EMusic is great if you like the stuff they've got. It's a fair range - 17,000 albums, 250,000 tracks - but not much in the way of top 40. You can try it free for 14 days and 50 downloads to see if it suits you.
I think it's 2000 downloads a month, but that doesn't seem to be stated anywhere obvious. I may have to slow down a bit, and actually listen to some of the stuff I've downloaded...
So far my downloads include Van Morrison (great stuff), Martha and the Muffins (remember Echo Beach?), The Kinks, The Drifters, They Might Be Giants, Charo, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk...
Jazz, they got. Swing, they got (my dad was a big-band fan, and I caught it from him). A lot of the rock that you can't seem to find in the stores, they got. Classical, they got. Annoying search engine, they got.
Big, recent names they mostly don't got.
Looks like a very good deal if you want to expand your listening and your music collection, but not if you want the latest album from $FOO.
Yep. That's what I'm looking at once I actually get some worthwhile content on my site.
Monthly fees are just too annoying. Either you have these people billing you every month until you put a stop to it, or you have to put your details back in every month. And if the fee is small, it gets eaten up by processing charges.
A small fee, once a year... $9.95, and I get to play your games/download your music/look at naughty pictures for a whole year? OK.
Also...is it really usable as an integrated camera?
I have a Sony Picturebook - PCG-C1MT or whatever the model is. The camera is... not the worst I have ever seen. It's about average for a webcam. In other words, complete crap compared to any half-decent still camera.
"Checking pricewatch, you can buy a quad Xeon board for under $500, and Xeons@2.4GHz for under $250."
I don't know where you found a quad Xeon board for that price, but I can tell you that those Xeons won't work. Those will be dual-processor capable Xeons. For a quad board, you need the Xeon MP - which is much more expensive.
You are me and I claim my $5. Though I think my cycle is closer to 28 hours. But yes, having to concentrate on debugging a program when you've only had four hours' sleep is hideous - particularly when it's the third day in a row of that.
I have one more problem - I'll go to bed at 3am, and lie awake for another hour. Finally go to sleep at 4, and have to get up at 7.
Bleah.
My old job let me work from home much of the time, and it was rare for anyone to call me before 10, so even if I didn't get to sleep before 4, I'd still get a reasonable six hours. Damn you, dot-com bubble!
If Swiftel can get bandwidth for $3 per GB - which they have publically stated - and make a comfortable profit at $6 per GB (they do have to pay for the appropriate lines and routers as well), how can Telstra (and others) get away with charging over $100 per GB?
I run Kazaa Lite. My uploads are free, and downloads are free between 1AM and 8AM and on weekends. Which means that if I'm downloading something, I *have* to be there at 8AM to stop it or risk bankruptcy.
Oh, and my download speeds are capped at 1/3 normal during off-peak times.
Oh, we have cable. Two cable networks, in fact. Owned by the two largest phone companies. Who are not interested in allowing competition.
Telstra have to allow other companies to re-sell their DSL connections, and this is in fact very common. However, for some unknown reason, all the ISPs outside of Western Australia are run by total morons. (Except, recently, for Swiftel - who originated in WA anyway - and Comindico.)
Rather than peering with each other and purchasing cheap international bandwidth, they connect to Telstra, pay huge bandwidth charges, and pass these on to their customers.
Either that or they just choose to rob their customers blind (and still can't make a decent profit). It's impossible to get a clear statement of where the money actually goes.
Pacific Internet, my ISP, also provide services in Hong Kong. There I can get a 6Mbit flat-rate connection for HK$288 per month - about A$55. Compare that to the Australian offering of 256k, capped at 500MB per month for A$45.
The real problem is not so much the download cap as the horrific excess charges. My ISP (Pacific Internet) offers an entry-level ADSL plan (256/64 with 500MB of downloads) for $44.95 per month (US$30). Once you go over the 500MB, you are charged at 14.9c per MB - $149 per GB (US$100). That's a fairly typical charge across the industry.
Things have started to improve just recently. First, Comindico (through numerous resellers) have started to offer flat-rate ADSL. Second, Swiftel (directly and also through resellers) have started to offer plans with an excess charge of just $6 per GB - 25 times cheaper than the industry standard.
As others have mentioned, Whirlpool is the place to go for Broadband news in Oz. Most of it is bad, of course. Telstra is, not to put to fine a point on it, evil. Our federal communications minister, the benighted Senator Alston, is hopelessly ill-suited to the post. It's not all darkness, though.
Actually, you need 7 bits for SECDED (single error correct, double error detect) ECC on 32 bits of data. With a 64-bit bus, you need 8 ECC bits - which is the same as you'd need for byte parity. Which is why no-one uses parity checking any more: ECC is better and costs the same.
ECC RAM is actually incredibly cheap; just not quite as incredibly cheap as non-ECC RAM. All it means is that you get 9 memory chips instead of 8. It should be 12.5% more expensive, but it doesn't quite work that way.
Laputa? I like Laputa, but I'd rank it after Spirited Away, Kiki and Totoro. I missed the chance to see Nausicaa and Porco Rosso on the big screen in 2000 due to pressures at work, but fortunately I was unemployed when Spirited Away came out;)
The best anime film I've seen in the past year was not Spirited Away, though, nor the Cowboy Bebop movie (which rocks, by the way), but Millennium Actress. It's just a wonderful, understated gem of a film. My Collectors Edition box set arrived from Japan today:)
I have a Sony Picturebook. I love it. It lives in my shoulder bag, and goes everywhere with me. It would be nice if it was a bit lighter, a bit faster, ran something other than WinXP... And if it lasted longer than two hours. Now that I'm working again, I think it's time to buy the extended battery.
I've actually seen this first hand (under slightly diferent circumstances). They don't charge in with guns drawn, but they do appear without notice, in considerable numbers, bearing appropriate warrants and court orders, and secure anything that they might consider evidence. Which may be your mail server.
The idea is to preserve the evidence, but the way they go about it is misguided and unnecessary more often than not.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been working on a science fiction novel that featured nuclear isomer-powered weapons of various sorts. Grumble.
The story also involves parallel universes. Any bets on how long it is before the DoD pre-empts that concept as well?
EMusic is great if you like the stuff they've got. It's a fair range - 17,000 albums, 250,000 tracks - but not much in the way of top 40. You can try it free for 14 days and 50 downloads to see if it suits you.
I think it's 2000 downloads a month, but that doesn't seem to be stated anywhere obvious. I may have to slow down a bit, and actually listen to some of the stuff I've downloaded...
So far my downloads include Van Morrison (great stuff), Martha and the Muffins (remember Echo Beach?), The Kinks, The Drifters, They Might Be Giants, Charo, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk...
Damn good value, says I.
Jazz, they got. Swing, they got (my dad was a big-band fan, and I caught it from him). A lot of the rock that you can't seem to find in the stores, they got. Classical, they got. Annoying search engine, they got.
:)
Big, recent names they mostly don't got.
Looks like a very good deal if you want to expand your listening and your music collection, but not if you want the latest album from $FOO.
I'm in
I took a look at Emusic. What's the catch? 2000 VBR MP3s per month for $10? They use LAME, so I can expect decent quality. There's no DRM.
Maybe they don't have all the current pop hits, but that's a good thing on the whole.
There's gotta be a catch! Well, there's the 12-month subscription, but still, 24,000 MP3s...
Yep. That's what I'm looking at once I actually get some worthwhile content on my site.
Monthly fees are just too annoying. Either you have these people billing you every month until you put a stop to it, or you have to put your details back in every month. And if the fee is small, it gets eaten up by processing charges.
A small fee, once a year... $9.95, and I get to play your games/download your music/look at naughty pictures for a whole year? OK.
$4.95 a month? Forget it.
Also...is it really usable as an integrated camera?
I have a Sony Picturebook - PCG-C1MT or whatever the model is. The camera is... not the worst I have ever seen. It's about average for a webcam. In other words, complete crap compared to any half-decent still camera.
It is very cute, though.
"Checking pricewatch, you can buy a quad Xeon board for under $500, and Xeons@2.4GHz for under $250."
I don't know where you found a quad Xeon board for that price, but I can tell you that those Xeons won't work. Those will be dual-processor capable Xeons. For a quad board, you need the Xeon MP - which is much more expensive.
You are me and I claim my $5. Though I think my cycle is closer to 28 hours. But yes, having to concentrate on debugging a program when you've only had four hours' sleep is hideous - particularly when it's the third day in a row of that.
I have one more problem - I'll go to bed at 3am, and lie awake for another hour. Finally go to sleep at 4, and have to get up at 7.
Bleah.
My old job let me work from home much of the time, and it was rare for anyone to call me before 10, so even if I didn't get to sleep before 4, I'd still get a reasonable six hours. Damn you, dot-com bubble!
That's A$6, so US$4, or about CDN$4.50. Which isn't cheap, but it's a hell of a lot better than A$150!
Oh, and Swiftel provide static IPs and allow servers too. Yes, I'm switching ISPs, and soon.
Wug. I don't want to do that. If I can work out some way to automate Kazaa itself... Or just wait til I finish my own file-sharing program :)
Not that bloody expensive.
If Swiftel can get bandwidth for $3 per GB - which they have publically stated - and make a comfortable profit at $6 per GB (they do have to pay for the appropriate lines and routers as well), how can Telstra (and others) get away with charging over $100 per GB?
I run Kazaa Lite. My uploads are free, and downloads are free between 1AM and 8AM and on weekends. Which means that if I'm downloading something, I *have* to be there at 8AM to stop it or risk bankruptcy.
Oh, and my download speeds are capped at 1/3 normal during off-peak times.
Yes, I'll be switching ISPs shortly.
Oh, we have cable. Two cable networks, in fact. Owned by the two largest phone companies. Who are not interested in allowing competition.
Telstra have to allow other companies to re-sell their DSL connections, and this is in fact very common. However, for some unknown reason, all the ISPs outside of Western Australia are run by total morons. (Except, recently, for Swiftel - who originated in WA anyway - and Comindico.)
Rather than peering with each other and purchasing cheap international bandwidth, they connect to Telstra, pay huge bandwidth charges, and pass these on to their customers.
Either that or they just choose to rob their customers blind (and still can't make a decent profit). It's impossible to get a clear statement of where the money actually goes.
Pacific Internet, my ISP, also provide services in Hong Kong. There I can get a 6Mbit flat-rate connection for HK$288 per month - about A$55. Compare that to the Australian offering of 256k, capped at 500MB per month for A$45.
The real problem is not so much the download cap as the horrific excess charges. My ISP (Pacific Internet) offers an entry-level ADSL plan (256/64 with 500MB of downloads) for $44.95 per month (US$30). Once you go over the 500MB, you are charged at 14.9c per MB - $149 per GB (US$100). That's a fairly typical charge across the industry.
Things have started to improve just recently. First, Comindico (through numerous resellers) have started to offer flat-rate ADSL. Second, Swiftel (directly and also through resellers) have started to offer plans with an excess charge of just $6 per GB - 25 times cheaper than the industry standard.
As others have mentioned, Whirlpool is the place to go for Broadband news in Oz. Most of it is bad, of course. Telstra is, not to put to fine a point on it, evil. Our federal communications minister, the benighted Senator Alston, is hopelessly ill-suited to the post. It's not all darkness, though.
Actually, you need 7 bits for SECDED (single error correct, double error detect) ECC on 32 bits of data. With a 64-bit bus, you need 8 ECC bits - which is the same as you'd need for byte parity. Which is why no-one uses parity checking any more: ECC is better and costs the same.
ECC RAM is actually incredibly cheap; just not quite as incredibly cheap as non-ECC RAM. All it means is that you get 9 memory chips instead of 8. It should be 12.5% more expensive, but it doesn't quite work that way.
Albeit mostly with "Boobies" posts.
Laputa? I like Laputa, but I'd rank it after Spirited Away, Kiki and Totoro. I missed the chance to see Nausicaa and Porco Rosso on the big screen in 2000 due to pressures at work, but fortunately I was unemployed when Spirited Away came out ;)
:)
The best anime film I've seen in the past year was not Spirited Away, though, nor the Cowboy Bebop movie (which rocks, by the way), but Millennium Actress. It's just a wonderful, understated gem of a film. My Collectors Edition box set arrived from Japan today
I have a Sony Picturebook. I love it. It lives in my shoulder bag, and goes everywhere with me. It would be nice if it was a bit lighter, a bit faster, ran something other than WinXP... And if it lasted longer than two hours. Now that I'm working again, I think it's time to buy the extended battery.
I don't recall ever seeing a 14GB SCSI drive. They all went 1-2-4-9-18-36-72 (or 73).
I think the original poster is just plain wrong.
It can happen that way.
I've actually seen this first hand (under slightly diferent circumstances). They don't charge in with guns drawn, but they do appear without notice, in considerable numbers, bearing appropriate warrants and court orders, and secure anything that they might consider evidence. Which may be your mail server.
The idea is to preserve the evidence, but the way they go about it is misguided and unnecessary more often than not.
Fine MS $40 billion and give it to NASA to build a new shuttle fleet. Oh, and $1 million to me because it's my idea.
Or perhaps /. is messed up and not showing me the responses. Yes, that seems more likely. Every geek wants a $1599 CD player/clock.
Judging by the lack of response, it would seem that not many geeks want a $1599 CD player/clock.
In Australia, forests (except perhaps for rainforests) are called "the bush". So a bushfire is a forest fire.