If your Rio supports m4a files (assuming the non DRM will be AAC) and presents itself as a disk drive to your operating system, then the answer is yes.
Right now you can just select and drag songs in iTunes to any folder and it will simply copy the files. It even does this with protected files. It's a useful feature for backing up.
It should eat significant market share as people with older Win98 boxes are forced to upgrade to *something* due to lack of ongoing security support.
I see this argument all the time. I'm not saying that there aren't tons of people still on Win98. The problem is, it's working for them and the need to upgrade has been there since the XP days.
Now, even if these people would think that upgrading to Ubuntu is a viable option (versus just keeping Windows 98, which works fine for them! Those aren't upgrade freaks like we are. Wait, I'm not an upgrade freak. I used Win2K exclusively up to fall 2005!), there still is a problem. The problem is that the hardware is hardly apt to run a distribution like Ubuntu. Win98-era PC's are in the range of P-III machines, most of them coming initially between 64 and 256 Meg RAM. Now a P-III with 256Meg with Ubuntu will probably work, but those are the machines that were extremely high-end back in the day. Normal people don't shop the high-end. Don't forget that back in those days, people that knew stuff about computers would double the amount of RAM in standard machines because it wasn't really enough. (Heck, I still do that these days!) The people that were knowledgeable back then, are most definitely not running Win98 anymore.
Just recently I fixed a Thinkpad E600 for a friend, which is a P-II 300MHz or so with 128Meg RAM (which I found astonishingly high for that class of machine. It turned out that it came form a stock sale from a bank) Ubuntu wouldn't even install: not enough RAM. I temporary exchanged the 2x64Meg sticks with 2x256Meg sticks and I could install Ubuntu and use it just fine. After installation, I put in back the original 2x64Meg and Ubuntu worked from the harddisk. Slow, but it worked.... I'd hate to use it everyday. Still, I gave it back like that because I'm not giving away 2x256Meg RAM...
All the current Win98 machines run fine on Win98, but they will be memory starved on any operating system that is considered "more modern" (and that includes XP) The fact that these typically can have damned slow disks, won't help when swapping.
I have one P-III 550MHz with 512Meg RAM running Windows XP which I refurbished for my mother in law. That one runs really fine.... However, the only thing that is original in that machine is the motherboard, the floppy and the case. It will probably run Ubuntu fine too, but it isn't a typical Win98-era machine anymore.
I live in Europe, and as it happens we just got the "TGV Est". I live about 375km from Paris (according to Google maps, which gives road distance) and the "TGV Est currently has its terminal at Paris and (one of the other terminals) in the capital of my country". Now, the time it needs is 2 hours and 5 minutes. On this track it has exactly 4 stops, and they don't stay at these stops for very long. This means, on average that it drives 180km/hour. Not close to the maximum of 300km/hour.... (Which is normal)
So just assuming this speed can be maintained over 1300km (and thus keeping into account stops and slowdowns), then the total time required would indeed be 7 hours and 15 minutes.
Others mention the geographical situation, which cannot be counted in because it would impact all other road travel too. Besides, anyone who has been in the Alps and took the train there, knows how slow mountainous areas are in train. Same thing for cars though.
I've been to the US, and I know how big it is... However, a fast train is not required everywhere. You start off with the easy tracks, that are useful. As far as I remember one of the first TGV tracks was the North-South line Paris-Lyons, which is about 500km. This is about the scale of Washington DC to Pittsburgh. I'm not claiming that this would be a useful track (what do I know?), but it most certainly would be a start.
Anyway: the US is huge and people are not willing to travel for 8 hours straight anymore (well, I did, in Europe, yes, sir). On the other hand, with flight these days, doing any bigger flight will take a lot of time away due to controls and pre-checkin conditions. Even if a flight is only 2 hours, but you need 1 hour pre-flight and one hour post-flight, you still lost a lot of time. Sure, no 8 hours, but travelling by train is marvelously relaxing....
That's weird, my wifes XP Home machine (bought about 4 years ago, methinks) is most certainly a P-IV 2.4 HT and both the real CPUs and the virtual CPU are detected correctly. Gotta explain this to me...
Besides, didn't you read the linked FAQ? A processor is not a core in Microsofts eyes. This means that HT or dual-core, both implemented in one processor seated in one socket on the motherboard, will work on Home. It's right there in the FAQ that I linked to! Now, my SMP machine, with one procesessor in each of the two sockets will not run XP Home with its full capabilities.
Isn't this like getting financial advice from someone with a hotmail address?
Yes, it is... but that is only because you're (probably) employed in IT. I had a real hard time explaining my father in law that he shouldn't be using the equivalent of aol.com (not actually, that, but from a national provider) for his business. The worst part is: he's got his own domain.
No, he keeps using the old address. Normal people don't see the harm in such adresses.
So, for the masses, I expect that a myspace page would be welcomed.
With a dual processor CPU you'll never want to use XP Home
Why not? (Granted, I prefer XP Pro, but for other reasons) XP Home is perfectly capable of supporting processors with 2 cores and has support for hyperthreading for those two cores. Theoretically, you can have two cores each doing hyperthreading and thus showing up as four CPUs in the task manager, and all of this on Windows XP Home. See the next-to last question on Multicore Processor Licensing.
As far as I understood, a 16-core processor should work on XP Home too (as they charge per processor). Now, I'd like to see that with my own eyes, but according to their claims it does.
True, my "real" SMP system, meaning two single-core CPU's is not supported by Windows XP Home. That's why it runs Debian Etch.
Nah, not the only one... I found another post mentioning it when I read the comments. To be fair, my post should be redundant and that guys post informative, because I posted 7 minutes later.
Well, I've met many. Mainly in big corporate environments and they usually wear suits.... I guess, we just live in different environments.
I also had a gripe with the Scientist/Engineer choosing Windows. May, be true, but many engineers run Unix workstations. Not necessary Linux though. I also know about quite a few scientists (bio-med) that migrated to OS X.
4. The Windows Enthusiast - these people are extremely rare. They actively believe that M$ products are superior to anything else out there and believe that if something is free, there must be something wrong with it.
Extremely rare? Have you ever ventured outside slashdot? They are extremely common!
True, and I'm even worse: I contribute money to open source projects. Yes, I have donated to OpenOffice.org, OpenBSD and to some other minor open source projects. I like *that* better than paying for commercial software.
But the attitude of these guys was just take it, we don't care which surprised me a lot.
Not me... You have to realise that many IT people are not real IT people. Some just ended up on the job. They don't care about licenses. Heck, even those that studied IT often don't care. The prime task to them is: "Get it work". That this implies a pirated Windows is irrelevant to them. (Often they don't have to care because the company they work for has a Volume License anyway).
This is mostly an ethical question. Even more so than a legal one. To me at least... I don't really care that it's illegal to pirate, but I care about not *being* a pirate. However, many people do not make that distinction: "it'll get the job done, and that is enough". I admit to pirating Windows XP (I got a volume license copy), but I slowly but surely phasing out all my illegal copies to Linux or stick with the OEM copies I have. It's one of the reasons that my brothers machine runs XP Home instead of my highly customized XP Pro installation. It came with his OEM computer and is legal... but it does give me much more grief than my customized pirated versions....
You are underestimating "Familiarity".... Besides, it's not just IT people that pirate. I've seen non-IT people pirate Windows before. Quite a lot of them do.... They usually spend a bit more time and get viruses easier, but they do pirate Windows.
That is what they say, but I don't think that's true. They rather have me running Vista illegally than running Linux legally. Why? Because it increases their market share, which in turn benefits to them. I am also more likely to choose Windows in my business decisions or demand Windows Vista from my employer because "that is what I know".
For students and poorer people they damn well want them to pirate Vista.... They might one day become paying customers.
Piracy is a form of advertisement, as odd as it may sound.
Ouais, c'est pas trop dur de trouver qui je suis. Surtout pas à partir de mon (mes) nom de plume slashdot.
Selon les études que j'ai entendu quand j'était stagiare-prof (car j'étais en formation pour devenir un prof encore mieux payé) il parait que le systeme Norvegien, Finlandais ou Suédois étais le top. (Un de ce trois pays, je ne me rapelle plus lequel) Le gros problème ici, c'est les langues: en maternelle les enfants doivent parler le Luxembourgeois, en primaire la plupart de leur cours sont en Allemand et en secondaire la plupart de leur cours sont en Français. Si tu n'est pas top en langues, tu n'a aucune chance dans le système Luxembourgeois. Puisque je n'étais pas issu du système Luxembourgeois je ne savais pas du tout que c'était le cas. En étant stagiare prof, j'ai toujours eu des remarques parce que j'écrivais des fautes d'ortographe/grammaire sur le tableau.... dans un cours d'informatique...:-/ Je ne serais jamais passé par l'examen final, juste à cause de cet handicap.
Les pays Nordiques n'ont pas ce problème de langue donc ils peuvent simplifier leur systeme. (Personellement, je crois justement que le système Luxembourgeois doit tout simplement adopter une langue principale...)
Oui, je suis nul en langues écrites, mais je bats n'importe quel Luxembourgeois dans l'oral... (Je suis Luxembourgeois naturalisé) Je suis persuadé que si j'aurais été dans le système Luxembourgeois en étant étudiant, je serais en train de nettoyer les chiottes à la place d'être informaticien.
The main question is: is this sustainable in the long run?
Sure, starting to save again would probably bring a crash in the economy, but after a couple of decades the economy will adapt. I think so at least. Of course it sucks to be in that couple decades, but if it's better in the long run...
Slashdot Mirror
If your Rio supports m4a files (assuming the non DRM will be AAC) and presents itself as a disk drive to your operating system, then the answer is yes. Right now you can just select and drag songs in iTunes to any folder and it will simply copy the files. It even does this with protected files. It's a useful feature for backing up.
Of course, how else do you think she's going to last several hours without going to the bathroom?
Have you never driven a long trip with a women in your car? *sigh*
It should eat significant market share as people with older Win98 boxes are forced to upgrade to *something* due to lack of ongoing security support.
I see this argument all the time. I'm not saying that there aren't tons of people still on Win98. The problem is, it's working for them and the need to upgrade has been there since the XP days.
Now, even if these people would think that upgrading to Ubuntu is a viable option (versus just keeping Windows 98, which works fine for them! Those aren't upgrade freaks like we are. Wait, I'm not an upgrade freak. I used Win2K exclusively up to fall 2005!), there still is a problem. The problem is that the hardware is hardly apt to run a distribution like Ubuntu. Win98-era PC's are in the range of P-III machines, most of them coming initially between 64 and 256 Meg RAM. Now a P-III with 256Meg with Ubuntu will probably work, but those are the machines that were extremely high-end back in the day. Normal people don't shop the high-end. Don't forget that back in those days, people that knew stuff about computers would double the amount of RAM in standard machines because it wasn't really enough. (Heck, I still do that these days!) The people that were knowledgeable back then, are most definitely not running Win98 anymore.
Just recently I fixed a Thinkpad E600 for a friend, which is a P-II 300MHz or so with 128Meg RAM (which I found astonishingly high for that class of machine. It turned out that it came form a stock sale from a bank) Ubuntu wouldn't even install: not enough RAM. I temporary exchanged the 2x64Meg sticks with 2x256Meg sticks and I could install Ubuntu and use it just fine. After installation, I put in back the original 2x64Meg and Ubuntu worked from the harddisk. Slow, but it worked.... I'd hate to use it everyday. Still, I gave it back like that because I'm not giving away 2x256Meg RAM...
All the current Win98 machines run fine on Win98, but they will be memory starved on any operating system that is considered "more modern" (and that includes XP) The fact that these typically can have damned slow disks, won't help when swapping.
I have one P-III 550MHz with 512Meg RAM running Windows XP which I refurbished for my mother in law. That one runs really fine.... However, the only thing that is original in that machine is the motherboard, the floppy and the case. It will probably run Ubuntu fine too, but it isn't a typical Win98-era machine anymore.
I live in Europe, and as it happens we just got the "TGV Est". I live about 375km from Paris (according to Google maps, which gives road distance) and the "TGV Est currently has its terminal at Paris and (one of the other terminals) in the capital of my country". Now, the time it needs is 2 hours and 5 minutes. On this track it has exactly 4 stops, and they don't stay at these stops for very long. This means, on average that it drives 180km/hour. Not close to the maximum of 300km/hour.... (Which is normal)
So just assuming this speed can be maintained over 1300km (and thus keeping into account stops and slowdowns), then the total time required would indeed be 7 hours and 15 minutes.
Others mention the geographical situation, which cannot be counted in because it would impact all other road travel too. Besides, anyone who has been in the Alps and took the train there, knows how slow mountainous areas are in train. Same thing for cars though.
I've been to the US, and I know how big it is... However, a fast train is not required everywhere. You start off with the easy tracks, that are useful. As far as I remember one of the first TGV tracks was the North-South line Paris-Lyons, which is about 500km. This is about the scale of Washington DC to Pittsburgh. I'm not claiming that this would be a useful track (what do I know?), but it most certainly would be a start.
Anyway: the US is huge and people are not willing to travel for 8 hours straight anymore (well, I did, in Europe, yes, sir). On the other hand, with flight these days, doing any bigger flight will take a lot of time away due to controls and pre-checkin conditions. Even if a flight is only 2 hours, but you need 1 hour pre-flight and one hour post-flight, you still lost a lot of time. Sure, no 8 hours, but travelling by train is marvelously relaxing....
That's weird, my wifes XP Home machine (bought about 4 years ago, methinks) is most certainly a P-IV 2.4 HT and both the real CPUs and the virtual CPU are detected correctly. Gotta explain this to me...
Besides, didn't you read the linked FAQ? A processor is not a core in Microsofts eyes. This means that HT or dual-core, both implemented in one processor seated in one socket on the motherboard, will work on Home. It's right there in the FAQ that I linked to! Now, my SMP machine, with one procesessor in each of the two sockets will not run XP Home with its full capabilities.
It's the sockets that count, dude...
Didn't you notice the smilie at the end? Go buy some humour...
Writing insecure web applications in less time. Thanks Borland! ;-)
Isn't this like getting financial advice from someone with a hotmail address?
Yes, it is... but that is only because you're (probably) employed in IT. I had a real hard time explaining my father in law that he shouldn't be using the equivalent of aol.com (not actually, that, but from a national provider) for his business. The worst part is: he's got his own domain.
No, he keeps using the old address. Normal people don't see the harm in such adresses.
So, for the masses, I expect that a myspace page would be welcomed.
With a dual processor CPU you'll never want to use XP Home
Why not? (Granted, I prefer XP Pro, but for other reasons) XP Home is perfectly capable of supporting processors with 2 cores and has support for hyperthreading for those two cores. Theoretically, you can have two cores each doing hyperthreading and thus showing up as four CPUs in the task manager, and all of this on Windows XP Home. See the next-to last question on Multicore Processor Licensing.
As far as I understood, a 16-core processor should work on XP Home too (as they charge per processor). Now, I'd like to see that with my own eyes, but according to their claims it does.
True, my "real" SMP system, meaning two single-core CPU's is not supported by Windows XP Home. That's why it runs Debian Etch.
Nah, not the only one... I found another post mentioning it when I read the comments. To be fair, my post should be redundant and that guys post informative, because I posted 7 minutes later.
If you really want to make it elite, make it quieter, cooler and less prone to dying.
Yeah, that and release "Elite" for it. When I read the headline, I got exited and though I'd buy an XBox 360 just for that....
It has "sex" in the headline.
What exactly did you expect?
Well, I've met many. Mainly in big corporate environments and they usually wear suits.... I guess, we just live in different environments.
I also had a gripe with the Scientist/Engineer choosing Windows. May, be true, but many engineers run Unix workstations. Not necessary Linux though. I also know about quite a few scientists (bio-med) that migrated to OS X.
Again: you mileage may vary....
4. The Windows Enthusiast - these people are extremely rare. They actively believe that M$ products are superior to anything else out there and believe that if something is free, there must be something wrong with it.
Extremely rare? Have you ever ventured outside slashdot? They are extremely common!
True, and I'm even worse: I contribute money to open source projects. Yes, I have donated to OpenOffice.org, OpenBSD and to some other minor open source projects. I like *that* better than paying for commercial software.
Octave? . Not that I know what SPSS is, but since you compare it to Matlab and Mathematica. Octave is really good!
But the attitude of these guys was just take it, we don't care which surprised me a lot.
Not me... You have to realise that many IT people are not real IT people. Some just ended up on the job. They don't care about licenses. Heck, even those that studied IT often don't care. The prime task to them is: "Get it work". That this implies a pirated Windows is irrelevant to them. (Often they don't have to care because the company they work for has a Volume License anyway).
This is mostly an ethical question. Even more so than a legal one. To me at least... I don't really care that it's illegal to pirate, but I care about not *being* a pirate. However, many people do not make that distinction: "it'll get the job done, and that is enough". I admit to pirating Windows XP (I got a volume license copy), but I slowly but surely phasing out all my illegal copies to Linux or stick with the OEM copies I have. It's one of the reasons that my brothers machine runs XP Home instead of my highly customized XP Pro installation. It came with his OEM computer and is legal... but it does give me much more grief than my customized pirated versions....
You are underestimating "Familiarity".... Besides, it's not just IT people that pirate. I've seen non-IT people pirate Windows before. Quite a lot of them do.... They usually spend a bit more time and get viruses easier, but they do pirate Windows.
That is what they say, but I don't think that's true. They rather have me running Vista illegally than running Linux legally. Why? Because it increases their market share, which in turn benefits to them. I am also more likely to choose Windows in my business decisions or demand Windows Vista from my employer because "that is what I know".
For students and poorer people they damn well want them to pirate Vista.... They might one day become paying customers.
Piracy is a form of advertisement, as odd as it may sound.
(I run Debian Etch, thank you very much)
Ouais, c'est pas trop dur de trouver qui je suis. Surtout pas à partir de mon (mes) nom de plume slashdot.
Selon les études que j'ai entendu quand j'était stagiare-prof (car j'étais en formation pour devenir un prof encore mieux payé) il parait que le systeme Norvegien, Finlandais ou Suédois étais le top. (Un de ce trois pays, je ne me rapelle plus lequel) Le gros problème ici, c'est les langues: en maternelle les enfants doivent parler le Luxembourgeois, en primaire la plupart de leur cours sont en Allemand et en secondaire la plupart de leur cours sont en Français. Si tu n'est pas top en langues, tu n'a aucune chance dans le système Luxembourgeois. Puisque je n'étais pas issu du système Luxembourgeois je ne savais pas du tout que c'était le cas. En étant stagiare prof, j'ai toujours eu des remarques parce que j'écrivais des fautes d'ortographe/grammaire sur le tableau.... dans un cours d'informatique... :-/ Je ne serais jamais passé par l'examen final, juste à cause de cet handicap.
Les pays Nordiques n'ont pas ce problème de langue donc ils peuvent simplifier leur systeme. (Personellement, je crois justement que le système Luxembourgeois doit tout simplement adopter une langue principale...)
Oui, je suis nul en langues écrites, mais je bats n'importe quel Luxembourgeois dans l'oral... (Je suis Luxembourgeois naturalisé) Je suis persuadé que si j'aurais été dans le système Luxembourgeois en étant étudiant, je serais en train de nettoyer les chiottes à la place d'être informaticien.
The main question is: is this sustainable in the long run?
Sure, starting to save again would probably bring a crash in the economy, but after a couple of decades the economy will adapt. I think so at least. Of course it sucks to be in that couple decades, but if it's better in the long run...
Sorry, I forgot that you pay for incoming SMS in the US.
Sorry, I forgot about that.... I'm in Europe. Incoming SMS (incoming calls too) is free...
Tiny country in Europe... but yes, you're right. I completely forgot even though I saw this some time ago.
Personally, I don't think that the economy would crash when everyone had more financial responsibility, but hey... I'm not an economist.
You write over 65 text messages a day?
Wow, just wow....