Re:Portable MP3 Player to Plug In To Car Audio?
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
It can.
1) Use one of those CD to audio tape converters and run it through your tape deck;
2) No tape deck? Lots of car CD receivers these days have an audio input on the face plate to allow people to plug MP3 players into the receiver.
Re:Haven't we had this discussion before?
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
that's a lot of money just to get one device on the network.
Haven't we had this discussion before?
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
We already went down this road with the Auditron (sp?) review. And this product can't even be stacked on other stereo gear. So how useful is this thing? It's basically a PC remote control, yes?
I guess my house just isn't big enough. I simply walk 20 feet to the back of the house and fiddle with my software MP3 player on my computer when I want to hear MP3's. I've got nice powered speakers, and it sounds just fine. Running CAT5 cable from my back bedroom to my living room would be more of a pain that it is worth.
And again, this thing isn't even really a stereo component.
with all the nostalgia from three years ago. If I read one more post about how "young and innocent" someone was when they were 16 (IN 1998!) I'm going to bust a seam...
Uh, you missed out on the whole @Home thing. It was pretty good while it lasted. For $40/month I got a static IP and a connection that was 3.7 down and 128 up. Non-commercial servers were okay (I ran a web server for 8 months) I never had a minute of outage until @Home pulled the plug last Friday.
It was a way better deal than DSL. With attbi, well, I'm not so sure about that anymore. But once I buy my own $90 cable modem, it will be just $35 a month.
I don't see how there is a routing problem. My router takes the IP assigned by attbi's DHCP server. It then routes traffic from within my LAN. attbi just sees traffic coming out of my router, just like it would if I had my computer connected directly to the cable modem. It's no different to them. There aren't multiple "hosts" as far as they are concerned. Just one. The router.
Also, see the attbi FAQ, which states that you can have up to 4 computers connected to your cable line.
I think the main reason @Home had to file BK was not because of low level management problems like managing bandwidth costs. It was the high level management problems like structuring the company under a mountain of debt its revenue could not service.
First of all, the agreement says you can't associate a host name with your dynamic IP for commercial purposes. The implication is you can do it for non-commercial purposes. As the reason for doing so is to run servers, this section implies it is okay to do so. But nowhere are you given direct permission to do so, nor does the agreement appear to prohibit private servers.
However, the paragraph you are citing is in the "Limitations of Liability" section. that section doesn't give you any rights. Instead, it limits your rights. All this is saying is that if someone manages to hack your computer, it is your problem and not ATTBI's. they aren't say its okay to run the server; only that you do so at your own risk. This is a limiting provision, and will not be interpreted to give you the right to run a server by implication.
This analysis is totally wrong. Right now @home is a company without customers. Yes, they are going to get money from Cox and Comcast, but they are also going to have to continue operating the network, which means that they will have expenses that will dig into that $320 million amount. After those contracts expire, @Home is a business with no customers.
Right now, from a valuation point of view, I can't see that @Home is worth anything more than the depreciated value of its equipment and its IP, whatever that may be. It has no future as a going concern.
And you can't compare @Home to attbi, because attbi is now the whole enchilada (i.e., cable lines and service network). @Home never had the physical lines into customers homes. That meant that attbi has 850,000 customers, but @Home only had a few (i.e., the cable customers). So the value of a cable company is utterly different than the value of @Home.
I fail to see why ATT should care how many computers I have hooked up in my own house. They are giving me 1.5Mb/s of bandwidth. I'm going to use it. It doesn't matter if I use it in one giant download or through web sessions on multiple machines. I can't take more than 1.5 Mb/s no matter how many computers I connect. So it should be my decision as to how I share the bandwidth, as long as I don't extend it outside my house.
And it's not like I've got twenty people in my house. My network consists of my primary box, another box that acts as an ethernet to local talk bridge so I can print, and a box in our guest bedroom for use on those rare occassions when both my wife and I want to use the net at the same time.
Maybe. I don't know. Everything I read from @Home claimed the IP numbers were dynamically assigned. Of course, I had the same IP for the 15 months I was on the network. I was 24.8.154.124.
Oh well. As you said, it's a learning opportunity...
Technically, I don't think anyone had a "static" IP. What we had was a dynamically assinged IP that never changed. But it was dynamic because a DHCP client would pick up the IP, and @Home stated they were using DHCP to assign IP numbers.
Also, I'm bummed about the server thing, because I like having Apache running on a box at home. I liked it for the flexibility. However, I never actually did much with it. And I can set up my DNS service to resolve the the 60 MB of space ATT is giving me or whatever.
1) With @Home I paid $46/month and I got 3.7 Mb down.
2) With ATT, I'm going to pay the same amount of money for 1.5 Mb, which from reports isn't even being attained.
So, I'm paying the same and getting a lot less. Plus, previously the user agreement said I could run a low-traffic, personal server. ATT says no servers of any kind. Granted, no one is probably going to bother me about a web server that gets less than 15 hits a day and transmits less than 200 Kb per day, but that's still annoying.
How would you feel if your auto leasing company came and swapped your Lexus for a Toyota and told you that the Toyota was as good as anything else you could get at that price?
The fact that there aren't better options doesn't mean that the cap doesn't suck.
I'm bitching about a cap, and why shouldn't I? Prior to the shutdown, I was paying $46/month for access that typically ran 3.7 Mb/s, with ping to UT servers I played on in the 75-90 range.
Now I'm going to pay the same price and I'm going to get 40% of the speed. While its true that there aren't a lot of better options out there, I was a lot happier when I got better than T1 speed for $46. It's as simple as that.
My typical downstream speed was 3.7Mb/s. Of course, when downloading from internet sites I was usually limited by the fact that the server was on a T1. But when downloading software updates from folks like Apple, who have their servers on T3, I would see transfer rates of ~375 Kb/s.
By "that isn't as idiotic..." I was referring to tech support's suggestion to set "mail" as the mail server.
That said, that kind of setup drives me crazy, because it makes things more complicated, and only simplifies things in a superficial way (i.e., a user still has to put something in that field, and you are telling them what to put in there, so how does shortenting "sac9.home.mail.com" to "mail" really make things that much easier?).
@Home was set up so that "mail" was routed to their mail servers, and if you entered "www" in a browser window, you were taken to a personalized @Home home page. So that isn't as idiotic as it might sound.
My point was that gambling was not a regulated activity only because of its impact on surrounding neighborhoods. That's certainly one of them.
And actually, gambling is largely illegal in most places because it presents a massive haven for crime. Gambling attracts criminal activity like cheesburgers attract our former president. Most states don't want to deal with the regulatory headache that goes along with trying to make sure that gambling isn't crooked and/or run by the mob. Nevada does it largely because no one else would go there if not for gambling. In the past, they allowed it because they were part of the Old West and really didn't care if the mob ran the casinos.
I thought I'd make the perhaps somewhat redundant point (there's an invitation to be modded down) that gambling is similar to prostitution with respect to the reasons for regulation. Gambling regulated not just because of its effects on the surroundings, but also because of its effects on the participants. In other words, a large reason it is illegal is because government has decided to "protect us from ourselves." Gamblers frequently end up losing a lot of money, and then can't pay their bills. Therefore, this activity has broader economic impacts. In addition, gambling creates all sorts of opportunities for fraud, money laundering, etc. Strip clubs, etc., on the other hand, have been held to be protected activity, and can't be banned outright. Hence, gov. that wants to regulate that kind of activity is forced to turn to zoning laws, which implicate the "secondary effects" type of analysis.
Doesn't this present an accountability problem? I log onto a public wireless network by sitting in a coffee shop with my laptop. I then start launching DoS attacks, or I upload a virus, or something similar. Nothing can be traced back farther than the IP of the gateway. They guy running the wireless node is then in a heap of trouble because the FBI doesn't believe his story that it could have been any one of several hundred people, none of whom he knows, or they do believe him and they are pretty much at a dead end.
Seems like there would have to be a way to identify public users.
A trial court's ruling has negligible precedential value (at least in the state court system-federal is different). It does not get published. It doesn't bind anyone. Trial court judges in the state courts here in a busy county like Santa Clara frequently have a dozen or more rulings such as this one to make a week. In addition, they might have 30 or more other less significant motions to rule on. So they don't have time to pay as much attention to the legal issues as an appellate court judge does. As a result, reversal on appeal is a definite possibility. Furthermore, this ruling is going to be very fact specific, as it most likely relies on what was posted and the company's motivation for going after the poster. That is, if someone posts something like "Company X sucks. Their products are horrible," Company X has a hard time arguing that its lawsuit is anything other than a screen to subpoena the identity of the poster. But if the post is "Company X CEO John Doe has been convicted of bestiality," the court is much more likely to let John Doe subpoena the identity of the poster.
Aeron chairs look flashy. And they have a big price tag. Right now, with all the.coms selling their assets in BK, etc., they can easily be had brand new for $600. Check ebay. But more important is the fact that they really aren't much of an extravagence. While $600 is certainly a lot for a chair from the perspective of someone looking for a chair for their home office, real office chairs, ones that will hold up with someone sitting in them for 10 hours a day, five or more days a week, can't be bought for under $300. Want one that has something more than height adjustment? Go up to $400. Want one that doesn't have hideous and cheap fabric? Move toward $500. I'm shopping for conference room chairs, and I looked at a bunch of $500 chairs, including one that was an Aeron knock off. None of them came close to the quality of the Aeron. So anyone who buys Aeron chairs is really only spending an extra $100 to $200, realistically, and they are getting a much better chair. Why spend $500 on an ugly chair that isn't comfortable when you can spend $200 more and get a chair that is comfortable?
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It can.
1) Use one of those CD to audio tape converters and run it through your tape deck;
2) No tape deck? Lots of car CD receivers these days have an audio input on the face plate to allow people to plug MP3 players into the receiver.
that's a lot of money just to get one device on the network.
We already went down this road with the Auditron (sp?) review. And this product can't even be stacked on other stereo gear. So how useful is this thing? It's basically a PC remote control, yes?
I guess my house just isn't big enough. I simply walk 20 feet to the back of the house and fiddle with my software MP3 player on my computer when I want to hear MP3's. I've got nice powered speakers, and it sounds just fine. Running CAT5 cable from my back bedroom to my living room would be more of a pain that it is worth.
And again, this thing isn't even really a stereo component.
I recently bought The Hobbit on DVD. It's really not all that bad, considering how much they compressed it.
I think a good live action version of The Hobbit would be cool.
with all the nostalgia from three years ago. If I read one more post about how "young and innocent" someone was when they were 16 (IN 1998!) I'm going to bust a seam...
If you are a cable customer (I was) I think it's like $5 a month cheaper. But you don't have to subscribe to cable TV.
right not attbi looks a bit confused, as their TOS document and their FAQ documents don't exactly line up.
Uh, you missed out on the whole @Home thing. It was pretty good while it lasted. For $40/month I got a static IP and a connection that was 3.7 down and 128 up. Non-commercial servers were okay (I ran a web server for 8 months) I never had a minute of outage until @Home pulled the plug last Friday.
It was a way better deal than DSL. With attbi, well, I'm not so sure about that anymore. But once I buy my own $90 cable modem, it will be just $35 a month.
I don't see how there is a routing problem. My router takes the IP assigned by attbi's DHCP server. It then routes traffic from within my LAN. attbi just sees traffic coming out of my router, just like it would if I had my computer connected directly to the cable modem. It's no different to them. There aren't multiple "hosts" as far as they are concerned. Just one. The router.
Also, see the attbi FAQ, which states that you can have up to 4 computers connected to your cable line.
I think the main reason @Home had to file BK was not because of low level management problems like managing bandwidth costs. It was the high level management problems like structuring the company under a mountain of debt its revenue could not service.
First of all, the agreement says you can't associate a host name with your dynamic IP for commercial purposes. The implication is you can do it for non-commercial purposes. As the reason for doing so is to run servers, this section implies it is okay to do so. But nowhere are you given direct permission to do so, nor does the agreement appear to prohibit private servers.
However, the paragraph you are citing is in the "Limitations of Liability" section. that section doesn't give you any rights. Instead, it limits your rights. All this is saying is that if someone manages to hack your computer, it is your problem and not ATTBI's. they aren't say its okay to run the server; only that you do so at your own risk. This is a limiting provision, and will not be interpreted to give you the right to run a server by implication.
This analysis is totally wrong. Right now @home is a company without customers. Yes, they are going to get money from Cox and Comcast, but they are also going to have to continue operating the network, which means that they will have expenses that will dig into that $320 million amount. After those contracts expire, @Home is a business with no customers.
Right now, from a valuation point of view, I can't see that @Home is worth anything more than the depreciated value of its equipment and its IP, whatever that may be. It has no future as a going concern.
And you can't compare @Home to attbi, because attbi is now the whole enchilada (i.e., cable lines and service network). @Home never had the physical lines into customers homes. That meant that attbi has 850,000 customers, but @Home only had a few (i.e., the cable customers). So the value of a cable company is utterly different than the value of @Home.
I fail to see why ATT should care how many computers I have hooked up in my own house. They are giving me 1.5Mb/s of bandwidth. I'm going to use it. It doesn't matter if I use it in one giant download or through web sessions on multiple machines. I can't take more than 1.5 Mb/s no matter how many computers I connect. So it should be my decision as to how I share the bandwidth, as long as I don't extend it outside my house.
And it's not like I've got twenty people in my house. My network consists of my primary box, another box that acts as an ethernet to local talk bridge so I can print, and a box in our guest bedroom for use on those rare occassions when both my wife and I want to use the net at the same time.
Maybe. I don't know. Everything I read from @Home claimed the IP numbers were dynamically assigned. Of course, I had the same IP for the 15 months I was on the network. I was 24.8.154.124.
Oh well. As you said, it's a learning opportunity...
Technically, I don't think anyone had a "static" IP. What we had was a dynamically assinged IP that never changed. But it was dynamic because a DHCP client would pick up the IP, and @Home stated they were using DHCP to assign IP numbers.
Also, I'm bummed about the server thing, because I like having Apache running on a box at home. I liked it for the flexibility. However, I never actually did much with it. And I can set up my DNS service to resolve the the 60 MB of space ATT is giving me or whatever.
My ftp server is another matter...
Opps. Why did the "tab" key submit my comment?
Anyway, to start over:
1) With @Home I paid $46/month and I got 3.7 Mb down.
2) With ATT, I'm going to pay the same amount of money for 1.5 Mb, which from reports isn't even being attained.
So, I'm paying the same and getting a lot less. Plus, previously the user agreement said I could run a low-traffic, personal server. ATT says no servers of any kind. Granted, no one is probably going to bother me about a web server that gets less than 15 hits a day and transmits less than 200 Kb per day, but that's still annoying.
How would you feel if your auto leasing company came and swapped your Lexus for a Toyota and told you that the Toyota was as good as anything else you could get at that price?
The fact that there aren't better options doesn't mean that the cap doesn't suck.
I'm tired of reading about people who claim that anyone upset with the 1.5 Mb cap are 13 year old whiners.
To review:
This is simply untrue.
I'm bitching about a cap, and why shouldn't I? Prior to the shutdown, I was paying $46/month for access that typically ran 3.7 Mb/s, with ping to UT servers I played on in the 75-90 range.
Now I'm going to pay the same price and I'm going to get 40% of the speed. While its true that there aren't a lot of better options out there, I was a lot happier when I got better than T1 speed for $46. It's as simple as that.
My typical downstream speed was 3.7Mb/s. Of course, when downloading from internet sites I was usually limited by the fact that the server was on a T1. But when downloading software updates from folks like Apple, who have their servers on T3, I would see transfer rates of ~375 Kb/s.
By "that isn't as idiotic ..." I was referring to tech support's suggestion to set "mail" as the mail server.
That said, that kind of setup drives me crazy, because it makes things more complicated, and only simplifies things in a superficial way (i.e., a user still has to put something in that field, and you are telling them what to put in there, so how does shortenting "sac9.home.mail.com" to "mail" really make things that much easier?).
@Home was set up so that "mail" was routed to their mail servers, and if you entered "www" in a browser window, you were taken to a personalized @Home home page. So that isn't as idiotic as it might sound.
My point was that gambling was not a regulated activity only because of its impact on surrounding neighborhoods. That's certainly one of them.
And actually, gambling is largely illegal in most places because it presents a massive haven for crime. Gambling attracts criminal activity like cheesburgers attract our former president. Most states don't want to deal with the regulatory headache that goes along with trying to make sure that gambling isn't crooked and/or run by the mob. Nevada does it largely because no one else would go there if not for gambling. In the past, they allowed it because they were part of the Old West and really didn't care if the mob ran the casinos.
I thought I'd make the perhaps somewhat redundant point (there's an invitation to be modded down) that gambling is similar to prostitution with respect to the reasons for regulation. Gambling regulated not just because of its effects on the surroundings, but also because of its effects on the participants. In other words, a large reason it is illegal is because government has decided to "protect us from ourselves." Gamblers frequently end up losing a lot of money, and then can't pay their bills. Therefore, this activity has broader economic impacts. In addition, gambling creates all sorts of opportunities for fraud, money laundering, etc. Strip clubs, etc., on the other hand, have been held to be protected activity, and can't be banned outright. Hence, gov. that wants to regulate that kind of activity is forced to turn to zoning laws, which implicate the "secondary effects" type of analysis.
Doesn't this present an accountability problem? I log onto a public wireless network by sitting in a coffee shop with my laptop. I then start launching DoS attacks, or I upload a virus, or something similar. Nothing can be traced back farther than the IP of the gateway. They guy running the wireless node is then in a heap of trouble because the FBI doesn't believe his story that it could have been any one of several hundred people, none of whom he knows, or they do believe him and they are pretty much at a dead end. Seems like there would have to be a way to identify public users.
A trial court's ruling has negligible precedential value (at least in the state court system-federal is different). It does not get published. It doesn't bind anyone. Trial court judges in the state courts here in a busy county like Santa Clara frequently have a dozen or more rulings such as this one to make a week. In addition, they might have 30 or more other less significant motions to rule on. So they don't have time to pay as much attention to the legal issues as an appellate court judge does. As a result, reversal on appeal is a definite possibility. Furthermore, this ruling is going to be very fact specific, as it most likely relies on what was posted and the company's motivation for going after the poster. That is, if someone posts something like "Company X sucks. Their products are horrible," Company X has a hard time arguing that its lawsuit is anything other than a screen to subpoena the identity of the poster. But if the post is "Company X CEO John Doe has been convicted of bestiality," the court is much more likely to let John Doe subpoena the identity of the poster.
Aeron chairs look flashy. And they have a big price tag. Right now, with all the .coms selling their assets in BK, etc., they can easily be had brand new for $600. Check ebay. But more important is the fact that they really aren't much of an extravagence. While $600 is certainly a lot for a chair from the perspective of someone looking for a chair for their home office, real office chairs, ones that will hold up with someone sitting in them for 10 hours a day, five or more days a week, can't be bought for under $300. Want one that has something more than height adjustment? Go up to $400. Want one that doesn't have hideous and cheap fabric? Move toward $500. I'm shopping for conference room chairs, and I looked at a bunch of $500 chairs, including one that was an Aeron knock off. None of them came close to the quality of the Aeron. So anyone who buys Aeron chairs is really only spending an extra $100 to $200, realistically, and they are getting a much better chair. Why spend $500 on an ugly chair that isn't comfortable when you can spend $200 more and get a chair that is comfortable?