I have an old 3g 40GB iPod that I received as a gift, it still works very well.
Yeah the iPod touch is cool, but 32GB is woefully inadequate.
The 160GB iPod Classic might be nice, but then I read comments that they have Cirrus Logic (*shudder*) sound chips instead of Yamahas. No thanks.
I've never used iTunes. Amazon.com sells MP3s with no DRM for the same or lower price than iTunes.
iPod still has the name recognition and is much sought after, but there are better alternatives, I'm looking at an Archos WiFi 160GB player, I just don't like how they want you to pay for the web browser.
These people are suing Google for putting their driveway and house in Google StreetView, and now with all the Internet coverage they're getting 100x more publicity and scrutiny than their few images in the Google database would have gotten them.
How about asking Google nicely to take the images down first?
I originally wanted an XBox360 over a PS3, GTA IV is coming out for both. But with Blu-Ray winning and the PS3's backward compatability with PS2 games (well the 60GB and 20GB anyway), I picked up a 60GB PS3 on eBay for a decent price. I'm very happy with it overall, except it won't play all my video files. Wireless controllers and HD rule. Motorstorm is a blast. Pieced together a Rock Band set for about $50, drums, mic, game. Will get a guitar later, I mostly wanted to drum.
I've been waiting for Tivo to do this for some time, seems like a natural thing for them to do. They already support various downloads like Amazon Unbox.
Ditto. Sprint Mobile Broadband (EVDO) is the only option I have at my rural location. I have a Yagi antenna and amp, and and currently getting about 1 megabit down, about 170kb up. It was a lot worse before last month, they must have upgraded the tower.
It generally works, it's a helluva lot better than dial-up. It's not perfect by any means, there are slowdowns and dropouts.
I'm a gamer, the pings aren't teriffic, about 150ms constant is the best I've gotten.
I pay $50 per month (you have to get in on a "SERO" program to get it for that price), but service is literally unlimited, unlike Verizon's "unlimited" service.
If I could get DSL or Cable I'd go for them in a second, I need a better ping and better reliability.
I don't care how open or closed the networks are, I'm not paying $40+ for cell phone service.
Tracfone works on Verizon's network and costs me about $10 a month. Initial investement was a $20 Tracfone + $50 minute doubler card + $20 60 min card, doubled to 120 minutes plus a code to add another 20 minutes. That was good for 3 months, I just added a $30 120 minute card doubled to 240 minutes. So now my cost is $10 per month. If you don't talk more than 80 minutes a month pay-as-you-go is the best deal.
Why not go back to horse & buggy while we're at it? I will if you will.
I don't want vinyl. I don't own a turntable any more. Record were scratchy, and you had to flip them to listen to the whole album. I don't even want CDs. I want MP3s. Amazon.com is about the only place that's doing it correctly, you can buy unprotected MP3s for reasonable prices.
So far I've downloaded Smashing Pumpkins and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, paid about $8 each. The downloader app needed to download entire albums is simple and easy to configure, you just tell it what folder you want your music saved to (default is My Documents\My Music\Amazon MP3), and whether to automatically add music to your WMP or iTunes collection (I use neither.)
I've never liked iTunes and haven't bought anything from them, but I'm a regular Amazon.com customer. I think this will really open up music downloads to a wide range of people. Amazon.com should stress how their downloads are different and unrestricted.
The selection seems pretty good so far. I hope it's not too good because I don't want to spend all my money on MP3s.:)
They say they don't watermark the files, the record company does. So the watermark only indicates the MP3 came from Amazon.com. This link includes a graph showing the waveform differences: http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/09/some-of-amazons.html
I used to subscribe to eMusic years ago when they had unlimited downloads for $XX per month. eMusic's catalog is still lacking (no Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails for starters), and I want to be able to buy albums, not subscribe for X number of tracks.
I suggest running a non-MS firewall, that seems to have blocked their little incursion.
I think people's objection to this is if MS can update your machine without your knowledge or consent, so can h4xx0rz. Also, there is an often valid "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" motto. If your machine is running don't fuck with it!
The only 2 recent games I paid full price for were GTA San Andreas and Oblivion. And even those were like $40 or $45, not $60. Years ago my parents bought me Ultima 7 for something like $60, and even though it wasn't my money, I felt bad they paid that much. At least it was a good game.
For most titles I'm perfectly happy behind the curve, paying $20 or less for PS2 titles. I see you can get XBox360 games for $20 now too, that'll be good when I get a 360 to play GTA4.
I agree, the monthly cost is what keeps people from adopting Tivo. People are stepping up from VCRs, which SUCK SUCK SUCK but at least they didn't have a monthly usage fee.
Tivo either has to lower the monthly costs or figure out a way to make money on hardware alone without the monthly cost. They could also team up with cable/satellite companies like they did with DirecTV.
Doesn't matter if Vista is "dying" or not, try to go buy a new computer without Vista. Vista will gradually be adopted as people upgrade their spyware and virus infested machines.
I think he means that AT&T Wireless (aka Suncom) turned into Cingular, which is now AT&T Wireless again.
I signed up with Suncom sometime around 2000 when I saw an ad in the paper for $10 a month cell phone service. No free minutes, but it was a good deal. My cell phone bill has averaged $16 a month for years. I stayed with them through the whole ride, until Cingular/AT&T told me that TDMA service in my area would be turned off on June 1, 2007. Of course I would be required to buy new phone and a new contract, and there was no $10, $20, or even $25 a month cell service. $29.99 was the lowest they had. On June 10, 2007 the TDMA service really did end, at which point I cancelled my Cingular/AT&T account and bought a Tracfone.
Ok, so I've got a spiffy 42" plasma and can watch beautiful HDTV shows over the air for free, better than DVD quality. I can also watch widescreen DVDs that for the most part look really good and cost around $10-$15.
So where's my incentive to buy a HD or BluRay player when the movies are $26 or more? Sure the picture will be (better be) beautiful, but I'm not paying over $20 for a movie.
Yeah Chase pissed me off with my credit card. I pay my bills online. Let's say the due date for my Chase credit card was Jan 15th. I'd log to the chase.com website on Jan 12th to make an electronic payment debited from my checking account. When you were filling out how much to pay, there was a notice that payments take 2-3 days to process. WTF? They have my bank account information, it's an electronic transfer, why is it my problem that it takes them 2-3 days to take my money?
And, the thing that made me cancel my card was that there was an expedited payment option; that they wanted to charge you something like $3 for!!!
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I have an old 3g 40GB iPod that I received as a gift, it still works very well.
Yeah the iPod touch is cool, but 32GB is woefully inadequate.
The 160GB iPod Classic might be nice, but then I read comments that they have Cirrus Logic (*shudder*) sound chips instead of Yamahas. No thanks.
I've never used iTunes. Amazon.com sells MP3s with no DRM for the same or lower price than iTunes.
iPod still has the name recognition and is much sought after, but there are better alternatives, I'm looking at an Archos WiFi 160GB player, I just don't like how they want you to pay for the web browser.
These people are suing Google for putting their driveway and house in Google StreetView, and now with all the Internet coverage they're getting 100x more publicity and scrutiny than their few images in the Google database would have gotten them.
How about asking Google nicely to take the images down first?
I originally wanted an XBox360 over a PS3, GTA IV is coming out for both. But with Blu-Ray winning and the PS3's backward compatability with PS2 games (well the 60GB and 20GB anyway), I picked up a 60GB PS3 on eBay for a decent price. I'm very happy with it overall, except it won't play all my video files. Wireless controllers and HD rule. Motorstorm is a blast. Pieced together a Rock Band set for about $50, drums, mic, game. Will get a guitar later, I mostly wanted to drum.
I've been waiting for Tivo to do this for some time, seems like a natural thing for them to do. They already support various downloads like Amazon Unbox.
Ditto. Sprint Mobile Broadband (EVDO) is the only option I have at my rural location. I have a Yagi antenna and amp, and and currently getting about 1 megabit down, about 170kb up. It was a lot worse before last month, they must have upgraded the tower.
It generally works, it's a helluva lot better than dial-up. It's not perfect by any means, there are slowdowns and dropouts.
I'm a gamer, the pings aren't teriffic, about 150ms constant is the best I've gotten.
I pay $50 per month (you have to get in on a "SERO" program to get it for that price), but service is literally unlimited, unlike Verizon's "unlimited" service.
If I could get DSL or Cable I'd go for them in a second, I need a better ping and better reliability.
The best part about sex with fembots is the "off" switch. Then you can just wheel her into a closet until next time.
I don't care how open or closed the networks are, I'm not paying $40+ for cell phone service.
Tracfone works on Verizon's network and costs me about $10 a month. Initial investement was a $20 Tracfone + $50 minute doubler card + $20 60 min card, doubled to 120 minutes plus a code to add another 20 minutes. That was good for 3 months, I just added a $30 120 minute card doubled to 240 minutes. So now my cost is $10 per month. If you don't talk more than 80 minutes a month pay-as-you-go is the best deal.
Why not go back to horse & buggy while we're at it? I will if you will.
I don't want vinyl. I don't own a turntable any more. Record were scratchy, and you had to flip them to listen to the whole album. I don't even want CDs. I want MP3s. Amazon.com is about the only place that's doing it correctly, you can buy unprotected MP3s for reasonable prices.
So far I've downloaded Smashing Pumpkins and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, paid about $8 each. The downloader app needed to download entire albums is simple and easy to configure, you just tell it what folder you want your music saved to (default is My Documents\My Music\Amazon MP3), and whether to automatically add music to your WMP or iTunes collection (I use neither.)
:)
I've never liked iTunes and haven't bought anything from them, but I'm a regular Amazon.com customer. I think this will really open up music downloads to a wide range of people. Amazon.com should stress how their downloads are different and unrestricted.
The selection seems pretty good so far. I hope it's not too good because I don't want to spend all my money on MP3s.
They say they don't watermark the files, the record company does. So the watermark only indicates the MP3 came from Amazon.com. This link includes a graph showing the waveform differences: http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/09/some-of-amazons.html
You have to configure the download manager to not automatically add to WMP or iTunes, I don't use either.
You can also specify a base folder to save the songs into.
I used to subscribe to eMusic years ago when they had unlimited downloads for $XX per month. eMusic's catalog is still lacking (no Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails for starters), and I want to be able to buy albums, not subscribe for X number of tracks.
I think if the cops tried this around here they'd have the whole crowd to fight off. At least I hope so, you gotta wonder about sheeple these days.
I'd probably get arrested trying to help the guy.
I guess Comcast thinks you should get all your video from them. Pay per view, things like that.
No games either. Those are getting up to 4 or 5GB these days. I think we need to get Steam lobbying on the side of customers.
I suggest running a non-MS firewall, that seems to have blocked their little incursion.
I think people's objection to this is if MS can update your machine without your knowledge or consent, so can h4xx0rz. Also, there is an often valid "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" motto. If your machine is running don't fuck with it!
The only 2 recent games I paid full price for were GTA San Andreas and Oblivion. And even those were like $40 or $45, not $60. Years ago my parents bought me Ultima 7 for something like $60, and even though it wasn't my money, I felt bad they paid that much. At least it was a good game.
For most titles I'm perfectly happy behind the curve, paying $20 or less for PS2 titles. I see you can get XBox360 games for $20 now too, that'll be good when I get a 360 to play GTA4.
I agree, the monthly cost is what keeps people from adopting Tivo. People are stepping up from VCRs, which SUCK SUCK SUCK but at least they didn't have a monthly usage fee.
Tivo either has to lower the monthly costs or figure out a way to make money on hardware alone without the monthly cost. They could also team up with cable/satellite companies like they did with DirecTV.
Why would you want a S3 if you don't have an HDTV? That would be like buying Porsche brakes for your Mustang.
Doesn't matter if Vista is "dying" or not, try to go buy a new computer without Vista. Vista will gradually be adopted as people upgrade their spyware and virus infested machines.
I think he means that AT&T Wireless (aka Suncom) turned into Cingular, which is now AT&T Wireless again.
I signed up with Suncom sometime around 2000 when I saw an ad in the paper for $10 a month cell phone service. No free minutes, but it was a good deal. My cell phone bill has averaged $16 a month for years. I stayed with them through the whole ride, until Cingular/AT&T told me that TDMA service in my area would be turned off on June 1, 2007. Of course I would be required to buy new phone and a new contract, and there was no $10, $20, or even $25 a month cell service. $29.99 was the lowest they had. On June 10, 2007 the TDMA service really did end, at which point I cancelled my Cingular/AT&T account and bought a Tracfone.
Some photos and text up at: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/mult
Me too, I put the KJAH station on my MP3 player and listened to it a LOT.
Ok, so I've got a spiffy 42" plasma and can watch beautiful HDTV shows over the air for free, better than DVD quality. I can also watch widescreen DVDs that for the most part look really good and cost around $10-$15.
So where's my incentive to buy a HD or BluRay player when the movies are $26 or more? Sure the picture will be (better be) beautiful, but I'm not paying over $20 for a movie.
Come back when prices lower.
It may not be perfect, but my iPod doesn't have a monthly service charge. And it's a helluva lot cheaper.
Yeah Chase pissed me off with my credit card. I pay my bills online. Let's say the due date for my Chase credit card was Jan 15th. I'd log to the chase.com website on Jan 12th to make an electronic payment debited from my checking account. When you were filling out how much to pay, there was a notice that payments take 2-3 days to process. WTF? They have my bank account information, it's an electronic transfer, why is it my problem that it takes them 2-3 days to take my money?
And, the thing that made me cancel my card was that there was an expedited payment option; that they wanted to charge you something like $3 for!!!