Does anybody know of a company that makes METAL, waterproof thumbdrives.
I'd pay an extra $50, just to know that my data was basiaclly indestructible.
I figure a cast aluminum casing (lanyard hole cast-in) in which the PCB is potted in epoxy would do thee trick very nicely.
But to call and say hey! I think he has a stolen laptop but I have no proof and I could be wrong (for all I know its a pawnshop laptop -- those are vetted for legality in some small ways) or otherwise. It wasn't strong enough proof to do anything about it.
Sure it was.
What you do is: get the SERIAL NUMBER OFF THE LAPTOP.
The police will be able to run it and see if it's stolen at their conveniece. There's no need to have a partol car rush out to your house or anything, just tell them who has it and the serial number.
In a free society, you don't just bring in the Gestapo everytime you have a twitchy nerve telling you something ain't right.
In free society, you can call the gestapo as much as you want. They'd only be able to get a warrant if the serial number DOES indeed come up stolen. (That's where the "free society" part comes in.)
I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but it really would have require minmal effort on your part to do something about this with basically no risk.
As and added bonus, the police might find something even more illegal than a stolen laptop when they go in looking for it.
You do want these guys out of your neighborhood right?
There's no conflict of interest; if the CEOs see one division loosing big money on some HW invention they will of course kill it. Why wouldn't they?
Because they would have made more money selling decent minidisc equipemnt than they would have lost to piracy.
Sony doesn't realize that its restrictions mean NOTHING in the grand scheme of things. If they start making CD burners that will not burn any form of music at all, people will just BUY FROM ANOTHER COMPANY.
You (and grandparent post) make it sound like nerds rule Sony.
I'm not sure how you got that from my post. It think idiots rule Sony (just look at their non-MP3 player).
A reasonably smart person would realize that an ATRAC-only player is going to do nothing but hurt its own sales while having no noticable effect on piracy since there are already a gazillion MP3 players out there.
It's a pretty safe bet that the engineers at Sony would love it if they were actually allowed to ship the thing with MP3 capability, since then someone might actually BUY their product. It's gotta suck to desgin a really cool hardware platform and have some manager make it basically useless.
Why on earth should we assume that someone who can break security has the slightest knowledge of how to fix security? I can break regular glass with a rock, but have no clue how to make shatter-proof glass.
Sure, but some companies actually have more than one employee.
They might have one guy who designs locks, and a SEPERATE PERSON who tries to break them. While a theif might not know how to design a lock, he could still be perfectly suited for a job as a tester.
Yes, they did pay their debt to society/do their time. I might hire them to do other things away from their area of conviction, but I'm not going to dangle temptation in front of their face. Does that seem like just straight common sense to anyone but me?
Your analogies aren't telling the whole story.
As another poster pointed out, it would be a great idea to hire an ex-theif to test you your company's new bike locks. Similarly, it makes sense to hire a hacker to look for holes in your company's new AV software.
It probably would be wise not to let him rewrite your company's payroll system in Perl, but there are ways to put an individual's unique knowedge to work without trusting them with the keys to the kingdom.
Sony wanted to do MP3 a long time ago, but it was their devision tied to the entertainment industry that FORCED them to use a propritary format...such as ATRAC3.
It's just a legal roadblock and civilwar for sony, not one of ignorance.
Which is why Sony should split itself into two seperate companies. Internal conflicts of interest have have probably cost Sony billions over the years.
Look at how crippled minidisc was. Sony could have *owned* the portable music market worldwide ten years ago if they weren't so worried about pissing off their own record label.
The points you bring up are for the car enthusiast. The vast majority of people aren't car enthusiasts and want nothing to do with adjusting tire pressure for different conditions.
It's a same to here you say this.
The post wasn't talking about equalizing your tire pressures for neutral cornering, or any orther type of esoteric car enthusiast type of practice. Those were basic concepts that everyone who drives a car should know.
There's more to driving a car than pushing pedal and turning the wheel, when you're driving a car you are operating a very dangerous, very expensive machine, you SHOULD have some basic concept of how it works.
Whould you use a chainsaw with no more background knowledge than "set it on the wood and pull the trigger"?
Sadly this doesn't seem to be a part of any driver's test that I know about. Here's an example:
THINK FAST:
You gas pedal is stuck to the floor, should you:
A) reach down with your hand and try to pull it up
B) use the brakes to maintain your speed
C) shift your transmission into neutral
D) turn your ignition switch to the "accessory" position
E) Shut off your car by removing the key from the ignition
How many people out there know the correct answer to this question? Do you?
Don't you think this is a basic, necessary, safety-related thing to know?
I was lucky to have good instincts and pick to correct answer when it happened to me, but I would have much rather been taught the answer as part of my written test.
Note:
The answer is D, choose any of the other choices and you can fuck yourself in a hurry.
A) takes your eyes off the road
B) will burn up your brakes, then you have a car with a stuck gas pedal AND no brakes
C) will toast your engine by overrevving it
E) will kill your engine but will also engage your car's steering wheel lock
(some cars have features which minimize some of these problems)
And finally,
I'll admit it, I consider myself a car enthusiast.
You might claim that makes be biased, but I honestly think the current blatant ignorance of proper automobile operation is a serious safety issue.
Try this go to ANY brake repair shop and ask them how often the get cars in for brake service where the brake pads have been worn down to the point where there is bare metal on metal contact.
You'll find that a lot of drivers out there are blissfully ignorant of the "squealers" on their brake pads, whose entire purpose it to warn the driver before the vehicle becomes unsafe to drive. They just turn up the radio.
I don't expect every driver to know how to change his spark plugs, but every driver SHOULD know all the basic, safety-critical information about their car. It's like operating a gun without knowing how to use the safety, it's just dangerously stupid.
WTF PEOPLE!! This isn't a "known caveat", this is gross neglience on the part of a manufacturer.
While this is certainly something that lock manufacturers need to deal with, everyone needs to also keep one simple idea in mind.
The purpose of a lock is to keep honest and semi-honest people from taking your stuff. If someone is damned and determined to take your bike, he's going to get it, regardless of what lock you use.
People like you are totally missing the point. This is like an airbag company making airbags that don't work 90% of the time! Sure it's a better idea never to get in an accident, but that's not the frickin point.
The point is kryptonite's locks are billed as "highly secure". They are not. This has been known in select circles (and kryptonite was informed) since at least 1992, yet the manufacturer has done nothing with that information to fix the problem.
I also have to nod in agreement with an earlier poster who pointed out that for the price of a fancy lock, you can get a bike that no one wants to steal.
This is total nonsense. Increbile POS bikes get stolen all the time, see my post about my friend's bike.
The problem is that it's just too damned easy to make an automated, electronic pick. (Imagine a set of coils being driven by a binary counter.)
I might even be possible to take just one big electromagnet and make all the pins oscillate so fast you could just pull the shackle and it would open itself.
One of the huge problems on the magnetic lock that I own is that there's not enough physical restriction. The key isnt inserted into the lock, it's pressed up against the side. This means that my bank of electromagnets can be of virtually unlimted size so long as the area of interest matches up with the side of the lock.
Well that's a retarded comparison to make. Of course lamp cord isn't going to produce a quality sound -- there's nothing in their design conducive to carrying an audio signal.
A comparison between $20-a-spool speaker wire from Radio Shack and $20-an-inch audiophile speaker wire would be more informative, and less noticeable.
Actually, you can get really good sound from lamp cord, it all depends on what kind.
As an EE these type of nonsense comparisons always piss me off.
For the most part, copper is copper and you're better off with 12 AWG "lamp cord" than 16 AWG "monster cable".
It may not be as pretty, and won't be as impressive to all your friends, but it sounds just as good, really.
Yeah. I thought so too until I heard the difference -- in my own house with my stereo.
What a highly scientific and believeable argument:
Some random guy on the internet claims the he can hear the difference!
Thanks for clearing this all up.
Obviously there's no way psychology could be having any effect here. [/sarcasm] I suggest you reseach the term "cognitive dissonance".
Just because it is an electric current does not mean that there are not physical and chemical changes taking place.
That statement is nothing but a bunch of handwaving. A bunch of copper strands inside a plastic sheath is not some sort of magic entity that we have no comprehension of.
Also not everyone is capable of hearing the difference.
Or perhaps not everyone is as suggestible as you.
Do you realize how mouch of a pompus ass you sound like trying to claim that "It's not that the difference is not there, it's that no one can hear it but me."
I won't get into the "scientific basis" here... except to say that, if you were to watch an apple fall from a tree, you might well conclude that there's no "scientific basis" for quantum mechanics. After all, doesn't Newtonian mechanics explain apples perfectly?
Of course you won't.
For some reason most "audiophiles" can't be bothered to back up their claims with either theory or non-subjective testing.
See, I'm not and "audiophile" I'm an electrical engineer who happens to love music. I actually understand how an amplifier works, what the key sections are, etc etc.
The type of audio nonsense that's being pushed here is very similar to the cure-all exilers that were sold hundreds of years ago. It truely disgusts me that people get away with such nonsense.
For some reason we let people and companies go around making bullshit claims that they can't back up: Power cable XYZ will provide you with "optimum signal clarity" for only $100.
WRONG. Random Access entails being able to access any location on the media In the same amount of time.
There are some definitons which include this criteria, but it's a rather silly criteria.
Under that cirteria hard disks are not random access (seek time), and if you want to get really pedantic about it almost NOTHING is random access. Any sort of ram where addressing was a variable number of step process wouldn't even be "random access" and fer chrissakes we all know what RAM stands for.
Or at least scientist audiophiles do. I was totally blown away when i tested different power supplies, power cords, interconnect cables, and speaker cables on the same system. I basically figured most of the hype was total nonsense. I mean, why the heck would you have to burn in a *cable*? Turns out that you can easily tell the difference in a blind test
What a bunch of nonsense!
I'm consitenly amazed by the crap that gets sold to audiophiles. Special power cables....please.
I should start a business selling "special" replacement plastic knobs for stereos, claiming they offer "nicer" sound.
Did you ever stop to think that the difference in sound was because you just turned the freakin AMPLIFIER on and off?
No, it could possibly have to do with the thermal characteristics of the AMPLIFIER, it must be the freakin power cable even thought there's no scientific basis for believeing so. [/sarcasm]
Another selling point is that truly digital recordings stored on random access media do not degrade over time, while the CDs and SACDs in your collection do so demonstrably.
You should review the meaning of the terms "digital" and "random access". CDs are both. (Why do you think you can jump to track 6 with a button push?)
Actual CDs have a very good shelf life, and it's really silly to compare the lifetime of a FILE FORMAT, to that of a real physical storage mechanism. What if you have a CD full of MP3s for example?
99.999% of email programs and browsers automatically "open" images for viewing
No 99% percent of email client installations do because they're either MS Outlook or MS Outlook Express. Pretty much nobody else is that stupid. Any OTHER client that I've ever used either doesn't do it, or give you the option to disable it. I would daresay the morjoirty of the actual programs out there actually AREN'T retarded, it just that everyone seems to have standardized on one of the few packages that is.
the status of the university is quite a bit different from that of a landlord. Universities have the rights to do a lot of things landlords can do, including intering your dorm room at any time for any reason.
Where on earth did you ever get that silly idea? You think that just because some place gives out degrees they are exempt from the law?
A lot of schools talk a lot of bullshit, but they are NOT above the law. See my post in this story regarding mail theft, for example.
You're not a tenant of that dorm room, you're more of a paying guest (read: less rights that you would in a hotel room).
This is total nonsense. Don't believe everything ANY school tells you.
What you are saying is only true in the sense that I can set a house on fire any time I want. Sure, technically I can, but it's ACTUALLY highly illegal.
If those apartments belong to the University, and the presence of your access point harms/disrupts the operation of their own network then to me it looks like it is well within the rights of the university to demand this - and as they can't single out a specific access point to cause the problem it seems just that they require ALL to be shut down.
I don't think you understand what's going on here. The university is trying to be their own mini-FCC.
This is illegal, and a similar case has already been ruled on in federal court stating exactly that. (The case was about the ability of airports to charge a fee for use of the 2.4 GHz spectrum.)
On the other if those apartments do not belong to the university, then I wouldn't see how they should even try and enforce this.
By threating to expel students, or various other less severe punishments which are themselve enforced by threat of expulsion.
In either case, it's not much of an issue - and it's not a freedom of speech / censorship issue, since they DO allow private access to the internet by wired means..
Actually it most definately is a RIGHTS issue. This is about a university claiming that is somehow has more right to the 2.4 GHz unliscensed band than anyone else does. They don't.
The fact that they allow access by wired means has nothing to do with this. It's a diversion from the real point. It's like saying that, I beat you up every Tuesday, but I never rape you.
It's still frickin illegal, and beyond their rights do to so.
I went to a Jesuit University in New York. Sex in a dorm was a violation of Residential Life policy. If you were caught, you could be written up - and it's happened.
I have a friend who sent quite a while at Valley Forge Christian College. They had all sorts of stupid rules and tried to enforce them.
The reality is that school administrators think they can get away with a LOT more than they actually can. A good example was the school searching student's mail and removing "offensive" items.
I'm sure they didn't like it very much when my friend pointed out that they were comitting a federal offense, or that he would report them if they didn't stop.
It's very likely that there was something in their honor code about the subject, but that really doesn't matter. The school knew it was fucked if he reported them and stopped immediately.
It seems to me that it would be quite easy to threaten a school with all sorts of peeping-tom type charges if they ever did "catch" you having sex inside your dorm room. There's probably some anti-stalking legislation that could be thrown in for good measure.
All sorts or illegal rules get enforced every day.
I recognize that Apple singed a contract with Apple and broke it, but I still think this is total bullshit.
Trademark law (or perhaps just the lawyers) are totally out of control.
Trademark exists so that your company may uniquely identify your products in a way that other companies may not copy. It does not.... or at least SHOULD not be used so that a company can exercise sole control or a word, phrase or graphic.
That's fucking nonsense.
Who owns the rights to the word "Apple"? Nobody.
Apple owns "Apple Computer", and the other Apple owns "Apple Corps". Companies should have little or no right to prevent another company from using a VERY common word that just happens to be a fraction of their trademark.
This is why I believe that if the Lindows lawsuit had been fought out to completion in the courtroom, microsoft would have lost. "Windows" is a common word, "Apple" is a common word. It's just plain stupid to believe that when you chose a trademark including that word, you gained sole rights to the word.
Imagine if Bass (the beer company and holders of one of the oldest registered trademarks) decided to sue ANY company who's product had a red triangle on it ANYWHERE.
It would be absolutely stupid.
Unfortunately the iRiver HDD players seemindly are of the larger form factor. I'm really looking something iPod mini sized, like the Philips HDD060-series is. iRiver has smaller-sized devices, but they all seem to be flash based, and the one with my minimum capacity of 1 GB wish is quite expensive, more expensive than a 4 GB iPod mini. I have heard a lot of good things about them, though.
All true.
I don't know of any ipod mini "style" players without DRM. You didn't mention the Rio Carbon (5GB) , but that seems to have DRM as well.
Interesting I just went to the iRiver web site and asked about this and they say:
Yes, the hard drive players support FM recording. They also have a built in FM recording timer.
That chart you linked to says that the HD based players do NOT support recording from the radio, which is consistent with my own personal experience with my ihp-120.
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Does anybody know of a company that makes METAL, waterproof thumbdrives.
I'd pay an extra $50, just to know that my data was basiaclly indestructible.
I figure a cast aluminum casing (lanyard hole cast-in) in which the PCB is potted in epoxy would do thee trick very nicely.
But to call and say hey! I think he has a stolen laptop but I have no proof and I could be wrong (for all I know its a pawnshop laptop -- those are vetted for legality in some small ways) or otherwise. It wasn't strong enough proof to do anything about it.
Sure it was.
What you do is: get the SERIAL NUMBER OFF THE LAPTOP.
The police will be able to run it and see if it's stolen at their conveniece. There's no need to have a partol car rush out to your house or anything, just tell them who has it and the serial number.
In a free society, you don't just bring in the Gestapo everytime you have a twitchy nerve telling you something ain't right.
In free society, you can call the gestapo as much as you want. They'd only be able to get a warrant if the serial number DOES indeed come up stolen. (That's where the "free society" part comes in.)
I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but it really would have require minmal effort on your part to do something about this with basically no risk.
As and added bonus, the police might find something even more illegal than a stolen laptop when they go in looking for it.
You do want these guys out of your neighborhood right?
There's no conflict of interest; if the CEOs see one division loosing big money on some HW invention they will of course kill it. Why wouldn't they?
Because they would have made more money selling decent minidisc equipemnt than they would have lost to piracy.
Sony doesn't realize that its restrictions mean NOTHING in the grand scheme of things. If they start making CD burners that will not burn any form of music at all, people will just BUY FROM ANOTHER COMPANY.
You (and grandparent post) make it sound like nerds rule Sony.
I'm not sure how you got that from my post. It think idiots rule Sony (just look at their non-MP3 player).
A reasonably smart person would realize that an ATRAC-only player is going to do nothing but hurt its own sales while having no noticable effect on piracy since there are already a gazillion MP3 players out there.
It's a pretty safe bet that the engineers at Sony would love it if they were actually allowed to ship the thing with MP3 capability, since then someone might actually BUY their product. It's gotta suck to desgin a really cool hardware platform and have some manager make it basically useless.
Why on earth should we assume that someone who can break security has the slightest knowledge of how to fix security? I can break regular glass with a rock, but have no clue how to make shatter-proof glass.
Sure, but some companies actually have more than one employee.
They might have one guy who designs locks, and a SEPERATE PERSON who tries to break them.
While a theif might not know how to design a lock, he could still be perfectly suited for a job as a tester.
Yes, they did pay their debt to society/do their time. I might hire them to do other things away from their area of conviction, but I'm not going to dangle temptation in front of their face. Does that seem like just straight common sense to anyone but me?
Your analogies aren't telling the whole story.
As another poster pointed out, it would be a great idea to hire an ex-theif to test you your company's new bike locks. Similarly, it makes sense to hire a hacker to look for holes in your company's new AV software.
It probably would be wise not to let him rewrite your company's payroll system in Perl, but there are ways to put an individual's unique knowedge to work without trusting them with the keys to the kingdom.
Sony wanted to do MP3 a long time ago, but it was their devision tied to the entertainment industry that FORCED them to use a propritary format...such as ATRAC3. It's just a legal roadblock and civilwar for sony, not one of ignorance.
Which is why Sony should split itself into two seperate companies. Internal conflicts of interest have have probably cost Sony billions over the years.
Look at how crippled minidisc was. Sony could have *owned* the portable music market worldwide ten years ago if they weren't so worried about pissing off their own record label.
My guess is that it uses the same battery as my own iriver ihp-120, who's battery can be purchased at the following linklink for $40
At leat for the ihp series, the battery is user replaceable, provided the user has a tiny torx screwdriver and some patience.
The points you bring up are for the car enthusiast. The vast majority of people aren't car enthusiasts and want nothing to do with adjusting tire pressure for different conditions.
It's a same to here you say this.
The post wasn't talking about equalizing your tire pressures for neutral cornering, or any orther type of esoteric car enthusiast type of practice.
Those were basic concepts that everyone who drives a car should know.
There's more to driving a car than pushing pedal and turning the wheel, when you're driving a car you are operating a very dangerous, very expensive machine, you SHOULD have some basic concept of how it works.
Whould you use a chainsaw with no more background knowledge than "set it on the wood and pull the trigger"?
Sadly this doesn't seem to be a part of any driver's test that I know about. Here's an example:
THINK FAST:
You gas pedal is stuck to the floor, should you:
A) reach down with your hand and try to pull it up
B) use the brakes to maintain your speed
C) shift your transmission into neutral
D) turn your ignition switch to the "accessory" position
E) Shut off your car by removing the key from the ignition
How many people out there know the correct answer to this question? Do you?
Don't you think this is a basic, necessary, safety-related thing to know?
I was lucky to have good instincts and pick to correct answer when it happened to me, but I would have much rather been taught the answer as part of my written test.
Note:
The answer is D, choose any of the other choices and you can fuck yourself in a hurry.
A) takes your eyes off the road
B) will burn up your brakes, then you have a car with a stuck gas pedal AND no brakes C) will toast your engine by overrevving it E) will kill your engine but will also engage your car's steering wheel lock
(some cars have features which minimize some of these problems)
And finally,
I'll admit it, I consider myself a car enthusiast.
You might claim that makes be biased, but I honestly think the current blatant ignorance of proper automobile operation is a serious safety issue.
Try this go to ANY brake repair shop and ask them how often the get cars in for brake service where the brake pads have been worn down to the point where there is bare metal on metal contact.
You'll find that a lot of drivers out there are blissfully ignorant of the "squealers" on their brake pads, whose entire purpose it to warn the driver before the vehicle becomes unsafe to drive. They just turn up the radio.
I don't expect every driver to know how to change his spark plugs, but every driver SHOULD know all the basic, safety-critical information about their car. It's like operating a gun without knowing how to use the safety, it's just dangerously stupid.
WTF PEOPLE!!
This isn't a "known caveat", this is gross neglience on the part of a manufacturer.
While this is certainly something that lock manufacturers need to deal with, everyone needs to also keep one simple idea in mind.
The purpose of a lock is to keep honest and semi-honest people from taking your stuff. If someone is damned and determined to take your bike, he's going to get it, regardless of what lock you use.
People like you are totally missing the point. This is like an airbag company making airbags that don't work 90% of the time! Sure it's a better idea never to get in an accident, but that's not the frickin point.
The point is kryptonite's locks are billed as "highly secure". They are not. This has been known in select circles (and kryptonite was informed) since at least 1992, yet the manufacturer has done nothing with that information to fix the problem.
I also have to nod in agreement with an earlier poster who pointed out that for the price of a fancy lock, you can get a bike that no one wants to steal.
This is total nonsense. Increbile POS bikes get stolen all the time, see my post about my friend's bike.
No shit. I remember when my friend's bike got stolen.
It was a 10-speed road bike with:
We were both amazed that there was someone out there who actually thought it was worth stealing.
Just use a magnetic lock.
Actually, those are a pretty bad idea.
(I have a couple BTW).
The problem is that it's just too damned easy to make an automated, electronic pick. (Imagine a set of coils being driven by a binary counter.)
I might even be possible to take just one big electromagnet and make all the pins oscillate so fast you could just pull the shackle and it would open itself.
One of the huge problems on the magnetic lock that I own is that there's not enough physical restriction. The key isnt inserted into the lock, it's pressed up against the side. This means that my bank of electromagnets can be of virtually unlimted size so long as the area of interest matches up with the side of the lock.
Well that's a retarded comparison to make. Of course lamp cord isn't going to produce a quality sound -- there's nothing in their design conducive to carrying an audio signal. A comparison between $20-a-spool speaker wire from Radio Shack and $20-an-inch audiophile speaker wire would be more informative, and less noticeable.
Actually, you can get really good sound from lamp cord, it all depends on what kind.
As an EE these type of nonsense comparisons always piss me off.
For the most part, copper is copper and you're better off with 12 AWG "lamp cord" than 16 AWG "monster cable".
It may not be as pretty, and won't be as impressive to all your friends, but it sounds just as good, really.
Yeah. I thought so too until I heard the difference -- in my own house with my stereo.
What a highly scientific and believeable argument:
Some random guy on the internet claims the he can hear the difference!
Thanks for clearing this all up.
Obviously there's no way psychology could be having any effect here. [/sarcasm] I suggest you reseach the term "cognitive dissonance".
Just because it is an electric current does not mean that there are not physical and chemical changes taking place.
That statement is nothing but a bunch of handwaving. A bunch of copper strands inside a plastic sheath is not some sort of magic entity that we have no comprehension of.
Also not everyone is capable of hearing the difference.
Or perhaps not everyone is as suggestible as you.
Do you realize how mouch of a pompus ass you sound like trying to claim that "It's not that the difference is not there, it's that no one can hear it but me."
I won't get into the "scientific basis" here... except to say that, if you were to watch an apple fall from a tree, you might well conclude that there's no "scientific basis" for quantum mechanics. After all, doesn't Newtonian mechanics explain apples perfectly?
Of course you won't.
For some reason most "audiophiles" can't be bothered to back up their claims with either theory or non-subjective testing.
See, I'm not and "audiophile" I'm an electrical engineer who happens to love music. I actually understand how an amplifier works, what the key sections are, etc etc.
The type of audio nonsense that's being pushed here is very similar to the cure-all exilers that were sold hundreds of years ago. It truely disgusts me that people get away with such nonsense.
For some reason we let people and companies go around making bullshit claims that they can't back up: Power cable XYZ will provide you with "optimum signal clarity" for only $100.
WRONG. Random Access entails being able to access any location on the media In the same amount of time.
There are some definitons which include this criteria, but it's a rather silly criteria.
Under that cirteria hard disks are not random access (seek time), and if you want to get really pedantic about it almost NOTHING is random access. Any sort of ram where addressing was a variable number of step process wouldn't even be "random access" and fer chrissakes we all know what RAM stands for.
Or at least scientist audiophiles do. I was totally blown away when i tested different power supplies, power cords, interconnect cables, and speaker cables on the same system. I basically figured most of the hype was total nonsense. I mean, why the heck would you have to burn in a *cable*? Turns out that you can easily tell the difference in a blind test
What a bunch of nonsense!
I'm consitenly amazed by the crap that gets sold to audiophiles. Special power cables....please.
I should start a business selling "special" replacement plastic knobs for stereos, claiming they offer "nicer" sound.
Did you ever stop to think that the difference in sound was because you just turned the freakin AMPLIFIER on and off?
No, it could possibly have to do with the thermal characteristics of the AMPLIFIER, it must be the freakin power cable even thought there's no scientific basis for believeing so. [/sarcasm]
Another selling point is that truly digital recordings stored on random access media do not degrade over time, while the CDs and SACDs in your collection do so demonstrably.
You should review the meaning of the terms "digital" and "random access". CDs are both. (Why do you think you can jump to track 6 with a button push?)
Actual CDs have a very good shelf life, and it's really silly to compare the lifetime of a FILE FORMAT, to that of a real physical storage mechanism. What if you have a CD full of MP3s for example?
99.999% of email programs and browsers automatically "open" images for viewing
No 99% percent of email client installations do because they're either MS Outlook or MS Outlook Express. Pretty much nobody else is that stupid. Any OTHER client that I've ever used either doesn't do it, or give you the option to disable it.
I would daresay the morjoirty of the actual programs out there actually AREN'T retarded, it just that everyone seems to have standardized on one of the few packages that is.
the status of the university is quite a bit different from that of a landlord. Universities have the rights to do a lot of things landlords can do, including intering your dorm room at any time for any reason.
Where on earth did you ever get that silly idea?
You think that just because some place gives out degrees they are exempt from the law?
A lot of schools talk a lot of bullshit, but they are NOT above the law. See my post in this story regarding mail theft, for example.
You're not a tenant of that dorm room, you're more of a paying guest (read: less rights that you would in a hotel room).
This is total nonsense. Don't believe everything ANY school tells you.
What you are saying is only true in the sense that I can set a house on fire any time I want. Sure, technically I can, but it's ACTUALLY highly illegal.
If those apartments belong to the University, and the presence of your access point harms/disrupts the operation of their own network then to me it looks like it is well within the rights of the university to demand this - and as they can't single out a specific access point to cause the problem it seems just that they require ALL to be shut down.
I don't think you understand what's going on here.
The university is trying to be their own mini-FCC.
This is illegal, and a similar case has already been ruled on in federal court stating exactly that. (The case was about the ability of airports to charge a fee for use of the 2.4 GHz spectrum.)
On the other if those apartments do not belong to the university, then I wouldn't see how they should even try and enforce this.
By threating to expel students, or various other less severe punishments which are themselve enforced by threat of expulsion.
In either case, it's not much of an issue - and it's not a freedom of speech / censorship issue, since they DO allow private access to the internet by wired means..
Actually it most definately is a RIGHTS issue. This is about a university claiming that is somehow has more right to the 2.4 GHz unliscensed band than anyone else does. They don't.
The fact that they allow access by wired means has nothing to do with this. It's a diversion from the real point. It's like saying that, I beat you up every Tuesday, but I never rape you.
It's still frickin illegal, and beyond their rights do to so.
I went to a Jesuit University in New York. Sex in a dorm was a violation of Residential Life policy. If you were caught, you could be written up - and it's happened.
I have a friend who sent quite a while at Valley Forge Christian College. They had all sorts of stupid rules and tried to enforce them.
The reality is that school administrators think they can get away with a LOT more than they actually can. A good example was the school searching student's mail and removing "offensive" items.
I'm sure they didn't like it very much when my friend pointed out that they were comitting a federal offense, or that he would report them if they didn't stop.
It's very likely that there was something in their honor code about the subject, but that really doesn't matter. The school knew it was fucked if he reported them and stopped immediately.
It seems to me that it would be quite easy to threaten a school with all sorts of peeping-tom type charges if they ever did "catch" you having sex inside your dorm room. There's probably some anti-stalking legislation that could be thrown in for good measure.
All sorts or illegal rules get enforced every day.
I recognize that Apple singed a contract with Apple and broke it, but I still think this is total bullshit.
Trademark law (or perhaps just the lawyers) are totally out of control.
Trademark exists so that your company may uniquely identify your products in a way that other companies may not copy. It does not.... or at least SHOULD not be used so that a company can exercise sole control or a word, phrase or graphic.
That's fucking nonsense.
Who owns the rights to the word "Apple"?
Nobody.
Apple owns "Apple Computer", and the other Apple owns "Apple Corps". Companies should have little or no right to prevent another company from using a VERY common word that just happens to be a fraction of their trademark.
This is why I believe that if the Lindows lawsuit had been fought out to completion in the courtroom, microsoft would have lost. "Windows" is a common word, "Apple" is a common word. It's just plain stupid to believe that when you chose a trademark including that word, you gained sole rights to the word.
Imagine if Bass (the beer company and holders of one of the oldest registered trademarks) decided to sue ANY company who's product had a red triangle on it ANYWHERE.
It would be absolutely stupid.
Unfortunately the iRiver HDD players seemindly are of the larger form factor. I'm really looking something iPod mini sized, like the Philips HDD060-series is. iRiver has smaller-sized devices, but they all seem to be flash based, and the one with my minimum capacity of 1 GB wish is quite expensive, more expensive than a 4 GB iPod mini. I have heard a lot of good things about them, though.
.....ah! found it:
All true.
I don't know of any ipod mini "style" players without DRM. You didn't mention the Rio Carbon (5GB) , but that seems to have DRM as well.
The iRiver iGP series devices.
1.5 GB HDD based player. Plays OGG, etc.
Link
Get one the the IRiver HDD mp3 players.
My ihp-120 shows up as a standard USB mass storage device. Just drag and drop under Windows, Linux and Mac.
Why spend money on a crippled piece of hardware?
I swear to God, I don't understand your problem.
Thanks for the laugh. You see posts like the one you were replying to and all you can do is scratch you head in amazement.
Interesting I just went to the iRiver web site and asked about this and they say:
Yes, the hard drive players support FM recording. They also have a built in FM recording timer.
That chart you linked to says that the HD based players do NOT support recording from the radio, which is consistent with my own personal experience with my ihp-120.