Re:Not much confidence, but still a good player.
on
Rio Karma User Review
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Something to note on the subject of java apps is that the author of the java interface publishes updates to the java manager software regularly on one of the java projects on sun, as well as several other useful pieces of software, one of which lets you STREAM music from the karma while its docked to an ethernet connection. This to me is a killer feature.
there are definitely some downsides to it. I haven't had that many problems with lockups since i updated to the latest firmware, but they are present. if I didn't have so much of my music in vorbis format i'd consider buying a different player. unfortunately my music (almost 35GB in ogg) doesn't have a high enough bitrate to really want to transcode it to AAC or something for play on an ipod.
all around i'd say its about in the middle of the pack. if you need vorbis playback, its at the top of the heap; otherwise, fair-to-middlin' is about as good as i'll give it, strictly on the merits of the player (ie, ignoring the fact that i can stream to officemates or my desktop from its cradle next to the stereo.)
yeah, actually you do. The right to privacy is implied by the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as explicitly granted in most state constitutions or laws. Anonymity is a component of free speech--for empirical evidence of such, take a look at what happens in places like Iran and China.
thanks for the info... I haven't had any problems with the hardware for the most part, except as you noted, the 3d support for the video isn't really there (radeon) but i have read instructions on how to get it to work on xandros's forums, although i never tried it.
i haven't used a redhat distro in years--does fedora have a livecd-style version?
heavy processor use is obviously going to tax the kernel, but for average use i'd like to see at least 2.5 hours of battery life, preferably closer to the 3.5 i get out of windows. is that in line with what you're seeing? also, what kind of laptop are you using?
Ok, I see that improved laptop support is one of the touted features here. My question is, how good is it?
I just switched back to windows (rather painlessly, thanks to the excellent QtParted and, strangely enough, a windows ME boot disk [for an XP machine--needed to restore the MBR]). I can't tell you how greatly it pains me to do so--as far as i'm concerned, linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for some time. ACPI-based laptops though, are another story. I've been trying for weeks to get my battery life to come close to what's possible under windows, and while the Software suspend project seems to work for a lot of people, i could never get it to work on my laptop (or maybe just my kernel). I've tried various distributions, from suse to xandros to straight debian to knoppix and even the simpler ones such as DSL and none of them allow me to really use my laptop for more than about an hour (give or take a quarter) without plugging in, which is just unacceptable for my purposes.
So i finally gave up and dropped the linux partitions and reinstalled the boot sector (oh how that final 'fdisk/mbr' pained me!) but at least i can spend three and a half hours at a coffee shop without needing an outlet. cygwin takes the edge off, but its a bit like methadone if you asked me.
so anyway, for anyone who's tested and/or used the new version of MDK on a recent laptop, what's your experience with the ACPI support? Battery life? Suspend functionality? dare i ask--functional keys? (yes, i know that's not really related to acpi, but mandrake is generally pretty conscientious about things like that, i thought perhaps they might have integrated a solution.)
4) Major in your passion, not what your parents or teachers suggested you major in. I majored in Computer Science and I don't regret it. Unfortunately, I majored in it too late in my college career, and it didn't work out, so...
Everyone is on one side of this or another, but from my experience, this is a BAD idea. Everyone I know who majored in something like history or art ended up in a crappy job taking shit off everyone higher up the ladder than them (read: everyone). You're going to end up taking crap off people in any job, so you might as well make some money while you're at it--and nothing is more depressing than having a masters degree in hand and not being able to find a job that pays more than 25k. (Except maybe being the smartest person you know and not being able to get your foot in the door b/c you don't have a finished degree--so whatever you do, finish what you start.)
you obviously didn't run it... mozilla is available through xandros networks, which involves a free registration.
the cd burning software can be enabled for 39.00 (the cost for the "standard" version--not the business version) or you can use non-xandros tools; the cd burning is within XFM. there's nothing stopping you from installing a 3rd party app.
my biggest bitch about xandros has to do with the fact that most of the stuff that's available through XN is a touch out of date, but that's the price you pay for stability.
having run XOC for the last couple of months on two laptops and a desktop, I can tell you I'm extremely impressed with it. It integrates very nicely into a windows network, and I'm able to use grdesktop to termserv into the 2k servers i have to admin over a vpn. Printing was a snap, even though the printer was hosted on a windows machine. OOffice of course comes installed, and most major classes of apps are available. I even installed cedega last night and played Civ3 on it. Yeah, i've had to compile my own apps from time to time, but as someone who's been using linux for 7 years now, this is the first time I've found one i could actually let my grandmother AND my CEO use.
Everything between the parent and the original post shows ignorance about the actual situation.
Nobody's wanting to upgrade windows xp on a radiation therapy machine. period. there are a few modalities that have old versions of windows embedded, but the software has the snot tested out of it before it ships, so while it may not be as "cool" as running qnx, its as safe.
the machines doctors want upgraded are running things like HIS's (hospital info systems), RIS's (Radiology info systems), and intercommunication servers that allow different systems to talk to each other, store images, patient information, scheduling, and assorted other kinds of software, none of which has ever "held human lives in its anthropomorphic hands." they hold a lot of other shit--the doctor's report about that nasty rash on your nuts, your girlfriend's last four mammograms, and the billing history on your account--but there's no danger to anyone's life there.
and having developed medical software on both windows and linux (as well as solaris and java) for the last several years, i can tell you that whether you're running windows or linux or qnx or amiga, if you upgrade the OS willy-nilly your software is going to become unstable in some circumstance. it doesn't matter how much you test, or even whether the bug is in your software, at some point, some doctor is going to be pissed at you because his reports won't come up.
they want stability in software and every update that comes down the pipe--you just can't have it both ways. part of the problem is that these people look at a computer and see a computer, which isn't what they bought. they bought an application, and in this arena, that usually means the hardware platform is static. its not like buying a copy of money or whatever your favorite application is--these systems cost millions of dollars for a large installation, and when that much money is on the table, you get the right to say what its going to run on. that's just the way it works.
I have to agree with the immediate parent. I've written substantial code in everything from C to Lisp to Python to vimscript, and I have found that for actually getting things done, especially when there's a good library binding available, languages like python, javascript, and php are my platform of choice.
sure, there have been times I've wanted to do something and couldn't, or couldn't easily--but more often than not, its a function of ignorance, rather than a deficit in the language. and yeah, there are plenty of times I wish the solution was really cross-platform (yeah,i know the languages are technically xp, but typically the library binding isn't) but as i tend to do a lot of browser and web programming its not usually such a big issue. I'm actually kind of excited to see where mono goes, as I like the.Net/java paradigm and I kind of like.Net more for gui programming at this point--but before I start a flame war I haven't done that much GUI work in either one. I can say definitively that the form designers i've used for.Net on win32 have been better than the ones i've used for eclipse, but that could always change.
anyway, point being, anyone that knocks scripting languages solely because they think compiled is always better is probably a college student who knows just enough to be dangerous.
You may realize this already and just be karmawhoring (and i mean this in the best sense of the word;) ) but in all seriousness, a dongle like this is kind of useful for those of us trying to turn an old less-than-useful computer with a sketchy bios into a router or single-purpose server. nothing's worse than having to have a keyboard plugged in to your home-entertainment system (when you use such a computer for an mp3 server) just because the bios sucks.
I can't speak to Seattle's market, but in Austin Starbucks isn't exactly the venue of choice for most people--the local coffeeshops are greatly favored here. Coffee's better, wifi is free (austin has one of the highest per capita free hotspot ratios in the country) and most of them serve booze as well.:)
In a city that's as big on local business as austin is, I find it hard to believe they're trying to cater to the "NPR" market.
having been down a similar road with an arts school myself, I can tell you, at least from my own experience, that this is going to come down to your relationship with the client. In my case, my client trusts me--I've never steered them wrong, and when I can't give them a solution to fit their needs in a cost-effective way, I give them solid recommendations. Consequently, I'm as valuable to them in a consultant's capacity as a vendor capacity, and if another vendor professing to offer an "open" solution tried to convince them I would never be able to integrate into it, they'd politely show them the door, if not laughing them out of it.
my advice? do your homework--check out this "open" solution, and if you can't get access to it from the community, be sure and let your client know just how open it is. also, make sure they realize what they're giving up by switching to one vendor--you know their needs intimately, you know how your CMS works, and they've already invested that money and deserve a return on it. The other guys, OTOH, are obviously out to make a buck without taking into account the legitimate needs of the client.
mod parent up. the question is just plain stupid. making serious changes in one's appearances often takes serious changes in ones lifestyle. that means taking whatever is in the way of the gym and making it less of a priority than the gym, along with modifications in your diet. you don't have to start out going five days a week or anything--just shoot for twice a week, say mondays and thursdays. after a month or so go to MWF, then give yourself another month or two of that, then shoot for MTThF. A trainer will really help you stay on track as well--if you've never worked out seriously before I highly recommend it.
until you're ready to do that, anything you do towards losing weight is a waste of money.
if they want to be americans they have two choices: have the word "America" or "American" in the name of their country, or move to the US of A. otherwise, they're north or south american, or a citizen of their respective countries.
I used to work with a guy who was very similar to the parent poster... former arc welder or something like that, fairly intelligent in some ways (he had what my dad called a peasant shrewdness) but one of the worst developers I've ever had to code with. he had pretty much the same opinion of me--no use for 'book learnin'--but the difference between the code i took four hours to write and the code he took 20 minutes to write was that we spent 2 days tracking down errors in his code--in the field no less, which is another story altogether--while mine worked fine.
does a motivated developer need a degree to be a good developer? no, don't be absurd. but in general, are people who took the time to learn the theory of development better developers? absolutely. its the difference between a sergeant who is a great tactician but poor strategist and a general who has learned over years of training at west point and in the field what strategies work.
Actually i just watched it the other day, and I still think its a classic. perhaps a bit juvenile in spots, though that can be forgiven since it was a movie aimed at, well, juveniles--kids even. i thought it might even be a little heavy for the sub 8yo crowd, given that at least three characters actually die violently (not counting the mice from nimh, excluding jonathan frisby and the fat mouse whose name escapes me.)
Actually, it means reading four or five different paragraphs three times each.
Don't presume that because you tried speech recognition five or six years ago that the same experience still holds. The technology is pretty good, although itrequires a lot of horsepower.
Seriously, I haven't seen any natural-language software reach the point where I would trust it with medical information. I would rather get the right treatment than someone fucking up my patient records...
Actually, I used to write medical software that had an autotranscription component using Dragon's software, and given a medical dictionary to select from and a proper training cycle, it was incredibly effective. The physician or a designated individual still had to approve the report, but very rarely were there any problems with transcription (we tracked corrections through the system so we'd know how effective it was, and after a proper training cycle it was better than 96% effective.)
on the subject of the cost of healthcare, doctors using our system loved it specifically because it allowed them to accomplish more work (for a lot of reasons, not just the Dragon software) in the same period of time, which helped the hospital keep costs down. Did that drive down medical costs for everyone? of course not--but not because things were more expensive. Face it, people are greedy. Insurance companies never cut rates, nor do doctors start working for less money. hospitals won't start charging appropriate costs back to the patients until they're forced to through legislation (which should be accompanied by a national healthcare system or a system to provide insurance coverage to the 40 million of us without it, to keep hospitals in business.)
IANAL, but if memory of my law survey classes holds true, the question to be answered WRT extradition is the physical location of the accused at the time of commission. In this case it seems that he was physically in Australia; therefore, he should be tried in Oz. Had he committed these crimes in the US then FLED to Oz, there would be a case for extradition.
IMHO this idea that the internet makes everywhere a jurisdiction of everywhere else is complete bullshit.
probably because its predictable, even if it sucks ass. also they're probably using a stock solaris install or something similar which comes with NN4.5.
You'd be surprised at the number of people who still think NN4.5 is the latest version of "netscape" as well.
As late as what, 1998? a web developer might have asked the same question about Netscape. It had such a large percentage of the market share that it was a pointless crusade to code for anything else.
Look where it got them.
There's also somethign about the question that's slightly reminiscent of the Y2K problem--I've said this myself on occasion, and know plenty of others who've echoed the sentiment: "Oh, i'll get around to updating that page long before another browser takes over." Yeah, right.
Bottom-line: code to the standards. IE 6 is fairly decent about most of them, though not as good as the Lizard, so you're probably safe for the future as well that way.
i'm pretty sure its legal in russia to do this. somebody can correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe they have compulsory licensing there.
security of information is another matter. i recommend using their paypal interface. the credit card processor has a secure form that forwards to a non-ssl action page, which gives me the heebie-jeebies.
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Something to note on the subject of java apps is that the author of the java interface publishes updates to the java manager software regularly on one of the java projects on sun, as well as several other useful pieces of software, one of which lets you STREAM music from the karma while its docked to an ethernet connection. This to me is a killer feature.
there are definitely some downsides to it. I haven't had that many problems with lockups since i updated to the latest firmware, but they are present. if I didn't have so much of my music in vorbis format i'd consider buying a different player. unfortunately my music (almost 35GB in ogg) doesn't have a high enough bitrate to really want to transcode it to AAC or something for play on an ipod.
all around i'd say its about in the middle of the pack. if you need vorbis playback, its at the top of the heap; otherwise, fair-to-middlin' is about as good as i'll give it, strictly on the merits of the player (ie, ignoring the fact that i can stream to officemates or my desktop from its cradle next to the stereo.)
yeah, actually you do. The right to privacy is implied by the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as explicitly granted in most state constitutions or laws. Anonymity is a component of free speech--for empirical evidence of such, take a look at what happens in places like Iran and China.
thanks for the info... I haven't had any problems with the hardware for the most part, except as you noted, the 3d support for the video isn't really there (radeon) but i have read instructions on how to get it to work on xandros's forums, although i never tried it.
i haven't used a redhat distro in years--does fedora have a livecd-style version?
heavy processor use is obviously going to tax the kernel, but for average use i'd like to see at least 2.5 hours of battery life, preferably closer to the 3.5 i get out of windows. is that in line with what you're seeing? also, what kind of laptop are you using?
Ok, I see that improved laptop support is one of the touted features here. My question is, how good is it?
/mbr' pained me!) but at least i can spend three and a half hours at a coffee shop without needing an outlet. cygwin takes the edge off, but its a bit like methadone if you asked me.
I just switched back to windows (rather painlessly, thanks to the excellent QtParted and, strangely enough, a windows ME boot disk [for an XP machine--needed to restore the MBR]). I can't tell you how greatly it pains me to do so--as far as i'm concerned, linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for some time. ACPI-based laptops though, are another story. I've been trying for weeks to get my battery life to come close to what's possible under windows, and while the Software suspend project seems to work for a lot of people, i could never get it to work on my laptop (or maybe just my kernel). I've tried various distributions, from suse to xandros to straight debian to knoppix and even the simpler ones such as DSL and none of them allow me to really use my laptop for more than about an hour (give or take a quarter) without plugging in, which is just unacceptable for my purposes.
So i finally gave up and dropped the linux partitions and reinstalled the boot sector (oh how that final 'fdisk
so anyway, for anyone who's tested and/or used the new version of MDK on a recent laptop, what's your experience with the ACPI support? Battery life? Suspend functionality? dare i ask--functional keys? (yes, i know that's not really related to acpi, but mandrake is generally pretty conscientious about things like that, i thought perhaps they might have integrated a solution.)
4) Major in your passion, not what your parents or teachers suggested you major in. I majored in Computer Science and I don't regret it. Unfortunately, I majored in it too late in my college career, and it didn't work out, so...
Everyone is on one side of this or another, but from my experience, this is a BAD idea. Everyone I know who majored in something like history or art ended up in a crappy job taking shit off everyone higher up the ladder than them (read: everyone). You're going to end up taking crap off people in any job, so you might as well make some money while you're at it--and nothing is more depressing than having a masters degree in hand and not being able to find a job that pays more than 25k. (Except maybe being the smartest person you know and not being able to get your foot in the door b/c you don't have a finished degree--so whatever you do, finish what you start.)
you obviously didn't run it... mozilla is available through xandros networks, which involves a free registration.
the cd burning software can be enabled for 39.00 (the cost for the "standard" version--not the business version) or you can use non-xandros tools; the cd burning is within XFM. there's nothing stopping you from installing a 3rd party app.
my biggest bitch about xandros has to do with the fact that most of the stuff that's available through XN is a touch out of date, but that's the price you pay for stability.
having run XOC for the last couple of months on two laptops and a desktop, I can tell you I'm extremely impressed with it. It integrates very nicely into a windows network, and I'm able to use grdesktop to termserv into the 2k servers i have to admin over a vpn. Printing was a snap, even though the printer was hosted on a windows machine. OOffice of course comes installed, and most major classes of apps are available. I even installed cedega last night and played Civ3 on it. Yeah, i've had to compile my own apps from time to time, but as someone who's been using linux for 7 years now, this is the first time I've found one i could actually let my grandmother AND my CEO use.
Everything between the parent and the original post shows ignorance about the actual situation.
Nobody's wanting to upgrade windows xp on a radiation therapy machine. period. there are a few modalities that have old versions of windows embedded, but the software has the snot tested out of it before it ships, so while it may not be as "cool" as running qnx, its as safe.
the machines doctors want upgraded are running things like HIS's (hospital info systems), RIS's (Radiology info systems), and intercommunication servers that allow different systems to talk to each other, store images, patient information, scheduling, and assorted other kinds of software, none of which has ever "held human lives in its anthropomorphic hands." they hold a lot of other shit--the doctor's report about that nasty rash on your nuts, your girlfriend's last four mammograms, and the billing history on your account--but there's no danger to anyone's life there.
and having developed medical software on both windows and linux (as well as solaris and java) for the last several years, i can tell you that whether you're running windows or linux or qnx or amiga, if you upgrade the OS willy-nilly your software is going to become unstable in some circumstance. it doesn't matter how much you test, or even whether the bug is in your software, at some point, some doctor is going to be pissed at you because his reports won't come up.
they want stability in software and every update that comes down the pipe--you just can't have it both ways. part of the problem is that these people look at a computer and see a computer, which isn't what they bought. they bought an application, and in this arena, that usually means the hardware platform is static. its not like buying a copy of money or whatever your favorite application is--these systems cost millions of dollars for a large installation, and when that much money is on the table, you get the right to say what its going to run on. that's just the way it works.
WTF? Aren't real lawyers banned from slashdot? you asshole, you're going to kill the market on free legal advice here...
I have to agree with the immediate parent. I've written substantial code in everything from C to Lisp to Python to vimscript, and I have found that for actually getting things done, especially when there's a good library binding available, languages like python, javascript, and php are my platform of choice.
.Net/java paradigm and I kind of like .Net more for gui programming at this point--but before I start a flame war I haven't done that much GUI work in either one. I can say definitively that the form designers i've used for .Net on win32 have been better than the ones i've used for eclipse, but that could always change.
sure, there have been times I've wanted to do something and couldn't, or couldn't easily--but more often than not, its a function of ignorance, rather than a deficit in the language. and yeah, there are plenty of times I wish the solution was really cross-platform (yeah,i know the languages are technically xp, but typically the library binding isn't) but as i tend to do a lot of browser and web programming its not usually such a big issue. I'm actually kind of excited to see where mono goes, as I like the
anyway, point being, anyone that knocks scripting languages solely because they think compiled is always better is probably a college student who knows just enough to be dangerous.
You may realize this already and just be karmawhoring (and i mean this in the best sense of the word ;) ) but in all seriousness, a dongle like this is kind of useful for those of us trying to turn an old less-than-useful computer with a sketchy bios into a router or single-purpose server. nothing's worse than having to have a keyboard plugged in to your home-entertainment system (when you use such a computer for an mp3 server) just because the bios sucks.
I can't speak to Seattle's market, but in Austin Starbucks isn't exactly the venue of choice for most people--the local coffeeshops are greatly favored here. Coffee's better, wifi is free (austin has one of the highest per capita free hotspot ratios in the country) and most of them serve booze as well. :)
In a city that's as big on local business as austin is, I find it hard to believe they're trying to cater to the "NPR" market.
having been down a similar road with an arts school myself, I can tell you, at least from my own experience, that this is going to come down to your relationship with the client. In my case, my client trusts me--I've never steered them wrong, and when I can't give them a solution to fit their needs in a cost-effective way, I give them solid recommendations. Consequently, I'm as valuable to them in a consultant's capacity as a vendor capacity, and if another vendor professing to offer an "open" solution tried to convince them I would never be able to integrate into it, they'd politely show them the door, if not laughing them out of it.
my advice? do your homework--check out this "open" solution, and if you can't get access to it from the community, be sure and let your client know just how open it is. also, make sure they realize what they're giving up by switching to one vendor--you know their needs intimately, you know how your CMS works, and they've already invested that money and deserve a return on it. The other guys, OTOH, are obviously out to make a buck without taking into account the legitimate needs of the client.
mod parent up. the question is just plain stupid. making serious changes in one's appearances often takes serious changes in ones lifestyle. that means taking whatever is in the way of the gym and making it less of a priority than the gym, along with modifications in your diet. you don't have to start out going five days a week or anything--just shoot for twice a week, say mondays and thursdays. after a month or so go to MWF, then give yourself another month or two of that, then shoot for MTThF. A trainer will really help you stay on track as well--if you've never worked out seriously before I highly recommend it.
until you're ready to do that, anything you do towards losing weight is a waste of money.
if they want to be americans they have two choices: have the word "America" or "American" in the name of their country, or move to the US of A. otherwise, they're north or south american, or a citizen of their respective countries.
I used to work with a guy who was very similar to the parent poster... former arc welder or something like that, fairly intelligent in some ways (he had what my dad called a peasant shrewdness) but one of the worst developers I've ever had to code with. he had pretty much the same opinion of me--no use for 'book learnin'--but the difference between the code i took four hours to write and the code he took 20 minutes to write was that we spent 2 days tracking down errors in his code--in the field no less, which is another story altogether--while mine worked fine.
does a motivated developer need a degree to be a good developer? no, don't be absurd. but in general, are people who took the time to learn the theory of development better developers? absolutely. its the difference between a sergeant who is a great tactician but poor strategist and a general who has learned over years of training at west point and in the field what strategies work.
Actually i just watched it the other day, and I still think its a classic. perhaps a bit juvenile in spots, though that can be forgiven since it was a movie aimed at, well, juveniles--kids even. i thought it might even be a little heavy for the sub 8yo crowd, given that at least three characters actually die violently (not counting the mice from nimh, excluding jonathan frisby and the fat mouse whose name escapes me.)
yes, i'm enjoying my unemployment check.
Actually, it means reading four or five different paragraphs three times each.
Don't presume that because you tried speech recognition five or six years ago that the same experience still holds. The technology is pretty good, although itrequires a lot of horsepower.
Seriously, I haven't seen any natural-language software reach the point where I would trust it with medical information. I would rather get the right treatment than someone fucking up my patient records...
Actually, I used to write medical software that had an autotranscription component using Dragon's software, and given a medical dictionary to select from and a proper training cycle, it was incredibly effective. The physician or a designated individual still had to approve the report, but very rarely were there any problems with transcription (we tracked corrections through the system so we'd know how effective it was, and after a proper training cycle it was better than 96% effective.)
on the subject of the cost of healthcare, doctors using our system loved it specifically because it allowed them to accomplish more work (for a lot of reasons, not just the Dragon software) in the same period of time, which helped the hospital keep costs down. Did that drive down medical costs for everyone? of course not--but not because things were more expensive. Face it, people are greedy. Insurance companies never cut rates, nor do doctors start working for less money. hospitals won't start charging appropriate costs back to the patients until they're forced to through legislation (which should be accompanied by a national healthcare system or a system to provide insurance coverage to the 40 million of us without it, to keep hospitals in business.)
IANAL, but if memory of my law survey classes holds true, the question to be answered WRT extradition is the physical location of the accused at the time of commission. In this case it seems that he was physically in Australia; therefore, he should be tried in Oz. Had he committed these crimes in the US then FLED to Oz, there would be a case for extradition.
IMHO this idea that the internet makes everywhere a jurisdiction of everywhere else is complete bullshit.
... I'd like you to meet my friend Mr. Kettle. I understand the two of you have a few things in common....
probably because its predictable, even if it sucks ass. also they're probably using a stock solaris install or something similar which comes with NN4.5.
You'd be surprised at the number of people who still think NN4.5 is the latest version of "netscape" as well.
As late as what, 1998? a web developer might have asked the same question about Netscape. It had such a large percentage of the market share that it was a pointless crusade to code for anything else.
Look where it got them.
There's also somethign about the question that's slightly reminiscent of the Y2K problem--I've said this myself on occasion, and know plenty of others who've echoed the sentiment: "Oh, i'll get around to updating that page long before another browser takes over." Yeah, right.
Bottom-line: code to the standards. IE 6 is fairly decent about most of them, though not as good as the Lizard, so you're probably safe for the future as well that way.
i'm pretty sure its legal in russia to do this. somebody can correct me if i'm wrong, but i believe they have compulsory licensing there.
security of information is another matter. i recommend using their paypal interface. the credit card processor has a secure form that forwards to a non-ssl action page, which gives me the heebie-jeebies.
way to go asshole, tell everybody about it. no fucking wonder I can't get my files to encode right now, its been slashdotted.
why doesn't anyone mention itunes lack of support for ogg? to me that's a perfectly legitimate reason to go with winamp for burning.