaced with Firefox, Thunderbird and VLC as default applications and a big corporate logo as default wallpaper?
Especially if said Mac shipped with a custom install-dvd that didn't install a standard OS X, but instead installed with said modifications.
BTW:
Another thing that is hard to uninstall is from OS X, is time-machine.
With Linux, everything outside of the Kernel can be removed, usually without even restarting.
Well, in all honesty, there usually are lots of strange, seemingly unnecessary dependencies in lots of Linux software too. =)
Removing low level stuff if you've made a default installation with lots of crap you don't want can have huge traps that'll render your system virtually unusable.
The ones capable of resolving these things in Linux is probably the same kind of people (though not necessarily the same people) who can fix a lean Windows-installation while keeping it usable.
In a way, maybe. =)
Since most problems with Vista isn't related to the kernel itself, a repackaging of Vista might actually be all that is needed.
Even drivers have become less of a hassle, unless you run old or niche-hardware.
Compare, for instance, with Linux.
One distribution of Linux can totally suck, another one, with the exact same kernel and software, can be excellent simply due to different choices made in packaging and configuration.
I don't think MS will be able to make a good repackaging of Vista kernel though. They're too blinded by their desire to control the users and to beat Apple at having crappy, useless eyecandy embedded in the GUI.
Apples might be nice in a home environment, especially if you can afford/can stand to use only Apple stuff.
In a managed environment running with an Apple server, though, they're horrible.
They talk like hell on the network, they're hard to manage in a sensible way, if you have more than a few hundred users is a nightmare to administrate them and most software uses the home-directory on the server for temporary files, scratch space and such.
DRM and copyright are permanently intertwined, while chmod/passwords/etc. have never been about protecting copyright.
I think what the he meant was this:
DRM means "Digital Rights Management".
Managing what rights a user has to a digital file is digital rights management.
Thus, DRM in it self isn't copyright protection but copyright protection schemes usually uses some kind of DRM.
Maybe it would work with a sheet of polarized plastic-glass over the license plate.
BTW, for us living outside the US: What is an amber alert anyway? Sounds like something you send the fashion police to deal with.
Also, if you find yourself passing someone on the right, you should move your drivers license over to the right... Through the window. =)
If you want to make money out of something (legal) that you do a few times a week in the evenings and weekends, you must first of all realize that you probably won't earn neither fast nor much money.
Also, this will probably be something that you aren't very good at yet, especially since you want it to be different from your profession.
Expect a lot of time spent simply learning new skills in the beginning.
You might, for an example, get into woodwork, if you've got a big enough garage and don't have to use it for a car or if you happen to have an extra shed or such.
Making chairs, tables and such. It's quite relaxing, it's very different from any kind of work where you use a computer as you main tool and some people are willing to pay quite a lot for locally hand-made furniture.
The tools and skills you acquire can also be put in use to fix that house of yours. =)
Personally, I live in an apartment, so I currently do electronic music in my spare time.
I can sit down a few minutes or hours a day and stop in an instant if I must do something else. While away from home, I can work with Reason and Sonar on a laptop and at home I only need about two square meters extra space beside my desk for my synthesizers and such.
About a year and a half ago a friend and I thought "Hey, why don't we try to commercialize some of our music?", so we've been working on finishing songs, getting to know people in local studios and stuff like that.
Hopefully, we'll be in a position where we potentially could make some money out of it within a year or so, of course depending on if anyone actually likes our music enough to pay for it.
The downside is that I spend lot's of time in front of a computer at work and while making music, I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at home too. =P
They don't have a theory.
They don't have a hypothesis.
They don't even have a conjecture, since that is something that is unproven but deemed likely to be true
All the creationists have is a set of guesses.
Hmm... In the eyes of a creationists, their guesses probably are likely to be true, so they can say that creationism is a conjecture.
It probably never will.
There are too many people who want people with "their" belief to be in power in order to get favourable treatment of their own "kind".
In order to avoid corruption and have a just and sane government and legal system, it must be illegal to belong to any kind of religion, cult, sect or any kind of "secret" society when working in the government or legal system.
The law is the law. A judge belonging to the Scientology cult, who don't judge objectively in cases involving Scientologists, isn't fit to work as a judge.
This makes it sound like 'peering' and 'transit' mean the same thing,
The article clearly describes the difference between the two, why some networks peer with some and why they buy transit from others and a bit about how the economics governing transits work.
In any case, both concepts, though different from each other, are inter-ISP arrangements.
Just because something takes up more resources doesn't mean it has to be slower.
Not if you're not using those resources, no.
Chugging along at 1-2% per core and 30% RAM usage, like I do while doing everyday web-browsing using Firefox 3, is basically a waste of resources, unless you count the small amount of energy saved by not using 100%.
If I want to browse while using, say, Reason and Sonar or a game, a browser that uses lot's of resources will definitely make things go slower.
ISP's oversubscribe their upstream links.
That's how they can make a living.
Exactly. Like most networks, it's simply not cost effective to build it to handle the maximum peak traffic.
For an example, we have around 800 computers with gigabit ethernet connected to 40 gigabit edge switches connected to one central gigabit switch.
Most applications are run directly from an application server that has two 1 gigabit ethernet connections to this central switch.
This link is thus hugely oversubscribed.
But having gigabit all the way to the workstations cut the time to start applications down to between a fifth and a tenth compared to having 100mbit edge switches with gigabit uplink, since it is unusual for people to start the same applications at the exact same time and using the same functions at the exact same time.
It's the same with low cost, high speed internet services.
You get the benefit of fast response and short load times, but at a much, much lower cost-level than a service that could offer this speed 100% of the time to 100% of the customers.
As long as the ISP's upfront and honest with the fact that they can't offer all its customers 100% utilization 24/7, thus having a cap, it should be alright.
If they have a cap but don't tell you about it, that's when you should start looking for another ISP.
F1, and other races, can be fascinating and interesting, whey they shoot the race from helicopter.
Seeing it from above so that you see the whole track and all the racers at once is interesting.
Seeing a few cars take a corner, or following same two or three cars as they battle for first position for half an hour, isn't.
The boring ground level shots are totally worthless, but for some reason that's what they show 99.9% of the time when they show a race of any kind on TV.
For this same reason, I'd never go and actually see a race, unless I can afford to hire a helicopter for the duration. =P
Cut back on the military budget 5 - 10 percent, use the annual savings on putting solar-cells, wind-turbines, etc where appropriate.
The people who loose their jobs due to the military cutback can apply for jobs producing and installing solar-cells, wind-plants and in the logistics needed to handle them.
To start with, put the new plants as far away from the big power-plants as possible to achieve maximum power savings from lessening energy loss in the power grid.
After a few decades, you'll have most of your power produced locally, with a few big plants producing backup power and power for heavy industry like steel-plants and such, who'll probably not go off nuclear or coal until we have fusion power.
Problem is, something like that is close to impossible in a non-dictatorship.
There's a certain category of people who will scream and bitch about how they don't want a wind-plant where they can see it, or how it is unfair that city X got solar power when city Y didn't, or how they don't want their tax to pay for a power plant that someone else use, or a thousand other random complaints. =P
One of the biggest benefits of wind/solar/wave/etc power is that it's localized, so that while it operates, it lessens the amount of energy that has to be transported over long distances.
Transporting electricity long distances is coupled with huge amounts of energy being wasted in transport.
however natural gas plants are able to do this, which is why they're used for supplemental power despite being more expensive than coal.
There's also the bit that coal power is the reigning king of the most polluting power sources we have ever utilized.
The modern plants equipped with expensive filtering cut back on their particle pollution, but there's still the ash to handle, which contains heavy metals and radioactive materials.
In many ways, the ash is more dangerous than waste from nuclear power plants.
Any way of lessening our (the human species) dependence on coal as a power source is good.
Solution:
Since there's already two gazillion different plugs, you can assign every plug one voltage and current.
Plug 1: 1V 0-1.5A
Plug 2: 1V 1.6-3A
Plug 3: 1.5V 0-1.5A
etc, etc...
Wonder how long after this becomes a relatively safe operation it will be before the first rich but ageing or ugly woman buy the face of a poor but beautiful young woman...
Capitalism über alles.