I bought the Zen Nomad because it was certainly a lot cheaper than the comparable iPod at the time, and I liked it. Yes it was larger, but the battery was good. Now it's dead, and since I've gone iTunes I decided to switch. There's stuff I miss (like making playlists on the player itself) but I have to admit the iPod is really nice. The AAC files take about half the space as MP3s and sound better. I didn't do a scientific study but on several songs with quiet passages the MP3 version sucks compared to AAC, and the MP3 was encoded at the max bit rate.
Do yourself a favor, an X1 or similar is really nice and you can palm it and take it outside.
I point it at a blank wall in the living room from 12' and get like 89" or something. The color is great. It sits on a bookshelf - try that with an overhead projector!
In the summer I take it outside and shoot against a 9x12 dropcloth, about $30 at Home Depot. Add wireless speakers, and you have your own drive-in for about $349k less than a real one.
I dunno, my guess is the initial manufacturing zigs and zags of Mr. Jobs held back initial shipments, but I recall seeing them (probably in a BYTE article) and that was the advertised price at the time. The university may have gotten educational pricing. I was intrigued but didn't have the dough to cough up, having already spent my retirement funds on an Amiga.
And then I went on to do lot of OS/2 work, so you can make an appropriate evaluation of my platform judgement.:-)
It depends. I have it attached to the stereo in the living room which you can hear pretty much anywhere in my small house, but I also send the stereo output to wireless speakers and just put them wherever, including outside in the summer.
It really works like a charm, even from the PC under XP.
I give mad props to RMS for the legal hack of the copyleft, and when the chips are counted he'll probably be given saint-hood by several developing countries, but I don't get the impression it'd be fun to work with him. And at the end of the day (and especially in the middle) that's mostly what you need to get through a large complex project.
I could be wrong, I've never met him. But I've got a short fuse on dogma. To get a thing done, at some point you just have to do it.
On the good side, open source says "less defects because we didn't rush it", but there's that other side that says to ship something shoot the engineer. There's a point to that too.:-)
I bought a PowerBook about a year ago (my first Mac) and have found that this really isn't much of an issue. Every once in awhile I have to hit the Control key to bring up a pop-up menu but not much. It took about 40 seconds to get over it the first time, since then I haven't been pining for a 2nd button.
You can always use it with a two-button mouse if you want.
What helps is being able to hold your liquor. I'm referring to playing in-person rather than online; there's a huge difference.
The best players I know personally work in print shops and on loading docks, so you might want to hold that "smarter-than-thou" attitude close the vest if you ever actually sit at a table on Friday night.
I've got an InFocus X1 and have been wanting to put Monday Night Football through it in HD (if nothing else) and I'm wondering if anyone's tried this. I've been holding off going full HD for for obvious reasons, but it seems to me the 800x600 would be a lot better than the normal NTSC signal.
I think it would really makes a difference on the long shots where you're looking at the whole field from above...
Anyone use this with a terrestrial HD receiver?
p.s. The weight aspect of the projector mentioned above is very cool - I can palm the thing. And when it's nice I take it outside and shoot against a drop-cloth on the back of the house for my person drive-in. Highly recommended.
In my case as soon as you backed up the steering unlocked and the "evidence" was gone. I finally had the presence of mind to stop and leave everything exactly as it was, and found I couldn't move the steering wheel at all.
(It's easy to get rattled when your car makes a hard right toward the curb!)
The actual problem was a ball bearing from the steering head had fallen down the shaft and into the lock mechanism. When turning right and under a load like pulling into traffic it would engage the bloody steering lock!
This only happened like 4 times in 4 years, including the test sessions. Pretty easy to miss that.
A) They could have a bug that only comes out under particular cirumstances that weren't reached in the test.
We all know that.
B) It can take a long time to smoke out weird car problems. I had a problem with my steering lock engaging that wasn't correctly diagnosed for like two years because it was a very specific set of actions that caused it to happen. It eventually caused an accident; fortunately it just put me into a guard rail when I was making a turn. They didn't believe me until one of the mechanics was buzzing around the shop and it almost put him into the wall.
He died in a traffic accident. Some fool took him out. I dunno why they'd let a national treasure actually drive himself to work at that age, but there ya go. He was 72 I believe.
The real problem was that nobody was pre-installing it, and IBM was also trying to push their own bus architecture on the PS/1, and people got confused about that too.
It was not hard to install if you knew what you were doing, but it could be impossible if you didn't.
Also, IBM just assumed all the printer and video companies would put out drivers, and they didn't. The smart thing would've been to PAY them and ship 'em with the package, but that didn't happen. So even if you got it installed it was entirely possible you wouldn't be able to get a decent printout or use your video card to the max.
The printing fiasco was a real shame, because Presentation Manager gave you great support for fonts, shearing, a lot of cool stuff. DeScribe was a really decent word processor/layout package.
I ported a DOS control system to OS/2 V1.3, and it rocked. Ran on a 25Mhz 386 with 8M of RAM, 50 threads, named pipes and shared memory between control processes and a separate graphics display, and it was solid as a rock in power plant conditions.
When Tom DeLay wanted to find the Texas Dems he had the feds track down their plane, so I wouldn't be surprised if they put Kennedy on the Do Not Fly list to keep him from voting on a particular bill.
No, John Kerry is not suing. The photographer who own the copyright and makes his living selling his pics through a stock agency is suing. Same thing as NBC.
"Moreover, the statement that "lawyers representing John Kerry's interest threatened our Internet server with legal action unless the picture was removed" is a false statement of fact. As stated above, this firm represents George Butler. John Kerry is not, and has never been, a client of this firm. In addition, we did not threaten your Internet server, EastLink, with legal action. "
I dunno about GWB's, but the guy who sued over the Kerry photos is a photographer who sells that image via a stock image house. Y'know, makes a living on his photography. I'm sure the Vets Against Kerry group has enough money to buy the images because they're very well funded by some of GWB's old Texas buddies.
So it's not that copyright was used to stop a political message, it's that they violated his rights - the images ARE available legally.
It's possible his contract with the stock photo house actually requires him to defend their use.
I just happened to drag out my laserdisc of that last night, forgot completely that Tom Baker played the bad guy sorcerer. Add in great Ray Harryhousen effects and the fabulous Caroline Monroe, and you can't go wrong.
My favorite line: "Abdul, for someone who likes the hashish so much you should be more at peace with yourself."
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I ripped them with the Creative software which is in fact limited to 320 k bit/s.
I don't know if you can write something to do better, but that's the max bit rate available from the product.
No bullshit.
I've got about 200 CDs ripped into max bitrate MP3s, and the same collection ripped into AAC.
The MP3 collections is almost 20G, the AAC collection is about 9.6G.
I reckon that's makes the AAC files about half the size for the same music, but math was never my strong point.
I bought the Zen Nomad because it was certainly a lot cheaper than the comparable iPod at the time, and I liked it. Yes it was larger, but the battery was good. Now it's dead, and since I've gone iTunes I decided to switch. There's stuff I miss (like making playlists on the player itself) but I have to admit the iPod is really nice. The AAC files take about half the space as MP3s and sound better. I didn't do a scientific study but on several songs with quiet passages the MP3 version sucks compared to AAC, and the MP3 was encoded at the max bit rate.
And it's about half the size!
Do yourself a favor, an X1 or similar is really nice and you can palm it and take it outside.
I point it at a blank wall in the living room from 12' and get like 89" or something. The color is great. It sits on a bookshelf - try that with an overhead projector!
In the summer I take it outside and shoot against a 9x12 dropcloth, about $30 at Home Depot. Add wireless speakers, and you have your own drive-in for about $349k less than a real one.
I dunno, my guess is the initial manufacturing zigs and zags of Mr. Jobs held back initial shipments, but I recall seeing them (probably in a BYTE article) and that was the advertised price at the time. The university may have gotten educational pricing. I was intrigued but didn't have the dough to cough up, having already spent my retirement funds on an Amiga.
:-)
And then I went on to do lot of OS/2 work, so you can make an appropriate evaluation of my platform judgement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
:-)
The machines weren't ready for "real" sales until 1990, when they went on the market for $9999.
Guess my memory isn't completely shot yet.
Hey, he had to do *something* with those $10k NEXT boxes.
Wonder what they go for on eBay now...
'nuff said
It depends. I have it attached to the stereo in the living room which you can hear pretty much anywhere in my small house, but I also send the stereo output to wireless speakers and just put them wherever, including outside in the summer.
It really works like a charm, even from the PC under XP.
Listen,
:-)
I give mad props to RMS for the legal hack of the copyleft, and when the chips are counted he'll probably be given saint-hood by several developing countries, but I don't get the impression it'd be fun to work with him. And at the end of the day (and especially in the middle) that's mostly what you need to get through a large complex project.
I could be wrong, I've never met him. But I've got a short fuse on dogma. To get a thing done, at some point you just have to do it.
On the good side, open source says "less defects because we didn't rush it", but there's that other side that says to ship something shoot the engineer. There's a point to that too.
It's only been what, like 15 years?
Who's kidding who?
I bought a PowerBook about a year ago (my first Mac) and have found that this really isn't much of an issue. Every once in awhile I have to hit the Control key to bring up a pop-up menu but not much. It took about 40 seconds to get over it the first time, since then I haven't been pining for a 2nd button.
You can always use it with a two-button mouse if you want.
What helps is being able to hold your liquor. I'm referring to playing in-person rather than online; there's a huge difference.
The best players I know personally work in print shops and on loading docks, so you might want to hold that "smarter-than-thou" attitude close the vest if you ever actually sit at a table on Friday night.
I've got an InFocus X1 and have been wanting to put Monday Night Football through it in HD (if nothing else) and I'm wondering if anyone's tried this. I've been holding off going full HD for for obvious reasons, but it seems to me the 800x600 would be a lot better than the normal NTSC signal.
I think it would really makes a difference on the long shots where you're looking at the whole field from above...
Anyone use this with a terrestrial HD receiver?
p.s. The weight aspect of the projector mentioned above is very cool - I can palm the thing. And when it's nice I take it outside and shoot against a drop-cloth on the back of the house for my person drive-in. Highly recommended.
Good point!
In my case as soon as you backed up the steering unlocked and the "evidence" was gone. I finally had the presence of mind to stop and leave everything exactly as it was, and found I couldn't move the steering wheel at all.
(It's easy to get rattled when your car makes a hard right toward the curb!)
The actual problem was a ball bearing from the steering head had fallen down the shaft and into the lock mechanism. When turning right and under a load like pulling into traffic it would engage the bloody steering lock!
This only happened like 4 times in 4 years, including the test sessions. Pretty easy to miss that.
A) They could have a bug that only comes out under particular cirumstances that weren't reached in the test.
We all know that.
B) It can take a long time to smoke out weird car problems. I had a problem with my steering lock engaging that wasn't correctly diagnosed for like two years because it was a very specific set of actions that caused it to happen. It eventually caused an accident; fortunately it just put me into a guard rail when I was making a turn. They didn't believe me until one of the mechanics was buzzing around the shop and it almost put him into the wall.
THEN they believed me.
He died in a traffic accident. Some fool took him out. I dunno why they'd let a national treasure actually drive himself to work at that age, but there ya go. He was 72 I believe.
The real problem was that nobody was pre-installing it, and IBM was also trying to push their own bus architecture on the PS/1, and people got confused about that too.
:-)
It was not hard to install if you knew what you were doing, but it could be impossible if you didn't.
Also, IBM just assumed all the printer and video companies would put out drivers, and they didn't. The smart thing would've been to PAY them and ship 'em with the package, but that didn't happen. So even if you got it installed it was entirely possible you wouldn't be able to get a decent printout or use your video card to the max.
The printing fiasco was a real shame, because Presentation Manager gave you great support for fonts, shearing, a lot of cool stuff. DeScribe was a really decent word processor/layout package.
I ported a DOS control system to OS/2 V1.3, and it rocked. Ran on a 25Mhz 386 with 8M of RAM, 50 threads, named pipes and shared memory between control processes and a separate graphics display, and it was solid as a rock in power plant conditions.
Now it sits next to my Amiga.
Ya think? Gee, now THERE's an understatement for you!
So, you're saying he was flying one-way for weeks?
When Tom DeLay wanted to find the Texas Dems he had the feds track down their plane, so I wouldn't be surprised if they put Kennedy on the Do Not Fly list to keep him from voting on a particular bill.
We've turned into your basic banana republic.
yes, what's in that pipe anywho?
Any good Sub-Genius knowns it's not dope, no my friend and DEA spy, no. It's "frop". Find THAT in the controlled substances schedule.
No, John Kerry is not suing. The photographer who own the copyright and makes his living selling his pics through a stock agency is suing. Same thing as NBC.
"Moreover, the statement that "lawyers representing John Kerry's interest threatened our Internet server with legal action unless the picture was removed" is a false statement of fact. As stated above, this firm represents George Butler. John Kerry is not, and has never been, a client of this firm. In addition, we did not threaten your Internet server, EastLink, with legal action. "
I dunno about GWB's, but the guy who sued over the Kerry photos is a photographer who sells that image via a stock image house. Y'know, makes a living on his photography. I'm sure the Vets Against Kerry group has enough money to buy the images because they're very well funded by some of GWB's old Texas buddies.
So it's not that copyright was used to stop a political message, it's that they violated his rights - the images ARE available legally.
It's possible his contract with the stock photo house actually requires him to defend their use.
I just happened to drag out my laserdisc of that last night, forgot completely that Tom Baker played the bad guy sorcerer. Add in great Ray Harryhousen effects and the fabulous Caroline Monroe, and you can't go wrong.
My favorite line: "Abdul, for someone who likes the hashish so much you should be more at peace with yourself."