This is a mixed bag-- you can't certify an "ideal antenna design," because ideal antennas are only that for a specific frequency. WiFi covers a range of frequencies in the 2.4GHz ballpark.
It would be possible to build an antenna of the same design type as a certified one, but tuned so that its gain is outside of the legal bounds on a particular channel or two. This could be as simple as making an antenna more directional, or by changing the distance between the little cross-pieces on a yagi. So even though it's still a yagi, or still some sort of parabolic dish, or whatever, it could be outside of spec.
So they test, certify the specs, and then require you to buy one that's tested to lesser specs.
I doubt it's any sort of real conspiracy-- it's just the radio-folk worried about us crapping radio waves all over the place at levels we're not allowed to. If you want to make a lot of wifi noise, get a HAM license. Some of the lower wifi channels are in the HAM range, and you could feel free to run your access point at hundreds of watts.
But I'm no expert-- just a bored engineer with limited radio knowledge. We really need a radio engineer or a salty old HAM to post to clear it up for all of us.
You're delusional. In terms of movie and book sales, scifi/fantasy comprise a very small portion of the total amount. Reason? *Most people don't care for scifi or fantasy*.
But once again you think your personal opinion is actual fact, regardless of evidence to the contrary.
I would now like to draw your attention to the top ten highest-grossing movies of all time:
1. Titanic 2. Star Wars 3. Star Wars: Episode I 4. E.T. 5. Jurassic Park 6. Forrest Gump 7. Lion King 8. Return of the Jedi 9. Independence Day 10. The Sixth Sense
Six of ten are sci-fi.
The top books of 2003 put a "mere" 3 sci-fi/fantasy books in the top ten. (including #1 and #2) Not a majority, but 33% is hardly a "very small portion of the total amount." Especially considering that the rest of the top ten includes two diet books, a self-help book, and two biographies. So... of the top 10 books of 2003, there are only five fiction books, and three are sci-fi.
It seems the original poster is not the only one mistaking his personal opinion for actual fact.
I bank with FirstIB, who doesn't actually own any ATMs at all. Instead of making the investment, they just pay the fees for other bank machines, up to some preset monthly limit. ($6, maybe)
Since I only hit a bank machine every other week or so, this works out very nicely. I can use any ATM anywhere, even the overchage-y ones in bars and tourist spots. It's nice not to have to think about it, and just use the nearest one.
If you had bothered to follow all three of his links, you might have noticed that they ALL pointed out that an American was not the first to invent the mentioned items. At which point, you might have been able to put the pieces together and discover that he was being sarcastic, and linked those specific articles intentionally.
This is the sort of thing that shouldn't have to be explained, but this is slashdot.
I absolutely cannot go back to watching TV on someone else's terms. I've been using a VCR to timeshift for years, and tivo since 2000. If the tivo becomes illegal or has its functionality reduced to a pointless level, I will simply abandon TV. My TV set will become a video-game and DVD display monitor, and I will suddenly have a much higher monthly budget for spending on something besides TV.
It's amazing how stupid you can make something sound. I thought it was good, though, and I didn't like Buffy or Trigun (the painful space-cowboy/space-priest anime) much.
Awww yeah. Perhaps it's rare these days, but at least I'm honest. It has a great UI, but reliability sucks. If anybody wants a cheap spare for the inevitable defects they will have with their current unit, super.
I'm sure as hell not trying to win any *new* sidekick converts, but for somebody stuck in a contract with a broken sidekick outside of warranty, this could be handy.
Awwww, the wide-eyed innocents are posting! Look at this one-- he actually believes that one of the graphics card manufacturers is NOT cheating! It's tough life-lesson time, kiddo-- they BOTH have a history of cheating. Also, there is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny was paid $5M by ATI to optimize his egg-rendering scheme for their hardware.
I'm not a fanboy, and currently have an ATI card. I ran NVidia for two generations before that. But this "multi-slot monster 600W" myth needs to get squashed. The 6800 GT is single-slot, quiet, and recommends a modest 350W PSU.
And in this particular benchmark (it's just ONE GAME, so don't make your whole decision on it) the midrange 6800 GT is almost precisely matching the highend X800 XT PE.
NVidia has really dug themselves a "marketing hole" somehow-- everyone believes that ALL of their current cards are two-slot 700W vacuum cleaners. It's like people can't even be bothered to look up actual information, or read articles...
I went through four sidekicks in six months. Defective screen, permanent lockup, defective keyboard, defective wheel, etc... and reception so lousy that made me take back all my bitching about Sprint, Cingular, and Verizon in the past.
I loved the interface, AIM client, SSH, etc... all very nicely done. What finally booted me, though, was the lack of sync. Mentioned in dozens of Danger's early press releases, this was never released for the T-Mobile Sidekick. You can't sync your contacts with anything besides their web interface, which itself can't sync with anything and disappears when you cancel service. When it worked, I loved it, and when it didn't work, I still loved it. But the defects and oversights got to be too much, and I cancelled my plan.
The worst part? The sync code is done. It's been deployed on several smaller carriers' networks for the hiptop/sidekick, and works fine. The "conspiracy theory" is that T-Mobile doesn't want to dilute blackberry sales with a cheaper device that syncs, but all they've managed to achieve is looking like asshats and the loss of revenue from people like me.
I went with a Treo 600 on Sprint, and although the interface is not as slick as the hiptop's, I've got IM on all four networks, SSH, VNC, MP3s, XVID, games, reception that works, no need for four replacement devices, and it syncs with all sorts of crap, including my yahoo! account and my office's exchange server.
If anybody wants it, I have a still-working Black&White Sidekick you can have for $60.
Too true. But illegality follows the car mod-chip people, too, violating emissions laws in order to gain power, sometimes even with a switch to put you back in "clean" mode to fool emissions tests. Is the "main use" to break emissions laws? No... but in this case, the "main use" (more horsepower) will *always* result in breaking the emissions law. At least with a PS2 modchip, using it to play homebrew games does not automatically violate copyrights.
Sure, it's not copyright violation per se, but quite a lot you can do to your car (including a replacement ECU, just like a mod chip) opens the door for breaking the emissions laws.
Clothing is a tough one-- about the only mods you could perform that result in breaking the law are those that put you in violation of indecency or profanity statutes. Which you could do, but it's easier to just be naked. You could violate somebody's copyright here, though-- with either a counterfit "aye caramba" t-shirt with Bart Simpson on the front, or a rip-off copy of some designer clothes.
Houses are easy-- it doesn't take you much time doing small wiring or structural repairs to a house, or making minor changes to wiring to violate housing codes. Put Cat5 in your wall? Is it really the right type for installing in a wall? My house was "modded" by the previous owner, who removed two vertical supports from the basement stair rail. Looks fine, works fine, but was a code violation according to the housing inspector. As was a repair to one of the floor joists, even though the only change to meet code was to use a board 1" wider to patch it.
Does that mean you made a repetitive slashdot joke, like the one you were complaining about here?
And before you get all jumpy, this is a joke, too. We are all being very inconsistent. We're posting on slashdot, and one of us is complaining about profanity, and the other is complaining about intolerance of differing opinions.
Something tells me we're both in the wrong place, but god knows why we just... can't.... quit....
And it's the first time I saw the thing. I thought it was funny-- sorry you're burned out on it. The important lesson here, kids, is not to post when your nerves are so raw that a joke with the word "fuck" in it will piss you off.
If your idea of humor requires it to have a more polite and eloquent vocabulary, you may want to consider reading a site besides slashdot. There is no excess of well-spoken intellectual wit here, but there ARE plenty of crass, repetitive, juvenile jokes in between the occasional science or computer topic.
Fair enough-- the price was for ATA drives, no luck for you on the laptop. But it's STILL going to be insignificant compared to your stupendous investment in CDs. Of course, in your current situation, spending *any* money is probably not a good idea.
At newegg.com, two 160GB ATA drives are going to run you $180. (I estimated a little high last time-- actual price for one drive is $89.50)
A USB 2.0 external enclosure for IDE drives is $28.99. Call it $30 for easy math, and buy two of them-- and we're at $240 total. Not a huge difference.
FLAC for Macs (and Linux, Windows, Amiga, Irix, and Solaris).
As to iTunes, I don't think it supports FLAC directly, but there seems to be some effort to write a plugin, and a couple of workaround methods currently. I *know* the iPod doesn't.
Well, for starters, that's why I suggested FLAC. Lossless compression, with about 60% filesize. So now we're down to 490 *.6 = 294 GB. I suspect it would be much better than that due simply to the fact that most CDs are not "filled to the brim" at 700MB.
The hard drive space (2 * 160GB drives) to hold that costs a whopping $220-- a tiny investment compared to the cost of your 700 CDs (700 * $8 = $5600, and that's a lowball estimate), and the value of your time to spend recompressing them. Assuming it takes you 30 seconds of time per CD, you will spend nearly six hours reencoding the discs each time. (and that's extrememly lowball, too) Not to mention the issue of using your originals as a "backup."
If you're in college and poor, the six hours may be less valuable to you than the $220. I was there once, too-- but I couldn't afford $5600 worth of CDs, either.
But hey, if you enjoy reencoding, and not having a lossless, separate backup of your originals-- knock yourself out.
I was just trying to point out a way to avoid manually inserting and removing 700 CDs. If you had them handy in FLAC (or WAV, etc...), a recode would be as simple as starting the script for whatever new format you wanted, and going away until it was done.
CDs are easier and faster than tapes and LPs, but it's still a manually-driven process. Rip once, and then encode as many times as you want later.
I buy hotcakes about once a month, in bundles of 3-8, depending on size, appetite, and restaurant.
I don't have an iPod. I'd say the hotcakes are still winning, but it's a long ways to go before the pancakes develop the sort of "I'll pay $400" branding that Apple has. You'd have to make the pancakes white and shiny, with a radically simplified and improved UI.
I actually toyed with doing this. It didn't work too badly, although playing the record faster seemed to make noise worse and clip the high-end a tad. (I would *guess* this is because I raised the top end frequency above either the output of my turntable or the input of my soundcard's frequency response threshold.)
Add to that the fact that it really only saved time on the one part of the process I could already do unattended-- the recording, while adding work to the part that takes most of the "you have to be there" time-- the editing and cleanup.
It ended up taking more of my time. The best way seemed to be to set up a timed recording for roughly the record length (add 5 or 10 mins to be sure) and just let it play a whole side. Most of my records could be split on visually obvious song gaps in a wav editor and then labelled and encoded. Shortening the part where I record the audio didn't save anything-- I already wasn't sitting there waiting for it. But it did add a sample-rate change to my editing process, and a bit of signal degradation.
I believe AAC uses vector quantization similar to VQF, and is "where the technology went" after that debacle. I will reiterate my recommendation for everybody again, because I don't think I was very clear:
Keep all your music encoded LOSSLESSLY, with somethig like FLAC. Convert to the lossy-format-du-jour as necessary, whether that's mp3, ogg, vqf, aac, wma, or whatever. It's much, much easier than going back to the source, and you can do it programatically. Even CDs have to be fed in, and if you have any LPs/tapes/etc..., you're screwed on reencoding. (realtime only, plus editing for length, noise cleanup, and manual tagging)
It Does Not Matter what tech looks like the "next big thing." You will guess wrong at some point, so pick a plan that saves your source quality (FLAC), and uses an open codec that can't disappear. Then if you're wrong, you have a backup plan that doesn't take forever.
My record collection was entirely converted to VQF. VQF. It was going to be the next big thing-- sounded better than mp3 at lower bitrates. Well, we all know how that turned out... who's heard of vqf now?
Learned an important lesson about "better" standards. Unless it's got widespread adoption, or improves things by an order of magnitude, it's not going anywhere. Vorbis may sneak in as people start using it here and there (video games, etc...) just because it's free, but I'd expect that to take a LONG time. For now, I'm sticking with mp3 for portables, and keeping the files in FLAC for easy reconversion next time. If only I'd had the storage space for that the first time around-- converting LPs is *tedious*.
$50 Micro-ATX case $100 SilenX 320W Micro-ATX psu $70 XP 2500+ $50 Nforce2 Mobo $75 512MB RAM $100 HDD $70 DVD+-RW $100 Radeon 9600 (fanless) + $30 component dongle (for the non-DVD folks-- DVI people can use practically any DVI video card) $50ish Zalman HSF for PSU $130 Dvico Fusion HDTV III tuner card $100 Wireless mouse+kb
Comes out to $925, and I'm sure you can do better, especially if you've got some parts (HDD, case, DVD-RW, CPU, fans, et...) you can re-use. You can also drop the HDTV tuner card and the ATI component dongle if you don't need them, and switch to a cheaper video card if you're just using it for older games.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a mixed bag-- you can't certify an "ideal antenna design," because ideal antennas are only that for a specific frequency. WiFi covers a range of frequencies in the 2.4GHz ballpark.
It would be possible to build an antenna of the same design type as a certified one, but tuned so that its gain is outside of the legal bounds on a particular channel or two. This could be as simple as making an antenna more directional, or by changing the distance between the little cross-pieces on a yagi. So even though it's still a yagi, or still some sort of parabolic dish, or whatever, it could be outside of spec.
So they test, certify the specs, and then require you to buy one that's tested to lesser specs.
I doubt it's any sort of real conspiracy-- it's just the radio-folk worried about us crapping radio waves all over the place at levels we're not allowed to. If you want to make a lot of wifi noise, get a HAM license. Some of the lower wifi channels are in the HAM range, and you could feel free to run your access point at hundreds of watts.
But I'm no expert-- just a bored engineer with limited radio knowledge. We really need a radio engineer or a salty old HAM to post to clear it up for all of us.
You're delusional. In terms of movie and book sales, scifi/fantasy comprise a very small portion of the total amount. Reason? *Most people don't care for scifi or fantasy*.
But once again you think your personal opinion is actual fact, regardless of evidence to the contrary.
I would now like to draw your attention to the top ten highest-grossing movies of all time:
1. Titanic
2. Star Wars
3. Star Wars: Episode I
4. E.T.
5. Jurassic Park
6. Forrest Gump
7. Lion King
8. Return of the Jedi
9. Independence Day
10. The Sixth Sense
Six of ten are sci-fi.
The top books of 2003 put a "mere" 3 sci-fi/fantasy books in the top ten. (including #1 and #2) Not a majority, but 33% is hardly a "very small portion of the total amount." Especially considering that the rest of the top ten includes two diet books, a self-help book, and two biographies. So... of the top 10 books of 2003, there are only five fiction books, and three are sci-fi.
It seems the original poster is not the only one mistaking his personal opinion for actual fact.
I bank with FirstIB, who doesn't actually own any ATMs at all. Instead of making the investment, they just pay the fees for other bank machines, up to some preset monthly limit. ($6, maybe)
Since I only hit a bank machine every other week or so, this works out very nicely. I can use any ATM anywhere, even the overchage-y ones in bars and tourist spots. It's nice not to have to think about it, and just use the nearest one.
If you had bothered to follow all three of his links, you might have noticed that they ALL pointed out that an American was not the first to invent the mentioned items. At which point, you might have been able to put the pieces together and discover that he was being sarcastic, and linked those specific articles intentionally.
This is the sort of thing that shouldn't have to be explained, but this is slashdot.
I absolutely cannot go back to watching TV on someone else's terms. I've been using a VCR to timeshift for years, and tivo since 2000. If the tivo becomes illegal or has its functionality reduced to a pointless level, I will simply abandon TV. My TV set will become a video-game and DVD display monitor, and I will suddenly have a much higher monthly budget for spending on something besides TV.
He forgot to mention the space-hooker.
It's amazing how stupid you can make something sound. I thought it was good, though, and I didn't like Buffy or Trigun (the painful space-cowboy/space-priest anime) much.
Awww yeah. Perhaps it's rare these days, but at least I'm honest. It has a great UI, but reliability sucks. If anybody wants a cheap spare for the inevitable defects they will have with their current unit, super.
I'm sure as hell not trying to win any *new* sidekick converts, but for somebody stuck in a contract with a broken sidekick outside of warranty, this could be handy.
Awwww, the wide-eyed innocents are posting! Look at this one-- he actually believes that one of the graphics card manufacturers is NOT cheating! It's tough life-lesson time, kiddo-- they BOTH have a history of cheating. Also, there is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny was paid $5M by ATI to optimize his egg-rendering scheme for their hardware.
Nvidia Cheating
ATI Cheating
I believe you've convinced yourself that someone is NOT cheating, which is resoundingly not the case. Everyone is cheating, except maybe Carmack.
Nvidia Cheating
ATI Cheating
I'm not a fanboy, and currently have an ATI card. I ran NVidia for two generations before that. But this "multi-slot monster 600W" myth needs to get squashed. The 6800 GT is single-slot, quiet, and recommends a modest 350W PSU.
And in this particular benchmark (it's just ONE GAME, so don't make your whole decision on it) the midrange 6800 GT is almost precisely matching the highend X800 XT PE.
NVidia has really dug themselves a "marketing hole" somehow-- everyone believes that ALL of their current cards are two-slot 700W vacuum cleaners. It's like people can't even be bothered to look up actual information, or read articles...
Oh, wait! I'm on slashdot!
I went through four sidekicks in six months. Defective screen, permanent lockup, defective keyboard, defective wheel, etc... and reception so lousy that made me take back all my bitching about Sprint, Cingular, and Verizon in the past.
I loved the interface, AIM client, SSH, etc... all very nicely done. What finally booted me, though, was the lack of sync. Mentioned in dozens of Danger's early press releases, this was never released for the T-Mobile Sidekick. You can't sync your contacts with anything besides their web interface, which itself can't sync with anything and disappears when you cancel service. When it worked, I loved it, and when it didn't work, I still loved it. But the defects and oversights got to be too much, and I cancelled my plan.
The worst part? The sync code is done. It's been deployed on several smaller carriers' networks for the hiptop/sidekick, and works fine. The "conspiracy theory" is that T-Mobile doesn't want to dilute blackberry sales with a cheaper device that syncs, but all they've managed to achieve is looking like asshats and the loss of revenue from people like me.
I went with a Treo 600 on Sprint, and although the interface is not as slick as the hiptop's, I've got IM on all four networks, SSH, VNC, MP3s, XVID, games, reception that works, no need for four replacement devices, and it syncs with all sorts of crap, including my yahoo! account and my office's exchange server.
If anybody wants it, I have a still-working Black&White Sidekick you can have for $60.
Too true. But illegality follows the car mod-chip people, too, violating emissions laws in order to gain power, sometimes even with a switch to put you back in "clean" mode to fool emissions tests. Is the "main use" to break emissions laws? No... but in this case, the "main use" (more horsepower) will *always* result in breaking the emissions law. At least with a PS2 modchip, using it to play homebrew games does not automatically violate copyrights.
Sure, it's not copyright violation per se, but quite a lot you can do to your car (including a replacement ECU, just like a mod chip) opens the door for breaking the emissions laws.
Clothing is a tough one-- about the only mods you could perform that result in breaking the law are those that put you in violation of indecency or profanity statutes. Which you could do, but it's easier to just be naked. You could violate somebody's copyright here, though-- with either a counterfit "aye caramba" t-shirt with Bart Simpson on the front, or a rip-off copy of some designer clothes.
Houses are easy-- it doesn't take you much time doing small wiring or structural repairs to a house, or making minor changes to wiring to violate housing codes. Put Cat5 in your wall? Is it really the right type for installing in a wall? My house was "modded" by the previous owner, who removed two vertical supports from the basement stair rail. Looks fine, works fine, but was a code violation according to the housing inspector. As was a repair to one of the floor joists, even though the only change to meet code was to use a board 1" wider to patch it.
Is an AEROPLANE something you fly in the aero?
Is an aeronautical engineer someone who designs aeronauts?
Is a cellular phone made from cells?
Is an aeroplane a large, flat surface made from aeros?
The answer to all of these is no. This is why we have dictionaries.
I do Fail It, apparently.
Does that mean you made a repetitive slashdot joke, like the one you were complaining about here?
And before you get all jumpy, this is a joke, too. We are all being very inconsistent. We're posting on slashdot, and one of us is complaining about profanity, and the other is complaining about intolerance of differing opinions.
Something tells me we're both in the wrong place, but god knows why we just... can't.... quit....
And it's the first time I saw the thing. I thought it was funny-- sorry you're burned out on it. The important lesson here, kids, is not to post when your nerves are so raw that a joke with the word "fuck" in it will piss you off.
If your idea of humor requires it to have a more polite and eloquent vocabulary, you may want to consider reading a site besides slashdot. There is no excess of well-spoken intellectual wit here, but there ARE plenty of crass, repetitive, juvenile jokes in between the occasional science or computer topic.
It was certainly funnier than your post, vocabulary or not.
Heck, there was even a link to the Onion article he was quoting. Where is your enlightening link or amusing comment?
Just because your definition of humor is different doesn't mean you get to dictate what other people say, or choose what they find humorous.
Fair enough-- the price was for ATA drives, no luck for you on the laptop. But it's STILL going to be insignificant compared to your stupendous investment in CDs. Of course, in your current situation, spending *any* money is probably not a good idea.
At newegg.com, two 160GB ATA drives are going to run you $180. (I estimated a little high last time-- actual price for one drive is $89.50)
A USB 2.0 external enclosure for IDE drives is $28.99. Call it $30 for easy math, and buy two of them-- and we're at $240 total. Not a huge difference.
FLAC for Macs (and Linux, Windows, Amiga, Irix, and Solaris).
As to iTunes, I don't think it supports FLAC directly, but there seems to be some effort to write a plugin, and a couple of workaround methods currently. I *know* the iPod doesn't.
Well, for starters, that's why I suggested FLAC. Lossless compression, with about 60% filesize. So now we're down to 490 * .6 = 294 GB. I suspect it would be much better than that due simply to the fact that most CDs are not "filled to the brim" at 700MB.
The hard drive space (2 * 160GB drives) to hold that costs a whopping $220-- a tiny investment compared to the cost of your 700 CDs (700 * $8 = $5600, and that's a lowball estimate), and the value of your time to spend recompressing them. Assuming it takes you 30 seconds of time per CD, you will spend nearly six hours reencoding the discs each time. (and that's extrememly lowball, too) Not to mention the issue of using your originals as a "backup."
If you're in college and poor, the six hours may be less valuable to you than the $220. I was there once, too-- but I couldn't afford $5600 worth of CDs, either.
But hey, if you enjoy reencoding, and not having a lossless, separate backup of your originals-- knock yourself out.
I was just trying to point out a way to avoid manually inserting and removing 700 CDs. If you had them handy in FLAC (or WAV, etc...), a recode would be as simple as starting the script for whatever new format you wanted, and going away until it was done.
CDs are easier and faster than tapes and LPs, but it's still a manually-driven process. Rip once, and then encode as many times as you want later.
I buy hotcakes about once a month, in bundles of 3-8, depending on size, appetite, and restaurant.
I don't have an iPod. I'd say the hotcakes are still winning, but it's a long ways to go before the pancakes develop the sort of "I'll pay $400" branding that Apple has. You'd have to make the pancakes white and shiny, with a radically simplified and improved UI.
I actually toyed with doing this. It didn't work too badly, although playing the record faster seemed to make noise worse and clip the high-end a tad. (I would *guess* this is because I raised the top end frequency above either the output of my turntable or the input of my soundcard's frequency response threshold.)
Add to that the fact that it really only saved time on the one part of the process I could already do unattended-- the recording, while adding work to the part that takes most of the "you have to be there" time-- the editing and cleanup.
It ended up taking more of my time. The best way seemed to be to set up a timed recording for roughly the record length (add 5 or 10 mins to be sure) and just let it play a whole side. Most of my records could be split on visually obvious song gaps in a wav editor and then labelled and encoded. Shortening the part where I record the audio didn't save anything-- I already wasn't sitting there waiting for it. But it did add a sample-rate change to my editing process, and a bit of signal degradation.
I believe AAC uses vector quantization similar to VQF, and is "where the technology went" after that debacle. I will reiterate my recommendation for everybody again, because I don't think I was very clear:
Keep all your music encoded LOSSLESSLY, with somethig like FLAC. Convert to the lossy-format-du-jour as necessary, whether that's mp3, ogg, vqf, aac, wma, or whatever. It's much, much easier than going back to the source, and you can do it programatically. Even CDs have to be fed in, and if you have any LPs/tapes/etc..., you're screwed on reencoding. (realtime only, plus editing for length, noise cleanup, and manual tagging)
It Does Not Matter what tech looks like the "next big thing." You will guess wrong at some point, so pick a plan that saves your source quality (FLAC), and uses an open codec that can't disappear. Then if you're wrong, you have a backup plan that doesn't take forever.
My record collection was entirely converted to VQF. VQF. It was going to be the next big thing-- sounded better than mp3 at lower bitrates. Well, we all know how that turned out... who's heard of vqf now?
Learned an important lesson about "better" standards. Unless it's got widespread adoption, or improves things by an order of magnitude, it's not going anywhere. Vorbis may sneak in as people start using it here and there (video games, etc...) just because it's free, but I'd expect that to take a LONG time. For now, I'm sticking with mp3 for portables, and keeping the files in FLAC for easy reconversion next time. If only I'd had the storage space for that the first time around-- converting LPs is *tedious*.
It shouldn't set you back $2K, even all-new.
$50 Micro-ATX case
$100 SilenX 320W Micro-ATX psu
$70 XP 2500+
$50 Nforce2 Mobo
$75 512MB RAM
$100 HDD
$70 DVD+-RW
$100 Radeon 9600 (fanless) + $30 component dongle (for the non-DVD folks-- DVI people can use practically any DVI video card)
$50ish Zalman HSF for PSU
$130 Dvico Fusion HDTV III tuner card
$100 Wireless mouse+kb
Comes out to $925, and I'm sure you can do better, especially if you've got some parts (HDD, case, DVD-RW, CPU, fans, et...) you can re-use. You can also drop the HDTV tuner card and the ATI component dongle if you don't need them, and switch to a cheaper video card if you're just using it for older games.