It really doesn't matter to me if an iPod update made Real's format quit working. I've purchased a number of songs from both the iTunes store and from Music Match.
The first thing I do is burn them to CD and them rip them back to MP3. (All within the same software.)
That way I still have the DRM'd music, plus can play the music on ANY of my digital players (Nomad IIMG, Zen, MP3 CD's, etc.)
When I took Justice classes in college (a bit over 20 years ago), one of the classes used FBI statistics to show your chances of doing even 1 day in jail for a crime. (It was like 1%)
It started out with the chances of being a suspect, chances of being charged, chances of going to court, chances of being convicted and then chances of doing any time for the crime.
It sounds like that according to you, the criminal justice system has completely reversed itself in the past 20 years.
"The only thing that could have stopped those two airplanes successfully is if the proper surveillance structure were in place to notice that strange things were a'brew"
Actually, we could have very easily stopped it and other acts of terrorism against. We (our government) could have kept our noses out of Middle East politics and the other affairs of other countries.
For over 100 years, and most especially since WWII, our government has decided that it should call the shots for the rest of the world. For 50 years, we have cajoled, imtimidated, embargoed, subverted and strong-armed weaker countries into doing what we want, either by force, politics, money or assassination.
We funded the Shah of Iran... We funded Osama Bin Laden... when the Ayatollah took over Iran, we funded Saddam. We constantly seem to play one side against the other.
And like it or not, for better or for worse, we are Isreal's strongest ally which just rubs salt in the wounds of many of the other countries of the Middle East. And that's just the middle east.
There are a lot of folks around the world who are tired of being strong-armed by the bully but don't have the armies or economical power to fight back. So some are doing it in the only manner that they can.
I don't like or approve of it. But I can understand their frustration. It is only matched by mine... at a government that appears to only want to get bigger and more powerful while lining the pockets of the politicians....at a government that can't solve problems at home, but insists that their way is the best way.
I found the problem with the garbled audio and iTunes for Windows.
I have TotalRecorder installed. Once I went into the control panel and set Windows to use my Audigy directly and to only use preferred devices, the garbling went away.
Just setting to use the Audigy isn't enough. You have to either set the "use only preferred" checkbox, or unininstall TotalRecorder.
My knee jerk reaction was that Apple was intentionally degrading the audio when TotalRecorder was detected (because iTunes worked after I uninstalled TotalRecorder on my work computer). I'm glad that this isn't the case.
1/ Does anyone know if iTunes communicates information about your music collection to Apple or anyone else (e.g. the RIAA)?
I haven't checked this yet... but my Kerio personal firewall should make it easy for me to find out. I can then monitor the port used with one of my packet sniffers. Will investigate and try to post the results to this thread this weekend.
2/ When you buy a song can you download it again the future if it gets deleted somehow? Can you download it in multiple formats?
You can only download in AAC format. Yes, you can download it again and again and again... provided you don't change your credit card billing address to a non-U.S. one.
To get other formats, simply burn the song(s) to a CD and rip them back into your favorite format.
3/ How does the ripping quality compare to CDEx and co?
So far, the ripping (using iTunes for Windows for this) is just fine. You have your choice of ripping to AAC (the default), MP3, Wav and AIFF at up to 320kbps.
4/ Do you have to install Quicktime
Yes, QuickTime 6.4 is required, and is included in the installation program. You have no choice in the matter.
5/ What's the deal with AAC on Windows?
Seems ok to me. Just another standard. I have my iTunes set to use MP3 by default though.
6/ Do you have to wear a black turtleneck and jeans to make it work correctly?
No, but it'll make you into a cooler, more hip and superintelligent person.
I watched my boss connect his Apple formatted iPod to his PC and iTunes for Windows. Rumor had it that you could finally connect the same iPod to both Macs and PCs.
The iPod mounted and almost immediately dialog came up that said something to the effect of "To use this iPod it has to be formatted, shall I continue?"
Of the course the Boss DIDN'T let it continue. He's not an idiot.
I downloaded and installed it about 12:30PM Pacific. It DOES look and feel just like on my Powerbook. I was very pleased that it didn't ask for any personal information (unlike MusicMatch). It even very nicely asked me if I wanted to import all of the AAC and MP3 files in "My Music".
There is where success ended though. When playing music, the sound is choppy. Much like when the heads and rollers are very dirt on a cassette or 8 track tape (or the tape is creased.)
However, the same songs play fine in Music Match and WinAMP on the same computer. (AMD Athlon 1900+, Windows XP Pro, 512MB ram.)
I like iTunes on my Powerbook. I'd like it on my XP machine here at work. However, it looks like for at least the time being, I'll be sticking with Music Match Plus (I registered it years ago and even bought the lifetime updates.)
I'm not surprised by this study either... After years of using two computers, two monitors, two keyboards, etc. I'm now using one computer equipped with a nice ATI Radeon card that has both digital and analog outputs.
My primary monitor is a Viewsonic VG181 (18" flat panel) that I run at 1280x1024 (unless I rotate it to portrait mode where it's 1024x1280) and my secondary monitor is an old Viewsonic 15" running at 1024x768.
My desktop extends across both monitors but the 15" is where I keep my file manager (TotalCommander), messengers, a web browser, vnc viewer, etc. It also serves as a great place to hold reference material while I work on something on the main monitor.
With the addition of the Ultramon software (http://www.ultramon.com) to manage the dual monitors I can really make this monitors sing and dance. Well, almost. heh
At home where I run OSX and Linux computers, I use my old Matrox dual head with 19" and 17" CRTs and my 15" TiBook with a 17" CRT.
It probably is a counter. AT&T is the company that the FTC contracted to host the DNC servers. That was mentioned in articles when the DNC site went up and got slammed. The articles stated that AT&T was scrambling to add extra servers to the pool to handle the unexpected load.
Atari was a bit late to the game with that format though.
Commodore made what is probably the first clamshell notebook in 1984 and showed it at Winter CES in January of 1985. While Commodore never sold it to the general public, the Atari Stacy looked similar when it came out almost five years later.
Toshiba released the T-1200 clamshell notebook in 1987 and made it through 1992. It even had a resume feature and an internal 1200 baud modem. From a little research (maybe 30 minutes) this morning, the Toshiba T-1200 and the Datavue (Dataview?) Spark were the first true clamshell laptops released to the public (using the now standard form factor). Both were released in 1987.
Back in the very early 90's (like 90-91 or so) I picked up a USED Toshiba (or was it NEC?) clamshell laptop. It was an XT based, with a 2 (or 2.5") internal 720K floppy drive (used the same disks as the later Canon Zapshot) and 2MB of ram (1.4MB configured as as drive d:, and DOS in ROM. This was the thinist laptop I've ever seen,with maybe the exception of the Toshiba Portege. They also had a model that included a tiny hard drive in the 20MB range instead of the floppy drive. I loved this computer, especially the keyboard which was pretty much identical to those in the latest Thinkpads and Powerbooks.
Later examples, all predating Apple's first Powerbook (which was released in October 1991) are:
Amastrad PPC 512 in 1988, Atari Stacy in September 1989, Apple Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple Powerbook 100 in October 1991.
And let's not forget the Toshiba T100-X Dynapad in 1993. That's the first TabletPC... ran Windows 3.1 and the Microsoft Pen OS.
You can find a lot of this at http://www.old-computers.com in their Museum.
>>For example, the Atari laptop which looked in the same form factor as current ones. IBM Stole that design and produced its first thinkpad. Soon after, Apple stole the design again and produced the first Powerbook
It's the same here in the states but most folks don't realize it. When you are stopped by the police for say speeding, the whole time of the stop you are under arrest as you are not allowed to leave.
Being held in custody while waiting for paperwork from the DA's office is simply waiting to be "booked" (charges filed).
Most Americans think of being arrested as the whole "go directly to jail", fingerprints, etc. but that is the booking stage. The arrest happens as soon as you are detained by the police.
I've only had one experience with the blacklist services. Right after I got stuck with implementing our new mail server a few years ago (and I had no clue as to what an open relay was) we suddenly found our company on the ORBS blacklist.
As it turned out, no one had ever spammed through us (according to ORBS), we just got picked up in a scan of IP addresses that they did looking for open relays.
The only way we found out about it was when replying to customer tech support emails, some of them came bouncing back with the "we don't accept email from you because you're on the ORBS list" type messages.
As in other cases on here, even after closing the relay, it took a long time (weeks) to get off of the list.
I always thought it ironic that to find open relays, ORBS would violate the ECPA by accessing smtp servers without consent of the owners. The black lists also served as a prebuilt list of open relays for spammers to use!
"Your honor, I plead not guilty to attempted breaking and entering. All I was doing was checking to make sure businesses locked their doors at night to keep out the thieves."
At work and home I use a lot of different platforms and operating systems (See posts for background, especially 1924175 for my feelings about elitists and zealots)
I believe that OSX/Apple and Linux ARE making serious inroads into the desktop, mostly by those who've dealt with Windows and low to mid end x86 hardware for years.
Here's my reasoning...
On the desktop
A few of us are tired of turning on an x86 machine to see the blue screen of death, a boot failure message, whatever... We're tired of Windows working great with a fresh install but six months later slowing to a crawl (must be that reboot timer.)
One of the guys here (who is NOT a computer 'guru') figured out that with the amount of time spent in the past year upgrading/reinstalling Windows and apps, waiting for one of us to come over to DO the work... that he could have bought a top of the line Apple and saved time and money to boot. Nothing that he does is Windows centric.
We did set him up with dual boot and various flavors of Linux (Lindows and Redhat)and he was even more lost, having to wait for us to tell him how to do something or to reconfigure something that he wanted to do. (Perhaps that was our fault for not doing it right in the first place.)
Yet set the man down at a Mac and he's happily clicking away. Doesn't even notice that it's an 800Mhz G4 instead of a 2.4Ghz P4.
I catch my wife using my 400Mhz G3 desktop mac at times because her's "is getting stupid again"... (*SIGH* another weekend shot backing up, reinstalling and reconfiguring Windows XP, her apps and data.)
My boss just brought in his 3.06Ghz P4 because it booted up with an error message one time too many. We're to use it for parts, perhaps for a new database server. (Note, there are dents in the side of the case that match his shoes.) Meanwhile he's using his iBook until his new Dual G5 2 Ghz machine arrives.
And these are just a few examples of the problems folks have with their x86 hardware and Windows that I and others here have to deal with.
On the server side:
The same boss looked at the hours that the two of us have spent configuring and setting up five rack mount servers (a combination of Windows and Linux, off the shelf name brand and custom built) plus the cost of the hardware. (one server purchased from eLinux has had to have the mother board, one hard drive and three power supplies replaced in the year that we've owned it.)
Then he looked at the cost of Apple's X-Serves. As an experiment, He had me set up an OSX server as a mail server, duplicating our Qmail/imap/virtual domain mail server functionality. Total time was about three hours I'd never done it before.) The Linux/Qmail version took me weeks of manhours, mostly spent searching the newsgroups, forums and books as I'd never done THAT configuration before either. Again, it was probably me as I didn't know what I was doing. But I was able to get it done a lot faster on OSX Server than on Linux, not knowing what I was doing on either machine. (Windows would have been faster still.)
We built a new file server with IDE raid to replace our aging Snap server (linux based)... It runs XP. If we don't reboot it every week, it locks up and stops serving shares. If fact, every Monday morning I have to reboot the Windows servers as a preventive measure. We find that they stay up longer.
The bottom line is that through all of this, the Linux machines have only suffered from hardware failures... once configured and running, they stay running.
The Macs (I have the G3 at home, the G4 Powerbook I carry with me and a G4 800 at work, plus a number of others around here) haven't crashed nor had hardware failures. My G3 hasn't needed to be "reinstalled" since I got it other than when I upgraded to newer versions of OSX. (Neither have the other Macs, but my G3 is the oldest.)
A number of years ago, I had a teen customer in my computer store getting his laptop upgraded and OS/2 installed. His mother was sitting there rather bored with our "geek" talk and asked was was the difference between OS/2 and Windows.
I simply handed her my laptop, loaded with OS/2 and the normal office apps, games, etc. and told her to try it herself. (Though she was a computer novice, she never asked any other questions.)
A couple of hours later when we were finished with the upgrades, we asked her what she thought. Her summary was... "It's just like Windows, only easier." And then proceeded to show us the things that she found better/different and that she'd done.
When any version of *nix can get that kind of reaction, it'll be a good home user competition for Windows.
BTW, she and I eventually got married (perhaps she was tired of paying for her son's upgrades!) and every time her Windows machine crashes ("get's stupid" as she puts it)asks why she can't have her OS/2 back.
It's pretty common here in Las Vegas, Nevada... I recently started war driving occasionally while making regular trips around town. In perhaps ten trips I've found almost 1,000 unique access points (no data is logged other than location, address, SSID and signal strength... all in "passive or RFMon" mode where I don't acces their network at all... much like listening on a radio scanner.)
Cable modem penetration is VERY high here. I know only two people still using dial-up (why not? $50 a month gets you 3mb/s downstream and 256 kb/s upstream)
As a small sample, there's seven of us that work in this office... 6 out of 7 have cable modem, 4 out of 7 have wireless lans at home. No, we're not in the computer business.;-)
That is why anyone who does this on a regular basis uses one of the escrow services for items of that amount. I've done it, the escrow service doesn't tell the seller that it is ok to ship until the check clears.
The buyer is protected because the the escrow company doesn't release the money to the seller until the buyer says the item arrived as advertised or until a certain time period has passed if the buyer doesn't respond.
In my book, anyone who wants to buy or sell an item for more than $1,000 and who won't do it through an escrow service isn't to be trusted in the first place.
Like others have said, in itself, this isn't anything new.
Back in the late 1980's, I read a story in (I think) Scientific American about a government funded Martin Marietta lab that was doing research into using lasers to detect trace elements at the molecular level.
A by-product of this research was the ability to polarize a molecule.
Suddenly the head geek had a brainstorm that perhaps this could be used for data storage. He turned the whole thing over to MM (anything developed using government funds is considered public domain).
MM then developed it into a WORM technology. I don't remember the original specs, but they did say that using multiple frequency lasers (to vary the depth and get 3D storage) they could get 1TB per cubic centimeter.
They envisioned this as being used for high capacity data storage where you didn't want the data changed. Monitoring data from nuclear power plants was one example given.
MM said they had no desire to develope the technology further and opened it to licensing. The article ended saying that six companies had already signed NDAs.
Then about 3-4 years later, another company announced a product called the "Rat Pack 50". A WORM system that used 1" squares (about the size of a Trisket cracker) that held 1 GB of data. The reader/writer was a changer that held 50 wafers. The unit was to cost in the neighborhood of about $5,000 if I remember right. I even saw a picture of it (or at least the prototype.)
From the description of the Rat Pack, I think the company had licensed MM's technology.
However, as far as I know, the Rat Pack never saw the light of day.
The more cynical of us figured that someone shut it down as it'd have blown the hard drive and fledgling CD-Burner markets out of the water. After all, the really expensive SCSI hard drives had just reached 1GB!
So while this article is interesting, it just more people finding another way to do something that's already been done.
The glimmer of light is that with enough folks and companies working on it, perhaps someday this will actually make it into the consumer market.
As others have mentioned, OPhoto.com is very good. I ordered prints from my Mavica the week before Christmas and got very good service. The 4x6's and 8x10's came out VERY nice.
You don't NEED any special software to upload your photos. Your Netscape will do the job just fine.
Personally I find this entire thread entirely too amusing, pointless and destructive to the Linux community at large. I've survived the following "My system is better than your system" elitist wars:
TRS-80 vs Apple vs Commodore Pet
Vic-20 vs Atari 400
CBM-64 vs Atari 800 vs Radio Shack Color Computer
Amiga vs Mac vs IBM PC
IBM OS/2 vs Windows 3.1 vs Windows NT 3.51
IBM OS/2 vs Windows 95 vs Windows NT 3.51
Windows 9x vs Windows NT
ETC, ad nauseum
I even remember bitter battles over which was the better CP/M platform! I've been working with personal computers longer than some of you have been alive, giving me must a little bit of experience in this. The one thing that has never changed in the 21 years is the fact that everyone wants to feel that their choice is the right one.
NT users sneer at Windows 9x users.
Windows 9x users sneer at Windows 3.x users
Linux users sneer at Windows users
FreeBSD users sneer at Linux users.
Mac users sneer at us
We sneer at Mac users
In Linux we have a very good operating system. Since you're all reading this, you know WHY you're running Linux. Choice is good. Multiple distros are good. Elitism is not good.
The first version of Linux I ever saw and used was Yggdrasil. I've also run Slackware, Debian and of course Red Hat. They were all good. I have my favorite. Even Linux Mandrake is good, without it, I probably wouldn't have tried KDE. Yes, I've even run FreeBSD.
The point is, enjoy what you use. Don't try to fragment the Linux or even the *nix community by all this bickering over distributions. To do so is playing exactly as hoped for in the recent Microsoft white paper on how to deal with the Linux threat. Microsoft FUD doesn't work very well against Linux, their best hope is for balkanization of the Linux community thereby causing us to lose focus.
So, let's try to calm the elitist urges within us and work for the common goals:
A better Linux
More Linux Support
More open software
Standards adherence
More choices. We now return you to our regular scheduled flaming
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It really doesn't matter to me if an iPod update made Real's format quit working. I've purchased a number of songs from both the iTunes store and from Music Match.
The first thing I do is burn them to CD and them rip them back to MP3. (All within the same software.)
That way I still have the DRM'd music, plus can play the music on ANY of my digital players (Nomad IIMG, Zen, MP3 CD's, etc.)
I'm glad to hear that things have improved.
When I took Justice classes in college (a bit over 20 years ago), one of the classes used FBI statistics to show your chances of doing even 1 day in jail for a crime. (It was like 1%)
It started out with the chances of being a suspect, chances of being charged, chances of going to court, chances of being convicted and then chances of doing any time for the crime.
It sounds like that according to you, the criminal justice system has completely reversed itself in the past 20 years.
"The only thing that could have stopped those two airplanes successfully is if the proper surveillance structure were in place to notice that strange things were a'brew"
...at a government that can't solve problems at home, but insists that their way is the best way.
Actually, we could have very easily stopped it and other acts of terrorism against. We (our government) could have kept our noses out of Middle East politics and the other affairs of other countries.
For over 100 years, and most especially since WWII, our government has decided that it should call the shots for the rest of the world. For 50 years, we have cajoled, imtimidated, embargoed, subverted and strong-armed weaker countries into doing what we want, either by force, politics, money or assassination.
We funded the Shah of Iran... We funded Osama Bin Laden... when the Ayatollah took over Iran, we funded Saddam. We constantly seem to play one side against the other.
And like it or not, for better or for worse, we are Isreal's strongest ally which just rubs salt in the wounds of many of the other countries of the Middle East. And that's just the middle east.
There are a lot of folks around the world who are tired of being strong-armed by the bully but don't have the armies or economical power to fight back. So some are doing it in the only manner that they can.
I don't like or approve of it. But I can understand their frustration. It is only matched by mine... at a government that appears to only want to get bigger and more powerful while lining the pockets of the politicians.
I found the problem with the garbled audio and iTunes for Windows.
I have TotalRecorder installed. Once I went into the control panel and set Windows to use my Audigy directly and to only use preferred devices, the garbling went away.
Just setting to use the Audigy isn't enough. You have to either set the "use only preferred" checkbox, or unininstall TotalRecorder.
My knee jerk reaction was that Apple was intentionally degrading the audio when TotalRecorder was detected (because iTunes worked after I uninstalled TotalRecorder on my work computer). I'm glad that this isn't the case.
1/ Does anyone know if iTunes communicates information about your music collection to Apple or anyone else (e.g. the RIAA)?
I haven't checked this yet... but my Kerio personal firewall should make it easy for me to find out. I can then monitor the port used with one of my packet sniffers. Will investigate and try to post the results to this thread this weekend.
2/ When you buy a song can you download it again the future if it gets deleted somehow? Can you download it in multiple formats?
You can only download in AAC format. Yes, you can download it again and again and again... provided you don't change your credit card billing address to a non-U.S. one.
To get other formats, simply burn the song(s) to a CD and rip them back into your favorite format.
3/ How does the ripping quality compare to CDEx and co?
So far, the ripping (using iTunes for Windows for this) is just fine. You have your choice of ripping to AAC (the default), MP3, Wav and AIFF at up to 320kbps.
4/ Do you have to install Quicktime
Yes, QuickTime 6.4 is required, and is included in the installation program. You have no choice in the matter.
5/ What's the deal with AAC on Windows?
Seems ok to me. Just another standard. I have my iTunes set to use MP3 by default though.
6/ Do you have to wear a black turtleneck and jeans to make it work correctly?
No, but it'll make you into a cooler, more hip and superintelligent person.
It works fine on everyone else's machines here... just not MINE. :-(
The library sharing works like a champ too.
I watched my boss connect his Apple formatted iPod to his PC and iTunes for Windows. Rumor had it that you could finally connect the same iPod to both Macs and PCs.
The iPod mounted and almost immediately dialog came up that said something to the effect of "To use this iPod it has to be formatted, shall I continue?"
Of the course the Boss DIDN'T let it continue. He's not an idiot.
I downloaded and installed it about 12:30PM Pacific. It DOES look and feel just like on my Powerbook. I was very pleased that it didn't ask for any personal information (unlike MusicMatch). It even very nicely asked me if I wanted to import all of the AAC and MP3 files in "My Music".
There is where success ended though. When playing music, the sound is choppy. Much like when the heads and rollers are very dirt on a cassette or 8 track tape (or the tape is creased.)
However, the same songs play fine in Music Match and WinAMP on the same computer. (AMD Athlon 1900+, Windows XP Pro, 512MB ram.)
I like iTunes on my Powerbook. I'd like it on my XP machine here at work. However, it looks like for at least the time being, I'll be sticking with Music Match Plus (I registered it years ago and even bought the lifetime updates.)
I'm not surprised by this study either... After years of using two computers, two monitors, two keyboards, etc. I'm now using one computer equipped with a nice ATI Radeon card that has both digital and analog outputs.
My primary monitor is a Viewsonic VG181 (18" flat panel) that I run at 1280x1024 (unless I rotate it to portrait mode where it's 1024x1280) and my secondary monitor is an old Viewsonic 15" running at 1024x768.
My desktop extends across both monitors but the 15" is where I keep my file manager (TotalCommander), messengers, a web browser, vnc viewer, etc. It also serves as a great place to hold reference material while I work on something on the main monitor.
With the addition of the Ultramon software (http://www.ultramon.com) to manage the dual monitors I can really make this monitors sing and dance. Well, almost. heh
At home where I run OSX and Linux computers, I use my old Matrox dual head with 19" and 17" CRTs and my 15" TiBook with a 17" CRT.
I now HATE being limited to only one monitor.
Just a nit-picking thought.
How do they figure that signing up to pay $9.99 to $50.00 a month is "no minimum monthly commitment"?
"a monthly charge of $50.00 - a price of just 16 cents per track - with no minimum monthly commitment."
If there was no charge UNLESS you downloaded something and THEN the $9.99 to $50.00 price kicked in... THAT would be "no minimum monthly commitment."
It probably is a counter. AT&T is the company that the FTC contracted to host the DNC servers. That was mentioned in articles when the DNC site went up and got slammed. The articles stated that AT&T was scrambling to add extra servers to the pool to handle the unexpected load.
Atari was a bit late to the game with that format though.
Commodore made what is probably the first clamshell notebook in 1984 and showed it at Winter CES in January of 1985. While Commodore never sold it to the general public, the Atari Stacy looked similar when it came out almost five years later.
Toshiba released the T-1200 clamshell notebook in 1987 and made it through 1992. It even had a resume feature and an internal 1200 baud modem.
From a little research (maybe 30 minutes) this morning, the Toshiba T-1200 and the Datavue (Dataview?) Spark were the first true clamshell laptops released to the public (using the now standard form factor). Both were released in 1987.
Back in the very early 90's (like 90-91 or so) I picked up a USED Toshiba (or was it NEC?) clamshell laptop. It was an XT based, with a 2 (or 2.5") internal 720K floppy drive (used the same disks as the later Canon Zapshot) and 2MB of ram (1.4MB configured as as drive d:, and DOS in ROM. This was the thinist laptop I've ever seen,with maybe the exception of the Toshiba Portege. They also had a model that included a tiny hard drive in the 20MB range instead of the floppy drive. I loved this computer, especially the keyboard which was pretty much identical to those in the latest Thinkpads and Powerbooks.
Later examples, all predating Apple's first Powerbook (which was released in October 1991) are:
Amastrad PPC 512 in 1988, Atari Stacy in September 1989, Apple Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple Powerbook 100 in October 1991.
And let's not forget the Toshiba T100-X Dynapad in 1993. That's the first TabletPC... ran Windows 3.1 and the Microsoft Pen OS.
You can find a lot of this at http://www.old-computers.com in their Museum.
>>For example, the Atari laptop which looked in the same form factor as current ones. IBM Stole that design and produced its first thinkpad. Soon after, Apple stole the design again and produced the first Powerbook
It's the same here in the states but most folks don't realize it. When you are stopped by the police for say speeding, the whole time of the stop you are under arrest as you are not allowed to leave.
Being held in custody while waiting for paperwork from the DA's office is simply waiting to be "booked" (charges filed).
Most Americans think of being arrested as the whole "go directly to jail", fingerprints, etc. but that is the booking stage. The arrest happens as soon as you are detained by the police.
I've only had one experience with the blacklist services. Right after I got stuck with implementing our new mail server a few years ago (and I had no clue as to what an open relay was) we suddenly found our company on the ORBS blacklist.
As it turned out, no one had ever spammed through us (according to ORBS), we just got picked up in a scan of IP addresses that they did looking for open relays.
The only way we found out about it was when replying to customer tech support emails, some of them came bouncing back with the "we don't accept email from you because you're on the ORBS list" type messages.
As in other cases on here, even after closing the relay, it took a long time (weeks) to get off of the list.
I always thought it ironic that to find open relays, ORBS would violate the ECPA by accessing smtp servers without consent of the owners. The black lists also served as a prebuilt list of open relays for spammers to use!
"Your honor, I plead not guilty to attempted breaking and entering. All I was doing was checking to make sure businesses locked their doors at night to keep out the thieves."
I believe that OSX/Apple and Linux ARE making serious inroads into the desktop, mostly by those who've dealt with Windows and low to mid end x86 hardware for years.
Here's my reasoning...
On the desktop
A few of us are tired of turning on an x86 machine to see the blue screen of death, a boot failure message, whatever... We're tired of Windows working great with a fresh install but six months later slowing to a crawl (must be that reboot timer.)
One of the guys here (who is NOT a computer 'guru') figured out that with the amount of time spent in the past year upgrading/reinstalling Windows and apps, waiting for one of us to come over to DO the work... that he could have bought a top of the line Apple and saved time and money to boot. Nothing that he does is Windows centric.
We did set him up with dual boot and various flavors of Linux (Lindows and Redhat)and he was even more lost, having to wait for us to tell him how to do something or to reconfigure something that he wanted to do. (Perhaps that was our fault for not doing it right in the first place.)
Yet set the man down at a Mac and he's happily clicking away. Doesn't even notice that it's an 800Mhz G4 instead of a 2.4Ghz P4.
I catch my wife using my 400Mhz G3 desktop mac at times because her's "is getting stupid again"... (*SIGH* another weekend shot backing up, reinstalling and reconfiguring Windows XP, her apps and data.)
My boss just brought in his 3.06Ghz P4 because it booted up with an error message one time too many. We're to use it for parts, perhaps for a new database server. (Note, there are dents in the side of the case that match his shoes.) Meanwhile he's using his iBook until his new Dual G5 2 Ghz machine arrives.
And these are just a few examples of the problems folks have with their x86 hardware and Windows that I and others here have to deal with.
On the server side:
The same boss looked at the hours that the two of us have spent configuring and setting up five rack mount servers (a combination of Windows and Linux, off the shelf name brand and custom built) plus the cost of the hardware. (one server purchased from eLinux has had to have the mother board, one hard drive and three power supplies replaced in the year that we've owned it.)
Then he looked at the cost of Apple's X-Serves. As an experiment, He had me set up an OSX server as a mail server, duplicating our Qmail/imap/virtual domain mail server functionality. Total time was about three hours I'd never done it before.) The Linux/Qmail version took me weeks of manhours, mostly spent searching the newsgroups, forums and books as I'd never done THAT configuration before either. Again, it was probably me as I didn't know what I was doing. But I was able to get it done a lot faster on OSX Server than on Linux, not knowing what I was doing on either machine. (Windows would have been faster still.)
We built a new file server with IDE raid to replace our aging Snap server (linux based)... It runs XP. If we don't reboot it every week, it locks up and stops serving shares. If fact, every Monday morning I have to reboot the Windows servers as a preventive measure. We find that they stay up longer.
The bottom line is that through all of this, the Linux machines have only suffered from hardware failures... once configured and running, they stay running.
The Macs (I have the G3 at home, the G4 Powerbook I carry with me and a G4 800 at work, plus a number of others around here) haven't crashed nor had hardware failures. My G3 hasn't needed to be "reinstalled" since I got it other than when I upgraded to newer versions of OSX. (Neither have the other Macs, but my G3 is the oldest.)
Th
A number of years ago, I had a teen customer in my computer store getting his laptop upgraded and OS/2 installed. His mother was sitting there rather bored with our "geek" talk and asked was was the difference between OS/2 and Windows.
I simply handed her my laptop, loaded with OS/2 and the normal office apps, games, etc. and told her to try it herself. (Though she was a computer novice, she never asked any other questions.)
A couple of hours later when we were finished with the upgrades, we asked her what she thought. Her summary was... "It's just like Windows, only easier." And then proceeded to show us the things that she found better/different and that she'd done.
When any version of *nix can get that kind of reaction, it'll be a good home user competition for Windows.
BTW, she and I eventually got married (perhaps she was tired of paying for her son's upgrades!) and every time her Windows machine crashes ("get's stupid" as she puts it)asks why she can't have her OS/2 back.
It's pretty common here in Las Vegas, Nevada... I recently started war driving occasionally while making regular trips around town. In perhaps ten trips I've found almost 1,000 unique access points (no data is logged other than location, address, SSID and signal strength... all in "passive or RFMon" mode where I don't acces their network at all... much like listening on a radio scanner.)
;-)
Cable modem penetration is VERY high here. I know only two people still using dial-up (why not? $50 a month gets you 3mb/s downstream and 256 kb/s upstream)
As a small sample, there's seven of us that work in this office... 6 out of 7 have cable modem, 4 out of 7 have wireless lans at home. No, we're not in the computer business.
That is why anyone who does this on a regular basis uses one of the escrow services for items of that amount. I've done it, the escrow service doesn't tell the seller that it is ok to ship until the check clears.
The buyer is protected because the the escrow company doesn't release the money to the seller until the buyer says the item arrived as advertised or until a certain time period has passed if the buyer doesn't respond.
In my book, anyone who wants to buy or sell an item for more than $1,000 and who won't do it through an escrow service isn't to be trusted in the first place.
Like others have said, in itself, this isn't anything new. Back in the late 1980's, I read a story in (I think) Scientific American about a government funded Martin Marietta lab that was doing research into using lasers to detect trace elements at the molecular level. A by-product of this research was the ability to polarize a molecule. Suddenly the head geek had a brainstorm that perhaps this could be used for data storage. He turned the whole thing over to MM (anything developed using government funds is considered public domain). MM then developed it into a WORM technology. I don't remember the original specs, but they did say that using multiple frequency lasers (to vary the depth and get 3D storage) they could get 1TB per cubic centimeter. They envisioned this as being used for high capacity data storage where you didn't want the data changed. Monitoring data from nuclear power plants was one example given. MM said they had no desire to develope the technology further and opened it to licensing. The article ended saying that six companies had already signed NDAs. Then about 3-4 years later, another company announced a product called the "Rat Pack 50". A WORM system that used 1" squares (about the size of a Trisket cracker) that held 1 GB of data. The reader/writer was a changer that held 50 wafers. The unit was to cost in the neighborhood of about $5,000 if I remember right. I even saw a picture of it (or at least the prototype.) From the description of the Rat Pack, I think the company had licensed MM's technology. However, as far as I know, the Rat Pack never saw the light of day. The more cynical of us figured that someone shut it down as it'd have blown the hard drive and fledgling CD-Burner markets out of the water. After all, the really expensive SCSI hard drives had just reached 1GB! So while this article is interesting, it just more people finding another way to do something that's already been done. The glimmer of light is that with enough folks and companies working on it, perhaps someday this will actually make it into the consumer market.
As others have mentioned, OPhoto.com is very good. I ordered prints from my Mavica the week before Christmas and got very good service. The 4x6's and 8x10's came out VERY nice. You don't NEED any special software to upload your photos. Your Netscape will do the job just fine.
I've survived the following "My system is better than your system" elitist wars:
- TRS-80 vs Apple vs Commodore Pet
- Vic-20 vs Atari 400
- CBM-64 vs Atari 800 vs Radio Shack Color Computer
- Amiga vs Mac vs IBM PC
- IBM OS/2 vs Windows 3.1 vs Windows NT 3.51
- IBM OS/2 vs Windows 95 vs Windows NT 3.51
- Windows 9x vs Windows NT
- ETC, ad nauseum
I even remember bitter battles over which was the better CP/M platform! I've been working with personal computers longer than some of you have been alive, giving me must a little bit of experience in this. The one thing that has never changed in the 21 years is the fact that everyone wants to feel that their choice is the right one.- NT users sneer at Windows 9x users.
- Windows 9x users sneer at Windows 3.x users
- Linux users sneer at Windows users
- FreeBSD users sneer at Linux users.
- Mac users sneer at us
- We sneer at Mac users
In Linux we have a very good operating system. Since you're all reading this, you know WHY you're running Linux. Choice is good. Multiple distros are good. Elitism is not good.The first version of Linux I ever saw and used was Yggdrasil. I've also run Slackware, Debian and of course Red Hat. They were all good. I have my favorite. Even Linux Mandrake is good, without it, I probably wouldn't have tried KDE. Yes, I've even run FreeBSD.
The point is, enjoy what you use. Don't try to fragment the Linux or even the *nix community by all this bickering over distributions. To do so is playing exactly as hoped for in the recent Microsoft white paper on how to deal with the Linux threat. Microsoft FUD doesn't work very well against Linux, their best hope is for balkanization of the Linux community thereby causing us to lose focus.
So, let's try to calm the elitist urges within us and work for the common goals: