What is considered actively revised, promoted, and/or otherwise used commercially? That may be as simple as posting a list of books or recordings for sale or for hire on a corporate website. The promotion does not have to be successful. This would be a promotion: "Use songs on this big list of really old obscure stuff as elevator music or background entertainment for your customers, act now and get a one year license for three songs for the price of a single song!"
Sounds reasonable in theory but I see a large hole for abuse. Copyrights would then be assigned to individuals under a contract that would include exclusive rights to that corporation to use that copyright, not really any different than what is happening now. All the time and effort to make such a law would be side stepped in minutes.
says this is being done to promote penetration of broadband service in the state
Yeah. Just like the limiting of open access to cable lines was to increase broadband access, just like the long term contracts and monopoly status in areas were to increase broadband access. Just like promises of upgrades for certain tax breaks and rate increases were to increase broadband access.
Cable and phone companies perpetual promise to deliver if... rinse, lather, and repeat.
You do not get something for nothing, the cheap subsidized phones are paid for by higher monthly fees. Considering only that aspect of the mobile industry, the consumers would come out even from a money standpoint if the phones and monthly service we prised fairly. What the contracts and subsidized phones allow the carriers to do is tie you into their service for the contract length and make you pay way more for a replacement phone if you would ever need one. The perpetual cycle starts over every year or so when you are eligible for another subsidized phone with a contract extension. The phone companies then make sure they will get their money back from selling the phone artificially cheaper with the whopping ETFs.
IMHO, price the phone fairly and break down the artificial carrier locked phones, and price the service separately. Ideally, bring your own phone would be better for everyone. This will never happen as all of the US carriers are working together to keep themselves isolated from each other.
Getting off topic here but there will never be a carrier that meets everyone needs, you will have to make sacrifices for any carrier you choose, fair enough but many of the sacrifices are on purpose by the carrier because of the methods they currently use.
If the punishment for rape was the same as for murder, there would be NO incentive for a criminal to stop at rape. Think about that. Suppose life in prison without parole was the punishment for both. If you rape someone and let them go without killing them, there is now a witness that can testify against you. If that person does describe you and you are caught, you are going to get the same punishment so why wouldn't the criminal just kill them? Maybe I'm wrong and the rapes would go down? Maybe criminals do not think it through to the punishment stage enough that either way would make a difference.
In my state, the sex offender list gives the crime committed, not in extreme detail but I know that "Unlawful sex with a minor" does not mean the person was caught pissing over by the pine tree.
But it has saved me from the wrath of Wife and saved a lot of priceless family foto's.
If I'm reading this right, I do not agree with your theory at all. RAID is not a backup solution, it is for availability and/or speed. One slip of the mouse, one accidental save over, one virus, one power fluctuation, one random controller anomoly, an OS issue (assuming your RAID setup also contained your boot drives) and the list goes on.. and your RAID setup will happily wipe out the data across all of your drives leaving you with nothing. Okay, your RAID setup does save you from a single HD failure but nothing else, there are many other problems that can cause data loss that you do not seem to be considering.
But some 300-500GB USB external hard drives. They are like $70-$100 now. Plug it into your Linux/Windows machine and share it out. Not as sexy but it will work. You can use rsync or the windows equivalent ntbackup or robocopy to back it up to another drive somewhere on your network. Hell, $100 for a 500GB external, buy two and plug one in periodically and copy one to the other with your scheduler.
There is no raid controllers and setup to worry about, no elaborate "recovery process" to follow if there is a failure, never a need to open up the computer, nothing special needed for installation (plug them in and share them out), and the external drives can be plugged into any USB port on any computer and mounted. Total cost for 500GB of "network" storage backed up to another 500GB drive on your desired schedule will be about $200 +tax.
As with any NAS or backup solution for the home... Speed, Reliability, Cheap. Pick any two.
VZW here wants you to pay for everything you can do with your phone. I'm surprised you don't get commercials while dialing from or to VZW handsets...oh...right...crappy pop ringers...
What if Apple signed their US exclusive agreement with Verizon? Would you have the same opinion? What if you were given a choice with the iPhone to use AT&T or Verizon. Who would you go with and why? Don't you think Verizon and AT&T would then compete and provide you better service and prices for your business and YOU would benefit from that? I don't care who or if Apple singed an exclusive agreement with myself but I would see the benefits as an end user to have choice. Obviously some countries have different opinions on what is allowed and not allowed or look at these things a little more then others do. I know that had the US government not made some specific laws, we would all be buying tires and gas from the same car company that we bought are cars from. For the same reasons I do not have to buy an iPhone if I do not like the arrangements, Apple does not have to sell the iPhone if it does not like the arrangements either. Does the consumer benefit overall from either of those decisions? It depends. I've found that these agreements usually lead to similar agreements across all of the competitors selling the same services or products. Think DirecTV with the NFL compared to Dish with MLB. Sirius with NFL compared to XM with MLB. Comcast bundling the NFL network with other sports packages and not offering it separately. Comcast and Verizon with their own versions of the triple play. Not all of these are directly related to the iPhone but the concept is the same and everyone has an opinion on whether they are getting a deal or it is unfair.
You don't have to drag it to the taskbar, just double click on it and it will open, or you can drag it to a desktop icon representing the application you want to open it will, the app will then open with that document you dropped on it. There is no reason to drag it to the currently running app that is showing in the task bar. After all, it is a task bar of what is already running, not a launching point for additional items you would like to open. At least that the way it seems to me I agree though, I guess it would not hurt to accept items dropped to a running task but what would the default be? Open a second instance or incorporate the dropped item into the existing item already opened?
What are you left with? Not a thing. All your money that you spent on music is gone, and you have nothing to show for it. That's you putting your ability to listen to the playlists you want at the mercy of things entirely outside of your control.
That does not make sense, what you have to show for it is every month you had the service, you had unlimited access to millions of full length songs for about the same price as a single CD. You have cable or satellite TV right? What do you have to show for paying at least $50/month for the last 10 years? How about a health club membership? After the first year, you still do not own any exercise equipment that you can work out on but you did get to use a wide variety of top notch equipment for the year you were a paying member.
Subscription models are not for everyone but for some people, they get their monies worth from them.
Right now, it states "Website coming 9am, November 1, 2007" but none of the links work. I did find this though:
gOS is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. I am not familiar with that license but it does have a really long name.
This technology is already available and incorporated into a lot of audio/video equipment. DVD players (even the cheaper ones), AV receivers, computer sounds card drivers (SB Live and above through the EAX control panel for example) and even some car stereos have this capability already. Dig deep into the menus and you may find it on some of your equipment as well. Typically called a sound normalizer, dynamic range compression, gain compressor, or something along those lines. These systems do not work across the entire dynamic range though, they typically leave the lower and middle ends untouched and only cut back on the peaks. I don't like any compression effect myself. A shift on the fly method you mentioned does not make sense though as you either want to compress the peaks or not compress the peaks. What the CD makers and radio stations are doing is different. They are raising the overall average volume by raising softer passages so they are now loud and the louder parts or peaks are only ever so slightly louder then the softer parts.
I had a 15 pack of solar lights from Costco. One of them was bad. I took the single broken light to Costco and the person reached under the counter and handed me a new one. Apparently I was not the first person to show up with a broken light. Worked out for both of us.
HP ships their servers with different passwords for the iLO server remote administration, the login is Administrator and the password is the serial number of the server. This information is attached in plain text and in bar code form to a paper tag tied to the server. You should obviously still change these to something else but at least it is not a single default one across all of the servers.
p.s. you can add an unlocked CDMA phone (if you can find one) to your Verizon plan using a form online.
Really? Sprint will only activate phones that it has sold and verified by the ESN. I tried to activate a Quest phone that was the same exact model as the Sprint version but they refused to do it. I had the MSL as well. A side story but the most frustrating part of this is I had called Sprint before I bought the phone and gave them the ESN. They verified it was clear and that it could be activated. When I got the phone I called to activate it and they said no can do, the ESN does not exist in their system. The first CS rep I had called lied about the phone and left no case notes. I was SOL. Rumor has it that getting your ESN and phone information into the Sprint database is a relatively easy task but finding the right person at Sprint to do it for you is just about impossible.
I would love for the government to get into the last mile (or wi-fi in this case). This way, we get the lines put in for about the same price and could potentially have competition for the service over those lines. Without a local governing body managing the last mile, we will forever be stuck with what we have now which is a monopoly with mediocre service. In the US, we basically have a government run last mile now but by convention, that same government chooses one company to run it AND provide the service. In this specific case in CHI though, the government is still choosing a single carrier which does not make sense because the initial investment of the wires and poles and property taking via right of way is almost non existent, only equipment and design. Seems like anyone with bandwidth would be a suitable candidate, it does not have to be "phone company".
IMO the difference between Slayer on CD and tape is more immediately obvious than the difference between a classical track on CD and tape.
For me, the biggest difference was the dynamic range and IMO, that stands out a lot more on a classical piece compared to Slayer (yes, I have them both on LP, cassette, and CD). Unless you were using a Nakamichi Dragon deck or some of the upper tier models, the dynamic range of a cassette was horrible because it was a combination of the noise or hiss and the limits of the tape, even with a metal tape and Dolby B/C or DBX applied (which introduced their own artifacts).
Of course I have not listened to an actual tape in probably 15 years and I'll never have (or want) a decent tape player or 4 track reel deck like I had in the 80's but the first thing I noticed back then about CD's was the dynamic range closely followed by the relatively flat frequency response.
I'm not buying your theory. Unless the crack heads hanging on the streets have a few friends in IT and know that those IT friends will buy tapes, they are not going to break into a car for them. I can't picture a random theft and lugging those things around trying to find someone to buy them. A lot of people reading slashdot are in IT in some form, have you ever been approached by a crack head selling backup tapes? Car stereos, cds, cell phones, maybe, not some Ultrium LTO3s
Word of mouth I assume. I know and have got at least 10 people to sign up with them (ouch). I never saw a Sunrocket commercial or banner ad. I guess their lack of advertising was saving them money? Look at Vonage though, everyone has heard of them, they are the number 1 VOIP provider and still losing extreme amounts of money. Is one method better then the other? Well I guess Vonage is still around but I would not say they are any better financially then Sunrocket is/was.
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edituser?sig="blow me"
If you are logged into/. and you happen to click on that link, your signature will be changed to "blow me" (okay, I know nothing about scripting and this is just an example but you get the idea)
How do I supply this link to your browser? One example is on a malicious web page in an image tag, there are many others. Since you have a/. set to log in automatically and save your cookie, any request from your machine to my malicious site would change your signature.
If you have 20 devices and services that attach, connect to, or interface with a widget by CompanyX, you are more then likely going to be buying another widget made by CompanyX when yours breaks and the cycle will continue. If you decide that something else might be a good choice and do not buy another widget made by CompanyX, the other 19 things that you invested in, that are integrated into your vehicle, that you have extended contracts on etc.. are now useless or reduced in capability. The 20 things you have all work together and are part of a team of devices for integration. Those 20 things are not as useful without the other 19. A widget docking station you paid for in your car is of no value any longer if you do not have a widget to connect to it. The docking station on your desk is not a useful any longer without an widget to connect to it. I am not trying to pick on any widget made by any compnay, only the concept of getting yourself stuck into a circle of products. What does stuff ending up in a landfill have to do with this concept anyway? I would say that would make the problem I point out worse because you keep buying stuff for to maintain the same integration over and over again.
I think you missed my point and missed my last statement that said "i am familiar with the concept that other computer companies are kind of doing the same thing which does not make the situation any better or justify it." I don't need the "MS is the evil as well" speech either because my post was just as anti MS as it was anti Apple. My goal is not to avoid Apple or MS, it is to avoid being trapped by an increasing number of things that require each other to be useful. I just bought a portable GPS unit, it runs Windows CE, I don't give a crap what it runs, I do not need a Windows home PC or a Windows cell phone to use it, it is a stand alone product that works regardless of me having a Linux or an Apple computer. If that same GPS unit required me to have a Windows Home PC, a subscription to MSN, a Windows antenna and a Windows CE phone for it to work, I would not have bought it. My point was putting all of your eggs in one basket and dedicating you future purchases towards one product like some people are with the iPod accessories and services seems too much like a trap to me. I could buy an iPod and buy nothing else to go with it and not be trapped in anything and I would be fine with that. I could have a Q (which I did in the past and got rid of it). With that Q, am I also buying from the Motorola music website, the Motorola compatible dock in the dashboard of my car, a Motorola streaming solution, a Motorola compatible desktop docking station, using a Motorola website to also buy videos, using a Motorola device to hear music along with a portable Motorola music player as well? Imagine a few years down the road and I do not Motorola's offerings? I have a shit load of stuff that is now completely useless to me. Substitute the word Motorola for MS or Apple and the same applies. The OS that may run a lot of those devices may be MS, it may not be MS. I am not saying that being an all in one solution is not a good choice for some but it is NOT a choice I will make regardless of Apple, MS, or Motorola.
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What is considered actively revised, promoted, and/or otherwise used commercially? That may be as simple as posting a list of books or recordings for sale or for hire on a corporate website. The promotion does not have to be successful. This would be a promotion:
"Use songs on this big list of really old obscure stuff as elevator music or background entertainment for your customers, act now and get a one year license for three songs for the price of a single song!"
Sounds reasonable in theory but I see a large hole for abuse. Copyrights would then be assigned to individuals under a contract that would include exclusive rights to that corporation to use that copyright, not really any different than what is happening now. All the time and effort to make such a law would be side stepped in minutes.
says this is being done to promote penetration of broadband service in the state
Yeah. Just like the limiting of open access to cable lines was to increase broadband access, just like the long term contracts and monopoly status in areas were to increase broadband access. Just like promises of upgrades for certain tax breaks and rate increases were to increase broadband access.
Cable and phone companies perpetual promise to deliver if... rinse, lather, and repeat.
You do not get something for nothing, the cheap subsidized phones are paid for by higher monthly fees. Considering only that aspect of the mobile industry, the consumers would come out even from a money standpoint if the phones and monthly service we prised fairly. What the contracts and subsidized phones allow the carriers to do is tie you into their service for the contract length and make you pay way more for a replacement phone if you would ever need one. The perpetual cycle starts over every year or so when you are eligible for another subsidized phone with a contract extension. The phone companies then make sure they will get their money back from selling the phone artificially cheaper with the whopping ETFs.
IMHO, price the phone fairly and break down the artificial carrier locked phones, and price the service separately. Ideally, bring your own phone would be better for everyone. This will never happen as all of the US carriers are working together to keep themselves isolated from each other.
Getting off topic here but there will never be a carrier that meets everyone needs, you will have to make sacrifices for any carrier you choose, fair enough but many of the sacrifices are on purpose by the carrier because of the methods they currently use.
If the punishment for rape was the same as for murder, there would be NO incentive for a criminal to stop at rape. Think about that. Suppose life in prison without parole was the punishment for both. If you rape someone and let them go without killing them, there is now a witness that can testify against you. If that person does describe you and you are caught, you are going to get the same punishment so why wouldn't the criminal just kill them? Maybe I'm wrong and the rapes would go down? Maybe criminals do not think it through to the punishment stage enough that either way would make a difference.
In my state, the sex offender list gives the crime committed, not in extreme detail but I know that "Unlawful sex with a minor" does not mean the person was caught pissing over by the pine tree.
But it has saved me from the wrath of Wife and saved a lot of priceless family foto's.
If I'm reading this right, I do not agree with your theory at all. RAID is not a backup solution, it is for availability and/or speed. One slip of the mouse, one accidental save over, one virus, one power fluctuation, one random controller anomoly, an OS issue (assuming your RAID setup also contained your boot drives) and the list goes on.. and your RAID setup will happily wipe out the data across all of your drives leaving you with nothing. Okay, your RAID setup does save you from a single HD failure but nothing else, there are many other problems that can cause data loss that you do not seem to be considering.
But some 300-500GB USB external hard drives. They are like $70-$100 now. Plug it into your Linux/Windows machine and share it out. Not as sexy but it will work. You can use rsync or the windows equivalent ntbackup or robocopy to back it up to another drive somewhere on your network. Hell, $100 for a 500GB external, buy two and plug one in periodically and copy one to the other with your scheduler.
There is no raid controllers and setup to worry about, no elaborate "recovery process" to follow if there is a failure, never a need to open up the computer, nothing special needed for installation (plug them in and share them out), and the external drives can be plugged into any USB port on any computer and mounted. Total cost for 500GB of "network" storage backed up to another 500GB drive on your desired schedule will be about $200 +tax.
As with any NAS or backup solution for the home... Speed, Reliability, Cheap. Pick any two.
VZW here wants you to pay for everything you can do with your phone. I'm surprised you don't get commercials while dialing from or to VZW handsets...oh...right...crappy pop ringers...
What if Apple signed their US exclusive agreement with Verizon? Would you have the same opinion? What if you were given a choice with the iPhone to use AT&T or Verizon. Who would you go with and why? Don't you think Verizon and AT&T would then compete and provide you better service and prices for your business and YOU would benefit from that?
I don't care who or if Apple singed an exclusive agreement with myself but I would see the benefits as an end user to have choice. Obviously some countries have different opinions on what is allowed and not allowed or look at these things a little more then others do. I know that had the US government not made some specific laws, we would all be buying tires and gas from the same car company that we bought are cars from.
For the same reasons I do not have to buy an iPhone if I do not like the arrangements, Apple does not have to sell the iPhone if it does not like the arrangements either. Does the consumer benefit overall from either of those decisions? It depends. I've found that these agreements usually lead to similar agreements across all of the competitors selling the same services or products. Think DirecTV with the NFL compared to Dish with MLB. Sirius with NFL compared to XM with MLB. Comcast bundling the NFL network with other sports packages and not offering it separately. Comcast and Verizon with their own versions of the triple play. Not all of these are directly related to the iPhone but the concept is the same and everyone has an opinion on whether they are getting a deal or it is unfair.
You don't have to drag it to the taskbar, just double click on it and it will open, or you can drag it to a desktop icon representing the application you want to open it will, the app will then open with that document you dropped on it. There is no reason to drag it to the currently running app that is showing in the task bar. After all, it is a task bar of what is already running, not a launching point for additional items you would like to open. At least that the way it seems to me
I agree though, I guess it would not hurt to accept items dropped to a running task but what would the default be? Open a second instance or incorporate the dropped item into the existing item already opened?
What are you left with? Not a thing. All your money that you spent on music is gone, and you have nothing to show for it. That's you putting your ability to listen to the playlists you want at the mercy of things entirely outside of your control.
That does not make sense, what you have to show for it is every month you had the service, you had unlimited access to millions of full length songs for about the same price as a single CD. You have cable or satellite TV right? What do you have to show for paying at least $50/month for the last 10 years? How about a health club membership? After the first year, you still do not own any exercise equipment that you can work out on but you did get to use a wide variety of top notch equipment for the year you were a paying member.
Subscription models are not for everyone but for some people, they get their monies worth from them.
How often is gOS updated?
Well, apparently their web site is not even up yet
http://www.thinkgos.com/index.html
Right now, it states "Website coming 9am, November 1, 2007" but none of the links work.
I did find this though:
gOS is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I am not familiar with that license but it does have a really long name.
This technology is already available and incorporated into a lot of audio/video equipment. DVD players (even the cheaper ones), AV receivers, computer sounds card drivers (SB Live and above through the EAX control panel for example) and even some car stereos have this capability already. Dig deep into the menus and you may find it on some of your equipment as well. Typically called a sound normalizer, dynamic range compression, gain compressor, or something along those lines. These systems do not work across the entire dynamic range though, they typically leave the lower and middle ends untouched and only cut back on the peaks.
I don't like any compression effect myself. A shift on the fly method you mentioned does not make sense though as you either want to compress the peaks or not compress the peaks.
What the CD makers and radio stations are doing is different. They are raising the overall average volume by raising softer passages so they are now loud and the louder parts or peaks are only ever so slightly louder then the softer parts.
I had a 15 pack of solar lights from Costco. One of them was bad. I took the single broken light to Costco and the person reached under the counter and handed me a new one. Apparently I was not the first person to show up with a broken light. Worked out for both of us.
HP ships their servers with different passwords for the iLO server remote administration, the login is Administrator and the password is the serial number of the server. This information is attached in plain text and in bar code form to a paper tag tied to the server. You should obviously still change these to something else but at least it is not a single default one across all of the servers.
p.s. you can add an unlocked CDMA phone (if you can find one) to your Verizon plan using a form online.
Really? Sprint will only activate phones that it has sold and verified by the ESN. I tried to activate a Quest phone that was the same exact model as the Sprint version but they refused to do it. I had the MSL as well. A side story but the most frustrating part of this is I had called Sprint before I bought the phone and gave them the ESN. They verified it was clear and that it could be activated. When I got the phone I called to activate it and they said no can do, the ESN does not exist in their system. The first CS rep I had called lied about the phone and left no case notes. I was SOL. Rumor has it that getting your ESN and phone information into the Sprint database is a relatively easy task but finding the right person at Sprint to do it for you is just about impossible.
I would love for the government to get into the last mile (or wi-fi in this case). This way, we get the lines put in for about the same price and could potentially have competition for the service over those lines. Without a local governing body managing the last mile, we will forever be stuck with what we have now which is a monopoly with mediocre service. In the US, we basically have a government run last mile now but by convention, that same government chooses one company to run it AND provide the service. In this specific case in CHI though, the government is still choosing a single carrier which does not make sense because the initial investment of the wires and poles and property taking via right of way is almost non existent, only equipment and design. Seems like anyone with bandwidth would be a suitable candidate, it does not have to be "phone company".
IMO the difference between Slayer on CD and tape is more immediately obvious than the difference between a classical track on CD and tape.
For me, the biggest difference was the dynamic range and IMO, that stands out a lot more on a classical piece compared to Slayer (yes, I have them both on LP, cassette, and CD). Unless you were using a Nakamichi Dragon deck or some of the upper tier models, the dynamic range of a cassette was horrible because it was a combination of the noise or hiss and the limits of the tape, even with a metal tape and Dolby B/C or DBX applied (which introduced their own artifacts).
Of course I have not listened to an actual tape in probably 15 years and I'll never have (or want) a decent tape player or 4 track reel deck like I had in the 80's but the first thing I noticed back then about CD's was the dynamic range closely followed by the relatively flat frequency response.
So using the term "visible light" is just as bad as saying PIN number or ATM machine?
I'm not buying your theory. Unless the crack heads hanging on the streets have a few friends in IT and know that those IT friends will buy tapes, they are not going to break into a car for them. I can't picture a random theft and lugging those things around trying to find someone to buy them. A lot of people reading slashdot are in IT in some form, have you ever been approached by a crack head selling backup tapes? Car stereos, cds, cell phones, maybe, not some Ultrium LTO3s
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
Word of mouth I assume. I know and have got at least 10 people to sign up with them (ouch). I never saw a Sunrocket commercial or banner ad. I guess their lack of advertising was saving them money? Look at Vonage though, everyone has heard of them, they are the number 1 VOIP provider and still losing extreme amounts of money. Is one method better then the other? Well I guess Vonage is still around but I would not say they are any better financially then Sunrocket is/was.
(okay, I know nothing about scripting and this is just an example but you get the idea)
How do I supply this link to your browser? One example is on a malicious web page in an image tag, there are many others.
Since you have a
If you have 20 devices and services that attach, connect to, or interface with a widget by CompanyX, you are more then likely going to be buying another widget made by CompanyX when yours breaks and the cycle will continue. If you decide that something else might be a good choice and do not buy another widget made by CompanyX, the other 19 things that you invested in, that are integrated into your vehicle, that you have extended contracts on etc.. are now useless or reduced in capability. The 20 things you have all work together and are part of a team of devices for integration. Those 20 things are not as useful without the other 19. A widget docking station you paid for in your car is of no value any longer if you do not have a widget to connect to it. The docking station on your desk is not a useful any longer without an widget to connect to it. I am not trying to pick on any widget made by any compnay, only the concept of getting yourself stuck into a circle of products. What does stuff ending up in a landfill have to do with this concept anyway? I would say that would make the problem I point out worse because you keep buying stuff for to maintain the same integration over and over again.
I think you missed my point and missed my last statement that said "i am familiar with the concept that other computer companies are kind of doing the same thing which does not make the situation any better or justify it." I don't need the "MS is the evil as well" speech either because my post was just as anti MS as it was anti Apple. My goal is not to avoid Apple or MS, it is to avoid being trapped by an increasing number of things that require each other to be useful. I just bought a portable GPS unit, it runs Windows CE, I don't give a crap what it runs, I do not need a Windows home PC or a Windows cell phone to use it, it is a stand alone product that works regardless of me having a Linux or an Apple computer. If that same GPS unit required me to have a Windows Home PC, a subscription to MSN, a Windows antenna and a Windows CE phone for it to work, I would not have bought it.
My point was putting all of your eggs in one basket and dedicating you future purchases towards one product like some people are with the iPod accessories and services seems too much like a trap to me. I could buy an iPod and buy nothing else to go with it and not be trapped in anything and I would be fine with that. I could have a Q (which I did in the past and got rid of it). With that Q, am I also buying from the Motorola music website, the Motorola compatible dock in the dashboard of my car, a Motorola streaming solution, a Motorola compatible desktop docking station, using a Motorola website to also buy videos, using a Motorola device to hear music along with a portable Motorola music player as well? Imagine a few years down the road and I do not Motorola's offerings? I have a shit load of stuff that is now completely useless to me. Substitute the word Motorola for MS or Apple and the same applies. The OS that may run a lot of those devices may be MS, it may not be MS. I am not saying that being an all in one solution is not a good choice for some but it is NOT a choice I will make regardless of Apple, MS, or Motorola.