Hmm, I think she does care about people ripping music from CDs, because the RIAA intends to break that behavior via copy protection.
And what can you ("legally") access on a PC on copy protected CDs? DRM'd Windows Media files. Which won't play on an iPod. So the RIAA's preferred methods of copy protection don't correspond with what consumers want (iPod) - therefore the iPod is flawed.
In related news, they're not in need of medication, because everyone else is crazy.
Why go through all the hassle of reinstalling? Why not get a 2nd HD and just use Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate your perfectly-working setup prior to the upgrade?
That'll take maybe 30 minutes (just be sure to quit all running apps prior to starting up CCC). Booting off of it, to verify it boots, then switching back to your original boot drive, should take another 5. If you have any custom folders off the root, be sure to copy them over at this time, but the standard OSX folders will get copied (applications, library, user, etc) by CCC.
Then you can do your 10.4 install and worst case if it all goes to hell you can just boot off your other HD and be back up and running in the time it takes to restart and boot off your backup drive. If you want the extra speed or something you can erase your original boot drive and CCC the working setup back.
I CCC before every minor rev install (10.3.x), I'm sure as hell going to do it before a major rev install 10.x). It save a hell of a lot of time. Someone please buy Mike Bombich a beer or something.
What sacrifices do you make to which dieties to ensure the power doesn't go out while it's in progress?
Whatever sacrifice you make, it should involve your wallet - namely buying a ~1500VA UPS. Then connect your PC (and not monitor/hubs/gizmos) into the battery-backup side. Configure the system to auto-shutdown when battery power runs low, then cross your fingers.
Since auto-shutdown will be clean (same as if you had done it yourself), if the defrag was still running it would be told to stop prior to system shutdown, leaving the system in a completely functional state.
While what you say is true, there have been studies that have shown that the larger the rebate, the more likely the purchaser will send in for it.
Under $15 rebates are in a different league than the $100+ rebates (I got a $100 rebate on my TiVo box). But since most rebates are very small everyone thinks the under 10% return rule applies to every rebate...
They wouldn't go after companies who have products with a shuffle feature in them. As you said, it's a long-standing feature that's commonplace in both hardware and software audio products. I don't think anyone, besides you evidently, is even remotely considering this as a legal basis for a lawsuit.
What they're considering are two points:
1) It looks virtually identical to the iPod Shuffle aside from an extra switch on the back. When I first saw the pictures I assumed the face-up (round button) shots were of an iPod shuffle, and the rear (two switches) were of the Super Shuffle. If the design is close enough to cause that kind of confusion, where someone could conceivably buy your product instead of your competitors because they look all but identical - that's grounds for a lawsuit under US trademark/trade dress laws. Of course, Luxpro would have to actually sell their product in the US for them to apply.
2) The name is not "Shuffle", it's "Super Shuffle." It was released, coincidentally enough, roughly 6 months after Apple launched the "iPod Shuffle." Golly, I wonder how they could have come up with that name, given that aside from an extra button it looks identical to an iPod Shuffle, which was on the market for some time prior to SS's launch.
All that being said, they're so close that I think (with no basis for my opinion other than that) they're actually being manufactured by the same company and sold under license to Apple and Luxpro. My assumption is that the two of them will not sell their products in the same market and therefore can sell virtually identical products in different places and not confuse anyone except naive internet users.
Almost. The SuperDrive could read 720K, 800K, and 1.44MB disks. They were "PC compatible" with the addition of third party software (eventually Apple purchased one of the packages and bundled it with the OS, much like they did with HAM).
720K & 1.44MB were CLV and the 800K was CAV - though CLV/CAV may be reversed (never can keep them straight).
What I'm asking is why I should spend another $200 for a device when I can just throw the PC that is laying around into the entertainment center rather than streaming over wireless or cat5
For you, so long as you have a case that doesn't look like ass when it's sitting in/around your entertainment center (or if you just don't care), I can't think of a reason.
However many people don't even have a spare system.
My parents, for instance, have a computer that's pushing 10 years old (if I get a tax return I'll buy 'em a new one this year - but I've been saying that for 4 years now). That's their only computer. That's all they want. It's all they need.
Many people push their old systems off on their children. A friend of mine gave his previous laptop to his kid, and she uses that. For them it's spend $200 on an uber-Express or steal their child's computer.
Other people sell off old systems to fund the Upgrade Train, running new software on their old system would be "unacceptably slow" and the sale of the old hardware offsets the purchase of the new hardware enough to keep that train running.
Personally, I only know of a couple people who have spare systems just lying around for no particular reason other than to have them lying around "just in case" they need them. The rest hand them off to children/parents/friends/strangers so they keep the level of clutter around their home down to manageable levels.
As for myself, I have 1 Mac and 1 PC at home. I generally sell old systems or components off on eBay - the alternative is to keep it all and drown in debt. Mmmm, no thanks.
You can get a well laid out whitebox 3U rackmount case, they do exist. Going up to 3Us gets you full access to all the slots and typically a reasonable amount of airflow. They're laid out like a thin minitower, drive bays sideways (this means they're the correct orientation when rackmounted, unlike thin minitower cases).
Moving down to 2Us sacrifices all but a couple PCI slots (those that are left are on riser card, which I wouldn't trust for high-utilization PCI cards - a single PCI video card is about all I'd trust), but if you make sure to get everything you need on the motherboard then you can still get good reliability with predicatable airflow from a 2U case. There's just enough room to use Slot 1 procs, if you're so inclined to use hardware that old.
But 1U ATX whitebox cases are fscking nuts. I don't think you can use a video card that has a heatsink. Your CPU's heatsink better be short 'n fat too.
Have you left it in the horizontal position instead of vertical (wide instead of tall)?
Most everyone I know who anally insists on placing their PS2 vertical has had a never ending string of drive problems. My first PS2 died after I did that for a while, my 2nd has been trooping along fine - which I attribute to always leaving it flat.
Just do that, run a lens cleaner through it every year or so (more often if you have pets), vacuum the front grill about as often (ditto), and it should survive until the PS3 is out and cheap.
Your uptime is still lightyears better than the average Windows box. Or, at least, the average Windows box that bothers to stay patched.
Though ever since MS started holding back patches as part of their "security initiative" marketing ploy, they have been coming slower... who the hell cares about uptime if your box gets pwned as a result of MS's marketing department?
Not affiliated in any way beyond being a happy owner of an IBM keyboard (82-key) & "IBM style" keyboard (101-key) I bought off them ages ago. Damned things last forever (I bought one as a replacement for an IBM keyboard made in the early 90s), and no carpal tunnel woes...
If you haven't updated your browser in two and a half years, then you're unlikely to see the problem.
The problem was introduced around 0.9 or so. Older versions do not have this problem.
Personally under 0.9.x I've only seen this problem on Slashdot once. I closed the tab, opened new tab, went to Slashdot, never saw it again. I thought it was just an anomaly until others on Slashdot talked about it.
FWIW, most installers I've gone through recently, though not the PC warez hound I was a decade ago so maybe I'm just lucky with newer titles, let you install a program group of your own choosing.
I have about a half dozen or so games that created a folder under Program Files\Games by my prompting. You may have to use a Custom install to get there, but dammit, I always choose Custom.
BTW, I'm not a warez hound at all, I buy all my titles. Which is why I usually wait for the Mac port to be released...
Apple's iTunes Music Store sells about 70-80% of the music sold online.
Which is all well and good, but their sales figures are a drop in the bucket compared to music sales in general.
It's a nascent market, and claiming someone has a monopoly just because they were there first with a good product (which is basically iTMS) is kind of a stretch. It's like saying that, right now, some company has a monopoly position on software for Wang computers - while that may be true, it's pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Not to detract from your statements at all, I'm just a little sensitive to the use of "monopoly" - particularly since a large swath of geeks refuse to admit that Microsoft is one...
Er. If you buy a new 8mm/DDS drive, it'll have a dedicated cleaning LED too. I've got a handful of various types within 25 or so feet of my desk, and they all have a cleaning light. However, I never actually let them get lit, I have things setup to proactively clean the heads based hours used since last cleaning.
Only problem I've heard with DLT is that the data flows to the tape at a fixed speed. If you cannot supply data to the tape fast enough, it will simply write less data into the same length of tape that otherwise would contain more data.
Now... the information in my noggin' is several years old and unless DLT has increased in speed tremendously, the likelihood is that a local backup of any modern system will be able to keep it saturated. It was a problem several years ago with PC class systems. Backups across the network are the question mark in my mind, 100Mb/sec isn't THAT much bandwidth, and I assume DLT has increased in speed enough to make that a problem. Perhaps not. Perhaps they fixed the "problem".
Using Mozilla is extreme? That simple choice will stop 99% of them, assuming you don't download free system tray gizmos and similar "free" software.
Seriously, I can still visit websites. It's a browser. It works. It's not extreme by any means. It seems like folks have gotten hung up on old versions and haven't given recent versions a spin. It's really improved these last couple releases.
I'm probably going to send out a company-wide email next week alerting users to it's presence on the fileserver, since I'm tired of cleaning out spyware on their systems. Yeah, they do hit "OK" to strange dialog boxes, yeah, they do download "free" software - basically if Norton doesn't stop them, they'll go ahead and do it no matter how insane it seems.
"Oh look! Someone loves me!"(click) (click)
Dear lord I wish Symantec would start labelling these things as a virus...
BTW, making spyware illegal will have one good effect - companies based in the US, or with US subsidiaries, will no longer team up with these scumbags. That, to me, is the #1 intrusion vector. Installing some little free gizmo from an otherwise reputable company that comes with a massive spyware payload that installs other spyware, that in turn installs other spyware, and so on.
What we're trying to tell you is this: Taking those steps will not help you.
Right now, at this very minute, with a fully patched version of IE, you can visit a freakin' website and have malware silently installed on your system. Whatever the really nasty ones are currently doing, Microsoft hasn't patched yet. Hitting Windows Update isn't a cure if the exploits the malware is using aren't patched. When they patch that exploit, they'll find another one to use. That, to me, means they've taken a step into virus/worm territory in terms of maliciousness.
It's complete and utter insanity that by visiting a website, simply visiting a website, that software can be auto-installed on your system. The fact that it can be done, at all, is completely inexcusable in my book. IE needs a ground-up rewrite or something.
As a result of this, I simply don't use IE. It's a drastic solution, but I find it works quite well, except for microsoft.com and a few other annoying little bitches who won't code their websites properly. Most I refuse to visit, but unfortunately a couple are relevant for my job, so I have to.
Also: Antivirus programs don't detect, nor prevent the installation of, malware. There are seperate products that detect and remove these things, but they're not included with antivirus software. Frankly, I think given how malicious these things have gotten, they SHOULD be considered a worm/virus, but it looks like Symantec/McAfee/etc. wants to sell you a second $50 box.
BTW, I'm listening, buyt I'm just trying to explain that the state of affairs has advanced within the past few weeks. And I assume you're simply ignorant of the tactical shift they've made (from patched exploits to unpatched exploits).
From the front page of [url=http://www.macintouch.com]Macintouch[/url] today:
The solution I came up with seems to work perfectly so far, only takes a few seconds to implement, and doesn't require installing any third-party software as other solutions I've seen do:
Go to/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/chrome O pen all.js in any text editor, though preferably vim.:) Search for the term "protocol-handler". Under the two lines addressing "mailto" and "news", add the following lines of code: pref("network.protocol-handler.external.hel p" , false);// disable help protocol pref("network.protocol-handler.external. disk" , false);// disable disk protocol
While it is true that US citizens will pay in either case, there are important differences.
If the government pays, the measure has to go through the appropriate branches of government and get approval, which sometimes isn't as easy as, say, the average representative's pork project. The cost is then deferred across all taxpayers.
If the ISP pays, it's much easier for the wiretapping measure to go through, because it doesn't have to jump through as much review. The cost is then deferred to all the ISP's customers.
Because in the latter case the cost is deferred to a smaller group of people, the cost/person should be higher (depending on the level of government corruption and waste of course).
In my opinion, if this is a matter of national security, then the citizens as a whole should pay for it. And if it can't survive the appropriate congressional oversight, then maybe the FBI doesn't actually need it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, I think she does care about people ripping music from CDs, because the RIAA intends to break that behavior via copy protection.
And what can you ("legally") access on a PC on copy protected CDs? DRM'd Windows Media files. Which won't play on an iPod. So the RIAA's preferred methods of copy protection don't correspond with what consumers want (iPod) - therefore the iPod is flawed.
In related news, they're not in need of medication, because everyone else is crazy.
My guess is it was this Dell.
Oh man. (I'm wiping tears out of eyes from laughing so hard)
That brings to mind my favor Homer Simpson quote:
It's funny because it's true.
Why go through all the hassle of reinstalling? Why not get a 2nd HD and just use Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate your perfectly-working setup prior to the upgrade?
That'll take maybe 30 minutes (just be sure to quit all running apps prior to starting up CCC). Booting off of it, to verify it boots, then switching back to your original boot drive, should take another 5. If you have any custom folders off the root, be sure to copy them over at this time, but the standard OSX folders will get copied (applications, library, user, etc) by CCC.
Then you can do your 10.4 install and worst case if it all goes to hell you can just boot off your other HD and be back up and running in the time it takes to restart and boot off your backup drive. If you want the extra speed or something you can erase your original boot drive and CCC the working setup back.
I CCC before every minor rev install (10.3.x), I'm sure as hell going to do it before a major rev install 10.x). It save a hell of a lot of time. Someone please buy Mike Bombich a beer or something.
Whatever sacrifice you make, it should involve your wallet - namely buying a ~1500VA UPS. Then connect your PC (and not monitor/hubs/gizmos) into the battery-backup side. Configure the system to auto-shutdown when battery power runs low, then cross your fingers.
Since auto-shutdown will be clean (same as if you had done it yourself), if the defrag was still running it would be told to stop prior to system shutdown, leaving the system in a completely functional state.
While what you say is true, there have been studies that have shown that the larger the rebate, the more likely the purchaser will send in for it.
Under $15 rebates are in a different league than the $100+ rebates (I got a $100 rebate on my TiVo box). But since most rebates are very small everyone thinks the under 10% return rule applies to every rebate...
Uh. Your logic is a little flawed.
They wouldn't go after companies who have products with a shuffle feature in them. As you said, it's a long-standing feature that's commonplace in both hardware and software audio products. I don't think anyone, besides you evidently, is even remotely considering this as a legal basis for a lawsuit.
What they're considering are two points:
1) It looks virtually identical to the iPod Shuffle aside from an extra switch on the back. When I first saw the pictures I assumed the face-up (round button) shots were of an iPod shuffle, and the rear (two switches) were of the Super Shuffle. If the design is close enough to cause that kind of confusion, where someone could conceivably buy your product instead of your competitors because they look all but identical - that's grounds for a lawsuit under US trademark/trade dress laws. Of course, Luxpro would have to actually sell their product in the US for them to apply.
2) The name is not "Shuffle", it's "Super Shuffle." It was released, coincidentally enough, roughly 6 months after Apple launched the "iPod Shuffle." Golly, I wonder how they could have come up with that name, given that aside from an extra button it looks identical to an iPod Shuffle, which was on the market for some time prior to SS's launch.
All that being said, they're so close that I think (with no basis for my opinion other than that) they're actually being manufactured by the same company and sold under license to Apple and Luxpro. My assumption is that the two of them will not sell their products in the same market and therefore can sell virtually identical products in different places and not confuse anyone except naive internet users.
Almost. The SuperDrive could read 720K, 800K, and 1.44MB disks. They were "PC compatible" with the addition of third party software (eventually Apple purchased one of the packages and bundled it with the OS, much like they did with HAM).
720K & 1.44MB were CLV and the 800K was CAV - though CLV/CAV may be reversed (never can keep them straight).
However many people don't even have a spare system.
My parents, for instance, have a computer that's pushing 10 years old (if I get a tax return I'll buy 'em a new one this year - but I've been saying that for 4 years now). That's their only computer. That's all they want. It's all they need.
Many people push their old systems off on their children. A friend of mine gave his previous laptop to his kid, and she uses that. For them it's spend $200 on an uber-Express or steal their child's computer.
Other people sell off old systems to fund the Upgrade Train, running new software on their old system would be "unacceptably slow" and the sale of the old hardware offsets the purchase of the new hardware enough to keep that train running.
Personally, I only know of a couple people who have spare systems just lying around for no particular reason other than to have them lying around "just in case" they need them. The rest hand them off to children/parents/friends/strangers so they keep the level of clutter around their home down to manageable levels.
As for myself, I have 1 Mac and 1 PC at home. I generally sell old systems or components off on eBay - the alternative is to keep it all and drown in debt. Mmmm, no thanks.
But I don't want to sell used cars.
You can get a well laid out whitebox 3U rackmount case, they do exist. Going up to 3Us gets you full access to all the slots and typically a reasonable amount of airflow. They're laid out like a thin minitower, drive bays sideways (this means they're the correct orientation when rackmounted, unlike thin minitower cases).
Moving down to 2Us sacrifices all but a couple PCI slots (those that are left are on riser card, which I wouldn't trust for high-utilization PCI cards - a single PCI video card is about all I'd trust), but if you make sure to get everything you need on the motherboard then you can still get good reliability with predicatable airflow from a 2U case. There's just enough room to use Slot 1 procs, if you're so inclined to use hardware that old.
But 1U ATX whitebox cases are fscking nuts. I don't think you can use a video card that has a heatsink. Your CPU's heatsink better be short 'n fat too.
The nice thing about having a track record of creating new "creative properties" is that you should be able to continue creating new "properties".
Have you left it in the horizontal position instead of vertical (wide instead of tall)?
Most everyone I know who anally insists on placing their PS2 vertical has had a never ending string of drive problems. My first PS2 died after I did that for a while, my 2nd has been trooping along fine - which I attribute to always leaving it flat.
Just do that, run a lens cleaner through it every year or so (more often if you have pets), vacuum the front grill about as often (ditto), and it should survive until the PS3 is out and cheap.
Your uptime is still lightyears better than the average Windows box. Or, at least, the average Windows box that bothers to stay patched.
Though ever since MS started holding back patches as part of their "security initiative" marketing ploy, they have been coming slower... who the hell cares about uptime if your box gets pwned as a result of MS's marketing department?
Unicomp is listening.
Not affiliated in any way beyond being a happy owner of an IBM keyboard (82-key) & "IBM style" keyboard (101-key) I bought off them ages ago. Damned things last forever (I bought one as a replacement for an IBM keyboard made in the early 90s), and no carpal tunnel woes...
If you haven't updated your browser in two and a half years, then you're unlikely to see the problem.
The problem was introduced around 0.9 or so. Older versions do not have this problem.
Personally under 0.9.x I've only seen this problem on Slashdot once. I closed the tab, opened new tab, went to Slashdot, never saw it again. I thought it was just an anomaly until others on Slashdot talked about it.
FWIW, most installers I've gone through recently, though not the PC warez hound I was a decade ago so maybe I'm just lucky with newer titles, let you install a program group of your own choosing.
I have about a half dozen or so games that created a folder under Program Files\Games by my prompting. You may have to use a Custom install to get there, but dammit, I always choose Custom.
BTW, I'm not a warez hound at all, I buy all my titles. Which is why I usually wait for the Mac port to be released...
It's a nascent market, and claiming someone has a monopoly just because they were there first with a good product (which is basically iTMS) is kind of a stretch. It's like saying that, right now, some company has a monopoly position on software for Wang computers - while that may be true, it's pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Not to detract from your statements at all, I'm just a little sensitive to the use of "monopoly" - particularly since a large swath of geeks refuse to admit that Microsoft is one...
Er. If you buy a new 8mm/DDS drive, it'll have a dedicated cleaning LED too. I've got a handful of various types within 25 or so feet of my desk, and they all have a cleaning light. However, I never actually let them get lit, I have things setup to proactively clean the heads based hours used since last cleaning.
Only problem I've heard with DLT is that the data flows to the tape at a fixed speed. If you cannot supply data to the tape fast enough, it will simply write less data into the same length of tape that otherwise would contain more data.
Now... the information in my noggin' is several years old and unless DLT has increased in speed tremendously, the likelihood is that a local backup of any modern system will be able to keep it saturated. It was a problem several years ago with PC class systems. Backups across the network are the question mark in my mind, 100Mb/sec isn't THAT much bandwidth, and I assume DLT has increased in speed enough to make that a problem. Perhaps not. Perhaps they fixed the "problem".
Using Mozilla is extreme? That simple choice will stop 99% of them, assuming you don't download free system tray gizmos and similar "free" software.
Seriously, I can still visit websites. It's a browser. It works. It's not extreme by any means. It seems like folks have gotten hung up on old versions and haven't given recent versions a spin. It's really improved these last couple releases.
I'm probably going to send out a company-wide email next week alerting users to it's presence on the fileserver, since I'm tired of cleaning out spyware on their systems. Yeah, they do hit "OK" to strange dialog boxes, yeah, they do download "free" software - basically if Norton doesn't stop them, they'll go ahead and do it no matter how insane it seems.
"Oh look! Someone loves me!" (click) (click)
Dear lord I wish Symantec would start labelling these things as a virus...
BTW, making spyware illegal will have one good effect - companies based in the US, or with US subsidiaries, will no longer team up with these scumbags. That, to me, is the #1 intrusion vector. Installing some little free gizmo from an otherwise reputable company that comes with a massive spyware payload that installs other spyware, that in turn installs other spyware, and so on.
What we're trying to tell you is this: Taking those steps will not help you.
Right now, at this very minute, with a fully patched version of IE, you can visit a freakin' website and have malware silently installed on your system. Whatever the really nasty ones are currently doing, Microsoft hasn't patched yet. Hitting Windows Update isn't a cure if the exploits the malware is using aren't patched. When they patch that exploit, they'll find another one to use. That, to me, means they've taken a step into virus/worm territory in terms of maliciousness.
It's complete and utter insanity that by visiting a website, simply visiting a website, that software can be auto-installed on your system. The fact that it can be done, at all, is completely inexcusable in my book. IE needs a ground-up rewrite or something.
As a result of this, I simply don't use IE. It's a drastic solution, but I find it works quite well, except for microsoft.com and a few other annoying little bitches who won't code their websites properly. Most I refuse to visit, but unfortunately a couple are relevant for my job, so I have to.
Also:
Antivirus programs don't detect, nor prevent the installation of, malware. There are seperate products that detect and remove these things, but they're not included with antivirus software. Frankly, I think given how malicious these things have gotten, they SHOULD be considered a worm/virus, but it looks like Symantec/McAfee/etc. wants to sell you a second $50 box.
BTW, I'm listening, buyt I'm just trying to explain that the state of affairs has advanced within the past few weeks. And I assume you're simply ignorant of the tactical shift they've made (from patched exploits to unpatched exploits).
Given Argentina's economy, don't be surprised if it's them.
While it is true that US citizens will pay in either case, there are important differences.
If the government pays, the measure has to go through the appropriate branches of government and get approval, which sometimes isn't as easy as, say, the average representative's pork project. The cost is then deferred across all taxpayers.
If the ISP pays, it's much easier for the wiretapping measure to go through, because it doesn't have to jump through as much review. The cost is then deferred to all the ISP's customers.
Because in the latter case the cost is deferred to a smaller group of people, the cost/person should be higher (depending on the level of government corruption and waste of course).
In my opinion, if this is a matter of national security, then the citizens as a whole should pay for it. And if it can't survive the appropriate congressional oversight, then maybe the FBI doesn't actually need it.
And best of all, MS's patch is free... ...unlike Viagra.