"Anyway, anyway, guys guys guys, come on. I'm in this computer, right. So I'm looking around, looking around, you know, throwing commands at it, I don't know where it is or what it does or anything. It's like, it's like choice, it's just beautiful, okay. Like four hours I'm just messing around in there. Finally I figure out, that it's a bank. Right, okay wait, okay, so it's a bank. So, this morning, I look in the paper, some cash machine in like Bumsville Idaho, spits out seven hundred dollars into the middle of the street. That was me. That was me. I did that."
Actually, a.308 Winchester with the 175gr BTHP (Sierra Match King) bullet can still be supersonic at 1000 yards.
With a muzzle velocity of at least 2650 feet per second, the Sierra MK 30cal 175gr bullet will make it out to and slightly beyond 1000 before it goes subsonic. It has a ballistic coefficient of.495-.505.
The 175gr is the standard bullet used on the US military M118LR 'sniper' round. M118 being the military designator for the ammo, 'LR' meaning Long Range.
You can even get a 22 caliber bullet in a.223 Remington (5.56 NATO) out to a 1000 yards maintaining supersonic flight. While many still use the.308 for 1000 yard Service Rifle competition, the AR15 platform in.223 has taken the Farr Trophy (US National Trophy for 1000 yard Service Rifle). This is accomplished by using an 80gr or heavier bullet. The Sierra Match King 22cal (.224") 80gr BTHP is popular, but the Very Low Drag bullets like the Berger 80gr VLD have a much higher ballistic coefficient and can buck the wind better.
Ballistic calculators for mobile devices isn't new. Exbal has been around for Palm and Windows Mobile devices for several years now. The only interesting thing is that this application was approved by the iTunes Application Store. I guess people are surprised Apple would allow a firearms/shooting related application on the App Store.
I think ballistic calculators on mobile devices is a gimmick anyway. I just use JBM to generate a ballistic table for a specific gun/ammo that I use in competition, make a hard copy, and keep that with the gun (some people even print it out on a small card and tape it to their stock).
I took CS13 taught by Randall Hyde back in my Freshman year (Spring 1998 Quarter). It is one of my favorite courses that I ever took in my 4 years at UCR. Randall Hyde got trashed by a lot of the students, but I respected him. I thought his teaching was effective and sound.
Not sure what happened to him after he stopped lecturing at UCR.
He still has his website/webserver up: http://webster.cs.ucr.edu
Did any of you guys participate in the 'computer shoot' he used to have every quarter or so? I guess he stopped holding them before I started college, but I remember he had a webpage about it on his site (no longer on the site).
While I haven't done extensive tests regarding microwave ovens and WiFi, we do have a microwave oven in our office area, which happens to be about 20 feet away from the access point / omni-directional in the adjacent office.
I ran the microwave while checking the signal strength and quality using the Cisco 350 Aironet card and Aironet Client Utilities and the Lucent Orinoco card and Orinoco utiliies and saw no impact on the wireless signal or functionality.
People need to understand that eBay is not a store. eBay is a place where people can sell off their stuff. On average, this is just some guy/girl who occasionally has something they want to sell, and would usually put out an ad in the newspaper's classifieds or post something on the campus bulletin boards (a real bulletin board as in staples or thumbtacks, yes they do exist). When you sell something via the classifieds or a garage/yard sale, pretty much all sales are final. Sellers/buyers don't think about returns because they both know the item is 'as is' and for the most part, the item is probably used.
When you buy off eBay, you aren't buying from eBay; you're buying that World War II memoribilia form a 60 year old man in Florida, or some old lamp from a 35 year old housewife in Washington.
Well, this was the intended use for eBay.
Now we have the people who buy new items through closeouts or wholesale and resell them on eBay. These are the people who caused eBay to turn into a quasi-online store, because they are the ones who get into details like Terms of Sale, return policies, warranties, etc.
I don't think the original founders of eBay expected people to start making their primary income from eBay sales, but that's what's happening now. I think eBay is fine as it is. They provide the infrastructure to facilitate the online buying and selling of goods between private parties. Let them deal with flak if anything happens in the transaction.
On eBay it has always been 'buyer beware', and it will remain that way.
I remember back in my early days of CS when when of my fellow colleagues turned on his laptop and the 16x CDROM (really fast back in that time) spun up because he left a disc in the laptop. It sounded like a jet engine starting up. Not good when the PHD is lecturing in a small class of 100 students or so.
But, driver problems on the client end aren't that common anymore, thankfully.
The main problem we see is client ignorance. It's pretty funny when a student comes in with help to configure a PCMCIA wireless card when they have a built-in wireless adapter and didn't know about it. But the humor is lost when it takes 10 minutes to explain to that person that they don't need the PCMCIA wireless adapter because of the built in one.
Actually your student fees did not fund any wireless deployment or anything related to campus computing whatsoever.
All wireless hardware and deployment costs have been paid for via grants from day one of the UCR wireless deployment project back before I was hired as a full time staff member.
And as far as campus computing, we don't get one cent over here in Student Computing Services from student fees or tuition. The only reason we've been able to deploy new computers in selected labs each year recently is because we received a 4-year grant (which ends next year I believe). So I don't know where that leaves us (SCS) when the money dries up.
But I digress. Go UCR!
----- Jonathan Glenn L. Ocab Technical Consultant, Student Computing Services University of California, Riverside jonathan.ocab at ucr.edu | ocabj at ocabj.net
I have a lot of experience with this working at the University of California (@Riverside). While we don't have a policy forcing students to purchase a laptop (or even a computer), Campus Computing and our department (Student Computing) strongly encourages the purchase of a laptop.
I think the main reason students don't buy a laptop is cost. They don't want to spend X thousands of dollars on a laptop. Granted you can get a used laptop or a low budget laptop for about a grand, but generally students think laptops are too pricey.
What I've always recommended to students who come to me and ask for advice is:
1. Get a laptop that will last four years. This means get something that will have a 3 or 4 year warranty, has one of the top CPU speeds available for a laptop at the current moment, a large hard drive, etc. This saves the time of worrying about upgrades later on.
2. Try to get a good balance between functionality and portability. I use a Dell Inspiron 8100 in my office, and while it is fully decked out with a 15" Ultra XGA screen, it weighs almost 9 lbs. But at the other end of the spectrum, I wouldn't get a slimline like the Sony's that have external cdrom drives.
3. Don't worry about the cost. Of course, don't go out and spend $4000 on a laptop. That would be stupid. Shop for a good price, but don't cut corners on specifications. Most students can afford to finance or credit card a laptop and pay it off by the time they get out of college. Plus, most schools have a loan program for a computer which carries a very low interest rate.
4. Get wireless. Even if a student doesn't think they'll use it, they will eventually, and they will end up using it a lot. 802.11b/g/whatever is just too convenient.
5. Check with your University about software pricing. If the school has a good site licensing program, you can avoid buying any software bundle options with the laptop.
As far as platform, I've been a big Mac fan ever since the dual-USB (white) iBooks came out and OS X went to 10.1. The current iBooks and Powerbooks, in my opinion, are the best laptop designs on the market. Sleek and stylish with OS 10.x, it's a great mobile computer. I ditched my 12" iBook for a 15" Powerbook, and while I love the 15" widescreen, I often miss the footprint of the 12" design.
For the Mac-phobic people, I simply point to Dell or Gateway and tell them to run XP Professional (not Home!).
And no matter what you pick, always buy through the educational store/catalog. I've noticed that service tends to be better if the laptop was purchased under the edu program.
If I were an incoming college freshman again (God forbid), I'd get a 12" Powerbook and build a low budget x86 workstation (for gaming... err... a backup system... Nah, for gaming).
Assuming the hd is under warranty and you can get it to return an error using the powermax software (Maxtor's util), you can easily get an RMA on the drive on the website.
Even if you can't get an error code using the Powermax software, you can call up the toll free number and tell them the drive is bad and you did blah blah blah to test it and it won't return an error in Powermax, then they'll still give you a replacement.
I've return several drives to Western Digital, Maxtor, and IBM in the past, and have never had issues getting a replacement.
I work at UCR Computing, but not for resnet. But I knew that we would be implementing packet shaping after last year's incident where the UC Riverside dorms went far over the expected bandwidth budget in the first full week of classes of the Fall quarter (dorm residents moved in the week before the start of classes).
I think students are overwhelmed by the new found power of fast connections. I know I was when I first went to college in '97.
The problem I see now is social. Students have the perception that they should have the right to do whatever they want with their college net connection. They don't have any idea about how bandwidth isn't unlimited and is free. One guy actually emailed me about how he can request more bandwidth because people outside the UCR network can't get fast speeds to his Counterstrike server he set up in his dorm room. What the Hell was he thinking? I can't believe he had the balls to email a campus admin for more bandwidth to run an unauthorized server in his dorm room. Like someone already posted, I told this guy that we were there to provide the best computing / networking possible for his educational career at UCR, not to provide the best net gaming.
From a end-user support standpoint, this appears to a more critical bug due to the ease of use. Anyone can email someone a fake link that deletes their system folders. I'm not sure that Microsoft has addressed this in anyway. Maybe they don't know about it yet.
If link above goes down, here's the quoted text:
There has been a very serious flaw discovered in the "Help Center" included in Windows XP.
To try it out, do the following, but, BE WARNED. IT WILL LIKELY delete anything you put in the "test" directory.
Create a folder called "test" at the root directory of your hard drive. Put some files in it (junk, whatever, stuff you don't care about losing). YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED AGAIN!
Then, copy and paste the "link" below into any address bar and hit enter.
Wait a few seconds, then, check that directory again. Gone, gone, gone.
This is a HORRIBLE exploit because it can be a link in any web page and exploits a terrible flaw in the Windows Help Center included in XP.
hcp://system/DFS/uplddrvinfo.htm?file://c:\test\*
Ways to fix this issue:
Delete/rename the "uplddrvinfo.htm" file (located in C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\System\DFS).
Or, open it , find, and delete the following section of code:
var oFSO = new ActiveXObject ( "Scripting.FileSystemObject" );
try
{
oFSO.DeleteFile( sFile );
}
Or unregister the hcp protocol handler.
Deleting the section of code breaks the exploit (I have verified it myself) and it is highly recommended that anyone here using XP take steps to fix this because it won't be fixed until SP1 for XP comes out.
With all due respect, the iPod takes the cake as far as MP3 players go. It's small, lightweight, got a huge capacity, looks cool (yeah, stupid reason), and now, it's reasonably priced.
I've owned Rios of all flavors, Nomad I and Nomad II. My biggest complaint with any MP3 player that uses Smartmedia, CompactFlash, or any other type of flash card memory is that it's just NOT ENOUGH storage. The most I've had was 128megs in my Nomad II (and a couple years ago, 128megs cost a lot more than it does now). 128megs is just enough to hold your average cd at 192k/sec. Yes, yes, you can downsample. But at 128k/sec you maybe able to squeeze in two albums.
Whereas with the iPod, with the 5gig minimum, you have plenty of room to breathe. I don't have to worry about downsampling my collection just to fit an album or two on a Rio or Nomad.
All in all, I just don't think flash card based MP3 players are worthwhile. Personally, I found it easier to use my Sony Discman (and that's why I eventually sold my Nomad II; my last flash card based player).
I bought a 10gig a few months after it was released and when the new 20s were announced, I sold my 10 and ordered the 20.
I have an Aiwa CD/MP3 deck in my car (the first generation) and ever since I bought my iPod, I've been using that in the car via the mini-in, instead of CDs with MP3s burned on them.
I've also been using the iPod as a portable HD. A great tool for backing mail files and transporting large movie files from the office to home.
Overall, I'm a big iPod fan and I recommend them to PC and Mac users alike.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's *nix tools to use the iPod in a *nix environment. There are a couple of sites on the web by people who want to use the iPod in Linux, but it doesn't look like they're going to get it working anytime soon.
I'm strictly a PC user (Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP, Linux, FreeBSD; more FreeBSD than Linux). I own a newer iBook and have become an OS X fan. But I use my iPod in Windows using Ephpod and MacDrive. I found that iTunes just wasn't for me, especially since Ephpod will import Winamp playlists.
We should start using the numbers of tickets sold as the unit for box office sales, not dollars. Especially considering it's hard to compare current box office sales to movies 20+ years ago. But of course, people like to hear about $$$ numbers, rather than if X number of tickets were sold.
I've had the Creative Labs Encore 2x kit when it was first released. It's easy to install in Windows 9x and has full support in NT 4, but the monitor output isn't all that great. It's excellent when pumping it out to a television, but if you plan on watching on your monitor, too, go with the Hollywood decoders by Sigma Designs. I've helped several of the Hollywood Pluses and they are awesome in terms of the monitor output. The DXR3 isn't much of an improvement over the DXR2, either. Last time I checked, there are NT drivers for the Hollywood.
Slashdot Mirror
Glocks: Pretty ugly as far as firearms are concerned, but total workhorses. Function in rough conditions and easy to maintain.
"Anyway, anyway, guys guys guys, come on. I'm in this computer, right. So I'm looking around, looking around, you know, throwing commands at it, I don't know where it is or what it does or anything. It's like, it's like choice, it's just beautiful, okay. Like four hours I'm just messing around in there. Finally I figure out, that it's a bank. Right, okay wait, okay, so it's a bank. So, this morning, I look in the paper, some cash machine in like Bumsville Idaho, spits out seven hundred dollars into the middle of the street. That was me. That was me. I did that."
So did Acid Burn kick Crash Override out of the system?
Actually, a .308 Winchester with the 175gr BTHP (Sierra Match King) bullet can still be supersonic at 1000 yards.
With a muzzle velocity of at least 2650 feet per second, the Sierra MK 30cal 175gr bullet will make it out to and slightly beyond 1000 before it goes subsonic. It has a ballistic coefficient of .495-.505.
The 175gr is the standard bullet used on the US military M118LR 'sniper' round. M118 being the military designator for the ammo, 'LR' meaning Long Range.
You can even get a 22 caliber bullet in a .223 Remington (5.56 NATO) out to a 1000 yards maintaining supersonic flight. While many still use the .308 for 1000 yard Service Rifle competition, the AR15 platform in .223 has taken the Farr Trophy (US National Trophy for 1000 yard Service Rifle). This is accomplished by using an 80gr or heavier bullet. The Sierra Match King 22cal (.224") 80gr BTHP is popular, but the Very Low Drag bullets like the Berger 80gr VLD have a much higher ballistic coefficient and can buck the wind better.
Ballistic calculators for mobile devices isn't new. Exbal has been around for Palm and Windows Mobile devices for several years now. The only interesting thing is that this application was approved by the iTunes Application Store. I guess people are surprised Apple would allow a firearms/shooting related application on the App Store.
I think ballistic calculators on mobile devices is a gimmick anyway. I just use JBM to generate a ballistic table for a specific gun/ammo that I use in competition, make a hard copy, and keep that with the gun (some people even print it out on a small card and tape it to their stock).
http://www.nforce.nl/index.php?do=nfo&id=70667 (released 06/30/2004)o &id=70624 (released 06/30/2004)
http://www.nforce.nl/index.php?do=nf
I don't believe in watching shitty cam or screener rips before I watch the movie in the actual theater.
But, I don't understand why this guy even bothered to try cam'ing the movie when he could have downloaded the rip that very day. What an idiot.
The last Comdex I went to was in 2002. The free swag was non-existent. No hot booth girls. Same old product, different year.
I ended up hitting the tables for the rest of the week.
YEEEEEAAAAH!!!
I took CS13 taught by Randall Hyde back in my Freshman year (Spring 1998 Quarter). It is one of my favorite courses that I ever took in my 4 years at UCR. Randall Hyde got trashed by a lot of the students, but I respected him. I thought his teaching was effective and sound.
Not sure what happened to him after he stopped lecturing at UCR.
He still has his website/webserver up: http://webster.cs.ucr.edu
Did any of you guys participate in the 'computer shoot' he used to have every quarter or so? I guess he stopped holding them before I started college, but I remember he had a webpage about it on his site (no longer on the site).
While I haven't done extensive tests regarding microwave ovens and WiFi, we do have a microwave oven in our office area, which happens to be about 20 feet away from the access point / omni-directional in the adjacent office.
I ran the microwave while checking the signal strength and quality using the Cisco 350 Aironet card and Aironet Client Utilities and the Lucent Orinoco card and Orinoco utiliies and saw no impact on the wireless signal or functionality.
People need to understand that eBay is not a store. eBay is a place where people can sell off their stuff. On average, this is just some guy/girl who occasionally has something they want to sell, and would usually put out an ad in the newspaper's classifieds or post something on the campus bulletin boards (a real bulletin board as in staples or thumbtacks, yes they do exist). When you sell something via the classifieds or a garage/yard sale, pretty much all sales are final. Sellers/buyers don't think about returns because they both know the item is 'as is' and for the most part, the item is probably used.
When you buy off eBay, you aren't buying from eBay; you're buying that World War II memoribilia form a 60 year old man in Florida, or some old lamp from a 35 year old housewife in Washington.
Well, this was the intended use for eBay.
Now we have the people who buy new items through closeouts or wholesale and resell them on eBay. These are the people who caused eBay to turn into a quasi-online store, because they are the ones who get into details like Terms of Sale, return policies, warranties, etc.
I don't think the original founders of eBay expected people to start making their primary income from eBay sales, but that's what's happening now. I think eBay is fine as it is. They provide the infrastructure to facilitate the online buying and selling of goods between private parties. Let them deal with flak if anything happens in the transaction.
On eBay it has always been 'buyer beware', and it will remain that way.
I remember back in my early days of CS when when of my fellow colleagues turned on his laptop and the 16x CDROM (really fast back in that time) spun up because he left a disc in the laptop. It sounded like a jet engine starting up. Not good when the PHD is lecturing in a small class of 100 students or so.
hmmmm... I don't recall that.
But, driver problems on the client end aren't that common anymore, thankfully.
The main problem we see is client ignorance. It's pretty funny when a student comes in with help to configure a PCMCIA wireless card when they have a built-in wireless adapter and didn't know about it. But the humor is lost when it takes 10 minutes to explain to that person that they don't need the PCMCIA wireless adapter because of the built in one.
Actually your student fees did not fund any wireless deployment or anything related to campus computing whatsoever.
All wireless hardware and deployment costs have been paid for via grants from day one of the UCR wireless deployment project back before I was hired as a full time staff member.
And as far as campus computing, we don't get one cent over here in Student Computing Services from student fees or tuition. The only reason we've been able to deploy new computers in selected labs each year recently is because we received a 4-year grant (which ends next year I believe). So I don't know where that leaves us (SCS) when the money dries up.
But I digress. Go UCR!
-----
Jonathan Glenn L. Ocab
Technical Consultant, Student Computing Services
University of California, Riverside
jonathan.ocab at ucr.edu | ocabj at ocabj.net
I have a lot of experience with this working at the University of California (@Riverside). While we don't have a policy forcing students to purchase a laptop (or even a computer), Campus Computing and our department (Student Computing) strongly encourages the purchase of a laptop.
I think the main reason students don't buy a laptop is cost. They don't want to spend X thousands of dollars on a laptop. Granted you can get a used laptop or a low budget laptop for about a grand, but generally students think laptops are too pricey.
What I've always recommended to students who come to me and ask for advice is:
1. Get a laptop that will last four years. This means get something that will have a 3 or 4 year warranty, has one of the top CPU speeds available for a laptop at the current moment, a large hard drive, etc. This saves the time of worrying about upgrades later on.
2. Try to get a good balance between functionality and portability. I use a Dell Inspiron 8100 in my office, and while it is fully decked out with a 15" Ultra XGA screen, it weighs almost 9 lbs. But at the other end of the spectrum, I wouldn't get a slimline like the Sony's that have external cdrom drives.
3. Don't worry about the cost. Of course, don't go out and spend $4000 on a laptop. That would be stupid. Shop for a good price, but don't cut corners on specifications. Most students can afford to finance or credit card a laptop and pay it off by the time they get out of college. Plus, most schools have a loan program for a computer which carries a very low interest rate.
4. Get wireless. Even if a student doesn't think they'll use it, they will eventually, and they will end up using it a lot. 802.11b/g/whatever is just too convenient.
5. Check with your University about software pricing. If the school has a good site licensing program, you can avoid buying any software bundle options with the laptop.
As far as platform, I've been a big Mac fan ever since the dual-USB (white) iBooks came out and OS X went to 10.1. The current iBooks and Powerbooks, in my opinion, are the best laptop designs on the market. Sleek and stylish with OS 10.x, it's a great mobile computer. I ditched my 12" iBook for a 15" Powerbook, and while I love the 15" widescreen, I often miss the footprint of the 12" design.
For the Mac-phobic people, I simply point to Dell or Gateway and tell them to run XP Professional (not Home!).
And no matter what you pick, always buy through the educational store/catalog. I've noticed that service tends to be better if the laptop was purchased under the edu program.
If I were an incoming college freshman again (God forbid), I'd get a 12" Powerbook and build a low budget x86 workstation (for gaming... err... a backup system... Nah, for gaming).
Assuming the hd is under warranty and you can get it to return an error using the powermax software (Maxtor's util), you can easily get an RMA on the drive on the website.
t y_ ata.htm
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/service/warran
Even if you can't get an error code using the Powermax software, you can call up the toll free number and tell them the drive is bad and you did blah blah blah to test it and it won't return an error in Powermax, then they'll still give you a replacement.
I've return several drives to Western Digital, Maxtor, and IBM in the past, and have never had issues getting a replacement.
Westsiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiide!
I work at UCR Computing, but not for resnet. But I knew that we would be implementing packet shaping after last year's incident where the UC Riverside dorms went far over the expected bandwidth budget in the first full week of classes of the Fall quarter (dorm residents moved in the week before the start of classes).
I think students are overwhelmed by the new found power of fast connections. I know I was when I first went to college in '97.
The problem I see now is social. Students have the perception that they should have the right to do whatever they want with their college net connection. They don't have any idea about how bandwidth isn't unlimited and is free. One guy actually emailed me about how he can request more bandwidth because people outside the UCR network can't get fast speeds to his Counterstrike server he set up in his dorm room. What the Hell was he thinking? I can't believe he had the balls to email a campus admin for more bandwidth to run an unauthorized server in his dorm room. Like someone already posted, I told this guy that we were there to provide the best computing / networking possible for his educational career at UCR, not to provide the best net gaming.
From a end-user support standpoint, this appears to a more critical bug due to the ease of use. Anyone can email someone a fake link that deletes their system folders. I'm not sure that Microsoft has addressed this in anyway. Maybe they don't know about it yet.
If link above goes down, here's the quoted text:
There has been a very serious flaw discovered in the "Help Center" included in Windows XP.
To try it out, do the following, but, BE WARNED. IT WILL LIKELY delete anything you put in the "test" directory.
Create a folder called "test" at the root directory of your hard drive. Put some files in it (junk, whatever, stuff you don't care about losing). YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED AGAIN!
Then, copy and paste the "link" below into any address bar and hit enter.
Wait a few seconds, then, check that directory again. Gone, gone, gone.
This is a HORRIBLE exploit because it can be a link in any web page and exploits a terrible flaw in the Windows Help Center included in XP.
hcp://system/DFS/uplddrvinfo.htm?file://c:\test\*
Ways to fix this issue:
Delete/rename the "uplddrvinfo.htm" file (located in C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\System\DFS).
Or, open it , find, and delete the following section of code:
var oFSO = new ActiveXObject ( "Scripting.FileSystemObject" ); try { oFSO.DeleteFile( sFile ); }
Or unregister the hcp protocol handler.
Deleting the section of code breaks the exploit (I have verified it myself) and it is highly recommended that anyone here using XP take steps to fix this because it won't be fixed until SP1 for XP comes out.
With all due respect, the iPod takes the cake as far as MP3 players go. It's small, lightweight, got a huge capacity, looks cool (yeah, stupid reason), and now, it's reasonably priced.
I've owned Rios of all flavors, Nomad I and Nomad II. My biggest complaint with any MP3 player that uses Smartmedia, CompactFlash, or any other type of flash card memory is that it's just NOT ENOUGH storage. The most I've had was 128megs in my Nomad II (and a couple years ago, 128megs cost a lot more than it does now). 128megs is just enough to hold your average cd at 192k/sec. Yes, yes, you can downsample. But at 128k/sec you maybe able to squeeze in two albums.
Whereas with the iPod, with the 5gig minimum, you have plenty of room to breathe. I don't have to worry about downsampling my collection just to fit an album or two on a Rio or Nomad.
All in all, I just don't think flash card based MP3 players are worthwhile. Personally, I found it easier to use my Sony Discman (and that's why I eventually sold my Nomad II; my last flash card based player).
I bought a 10gig a few months after it was released and when the new 20s were announced, I sold my 10 and ordered the 20.
I have an Aiwa CD/MP3 deck in my car (the first generation) and ever since I bought my iPod, I've been using that in the car via the mini-in, instead of CDs with MP3s burned on them.
I've also been using the iPod as a portable HD. A great tool for backing mail files and transporting large movie files from the office to home.
Overall, I'm a big iPod fan and I recommend them to PC and Mac users alike.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's *nix tools to use the iPod in a *nix environment. There are a couple of sites on the web by people who want to use the iPod in Linux, but it doesn't look like they're going to get it working anytime soon.
I'm strictly a PC user (Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP, Linux, FreeBSD; more FreeBSD than Linux). I own a newer iBook and have become an OS X fan. But I use my iPod in Windows using Ephpod and MacDrive. I found that iTunes just wasn't for me, especially since Ephpod will import Winamp playlists.
Good luck in your quest for an MP3 player.
get macdrive or macopener and download a copy of ephpod.
i've been ipoding in windows for months now.
(yes, i have an ibook, but itunes is horrible for managing large collections like mine. ephpod automatically translates my winamp m3u playlists.
We should start using the numbers of tickets sold as the unit for box office sales, not dollars. Especially considering it's hard to compare current box office sales to movies 20+ years ago. But of course, people like to hear about $$$ numbers, rather than if X number of tickets were sold.
it's obvious this guy needs to get laid.
ian: go cancel your raincheck man. bling bling!
i'm not a numbers fanatic, but are there any benchmarks on this drive? i want to see how it racks up compared to the new maxtor 40 gig.
....
75 gigs.... {drool}
I've had the Creative Labs Encore 2x kit when it was first released. It's easy to install in Windows 9x and has full support in NT 4, but the monitor output isn't all that great. It's excellent when pumping it out to a television, but if you plan on watching on your monitor, too, go with the Hollywood decoders by Sigma Designs. I've helped several of the Hollywood Pluses and they are awesome in terms of the monitor output. The DXR3 isn't much of an improvement over the DXR2, either. Last time I checked, there are NT drivers for the Hollywood.