Well, this helps remove the bad taste left in my mouth by the pricing of the ipod mini (assuming HP releases at least one cheap player).
My gripe with the mini was this: Apple is winning the legal digital music race. The digital music experience is not complete, and hardly worth the trouble, without a portable player. By pricing the mini as it did, Apple seemed to say "if you can't afford to carry around an easily stealable and breakable $250, WMA is for you!" Since lots of my friends and family fall into that area, I lost my enthusiasm for iHegemony in digital music.
This may fix it! Now my poorer relations can fully participate, even though they may end up with a crummy, not-so-stylish player, to go with their crummy Windows PCs. They can still use the ITMS and iTunes.
I'm a coder. I'm very well paid. I expect to, and hope I don't, eventually lose my job to overseas outsourcing.
But as a morale matter, I have to say I don't see anything wrong with what these execs are doing. They are paying as little as possible for what they want to buy, just as I do when I buy stuff and services. I don't see how it is morally better to hire an American for 80k rather than and Indian for 8K. Does the American deserve a job more than the Indian?
I lose if my job goes overseas, but the programmers who get my job win. Should my employeer care more about me than those programmers. It doesn't care about either of us, of course, only money. But assuming it SHOULD care, why should workers in the same country be first in line?
I find the minipod price disappointing, after the rumors of $100-$200. I have several friends and relatives very unlikely to pay $250, who could have easily gone for a $125 minipod. Maybe we'll see less expensive 2 gig versions in a few months.
I've never seen a solution to the conflicting attributes of a good password.
It should be hard to guess, involving a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers, and involving no personal data.
It should be different for each site or system.
You should change it often.
You shouldn't write it down or put it in a text file.
Does anyone really follow these rules? How do you remember all your passwords if you do?
Interesting. I've heard the technology analogies for years, of course, starting with Isaac Asimov's essay on TLOTR long ago, but the whole Democracy v. Feudalism thing is a new one on me. Likewise we hear lots about the two world wars and TLOTR, but I wonder if he was thinking about earlier upheavel.
So, the rings are political power. Only three are given to the traditional nobles, the elves. More (was it five?) are given to the miners and smiths, the drawves. A whole boatload is given to the farmers and tradesmen (humans). So that's a total of 14 for the third estate v. only 3 for the second.
But this diffusion of power, this weakening of the elves is what allows Napolean (Sauron) to grab total power when the time comes. Was Tolkein convinced that the beneficence of the first and second estates is all that protects us from dictatorship?
This will almost certainly be opposed by the Justice Dept. At the very least I think they would require MS to either continue or spin off the Java and Linux products. Of course, since Kylix make little money, spinning it off would be the same as killing it.
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PyDance is way cool.
Open source, ogg support, works well with dance pads for the PS/2 and it's easy to make your own songs.
My gripe with the mini was this: Apple is winning the legal digital music race. The digital music experience is not complete, and hardly worth the trouble, without a portable player. By pricing the mini as it did, Apple seemed to say "if you can't afford to carry around an easily stealable and breakable $250, WMA is for you!" Since lots of my friends and family fall into that area, I lost my enthusiasm for iHegemony in digital music.
This may fix it! Now my poorer relations can fully participate, even though they may end up with a crummy, not-so-stylish player, to go with their crummy Windows PCs. They can still use the ITMS and iTunes.
I'm back to rooting for Apple. :)
I suspect the advantage is that HP wrote Apple a nice fat check.
But as a morale matter, I have to say I don't see anything wrong with what these execs are doing. They are paying as little as possible for what they want to buy, just as I do when I buy stuff and services. I don't see how it is morally better to hire an American for 80k rather than and Indian for 8K. Does the American deserve a job more than the Indian?
I lose if my job goes overseas, but the programmers who get my job win. Should my employeer care more about me than those programmers. It doesn't care about either of us, of course, only money. But assuming it SHOULD care, why should workers in the same country be first in line?
I find the minipod price disappointing, after the rumors of $100-$200. I have several friends and relatives very unlikely to pay $250, who could have easily gone for a $125 minipod. Maybe we'll see less expensive 2 gig versions in a few months.
I've never seen a solution to the conflicting attributes of a good password. It should be hard to guess, involving a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers, and involving no personal data. It should be different for each site or system. You should change it often. You shouldn't write it down or put it in a text file. Does anyone really follow these rules? How do you remember all your passwords if you do?
Interesting. I've heard the technology analogies for years, of course, starting with Isaac Asimov's essay on TLOTR long ago, but the whole Democracy v. Feudalism thing is a new one on me. Likewise we hear lots about the two world wars and TLOTR, but I wonder if he was thinking about earlier upheavel. So, the rings are political power. Only three are given to the traditional nobles, the elves. More (was it five?) are given to the miners and smiths, the drawves. A whole boatload is given to the farmers and tradesmen (humans). So that's a total of 14 for the third estate v. only 3 for the second. But this diffusion of power, this weakening of the elves is what allows Napolean (Sauron) to grab total power when the time comes. Was Tolkein convinced that the beneficence of the first and second estates is all that protects us from dictatorship?
This will almost certainly be opposed by the Justice Dept. At the very least I think they would require MS to either continue or spin off the Java and Linux products. Of course, since Kylix make little money, spinning it off would be the same as killing it.