>Actually, for a small monthly fee you can have the nearly the whole world of RIAA music streaming at you by request.
Streaming is not always desired, though. True posession has its advantages. For example, I no longer need to hunt for reeeeally long ethernet cables when I want to listen to music while driving further away than my next door neighbor.:-)
There's a website that withstands a 24/7/365 slashdotting: http://slashdot.org. They run on MySQL. Is it airline- or bank-big? No. Is it bigger than damn near everything else? Yes. "Big-time" enough for me.
>>On the other side of me, at that lunch, sat a database administrator whose facility is planning a migration from Oracle to MySQL
>Whatever moron made that decision needs to be outsourced to India. Thats sort of like trading in a shiny BMW for a freakin go-cart.
Or maybe his company is like mine. We've moved several apps from MS-SQL to MySQL (little stuff--calendars and whatnot) and we now have one less instance of MS-SQL running. My company (like many others) pays per installation, per year. When the auditors come 'round this summer, and every summer thereafter, we will save a few hundred bucks every year by not having that needless instance.
3 words: You. Aren't. Everyone. I use MySQL for a million and one lightweight apps: calendars, phone lists, surveys, etc. I haven't run into a single problem. For me, MySQL and Postgres are *equally* the right tool, so we go to the next phase: what do we already have installed? and the biggie at my current job: what runs natively under Windows, which our Intranet already is running on? Maybe PGSQL is better than MySQL in the grand scheme of things, but for the tiny little apps I write, there is *no difference whatsoever.* Period. And this applies to about a million other small developers.
Hooray, they have re-invented Mac OS 7's spatial finder. And guess what: I've been explaining to users how to navigate Mac OS since 1995, and leaving everyting on the desktop only works if a) you don't mind a cluttered desktop (many users do) and b) you have a large enough monitor.
And there are plenty of surprises. (Not sure if Nautilus copies this or not, but this is what OS 7-9 did.) Double-click on the hard drive (or your home folder, or whatever) and put it in list/details view. Double-click on a folder--say, Documents. Go back to the parent window. Click the flippy triangle or plus sign or whatever next to Documents. Watch the "Documents" window close itself. Start explaining "spatial" to the user. Prepare for blank stares.
Face it: computers are complex devices that can perform a multitude of functions. Unless you are going to do only the most basic things (for example, only run a word processor and always save all your docs to the same folder) it will always be complex.
Glad you've taken the hat off. One point you missed: "While where I go and how fast I got there aren't anyone's business under normal circumstances..."
...um, except for the fact that you're driving in public, which means it explicitly is the business of anyone anywhere at any time along your route who feels like paying attention.
Something else the tinfoil-hat-crowd keeps forgetting is that driving is, almost by definition, done *in public*. *Anyone* has the right to observe you by whatever means they wish. This is *not* "two-consenting-adults-in-their-own-bedroom" stuff we're talking about here.
I bought and FM thingie for my iPod. It sucked. Returned it the same week, went to Best Buy, and got the cheapest (~$150 installed) AIWA with a line-in jack they had and it's great. A friend, who also owns an iPod, tried too, with a newer model of FM thingie. A little better but overall it still sucked. The same week he bought the mod, he returned it & got a deck with a line-in.
Bite the bullet. Spend the money. Go get the cheapest deck with a line-in you can. (Even mine has 2 sets of preamp outs, for when I save up enough to get a new amp, subs, and separates.)
- and cut the delay between consecutive songs to ZERO. I *hate* that pop of silence between two tracks that have a seamless transition, like the one between "A Month of Sundays" and "Sunset Grill" on Don Henley's "Building the Perfect Beast." I would *pay* for that feature.
as a tpical how-did-I-live-without-it tivo owner, I alternate between 30-seconding over commercials and FFing through them. I often catch a glimpse of a cute one that I will go back and look at. some are great, "honey come here!"-quality ads. I've actaully got a tape that I put the best ones onto, like the one where the kid smashes a jelly doughnut and launches the jelly into his brother's mouth (more or less.) and I've watched a few of the showcase ones, too. entertaining ads can be as good as anything else.
>Well, here's what I don't understand... Why would anyone want an ugly transparent contraption?
You see, there's this thing called "taste." It's hard to explain but it's different for different people. In short, some people think techy color innards are cool. You're not one of them? Fine. You think your taste is good and everyone else's is crap? That might make you an elitist snob, but hey, everyone's entitled to their opinion.
Beige was never a "fashion." Beige, better than any other color, hides dust. Put a white box, a black box, and a beige box on your cube floor. Wait a month. Look at them. See? Colors were fashions. Beige wasn't.
Also, dust-hiding is more important for stationary items (desktops, keyboards, pritners) than portable items (laptops.) Hence, early black ThinkPads.
Cool case mods just like you describe, btw, are at applefritter.com. Lotsa cool retro stuff, but the guy recently redesigned his site and it's hard to find them anymore (no more thumbnails.) A couple are here: http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/redrocket http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/894
New system driving away users? New system requires too much hardware? Where have I heard this before? It didn't kill them in '89 and I don't think it will 15 years later.
retarded article
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
one of many problems: "The next fatal problem for TiVo is high-definition TV signals. 2004 will be the year America embraces HDTV. The Super Bowl looked tremendous in HD, movies are amazing, and in May, when ESPN begins broadcasting SportsCenter in HD, the contest will be over."
OK, so HDTV has been coming Real Soon Now (tm) for, what, a decade? And this yahoo (no pun intended) thinks SportsCenter is going to propel it to the massses? In the next 8 1/2 months? No one ever said HDTV wasn't good. It's just expensive (capable TV, plus tuner, plus whatever) and supported channels are few and far between. Yet somehow, at today's prices, everyone in America is going to buy a new, big, expensive TV and related gear this year? Uh-huh.
In any case, he seems to think TiVo is unable to change. Yeah, TiVo is absolutely unflexible and will be totally unable to adapt to *any* changes in the market. They're going to stubbornly make one product and go under when there's no more demand for it. This article is such non-news I don't even know what to say about it.
I'd like to have a portable video-playing thingie as much as the next guy, but they are trying to squeeze into an incredibly small niche here: people who are willing to spend $800 on something larger than an iPod, but who don't want to spend the same amount of money on a DVD-playing laptop. Any larger than an iPod and you're quickly getting out of the fits-in-the-pocket category. What are they aiming for, the fits-in-a-glovebox market?
>There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO.
Except for the fact that a) I rarely *want* a whole CD--usually I just want a couple songs, b) I can have the one song I want in seconds, rather than a half hour, plus getting dressed, wear and tear on the car, that much more pollution, etc., c) I mainly listen to music with my iPod while driving and thus have no need for a shiny 5" disc, d) I could give two shits about album art, liner notes, etc.; all I might want are lyrics, but they usually aren't included, and I can usually find them online anyway, e) since I only want it in a portable format, why should I rip it when someone else has already encoded it for me, and f) the *last* fucking thing I need in my house is more jewel cases. So yeah, except for those half dozen reasons (and those are just off the top of my head; I could probably come up with another half-dozen) there's no reason to buy music online.
I hate people who declare "There is no reason to do X because I myself don't like it."
CDs are good for some people, iTunes are good for others, P2P is good for others, and there are many people who are in more tha one group.
As you stated, that is *your* humble opinion. You should have said "There is no reason *for me* to buy music online." You != the world.
A final note: whole albums, new and old alike, can be purchased for $9.99 from the ITMS. Compare that to store prices.
PS: Uncompressed, my modest collection (~300 CDs) would be over 200 GB. Hard drives aren't *that* cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the Earth big? Yes. Is the galaxy big? Yes. Is the Earth small compared to it? Yes. Does that make the Earth not big? No.
>Actually, for a small monthly fee you can have the nearly the whole world of RIAA music streaming at you by request.
:-)
Streaming is not always desired, though. True posession has its advantages. For example, I no longer need to hunt for reeeeally long ethernet cables when I want to listen to music while driving further away than my next door neighbor.
There's a website that withstands a 24/7/365 slashdotting: http://slashdot.org. They run on MySQL. Is it airline- or bank-big? No. Is it bigger than damn near everything else? Yes. "Big-time" enough for me.
>>On the other side of me, at that lunch, sat a database administrator whose facility is planning a migration from Oracle to MySQL
>Whatever moron made that decision needs to be outsourced to India. Thats sort of like trading in a shiny BMW for a freakin go-cart.
Or maybe his company is like mine. We've moved several apps from MS-SQL to MySQL (little stuff--calendars and whatnot) and we now have one less instance of MS-SQL running. My company (like many others) pays per installation, per year. When the auditors come 'round this summer, and every summer thereafter, we will save a few hundred bucks every year by not having that needless instance.
3 words: You. Aren't. Everyone. I use MySQL for a million and one lightweight apps: calendars, phone lists, surveys, etc. I haven't run into a single problem. For me, MySQL and Postgres are *equally* the right tool, so we go to the next phase: what do we already have installed? and the biggie at my current job: what runs natively under Windows, which our Intranet already is running on? Maybe PGSQL is better than MySQL in the grand scheme of things, but for the tiny little apps I write, there is *no difference whatsoever.* Period. And this applies to about a million other small developers.
"Apple has "Trash" and MSFT has "Recycle Bin". Apple list their icons on the right and MSFT list them on left..."
;-)
Exactly! They're *totally different!*
"El Photo" is OK but it should be "Los Songs." ;-)
You're right, I am new here. I mugged a guy for this (relatively) low UID.
:-)
Nice try.
Hooray, they have re-invented Mac OS 7's spatial finder. And guess what: I've been explaining to users how to navigate Mac OS since 1995, and leaving everyting on the desktop only works if a) you don't mind a cluttered desktop (many users do) and b) you have a large enough monitor.
And there are plenty of surprises. (Not sure if Nautilus copies this or not, but this is what OS 7-9 did.) Double-click on the hard drive (or your home folder, or whatever) and put it in list/details view. Double-click on a folder--say, Documents. Go back to the parent window. Click the flippy triangle or plus sign or whatever next to Documents. Watch the "Documents" window close itself. Start explaining "spatial" to the user. Prepare for blank stares.
Face it: computers are complex devices that can perform a multitude of functions. Unless you are going to do only the most basic things (for example, only run a word processor and always save all your docs to the same folder) it will always be complex.
Glad you've taken the hat off. One point you missed: "While where I go and how fast I got there aren't anyone's business under normal circumstances..."
...um, except for the fact that you're driving in public, which means it explicitly is the business of anyone anywhere at any time along your route who feels like paying attention.
Something else the tinfoil-hat-crowd keeps forgetting is that driving is, almost by definition, done *in public*. *Anyone* has the right to observe you by whatever means they wish. This is *not* "two-consenting-adults-in-their-own-bedroom" stuff we're talking about here.
I bought and FM thingie for my iPod. It sucked. Returned it the same week, went to Best Buy, and got the cheapest (~$150 installed) AIWA with a line-in jack they had and it's great. A friend, who also owns an iPod, tried too, with a newer model of FM thingie. A little better but overall it still sucked. The same week he bought the mod, he returned it & got a deck with a line-in.
Bite the bullet. Spend the money. Go get the cheapest deck with a line-in you can. (Even mine has 2 sets of preamp outs, for when I save up enough to get a new amp, subs, and separates.)
Fabulous post, but you forgot to play it back through the world's largest subwoofer.
- and cut the delay between consecutive songs to ZERO. I *hate* that pop of silence between two tracks that have a seamless transition, like the one between "A Month of Sundays" and "Sunset Grill" on Don Henley's "Building the Perfect Beast." I would *pay* for that feature.
:-)
Then, add beat-mixing.
Thanks for the link. Does 'series' mean 'season' in the UK?
The "Sanger Amerika bomber," eh? Hmm, I wonder what the Germans designed it for. I guess I'd better click that link and find out. :-)
Seriously, thanks for the link... but that's just the funniest (in its way) name for a plane I've ever heard.
I am so smart! S-M-R-T!</homer> :-)
How is an app that's already available, free, for OS X and Windows going to be Linux's "killer app"?
as a tpical how-did-I-live-without-it tivo owner, I alternate between 30-seconding over commercials and FFing through them. I often catch a glimpse of a cute one that I will go back and look at. some are great, "honey come here!"-quality ads. I've actaully got a tape that I put the best ones onto, like the one where the kid smashes a jelly doughnut and launches the jelly into his brother's mouth (more or less.) and I've watched a few of the showcase ones, too. entertaining ads can be as good as anything else.
>Well, here's what I don't understand... Why would anyone want an ugly transparent contraption?
You see, there's this thing called "taste." It's hard to explain but it's different for different people. In short, some people think techy color innards are cool. You're not one of them? Fine. You think your taste is good and everyone else's is crap? That might make you an elitist snob, but hey, everyone's entitled to their opinion.
Beige was never a "fashion." Beige, better than any other color, hides dust. Put a white box, a black box, and a beige box on your cube floor. Wait a month. Look at them. See? Colors were fashions. Beige wasn't.
t
Also, dust-hiding is more important for stationary items (desktops, keyboards, pritners) than portable items (laptops.) Hence, early black ThinkPads.
Cool case mods just like you describe, btw, are at applefritter.com. Lotsa cool retro stuff, but the guy recently redesigned his site and it's hard to find them anymore (no more thumbnails.) A couple are here:
http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/redrocke
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/894
New system driving away users? New system requires too much hardware? Where have I heard this before? It didn't kill them in '89 and I don't think it will 15 years later.
one of many problems: "The next fatal problem for TiVo is high-definition TV signals. 2004 will be the year America embraces HDTV. The Super Bowl looked tremendous in HD, movies are amazing, and in May, when ESPN begins broadcasting SportsCenter in HD, the contest will be over."
OK, so HDTV has been coming Real Soon Now (tm) for, what, a decade? And this yahoo (no pun intended) thinks SportsCenter is going to propel it to the massses? In the next 8 1/2 months? No one ever said HDTV wasn't good. It's just expensive (capable TV, plus tuner, plus whatever) and supported channels are few and far between. Yet somehow, at today's prices, everyone in America is going to buy a new, big, expensive TV and related gear this year? Uh-huh.
In any case, he seems to think TiVo is unable to change. Yeah, TiVo is absolutely unflexible and will be totally unable to adapt to *any* changes in the market. They're going to stubbornly make one product and go under when there's no more demand for it. This article is such non-news I don't even know what to say about it.
I'd like to have a portable video-playing thingie as much as the next guy, but they are trying to squeeze into an incredibly small niche here: people who are willing to spend $800 on something larger than an iPod, but who don't want to spend the same amount of money on a DVD-playing laptop. Any larger than an iPod and you're quickly getting out of the fits-in-the-pocket category. What are they aiming for, the fits-in-a-glovebox market?
>There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO.
Except for the fact that a) I rarely *want* a whole CD--usually I just want a couple songs, b) I can have the one song I want in seconds, rather than a half hour, plus getting dressed, wear and tear on the car, that much more pollution, etc., c) I mainly listen to music with my iPod while driving and thus have no need for a shiny 5" disc, d) I could give two shits about album art, liner notes, etc.; all I might want are lyrics, but they usually aren't included, and I can usually find them online anyway, e) since I only want it in a portable format, why should I rip it when someone else has already encoded it for me, and f) the *last* fucking thing I need in my house is more jewel cases. So yeah, except for those half dozen reasons (and those are just off the top of my head; I could probably come up with another half-dozen) there's no reason to buy music online.
I hate people who declare "There is no reason to do X because I myself don't like it."
CDs are good for some people, iTunes are good for others, P2P is good for others, and there are many people who are in more tha one group.
As you stated, that is *your* humble opinion. You should have said "There is no reason *for me* to buy music online." You != the world.
A final note: whole albums, new and old alike, can be purchased for $9.99 from the ITMS. Compare that to store prices.
PS: Uncompressed, my modest collection (~300 CDs) would be over 200 GB. Hard drives aren't *that* cheap.