Your milage may vary, but I can tell the difference instantly. How did you try, listen to your computer speakers or a proper stereo? Encode the same file in 128Kb and 256Kb and listen to both on the iPod. If you still can't hear it, you are a lucky man, I have to put up with buying bigger drives and lower battery life...;-)
I have to admit I haven't heard it with my own files, but I wasn't overly impressed with what I heard. And the only time I saw an article refering to it as "audiophile" quality was when straight WAVs were being played.
I would think that the only goverment in the world that can be bribed into accepting it as a deductable is the US, so that doesn't apply to me. And with tax rates as low as they are, I doubt it makes up for that. Except if you get your company paying for your personal player, of course.
Car chargers are avialable for most players, just get a universal one that outputs the right voltage for your player, the actual charger part is built in. And in most countries outside the US, the FM transmitter is outlowed and besides, it would work on any player. The only one being unique to the iPod is the card reader (actualy, it isn't, some of the horribly looking Archos boxes support them) and I am sure others will follow suit, soon.
I am not disputing that the iPod is a good player, but what is great about only 8 hours battery life (and that much only when playing disgusting sounding 128Kb MP3s) without the option of taking a spare? How good are controls so sensitive it's way too easy to make the player do things you don't want? And did I mention soundquality is not oustanding, but just OK? So how does a 50% greater price tag make up for the slightly smaller size?
There was a time when the iPod was the only game in town, but it isn't anymore and there are other good players out there. I am a very satisfied owner of a Creative Jukebox Zen NX 30GB.
Maybe all those spammer are right, size does matter and bigger is better.
Performace won't matter much, except for self-compile distros, where you can get about 10% better performance. But it is a bit silly, on any distro the kernel is easy to compile and so are any applications you really use (database, webserver). But I don't see the point in making vi run 10% faster...
I call it simply 16 college radio stations! I guess they wouldn't have made the NYT unless they came up with some imaginery barely-legal hook for their very "innovative" idea...
Of course it is legal, there is no law stopping radio/TV stations allowing anyone they choose to pick what to play and this is no different.
Isn't "liberal vote splitting" exactly what got dubya in the white house anyway? (that, and some weasly breaking of laws)
Looking at the results of this poll, most voters would have been from the US, most non-US people wouldn't even have heard of many of the options on the list!
What surprises me is that GWB is considered so much more of a weasel than Sadam and yet who do Americans support kicking out of office? They need to get their priorities straight, man.
No it's not free, it is supported by ads, which you do not see on 3rd party clients. What's even worse is that some of these 3rd party clients are FOR SALE! They make their money on Microsoft donating servers and bandwidth. As wrong as MS is in many cases, two wrongs do not make a right.
OTOH, I do use Trillian at work on NT4, as the perfectly working MSN Messenger 4.6 is banned and 5.0 keeps disconnecting.
Good point. Although I do believe the distros should make a good decision, none of the WMs out there are good enough in my view. But someone with the market power like RedHat or SuSe could easily go back to basics and do/organise what I propose.
But I should stop talking about this because apperantly, making suggestions on how to make things better is now classified as flamebait...
To anyone who scored my post as flamebait: flamebait is a deliberate attempt at causing trouble. My post clearly is not. If others take it as bait and start to flame, punish them, but don't shoot the messenger, I am just pointing out what in my view is wrong with the current attempts at Linux's holy grail: conquor the desktop. If this kind of proposal is not welcome here, please score it "Off topic".
Yup. Too bad hardware is very expensive. Luckily I am not a power junkie, just something that is fast enough to do what I want it to do comfortably (browse, code Java and Photoshop). I have become a laptop junkie nowadays, my desktop sits idle most of the time while I work/play on the couch. When the next upgrade cycle arrives (probably another 18 months or so) I will be very tempted to get a lower spec (affordable!) Mac laptop. (By that time that will probably a G4) I'll be using Linux, like yourself, only as server.
I just don't have time to wait for hell to freeze over...
I never said to rewrite the OS from scratch, just the windowing system.
There isn't much wrong with Linux, it is great as a server and as base for a GUI desktop. But to be a true desktop OS, there needs to be a better windowing system, not some ancient pile of crap with 20 different "Window Managers" and awfull configuration utilities for the underlying OS.
What it needs is a common look and feel, which customizable within reason. Then there should be a registry-type thing for system settings. I am not an OS X expert, but it seems Apple replaced all config files from/etc with some central config daemon, leaving the files only in place to inform us unix users of that fact with a comment inside of them.
And quit installing 10 different apps to do the same thing (10 for mail, 10 for ftp, 10 media players, etc), none of which are very good or understandable by novices. We need only a single good one, maybe a second, but a distribution should only put in one.
Then there should be a common installer, like windows has. Every application knows how to install itself so you do not have to wait untill a package is available for you version of your distribution. The current way is just insane.
The problem is: this would mean people work together, putting their own ego-stroking aside for the common good. What Linux needs is to be more like Redmond. Not just have some people that decided what goes in the kernel, but have a group of people that decide what goes into the apps, as opposed to vendors just picking what is available. This way developers have standards to work to. If it isn't good enough, it doesn't get released and no egos get stroked at all.
Well, I was debating which to use in this case as I believe both of them to be applicable. I looked it up just now and irony, as I believed, also has a meaning other than (though closely related) the one used in the Alanis Morisette song:
Irony: The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
Sarcasm: A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.
You could say I was using irony as a form of sarcasm!
Good to know that pretty much the whole world now seems to be on 3G, why else would the article speak of "legacy GSM handsets"?
Operators couldn't care less
on
Cracking GSM
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Like they didn't arrest a russian programmer? Granted, he was distributing working software. But still, the US lets Israel get away with many, many things they wouldn't let other countries.
The only other reason I can see for him not being arrested is the fact that GSM is not a US owned technology. That and the fact that operators couldn't care less, it is not like they hold copyright over your conversations...
Installing and running a Linux Distribution is easy. But what happens when your vendor can't be bothered to timely release updated packages of the software, especialy buggy ones like the various browsers and media players? Then you have to update it from the source or packages from the people that write the software. Which puts all it's files in completely different places. And then how do you make it work properly with your distro-centric KDE/GNome system?
For that reason I don't like Linux on the desktop, way too much effort for too few gains. I seem to try once a year and am always dissapointed. It's about time someone came up with an installer standard like Windows has, so you can just get the software from the source and install/upgrade it with the click of a button.
Now that would make Linux a system for the masses.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, it is probably the greatest server operating system in existence. But for it ever to be able to compete with Windows or OS X, X windows needs to go back to the drawing board. There is a reason Apple chose not to base their GUI on it...
There is a difference between can't and won't. You were clearly in the latter category.
As for the warranty, I can't comment on the situation in your country, but I have never had any problems getting components replaced. Although, of course, it hasn't happened much.
In any case: the Dells I have seen in recent times are clearly much more geared towards tinkering consumers, I'd get one of those before any HP/Compaq/IBM, which have driven me nuts on so many occasions. (Compaq servers, OTOH, rock)
You invest all that money but then can't find an hour to stick a few components together?
Anyone not able to put a PC together in under an hour should not be running Linux anyway. If you don't have enough knowledge for the first step, you sure as hell won't be able to understand the second...
To me they always seem to require expensive memory for it to be guaranteed to work, un-upgradable components, and arcane BIOSes that run a version of windows to configure it.
This is all well and great for big companies that want 1000s of the same PCs for easy maintainance and vendor support, but for the average geek it is nothing but trouble.
I'll just stick with buying components or bare-bones PCs, those have always been without M$-Tax as well, thank you.
Lie detectors are not evidence, they only lead to further investigations, which is fair enough.
From a crowd (/.) that not only advocates free speech but also the freedom to listen to anything that is being transmitted, yet you opose to a 3rd party listening in on your own transmissions?
Of course someone whose house has just burned down or car totaled will be stressed, but the evidence in these cases is so clear, that a police report can be trusted, something which can't be said about foreign police reports of many people who have the camera they don't like anymore "stolen" (as in donated to a nephew) on holiday. Claiming that, usualy days or weeks after the fact shouldn't put you under much stress, if it does and you can't come up with a good story to further questions, hesitating on too many details you hadn't thought about when concieving your fraud...
I am sceptical about the system but don't see this to be that much of an invasion of privacy.
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Your milage may vary, but I can tell the difference instantly. How did you try, listen to your computer speakers or a proper stereo? Encode the same file in 128Kb and 256Kb and listen to both on the iPod. If you still can't hear it, you are a lucky man, I have to put up with buying bigger drives and lower battery life... ;-)
I have to admit I haven't heard it with my own files, but I wasn't overly impressed with what I heard. And the only time I saw an article refering to it as "audiophile" quality was when straight WAVs were being played.
I would think that the only goverment in the world that can be bribed into accepting it as a deductable is the US, so that doesn't apply to me. And with tax rates as low as they are, I doubt it makes up for that. Except if you get your company paying for your personal player, of course.
Car chargers are avialable for most players, just get a universal one that outputs the right voltage for your player, the actual charger part is built in. And in most countries outside the US, the FM transmitter is outlowed and besides, it would work on any player. The only one being unique to the iPod is the card reader (actualy, it isn't, some of the horribly looking Archos boxes support them) and I am sure others will follow suit, soon.
I am not disputing that the iPod is a good player, but what is great about only 8 hours battery life (and that much only when playing disgusting sounding 128Kb MP3s) without the option of taking a spare? How good are controls so sensitive it's way too easy to make the player do things you don't want? And did I mention soundquality is not oustanding, but just OK? So how does a 50% greater price tag make up for the slightly smaller size?
There was a time when the iPod was the only game in town, but it isn't anymore and there are other good players out there. I am a very satisfied owner of a Creative Jukebox Zen NX 30GB.
Maybe all those spammer are right, size does matter and bigger is better.
BS it is then! :) Just repeating the Gentoo marketing hype...
Performace won't matter much, except for self-compile distros, where you can get about 10% better performance. But it is a bit silly, on any distro the kernel is easy to compile and so are any applications you really use (database, webserver). But I don't see the point in making vi run 10% faster...
I call it simply 16 college radio stations! I guess they wouldn't have made the NYT unless they came up with some imaginery barely-legal hook for their very "innovative" idea...
Of course it is legal, there is no law stopping radio/TV stations allowing anyone they choose to pick what to play and this is no different.
...so get ready to send those "you idiot" emails to dumb users that decide it's a good idea to send "protected" emails to those without Outlook 2003.
I for one will be ignoring any emails I get this way.
Isn't "liberal vote splitting" exactly what got dubya in the white house anyway? (that, and some weasly breaking of laws)
Looking at the results of this poll, most voters would have been from the US, most non-US people wouldn't even have heard of many of the options on the list!
What surprises me is that GWB is considered so much more of a weasel than Sadam and yet who do Americans support kicking out of office? They need to get their priorities straight, man.
No it's not free, it is supported by ads, which you do not see on 3rd party clients. What's even worse is that some of these 3rd party clients are FOR SALE! They make their money on Microsoft donating servers and bandwidth. As wrong as MS is in many cases, two wrongs do not make a right.
OTOH, I do use Trillian at work on NT4, as the perfectly working MSN Messenger 4.6 is banned and 5.0 keeps disconnecting.
Good point. Although I do believe the distros should make a good decision, none of the WMs out there are good enough in my view. But someone with the market power like RedHat or SuSe could easily go back to basics and do/organise what I propose.
But I should stop talking about this because apperantly, making suggestions on how to make things better is now classified as flamebait...
To anyone who scored my post as flamebait: flamebait is a deliberate attempt at causing trouble. My post clearly is not. If others take it as bait and start to flame, punish them, but don't shoot the messenger, I am just pointing out what in my view is wrong with the current attempts at Linux's holy grail: conquor the desktop. If this kind of proposal is not welcome here, please score it "Off topic".
Yup. Too bad hardware is very expensive. Luckily I am not a power junkie, just something that is fast enough to do what I want it to do comfortably (browse, code Java and Photoshop). I have become a laptop junkie nowadays, my desktop sits idle most of the time while I work/play on the couch. When the next upgrade cycle arrives (probably another 18 months or so) I will be very tempted to get a lower spec (affordable!) Mac laptop. (By that time that will probably a G4) I'll be using Linux, like yourself, only as server.
I just don't have time to wait for hell to freeze over...
I never said to rewrite the OS from scratch, just the windowing system.
/etc with some central config daemon, leaving the files only in place to inform us unix users of that fact with a comment inside of them.
There isn't much wrong with Linux, it is great as a server and as base for a GUI desktop. But to be a true desktop OS, there needs to be a better windowing system, not some ancient pile of crap with 20 different "Window Managers" and awfull configuration utilities for the underlying OS.
What it needs is a common look and feel, which customizable within reason. Then there should be a registry-type thing for system settings. I am not an OS X expert, but it seems Apple replaced all config files from
And quit installing 10 different apps to do the same thing (10 for mail, 10 for ftp, 10 media players, etc), none of which are very good or understandable by novices. We need only a single good one, maybe a second, but a distribution should only put in one.
Then there should be a common installer, like windows has. Every application knows how to install itself so you do not have to wait untill a package is available for you version of your distribution. The current way is just insane.
The problem is: this would mean people work together, putting their own ego-stroking aside for the common good. What Linux needs is to be more like Redmond. Not just have some people that decided what goes in the kernel, but have a group of people that decide what goes into the apps, as opposed to vendors just picking what is available. This way developers have standards to work to. If it isn't good enough, it doesn't get released and no egos get stroked at all.
Oh no. Not just X, but also Win32 compatible.
I doubt we'll ever see this project finish. When is anybody going to just start from scratch, like Apple did with OS X? Build it and they will come.
Now we can finaly feel like we are aboard the Enterprise by going through our "personal database"!
Irony: The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
Sarcasm: A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.
You could say I was using irony as a form of sarcasm!
ROTFL! ;-)
Ehrm, have you ever heard of the word "irony"?
Good to know that pretty much the whole world now seems to be on 3G, why else would the article speak of "legacy GSM handsets"?
The only other reason I can see for him not being arrested is the fact that GSM is not a US owned technology. That and the fact that operators couldn't care less, it is not like they hold copyright over your conversations...
For that reason I don't like Linux on the desktop, way too much effort for too few gains. I seem to try once a year and am always dissapointed. It's about time someone came up with an installer standard like Windows has, so you can just get the software from the source and install/upgrade it with the click of a button.
Now that would make Linux a system for the masses.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, it is probably the greatest server operating system in existence. But for it ever to be able to compete with Windows or OS X, X windows needs to go back to the drawing board. There is a reason Apple chose not to base their GUI on it...
There is a difference between can't and won't. You were clearly in the latter category.
As for the warranty, I can't comment on the situation in your country, but I have never had any problems getting components replaced. Although, of course, it hasn't happened much.
In any case: the Dells I have seen in recent times are clearly much more geared towards tinkering consumers, I'd get one of those before any HP/Compaq/IBM, which have driven me nuts on so many occasions. (Compaq servers, OTOH, rock)
You invest all that money but then can't find an hour to stick a few components together?
Anyone not able to put a PC together in under an hour should not be running Linux anyway. If you don't have enough knowledge for the first step, you sure as hell won't be able to understand the second...
To me they always seem to require expensive memory for it to be guaranteed to work, un-upgradable components, and arcane BIOSes that run a version of windows to configure it.
This is all well and great for big companies that want 1000s of the same PCs for easy maintainance and vendor support, but for the average geek it is nothing but trouble.
I'll just stick with buying components or bare-bones PCs, those have always been without M$-Tax as well, thank you.
I never knew Sun was in the Open Source business with their J2EE server!
Or maybe they mean that in when Telstra writes their .net apps they will do that in the blind, not able to see their own code, local_echo=off?
Or they will release the source of any J2EE online billing application they write.
Or maybe the article's author is just using one too many buzz words...
Lie detectors are not evidence, they only lead to further investigations, which is fair enough.
From a crowd (/.) that not only advocates free speech but also the freedom to listen to anything that is being transmitted, yet you opose to a 3rd party listening in on your own transmissions?
Of course someone whose house has just burned down or car totaled will be stressed, but the evidence in these cases is so clear, that a police report can be trusted, something which can't be said about foreign police reports of many people who have the camera they don't like anymore "stolen" (as in donated to a nephew) on holiday. Claiming that, usualy days or weeks after the fact shouldn't put you under much stress, if it does and you can't come up with a good story to further questions, hesitating on too many details you hadn't thought about when concieving your fraud...
I am sceptical about the system but don't see this to be that much of an invasion of privacy.