Does anyone use an iPod or similar drive-based MP3 player while working out?
I jog a few miles a day, and I'm thinking about getting an MP3 player because the radio reception where I'm at stinks (and having nothing to concentrate on but actually running makes a mile seem like an eternity). The iPod seems like a good solution, but I'm hesitant to get one because it uses a hard drive and I'm worried that the jostling will damage it in short order.
The guy at the Mac store in my local mall said that it's not a problem and that people use the iPod for workout tunes all the time, but I'm not sure I believe him.
Experience, anyone?
Re:Pirates of Silicon Valley?
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Hm, I think a more appropriate part of that movie was where Gates and Balmer are at that Mac convention at the end as "friends" of Apple.
It took me a couple of readings to convince myself that McCullagh's article wasn't parody.
This stupid fuck apparently thinks that things worth fighting for should be easy to get, or that rights aren't won and secured on the backs and with the blood of people willing to fight for what they know is right.
This guy is an embarressment to the profession of "web journalist", which is saying a lot in a world of Matt Drudges. I wonder if Declan would ever protect a source. Would he refuse a request from police? Would he refuse a subpoena? Would he go to prison to protect a source?
The idea that a few setbacks spells everlasting defeat has to be the most absurd thing I've ever heard.
Geeks aren't necessarily political animals. What we are, however, is a group of intelligent people with impressive earning potential and a widely-felt purpose.
Of course, someone is always building the better mousetrap, so you'd be foolish to stop looking for it completely. Were I to take over an existing IT department, my agenda would be to (a) make sure we're not currently doing anything stupid and (b) keep an eye out for things that will make it easier for my people to do their jobs, then perform a careful implementation of such.
For example, if my company grew to 100 people and was showing signs of continued growth, I'd seriously consider switching the file server to a NetApp for the sake of easily adding large amounts of room without disrupting what we already have going on.
Again, like I've said in other posts, the trick is to have good people who aren't either too conservative or too reckless.
But we NEED to buy new hardware and software. Our admin said so. After all, you can't POSSIBLY run a web server (IIS), database (SQL Server 2K), and email server (Exchange 2K) on the same machine and expect it to keep running for long, can you? Even IF the machine is a dual 1GHz with a Gig of RAM...
I side with your admin on this one. Having all your eggs in one basket is always a piss-poor idea, especially when your basket is a Windows box. You want people to be able to work on *something*, even if a single thing (like email) is down for a couple of hours.
Of course, your manager should have just bought three reasonable machines to being with.
Smart companies will find good people and pay whatever it takes to keep them.
Stupid companies will offer low pay and deal with the people they attract with that, who will then go out and make boneheaded decisions and toss the whole company into well-deserved chaos.
Now, I agree that the average salary has gone down, however that's more just from there being a reasonable pool of people to choose from rather than 1% unemployment.
Too many high-level managers I've met miss the real key to an effective IT organization: the people.
Think about the "bad" IT spending (both in terms of dollars spent and dollars not spent costing productivity) you've seen in the last five years. Here are some of mine: A main file server that keeps filling up. An email server that can handle 8x the level of traffic it will ever see. An IP conference system brought in-house to serve 2-3 conference calls a day. Running fiber to the desktop at great expense to serve people whose primary application is email. Bringing in four different version control systems for one development effort. Replacing one outdated computer at a time, so that suddenly you're supporting a hundred slightly different machines.
I could go on, but you get the point. All of these are examples of "bad" IT spending that would have been prevented if you'd had good people and good managers, people who understand that the first rule of IT is to know why you need a given thing.
Now, it's hard to get people who are smart without being arrogant, careful without being overly conservative and etc. Moreover, even if you assemble a good team, it can be expensive to keep it together. The gains of a good group of people are realized in the long-term, and this is why so many otherwise intelligent businesses have incompetent people wasting money.
When I was in college, I put together a group of CS majors who wanted to learn practical computer usage, UNIX-centered development, networking and etc. -- topics definately not covered in CS classes.
We took over the student ACM, weaseled an unused facilty office from the CS department and went to work on assembling a small lab based on the UPL at UW-Madison (we stole their name, too, which really frosted them and nearly earned me a beating from a guy with a crowbar, but I digress).
The real trouble was getting machines to run "real" UNIX distros on.
Given that, the Solaris x86 distribution was an attractive alternative. In the end, we didn't go with it because $99 was prohibitive (hey, we were *college* students). However, if I knew then what I know now (how good Solaris use and admin is on a resume), I would have insisted we spring for it on the second machine we put together from donated bits -- as it was we just used Linux.
So, there's your roundabout answer: It's for people who can't afford Big Iron but want to learn Solaris.
True, but the basic idea of combining motion detection and holography (providing visual feedback) was nice.
I suspect you could invent a fairly simple touch-feedback interface glove in this same vein using current tech -- just install a small buzzer at the end of each finger to provide tactile feedback when you "touch" a key.
Actually, I liked the changing holographic interface the main character in Final Fantasy was using towards the beginning. It seemed well-suited for the applications -- it provided a simple, useful one-handed interface that went completely away when you were done using it.
By your logic, I should be able to tint all my windows to 95% and drive around without license plates. Of course, I can't do that for obvious reasons.
You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. That's why they call it "in public". If you want privacy, stay in your house and out of areas in plain view of public places -- then you have a leg to stand on.
I try to stay away from extreme examples like "someone could use it to kill his wife! AND KIDS! For the love of God, think about the CHILDREN!". They're unrealistic and appeal mostly to the Jerry Springer sect of society.
After all, if he was a cop, he'd need to get a subpoena to get at the information. It'd be much easier just to put out an APB on her car. As such, it's not really a realistic potential problem and not a good counterargument.
$12 million a year is a pretty hefty number by anyone's standards. You could engage in many court cases testing constitutionally-challenged laws, you could donate to the right candidates, you could run education to counter the opposition's propaganda.
Okay, I could also have said that it was tracking me going to anti-war demonstrations or to heckle Dick Cheney while he's in town.
Of course, those things are legal and are free from civil problems.
Cheating on my wife, while legal, could lead to problems in a divorce case (although I think CA's a no-fault state). It's the easiest example I could come up with. If you have a better one, then by all means let's hear it.
Not to be contrarian, but the difference is that, in telling you her name, profession and travel habits, she's controlling the release of her information.
I don't have a big problem with toll records being accessible in criminal cases (aka, by subpeona). Many criminals *are* stupid, so if this helps catch them then I'm happy. Besides, I have no reasonable expectation of privacy on a bridge (which is why I try to keep the nose-picking to a minimum).
What I worry about it that leading to civil uses -- what if my wife's lawyer got records showing I was sneaking over the Golden Gate to visit my mistress (expensive booty call with the new tolls, BTW).
I wish there were some reasonable way to insure against a slippery slope. I would prefer to live in a country where it's easy to catch criminals without sliding into surveilling lawful citizens.
Those who read/. are aware of the problems but aren't a powerful enough or mobilized enough group (Slashdotting of weak servers notwithstanding) to get things changed significantly politically.
No, the problem is that we all *think* we aren't powerful enough to get anything changed. In reality, we are a reasonably large group of people, the majority of whom are young and making multiples of the average US salary.
On average, I give the EFF $100 a month. If you were to do the same, things might actually improve.
Want to learn how to program? Pay gobs of money, and even then your programs are restricted by American corporations. (dont use a file format you didn't create from scratch, dont make a text-to-speech for.pdf files, dont step on the grass when you're surrounded by fields!)
Of course, those same laws also protect code licensed under the GPL from abuse. I'm with Linus here: if you write the code, you should decide on its license.
All that having been said, I found nothing in that article that seemed to imply America has a monopoly on this behavior, just that, under the current Copyright Cartels (is there any doubt in anyone's mind who is calling the shots in D.C. these days?), we, or rather America, are by far the worst offendors.
The really sad and disappointing part of this is that Americans could end the dominance of those who control them tommorrow (well, in November) if only things like critical thinking and questioning the government were to come into fashion again.
Unfortunately, the clue stick isn't going to cut it on this one. I need to find something more along the lines of a clue thermonuclear weapon...
While the rest of the world pulls the same BS, I always feel so much more disappointed when the US does it.
Our Constitution is structured to place power in the hands of the many, so when we do something like allow secret trials or censor viewpoints or extend copyrights into perpetuity like some frozen baseball player, I feel disappointed not only in the system that has let me down, but in the general population who are obviously not paying attention to the actions of their government or thinking critically about its actions.
Slashdot Mirror
I jog a few miles a day, and I'm thinking about getting an MP3 player because the radio reception where I'm at stinks (and having nothing to concentrate on but actually running makes a mile seem like an eternity). The iPod seems like a good solution, but I'm hesitant to get one because it uses a hard drive and I'm worried that the jostling will damage it in short order.
The guy at the Mac store in my local mall said that it's not a problem and that people use the iPod for workout tunes all the time, but I'm not sure I believe him.
Experience, anyone?
Worry about Microsoft most when they're smiling.
Dude, I have two words: Animal House.
This stupid fuck apparently thinks that things worth fighting for should be easy to get, or that rights aren't won and secured on the backs and with the blood of people willing to fight for what they know is right.
This guy is an embarressment to the profession of "web journalist", which is saying a lot in a world of Matt Drudges. I wonder if Declan would ever protect a source. Would he refuse a request from police? Would he refuse a subpoena? Would he go to prison to protect a source?
I doubt it. Why? Because he's a coward.
The idea that a few setbacks spells everlasting defeat has to be the most absurd thing I've ever heard. Geeks aren't necessarily political animals. What we are, however, is a group of intelligent people with impressive earning potential and a widely-felt purpose.
Fuck this guy. Support the EFF.
Okay, it's a step in the right direction to have more games on Linux, but could they fix the glaring problems first?
Of course, someone is always building the better mousetrap, so you'd be foolish to stop looking for it completely. Were I to take over an existing IT department, my agenda would be to (a) make sure we're not currently doing anything stupid and (b) keep an eye out for things that will make it easier for my people to do their jobs, then perform a careful implementation of such.
For example, if my company grew to 100 people and was showing signs of continued growth, I'd seriously consider switching the file server to a NetApp for the sake of easily adding large amounts of room without disrupting what we already have going on.
Again, like I've said in other posts, the trick is to have good people who aren't either too conservative or too reckless.
I side with your admin on this one. Having all your eggs in one basket is always a piss-poor idea, especially when your basket is a Windows box. You want people to be able to work on *something*, even if a single thing (like email) is down for a couple of hours.
Of course, your manager should have just bought three reasonable machines to being with.
Stupid companies will offer low pay and deal with the people they attract with that, who will then go out and make boneheaded decisions and toss the whole company into well-deserved chaos.
Now, I agree that the average salary has gone down, however that's more just from there being a reasonable pool of people to choose from rather than 1% unemployment.
Think about the "bad" IT spending (both in terms of dollars spent and dollars not spent costing productivity) you've seen in the last five years. Here are some of mine: A main file server that keeps filling up. An email server that can handle 8x the level of traffic it will ever see. An IP conference system brought in-house to serve 2-3 conference calls a day. Running fiber to the desktop at great expense to serve people whose primary application is email. Bringing in four different version control systems for one development effort. Replacing one outdated computer at a time, so that suddenly you're supporting a hundred slightly different machines.
I could go on, but you get the point. All of these are examples of "bad" IT spending that would have been prevented if you'd had good people and good managers, people who understand that the first rule of IT is to know why you need a given thing.
Now, it's hard to get people who are smart without being arrogant, careful without being overly conservative and etc. Moreover, even if you assemble a good team, it can be expensive to keep it together. The gains of a good group of people are realized in the long-term, and this is why so many otherwise intelligent businesses have incompetent people wasting money.
We took over the student ACM, weaseled an unused facilty office from the CS department and went to work on assembling a small lab based on the UPL at UW-Madison (we stole their name, too, which really frosted them and nearly earned me a beating from a guy with a crowbar, but I digress).
The real trouble was getting machines to run "real" UNIX distros on.
Given that, the Solaris x86 distribution was an attractive alternative. In the end, we didn't go with it because $99 was prohibitive (hey, we were *college* students). However, if I knew then what I know now (how good Solaris use and admin is on a resume), I would have insisted we spring for it on the second machine we put together from donated bits -- as it was we just used Linux.
So, there's your roundabout answer: It's for people who can't afford Big Iron but want to learn Solaris.
I suspect you could invent a fairly simple touch-feedback interface glove in this same vein using current tech -- just install a small buzzer at the end of each finger to provide tactile feedback when you "touch" a key.
Actually, I liked the changing holographic interface the main character in Final Fantasy was using towards the beginning. It seemed well-suited for the applications -- it provided a simple, useful one-handed interface that went completely away when you were done using it.
Er, dude, it's what we call "an example". I'm not actually married.
Well, no, not in the case you're bringing up.
By your logic, I should be able to tint all my windows to 95% and drive around without license plates. Of course, I can't do that for obvious reasons.
You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. That's why they call it "in public". If you want privacy, stay in your house and out of areas in plain view of public places -- then you have a leg to stand on.
After all, if he was a cop, he'd need to get a subpoena to get at the information. It'd be much easier just to put out an APB on her car. As such, it's not really a realistic potential problem and not a good counterargument.
What you expect, then, is anonymity. There's a difference.
You're never powerless until you think you are.
Of course, those things are legal and are free from civil problems.
Cheating on my wife, while legal, could lead to problems in a divorce case (although I think CA's a no-fault state). It's the easiest example I could come up with. If you have a better one, then by all means let's hear it.
I think, basically, that's what most people want.
What I worry about it that leading to civil uses -- what if my wife's lawyer got records showing I was sneaking over the Golden Gate to visit my mistress (expensive booty call with the new tolls, BTW).
I wish there were some reasonable way to insure against a slippery slope. I would prefer to live in a country where it's easy to catch criminals without sliding into surveilling lawful citizens.
No, the problem is that we all *think* we aren't powerful enough to get anything changed. In reality, we are a reasonably large group of people, the majority of whom are young and making multiples of the average US salary.
On average, I give the EFF $100 a month. If you were to do the same, things might actually improve.
Of course, those same laws also protect code licensed under the GPL from abuse. I'm with Linus here: if you write the code, you should decide on its license.
The really sad and disappointing part of this is that Americans could end the dominance of those who control them tommorrow (well, in November) if only things like critical thinking and questioning the government were to come into fashion again.
Unfortunately, the clue stick isn't going to cut it on this one. I need to find something more along the lines of a clue thermonuclear weapon...
Our Constitution is structured to place power in the hands of the many, so when we do something like allow secret trials or censor viewpoints or extend copyrights into perpetuity like some frozen baseball player, I feel disappointed not only in the system that has let me down, but in the general population who are obviously not paying attention to the actions of their government or thinking critically about its actions.