Unplanned maintenance is, by definition, impossible to account for. You cannot make a TCO analysis banking on software failure due to bumbling on the part of your IT staff. Even if you did, you'd have to take into account the same type of measurement on the Linux side -- I guarantee you that an IT department that can't properly patch and secure Windows will royally fuck up your Linux installs. After all, OSS is not immune to problems just because the software has more eyeballs on it. Any number of major problems could cause a wide outage and require an expensive task force to repair it -- and these are as likely to happen due to complex and apocryphal configurations as they are from viruses and exploits.
Understanding this is important to purchasers. That's why companies sponsor third party analysis of their competitors...because it offers credibility beyond the he said / she said of dueling vendors. Is it inherently flawed? Not necessarily. Is it entirely trustworthy? Of course not. You have to use your judgment and compare the assumptions made on both sides. If these TCO analysis ignore the possibility of massive downtime due to viruses and adds in a bunch of needless training, then it's not properly stacked.
I don't think the Software Assurance thing you're talking about is a problem at all, btw. It covers a period ranging from the beginning of one cost to its renewal. It is logical that the NEXT period will follow the trend set by the previous one. Microsoft has NOT been jacking up their prices exponentially; in fact, adjusted for inflation they have been going down. There are tons of other flaws and snafus and provisos, but displaying the cost of a product within the time period of its expected use is what TCO is all about.
I dunno. We're upgrading all of our company's DOS offerings to.NET as soon as we can, and expect to be able to fully drop support some time next year. And I'm making subtle inroads to Linux as well...our.NET client apps work just fine in Mono and Sybase on Linux is an option for the server.
Nobody's BOUGHT any of these products yet, but it doesn't take much extra care to support Mono/Sybase...and you never know when some big contract will go out for bid with Linux as a requirement. Government is big, slow and wierd...you never know when the direction of a million dollar contract will turn to OSS just because some comptroller's brother is a penguinhead.
It's nice to know that I illicit such passion among my peers. That's what rhetoric is all about, really: conveying a message. And since I usually chalk up several highly moderated post per day, your efforts really only serve to burn off other people's points. Suits me fine. Those are points that won't get wasted on dissenting opinions.
That's the great thing about being right. You get a lot of attention.
The difference here is that ALL the trucks are going to have major problems within their lifetime. If one manufacturer is well known by all your fleet mechanics, drivers and customization staff, has been around for twenty years and has, for the most part, provided reliable transportation despite a few lemons, you probably don't switch. It's just too much work for uncertain gains.
I'm really impressed whenever I hear that X government or Y agency has switched to Linux. Partially because it's a massive undertaking, but mostly because whoever sold them on the idea must have given them risk assurances beyond the dreams of actuaries.
No, it isn't a good idea. Reprogramming a legacy system could cost millions that hasn't been budgeted, whereas this "fresh software" approach will probably only cost several thousand. Linux should definitely be a consideration when they take revisit their system, something they should do soon. But it will take at least a year to plan and budget this project. They need a stopgap method to get them online right now, and Linux is an absurd choice for that. Maybe down the road some Bochs solution...but not while the freakin' department is down!
Furthermore, I doubt that the consultants are "to blame for the whole mess," in my experience it is much more likely that they were called in due to a shortcoming in the state IT department's ability to handle the problem.
DMV software isn't the sort of thing you find on the shelf at Best Buy. The state is probably using custom software that will only run on one platform. They probably either designed it themselves or paid a contractor to do so. Either way, no new charges should be accrued...this sort of thing would be included in a yearly maintenance contract. Rewriting the software in Linux wouldn't be an option and it's embarrassing that somebody would suggest it. It'd be like telling somebody with a sick dog that they should have bought a cat.
"Fresh software" probably means bringing down the whole network, reinstalling and patching all machine operating systems, and then reinstalling the software. This will not cost anything extra in terms of the software -- however, the process will surely be costly in terms of manpower (I'm sure the state doesn't employ enough IT staff for every DMV office) and the state will have to pay for it. My company has had, on occasion, requests to help our customers recover from viruses they did not properly protect themselves from. We charge a premium for this service, because 1) there's nobody else who knows how to do it well 2) we TELL them how to protect themselves, and they still don't do it.
So, in short: no, the "fresh software" won't cost them anything. Installing it, however, won't be cheap. And I'm guessing the state doesn't have a discretionary budget for this sort of thing, meaning something will be getting cut.
America is ready for a third party -- the Democrats seem to have lost their thunder, and many Republicans feel that their party isn't meeting their needs.
However, the name "Green Party" invokes in many people images of socialism and even ecoterrorism. The ecological movement has been painted as an anti-worker and even anti-American concept by people who believe that conservation and the reduction of pollution should be voluntary undertakings. I know that's not what the party is about, but that's doesn't stop older voters like my father from equating the movement with, for lack of a better term, neo-hippism.
How does the party plan to improve its public image and distance itself from more radical anti-corporate, anti-ecological groups? And how do you intend to endear your humanistic social goals to the institutions that currently fund the political system, namely rich individuals and corporations?
The language in.NET is not C/C++...it's Managed C/C++. The "Managed" refers to extensions that perform memory management, garbage collection and bounds checking, as well as simplified linking. Standard C code works, and (I think) simply compiling it with the.NET managed memory libraries is enough to overcome said shortcomings.
Furthermore, they aren't "putting" C onto.NET...Managed C was one of the three original CLR languages. It's been there since the betas. I myself would never use it (having a larger VB codebase and doing all future work in C#), but it's supposed to be robust.
1) Microsoft is spelled with an s, not a dollar sign. Said symbol is not pronounced in English script.
2) Generally, once a company discovers a flaw in their program, they release a patch for it in the latest version first. Since this product drives profits, it is in the company's best interests to make it worth buying. Hence, SP2 was released before other patches.
3) Other patches exist for this vulnerability. I don't even run XP and I'm protected.
Google is right there, next to your address bar. If you use the two in tandem, you can avoid saying retarded things.
as its "open" source the flaws are usually much faster found and fixed within hours
This is kind of an empty metric. Yes, the cause of flaws is discovered within a few hours and a patch is released to developers. But who cares? Said patch is completely untested on systems homogenous to yours; it's not guaranteed not to completely break your systems, heck it's not even guaranteed to work. You may see a patch replaced by another patch in a few hours. In the end, the situation is nearly identical to the situation with Microsoft's products: you wait to install the patch. You have to test it on a guinea pig system before rolling it out company wide.
I'm sure internal to Microsoft, the bug response is similar. I know it's rare that I don't fix one of my company's software bugs in an hour...but the patch for that bug could take MONTHS to roll out. Developing a patch is the easiest step. It's all the other work that takes time, and OSS isn't better at it...it's WORSE, because it requires more knowledge and more work on the part of administrators to fix systems.
And yes, buffer overflows happen in open source software as well as in Microsoft software.
True. And in the future, they may be even more prevalent than in Microsoft software. If it's truly MS' goal to switch all development to the managed.NET platform (and it should be), then overflow protection will be free during development and nearly free in terms of execution time.
On the other hand, it doesn't appear that there's any impetus in the open source community to rewrite components in a modern exception handling, bounds checking, type verifying language. In fact, I see a lot of reliance on C. It's not 1972 anymore, guys. Computers have grown to the point that abstraction is far more important than tiny optimizations. And powerful optimizations are still possible in modern languages!
They don't know who you're talking about. Here on Slashdot, they have different definitions for some terms.
Try this: "You know, Apple, the guys who don't use OGG or FLAC, have 2% of the market compared to Slackware Linux's 23%, fucked Konfabulation, don't offer iTunes for Linux, screw artists by making deals with the RIAA instead of offering no songs people like, won't license their OS so they could be the next Microsoft and do it all on hardware that's more expensive that comparable commodity PC hardware you can make yourself. Oh, and the iPod doesn't have an FM tuner or a jockstrap and costs too much, nobody will buy it."
Incidentally, OSX's use of sudo is very nice, way better than SuSE's, mostly because they don't refer to it as a "root password." I am a computer nobody. What does "root" mean to me? Nothing. What does Administrator mean to me? Something. That lock (the one that offers a simple way to chown your settings to root without knowing what any of those words mean) is a godsend too. The first step towards general UNIX-based OS adoption is trying to ignore the fact that it's UNIX except where absolutely necessary.
It's certainly nice for some indies. My favorite ska guitarist is on Asian Man records and it would be laughable for him to be on iTunes. $.99 is a lot when you already sell entire records for $8 a pop.
Which is why, if you're homeless, you should commit a crime.
Worst comes to worse, you're in prison. At best, you get some free shit.
Seriously though, if you worked for Computer Associates at any time, and wound up homeless as a result of CEO corruption, you are even worse at managing money than I am. I know guys who were broke and been out of the workforce for YEARS who still keep up their rent.
See, I actually like that (though I agree it isn't verity). I drive a Volkswagen, and the factory deck has a really overly sensitive music sensor. Whispering on a track causes it to fast forward...which is obnoxious as hell when you're listening on an adapter.
What you're talking about is bit quantity. CDs use 1411 kilobits to image a given data sample...44000 packets of two 16 bit values per second.
This is not the same as quality. Quality in music is the amount of discrete dynamic information recorded within a sample. Believe it or not, storing an accurate representation of the data at a given sample rate and bit strength is not necessarily the best way to preserve quality. It's certainly not the most efficient. With a 1411 kilobits, psychoacoustically compressed sample, you could easily have a much higher bit strength or sample rate with more discrete dynamics than even the CD. Shit, even lossless compression could get double the quality or more at 1411 kilobits than a CD can.
That number is mostly meaningless for this reason. So is the term "CD Quality." I've seen it used for 192 kbit MP3, 128 kbit AAC, 64 kbit WMA...fact of the matter is, "CD Quality" is whatever you perceive it to be. I happen to really like AAC at 128 and higher bitrates, it preserves the precision I expect when encoding a rhythm section without creating shimmering or tiering. It's great for rock and hip hop. And that's all that matters.
But where's the benefit? People will pay more for major label acts. They will buy them on iTunes, etc, for $.99 with DRM. The number of people who will buy unprotected songs for cheaper is surely higher...but I doubt that it's four times higher, which it would have to be for this to profitable.
Maybe they'll be forced to go that low eventually...but right now, enough people will (still?) pay enough for music to make it a better business decision to keep the price high and try to make it legally uncomfortable for file sharers. To do anything else would reduce profits and that's management suicide.
Understood...I should have pointed out that I have a laptop, so my computer can go wherever I like it to, and before that I had a computer that was the center of my media empire so the 8 track, reel to reel, record player and the Nakamichi Dragon were all chained to it, anyway, to get the analog components of my system converted to digital to pass to the amplifier.
I have since gone off the idea of digital amplification. It's a pain in the ass and good cabling and attentive grounding usually result in better sound. Converting said analog devices to digital, I can use their meta-data in massive hands-off playlists effortlessly. It's also greatly simplified my preferred audio setup, which makes my wife happy. She hates cables all over everything, not to mention the heat and all that electricity. She'll actually use the stereo now, just plugs her iBook into the monitors and plays stuff from my iTunes library (though I should bite the bullet and buy a couple Airport Express units).
Oh, I'm not ripping from vinyl for archival purposes. That'd be sort of a dumb idea, seeing as how the vinyl itself will outlast anything I back it up to. I have discs from 1932 that still aound great...I seriously doubt I will be listening to my CDs in 2076.
I'm ripping the vinyl because I don't have it on CD (some of it isn't available on CD) and I want to listen on the iPod, include it in playlists for parties, etc.
Since I don't have a lot of space (only 80 gig, that's as big as laptop hard drives get), I rip to the best sounding format I can use where I need to with the smallest footprint. That's AAC for now.
Actually, I've used that. Saved my ass, too. I have a good Address Book in OSX, mostly because I like to assign photos to the vCards of people I email frequently. I exported it to the iPod, because i could. I promptly forgot about it.
Six months later I was out and about in Boston and my car broke down at the same time my cell phone battery died. I was able to call my buddy in Cambridge, who I haven't seen in six years, because I had his phone number on the iPod.
Might as well make as many useful copies of data as you can.
when you have a remote, why the hell would I use the main unit's controls?
I dropped using the iPod's remote the second day I had it. What a waste. The flexibility of the iPod isn't playing a song, advancing one track, and then selecting a new album...it's setting up these huge, dynamic playlists using iTunes and adding your own on the fly.
I guess if I was doing forward and backward a lot, I would like a nice wireless remote to do it.
Incidentally, i've been doing a lot of vinyl conversions recently. I use my computer, since it has a pretty good ADC and is designed for flexibility. What I do is record the music straight to AAC. I guess I could add a step, but why?
Actually, the iPod has a ton of features I don't need. So really, it's 150% of what I need. If being satisfied with a purchase and not seeing any reason to fuck with it just to add features I don't need is your definition of fanboy, I stand so defined.
Sorry your needs aren't being met. Maybe that's Apple's fault. Or maybe you have too many needs. Take a long, hard look at why you feel you need feature X: is it because you're doing X all the time and want to continue to do it, or because you might maybe do X, if you did it once and liked it, and want to be able to claim you have X support?
Incidentally, iPod sales numbers can be mucked with however you like. Analysts comparing units sold come up with different numbers that analysts who compare media player chip sales. Of course, media player chip sales are not a great metric, as these chips go into portable gaming devices, cell phones, and standard CD players. If you buy a cheap-o boombox and happend to discover it's got MP3 support (as I did last year), you're not competing with the iPod. In the only Apples to near-apples metrics we have -- non-convergent Hard drive and flash based media players sold in US, Europe and Japan -- APPL rules by a wide margin. But continue to quote whatever numbers allow you to hate Apple and us obnoxious, smiling fanboys. It will make you feel better about being ignored.
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Unplanned maintenance is, by definition, impossible to account for. You cannot make a TCO analysis banking on software failure due to bumbling on the part of your IT staff. Even if you did, you'd have to take into account the same type of measurement on the Linux side -- I guarantee you that an IT department that can't properly patch and secure Windows will royally fuck up your Linux installs. After all, OSS is not immune to problems just because the software has more eyeballs on it. Any number of major problems could cause a wide outage and require an expensive task force to repair it -- and these are as likely to happen due to complex and apocryphal configurations as they are from viruses and exploits.
Understanding this is important to purchasers. That's why companies sponsor third party analysis of their competitors...because it offers credibility beyond the he said / she said of dueling vendors. Is it inherently flawed? Not necessarily. Is it entirely trustworthy? Of course not. You have to use your judgment and compare the assumptions made on both sides. If these TCO analysis ignore the possibility of massive downtime due to viruses and adds in a bunch of needless training, then it's not properly stacked.
I don't think the Software Assurance thing you're talking about is a problem at all, btw. It covers a period ranging from the beginning of one cost to its renewal. It is logical that the NEXT period will follow the trend set by the previous one. Microsoft has NOT been jacking up their prices exponentially; in fact, adjusted for inflation they have been going down. There are tons of other flaws and snafus and provisos, but displaying the cost of a product within the time period of its expected use is what TCO is all about.
I dunno. We're upgrading all of our company's DOS offerings to .NET as soon as we can, and expect to be able to fully drop support some time next year. And I'm making subtle inroads to Linux as well...our .NET client apps work just fine in Mono and Sybase on Linux is an option for the server.
Nobody's BOUGHT any of these products yet, but it doesn't take much extra care to support Mono/Sybase...and you never know when some big contract will go out for bid with Linux as a requirement. Government is big, slow and wierd...you never know when the direction of a million dollar contract will turn to OSS just because some comptroller's brother is a penguinhead.
It's nice to know that I illicit such passion among my peers. That's what rhetoric is all about, really: conveying a message. And since I usually chalk up several highly moderated post per day, your efforts really only serve to burn off other people's points. Suits me fine. Those are points that won't get wasted on dissenting opinions.
That's the great thing about being right. You get a lot of attention.
The difference here is that ALL the trucks are going to have major problems within their lifetime. If one manufacturer is well known by all your fleet mechanics, drivers and customization staff, has been around for twenty years and has, for the most part, provided reliable transportation despite a few lemons, you probably don't switch. It's just too much work for uncertain gains.
I'm really impressed whenever I hear that X government or Y agency has switched to Linux. Partially because it's a massive undertaking, but mostly because whoever sold them on the idea must have given them risk assurances beyond the dreams of actuaries.
No, it isn't a good idea. Reprogramming a legacy system could cost millions that hasn't been budgeted, whereas this "fresh software" approach will probably only cost several thousand. Linux should definitely be a consideration when they take revisit their system, something they should do soon. But it will take at least a year to plan and budget this project. They need a stopgap method to get them online right now, and Linux is an absurd choice for that. Maybe down the road some Bochs solution...but not while the freakin' department is down!
Furthermore, I doubt that the consultants are "to blame for the whole mess," in my experience it is much more likely that they were called in due to a shortcoming in the state IT department's ability to handle the problem.
DMV software isn't the sort of thing you find on the shelf at Best Buy. The state is probably using custom software that will only run on one platform. They probably either designed it themselves or paid a contractor to do so. Either way, no new charges should be accrued...this sort of thing would be included in a yearly maintenance contract. Rewriting the software in Linux wouldn't be an option and it's embarrassing that somebody would suggest it. It'd be like telling somebody with a sick dog that they should have bought a cat.
"Fresh software" probably means bringing down the whole network, reinstalling and patching all machine operating systems, and then reinstalling the software. This will not cost anything extra in terms of the software -- however, the process will surely be costly in terms of manpower (I'm sure the state doesn't employ enough IT staff for every DMV office) and the state will have to pay for it. My company has had, on occasion, requests to help our customers recover from viruses they did not properly protect themselves from. We charge a premium for this service, because 1) there's nobody else who knows how to do it well 2) we TELL them how to protect themselves, and they still don't do it.
So, in short: no, the "fresh software" won't cost them anything. Installing it, however, won't be cheap. And I'm guessing the state doesn't have a discretionary budget for this sort of thing, meaning something will be getting cut.
America is ready for a third party -- the Democrats seem to have lost their thunder, and many Republicans feel that their party isn't meeting their needs.
However, the name "Green Party" invokes in many people images of socialism and even ecoterrorism. The ecological movement has been painted as an anti-worker and even anti-American concept by people who believe that conservation and the reduction of pollution should be voluntary undertakings. I know that's not what the party is about, but that's doesn't stop older voters like my father from equating the movement with, for lack of a better term, neo-hippism.
How does the party plan to improve its public image and distance itself from more radical anti-corporate, anti-ecological groups? And how do you intend to endear your humanistic social goals to the institutions that currently fund the political system, namely rich individuals and corporations?
The language in .NET is not C/C++...it's Managed C/C++. The "Managed" refers to extensions that perform memory management, garbage collection and bounds checking, as well as simplified linking. Standard C code works, and (I think) simply compiling it with the .NET managed memory libraries is enough to overcome said shortcomings.
.NET...Managed C was one of the three original CLR languages. It's been there since the betas. I myself would never use it (having a larger VB codebase and doing all future work in C#), but it's supposed to be robust.
Furthermore, they aren't "putting" C onto
A few corrections to your post:
1) Microsoft is spelled with an s, not a dollar sign. Said symbol is not pronounced in English script.
2) Generally, once a company discovers a flaw in their program, they release a patch for it in the latest version first. Since this product drives profits, it is in the company's best interests to make it worth buying. Hence, SP2 was released before other patches.
3) Other patches exist for this vulnerability. I don't even run XP and I'm protected.
Google is right there, next to your address bar. If you use the two in tandem, you can avoid saying retarded things.
Hey. This is Slashdot. Until some amateur clones an idea and offers it for free with no support, it doesn't exist.
as its "open" source the flaws are usually much faster found and fixed within hours
This is kind of an empty metric. Yes, the cause of flaws is discovered within a few hours and a patch is released to developers. But who cares? Said patch is completely untested on systems homogenous to yours; it's not guaranteed not to completely break your systems, heck it's not even guaranteed to work. You may see a patch replaced by another patch in a few hours. In the end, the situation is nearly identical to the situation with Microsoft's products: you wait to install the patch. You have to test it on a guinea pig system before rolling it out company wide.
I'm sure internal to Microsoft, the bug response is similar. I know it's rare that I don't fix one of my company's software bugs in an hour...but the patch for that bug could take MONTHS to roll out. Developing a patch is the easiest step. It's all the other work that takes time, and OSS isn't better at it...it's WORSE, because it requires more knowledge and more work on the part of administrators to fix systems.
And yes, buffer overflows happen in open source software as well as in Microsoft software.
.NET platform (and it should be), then overflow protection will be free during development and nearly free in terms of execution time.
True. And in the future, they may be even more prevalent than in Microsoft software. If it's truly MS' goal to switch all development to the managed
On the other hand, it doesn't appear that there's any impetus in the open source community to rewrite components in a modern exception handling, bounds checking, type verifying language. In fact, I see a lot of reliance on C. It's not 1972 anymore, guys. Computers have grown to the point that abstraction is far more important than tiny optimizations. And powerful optimizations are still possible in modern languages!
You know, Apple...
They don't know who you're talking about. Here on Slashdot, they have different definitions for some terms.
Try this: "You know, Apple, the guys who don't use OGG or FLAC, have 2% of the market compared to Slackware Linux's 23%, fucked Konfabulation, don't offer iTunes for Linux, screw artists by making deals with the RIAA instead of offering no songs people like, won't license their OS so they could be the next Microsoft and do it all on hardware that's more expensive that comparable commodity PC hardware you can make yourself. Oh, and the iPod doesn't have an FM tuner or a jockstrap and costs too much, nobody will buy it."
Incidentally, OSX's use of sudo is very nice, way better than SuSE's, mostly because they don't refer to it as a "root password." I am a computer nobody. What does "root" mean to me? Nothing. What does Administrator mean to me? Something. That lock (the one that offers a simple way to chown your settings to root without knowing what any of those words mean) is a godsend too. The first step towards general UNIX-based OS adoption is trying to ignore the fact that it's UNIX except where absolutely necessary.
It's certainly nice for some indies. My favorite ska guitarist is on Asian Man records and it would be laughable for him to be on iTunes. $.99 is a lot when you already sell entire records for $8 a pop.
Which is why, if you're homeless, you should commit a crime.
Worst comes to worse, you're in prison. At best, you get some free shit.
Seriously though, if you worked for Computer Associates at any time, and wound up homeless as a result of CEO corruption, you are even worse at managing money than I am. I know guys who were broke and been out of the workforce for YEARS who still keep up their rent.
See, I actually like that (though I agree it isn't verity). I drive a Volkswagen, and the factory deck has a really overly sensitive music sensor. Whispering on a track causes it to fast forward...which is obnoxious as hell when you're listening on an adapter.
Also the music is fucking terrible. But hey, it's DRM free.
What you're talking about is bit quantity. CDs use 1411 kilobits to image a given data sample...44000 packets of two 16 bit values per second.
This is not the same as quality. Quality in music is the amount of discrete dynamic information recorded within a sample. Believe it or not, storing an accurate representation of the data at a given sample rate and bit strength is not necessarily the best way to preserve quality. It's certainly not the most efficient. With a 1411 kilobits, psychoacoustically compressed sample, you could easily have a much higher bit strength or sample rate with more discrete dynamics than even the CD. Shit, even lossless compression could get double the quality or more at 1411 kilobits than a CD can.
That number is mostly meaningless for this reason. So is the term "CD Quality." I've seen it used for 192 kbit MP3, 128 kbit AAC, 64 kbit WMA...fact of the matter is, "CD Quality" is whatever you perceive it to be. I happen to really like AAC at 128 and higher bitrates, it preserves the precision I expect when encoding a rhythm section without creating shimmering or tiering. It's great for rock and hip hop. And that's all that matters.
Is this a subtle argument against eMusic?
But where's the benefit? People will pay more for major label acts. They will buy them on iTunes, etc, for $.99 with DRM. The number of people who will buy unprotected songs for cheaper is surely higher...but I doubt that it's four times higher, which it would have to be for this to profitable.
Maybe they'll be forced to go that low eventually...but right now, enough people will (still?) pay enough for music to make it a better business decision to keep the price high and try to make it legally uncomfortable for file sharers. To do anything else would reduce profits and that's management suicide.
Understood...I should have pointed out that I have a laptop, so my computer can go wherever I like it to, and before that I had a computer that was the center of my media empire so the 8 track, reel to reel, record player and the Nakamichi Dragon were all chained to it, anyway, to get the analog components of my system converted to digital to pass to the amplifier.
I have since gone off the idea of digital amplification. It's a pain in the ass and good cabling and attentive grounding usually result in better sound. Converting said analog devices to digital, I can use their meta-data in massive hands-off playlists effortlessly. It's also greatly simplified my preferred audio setup, which makes my wife happy. She hates cables all over everything, not to mention the heat and all that electricity. She'll actually use the stereo now, just plugs her iBook into the monitors and plays stuff from my iTunes library (though I should bite the bullet and buy a couple Airport Express units).
Oh, I'm not ripping from vinyl for archival purposes. That'd be sort of a dumb idea, seeing as how the vinyl itself will outlast anything I back it up to. I have discs from 1932 that still aound great...I seriously doubt I will be listening to my CDs in 2076.
I'm ripping the vinyl because I don't have it on CD (some of it isn't available on CD) and I want to listen on the iPod, include it in playlists for parties, etc.
Since I don't have a lot of space (only 80 gig, that's as big as laptop hard drives get), I rip to the best sounding format I can use where I need to with the smallest footprint. That's AAC for now.
Actually, I've used that. Saved my ass, too. I have a good Address Book in OSX, mostly because I like to assign photos to the vCards of people I email frequently. I exported it to the iPod, because i could. I promptly forgot about it.
Six months later I was out and about in Boston and my car broke down at the same time my cell phone battery died. I was able to call my buddy in Cambridge, who I haven't seen in six years, because I had his phone number on the iPod.
Might as well make as many useful copies of data as you can.
when you have a remote, why the hell would I use the main unit's controls?
I dropped using the iPod's remote the second day I had it. What a waste. The flexibility of the iPod isn't playing a song, advancing one track, and then selecting a new album...it's setting up these huge, dynamic playlists using iTunes and adding your own on the fly.
I guess if I was doing forward and backward a lot, I would like a nice wireless remote to do it.
Incidentally, i've been doing a lot of vinyl conversions recently. I use my computer, since it has a pretty good ADC and is designed for flexibility. What I do is record the music straight to AAC. I guess I could add a step, but why?
Actually, the iPod has a ton of features I don't need. So really, it's 150% of what I need. If being satisfied with a purchase and not seeing any reason to fuck with it just to add features I don't need is your definition of fanboy, I stand so defined.
Sorry your needs aren't being met. Maybe that's Apple's fault. Or maybe you have too many needs. Take a long, hard look at why you feel you need feature X: is it because you're doing X all the time and want to continue to do it, or because you might maybe do X, if you did it once and liked it, and want to be able to claim you have X support?
Incidentally, iPod sales numbers can be mucked with however you like. Analysts comparing units sold come up with different numbers that analysts who compare media player chip sales. Of course, media player chip sales are not a great metric, as these chips go into portable gaming devices, cell phones, and standard CD players. If you buy a cheap-o boombox and happend to discover it's got MP3 support (as I did last year), you're not competing with the iPod. In the only Apples to near-apples metrics we have -- non-convergent Hard drive and flash based media players sold in US, Europe and Japan -- APPL rules by a wide margin. But continue to quote whatever numbers allow you to hate Apple and us obnoxious, smiling fanboys. It will make you feel better about being ignored.