This probably wraps up what various people have said in other ways, but I'll say it again. (and I'm being general on purpose -- I'm not trying to make specific reccomendations). The real answer here is a Defense In Depth Security policy.
To truly protect your system(s), you need to do many different things, including keeping the system updated, educating users, using a NAT, installing an IDS, and much more. That said, an IDS is probably one of the last things you should worry about: get your "basics" right first.
I've got a Neuros...the USB1.1 version from about two years back. I gotta say -- it's a sweet device.
-- I like the swappable backpack idea because it makes for cheaper upgrading and the ability for more than one person to use the same device with minimal difficulty.
-- I absolutely LOVE the integrated FM broadcast. This hit the market before everyone and their mother was making add-ons for this functionality, and it's still a really handy feature. It means that _I_ always get to hear my music in other people's cars, because no one else has this ability!
-- HiSi (the song-identifier) is a pretty nifty gimick, too, although of minimal use (more to the point is the built-in FM reciever...something that I think EVERY audio player should have -- it costs about 20 cents to include at this point, why not do it?!?!)
(disclaimer at this point -- mine IS the old version)
!!!HOWEVER!!!
The one failing of the Neuros is in its interface. Navigation is painfully slow. You cannot queue up songs while it's playing. Organizing songs into playlists inexplicably takes about 3 or 4 seconds once you've decided upon a song and selected "Add to my playlist". There is no way to play a series of albums, so you are stuck playing alphabetically by song title, by artist (and then within the artist by song title) or album-by-album. See previous statment about creating custom playlists. Oh yeah, and for some reason, it takes about 3 seconds to boot each time you start it. My PC starts faster!!
So, to put it lightly, the interface plain SUCKS! And ultimately, that's what matters. I love the tech aspect of this device. The open-standards are awesome (ogg support used to require a separate version of the firmware -- dunno if that's still true); there's a thriving developer's community which is fully supported by the company. Their customer service is phenominal (a broken mini-audio jack took 5 days to fix -- shipping time to Chicago included!). But the interface needs a lot of work.
And the interface of an audio player is the make-it or break-it point, IMHO. It's what you see every day. How quickly can you play your music? Good interfaces are invisible. You don't notice that they are there. You just notice that you can get the job done and do it quickly. I think this is more important in the portable-audio market than anywhere else. If I have to make the decision whether or not to turn on my device because there is a 10-second lead-in before music starts and a 5-second end sequence, then they've lost me...
I haven't had a chance to get my hands on a generation 2 device yet, so perhaps there has been a massive improvement. However, as of now, my next audio player purchase will be an iPod -- unless someone can point me to a better interface!
What I was getting at in my original post was that everyone seems to think that as soon as Google touches something, it's immediately made amazing. Not true! They ruined Deja News for a _loooong time_ (Have you seen their latest beta for groups? Still needs work).
In addition, we, as users, need to keep asking for new features and creating a _DEMAND_ for good products. I send in bugfixes & feature requests several times per week on Gmail. I think that Gmail is far and away _the best_ webmail product out there, but I still get irritated and fire off suggestions about portions of it which don't make sense (what's the point of being able to create a labeling filter that only applies one label? The whole point of labels is to be able to apply several!!!).
So to sum it up, I'm interested, but just not immediately a Picassa zelot just because Google grabbed it...
This might be awesome, or it might not. I'm not overly impressed with Google's web picture search, so I'm not gonna hold my breath on this one. Their forte is search of text, and sure, you can put a million keywords or a clever description on each picture, but that doesn't really help me. I want to be able to sketch a rough version of the picture and have the system find all images which match it. Or how about identification of individual people? So that I can outline a section of a given picture and it'll find all other pictures which contain a similar section (AKA a given person).
For some reason, I read "pot-in-pot" as more of a smuggler's invention. Ingenious! I'll hide the _REAL_ pot inside this _FAKE_ pot, so they'll never find it!
Finally! Someone with half a chance at being heard is making the point that needs to be made. We're all focusing on the wrong part here. What immeadiately caught my eye was the attempting to stifle a legitimate and potentially profit-cutting business model. I'm no legal expert, but it seems that this is exactly what the RIAA has been doing for the past 5, 10 years. We all know they're not here because of some moral objection to file sharing. They done't give a rats ass about the morality of anything. Their only concern is the money their making and for some reason, they're stupid enough to think that filesharing is threatening them. So they'll do everything in their considerable power to destroy this threat. We'll just ignore the fact that RIAA revenues, on a per-copy basis (none of this bull about not releasing as many copies to artificially drop gross sales) has increased each year that a filesharing program has been in the mainstream should tell them something. It says to me that they missed the boat and should've been in the filesharing business themselves a long time ago. But they're hell-bent on clinging to an aging business model, which will eventually become obsolete anyway as home-production and mastering equipment becomes cheaper. Eventually, someone will come up with a good way to distribute completely digitally, bypassing the need for expensive distribution. I personally am very willing to pay for MP3s. I'd be even more willing (as bandwidth allows) to pay for uncompressed audio which I can download. And I'd be willing to guess, that reasonably priced, it would be pretty successful. And since there would be no need for a physical product, the costs would be very low. Now, if only I could make some worthwhile music so that I could try and prove this model!
Interesting that Gates is under the impression that a "continually evolving computer-operating system that attracts the efforts of eager software developers" Doesn't exist. Hmmm...I wonder if he can say Linux?
Lesee:
continually evolving? many, many variants.
Attracts efforts of eager software developers? Well since everyone has acess to the underlying parts of the OS it's possible to make decent programs...so it makes people eager.
I'm a little skeptical about MS's offer to release the Windows source in "timely" manner. Since all their other products come out on time I'm sure this won't be any different...And further it seems like the wording is a little abusive: something to the effect of portions of the OS that are useful for software developers. Who decides that anyway?
C'mon we don't really need to be asking this on Slashdot...Seems like maybe this is something that people need to figure out on their own...and anyway if some big place owns them, then so what? If they don't mess with it than who cares?
This wouldn't need to weed out the poor. Seems like if we had a better college system to begin with, we wouldn't worry about money, but since everyone HAS to go to college, some people who are more worthy and less rich get knocked out of the running. What's wrong here?
Wow. I could have told you all that. Many people have realized that this was true for a few years. Only those who have condemned file sharing as illegal are out of the loop. I'd love to think that these surveys would convince big business to listen to the public, but I'm sure it won't. They would prefer to do focus group studies...
It seems that the major problem here is that groups like the RIAA are afraid or unwilling to change, either because of the expense associated with it, or for some other reason. If, when the MP3 standard was new, they had immediately started trying to create a system for distribution that involved payment, then there would have been no problems. The RIAA would have made some money (assuming that they priced downloads reasonably) and music lovers everywhere would have been grateful.
However, they started a witch hunt to destroy anyone who might have a new idea about how music distribution should work. They felt threatened, and therefore tried to eliminate the threat, rather than realizing the potential of it.
Just my two cents. And for the record I've been saying this for at least 2 years...
Slashdot Mirror
This probably wraps up what various people have said in other ways, but I'll say it again. (and I'm being general on purpose -- I'm not trying to make specific reccomendations). The real answer here is a Defense In Depth Security policy.
To truly protect your system(s), you need to do many different things, including keeping the system updated, educating users, using a NAT, installing an IDS, and much more. That said, an IDS is probably one of the last things you should worry about: get your "basics" right first.
Thanks!
I'll definitely check both out (loading latest DI firmware now).
That's what I'm talkin' about!!
As a result of seeing this article I went over to the site and emailed a few questions to the support staff.
11 MINUTES LATER, I had my reply. That's crazy. That's the kind of customer service I'd like to see everywhere! Stupid interface problems...
I've got a Neuros...the USB1.1 version from about two years back. I gotta say -- it's a sweet device.
-- I like the swappable backpack idea because it makes for cheaper upgrading and the ability for more than one person to use the same device with minimal difficulty.
-- I absolutely LOVE the integrated FM broadcast. This hit the market before everyone and their mother was making add-ons for this functionality, and it's still a really handy feature. It means that _I_ always get to hear my music in other people's cars, because no one else has this ability!
-- HiSi (the song-identifier) is a pretty nifty gimick, too, although of minimal use (more to the point is the built-in FM reciever...something that I think EVERY audio player should have -- it costs about 20 cents to include at this point, why not do it?!?!)
(disclaimer at this point -- mine IS the old version)
!!!HOWEVER!!!
The one failing of the Neuros is in its interface. Navigation is painfully slow. You cannot queue up songs while it's playing. Organizing songs into playlists inexplicably takes about 3 or 4 seconds once you've decided upon a song and selected "Add to my playlist". There is no way to play a series of albums, so you are stuck playing alphabetically by song title, by artist (and then within the artist by song title) or album-by-album. See previous statment about creating custom playlists. Oh yeah, and for some reason, it takes about 3 seconds to boot each time you start it. My PC starts faster!!
So, to put it lightly, the interface plain SUCKS! And ultimately, that's what matters. I love the tech aspect of this device. The open-standards are awesome (ogg support used to require a separate version of the firmware -- dunno if that's still true); there's a thriving developer's community which is fully supported by the company. Their customer service is phenominal (a broken mini-audio jack took 5 days to fix -- shipping time to Chicago included!). But the interface needs a lot of work.
And the interface of an audio player is the make-it or break-it point, IMHO. It's what you see every day. How quickly can you play your music? Good interfaces are invisible. You don't notice that they are there. You just notice that you can get the job done and do it quickly. I think this is more important in the portable-audio market than anywhere else. If I have to make the decision whether or not to turn on my device because there is a 10-second lead-in before music starts and a 5-second end sequence, then they've lost me...
I haven't had a chance to get my hands on a generation 2 device yet, so perhaps there has been a massive improvement. However, as of now, my next audio player purchase will be an iPod -- unless someone can point me to a better interface!
Just what the doctor ordered!
Thanks.
Exactly!
What I was getting at in my original post was that everyone seems to think that as soon as Google touches something, it's immediately made amazing. Not true! They ruined Deja News for a _loooong time_ (Have you seen their latest beta for groups? Still needs work).
In addition, we, as users, need to keep asking for new features and creating a _DEMAND_ for good products. I send in bugfixes & feature requests several times per week on Gmail. I think that Gmail is far and away _the best_ webmail product out there, but I still get irritated and fire off suggestions about portions of it which don't make sense (what's the point of being able to create a labeling filter that only applies one label? The whole point of labels is to be able to apply several!!!).
So to sum it up, I'm interested, but just not immediately a Picassa zelot just because Google grabbed it...
This might be awesome, or it might not. I'm not overly impressed with Google's web picture search, so I'm not gonna hold my breath on this one. Their forte is search of text, and sure, you can put a million keywords or a clever description on each picture, but that doesn't really help me. I want to be able to sketch a rough version of the picture and have the system find all images which match it. Or how about identification of individual people? So that I can outline a section of a given picture and it'll find all other pictures which contain a similar section (AKA a given person).
Then I'll get excited...
For some reason, I read "pot-in-pot" as more of a smuggler's invention. Ingenious! I'll hide the _REAL_ pot inside this _FAKE_ pot, so they'll never find it!
Finally! Someone with half a chance at being heard is making the point that needs to be made. We're all focusing on the wrong part here. What immeadiately caught my eye was the attempting to stifle a legitimate and potentially profit-cutting business model. I'm no legal expert, but it seems that this is exactly what the RIAA has been doing for the past 5, 10 years. We all know they're not here because of some moral objection to file sharing. They done't give a rats ass about the morality of anything. Their only concern is the money their making and for some reason, they're stupid enough to think that filesharing is threatening them. So they'll do everything in their considerable power to destroy this threat. We'll just ignore the fact that RIAA revenues, on a per-copy basis (none of this bull about not releasing as many copies to artificially drop gross sales) has increased each year that a filesharing program has been in the mainstream should tell them something. It says to me that they missed the boat and should've been in the filesharing business themselves a long time ago. But they're hell-bent on clinging to an aging business model, which will eventually become obsolete anyway as home-production and mastering equipment becomes cheaper. Eventually, someone will come up with a good way to distribute completely digitally, bypassing the need for expensive distribution. I personally am very willing to pay for MP3s. I'd be even more willing (as bandwidth allows) to pay for uncompressed audio which I can download. And I'd be willing to guess, that reasonably priced, it would be pretty successful. And since there would be no need for a physical product, the costs would be very low. Now, if only I could make some worthwhile music so that I could try and prove this model!
"continually evolving computer-operating system that attracts the efforts of eager software developers"
Doesn't exist. Hmmm...I wonder if he can say Linux?
Lesee:
continually evolving?
many, many variants.
Attracts efforts of eager software developers?
Well since everyone has acess to the underlying parts of the OS it's possible to make decent programs...so it makes people eager.
I'm a little skeptical about MS's offer to release the Windows source in "timely" manner. Since all their other products come out on time I'm sure this won't be any different...And further it seems like the wording is a little abusive: something to the effect of portions of the OS that are useful for software developers. Who decides that anyway?
~i = an imaginary being~
C'mon we don't really need to be asking this on Slashdot...Seems like maybe this is something that people need to figure out on their own...and anyway if some big place owns them, then so what? If they don't mess with it than who cares?
~i = an imaginary being~
This wouldn't need to weed out the poor. Seems like if we had a better college system to begin with, we wouldn't worry about money, but since everyone HAS to go to college, some people who are more worthy and less rich get knocked out of the running. What's wrong here?
Wow. I could have told you all that. Many people have realized that this was true for a few years. Only those who have condemned file sharing as illegal are out of the loop. I'd love to think that these surveys would convince big business to listen to the public, but I'm sure it won't. They would prefer to do focus group studies...
It seems that the major problem here is that groups like the RIAA are afraid or unwilling to change, either because of the expense associated with it, or for some other reason. If, when the MP3 standard was new, they had immediately started trying to create a system for distribution that involved payment, then there would have been no problems. The RIAA would have made some money (assuming that they priced downloads reasonably) and music lovers everywhere would have been grateful.
However, they started a witch hunt to destroy anyone who might have a new idea about how music distribution should work. They felt threatened, and therefore tried to eliminate the threat, rather than realizing the potential of it.Just my two cents. And for the record I've been saying this for at least 2 years...
~i = an imaginary being~