[Listening to the new U2 single just bought on iTunes:) ]
Now that I am more than 10 years out of college, it is definately worth $0.99 to just get the song I want without trolling the p2p networks looking for music.
Besides, in recent years, if it ain't hip with the teen/college crowd, it ain't on the p2p networks. Those tracks that are there are of very variable quality -- you have to get several copies because some moron can't rip or encode correctly. It's just not worth the hassle.
Things I really like about iTunes:
- cost;
- quality;
- ease of purchase;
- the "others also bought" links let me explore things I haven't heard before; and, of course
- buying the single for a buck instead of a 10 track crappy cd for $14 for that one single.
Things I still am waiting for:
- broader catalogue (Madonna and The Beatles for two are still not available)
1. Observers see no problems, report they see no problems, and we get to stop hearing made-up nonsense about widespread election problems.
No. The nonsense about widespread election problems is not grounded in facts and logic. Many groups have reported there were no problems and yet this is still brought up. Don't expect this (very politicaly useful) charge to go away just because some Europeans say it isn't true.
2. Observers claim they see problems. They might be telling the truth. They might be lying. Everyone gets upset. We never find out conclusively one way or the other.
It all depends on which end of the process you are talking about. I would be stunned if there were more than a couple of instances of election problems at the polling places, on election day. Its all the work of purging the election rolls of "undesirables" (i.e., Democrats) that occurs months before the election that is the problem that is most often brought up. There is story after story about those problems, especially in Florida.
I spend very litle time watching TV anyway. That is the whole reason why I have avoided buying a new TV in the last 10 years. I just can't justify spending several thousand bucks to see a couple of sports games and Nova episodes.
As for movies, I use netflix (though the usefulness to cost ratio is dropping steadily in my estimation, and I will probably even drop that after a while).
If journalists choose to cover unimportant issues such as Howard Deans debacle, Zel Millers flaming, Bill Clintons sex scandal etc, then people aren't going to be well informed
I only really heard and saw an overdose of these on television an radio. Part of the problem is the 24 hour programming pressure. They have to talk about something -- the GM abhors dead air. Another part of the problem is of the shift work and big egos on television and radio -- every new host has to has his/her say. If you listen to a talk radio station, there is a different host during morning drive, lunch time, and evening drive but they all are talking about the same stories. The host assumes that what they have to say is new, fresh, and insightful about the "big story". With all that ego inflation, there is little time for other stories.
Newspapers and magazines (both physical and electronic) have more time to revise and edit a story, so they are more likely to get facts right the first time. They also have a much broader selection of writers. Each writer covers his or her own story or different angle on a big story. The only area where writers all need to spout their personal theories is on the op-ed page -- and that's mostly entertainment anyway.
They point to a more persistent problem, the widespread usage of caller screening technologies that have been adopted to ward off telemarketers. "Recent compilations of response rates in telephone surveys by the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research suggest that studies with short field periods are now averaging about 10 percent, although most media polls have response rates in the 30-45 percent range"
It doesn't take much of a stretch to realize that it is the more affluent and educated that generally spend the time and money to avoid unwanted interruptions by the telephone. This seems to me to make a very slight (maybe a point or less in most polls) conservative bias in many polls.
The upshot for those who want to get their voice heard by a pollster - pick up the phone when the caller ID says "unknown caller". It might be someone asking your opinion about presidential candidates. Of course, it probably is someone asking you to buy storm windows or somesuch.
I haven't bought a new console since a sega genesis 10(?) years ago. I was looking at new PC games and realized that I would have to upgrade the damn thing AGAIN to play the games I wanted.
Screw that - the $200 U.S. to get a system (with all the trimmings) is a lot cheaper than upgrading my computer just for games.
I looked around at several stores and noticed that the number of PS games out numbered the number of xbox games by a factor or 2 or 3. In addition, although the games released in the last 8 weeks or so were the same $50-60, for older games, the PS games were much cheaper.
I teach for a very large school district in Texas. This past year the district purchased laptops for all the teachers. The laptops ran $1050. The license for office was $50 a pop. That is an amazing price, but the district refused to pay. Instead they bought a district support contract from Sun for StarOffice.
No one uses it. Attachments still all show up as.doc (or.pdf) files, never the StarOffice format. In addition, many teachers I know are not very good at using computers. They have a hard enough time learning how to use MS Office without learning StarOffice, too.
Yes, its the same functions in a slightly different interface, but that's not the point. Teachers are never interested in doing extra work that they do not see will have a direct impact on their classroom. Its just too easy to ask the tech teacher for a copy of MS Office and install it anyway.
I hate blowing $13 to $16 on a CD with two decent songs and eight that are just painful to listen to. Even if I rip the music and sell it back to a resale store, I only get $1 to $2 back (up to $4 for a hot pop album which I rarely buy).
Instead, I can get just the songs I want for $0.99 each. When Napster was in its prime, I just grabbed the songs I wanted from others. I tried other services after that, but finding the songs I wanted gor to be a pain in the neck and the quality of the songs I did find was likely to be poor.
Now that I'm out of college and have a real job and a family, I would much rather spend three minutes and a buck to get the song I want than spending half the night to find a "free" version with digital clicks and parts of it missing.
The point that sold me on the service is that I can burn as many music cds as I want. That's all I relly want. If I buy it, I should be able to playit, and I can.
The computer vendors are working on slim enough margins while selling Windows boxes. There is very little possibility a vendor has enough cash to pring the programmers on board to "hack together thrir own support."
The software has to be supported by the maker of the software.
Looking at the text of the law, it seems that this law is primarialy aimed at those irritating companies who redirect phone calls to collect huge usage fees.
Only when it is read very broadly could it apply to this grad student's project. But I don't blame him for being cautious. Being the defendant in the test case of a new law is a very difficult place to be.
I have the opposite status - I'm in Texas. Although I am a Democrat, there is no way on God's green Earth that Bush will lose Texas. That means that my vote (at the Presidential level) is basically symbolic. I am toying with the idea of voting for Nader even though I think he is dead wrong on the issue of free trade.
I am not precisely sure how old he is (I didn't ask in his interview to avoid any age discrimination claims), but looking at his resume, the most recent AS/400 system administrator I hired is more than 60 years old.
I got tired of young punks (I am younger than 30 myself) who held paper certications and an e-mail subscription to the job lists on Dice, Monster, and HotJobs. I purposely set out to find an old guy to to the job and it has paid off. He has the maturity to always treate the users with respect, has the experience to perform administration functions well, and has not balked yet when I needed him to stay overnight once in a while.
What about the others -- I lurk therefore I am not?
Anyway, your Jeep club is a real community. You use the internet as a tool to strengthen the relationships in that real community. Sending a message to a relative doesn't make her a virtual relative - it just strengthens the relationship.
A community is a vibrant, living, multi-purpose collection of people. Clans, MUDs, and UO all only exist because of one reason -- to play the game. They are just Saturday afternoon D&D clubs taken to the extreme.
Question and response postings are not a community. I don't know you (or anyone else on slashdot for that matter) from Adam. Questions are usually shot out into the void and someone else shoots her response back into the void with a note that it is in response to the question. The rapid changes in the people who read and post to a particular board make it impossible to form familiar bonds that exist in a community.
The best boards I have seen have less relationships than a good size apartment complex. I recognize a few of the people in the complex where I live, and speak occasionaly to a few -- much like most of the "relationships" that exist in the e-communities that are so hyped.
Nope. This was just a proposal by Napster to stay in business. The RIAA has no intention of taking this deal. They have Napster by the short hairs, why let them go now?
I would pay twice as much for the service if there was more music available and of better quality. Napster sites are swamped with the same music I can hear on the pop 40 radio stations. Finding anything else can be substantially more difficult. When I do find that rare gem, I am rarely suprised to see low bit rates, poor quality, and missing tags. All of which is fine only if the service is free.
Slashdot Mirror
[Listening to the new U2 single just bought on iTunes :) ]
Now that I am more than 10 years out of college, it is definately worth $0.99 to just get the song I want without trolling the p2p networks looking for music.
Besides, in recent years, if it ain't hip with the teen/college crowd, it ain't on the p2p networks. Those tracks that are there are of very variable quality -- you have to get several copies because some moron can't rip or encode correctly. It's just not worth the hassle.
Things I really like about iTunes:
- cost;
- quality;
- ease of purchase;
- the "others also bought" links let me explore things I haven't heard before; and, of course
- buying the single for a buck instead of a 10 track crappy cd for $14 for that one single.
Things I still am waiting for:
- broader catalogue (Madonna and The Beatles for two are still not available)
No. The nonsense about widespread election problems is not grounded in facts and logic. Many groups have reported there were no problems and yet this is still brought up. Don't expect this (very politicaly useful) charge to go away just because some Europeans say it isn't true.
2. Observers claim they see problems. They might be telling the truth. They might be lying. Everyone gets upset. We never find out conclusively one way or the other.
It all depends on which end of the process you are talking about. I would be stunned if there were more than a couple of instances of election problems at the polling places, on election day. Its all the work of purging the election rolls of "undesirables" (i.e., Democrats) that occurs months before the election that is the problem that is most often brought up. There is story after story about those problems, especially in Florida.
I spend very litle time watching TV anyway. That is the whole reason why I have avoided buying a new TV in the last 10 years. I just can't justify spending several thousand bucks to see a couple of sports games and Nova episodes.
As for movies, I use netflix (though the usefulness to cost ratio is dropping steadily in my estimation, and I will probably even drop that after a while).
I only really heard and saw an overdose of these on television an radio. Part of the problem is the 24 hour programming pressure. They have to talk about something -- the GM abhors dead air. Another part of the problem is of the shift work and big egos on television and radio -- every new host has to has his/her say. If you listen to a talk radio station, there is a different host during morning drive, lunch time, and evening drive but they all are talking about the same stories. The host assumes that what they have to say is new, fresh, and insightful about the "big story". With all that ego inflation, there is little time for other stories.
Newspapers and magazines (both physical and electronic) have more time to revise and edit a story, so they are more likely to get facts right the first time. They also have a much broader selection of writers. Each writer covers his or her own story or different angle on a big story. The only area where writers all need to spout their personal theories is on the op-ed page -- and that's mostly entertainment anyway.
They point to a more persistent problem, the widespread usage of caller screening technologies that have been adopted to ward off telemarketers. "Recent compilations of response rates in telephone surveys by the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research suggest that studies with short field periods are now averaging about 10 percent, although most media polls have response rates in the 30-45 percent range"
It doesn't take much of a stretch to realize that it is the more affluent and educated that generally spend the time and money to avoid unwanted interruptions by the telephone. This seems to me to make a very slight (maybe a point or less in most polls) conservative bias in many polls.
The upshot for those who want to get their voice heard by a pollster - pick up the phone when the caller ID says "unknown caller". It might be someone asking your opinion about presidential candidates. Of course, it probably is someone asking you to buy storm windows or somesuch.
I haven't bought a new console since a sega genesis 10(?) years ago. I was looking at new PC games and realized that I would have to upgrade the damn thing AGAIN to play the games I wanted.
Screw that - the $200 U.S. to get a system (with all the trimmings) is a lot cheaper than upgrading my computer just for games.
I looked around at several stores and noticed that the number of PS games out numbered the number of xbox games by a factor or 2 or 3. In addition, although the games released in the last 8 weeks or so were the same $50-60, for older games, the PS games were much cheaper.
I walked out with a PS2 and a stack of games.
I teach for a very large school district in Texas. This past year the district purchased laptops for all the teachers. The laptops ran $1050. The license for office was $50 a pop. That is an amazing price, but the district refused to pay. Instead they bought a district support contract from Sun for StarOffice.
.doc (or .pdf) files, never the StarOffice format. In addition, many teachers I know are not very good at using computers. They have a hard enough time learning how to use MS Office without learning StarOffice, too.
No one uses it. Attachments still all show up as
Yes, its the same functions in a slightly different interface, but that's not the point. Teachers are never interested in doing extra work that they do not see will have a direct impact on their classroom. Its just too easy to ask the tech teacher for a copy of MS Office and install it anyway.
I hate blowing $13 to $16 on a CD with two decent songs and eight that are just painful to listen to. Even if I rip the music and sell it back to a resale store, I only get $1 to $2 back (up to $4 for a hot pop album which I rarely buy).
Instead, I can get just the songs I want for $0.99 each. When Napster was in its prime, I just grabbed the songs I wanted from others. I tried other services after that, but finding the songs I wanted gor to be a pain in the neck and the quality of the songs I did find was likely to be poor.
Now that I'm out of college and have a real job and a family, I would much rather spend three minutes and a buck to get the song I want than spending half the night to find a "free" version with digital clicks and parts of it missing.
The point that sold me on the service is that I can burn as many music cds as I want. That's all I relly want. If I buy it, I should be able to playit, and I can.
The computer vendors are working on slim enough margins while selling Windows boxes. There is very little possibility a vendor has enough cash to pring the programmers on board to "hack together thrir own support."
The software has to be supported by the maker of the software.
Looking at the text of the law, it seems that this law is primarialy aimed at those irritating companies who redirect phone calls to collect huge usage fees.
Only when it is read very broadly could it apply to this grad student's project. But I don't blame him for being cautious. Being the defendant in the test case of a new law is a very difficult place to be.
Yes, I do pay $60 to RedHat network.
I set up the download of the first iso disc last night. With a DSL connection in the US, the file just finished about 22 hours later. Wow.
So I downloaded bit torrent to see if the download would be faster. So far, its not really. The download rate is from 4k to 7k.
Sigh.
We'll see.
I am not precisely sure how old he is (I didn't ask in his interview to avoid any age discrimination claims), but looking at his resume, the most recent AS/400 system administrator I hired is more than 60 years old.
I got tired of young punks (I am younger than 30 myself) who held paper certications and an e-mail subscription to the job lists on Dice, Monster, and HotJobs. I purposely set out to find an old guy to to the job and it has paid off. He has the maturity to always treate the users with respect, has the experience to perform administration functions well, and has not balked yet when I needed him to stay overnight once in a while.
If you can find the right guy, grab him.
Didn't some Japanese company want to turn MIR into a hotel? With the current descriptions on /., it sounds more like a Motel 6.
Anyway, your Jeep club is a real community. You use the internet as a tool to strengthen the relationships in that real community. Sending a message to a relative doesn't make her a virtual relative - it just strengthens the relationship.
A community is a vibrant, living, multi-purpose collection of people. Clans, MUDs, and UO all only exist because of one reason -- to play the game. They are just Saturday afternoon D&D clubs taken to the extreme.
The best boards I have seen have less relationships than a good size apartment complex. I recognize a few of the people in the complex where I live, and speak occasionaly to a few -- much like most of the "relationships" that exist in the e-communities that are so hyped.
Nope. This was just a proposal by Napster to stay in business. The RIAA has no intention of taking this deal. They have Napster by the short hairs, why let them go now?
I would pay twice as much for the service if there was more music available and of better quality. Napster sites are swamped with the same music I can hear on the pop 40 radio stations. Finding anything else can be substantially more difficult. When I do find that rare gem, I am rarely suprised to see low bit rates, poor quality, and missing tags. All of which is fine only if the service is free.