" Out of the hundreds of DVD's I've burned, I've had very few (maybe 2-3) coasters. How is that mediocre?"
The number of coasters is only a small measure of media quality. I suggest you do some comparison burns on RiTEK and compare some KProbe PI/PO scans and see the real hardware error rates associated with these discs. (Of course most people don't have the hardware for this, as you can only generate the graphs with Lite-on or the latest Plextor drives.)
Try comparing the longevity of each type of discs as well. I guarantee you that RiTEK will not stand up as well as Taiyo Yuden or Ricoh in harsh conditions. Even now I have many of each type of CDR in the car, burned for music. These things have been in there in rough handling through harsh freezing winters, searing summers, frozed and thawed and baked over and over again. The T-Y's are still perfect after months and even years. The RiTEKs are developing unreadable sectors.
That is why RiTEK is not the best (though still a cost effective alternative, though I wouldn't keep a single copy of anything important on one.)
"Get Ritek DVD-/+Rs. They're the best, most reliable quality discs on the market right now. Amazon has some deals on them right now. "
"No, they're mediocre. You can get much better quality if you're willing to pay for it."
Absolutely correct. Procuring top quality CDR/DVDR optical media is a black art. The best CD-R, DVD+R and DVD-R optical media you can get is from Taiyo Yuden and disturbingly expensive. The best +Rw IMO is Ricoh. The best +R9 is yet to be seen. Ritek is still decent though, and often a very comfortable compromise between quality and expense. My preferred cost/quality compromise for +R would be Mitsubishi Chemicals DVD+R. I rarely buy -R, now so when I do purchase, I get the best.
(And of course 'the best' changes from burner to burner. Some discs like one brand more than others. Go read reviews on CDFreaks.com and see for yourself how many cheap Lite-on burners will choke on Taiyo Yuden discs. I have both a Plextor PX-708A Dual Format DVD burner and PX-W4012A 40x12x40 CDRw myself for burning purposes, and a modded Pioneer 106S DVDROM slot loader for convenience. Still I am waiting for Plextor's dual layer offering and more reviews of the Pioneer A08 and NEC 3500A DL burners as well before I invest in DL.)
The trick of course is actually finding products made by the real manufacturers. There are less than 20 companies in the world that actually manufacture DVDR or CDR discs and they are simply branded for whomever's buying them. You will not walk into Worst Buy and find any product labelled Ritek, Ricoh or Taiyo Yuden. Typically for CDR, I get FujiFilm "Made in Japan" and that is T-Y. Be careful to avoid the "Made in Taiwan" as that is Prodisc. (Note: There are many Taiwanese based CDR and DVDR manufacturers like Product, CMC, Ritek, etc. and Made in Taiwan can be any one of these depending on the brand name.) For -R, again FujiFilm boxes (not spindles,) made in Japan. I have not been able to find T-Y +R in my country, so I generally purchase Maxell +R "Made in Japan" which is from Ricoh. For +Rw, I get the boxes (not spindles) "Made in Taiwan." These are actually mislabelled and the discs inside are clearly Made in Japan. It's printed on the individual Jewel Cases and also on the discs themselves.
Where do you get these things? The genuine ones? (I've seen plenty of fake Pioneer DVD-R in Chinatowns for low prices.) I hear lots of good things about ACCA Products, though I have not shopped there myself due to the customs importation annoyances assicated with being in Canada.
Only on slashdot would this be moderated as +5, Interesting.:P
It's *so* obvious where this is wil go...
on
Virtual Girlfriend
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Upgrading to Wife 1.0
Last a friend of mine upgraded from Girlfriend 4.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's memory hog leaving few system resources for other applications. He is now noticing the Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child-processes, which is further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included in the product documentation, though other users have informed me that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.
Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself so that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. Some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BachelorParty 2.5 and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run on the system at all, causing the system to lockup when launched (even though the apps worked fine before).
Wife 1.0 provides no installation options. Thus, the installation of undesired plug-ins such as Mother-in-law 55.8 and the Brother-in-law Beta is unavoidable. Also system performance seems to diminish each passing day.
Some features my friend would like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0:
A "don't remind me again button" A Minimize button The ability to delete the "headache" file An install feature that provides an option to uninstall 2.0 version without loss of other system resources An option to run the network driver in "promiscuous mode" allowing the systems hardware probe to be much more useful/effective.
I myself wish I had decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 3.0. Even here, however, I have found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 4.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 3.0 first, otherwise the two versions of Girlfriend will have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port.
Other users have told me that this is a long-standing problem that I should have been aware of. Guess that explains what happened to versions 1 & 2.
To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 3.0 doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system. Another identified problem is that all versions of Girlfriend have annoying little messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.
VIRUS ALERT
All users should be aware that Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MS Money files before doing the uninstall itself. Once that happens, Mistress 1.1. won't install and you will get an "insufficient resources" error message. To avoid the aforementioned bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and 'never' run any file transfer applications (such as Laplink) between the two systems.
I've used GMail for about 2 months now and I have my primary email at my domain name cc everything to it. Around 95%+ of the "spam" identified by GMail consists of false positivies.
Mind you, I am careful with my info and I have only received one actual spam to my Gmail account in that time. And yes, it was correctly tagged.
"Yeah, I had to use google to find the Terminal app in OS X."
"Couldn't you just have used the OS X find command? Isn't Google a bit of overkill for this?"
You forget: When new to OS X, you don't know that there's a find command, or even that the 'Terminal' app is called 'Terminal' . (Actually I never really used the find command until I saw steve using it in iTunes in the 2004 WWDC video.)
When I got my first OS X machine in 2003, I searched for a while in the finder, and then ended up asking my mac-addict friend who told me where to find it. While OS X overall is wonderful, I do believe that opening a shell in particular is not an intuitive activity for users new to the environment.
"I can guarantee you, without question, that they purchased at least one iPod over at Real, since they had to test write their software for it (requiring testing, etc.). Everyone using an iPod agreed to the software agreement involved in its use. Real is fucking screwed here, and I cannot believe they did something this dumb.
There are some companies you can piss off, and Apple isn't really one of them here."
Really, I find it very amusing that so many people here say that Real is screwed.
Real has just built a product that complements the iPod and gives people more of a reason to buy it at no cost to Apple. Why would Apple sue Real? The worst case scenario here is that more iTunes sales come to pass.
"...is that somebody might actually get paid for elevator music."
This sounds like a huge SCAM to me.
"The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada would also like to extend this policy to 'coffee shops, clothing stores, lounges, elevators..."
"If I could just hook the thing up to my machine and put my music on it, then fine. But I have concerns about the DRM, about having to use Mac or Windows, and about the price."
It's amazing how a few facts can dispel FUD like this.
The iPod acts like a regular hard drive in an enclosure. There is no need to have iTunes or even a Mac or a Windows box. You can access the filesystem directly and copy your files over.
There are freely available m4a and mp3 encoders out there for you to encode to you heart's content. AAC is an open standard. Also it supports.wav and.aiff formats, the former of which is pretty universal.
As to DRM: What DRM, aside from the music store? If you don't want that, then don't use the iTMS. (Good luck finding another clearly legal online music store with less restrictive terms.) Just buy your physical CDs and rip to your heart's content.
Expensive I can understand, buy how exactly does the iPod lock you into any platform you don't want to use?
"
Considering that you're more likely to trip over a siberian tiger in Manhattan than to find an OGG file, the ability to play OGG is just an icing on the cake, and not really necessary in a portable music player."
Clearly you do not surf illegal download sites. Many bittorrent album downloads are now in ogg and ape (monkey's audio, a lossless format.)
"It's your legal right to clear the package yourself (or get your own broker). Of course, in those cases the shipper says you have to pick it up in their warehouse in {vancouver, toronto, st. john's NFLD, whichever is farthest from you}.
The worst for this is UPS, then DHL. The best method to ship to Canada is USPS (yes, the post office). Canada post charges a flat $5 for packages, and that's usually just to assess GST charges (which you have to pay anyway)."
DHL is bad?
Earlier this year I bought a bunch of stuff from amazon.co.jp and had it shipped to me in Canada via DHL. It arrived at my address in 2 days in perfect condition. Then 3 weeks later the customs bill showed up and it ONLY had the Canada Customs $5 scam fee plus the normal 15% taxes. There was no brokerage fee and no hassle. My package was not held hostage.
(Actually paying the bill was a bitch though. They don't give you instructions or anything. They should have a web form for that.)
"Given the amount of problems suffered by the iBook line, I might prefer to pay $125 to be tied to my desk just so that I won't have to worry about the motherboard shorting out and having to ship my iBook back to the mothership for AppleCare service."
The logic board problems are restricted to only the G3 iBooks. They do not exist in the current line of G4 iBooks.
Btw, my white G3 iBook is 17 months old now and, except for a battery problem, has been solid as a rock. (They shipped me a new battery for free, btw.)
"... all the antivirus companies like Symantec, Sophos, etc. just start classifying IE as a virus. Get rid of IE and most of these viruses/worms will have nowhere to go."
Anti-virus companies would never do this. It would put them out of business!
"What would happen is that you send an email and in order to send it your computer must solve a problem for every recipient of your email that would only take a part of a second so that you wouldn't notice it, but a spammer, who must send tons of email, would. The logistics is quite difficult, but MIT's Tech Magazine has had several interesting articles on the subject."
In case you aren't aware, Future Shop is owned by Best Buy.
(It hasn't always been like this. They were puchased within the last few years. But even before they were acquired, they did do the whole extended warranty / long lineups / etc type shit.)
"I honestly believe that somewhere in the Best Buy training manual, there is a section under computer/technical questions that says: "If you don't know the answer to a customer's technical question, make something up that sounds good." I have personally tested BB employees by asking them technical questions I know the answer to (or know there isn't a good answer) and heard some pretty entertaining made-up answers. I encourage you to try this."
Good point.
My 'technical tester question' for salesdrones is to ask: "Does the product have LRF?" I got the line from my boss, who has heard various responses, such as: "Absolutely!" "LRF is vapourware." "LRF is overrated."
"The trick is when your laptop is about to go out of warranty find a power supply with the same plug but has reversed polarity. If it lives up the amperage."
This person is the 'demon shopper' that best buy and other retailers don't want to let into the store. Getting what you paid for and getting decent warranty service is one thing, but deliberately abusing the store policies is another.
(Note: We only put the accent on when Americans are around. They think they're laughing at us, but in reality it's us laughing at them for being so damn gullible and easily amused. If they get tired of that, we weird them out with bagged milk.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
The number of coasters is only a small measure of media quality. I suggest you do some comparison burns on RiTEK and compare some KProbe PI/PO scans and see the real hardware error rates associated with these discs. (Of course most people don't have the hardware for this, as you can only generate the graphs with Lite-on or the latest Plextor drives.)
Try comparing the longevity of each type of discs as well. I guarantee you that RiTEK will not stand up as well as Taiyo Yuden or Ricoh in harsh conditions. Even now I have many of each type of CDR in the car, burned for music. These things have been in there in rough handling through harsh freezing winters, searing summers, frozed and thawed and baked over and over again. The T-Y's are still perfect after months and even years. The RiTEKs are developing unreadable sectors.
That is why RiTEK is not the best (though still a cost effective alternative, though I wouldn't keep a single copy of anything important on one.)
"No, they're mediocre. You can get much better quality if you're willing to pay for it."
Absolutely correct. Procuring top quality CDR/DVDR optical media is a black art. The best CD-R, DVD+R and DVD-R optical media you can get is from Taiyo Yuden and disturbingly expensive. The best +Rw IMO is Ricoh. The best +R9 is yet to be seen. Ritek is still decent though, and often a very comfortable compromise between quality and expense. My preferred cost/quality compromise for +R would be Mitsubishi Chemicals DVD+R. I rarely buy -R, now so when I do purchase, I get the best.
(And of course 'the best' changes from burner to burner. Some discs like one brand more than others. Go read reviews on CDFreaks.com and see for yourself how many cheap Lite-on burners will choke on Taiyo Yuden discs. I have both a Plextor PX-708A Dual Format DVD burner and PX-W4012A 40x12x40 CDRw myself for burning purposes, and a modded Pioneer 106S DVDROM slot loader for convenience. Still I am waiting for Plextor's dual layer offering and more reviews of the Pioneer A08 and NEC 3500A DL burners as well before I invest in DL.)
The trick of course is actually finding products made by the real manufacturers. There are less than 20 companies in the world that actually manufacture DVDR or CDR discs and they are simply branded for whomever's buying them. You will not walk into Worst Buy and find any product labelled Ritek, Ricoh or Taiyo Yuden. Typically for CDR, I get FujiFilm "Made in Japan" and that is T-Y. Be careful to avoid the "Made in Taiwan" as that is Prodisc. (Note: There are many Taiwanese based CDR and DVDR manufacturers like Product, CMC, Ritek, etc. and Made in Taiwan can be any one of these depending on the brand name.) For -R, again FujiFilm boxes (not spindles,) made in Japan. I have not been able to find T-Y +R in my country, so I generally purchase Maxell +R "Made in Japan" which is from Ricoh. For +Rw, I get the boxes (not spindles) "Made in Taiwan." These are actually mislabelled and the discs inside are clearly Made in Japan. It's printed on the individual Jewel Cases and also on the discs themselves.
Where do you get these things? The genuine ones? (I've seen plenty of fake Pioneer DVD-R in Chinatowns for low prices.) I hear lots of good things about ACCA Products, though I have not shopped there myself due to the customs importation annoyances assicated with being in Canada.
Only on slashdot would this be moderated as +5, Interesting. :P
Upgrading to Wife 1.0
Last a friend of mine upgraded from Girlfriend 4.0 to Wife 1.0 and found
that it's memory hog leaving few system resources for other applications.
He is now noticing the Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child-processes, which is
further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular
phenomenon was included in the product documentation, though other users
have informed me that this is to be expected due to the nature of the
application.
Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself so that it is always launched at
system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. Some
applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BachelorParty 2.5 and PubNight 7.0
are no longer able to run on the system at all, causing the system to
lockup when launched (even though the apps worked fine before).
Wife 1.0 provides no installation options. Thus, the installation of
undesired plug-ins such as Mother-in-law 55.8 and the Brother-in-law Beta
is unavoidable. Also system performance seems to diminish each passing day.
Some features my friend would like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0:
A "don't remind me again button"
A Minimize button
The ability to delete the "headache" file
An install feature that provides an option to uninstall 2.0 version
without loss of other system resources
An option to run the network driver in "promiscuous mode" allowing the
systems hardware probe to be much more useful/effective.
I myself wish I had decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with
Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 3.0. Even here, however, I have found
many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 4.0. You must
uninstall Girlfriend 3.0 first, otherwise the two versions of Girlfriend
will have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port.
Other users have told me that this is a long-standing problem that I
should have been aware of. Guess that explains what happened to versions 1
& 2.
To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 3.0 doesn't
work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the
system. Another identified problem is that all versions of Girlfriend have
annoying little messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.
VIRUS ALERT
All users should be aware that Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you
try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will
delete MS Money files before doing the uninstall itself. Once that
happens, Mistress 1.1. won't install and you will get an "insufficient
resources" error message. To avoid the aforementioned bug, try installing
Mistress 1.1 on a different system and 'never'
run any file transfer applications (such as Laplink) between the two
systems.
Mind you, I am careful with my info and I have only received one actual spam to my Gmail account in that time. And yes, it was correctly tagged.
Clearly you did not excel in learning how to use the spellchecker. ;)
"Couldn't you just have used the OS X find command? Isn't Google a bit of overkill for this?"
You forget: When new to OS X, you don't know that there's a find command, or even that the 'Terminal' app is called 'Terminal' . (Actually I never really used the find command until I saw steve using it in iTunes in the 2004 WWDC video.)
When I got my first OS X machine in 2003, I searched for a while in the finder, and then ended up asking my mac-addict friend who told me where to find it. While OS X overall is wonderful, I do believe that opening a shell in particular is not an intuitive activity for users new to the environment.
Really, I find it very amusing that so many people here say that Real is screwed.
Real has just built a product that complements the iPod and gives people more of a reason to buy it at no cost to Apple. Why would Apple sue Real? The worst case scenario here is that more iTunes sales come to pass.
This sounds like a huge SCAM to me.
"The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada would also like to extend this policy to 'coffee shops, clothing stores, lounges, elevators..."
Yep, I was right.
It's amazing how a few facts can dispel FUD like this.
The iPod acts like a regular hard drive in an enclosure. There is no need to have iTunes or even a Mac or a Windows box. You can access the filesystem directly and copy your files over.
There are freely available m4a and mp3 encoders out there for you to encode to you heart's content. AAC is an open standard. Also it supports .wav and .aiff formats, the former of which is pretty universal.
As to DRM: What DRM, aside from the music store? If you don't want that, then don't use the iTMS. (Good luck finding another clearly legal online music store with less restrictive terms.) Just buy your physical CDs and rip to your heart's content.
Expensive I can understand, buy how exactly does the iPod lock you into any platform you don't want to use?
You have just been educated. Have a nice day.
Clearly you do not surf illegal download sites. Many bittorrent album downloads are now in ogg and ape (monkey's audio, a lossless format.)
DHL is bad?
Earlier this year I bought a bunch of stuff from amazon.co.jp and had it shipped to me in Canada via DHL. It arrived at my address in 2 days in perfect condition. Then 3 weeks later the customs bill showed up and it ONLY had the Canada Customs $5 scam fee plus the normal 15% taxes. There was no brokerage fee and no hassle. My package was not held hostage.
(Actually paying the bill was a bitch though. They don't give you instructions or anything. They should have a web form for that.)
Probably true. Amazon.com won't ship many electronics or software to Canada because the laws about warranties are different.
The logic board problems are restricted to only the G3 iBooks. They do not exist in the current line of G4 iBooks.
Btw, my white G3 iBook is 17 months old now and, except for a battery problem, has been solid as a rock. (They shipped me a new battery for free, btw.)
Fortunately my mac is obsolete and won't run StarCraft.
Yay for productivity!
Anti-virus companies would never do this. It would put them out of business!
This was announced by microsoft several months ago.
"'Fewer' doesn't help; all they need is one. "
Though if it's only one, it'd sure make it easy to blacklist and be done with it.
Heh, this was actually featured on my Real Time Systems final exam last Winter. We had to express the Avian Carrier RFC using petri net modelling.
shoot me now.
I stand corrected.
Sorry.
(It hasn't always been like this. They were puchased within the last few years. But even before they were acquired, they did do the whole extended warranty / long lineups / etc type shit.)
Good point.
My 'technical tester question' for salesdrones is to ask: "Does the product have LRF?" I got the line from my boss, who has heard various responses, such as: "Absolutely!" "LRF is vapourware." "LRF is overrated."
(LRF == Little Rubber Feet : P)
This person is the 'demon shopper' that best buy and other retailers don't want to let into the store. Getting what you paid for and getting decent warranty service is one thing, but deliberately abusing the store policies is another.
(Note: We only put the accent on when Americans are around. They think they're laughing at us, but in reality it's us laughing at them for being so damn gullible and easily amused. If they get tired of that, we weird them out with bagged milk. ;-)
FYI: Tim Hortons, the ultimate icon of Canadian culture and ideals, was bought out by Wendy's.