Agreed. Isn't the allure of an iPod the entire integrated experience, iPod/iTunes/iTMS? iTunes is the very heart of that, so if you don't want to use iTunes, why would you use an iPod? No, the allure of an iPod is that it plays all your music with a decent user interface. What you have to do in order to get your music onto the device in the first place is a secondary concern. I like iTunes, but if someone else is more comfortable with some other application for managing their music, that's fine.
As a couple of other posters explained, iTunes is fine if you're willing to cede control and don't try to micromanage. No, it doesn't behave the way you want, but if you focus more on what you want to accomplish and less on the steps you want to take to get there, it does a pretty good job. There are things you can't do with iTunes that would certainly be nice, but in many cases, no competing program has those features anyway.
There is some information that's stored only in the iTunes Library, and not in ID3 tags - for example play counts, song ratings (those little star things), and the options for when to begin and end playing a particular track. This information will be lost if something happens to your iTunes Library database. However, anything that is stored in the file (title, artist, album, genre, etc. - even album cover art) should not be lost if you uninstall iTunes.
It would actually take a fair amount of effort (and time) to go through and remove all of this information from every MP3 or AAC file you have. iTunes does not do this when uninstalling.
Either you don't understand what the DMCA says, or you don't understand what Apple has done.
Apple has added a hash to the iTunes Library database. The music is not encrypted*, so we're not talking about breaking encryption to bypass DRM, and the database is not copyrighted, so we're not talking about breaking encryption to bypass DRM. The DMCA doesn't apply.
* Unless you bought encrypted music from the iTunes Store, but even if you did, we're not talking about breaking that encryption.
If you want to upgrade Windows, you usually wind up needing a new machine, so: new machine, new video card, new drivers, new Windows -- not a problem. Well, at least not the same problem. Thanks for clarifying that; I was gonna have to correct you. NVidia's Vista drivers are certainly not problem-free. The latest problem I'm having is that if I have two displays in clone mode (same image on two displays, a projector and a CRT), it will consistently reset to single display mode (so the second display no longer works) every time the energy saver kicks in. I've worked around this for the moment by disabling the energy saver feature, and just have to hit the power button on the CRT when I'm done using it.
The major sin of Portland drivers (in my mind) seems to be the slowness with with they turn (causing more people to be stuck at a red light when it cycles or to have to come to a stop in the road) and their willingness to turn onto the road close enough in front of you to force you have to slow down to avoid hitting them. If you're making e.g. a right turn from the right lane, you are supposed to turn into the right lane, not cross a lane and turn into the left (or center or whatever) lane. Although many people ignore that rule, it is a rule, and a lot of people follow it - but they misjudge the speed of traffic already in that lane, and like you said, the assumption is that people will slow down for them, because people do slow down for them.
I-5 between Vancouver and Wilsonville is pretty awful.
I've heard that, but isn't that starting to get out of the city, where you mix with drivers who don't have similar traffic control schema to train them? I haven't spent too much time in the northern half of the city. You misunderstand: Vancouver is north of Portland, and Wilsonville is south of Portland. The entire stretch of I-5 in between is usually slow.
Through downtown, traffic goes maybe 25mph tops if there aren't any accidents.
That's by design. Downtown traffic is supposed to flow more slowly due to the tightness of the streets and the sheer number of pedestrians there. Downtown traffic is slow even in Atlanta. I just has to be that way, especially with the sheer density of streets and traffic lights in Portland. I wasn't clear: I was referring to the section of I-5 that passes through downtown Portland; the central part of that Vancouver-to-Wilsonville section I mentioned earlier. It's posted 50mph, but with traffic it crawls.
Side note: Portland pedestrians also seem to have a sense of entitlement even as far as out as the suburbs due to the city's walking and bike friendly nature. Atlanta pedestrians are only that way in downtown; elsewhere, a survival instinct makes them a little more wary. I find myself in humorous passive-aggressive confrontations because of this where my drilled in survival reflexes make me refuse to cross pedestrian crosswalks with cars present, and cars refuse to move on until I cross. Where I'm from, pedestrian crosswalks are (effectively) for excusing people who are already crossing them instead of for making drivers yield way. You don't presume to cross unless you don't see anybody coming. (Unless you live in downtown.) It's polite to stop for people who are waiting at a crosswalk, particularly if there's traffic behind you so it looks like the pedestrians might be waiting for awhile. Pedestrians have the right of way, but as a pedestrian, you have a responsibility to not get your ass run over. Usually the driver will motion for the pedestrian to cross; if you're a pedestrian, watch for that (and if you're a polite driver, do that).
But you're right, in downtown Portland, the rules all change. It's very car-unfriendly, and I try to avoid driving there whenever possible. It's a much better idea to park at a TriMet Park & Ride lot and take the MAX.
I was told this past week that I could not get any support for my HP network printer because they did not support connecting it to a switch. You are only allowed to connect it to a router. I've never run into this kind of stupidity with HP. You call up, navigate your way through their automated phone system, get a tech from India on the line, explain your problem, and they transfer you to somebody in the US who can actually help you. Even their first-tier Indian techs are usually friendly, if you're not a complete moron.
That doesn't mean they'll always be able to solve your problem. I have a client with an all-in-one printer/fax/scanner thing, and the drivers for Windows Vista don't support anything except printing if the printer is connected via Ethernet. It works if the printer is connected via USB, but it won't do USB and Ethernet at the same time, so even my idea of connecting it to the Vista machine via USB and letting the XP box and iMac connect over Ethernet wouldn't work. New Vista drivers are coming, but there was no ETA.
woah, apple known for service? not from my experience, they worse than microsoft in the "it's your fault, not the OS fault" department I've never had any trouble with Apple's tech support. I've been put on hold for a minute or two while the tech went to look something up or ask someone about something, but they've never failed to take care of my problem.
I once had to explain to a Microsoft tech what a RAID controller is, though. This was theoretically a tech who specializes in troubleshooting Windows XP installation issues.
I've been shocked by the total lack of aggression in drivers here. They usually drive at or below the speed limit (like the law requires) instead of tailgating and trying to run off the road anyone doing less than 10-15 over the speed limit like they do in Atlanta. We drive the speed limit on surface streets, but we do speed on freeways, traffic permitting. I-205 is posted 55mph, but the left lane normally does 65-70. I recently followed a cop doing 70 on 205.
I-5 between Vancouver and Wilsonville is pretty awful. Through downtown, traffic goes maybe 25mph tops if there aren't any accidents.
A friend of mine in Phoenix AZ was trying to merge into the lane to her left, so she turned on her turn signal and slowed down, expecting the car behind her in the left lane to suddenly speed forward to jump into the space before she could merge, because that's what Phoenix drivers always do. When that didn't happen, she slowed down some more, confused. The other car was slowing down, to allow her to merge in front! Her confusion was lifted when she noticed that the other car had Oregon plates.:-)
According to the people in charge of the meters in my city, the money taken in by the meters just about covers the costs of collecting it and maintaining the meters. Which would no longer need to be done if the meters weren't there, so the city doesn't need to be reimbursed for that, just for the revenue from parking tickets.
Yeah, the old question of "can God create a boulder so heavy He can't lift it?"
A definition I heard not too long ago is that God can do anything that is consistent with His will. God's will is constant and unchanging, despite several passages from Scripture that appear to indicate that God has changed His mind on occasion (I'm still not sure what to make of those). If you can wrap your head around the idea that God's will never changes, then the idea that God can only do things that are consistent with His will starts making partial sense - at least you have a consistent framework to work with.
I wouldn't say Flash ads are inherently bad, only that most current Flash ads are bad. It is possible to create an ad, using Flash, that doesn't violate your other rules: very subtle animation, no sound, no cursor following, no popups.
The same idea applies to other uses of Flash. Most of the people who hate Flash do so because it's so often abused to do horribly obnoxious things. (Here on Slashdot, there's also a significant minority who hate Flash simply because it's not Free Software, or because the Linux port isn't the latest version, or some technical reason why it doesn't run well on their machine.)
However if I was to torture a person who disagreed with me even for an hour, most people would consider me unbalanced.
Guess who tortures people for eternity?
God doesn't torture people for eternity - quite the opposite. Hell is simply eternal separation from God. Yes, Hell is torture, but it's not something God causes.
Yeah, from the headline, I somehow thought it might be at least somewhat relevant to some part of the real world. I thought it would be something about a Mid-East or SE Asian country, or at least something like Luxembourg, but coup against a web site?! Come on kdawson. Not just a coup against a web site, but a coup against their own web site, which most of the rest of us (many of whom are Mac users) have never even heard of.
They already have a special privileged status due to their tax exemption. This tax free money is increasingly being used for political campaigning. Making them pay their share would remove the ability to use churches as an end run around the laws on that. Churches don't pay taxes because they're non-profit organizations. Other non-religious non-profit organizations don't pay taxes either. However, the moment they start political campaigning, they lose their tax-exempt status, and the IRS will come collecting.
Churches are permitted to make biased political information available to their congregation, for example in the form of brochures or magazines. They are NOT permitted to preach from the pulpit that their members should vote for or against a particular candidate. I'm not saying it never happens, but if you see it happen, call the IRS and turn them in.
The BBC (Microsoft) player wraps everything in Microsoft DRM - VLC CANNOT PLAY IT. Surely you meant to say the BBC (Microsoft) player unwraps everything? The player doesn't add DRM...
I think the real story is not that an unscrupulous company is defrauding customers of their rebates. What is interesting to me is that people seem to still shop at Fry's!!
That is one of two places I refuse to ever step foot in again. You should see the customer returns go right back to the shelf. And don't forget the frisk at the door. Yeah, they really value their customers. Some of those returns that are going right back on the shelf are items I've returned myself, that work perfectly fine, but for some reason it turns out I didn't need. For example, I just bought a SATA hard drive with a SATA controller card for an old PC, but it turns out my BIOS is too retarded to let me boot from the SATA controller, so I've decided to take the card and the drive back to the store. They both work fine, but it turns out that they don't suit my needs right now.
The ability to do this is the main reason I keep shopping at Fry's. And, sometimes I buy those returned items - I just bought an expensive Intel dual-port gigabit server NIC that had been previously returned, and I'm perfectly happy with it (no more kernel panics, yay!).
I've never been treated rudely at Fry's (although I've never been to the one in Fremont), and I shop there all the time because of their return policy. Full refund, no restocking fee, for any reason at all. Shopping online is great, but it's only cheaper if you're willing to wait several days for shipping, and returns are a pain.
In terms of fairness and honesty, one of the new "scams" is the use of "debit cards" to fulfill rebate promises; these are a huge hassle and are intended to create additional profit, and I was outraged to receive one of these instead of a check (as promised) from Symantec a couple years ago; I won't buy another Symantec product. I agree, the debit card rebate is a hassle... but Symantec claims they're doing it because their customers think it's easier, and I can see how it would be, for someone who doesn't have a bank account, which is apparently a surprising number of people.
FWIW, I had no problem getting a $50 rebate from Symantec for a $49.99 purchase of the Norton Antivirus 3-user pack from Fry's.
And while you couldn't pay me to install SystemWorks or Internet Security, NAV 2007 isn't that bad. My impression is that they had to remove some of the bloat from 2006 in order to get it to work on Vista. Helpful tip: don't bother with the CD in the box, just download the demo from Symantec's web site and enter the serial number within a week or so.
My understanding is that they're not suing Spamhaus for blocking their mail, they're suing Spamhaus for falsely labeling them with "known professional spam operations that have been terminated by a minimum of 3 Internet Service Providers for spam offenses." The plantiff claims that this isn't true, that they're not a spam organization, and that they've never been terminated by any ISP for spam offenses. Plaintiff further claims that being falsely labeled as such by the defendant has damaged Plaintiff's reputation and cost them business.
Use of Spamhaus contributes to email unreliability and should not be imposed by ISP services. Obviously you don't run a mail server, and have no idea how much spam is being blocked for you. If your e-mail wasn't being filtered, you would either stop using it, or desperately try to find a way to filter it.
Email is unreliable enough without blacklist (or for that matter, even greylist) techniques being applied by lazy ISPs who are looking for a brainless way to reduce their email traffic load. What would you suggest - that mail administrators employ a team of trained experts to sift through thousands upon thousands of messages every day, manually identifying what is spam and what is not?
I run a very small mail server at home, just for me and family and friends. This isn't for an ISP or anything, this is just for personal use. Do you have any idea how much spam I block?
Just on this one small server, in one week, around 10,000 SMTP connections are rejected based on DNS-based IP blacklists (these include blacklists for entire countries, such as Korea and China). Another 2,000 or so are rejected based on various other criteria I've come up with, such as what the reverse DNS hostname looks like (I've put together a list of patterns to match against), or who the envelope sender is, or even the recipient list. Once a message makes it through all of that, it is accepted. Of the accepted messages, around 50-100 are blocked because ClamAV identifies them as known phishing attempts or viruses. Finally, the messages are analyzed with SpamAssassin, which assigns a score to each message (using several rules I've written myself, as well as rules I've selected from the SpamAssassin Rules Emporium). Messages with a score of 5 or higher are quarantined for review. That's about 3,000 messages, nearly all of which are spam.
If we assume that two thirds of the refused connections are just attempts to re-send the same message (despite the fact that the connections are rejected with a 5.x.x code which indicates a permanent failure), we get a conservative total of 7,000 spams per week, or 1,000 per day. Just on my little server I use for my friends and family.
Now imagine a large ISP with 100,000+ customers. If they can't effectively block hundreds of spams per customer per day, their customers will go elsewhere, or just stop using e-mail altogether.
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Presumably they're running iTunes on those iMacs? So, they'll never even know about this change, unless you tell them?
As a couple of other posters explained, iTunes is fine if you're willing to cede control and don't try to micromanage. No, it doesn't behave the way you want, but if you focus more on what you want to accomplish and less on the steps you want to take to get there, it does a pretty good job. There are things you can't do with iTunes that would certainly be nice, but in many cases, no competing program has those features anyway.
I've never heard of this happening.
There is some information that's stored only in the iTunes Library, and not in ID3 tags - for example play counts, song ratings (those little star things), and the options for when to begin and end playing a particular track. This information will be lost if something happens to your iTunes Library database. However, anything that is stored in the file (title, artist, album, genre, etc. - even album cover art) should not be lost if you uninstall iTunes.
It would actually take a fair amount of effort (and time) to go through and remove all of this information from every MP3 or AAC file you have. iTunes does not do this when uninstalling.
Either you don't understand what the DMCA says, or you don't understand what Apple has done.
Apple has added a hash to the iTunes Library database. The music is not encrypted*, so we're not talking about breaking encryption to bypass DRM, and the database is not copyrighted, so we're not talking about breaking encryption to bypass DRM. The DMCA doesn't apply.
* Unless you bought encrypted music from the iTunes Store, but even if you did, we're not talking about breaking that encryption.
I've heard that, but isn't that starting to get out of the city, where you mix with drivers who don't have similar traffic control schema to train them? I haven't spent too much time in the northern half of the city. You misunderstand: Vancouver is north of Portland, and Wilsonville is south of Portland. The entire stretch of I-5 in between is usually slow. Through downtown, traffic goes maybe 25mph tops if there aren't any accidents.
That's by design. Downtown traffic is supposed to flow more slowly due to the tightness of the streets and the sheer number of pedestrians there. Downtown traffic is slow even in Atlanta. I just has to be that way, especially with the sheer density of streets and traffic lights in Portland. I wasn't clear: I was referring to the section of I-5 that passes through downtown Portland; the central part of that Vancouver-to-Wilsonville section I mentioned earlier. It's posted 50mph, but with traffic it crawls. Side note: Portland pedestrians also seem to have a sense of entitlement even as far as out as the suburbs due to the city's walking and bike friendly nature. Atlanta pedestrians are only that way in downtown; elsewhere, a survival instinct makes them a little more wary. I find myself in humorous passive-aggressive confrontations because of this where my drilled in survival reflexes make me refuse to cross pedestrian crosswalks with cars present, and cars refuse to move on until I cross. Where I'm from, pedestrian crosswalks are (effectively) for excusing people who are already crossing them instead of for making drivers yield way. You don't presume to cross unless you don't see anybody coming. (Unless you live in downtown.) It's polite to stop for people who are waiting at a crosswalk, particularly if there's traffic behind you so it looks like the pedestrians might be waiting for awhile. Pedestrians have the right of way, but as a pedestrian, you have a responsibility to not get your ass run over. Usually the driver will motion for the pedestrian to cross; if you're a pedestrian, watch for that (and if you're a polite driver, do that).
But you're right, in downtown Portland, the rules all change. It's very car-unfriendly, and I try to avoid driving there whenever possible. It's a much better idea to park at a TriMet Park & Ride lot and take the MAX.
That doesn't mean they'll always be able to solve your problem. I have a client with an all-in-one printer/fax/scanner thing, and the drivers for Windows Vista don't support anything except printing if the printer is connected via Ethernet. It works if the printer is connected via USB, but it won't do USB and Ethernet at the same time, so even my idea of connecting it to the Vista machine via USB and letting the XP box and iMac connect over Ethernet wouldn't work. New Vista drivers are coming, but there was no ETA.
I once had to explain to a Microsoft tech what a RAID controller is, though. This was theoretically a tech who specializes in troubleshooting Windows XP installation issues.
(I normally use Plain Old Text mode, but it could use a more accurate name.)
I-5 between Vancouver and Wilsonville is pretty awful. Through downtown, traffic goes maybe 25mph tops if there aren't any accidents.
A friend of mine in Phoenix AZ was trying to merge into the lane to her left, so she turned on her turn signal and slowed down, expecting the car behind her in the left lane to suddenly speed forward to jump into the space before she could merge, because that's what Phoenix drivers always do. When that didn't happen, she slowed down some more, confused. The other car was slowing down, to allow her to merge in front! Her confusion was lifted when she noticed that the other car had Oregon plates.
Yeah, the old question of "can God create a boulder so heavy He can't lift it?"
A definition I heard not too long ago is that God can do anything that is consistent with His will. God's will is constant and unchanging, despite several passages from Scripture that appear to indicate that God has changed His mind on occasion (I'm still not sure what to make of those). If you can wrap your head around the idea that God's will never changes, then the idea that God can only do things that are consistent with His will starts making partial sense - at least you have a consistent framework to work with.
I wouldn't say Flash ads are inherently bad, only that most current Flash ads are bad. It is possible to create an ad, using Flash, that doesn't violate your other rules: very subtle animation, no sound, no cursor following, no popups.
The same idea applies to other uses of Flash. Most of the people who hate Flash do so because it's so often abused to do horribly obnoxious things. (Here on Slashdot, there's also a significant minority who hate Flash simply because it's not Free Software, or because the Linux port isn't the latest version, or some technical reason why it doesn't run well on their machine.)
True of course.
However if I was to torture a person who disagreed with me even for an hour, most people would consider me unbalanced.
Guess who tortures people for eternity?
God doesn't torture people for eternity - quite the opposite. Hell is simply eternal separation from God. Yes, Hell is torture, but it's not something God causes.I'd like to know who came up with the name, and when they came up with it: before or after September 11th 2001?
Making them pay their share would remove the ability to use churches as an end run around the laws on that. Churches don't pay taxes because they're non-profit organizations. Other non-religious non-profit organizations don't pay taxes either. However, the moment they start political campaigning, they lose their tax-exempt status, and the IRS will come collecting.
Churches are permitted to make biased political information available to their congregation, for example in the form of brochures or magazines. They are NOT permitted to preach from the pulpit that their members should vote for or against a particular candidate. I'm not saying it never happens, but if you see it happen, call the IRS and turn them in.
That is one of two places I refuse to ever step foot in again. You should see the customer returns go right back to the shelf. And don't forget the frisk at the door. Yeah, they really value their customers. Some of those returns that are going right back on the shelf are items I've returned myself, that work perfectly fine, but for some reason it turns out I didn't need. For example, I just bought a SATA hard drive with a SATA controller card for an old PC, but it turns out my BIOS is too retarded to let me boot from the SATA controller, so I've decided to take the card and the drive back to the store. They both work fine, but it turns out that they don't suit my needs right now.
The ability to do this is the main reason I keep shopping at Fry's. And, sometimes I buy those returned items - I just bought an expensive Intel dual-port gigabit server NIC that had been previously returned, and I'm perfectly happy with it (no more kernel panics, yay!).
I've never been treated rudely at Fry's (although I've never been to the one in Fremont), and I shop there all the time because of their return policy. Full refund, no restocking fee, for any reason at all. Shopping online is great, but it's only cheaper if you're willing to wait several days for shipping, and returns are a pain.
FWIW, I had no problem getting a $50 rebate from Symantec for a $49.99 purchase of the Norton Antivirus 3-user pack from Fry's.
And while you couldn't pay me to install SystemWorks or Internet Security, NAV 2007 isn't that bad. My impression is that they had to remove some of the bloat from 2006 in order to get it to work on Vista. Helpful tip: don't bother with the CD in the box, just download the demo from Symantec's web site and enter the serial number within a week or so.
I run a very small mail server at home, just for me and family and friends. This isn't for an ISP or anything, this is just for personal use. Do you have any idea how much spam I block?
Just on this one small server, in one week, around 10,000 SMTP connections are rejected based on DNS-based IP blacklists (these include blacklists for entire countries, such as Korea and China). Another 2,000 or so are rejected based on various other criteria I've come up with, such as what the reverse DNS hostname looks like (I've put together a list of patterns to match against), or who the envelope sender is, or even the recipient list. Once a message makes it through all of that, it is accepted. Of the accepted messages, around 50-100 are blocked because ClamAV identifies them as known phishing attempts or viruses. Finally, the messages are analyzed with SpamAssassin, which assigns a score to each message (using several rules I've written myself, as well as rules I've selected from the SpamAssassin Rules Emporium). Messages with a score of 5 or higher are quarantined for review. That's about 3,000 messages, nearly all of which are spam.
If we assume that two thirds of the refused connections are just attempts to re-send the same message (despite the fact that the connections are rejected with a 5.x.x code which indicates a permanent failure), we get a conservative total of 7,000 spams per week, or 1,000 per day. Just on my little server I use for my friends and family.
Now imagine a large ISP with 100,000+ customers. If they can't effectively block hundreds of spams per customer per day, their customers will go elsewhere, or just stop using e-mail altogether.