I agree with what you've said here, but with a caveat that may seem obvious to some, not so to others: MOST big companies operate this way. Take for example the company I work for, which will remain unnamed here, but is a Fortune 500 company. The software we design is used in mission-critical systems as well as average not-so-critical situations. We routinely have hundreds of bugs that we know about, but choose not to fix. Why? Simply put, it's not profitable to fix them unless they rise to a level that threatens our revenue. Now that's not my decision, mind you, just the way things happen to be. I've got two friends who work at Microsoft, one of which works in an area dealing with OS bugs. Just before Win2K was released, I was sitting with him as he showed me the millions of bugs (yes, millions) that they (Microsoft) weren't going to fix... ostensibly for the same reason as my company.
I'm not saying that this is right, or we shouldn't strive to be better. It just sometimes gets old to hear "Microsoft bad" all of the time (and I'm not disagreeing) and not have the sort of group realization that, the way Microsoft operates is pretty much business-as-usual for most large corporations (and not just software corps).
That's why we need a strong regulatory climate (but not overly heavy-handed), and a market that takes care of the rest. And to all of those who say that Microsoft is too big to take down with just market-pressure, what about IBM? What about the little geek with an idea who juked one of the biggest companies in the world so bad they almost didn't recover? Someday... if the Linux idea keeps growing, it will reach a point where it too can do to Microsoft what Microsoft did to IBM.
Wow... looking back that that little rant, I seem to have wandered off the reservation. Hmmm... I wonder if I toss in a quick "Microsoft Bad" if it'll be enough to protect me from the inevitable flames?
I'll second the comments on Rockbox... definitely a better OS than the stock Archos version (on supported models - which at this point are limited to the Player/Recorder versions.)
I'm an avowed Archos fanboy, no apologies given. That being said, I'm still not sure how much I need a device with so many different functions. Cost is an issue of course too, as is storage. Archos led the pack with 20GB back when, and now they've been pushing the limits with the AV380, going to 80GB. What I need now is 120GB... I'll do it myself if they don't, but of course price starts becoming an issue then.
I have to say that the other thing I appreciate about Archos, is there is no special software required to move files around. Plug in... drag files to new drive letter (in Windoze anyhow), or just plug in and tar/untar from bash. Whatever.
Now... as others have said... if we could just get some better batteries! Though on a side note there, for those of you with the older NiMH "tube" 1500 batteries... you can replace 'em with 2100, up the cache memory to 8megs (on Recorders) and bump battery life to 20 hours or so.
Wow... an AC trying to school me on on language definitions... will wonders never cease. Well, for the unenlightened, here we go:
i-ro-nyn., pl.-nies. 1.a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by irony. c. A literary style employing irony for humorous or rhetorical effect. 2.a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. b. An occurrence, a result, or a circumstance notable for such incongruity.
Personally I find this to be a good thing. Reverse engineering, duplicating any device in hardware or software is cool. Copying the vaunted IPOD on a Windows Pocket PC? That's the ultimate in irony there.
I myself don't care for the IPOD or it's interface, so I've got no reason to play with this software. But the idea sounds interesting, if not particularly useful. What would be more impressive overall however, is if this company did something ala what Rockbox did for the Archos devices, and wrote a new OS to run on the IPOD itself.
lol. I'm not sure that I really hate anyone in particular, actually. It's just the mentality you get in large groups of people that's interesting to me. ie; Saying "Cliinton" to a large group of Republicans or "Bush" to a similiarly large group of Democrats yields roughly the same Pavlov-like reactionary, regurgitated, generally uninformed rhetoric. All of that rhetoric starts and grows from the seeds of some truth (ie; Microsoft can be the devil, and has been on several occasions) but it eventually balloons into a mindless spewing of shite by the masses. My point initially was simply that Microsoft's purported involvement in this SCO thing has been hashed and rehashed since the beginning. One new memo which is fuzzy at best, doesn't seem to lend itself to any insights one way or another. The CA portion of the original article however, was newer and offered much more insight into SCO's tactics, yet it barely got addressed in amongst the anti-Microsoft feeding frenzy.
Insight is good, and I think Slashdot and the people here who make up the community contribute to a lot of meaningful discussions that get to the "heart of the matter." But I also think there's a definite element of partisanship here too, especially when moderated down as flamebait for suggesting that Microsoft might have not been the best focus of a particular discussion.
Just the same though, I keep coming back... so it can't be all bad.:)
God I love the mentality on Slashdot. An article comes out with a relatively redundant memo re: Microsoft's involvement with SCO, and CA laying the retorical bitch-slap on SCO, and what does the mob here fixate on? Hmmm... lesse, could it be, Microsoft? For #@$ sake people, there could be a comet streaking towards the earth, about to destroy humanity, and somehow the majority of the tin-foil-hat-wearing-we-hate-Microsoft crowd would find a way to blame them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft or any other software company for that matter. It's just funny to see the pavlov-like response here when that one word is thrown out.
In the last few years there has been a lot of hype, at least with business folks, that Web sites like Yahoo, Google, MSN, Netscape would become big "Portals." on the Internet, driving all others into obscurity. It sounds like Microsoft to a certain extent may still believe this. You control the results of the search, you are in a position to profit from it. To quote the certain to come business advice:
(1) Leverage monopoly to get into search engine business (2) ?? (3) Profit!
What I've seen in practice however, is quite different. It seems as if the new users tend to get sucked into the "portal" concept when they sign up with Earthlink, MSN, etc. But as they become more Internet savvy, they migrate and spend less and less time on those sites. It's like a giant ponzi scheme... once they run out of new people to sign up, they're done.
I guess with the speed of the tech cycle right now, If Microsoft profits off of something like this for even a couple of years, then it's worth it (well, duh... Hmmm... case of the painfully obvious this morning.) Bottom line though, I think at this point Microsoft is still coming in well above negatives like costs to litigate, negative regulatory environments, bad feelings, slashdot insults, etc. Microsoft is a business, bottom line, as soon as it gets more expensive to work this way... they'll change strategies. As long as this is working, which it obviously is, they'll stick with it even if God himself came down and said stop.
I can't remember what the product was... and maybe that's why it's not in the top ten... but the fairly recent commercial called "Cat Herding" should be in the top ten, IMO. The Yahoo commercial with the dolphin was pretty funny too. Though, like they say on the site, with some 60 commercials per game and 37 Superbowls... that's a lot of ads. Maybe they need to do an MTV style countdown, like the Top 100 or something.
Then again... I use my DVR to rewind particularly funny commercials, even though I almost never buy the particular products advertised.
The New York Times reported a "color gass condensate" when gold ions were bombarded with relativistic deuterons. In this condition, nucleons and quarks blur into a jello of gluons.
... to which promptly became stuck a large group of peons...
Actually... the far right almost always supports Republicans, the far left almost always support democrats, and the "middle-class" determines the election... when they vote. I'll almost always vote Republican because they protect my interests better, and it sounds like your interests are better protected by Democrats. Both parties will spend between now and election day pandering to the middle of the road voters, while simultaneously trying to not agravate their respective bases too much.
Obviously you and I can respectfully disagree, but let's not obfuscate and say that the middle class are smart because they voted our way, the other way, or whatever. The middle class votes just like we all do, "What's in it for me."
"business-aligned Republican" seems redundent.
I meant as opposed to the "religious-gay-bashing-freak" portion of the party.
Yes, We need to stop these whiney workers crying to congress while all these upstanding CEOs are playing fair
That's not quite what I meant. Obviously we need to keep everyone honest, no matter where they fall in the food chain. And I don't like it when CEOs whine to congress either (Scott McNealy comes to mind.) My point was just that in a Free Market Economy everyone has the ability to change their status in life, or at least work at it. We shouldn't be protecting workers for picking professions where the pay is not what they thought it would be. Let's see... I'm going to go to college to become a teacher, then I'll bitch because I don't make nearly enough to survive. I'd say that's a case of rampant stupidity since it would be easy to research before you got into that field.
Remember, even the most leftist union supporter in the U.S. has access to retirement benefits which are based on stock portfolios which go up why? Because the companies that fund are invested in moved business overseas (just one small factor, but still an important one.)
I'll be the first to admit that there are not very many black-and-white answers here. I can't say "Overseas jobs bad" any more than I can say "Protect U.S. workers, good." It's all intertwined and interdependant. Perhaps the best solution isn't a penalty persay, but maybe some incentives (tax or otherwise) to companies who keep a majority of their employees in the U.S. (for American companies that is.)
The iPod isn't twice the price of the Archos is it? And it plays mp3s fine, so in what way is it more proprietary?
When I bought my Recorder-20, it cost me $259 (U.S.) and the 20GB IPod was, last I checked, going for almost twice that amount. Now the latest Archos models with video, etc are getting ridiculously expensive (like $800) but Apple hasn't got anything similiar so who knows what they'd charge.
As for the ability of the IPod to be used as a regular old hard drive, my bad, I wasn't aware it had that capability. The proprietary comment came because I was under the impression that you had to use Apple's software to move music to the unit. Is that not correct? On my Archos I just drag and drop text playlists and whole directories to the unit via Winblows, Linux, whatever.
As for booting from the Archos... I haven't tried that, though I may have to now!:)
"And realistically how can they expect people in America to work for less money when our cost of living is so high here?" "They" work for the shareholders, not for anyone else. I don't think that's bad, just how it is.
This whole article and some reactions illustrate pretty well a trend that's only going to continue. The middle class in America is going away. Anyone who has travelled extensively (out of the U.S. for us Americans) has seen that in a majority of countries in the world, the middle class doesn't exist. There are fabulously, fabulously wealthy people... and everyone else. Sometimes the everyone else could be considered sort of comparable to the middle class in America, but more often than not they are moving more towards being as fabulously poor as the rich are rich. In a lot of countries that is a major problem because there are no opportunities to get out of your social position. In America however, we have choices... albeit painful ones often. Let's say I'm a college student, always interested in Computer Science. I'm halfway through my major, when I start noticing precisely what we're talking about here: Holy Shite! No jobs for my chosen profession any more! What do I do? Well... either keep going and take advantage of the free market economy (ie; start a company, find an angle, etc) or switch majors. Or choice three, which a lot of Americans take: Bury your head in the sand, hope that it all goes away, and if it doesn't... lobby congress until they protect you somehow.
*Note* By way of full disclosure, I'm a business-aligned Republican and becoming more invested in politics. I've got my helmet on, let the bashing begin.
Has anyone seen or heard of any Network Engineer/Admin/etc positions being moved overseas? So far in my company, and all of our clients' (very large investment banks, etc) companies, the IT staff seem to be pretty well insulated. I suppose you could have everyone VPN in and just hire one guy (could be the janitor's day job) to "unplug the left cable from the 5th rack...etc." I just don't see it happening in this industry segment. 'Course, I could just be hoping since that's the segment I'm plopped firmly in.
On a side note, my company has moved almost our entire call center, customer support, and a few other functions to offices in India and a couple other undisclosed countries. I'm always torn when this sort of thing happens: As a stockholder I'm seeing increased portfolio value, as an employee I'm a bit worried, and as a customer I'm just sick of calling 1-800-SomeNumber and getting Abu.
As regards the size of music collections... I'm sitting at approximately 97.3 Gigs currently... and I don't even have a lot of the albums I need (complete artist collections, etc). I like having most of it with me simply because I never know what I'll want to listen to at any given time. That's the beauty of the MP3 (or whichever format you prefer) format is portability. Invariably if I leave some music at home, that's the stuff I'll be in the mood for. It's also handy at parties to have a large collection to cycle through. I have an ARCHOS that I hacked to 80GB so I can take *most* of my collection with me. Everything is organized and I can just pick random genres or go with prebuilt playlists.
I'll admit that the IPOD is sexy looking, and the interface is nice from what I've seen... but why someone would pay twice as much for a proprietary system is beyond me (lol... then again I'm writing this on my Compaq TabletPC with... yup, you know). The beauty of the ARCHOS is that it is just a hard drive with an interface. I can partition, format, etc and store music, data, whatever. Drivers are built in (for Winblows anyhow) and with USB 2 I can move data fairly painlessly.
Hmm... start business, constantly act in a cutthroat way, become a multi-billionaire, company starts to have trouble, sell out and go live on a yacht somewhere in the South Pacific.
Yeah... one day Bill will wake up, look at his bank statement, and feel horrible that at what his monopolistic actions have wrought. THPPPTT!!
I probably just missed the boat somewhere on this one, but how do we know Microsoft is involved in all of this SCO shite? I'm not doubting that they are by any means, it's just the kind of thing they'd do, but is there some information somewhere on how involved they *really* are?
Slashdot Mirror
There's a donut joke in here somewhere...
I agree with what you've said here, but with a caveat that may seem obvious to some, not so to others: MOST big companies operate this way. Take for example the company I work for, which will remain unnamed here, but is a Fortune 500 company. The software we design is used in mission-critical systems as well as average not-so-critical situations. We routinely have hundreds of bugs that we know about, but choose not to fix. Why? Simply put, it's not profitable to fix them unless they rise to a level that threatens our revenue. Now that's not my decision, mind you, just the way things happen to be. I've got two friends who work at Microsoft, one of which works in an area dealing with OS bugs. Just before Win2K was released, I was sitting with him as he showed me the millions of bugs (yes, millions) that they (Microsoft) weren't going to fix... ostensibly for the same reason as my company.
I'm not saying that this is right, or we shouldn't strive to be better. It just sometimes gets old to hear "Microsoft bad" all of the time (and I'm not disagreeing) and not have the sort of group realization that, the way Microsoft operates is pretty much business-as-usual for most large corporations (and not just software corps).
That's why we need a strong regulatory climate (but not overly heavy-handed), and a market that takes care of the rest. And to all of those who say that Microsoft is too big to take down with just market-pressure, what about IBM? What about the little geek with an idea who juked one of the biggest companies in the world so bad they almost didn't recover? Someday... if the Linux idea keeps growing, it will reach a point where it too can do to Microsoft what Microsoft did to IBM.
Wow... looking back that that little rant, I seem to have wandered off the reservation. Hmmm... I wonder if I toss in a quick "Microsoft Bad" if it'll be enough to protect me from the inevitable flames?
I'll second the comments on Rockbox... definitely a better OS than the stock Archos version (on supported models - which at this point are limited to the Player/Recorder versions.)
I'm an avowed Archos fanboy, no apologies given. That being said, I'm still not sure how much I need a device with so many different functions. Cost is an issue of course too, as is storage. Archos led the pack with 20GB back when, and now they've been pushing the limits with the AV380, going to 80GB. What I need now is 120GB... I'll do it myself if they don't, but of course price starts becoming an issue then.
I have to say that the other thing I appreciate about Archos, is there is no special software required to move files around. Plug in... drag files to new drive letter (in Windoze anyhow), or just plug in and tar/untar from bash. Whatever.
Now... as others have said... if we could just get some better batteries! Though on a side note there, for those of you with the older NiMH "tube" 1500 batteries... you can replace 'em with 2100, up the cache memory to 8megs (on Recorders) and bump battery life to 20 hours or so.
Wow... an AC trying to school me on on language definitions... will wonders never cease. Well, for the unenlightened, here we go:
i-ro-ny n., pl. -nies. 1.a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by irony. c. A literary style employing irony for humorous or rhetorical effect. 2.a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. b. An occurrence, a result, or a circumstance notable for such incongruity.
Personally I find this to be a good thing. Reverse engineering, duplicating any device in hardware or software is cool. Copying the vaunted IPOD on a Windows Pocket PC? That's the ultimate in irony there.
I myself don't care for the IPOD or it's interface, so I've got no reason to play with this software. But the idea sounds interesting, if not particularly useful. What would be more impressive overall however, is if this company did something ala what Rockbox did for the Archos devices, and wrote a new OS to run on the IPOD itself.
lol. I'm not sure that I really hate anyone in particular, actually. It's just the mentality you get in large groups of people that's interesting to me. ie; Saying "Cliinton" to a large group of Republicans or "Bush" to a similiarly large group of Democrats yields roughly the same Pavlov-like reactionary, regurgitated, generally uninformed rhetoric. All of that rhetoric starts and grows from the seeds of some truth (ie; Microsoft can be the devil, and has been on several occasions) but it eventually balloons into a mindless spewing of shite by the masses. My point initially was simply that Microsoft's purported involvement in this SCO thing has been hashed and rehashed since the beginning. One new memo which is fuzzy at best, doesn't seem to lend itself to any insights one way or another. The CA portion of the original article however, was newer and offered much more insight into SCO's tactics, yet it barely got addressed in amongst the anti-Microsoft feeding frenzy.
:)
Insight is good, and I think Slashdot and the people here who make up the community contribute to a lot of meaningful discussions that get to the "heart of the matter." But I also think there's a definite element of partisanship here too, especially when moderated down as flamebait for suggesting that Microsoft might have not been the best focus of a particular discussion.
Just the same though, I keep coming back... so it can't be all bad.
God I love the mentality on Slashdot. An article comes out with a relatively redundant memo re: Microsoft's involvement with SCO, and CA laying the retorical bitch-slap on SCO, and what does the mob here fixate on? Hmmm... lesse, could it be, Microsoft? For #@$ sake people, there could be a comet streaking towards the earth, about to destroy humanity, and somehow the majority of the tin-foil-hat-wearing-we-hate-Microsoft crowd would find a way to blame them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft or any other software company for that matter. It's just funny to see the pavlov-like response here when that one word is thrown out.
"Microsoft"
Hmmm... just testing.
"...If the rest of the public sees us as a bunch of file-sharing, website DoSing, ignorant hippies who think everything should be free..."
Wait... you mean we're not? DOH!
I thought they were number one?! Oh... wait, that's for having decisions overturned... my bad.
In the last few years there has been a lot of hype, at least with business folks, that Web sites like Yahoo, Google, MSN, Netscape would become big "Portals." on the Internet, driving all others into obscurity. It sounds like Microsoft to a certain extent may still believe this. You control the results of the search, you are in a position to profit from it. To quote the certain to come business advice:
(1) Leverage monopoly to get into search engine business
(2) ??
(3) Profit!
What I've seen in practice however, is quite different. It seems as if the new users tend to get sucked into the "portal" concept when they sign up with Earthlink, MSN, etc. But as they become more Internet savvy, they migrate and spend less and less time on those sites. It's like a giant ponzi scheme... once they run out of new people to sign up, they're done.
I guess with the speed of the tech cycle right now, If Microsoft profits off of something like this for even a couple of years, then it's worth it (well, duh... Hmmm... case of the painfully obvious this morning.) Bottom line though, I think at this point Microsoft is still coming in well above negatives like costs to litigate, negative regulatory environments, bad feelings, slashdot insults, etc. Microsoft is a business, bottom line, as soon as it gets more expensive to work this way... they'll change strategies. As long as this is working, which it obviously is, they'll stick with it even if God himself came down and said stop.
I can't remember what the product was... and maybe that's why it's not in the top ten... but the fairly recent commercial called "Cat Herding" should be in the top ten, IMO. The Yahoo commercial with the dolphin was pretty funny too. Though, like they say on the site, with some 60 commercials per game and 37 Superbowls... that's a lot of ads. Maybe they need to do an MTV style countdown, like the Top 100 or something. Then again... I use my DVR to rewind particularly funny commercials, even though I almost never buy the particular products advertised.
Sorry 'bout that. I happened to see the MSNBC one first and had already added that link. Does it really matter though?
The New York Times reported a "color gass condensate" when gold ions were bombarded with relativistic deuterons. In this condition, nucleons and quarks blur into a jello of gluons.
... to which promptly became stuck a large group of peons...
Actually... the far right almost always supports Republicans, the far left almost always support democrats, and the "middle-class" determines the election... when they vote. I'll almost always vote Republican because they protect my interests better, and it sounds like your interests are better protected by Democrats. Both parties will spend between now and election day pandering to the middle of the road voters, while simultaneously trying to not agravate their respective bases too much.
Obviously you and I can respectfully disagree, but let's not obfuscate and say that the middle class are smart because they voted our way, the other way, or whatever. The middle class votes just like we all do, "What's in it for me."
"business-aligned Republican" seems redundent. I meant as opposed to the "religious-gay-bashing-freak" portion of the party. Yes, We need to stop these whiney workers crying to congress while all these upstanding CEOs are playing fair That's not quite what I meant. Obviously we need to keep everyone honest, no matter where they fall in the food chain. And I don't like it when CEOs whine to congress either (Scott McNealy comes to mind.) My point was just that in a Free Market Economy everyone has the ability to change their status in life, or at least work at it. We shouldn't be protecting workers for picking professions where the pay is not what they thought it would be. Let's see... I'm going to go to college to become a teacher, then I'll bitch because I don't make nearly enough to survive. I'd say that's a case of rampant stupidity since it would be easy to research before you got into that field.
Remember, even the most leftist union supporter in the U.S. has access to retirement benefits which are based on stock portfolios which go up why? Because the companies that fund are invested in moved business overseas (just one small factor, but still an important one.)
I'll be the first to admit that there are not very many black-and-white answers here. I can't say "Overseas jobs bad" any more than I can say "Protect U.S. workers, good." It's all intertwined and interdependant. Perhaps the best solution isn't a penalty persay, but maybe some incentives (tax or otherwise) to companies who keep a majority of their employees in the U.S. (for American companies that is.)
The iPod isn't twice the price of the Archos is it? And it plays mp3s fine, so in what way is it more proprietary?
:)
When I bought my Recorder-20, it cost me $259 (U.S.) and the 20GB IPod was, last I checked, going for almost twice that amount. Now the latest Archos models with video, etc are getting ridiculously expensive (like $800) but Apple hasn't got anything similiar so who knows what they'd charge.
As for the ability of the IPod to be used as a regular old hard drive, my bad, I wasn't aware it had that capability. The proprietary comment came because I was under the impression that you had to use Apple's software to move music to the unit. Is that not correct? On my Archos I just drag and drop text playlists and whole directories to the unit via Winblows, Linux, whatever.
As for booting from the Archos... I haven't tried that, though I may have to now!
"And realistically how can they expect people in America to work for less money when our cost of living is so high here?"
"They" work for the shareholders, not for anyone else. I don't think that's bad, just how it is. This whole article and some reactions illustrate pretty well a trend that's only going to continue. The middle class in America is going away. Anyone who has travelled extensively (out of the U.S. for us Americans) has seen that in a majority of countries in the world, the middle class doesn't exist. There are fabulously, fabulously wealthy people... and everyone else. Sometimes the everyone else could be considered sort of comparable to the middle class in America, but more often than not they are moving more towards being as fabulously poor as the rich are rich. In a lot of countries that is a major problem because there are no opportunities to get out of your social position. In America however, we have choices... albeit painful ones often. Let's say I'm a college student, always interested in Computer Science. I'm halfway through my major, when I start noticing precisely what we're talking about here: Holy Shite! No jobs for my chosen profession any more! What do I do? Well... either keep going and take advantage of the free market economy (ie; start a company, find an angle, etc) or switch majors. Or choice three, which a lot of Americans take: Bury your head in the sand, hope that it all goes away, and if it doesn't... lobby congress until they protect you somehow.
*Note* By way of full disclosure, I'm a business-aligned Republican and becoming more invested in politics. I've got my helmet on, let the bashing begin.
Has anyone seen or heard of any Network Engineer/Admin/etc positions being moved overseas? So far in my company, and all of our clients' (very large investment banks, etc) companies, the IT staff seem to be pretty well insulated. I suppose you could have everyone VPN in and just hire one guy (could be the janitor's day job) to "unplug the left cable from the 5th rack...etc." I just don't see it happening in this industry segment. 'Course, I could just be hoping since that's the segment I'm plopped firmly in. On a side note, my company has moved almost our entire call center, customer support, and a few other functions to offices in India and a couple other undisclosed countries. I'm always torn when this sort of thing happens: As a stockholder I'm seeing increased portfolio value, as an employee I'm a bit worried, and as a customer I'm just sick of calling 1-800-SomeNumber and getting Abu.
As regards the size of music collections... I'm sitting at approximately 97.3 Gigs currently... and I don't even have a lot of the albums I need (complete artist collections, etc). I like having most of it with me simply because I never know what I'll want to listen to at any given time. That's the beauty of the MP3 (or whichever format you prefer) format is portability. Invariably if I leave some music at home, that's the stuff I'll be in the mood for. It's also handy at parties to have a large collection to cycle through. I have an ARCHOS that I hacked to 80GB so I can take *most* of my collection with me. Everything is organized and I can just pick random genres or go with prebuilt playlists.
.02
I'll admit that the IPOD is sexy looking, and the interface is nice from what I've seen... but why someone would pay twice as much for a proprietary system is beyond me (lol... then again I'm writing this on my Compaq TabletPC with... yup, you know). The beauty of the ARCHOS is that it is just a hard drive with an interface. I can partition, format, etc and store music, data, whatever. Drivers are built in (for Winblows anyhow) and with USB 2 I can move data fairly painlessly.
Just my
Now I just feel silly... and slow. I must need more coffee. Or maybe a USB Menorah.
Second Posting... Somehow this feels a bit anti-climactic and not at all as satisfying as I'd pictured...
Hmm... start business, constantly act in a cutthroat way, become a multi-billionaire, company starts to have trouble, sell out and go live on a yacht somewhere in the South Pacific. Yeah... one day Bill will wake up, look at his bank statement, and feel horrible that at what his monopolistic actions have wrought. THPPPTT!!
I probably just missed the boat somewhere on this one, but how do we know Microsoft is involved in all of this SCO shite? I'm not doubting that they are by any means, it's just the kind of thing they'd do, but is there some information somewhere on how involved they *really* are?