The company he works for put up his bail and arranged for his defense, no? So if what he says in trial goes strongly against them, i.e. "I didn't want to write it, but they made me, honest!" then he's a coward. If, however, he says, "yeah, I wrote it, they bought it from me and decided to sell it" or some such thing, well that's different.
Also, I don't seem to know of any charges being held against his employers yet, so for now, nobody is in trouble. This wrong has been righted, if only temporarily.
And I want them to know this information. If it means I don't have to watch any more ads for things that don't relate to me, all the better. It's better for them, and me. There are all kinds of great commercials on TV, and I enjoy watching them, but not over and over again, and not the stupid ones. So if this could filter them out, in some way, I'm definately for it. There is a benefit to me as well as to them, and no meaningful downside.
Well that's certainly not going to make your profile *more* accurate, but they won't start showing you more programs from the Oxygen channel, so it's not going to totally ruin you.
Re:Just for the sake of asking...
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 1
I wrote another e-mail from a form on their website and they wrote me back with RMA request information. They haven't issued me an RMA yet, but they have at least responded, so things are moving forward. I'll respond again if I get it to work.
Agreed. Analogy: If Honda sold all Honda Accords with the same key, and didn't tell anybody, and mine got stolen, it'd be their fault. Even if recalling them would cost Honda lots of money. Because just as I could not be expected to watch my car at all times to make sure it is not stolen, I cannot be reasonably expected not to surf the 'net using the pre-installed browser. Especially if I didn't know I wasn't supposed to.
Then why hasn't congress passed any worthwhile laws recently? I mean, why do we still have SPAM, and those ads that spawn other ads when you close them, and why do I have to goddamn pass idiots in the right lane because they drive 54 in the left lane and won't pull over? Somebody should be taking care of this. That's what tax dollars are for. Me. As much as for Microsoft. If not more than. I'm not saying the FBI needs to drop what they're doing, I'm saying that congress needs to get off their lazy asses and get something done for once. God I hate them!
Sorry for ranting.
Re:I must be missing something
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 1
True, it has no functionality over a PC, but then again neither does a laptop or palmtop - people buy those not for the added functionality, but rather for the fact that they can be taken places where its not really very convenient to take a full PC. Like your living room, for example. Who says a full PC won't go well in your living room?
I have a friend who bought a laptop and keeps it in his living room, with the audio connected to his pre-amp. He takes it out with him when he needs it, but that's where it stays. He has a wireless mouse sitting on the coffee table and he has video output to his TV. It's got ethernet connecting to his desktop. I love that solution, and I'm thinking of setting up something like it. If only I had money.
I know that the minijack output will be less than perfect quality, and I'd certainly prefer SPDIF, which AFAIK isn't available on any laptops(correct me if I'm wrong, I'd like to know), but his is a very functional solution with a great cool factor.
Re:I must be missing something
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 1
True, but if you're going to be that obsessive about it, MP3 is not for you.
Re:Just for the sake of asking...
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 1
This is useful information. I recently dropped my Rio Volt from about 3 feet while running on my treadmill, and now it doesn't work. It looks like it's going to, but says "NO DISC" whenever I power it up. I e-mailed Rio friday, and now it's tuesday afternoon and I haven't heard back. It's under warranty, but that's only useful if you can get the manufacturer to honor it. And it doesn't look broken, so I'm not about to admit to dropping it. Don't tell anybody.
The SP/DIF can actually degrade the digital sound signal [by causing jitter] I have anecdotal evidence to back this up. I worked at a small audiophile company that made some of the greatest pre-amps in the world, and according to our chief of R&D(a nice old guy with crazy hair and bad breath), SPDIF is actually inferior to coax, because it can cause jitter. Not to mention that the cable is very brittle, and is easily damaged. The advantage is that you can't get interference like you can with some RCA cables. So for true accuracy, keep your RCA away from power sources or other potential causes of interference, put your CD jukebox on $100 pyramid-looking thingies, make sure it's running on a separate circuit from any other appliances, and hire a monk to meditate next to it. Make sure he's Buddhist, otherwise it won't be as effective.
Wait, wait, wait, is there software that'll automate Divx encoding entirely? I'm talking set it and forget it here, where you put the disc in, press a button (or type a command) and walk away? Because if that's true...
Seriously, is there?
Hey buddy, I like music as much as the next guy, but you took it hiking with you in the mountains? Man, what a waste! You can listen to music anywhere for the rest of your life, but when you decide to take a road-trip to the mountains and go wandering around in them, the entire point of the excercise is to free your mind from the day-to-day banalities of life and experience the great outdoors!
That being said, I'm jealous; I want one. But only on long drives and in the mall, not in the mountains.
You're right. He can access it by taking ownership and changing NTFS permissions, but if it's encrypted, he can't clear the encryption bit. I don't know what I was thinking. Sorry 'bout that.
On a similar note, how well are the files encrypted? If you could crack the recovery key, every encrypted file would be yours. How strongly is it encrypted?
Okay, if you buy a car and find an expensive watch, it's immoral to keep it, but if it cost nothing to produce, despite the fact that it's worth something to you, is it immoral to wear it? If the alternative were returning the car *and* the watch? Mine may not be the greatest analogy, but I don't think yours was any better...
NTFS is a great big ol' step up from FAT, but it still sucks a fattie.
Say you took some nudie pics of your girlfriend and you want to keep them safe. What do you do? You encrypt the file, then set NTFS permissions so that only you can access it, then make sure your nosy roommate doesn't have admin rights to the box.
Secure? Maybe a little. But he can just grab your HD, put it in his box, boot off of HIS W2k/XP install where he has admin privileges, take ownership of the file, clear the encryption bit, change the NTFS permissions, and start a-whackin'.
Sounds difficult, but if you're familiar with NTFS permissions, it only takes 15 seconds, plus the time to plug in the HD. The only thing that prevents him from doing so is that when he puts the NTFS permissions back the way they were, he will still be listed as the owner of the file, so you'd know that somebody was playing with the file, if you ever bothered to check.
I listen to a lot of episodes of Loveline(the radio show) that I download in MP3 format. They're 2 hours each, maybe 1.5 when you skip through the commercials and songs. They're encoded at 16kbps, and they come in at 15 megs/2 hours. The sound is acceptable for the talking, I can fit like 50 episodes (that's 100 hours) onto one CD, and they make cross-country trips so much easier!
It only buffers 120 seconds though. I'm not sure how much memory it has, but for regular CD-audio, it buffers... (let me check) 40 seconds or 10 seconds, depending on how you set it. For MP3s, it's not 120 seconds all the time. What it does is it'll spin up the disc, read 120 seconds, then spin the disc down. This saves battery life (and it's cool to show your friends), but it doesn't have 120 seconds in memory all the time.
I'm going to do a scientific(R) test of my Rio Volt, where I time the length of the disc being spun down, and see when it spins it back up (it obviously wouldn't do it at 120 seconds, maybe 1/2 way through).
Approximately 1 minute. Yay.
I like that they update the firmware fairly often. You can download a small file off their website, burn it to a CD, put it in, turn it on, and it upgrades itself. Since I bought it, the most recent firmware adds a ton of features, and shortens the hit-play-button-to-music-playing time from, say, 20 seconds, to about ten, on the CD full of MP3s I have in there now.
It gets about the same battery life playing MP3s as CDs, maybe a little better, but not significantly. I don't care, I just use rechargeables. It plays 800mb CDs, CDRW, WMA, MP3, CD-audio, and possibly Ogg Vorbis in the future via a firmware upgrade. I've never had a problem with a disc not working here that worked anywhere else. It's cute, comes with a remote control that's almost useless because I can't get it to stay on my shirt pocket (stoopid weak spring), the battery compartment comes open a little too easily, the case it comes with is kinda weak--there's no little window so you can see what track is playing. The line-out minijack isn't wired right. It should output at a fixed level, but outputs based on the volume and EQ settings, and as such is no different than the headphone plugin. The LCD display is a little small--it shows two tracks at once, but only about 16 characters at a time, and it scrolls r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. If you hit the button for Next Track, it has to load it into memory from scratch, and is prone to skipping during that time if you're moving. I also wish it wouldn't turn off when you open the lid, since it takes so long to start back up afterwards.
I have no major complaints with my player, it's great for a lot of things, and it's cheap. If you're looking to get a portable MP3 CD player, this is the one to get.
And don't think that for each copy of windows handed out they don't have any costs either, they're not free once you consider everything into account (you add up all costs of developing and divide by the number of products made)... It's not going to cost them $900mil, but it will cost $400mil or so...
These are schools that would not have been able to afford the Windows software, and many may instead have used Linux. So these sales shouldn't be accounted for - they never would have existed. The economics are much more complicated, but it'd be less than 400, likely.
I recently found out that blockbuster's website lets you search their in-store selection. So I first looked for MST3K in my city, and ended up renting Manos, the Hands of Fate. The movie is so bad that even they can't make it as much fun as some of their other movies. It's SO stupid! Ugh. Anyway, I love MST3K, but this isn't my favorite episode.
If *I* were Best Brains, I would release a collection by season. Charge us $75 a season, get all the episodes on DVD, and everyone goes home happy. If they keep releasing these things one DVD at a time, I'll grow old and die before I can collect them all. If they get them out now, say, a season a year, they can keep us coming back for, what, 10 years?
Anyway, I love MST3K, and I'm sorry there are no new episodes. But they still show reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel, saturday mornings at 9am MST.
Back when it was MCI, I worked for the desktop support team here in Colorado Springs. Because I was under 18, their health insurance wouldn't cover me, so what I ended up doing is working as a temp for a company called Kelly Services. I basically made up my hours every week, gave them to the nice lady, and watched my bank account grow a few days later. I didn't make much money, but I didn't exactly do much work either. Most of the time I sat in my office and napped. I was fortunate enough to have an office, because a large part of my job involved me taking somebody's computer and holding it for ransom for 4 or 5 hours, until they paid up. Or it got fixed. My impression of the place was this: there isn't much in the way of culture, you go there and work, then you go home. If you're lucky, once a year your department goes on a ski trip or to the casinos or whatever.
What I can say is that there were quite a few rounds of layoffs, all involving temp workers (such as myself). I suppose this was so that they could keep costs down, and keep from hiring people on permanently. They would fire 75% of their temps, then later hire them back, and when it came quarterly earnings time again, lo and behold, they would lay these people off yet again. Such was the cycle. Permanent employees had less to worry about. But in the end, I didn't like the management, so at the tender age of 17, I resigned. I would work there again, but you're likely in a different place than I am. I need to make $25k/year, you probably need to make 50. Or more. Good luck.
I just saw that on CNN (tv). It was flying out of Pittsburgh, and was going to Washington. It was diverted to Dulles from another airport after the skymarshalls reported a problem. What the problem is is not yet known. Anybody know anything about this?
Yours is a good argument, but I don't think that censoring these things necessarily weakens the extremist groups, which is of course it's goal. So, if we were to revisit the issue sometime in the future and find that extremism was measureably impacted by this ban, then it was successful. I would still disagree with the precedent it sets, were a similar law to be instituted in the US. But I'll grant you that the US is not the World. What I worry about is that is that if this is unsuccessful in curtailing extremism, then it will serve one purpose: to be a stepping stone for future and similar laws, each eroding your freedom in some way.
I think that the basis for my distrust of this law is my cynicism towards government. Here in the US, we are constantly bombarded by those who would like to take our freedom in the name of security, and they have done nothing but force us to the extreme left, guarding against any laws like this as a personal attack. Do you guys in EU feel differently? Do you trust that your government is making the right decisions? Because if you do, that would explain why you don't have a problem with this.
Wow, when you stop and think about it, that could be a really good thing. I mean, not the law, but that you guys trust into your government.
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The company he works for put up his bail and arranged for his defense, no? So if what he says in trial goes strongly against them, i.e. "I didn't want to write it, but they made me, honest!" then he's a coward. If, however, he says, "yeah, I wrote it, they bought it from me and decided to sell it" or some such thing, well that's different.
Also, I don't seem to know of any charges being held against his employers yet, so for now, nobody is in trouble. This wrong has been righted, if only temporarily.
And I want them to know this information. If it means I don't have to watch any more ads for things that don't relate to me, all the better. It's better for them, and me. There are all kinds of great commercials on TV, and I enjoy watching them, but not over and over again, and not the stupid ones. So if this could filter them out, in some way, I'm definately for it. There is a benefit to me as well as to them, and no meaningful downside.
Well that's certainly not going to make your profile *more* accurate, but they won't start showing you more programs from the Oxygen channel, so it's not going to totally ruin you.
huh?
I wrote another e-mail from a form on their website and they wrote me back with RMA request information. They haven't issued me an RMA yet, but they have at least responded, so things are moving forward. I'll respond again if I get it to work.
Agreed. Analogy: If Honda sold all Honda Accords with the same key, and didn't tell anybody, and mine got stolen, it'd be their fault. Even if recalling them would cost Honda lots of money. Because just as I could not be expected to watch my car at all times to make sure it is not stolen, I cannot be reasonably expected not to surf the 'net using the pre-installed browser. Especially if I didn't know I wasn't supposed to.
Then why hasn't congress passed any worthwhile laws recently? I mean, why do we still have SPAM, and those ads that spawn other ads when you close them, and why do I have to goddamn pass idiots in the right lane because they drive 54 in the left lane and won't pull over? Somebody should be taking care of this. That's what tax dollars are for. Me. As much as for Microsoft. If not more than. I'm not saying the FBI needs to drop what they're doing, I'm saying that congress needs to get off their lazy asses and get something done for once. God I hate them!
Sorry for ranting.
True, it has no functionality over a PC, but then again neither does a laptop or palmtop - people buy those not for the added functionality, but rather for the fact that they can be taken places where its not really very convenient to take a full PC. Like your living room, for example.
Who says a full PC won't go well in your living room?
I have a friend who bought a laptop and keeps it in his living room, with the audio connected to his pre-amp. He takes it out with him when he needs it, but that's where it stays. He has a wireless mouse sitting on the coffee table and he has video output to his TV. It's got ethernet connecting to his desktop. I love that solution, and I'm thinking of setting up something like it. If only I had money.
I know that the minijack output will be less than perfect quality, and I'd certainly prefer SPDIF, which AFAIK isn't available on any laptops(correct me if I'm wrong, I'd like to know), but his is a very functional solution with a great cool factor.
True, but if you're going to be that obsessive about it, MP3 is not for you.
This is useful information. I recently dropped my Rio Volt from about 3 feet while running on my treadmill, and now it doesn't work. It looks like it's going to, but says "NO DISC" whenever I power it up. I e-mailed Rio friday, and now it's tuesday afternoon and I haven't heard back. It's under warranty, but that's only useful if you can get the manufacturer to honor it. And it doesn't look broken, so I'm not about to admit to dropping it. Don't tell anybody.
The SP/DIF can actually degrade the digital sound signal [by causing jitter]
I have anecdotal evidence to back this up. I worked at a small audiophile company that made some of the greatest pre-amps in the world, and according to our chief of R&D(a nice old guy with crazy hair and bad breath), SPDIF is actually inferior to coax, because it can cause jitter. Not to mention that the cable is very brittle, and is easily damaged. The advantage is that you can't get interference like you can with some RCA cables. So for true accuracy, keep your RCA away from power sources or other potential causes of interference, put your CD jukebox on $100 pyramid-looking thingies, make sure it's running on a separate circuit from any other appliances, and hire a monk to meditate next to it. Make sure he's Buddhist, otherwise it won't be as effective.
Wait, wait, wait, is there software that'll automate Divx encoding entirely? I'm talking set it and forget it here, where you put the disc in, press a button (or type a command) and walk away? Because if that's true...
Seriously, is there?
Hey buddy, I like music as much as the next guy, but you took it hiking with you in the mountains? Man, what a waste! You can listen to music anywhere for the rest of your life, but when you decide to take a road-trip to the mountains and go wandering around in them, the entire point of the excercise is to free your mind from the day-to-day banalities of life and experience the great outdoors!
That being said, I'm jealous; I want one. But only on long drives and in the mall, not in the mountains.
I don't know, I figure if your drink actually had cocoa in it, Coke might just leave you alone and wait for the consumers to have your head.
You're right. He can access it by taking ownership and changing NTFS permissions, but if it's encrypted, he can't clear the encryption bit. I don't know what I was thinking. Sorry 'bout that.
On a similar note, how well are the files encrypted? If you could crack the recovery key, every encrypted file would be yours. How strongly is it encrypted?
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Okay, if you buy a car and find an expensive watch, it's immoral to keep it, but if it cost nothing to produce, despite the fact that it's worth something to you, is it immoral to wear it? If the alternative were returning the car *and* the watch? Mine may not be the greatest analogy, but I don't think yours was any better...
NTFS is a great big ol' step up from FAT, but it still sucks a fattie.
Say you took some nudie pics of your girlfriend and you want to keep them safe. What do you do? You encrypt the file, then set NTFS permissions so that only you can access it, then make sure your nosy roommate doesn't have admin rights to the box.
Secure? Maybe a little. But he can just grab your HD, put it in his box, boot off of HIS W2k/XP install where he has admin privileges, take ownership of the file, clear the encryption bit, change the NTFS permissions, and start a-whackin'.
Sounds difficult, but if you're familiar with NTFS permissions, it only takes 15 seconds, plus the time to plug in the HD. The only thing that prevents him from doing so is that when he puts the NTFS permissions back the way they were, he will still be listed as the owner of the file, so you'd know that somebody was playing with the file, if you ever bothered to check.
I listen to a lot of episodes of Loveline(the radio show) that I download in MP3 format. They're 2 hours each, maybe 1.5 when you skip through the commercials and songs. They're encoded at 16kbps, and they come in at 15 megs/2 hours. The sound is acceptable for the talking, I can fit like 50 episodes (that's 100 hours) onto one CD, and they make cross-country trips so much easier!
I'm going to do a scientific(R) test of my Rio Volt, where I time the length of the disc being spun down, and see when it spins it back up (it obviously wouldn't do it at 120 seconds, maybe 1/2 way through).
Approximately 1 minute. Yay.
I like that they update the firmware fairly often. You can download a small file off their website, burn it to a CD, put it in, turn it on, and it upgrades itself. Since I bought it, the most recent firmware adds a ton of features, and shortens the hit-play-button-to-music-playing time from, say, 20 seconds, to about ten, on the CD full of MP3s I have in there now.
It gets about the same battery life playing MP3s as CDs, maybe a little better, but not significantly. I don't care, I just use rechargeables. It plays 800mb CDs, CDRW, WMA, MP3, CD-audio, and possibly Ogg Vorbis in the future via a firmware upgrade. I've never had a problem with a disc not working here that worked anywhere else. It's cute, comes with a remote control that's almost useless because I can't get it to stay on my shirt pocket (stoopid weak spring), the battery compartment comes open a little too easily, the case it comes with is kinda weak--there's no little window so you can see what track is playing. The line-out minijack isn't wired right. It should output at a fixed level, but outputs based on the volume and EQ settings, and as such is no different than the headphone plugin. The LCD display is a little small--it shows two tracks at once, but only about 16 characters at a time, and it scrolls r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. If you hit the button for Next Track, it has to load it into memory from scratch, and is prone to skipping during that time if you're moving. I also wish it wouldn't turn off when you open the lid, since it takes so long to start back up afterwards.
I have no major complaints with my player, it's great for a lot of things, and it's cheap. If you're looking to get a portable MP3 CD player, this is the one to get.
These are schools that would not have been able to afford the Windows software, and many may instead have used Linux. So these sales shouldn't be accounted for - they never would have existed. The economics are much more complicated, but it'd be less than 400, likely.
If *I* were Best Brains, I would release a collection by season. Charge us $75 a season, get all the episodes on DVD, and everyone goes home happy. If they keep releasing these things one DVD at a time, I'll grow old and die before I can collect them all. If they get them out now, say, a season a year, they can keep us coming back for, what, 10 years?
Anyway, I love MST3K, and I'm sorry there are no new episodes. But they still show reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel, saturday mornings at 9am MST.
What I can say is that there were quite a few rounds of layoffs, all involving temp workers (such as myself). I suppose this was so that they could keep costs down, and keep from hiring people on permanently. They would fire 75% of their temps, then later hire them back, and when it came quarterly earnings time again, lo and behold, they would lay these people off yet again. Such was the cycle. Permanent employees had less to worry about. But in the end, I didn't like the management, so at the tender age of 17, I resigned. I would work there again, but you're likely in a different place than I am. I need to make $25k/year, you probably need to make 50. Or more. Good luck.
I just saw that on CNN (tv). It was flying out of Pittsburgh, and was going to Washington. It was diverted to Dulles from another airport after the skymarshalls reported a problem. What the problem is is not yet known. Anybody know anything about this?
I think that the basis for my distrust of this law is my cynicism towards government. Here in the US, we are constantly bombarded by those who would like to take our freedom in the name of security, and they have done nothing but force us to the extreme left, guarding against any laws like this as a personal attack. Do you guys in EU feel differently? Do you trust that your government is making the right decisions? Because if you do, that would explain why you don't have a problem with this.
Wow, when you stop and think about it, that could be a really good thing. I mean, not the law, but that you guys trust into your government.