Having owned one of these devices since last christmas, let me offer my own two cents:
The battery life is awesome. I get an easy 12 hours of run time out of my karma between charges.
The built-in DJ funtion is unparalled. The ability to generate random playlists, or playlists based upon id3 criteria (such as decade, genre), playlists based on most listened to, least listened to, not recently listened to, etc.. all from the player itself just blows away all the competition.
The network integration is a nice feature, which the OP does mention. I also think that having lite-yet-fully-function java version of the software built into the player is a great and useful add on (simply browse to the ip and you can download the software right from the Karma). Plus, the included dock does this cool pulse thing when the karma is docked:-)
The price point on this thing is just right. I got mine on sale for $280 last christmas, while the MSRP is a little higher is still beats the price of the ipod at the same capacity (20 GB)
Audio format support: This thing supports ogg, mp3, wav, flac, and probably more that I am too lazy to go look up.
I do agree that the player is a little bulky, at least in the dimension of width. Were it a little narrower I would say that it is perfect, but it is nowhere near as unwieldy as was my first hd-based player, the Archos Multimedia Jukebox 20.
This is slightly off topic for this particular thread, but elsewhere in the comments it has been mentioned, so I hope others take that into account.
I have to recommend reading Stranger in a Strange Land, as others (above) have done.
That being said, I feel compelled to comment on your signature.
The verb Grok, as used in Stranger, does not mean to understand at a deep level. What it means is to drink. Usage changes the connotation perhaps, but the denotation is still "to drink". The allusion is that by groking something in fullness, it becomes irrevocably part of you. Which is appropriate, as the purpose of the entire thread could be summed up as "books which you've grokked."
Sorry if I'm being pedantic, but complaining about the usage of a term you yourself don't understand really irks me.
naim is a great, free, GPL'd instant messaging client. Very featureful, intuitive, and in my opinion one of the best examples of ncurses programming out there.
"I'm not going to tell you that you SHOULD get high-speed Internet access"
I'm not going to tell him that either, because I read the post and he said he's "stuck on dial-up." This most likely means that he probably lives in a location very akin to mine, i.e. where the only broadband solution available is satellite, which has a very hefty initial outlay (last I checked it was in the $600 range)
So I sympathize with the poster as to his modem woes, up until quite recently achieving any speeds over 28.8 was impossible for me, simply due to line quality.
As for a solution? I suggest the same solution I use, namely to acquire an external modem (as others above have already suggested).
I highly recommend that said external modem should support v.92, as the speed gain is quite noticeable when loading pages. Of course, if we could only get an ISP to offer accelerated dialup software that worked under linux....
I am not usually one for "Me Too!" posts. I've tried most of the major distros at some point or another, and on this laptop I've got to recommend SuSE.
I have installed both SuSE 8.2 and then 9.0 on my HP laptop, and it runs beautifully, with support for all hardware features except sleep (IIRC this is a limitation of the 2.4 kernel, not the distro)
For a new user, just go with the installer defaults.
YaST is a godsend to users, in that you don't have to know how to edit config files by hand to get your system working.
This debate has raged many times, in many different threads. Here are my (unasked for) two cents.
1. If you are paying a hosting company, and your site goes down due to inadequate bandwidth, this is not slashdot's fault. Its not even your fault (arguably you should have chosen a better hosting company, but still), it is the hosting companys fault for not having fault-tolerant hardware and / or effective bandwidth-throttling measures in place. While I am not saying the site shouldn't have gone down, it shouldn't have disappeared, and it certainly shouldn't have taken down the other sites running from that box. The admins of the hosting company are at fault here.
2. If you aren't using a hosting company, and you post something that you even SUSPECT could alter your normal traffic patterns, be prepared for just that. While the slashdot effect is awe-inspiring, its not the be-all and end-all. Lots of sites have survived it before, and not all of them were sitting on huge pipes with mammoth hardware.
Slashdot has absolutely no burden of guilt in linking to a site inadequately prepared for traffic.
The AT&T stores in my area (southwestern PA) all have working demos of their phones. I will stay out of the debates regarding service, and instead answer the question as asked.
Perhaps this thread presents an opportunity to the Slashdot editors to interview someone from some of the companies that are successful? Emperor Linux (linux laptops, many models, choice of distro) and of course Penguin Computing both spring to mind.
I have to agree. The added geek factor of designing one's own personalized gerber multi-tool can't be beat. The price comes in right under your budget, and since he personalized it, he's sure to like it.
Plus, the one-handed open that Gerber has patented is much easier, smoother, and nicer than having to manually unfold the leatherman; the "snick" noise it makes is just cool (as anyone who has ever seen the movie Mallrats can attest to).
Speaking of which, there's another gift idea. Get him the New Jersey (quintology? well, there's 5 of them now) movies on DVD, if he doesn't already have them. Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He'll love them.
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces altitude and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
"You must work in Information Technology" says the balloonist.
"I do" replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well" says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone."
The man below says "You must work in business." "I do" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."
From the sounds of it, you have probably tackled all of these, but David (and Leigh) Eddings have several series that are excellent. They really excel at characterization, and the plotlines are good.
While not NSA centric, Bruce Schneier's Applied Crytography is a great practical overview of crypto in general, with lots of practical examples and code.
This isn't an april fool's joke. I am currently one of the students applying for said scholarships, as my lowly school is one of the chosen few to receive money (IUP - Indiana University of Pennsylvania) Apparently there are going to be approximately 10 people from my school receiving the scholarship, which is to consist of full tuition, a personal computer, room and board (possibly in one centralized location for all of the scholarship winners) and the aforementioned two year job (quite probably with the NSA, as to the best of my knowledge they are the main agency associated with this program). Applications are due at my school on friday, so this is already being implemented.
The Color reflective thin film transistor (TFT) LCD used in the Compaq ipaq handheld, when backlit, is extraordinarily visible, even in full sunlight. Whether it's feasible to determine if there are any larger and similar screens available commerically, I am not sure, but this may be a starting point....
Text adventure games are my weakness. Zork, HHGTTG, and anything else made by Infocom (hard to find binaries for some of them now), plus nethack, adventure (xyzzy!) and rogue. The games may be outdated by today's standards, but I still can't put them down.
I don't know about the rest of the slashdot crowd, but when I was a child,I would not have been shocked / upset by any of the topics shown in Invader Zim.
It was a strange day that I didn't imagine being a space invader, seeing/conquering strange new worlds, being "LORD OF ALL HUMANS!!!", etc... This sort of creative imagination is what enabled me to get THROUGH childhood.
Zim's complete inability to circumvent authority coupled with his dogged determination to do just that, all while having to report to the the Tallest (which in my universe as a child would have been Mom and Dad) make this show identifiable to children. This sort of television isn't shocking to them, so why should we worry about it as adults?
I know when I was that age, I absolutely LOVED Ren and Stimpy, for some of the same reasons (it wasn't syrupy sweet intelligence insulting blatant pacifism intended cartooning like most of the other cartoons on TV at the time; for example one of the other original nicktoons, Doug.)
Slashdot Mirror
Having owned one of these devices since last christmas, let me offer my own two cents:
:-)
The battery life is awesome. I get an easy 12 hours of run time out of my karma between charges.
The built-in DJ funtion is unparalled. The ability to generate random playlists, or playlists based upon id3 criteria (such as decade, genre), playlists based on most listened to, least listened to, not recently listened to, etc.. all from the player itself just blows away all the competition.
The network integration is a nice feature, which the OP does mention. I also think that having lite-yet-fully-function java version of the software built into the player is a great and useful add on (simply browse to the ip and you can download the software right from the Karma). Plus, the included dock does this cool pulse thing when the karma is docked
The price point on this thing is just right. I got mine on sale for $280 last christmas, while the MSRP is a little higher is still beats the price of the ipod at the same capacity (20 GB)
Audio format support: This thing supports ogg, mp3, wav, flac, and probably more that I am too lazy to go look up.
I do agree that the player is a little bulky, at least in the dimension of width. Were it a little narrower I would say that it is perfect, but it is nowhere near as unwieldy as was my first hd-based player, the Archos Multimedia Jukebox 20.
This is slightly off topic for this particular thread, but elsewhere in the comments it has been mentioned, so I hope others take that into account.
I have to recommend reading Stranger in a Strange Land, as others (above) have done.
That being said, I feel compelled to comment on your signature.
The verb Grok, as used in Stranger, does not mean to understand at a deep level. What it means is to drink. Usage changes the connotation perhaps, but the denotation is still "to drink". The allusion is that by groking something in fullness, it becomes irrevocably part of you. Which is appropriate, as the purpose of the entire thread could be summed up as "books which you've grokked."
Sorry if I'm being pedantic, but complaining about the usage of a term you yourself don't understand really irks me.
naim is a great, free, GPL'd instant messaging client. Very featureful, intuitive, and in my opinion one of the best examples of ncurses programming out there.
"I'm not going to tell you that you SHOULD get high-speed Internet access"
I'm not going to tell him that either, because I read the post and he said he's "stuck on dial-up." This most likely means that he probably lives in a location very akin to mine, i.e. where the only broadband solution available is satellite, which has a very hefty initial outlay (last I checked it was in the $600 range)
So I sympathize with the poster as to his modem woes, up until quite recently achieving any speeds over 28.8 was impossible for me, simply due to line quality.
As for a solution? I suggest the same solution I use, namely to acquire an external modem (as others above have already suggested).
I highly recommend that said external modem should support v.92, as the speed gain is quite noticeable when loading pages.
Of course, if we could only get an ISP to offer accelerated dialup software that worked under linux....
I also had this argument with a teacher, and was able to successfully convince him by pointing out that there is no method for iteration in HTML.
I am not usually one for "Me Too!" posts. I've tried most of the major distros at some point or another, and on this laptop I've got to recommend SuSE.
I have installed both SuSE 8.2 and then 9.0 on my HP laptop, and it runs beautifully, with support for all hardware features except sleep (IIRC this is a limitation of the 2.4 kernel, not the distro)
For a new user, just go with the installer defaults.
YaST is a godsend to users, in that you don't have to know how to edit config files by hand to get your system working.
No, Slashdot IS God.
or was that Google?
Either way.
This debate has raged many times, in many different threads. Here are my (unasked for) two cents.
1. If you are paying a hosting company, and your site goes down due to inadequate bandwidth, this is not slashdot's fault. Its not even your fault (arguably you should have chosen a better hosting company, but still), it is the hosting companys fault for not having fault-tolerant hardware and / or effective bandwidth-throttling measures in place. While I am not saying the site shouldn't have gone down, it shouldn't have disappeared, and it certainly shouldn't have taken down the other sites running from that box. The admins of the hosting company are at fault here.
2. If you aren't using a hosting company, and you post something that you even SUSPECT could alter your normal traffic patterns, be prepared for just that. While the slashdot effect is awe-inspiring, its not the be-all and end-all. Lots of sites have survived it before, and not all of them were sitting on huge pipes with mammoth hardware.
Slashdot has absolutely no burden of guilt in linking to a site inadequately prepared for traffic.
Just my two cents.
It's not gone.... it's here.
The AT&T stores in my area (southwestern PA) all have working demos of their phones. I will stay out of the debates regarding service, and instead answer the question as asked.
Perhaps this thread presents an opportunity to the Slashdot editors to interview someone from some of the companies that are successful? Emperor Linux (linux laptops, many models, choice of distro) and of course Penguin Computing both spring to mind.
I have to agree. The added geek factor of designing one's own personalized gerber multi-tool can't be beat. The price comes in right under your budget, and since he personalized it, he's sure to like it.
Plus, the one-handed open that Gerber has patented is much easier, smoother, and nicer than having to manually unfold the leatherman; the "snick" noise it makes is just cool (as anyone who has ever seen the movie Mallrats can attest to).
Speaking of which, there's another gift idea. Get him the New Jersey (quintology? well, there's 5 of them now) movies on DVD, if he doesn't already have them. Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He'll love them.
Since You want to be a spelling nazi, it's "want to", not "wanna".
Yet Another Oldie but Goodie
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces altitude and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and
shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
"You must work in Information Technology" says the balloonist.
"I do" replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well" says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone."
The man below says "You must work in business."
"I do" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."
From the sounds of it, you have probably tackled all of these, but David (and Leigh) Eddings have several series that are excellent. They really excel at characterization, and the plotlines are good.
While not NSA centric, Bruce Schneier's Applied Crytography is a great practical overview of crypto in general, with lots of practical examples and code.
Not to mention that condensed water would be pure h20, and thus be non-conductive.
It's not really a spoiler, since there are marketing images of him holding one, but wait till you see Yoda wield a light-saber. it is amazing.
This is offtopic, and should be modded as such.
.sig
nice
I'm sure this comment will ice out.
This isn't an april fool's joke. I am currently one of the students applying for said scholarships, as my lowly school is one of the chosen few to receive money (IUP - Indiana University of Pennsylvania) Apparently there are going to be approximately 10 people from my school receiving the scholarship, which is to consist of full tuition, a personal computer, room and board (possibly in one centralized location for all of the scholarship winners) and the aforementioned two year job (quite probably with the NSA, as to the best of my knowledge they are the main agency associated with this program). Applications are due at my school on friday, so this is already being implemented.
The O'Reilly network already has a pretty good resource for news from multiple sites in the Meerkat Wire Service
The Color reflective thin film transistor (TFT) LCD used in the Compaq ipaq handheld, when backlit, is extraordinarily visible, even in full sunlight. Whether it's feasible to determine if there are any larger and similar screens available commerically, I am not sure, but this may be a starting point....
Text adventure games are my weakness. Zork, HHGTTG, and anything else made by Infocom (hard to find binaries for some of them now), plus nethack, adventure (xyzzy!) and rogue. The games may be outdated by today's standards, but I still can't put them down.
now what do I do with this parrot?
I don't know about the rest of the slashdot crowd, but when I was a child,I would not have been shocked / upset by any of the topics shown in Invader Zim.
It was a strange day that I didn't imagine being a space invader, seeing/conquering strange new worlds, being "LORD OF ALL HUMANS!!!", etc... This sort of creative imagination is what enabled me to get THROUGH childhood.
Zim's complete inability to circumvent authority coupled with his dogged determination to do just that, all while having to report to the the Tallest (which in my universe as a child would have been Mom and Dad) make this show identifiable to children. This sort of television isn't shocking to them, so why should we worry about it as adults?
I know when I was that age, I absolutely LOVED Ren and Stimpy, for some of the same reasons (it wasn't syrupy sweet intelligence insulting blatant pacifism intended cartooning like most of the other cartoons on TV at the time; for example one of the other original nicktoons, Doug.)
Have you tried running the hostname command as root?
root@wiretap029114.nsa.gov:/ > hostname localhost.localdomain