We have been using all means at our disposal, legal and otherwise, to determine the who and where of the sharing of our music property. We know you wouldn't want to see your name or the name of your company dragged through the gutter. So please cease and desist before matters become unpleasant.
The fact that the first comment the authors make in their summary regarding the various merits of the fans deals not with performance or cost, but rather completely superfluous colored lights says something about this review in general.
True enough, hence the subject line here. I placed an order for 4 Coolermaster TLF-R82 fans yesterday. They're rated ~25db, according to Coolermaster. I read more comprehensive review of this fan elsewhere, and hope they offer a low noise as well as colorful alternative. Otherwise they'll be on eBay or in a junk box, or maybe I'll submit an article here reviewing them and offering to part with them cheep.:-)
A coworker and I, where discussing overclocking and case mods and toying with building a PC in one of those compact refridgerators, maybe with a little modification to the smaller freezer element. It's probably been done, tho.:-)
I had a fan where the bearings dryed out and it made obscene noises whenever it started up. Used to be easy to take apart fans and fix the bearings, but not anymore. Still, when I replaced the fan with one quieter than a churchmouse I'd find I left the computer running days after I had used it. I had only shut off the monitor.
Though, I bought a Lian-Li case with 3 fans, and added a powersupply with yet another fan, so I spent the morning ordering some very quiet fans(<35db)
OTOH, what's the record for the loudest computer? Maybe a competition with some rules, i.e. no speaker created noise, must all be from fans.
Going to the effort of "dig through layers of pages to [a] phone number" is worth the trouble. Email may be fast and convenient but you'll often get further faster by going in search of a live person and having an actual conversation.
Problem is, as I was explaining, these are becoming increasingly difficult to find. More often they direct you to an online form to fill out. I'm even pestered, when I get numbers and try to call, to try friendly helpful web pages, just before I explain how unhelpful, confusing and totally worthless the pages are.
Yeah, the DNA reference to "Beware the Leopard" is all to familiar in this sense, as well as allusions to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation ("a bunch
of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came") Adams was quite observant and rather prophetic in how bad things could be.
Share and enjoy
The Problem with CYA at eBay
on
Ebay vs. Musician
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Ebay, like many presences on the web, as George noted, are increasingly hostile to the public.
Let me explain 'hostile'. Automated responses, canned responses, lack of contact information for a real person or even having to dig through layers of pages to find email or phone numbers.
I've been a buyer and seller on eBay since late 1999 and their increasing distance between their people and customers is worrying. It's infuriating to an extreme when you find that Obvious things are hard to locate on their site and usually the novice only has volunteers on forums to go to, which are usually a complete waste, because most of the time it's social activity in the forums, rather than any real help.
Needing and seeking help on eBay is almost like going to large Builder's Square-type store, finding a box of nails you want, but on a shelf you can't reach, and having to find the employees break room to get someone to get them down for you, then having to wait for a cashier to finish a cigarette break before ringing up your order and then informing you they can only accept payment entered through a secretly hidden card scanner, somewhere in the store which you must find and your only help is from a band of gypsies which has been trapped in the store since 1994 and would rather ignore you unless you have a spare chicken. Effectively, like some of those weird chase dreams where you can't run and wake up tangled in bedsheets.
I've been following these and there's a number of manufacturers planning to make them available, Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, Fujitsu, et al, but dates have been pushed back. Seagate was to be shipping ST380023AS and ST3120023AS drives in late October, now I'm seeing late November or even December. Maxtor has stated they will ship in December, others I haven't found out about. There will be a SATA group presence at COMDEX. Here's a source of information, but it tends to be general and dated, aside from having some technical docs online, too.
What I am doing, often, is actually driving. Particularly though my corridor (where I saw a spin-out last night seconds after it happened, and just dodged a headlight lying in my lane) where keeping your mind on what drivers are doing around me is priority one. After-market stereos, mine included, have lots of tiny little buttons, too, which makes them significantly hard to jab a finger at in 0.15 (very fast reflext time, where 0.1 would be phenominal) seconds, subjecting me to those stupid Sprint PCS commercials.
It's really like having your own pool (with associated costs) vs. jumping in the local free swimming hole. Each has pros and cons, but I like the pros of satellite, particularly after having it for a couple months.
Anything you can make for $100, we can make for $40,'
Sounds like the reasoning behind something mentioned under the Power Supply Review, a couple days back, regarding produce it fast enough and let quantity make up for the high failure rates.
So how much do you pay for it? I don't pay anything.
Your time is worth nothing? Mine ain't. If I could be listening to music or news instead of blather about some product or service, buddy, I hit the channel changer. Life's too short to spend listening to commercials, particularly the ones that are annoying.
Not only that, you've freely given brain cells to remember those commercials and be programmed by their messages (Pepsi makes you think young, Doctor Scholl's cures athlete's foot, Gritty Kitty stays crunchy even in milk, etc.)
The sat radio services have been live for what, less then two years? It seems disturbing that a venture of this size wouldn't have had a longer term plan.
Recall, it was another idea conceived while the bubble was growing. Assuming they survive the downturn, and I really do hope they do, they should do fine. Imagine GM, Ford or Chrysler gearing up assembly lines for bigger cars with bigger engines, just as the arab states realized they could gouge for petroleum (~1973) A shock to the system, but it didn't kill them, even while Honda and Toyota were eating their lunch.
Yet, it has been observed in lean times people spend more money on entertainment. Isn't that a h00t? Video game sales are good, movie attendance is setting records, the pub has been jammed with people visiting our tourist-trap city lately. I'd like to see "less spending" backed up by a number of people who have discontinued cable TV (usually $30 a month for basic)
I'd pay twice as much for the service just to keep it alive.
Ssshhh!;-) But, yeah I agree with you. I have Sirius and 100 channels was a bit overwhelming at first, but now I've grown into it and it's the best thing that ever happened to radio. I really do hope it survives.
In 4 weeks I'll be in the middle of the Mohave Desert, listening to jazz, swing, the BBC, etc. where I got bugger all last year.
Not a good business model when your competiton is free.
Free? Maybe public broadcasting or community radio, but commercial radio? Nothing like hearing your music interupted by ads for zit creme, Bud, soda, etc. Maybe you've gotten accustomed to it, but man, lemme tell ya, it ain't free!
Now imagine what a piss-poor business model selling people TV over a wire and STILL including commercials and THEN charging for premium channels.
Under the new plan, which is subject to regulatory and shareholder approval, current holders of Sirius common stock will together hold 8 percent of the new common stock.
Uh, yeah, I know I'd vote for that.:)
Well, Sirius has backing to get them through next year if this happens, whereas a vote against it means they exit in early 2003, which I've never understood. I've seen debtholders refuse to sell or accept a lower price, only to see what they had become utterly worthless because the sum of the assets was worth less than the whole.
Personally, I'd like Sirius to keep going, since I signed up this summer and it's great, I scarcely listen to the local radio stations anymore, since commercial free really does spoil you (with the exception of Sirius' own occasional plugs for what's going on other channels)
With luck, enough new cars will sell to help boost the numbers. I think XM indicated they need 2 million to break even and Sirius about 4 million, but don't quote me on that. It's a lean market and people are pinching pennies.
The real barrier to satellite radio isn't your subscription, it's the cost of the special receiver and antenna, which can be about $300 combined, though I know there's a $75 rebate out there for something from Sirius and/or Kenwood.
Yes, that is correct; the pain you feel is called exercise.
I suspect many/. readers (myself included) could use a bit more of it.
Speak for yourself, I ride on weekends (and weekdays as daylight permits) 30-50 miles, including what would be cat 4-2 climbs, usually at a pace that leaves me drained and running on andrenaline (often takes hours to cool down enough to actually sleep, hey, use that rush to code or game!) Though I do get some numbness in my left hand which might be carpal related after decades of coding. I think geeks are more fit than they've been before, as many geek friends run or cycle, even competing in triathlons. And then there's probably one of the biggest geeks of all, Lance Armstrong, who even weighs his food.
Still, even a fit person would tire of holding up something which weighs only a couple ounces (e.g. the mouse) so most use is with the arm resting on desk or chair arm.
Most of my action games I play in a similar manner defining keys which are easiest to reach for the quickest reflex time, however the choice of mouse, for game-play, would probably benefit from an easier to use mouse. i.e. standard desktop mouse requires moving the entire forearm, where the gyromouse requires only slight movement of the wrist.
I've found hitting mouse buttons with my index finger very fatiguing. I have read somewhere that like carpal tunnel, there's some repetative stress injury associated with mouse clicking. From personal experience I wouldn't disagree with such a claim, as after a lot of desktop design work my indexfinger feels like it does when I carry too many plastic grocery bags around it for a while.
I suggest giving one a try. (and no, I don't work for them or hold stock in Gyration)
Thanks for the info. I've been keen on regaining desktop real estate, since my Sun monitor (actually manufactured for Sun by Sony, IIRC, Trinitron) takes up the entire depth of the desk and I'd like to have more room for keyboard, manuals, mug of tea, etc. Facing a bit less radiation is also a plus, as I spend much of the week sitting in front of a 19" CRT and would prefer not to extend that exposure at home (I've had radiation treatments years ago and it's still something I think about.)
Built in speakers might be nice, initially, but I do plan to put in some decent quality audio, something like an Audigy 2 for digitizing audio, editting and playback.
I've had a Sony laptop with LCD for about 3.5 years now and no stuck pixels and it has held up well enough to convince me that LCD should be a safe investment now. Eyestrain seems to be caused by the 60+Hz refersh rates on CRTs, as I've never had sore eyes or headaches from the LCD, whereas they come on in about 10 minutes with a CRT without reading glasses, the only place I actually wear glasses, as typically I have 20/15 (better than average) vision.
Hot Damn!
on
LCD Round-up
·
· Score: 3, Informative
And I'm about 2 weeks from getting a 17" monitor. I've looked at Sony, NEC and Viewsonic in person and so far the NEC 1700+ series look great, but still $650 is enough to give pause. There are cheaper, but you get what you pay for, and a 17" for $550 may be one sorry investment.
this has very limited applications. I think it will be difficult to play games with this, since I use the keyboard also.
And with a desktop mouse you're still taking your hand off the keyboard, onto the mouse, off the mouse, and repositioning over the keyboard. The typical use of separate input devices is your bugbear, not the mouse and whether it is hand held or deskbound. Some study revealed GUI designs which lack keyboard shortcuts and require mouse movement are far less efficient. It serves game designers well to remember this. Imagine grabbing a joystick, then leaping to the keyboard, then back to the joystick again. Same problem.
hen there is the issue of whether I want to hold my hand up in the air when using my mouse in the first place. That has to hurt after a few minutes.
Movement can be adjusted for very small arcs to very large arcs. When I had a Gyromouse I could rest my hand on the desk and just lightly move it around, or rest in on my thigh if I wasn't needing keyboard. It was far more relaxing, easier to use and responsive, when I had a Gyromouse (and I'm going to buy another one soon) than any desktop mouse or touchpad.
6 Years ago...
on
Airborne Mouse
·
· Score: 3, Informative
6 years ago I had a Gyration Gyromouse (which I've actually mentioned in a few posts over the years) and it was the same thing, except it didn't have a charger-cradle. I absolutely loved it, too bad I left the job where I used it and no employer has been willing to buy me another.
The earlier version could work on a wire or wireless (wireless operation ate batteries, though) and was a beauty for clicking because you did it with your thumb, rather than index finger. The thumb is stronger and with it's shorter radius and good dexterity can click much more effectively without fatigue than a finger.
They also had the presentation mouse, which we put in a lecture theater about the same time.
This is merely Gyration receiving some nice press from largely ignorate media.
I just got a PC Power & Cooling supply (Silencer 400, IIRC) ~138$US and it is cooling its heels in a cabinet at the moment. I certainly agonized a lot over making sure I'd have a decent source of power for whatever I jam into the cabinet over the next couple years. Seemed PC Power & Cooling is highly regarded, so I sprung for the extra. Rather a bummer THG didn't include any in their tests, as I'd like to see how they stacked up, at least representatively, if not the exact model.
The reason the power supply is idle is because I'm building a system to replace my agonizingly slow laptop (my only concession to PC's so far) and I'm getting bits of the system over time. Novemer is monitor month and looks to be an NEC 1700 job.
I was hoping for the much ballyhooed Serial ATA drives to come out, but see Seagate's ST380023AS (80G, also the 120G) drives have been pushed back from late October to late November.:-/
Slashdot Mirror
We have been using all means at our disposal, legal and otherwise, to determine the who and where of the sharing of our music property. We know you wouldn't want to see your name or the name of your company dragged through the gutter. So please cease and desist before matters become unpleasant.
Yours truly,
Hilary Rosen
RIAA Counsel
True enough, hence the subject line here. I placed an order for 4 Coolermaster TLF-R82 fans yesterday. They're rated ~25db, according to Coolermaster. I read more comprehensive review of this fan elsewhere, and hope they offer a low noise as well as colorful alternative. Otherwise they'll be on eBay or in a junk box, or maybe I'll submit an article here reviewing them and offering to part with them cheep. :-)
A coworker and I, where discussing overclocking and case mods and toying with building a PC in one of those compact refridgerators, maybe with a little modification to the smaller freezer element. It's probably been done, tho. :-)
If you overclock it, can it cool itself?
Though, I bought a Lian-Li case with 3 fans, and added a powersupply with yet another fan, so I spent the morning ordering some very quiet fans(<35db)
OTOH, what's the record for the loudest computer? Maybe a competition with some rules, i.e. no speaker created noise, must all be from fans.
Problem is, as I was explaining, these are becoming increasingly difficult to find. More often they direct you to an online form to fill out. I'm even pestered, when I get numbers and try to call, to try friendly helpful web pages, just before I explain how unhelpful, confusing and totally worthless the pages are.
Yeah, the DNA reference to "Beware the Leopard" is all to familiar in this sense, as well as allusions to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation ("a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came") Adams was quite observant and rather prophetic in how bad things could be.
Share and enjoy
Let me explain 'hostile'. Automated responses, canned responses, lack of contact information for a real person or even having to dig through layers of pages to find email or phone numbers.
I've been a buyer and seller on eBay since late 1999 and their increasing distance between their people and customers is worrying. It's infuriating to an extreme when you find that Obvious things are hard to locate on their site and usually the novice only has volunteers on forums to go to, which are usually a complete waste, because most of the time it's social activity in the forums, rather than any real help.
Needing and seeking help on eBay is almost like going to large Builder's Square-type store, finding a box of nails you want, but on a shelf you can't reach, and having to find the employees break room to get someone to get them down for you, then having to wait for a cashier to finish a cigarette break before ringing up your order and then informing you they can only accept payment entered through a secretly hidden card scanner, somewhere in the store which you must find and your only help is from a band of gypsies which has been trapped in the store since 1994 and would rather ignore you unless you have a spare chicken. Effectively, like some of those weird chase dreams where you can't run and wake up tangled in bedsheets.
Maybe they model themselves on the Prisoner.
I've been following these and there's a number of manufacturers planning to make them available, Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, Fujitsu, et al, but dates have been pushed back. Seagate was to be shipping ST380023AS and ST3120023AS drives in late October, now I'm seeing late November or even December. Maxtor has stated they will ship in December, others I haven't found out about. There will be a SATA group presence at COMDEX. Here's a source of information, but it tends to be general and dated, aside from having some technical docs online, too.
It's really like having your own pool (with associated costs) vs. jumping in the local free swimming hole. Each has pros and cons, but I like the pros of satellite, particularly after having it for a couple months.
Sounds like the reasoning behind something mentioned under the Power Supply Review, a couple days back, regarding produce it fast enough and let quantity make up for the high failure rates.
Your time is worth nothing? Mine ain't. If I could be listening to music or news instead of blather about some product or service, buddy, I hit the channel changer. Life's too short to spend listening to commercials, particularly the ones that are annoying.
Not only that, you've freely given brain cells to remember those commercials and be programmed by their messages (Pepsi makes you think young, Doctor Scholl's cures athlete's foot, Gritty Kitty stays crunchy even in milk, etc.)
Um, didn't I see something about criminal charges being filed against their CEO?
Maybe not such a good idea after all.
Recall, it was another idea conceived while the bubble was growing. Assuming they survive the downturn, and I really do hope they do, they should do fine. Imagine GM, Ford or Chrysler gearing up assembly lines for bigger cars with bigger engines, just as the arab states realized they could gouge for petroleum (~1973) A shock to the system, but it didn't kill them, even while Honda and Toyota were eating their lunch.
Yet, it has been observed in lean times people spend more money on entertainment. Isn't that a h00t? Video game sales are good, movie attendance is setting records, the pub has been jammed with people visiting our tourist-trap city lately. I'd like to see "less spending" backed up by a number of people who have discontinued cable TV (usually $30 a month for basic)
Ssshhh! ;-) But, yeah I agree with you. I have Sirius and 100 channels was a bit overwhelming at first, but now I've grown into it and it's the best thing that ever happened to radio. I really do hope it survives.
In 4 weeks I'll be in the middle of the Mohave Desert, listening to jazz, swing, the BBC, etc. where I got bugger all last year.
Free? Maybe public broadcasting or community radio, but commercial radio? Nothing like hearing your music interupted by ads for zit creme, Bud, soda, etc. Maybe you've gotten accustomed to it, but man, lemme tell ya, it ain't free!
Now imagine what a piss-poor business model selling people TV over a wire and STILL including commercials and THEN charging for premium channels.
Well, Sirius has backing to get them through next year if this happens, whereas a vote against it means they exit in early 2003, which I've never understood. I've seen debtholders refuse to sell or accept a lower price, only to see what they had become utterly worthless because the sum of the assets was worth less than the whole.
Personally, I'd like Sirius to keep going, since I signed up this summer and it's great, I scarcely listen to the local radio stations anymore, since commercial free really does spoil you (with the exception of Sirius' own occasional plugs for what's going on other channels)
With luck, enough new cars will sell to help boost the numbers. I think XM indicated they need 2 million to break even and Sirius about 4 million, but don't quote me on that. It's a lean market and people are pinching pennies.
The real barrier to satellite radio isn't your subscription, it's the cost of the special receiver and antenna, which can be about $300 combined, though I know there's a $75 rebate out there for something from Sirius and/or Kenwood.
I suspect many /. readers (myself included) could use a bit more of it.
Speak for yourself, I ride on weekends (and weekdays as daylight permits) 30-50 miles, including what would be cat 4-2 climbs, usually at a pace that leaves me drained and running on andrenaline (often takes hours to cool down enough to actually sleep, hey, use that rush to code or game!) Though I do get some numbness in my left hand which might be carpal related after decades of coding. I think geeks are more fit than they've been before, as many geek friends run or cycle, even competing in triathlons. And then there's probably one of the biggest geeks of all, Lance Armstrong, who even weighs his food.
Still, even a fit person would tire of holding up something which weighs only a couple ounces (e.g. the mouse) so most use is with the arm resting on desk or chair arm.
I've found hitting mouse buttons with my index finger very fatiguing. I have read somewhere that like carpal tunnel, there's some repetative stress injury associated with mouse clicking. From personal experience I wouldn't disagree with such a claim, as after a lot of desktop design work my indexfinger feels like it does when I carry too many plastic grocery bags around it for a while.
I suggest giving one a try. (and no, I don't work for them or hold stock in Gyration)
Built in speakers might be nice, initially, but I do plan to put in some decent quality audio, something like an Audigy 2 for digitizing audio, editting and playback.
I've had a Sony laptop with LCD for about 3.5 years now and no stuck pixels and it has held up well enough to convince me that LCD should be a safe investment now. Eyestrain seems to be caused by the 60+Hz refersh rates on CRTs, as I've never had sore eyes or headaches from the LCD, whereas they come on in about 10 minutes with a CRT without reading glasses, the only place I actually wear glasses, as typically I have 20/15 (better than average) vision.
And I'm about 2 weeks from getting a 17" monitor. I've looked at Sony, NEC and Viewsonic in person and so far the NEC 1700+ series look great, but still $650 is enough to give pause. There are cheaper, but you get what you pay for, and a 17" for $550 may be one sorry investment.
And with a desktop mouse you're still taking your hand off the keyboard, onto the mouse, off the mouse, and repositioning over the keyboard. The typical use of separate input devices is your bugbear, not the mouse and whether it is hand held or deskbound. Some study revealed GUI designs which lack keyboard shortcuts and require mouse movement are far less efficient. It serves game designers well to remember this. Imagine grabbing a joystick, then leaping to the keyboard, then back to the joystick again. Same problem.
hen there is the issue of whether I want to hold my hand up in the air when using my mouse in the first place. That has to hurt after a few minutes.
Movement can be adjusted for very small arcs to very large arcs. When I had a Gyromouse I could rest my hand on the desk and just lightly move it around, or rest in on my thigh if I wasn't needing keyboard. It was far more relaxing, easier to use and responsive, when I had a Gyromouse (and I'm going to buy another one soon) than any desktop mouse or touchpad.
The earlier version could work on a wire or wireless (wireless operation ate batteries, though) and was a beauty for clicking because you did it with your thumb, rather than index finger. The thumb is stronger and with it's shorter radius and good dexterity can click much more effectively without fatigue than a finger.
They also had the presentation mouse, which we put in a lecture theater about the same time.
This is merely Gyration receiving some nice press from largely ignorate media.
The reason the power supply is idle is because I'm building a system to replace my agonizingly slow laptop (my only concession to PC's so far) and I'm getting bits of the system over time. Novemer is monitor month and looks to be an NEC 1700 job.
I was hoping for the much ballyhooed Serial ATA drives to come out, but see Seagate's ST380023AS (80G, also the 120G) drives have been pushed back from late October to late November. :-/
You should have bought their stock on Friday, AMD is up 25.5%