Don't ever do this with your in-built sound card, unless you want to piss off everyone that gets a copy. It will sound terrible.
By a decent card and some proper interconnects to do the dub. Or, you could do it properly and get a card with a digital input and a CD player with a digital output. Some setups can even automatically detect the track boundaries when playing a whole album, saving you the bother of splitting it yourself.
Finally, you could do what 99% of everyone else does. Just download it from your favourite p2p application. As the original is protected, there will be less variants of the album available as less people are capable of ripping it. This actually makes it easier to download as there are more sources for the files as everyone is going for the same versions.
Not like you could tell the difference once it's converted to your preferred portable listening format.
Bollocks. A properly encoded mp3 using a VBR rate, such as the r3mix preset has been proven to be indistingishable from the original using blind tests on professional hi-fi equiptment.
On the other hand, an mp3 done at 128kbit is going to sound shit regardless of the source.
Of course, most morans listen to mp3 through their free speakers that they got with the PC, converted to analog using a crappy on-board sound chip. What do you expect? Get a card with a digital output, hook it up to a decent DAC and you are laughing. (the blind tests above were done by burning the mp3 to CD, same idea essentially)
would you rather stare entranced at a 1 X 1 screen, or a 25 inch TV? Which do you think is better for your eyes?
Yeah, but which is better for slipping into your pocket when your train gets to your stop? You're missing the point, these devices aren't replacing anything. No one is forcing you to take it up.
Honestly, I just don't get/. regarding mobile phones. Some people pitch trouser tents when some new device is released to slice bread while running linux, yet they act like ludites for mobile technology. What's the deal? Am I just getting a non-US perspective here, as mobile technology hasn't proved as popular in the states while here in Europe it's massive? Jeez, ringtones are outselling single sales of the songs they are supposed to be on this side of the pond!!
The original, Duke Nukem 3D, has been available some mobiles for a month or two. Still in beta tho.
Oh, and the same phone had a 3D game available for it about a year and a half ago. Yawn. Old news. You can already get off-the-shelf 3D development engines for phone games.
OK, so clearly we have different things we look for in a phone. Mine does e-mail, web, MSN, photos, divx, mp3, gps, mapping and calendaring. You can also use it as a keydrive. I couldn't care less for games and ringtones, just functionality that I actually use. I've actually stopped using my desktop as much, as I no longer have to log on just to see if I have mail.
There is no rationale reason whatsoever why a cell phone needs to be susceptible to viruses.
Then you think that there is no need for a mobile where you can install third-party software? All a virus is is a malicious piece of software.
Would the same hold for a PC perhaps? Maybe you should only ever be allowed to use the software that comes with it, provided by the OS vendor? That would make things a lot more secure! After all, "there is no need for a OS to be susceptible to viruses", is there?
I'm not sure what advantage it gives over just making the PDA, or whatever, do the job directly.
I think it's a social thing, this could work for the masses. Sure, for many (if not most)/. readers, uploading something to a server for retrieval elsewhere is second-nature to us. For someone non-tech oriented, it wouldn't even be obvious to them that you can do this.
On the other hand, having a physical token that you "carry" the data in might seem more acceptible. Just tap the screen (or whatever) and whatever document you have in focus gets grabbed. You take it to the projector in the meeting room, tap it, and your presentation "just works". The concept is just simpler and more real world, and it should be extremely easy to use.
It's also got a Star Trek feel to it. In the show they pass reports and such via pda like devices. Why bother when the computer can just send it to their console? And we all know that Sci-Fi influences drives a lot of R&D!!
I've taken it a step further. I got a password manager for my mobile phone and I keep everything encrypted in there. Each website gets an unique e-mail and password e.g. ebay@mydomain.com 4jd74jks. As I don't need to remember the passwords, each one is random gobblegook. I always have the phone anywhere I am, so I don't have to worry about someone messing with it without me knowing.
The password manager is doubly secure as the phone is also locked and the only way to unlock it without the correct code erases the internal storage, along with the password file.
Of course, this still leaves a major vunerability; compromised machines. The next improvement would be using a one-time password system. Then if you get your details tracked by a keylogger, virus or any other technique described in this thread, it really doesn't matter as the password is worthless the moment it gets used.
As soon as someone does this for mobile phones, I'm on it!! Of course, it will only work for systems I own, but they are the ones I care about the most. My credit card insurance takes care of the rest, and I could handle the karma loss if this account got hijacked...;-)
Socialism......does NOT work, because every human on this planet, has a yearning to be free!
Ah great, another capitalism == freedom nutter. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems. There are a hell of a lot of socialist countries (try Europe) where you have more freedom than capitalist countries. I'd place a bet on this, but that would be against the law where you are.
You see, the big fat rich people have convinced you that the system which benefits them and makes them uber rich also means you are "free". If you have issues with the inbalance, then you must be an evil communist. So please don't rock the boat and upset their apple cart. You must hate freedom if you feel like that.
It keeps synchronizing the copies, so frequent backups are needed in case any copy is corrupted. There is a larger chance of corruption because any copy can corrupt the rest.
Never thought of it that way, interesting. I'm glad I'm doing sequential backups.
switched to Maxtor after having problems with the others.
- Western Digital is always priced far above everybody else.
I'm just buying for home use, so price is never really an issue when the difference is small. Paying an extra 5/10 bucks doesn't bother me as I'm not dealing with volume. I do seem to go thru a lot of storage tho, I've just bought a pair of 160GB drives for my main home/mail area.
WRT Maxtor, well I've had a lot of failures with them over the past 3-4 years. I suspect the box was running a little hot which may have contributed to this. I've also been hit by a DeathStar, which the shop claimed was not the one they sold me and would not replace. Last time I shop there, especially as the receipt for that days purchases had over 1500 UKP in sales (over $2500).
Currently my main desktop is making the warning clicks of death (with accompying OS freezes) and I'm expect that DeathStar to shuffle along soon. It's been this way for at least six months tho...
The most recent drive I bought was Segate Baracuda. I did a little googling first and they seemed to be well represented in user opinions on usenet and web boards. I can't comment on the noise as I've pulled out the original (hot) server and replaced with a new one, so the acoustics are all different. It's a smaller case and the drive is closer to it. Overall noise is down (I sleep in this room) but there is a new wirr wirr sound, but that could be the CPU fan.
Make friends with other techies, or see if your job will give you an IP Address and a place to leave a server.
I wouldn't want to give a techie access to this box, far too much personal data on it. Was looking for a non-techie for security reasons, all I need to do is lock the bios and boot order and lock the case and I'll know it's pretty secure. Giving it to someone who knows what GRUB is seems to be a bad idea!
Work is an option, for instance I could host the backup in here and just NAT out onto my own box, so I wouldn't need an external IP. But I'm not convinced...I'd rather give it to someone I trust rather than someone I'm paid to endure!!
The archtypical Slashdotter would be jealous that you have non-techie friends.
All my friends are non-techie! I get techies in work and on the net. That's enough for me!! But I have placed a few friends on the slippery path to geekdom!
Does anyone know of a source for T-shirts with this yellow five circle pattern? Any photo with you in it would be impossible to digitally edit with the new software.
Just wait until the first crime to be "gotten away with" because the criminal had one of these T-shirts used to prevent CCTV footage from reproducing their likeness!
SD cards do not have this limitation. The addressing system takes place entirely on the card IIRC. All the device does is says "give me this file" and the card sends it the bytes. In theory any device made today (software bugs withstanding) should be able to take any size of card.
There are bound to be some hard limits on things like directory listing sizes, file system depths and max individual file size, but don't quote me on these!
I'm the same. I still use several PCs at home and at work, but my phone can do most of the things I use the PC for. However, I won't use the phone when I've access to a PC, that's just silly. But for checking your todo list, sending short e-mails, listening to mp3s or watching the occassional divx on the bus, my phone is ideal.
Plus, talking to someone on messenger while you are in the park with beer and nice weather while they are in work is a lot of fun! Especially when you attach a photo to the jibeing.;-)
Many things work better on a phone as well. Map websites are fine and dandy, but the chances are that when you are on a PC, you know where you are. Being able to whip out my phone and enter a street name to see the nearest stations/hosptials/pubs while on the move is great.
Other things like the integration can make life really easy. For example, on a received e-mail on my phone, the sender is a hyperlink. Click on it and it'll take you to their entry in the address book, where you can either IM/SMS them, e-mail them (to any one of their inevitable multiple addresses), send them a voice mail or even call them! (well, it is a phone after all). And with most phones now you can sync with a PC, meaning that if someone gives you contact details on the road, the next time you dock you get it uploaded and importantly backed-up on your PC. Lose the phone, you lose nothing, especially if you are pulling mail from an imap server.
There may be a market for cell phone TV's, but I can't see anybody buying this.
Many phones can already play divx/mpeg which is preferable as you can pause etc when distracted. The only time you'd be better with a TV tuner was to catch live events, say sport/news etc. Even then though, most phones now have net access, and why would you want to watch a football game on a screen where you can't even see the ball!!
Well, I back up my home debian courier IMAP server using rsync-backup each night onto a redundant PC containing a similar sized hard-drive. The data is simply Maildir format, i.e. a collection of files. Another person suggests using client side copies, well this may be adequate, but only if you are aware of the problem and can launch the client in offline mode. The moment you connect after data loss, you can kiss those local cached copies goodbye.
I use the same system to keep a backup of my home dir and my large music collection. Having lost many hard-drives in the past (and never buying Maxtor again), I'm used to being prepared. Basically my server has two hard-drives... a small system one and a ext data partition. Everything on the ext partition (home, media, favorites, downloads) is included in the backup. Should the server fail, just reinstall the OS, although I'm thinking about Ghosting the install for quick restoration should it go bad.
Next step is to convince a friend with broadband to allow me to put the redundant box on their network, giving me off-site backups. You'd think it would be easy to persuade someone to host a box that has 70 GB of music on it, but you'd be surprised. Most non-geeks don't seem happy with the idea of a box running 24/7...
upwards of 10 GB, and some of my friends have more than twice that much on their computers
Twice that? I'm pushing 70 GB now, too big for even an ipod. Choosing what to convert to my 256MB SD-card is a major pain!!
Of course, I only carry one device with me, that acts as a PDA, organiser, mobile phone and internet device. Despite being a complete gadget geek, I like to travel light and combining everything into my phone, which I've carried everywhere for 10 years anyway, makes perfect sense.
I genuinely believe devices like ipods are a passing fad. Not that there won't be devices like them in future, just that they'll converge with other things. Lets face it, there's a lot of common functionality between your phone, PDA and ipod. Each has a battery, processor and memory. The cost of including new features will always be preferable to separate devices. Once you have the hardware to do this, all it takes is the right software to do different things. Carrying all this including a laptop hard-drive just to play music seems insane to me.
I too am disappointed that more companies don't make devices that let you configure things yourself. I too wish I could tweak menus and defaults. To me personally, it doesn't matter if it's open source or not...
Ironically, the Microsoft Smartphone platform is very configuable. The menu system is identical to Win32 systems, i.e. folders and shortcut. It's definately a hackers phone, not for the faint-hearted.
Plus it can be legitimately application-unlocked unlike many DRM capable phones and the SDK is free (as in beer).
But all this could be solved by simply having a "reset button". Put a copy of the firmware in ROM... as soon as the button is pressed it reverts to that.
Covered in the "hidden" service menu on these phones. It automatically restores any parts of the registry or file system that become corrupt, so I've never seen it fail on me because of my screwing around.
Look at how popular ringers and backgrounds have become.
Another great feature here is ringtones are wav files (I just make my own in CoolEdit) and backgrounds are jpgs. The user-front end is completely skinable.
My favourite toy on it right now is Mapopolis, a vector based mapping app with GPS capabilities. I haven't gotten lost in ages...
But it's M$, so I'm probably wasting my time here...
I agree with the parent on BSPlayer, fabulous piece of software, very configurable. Not heard of FooBar tho.
However, I'd avoid codec packs if possible. They usually install outdated versions of codecs, as well as multiple handlers for different compression schemes. It becomes a nightmare to track and control which codec is used for whatever media.
It's far simpler and more reliable to install the codecs you need. DivX, XviD and an AC3 audio filter cover most of the ones you don't get on a standard windows build.
I also install WMP just to get the WMV codecs that come with it. BSPlayer picks these up nicely.
I completely disagree with you. I wear headphones all the time to avoid trouble. You can simply ignore anyone who shouts or speaks to you as you walk past. In order to get your attention, they need to get right in front of you, which cuts out all but the most determined agressor. Many muggings start with innocent questions like "do you have the time?" or "do you have a light?", basically you can avoid getting into them.
Of course, don't have the music on too loud, you still need to hear what's going on around you.
if you are attacked by a French man, the government of your country cannot declare war on France?
Who needs a reason to declare war? Just make one up. And when that is laughed down, make something else up. By that point the war has started. Sounds all too familiar...
I agree. I bought an XBox specifically to play divx and mpeg video about a year ago and I've got mine set up to boot straight to XBMC. I rarely drop down into the ExolutionX launcher. XBMC does everything you need. I especially like the audio sync adjustments that you can make if you find the video is out, being someone who gets bugged by that.
It's a great toy. I never bothered upgrading the hard-drive, instead I stream all my media off several large drives on my linux box which is on 24/7 anyway. Had a bunch of folk round that were very impressed, imagine having entire runs of TV shows available on demand. Beats broadcast TV anyday.
The media giants missed the boat, much like the music industry. While they are still arguing about DRM and how to profit from it, people are simply making their own shit. And it's completely outwith their control. The BBC seem to be the only ones who have a clue to what's going on.
For anyone setting up an XBox for media, I recommend starting with the Slayer's EvoX installer, which you can get as an iso if you know where to find that sort of thing. It installs the EvolutionX dashboard with a whole load of useful applications.
I'm UK based, and the pedo fever here is far worse than the USA. The tabloid media has hit the subject so hard that everyone is suspious of everyone. And as you say, that's really bad for the kids growing-up process.
I would be genuinely aprehensive about helping a lost kid nowadays. If the parent was to turn up just as you started talking, well you can kiss your job, your friends and your family goodbye. No smoke without fire etc.
You can't even smile when you see a bunch of kids having fun without somebody assuming you're getting sexual gratification out of it.
I make sure to NEVER talk to my neighbors and always hurry from the car to the house without making eye contact with them if they try to start a conversation.
Although intended as comedy, there is a lot of truth in this. You can't even smile at a cute baby these days without accusing glares.
The result of this however does not bode well when your kids go missing. I'll be damned if I'm going near a kid that looks lost, unless I've got at least 20 witnesses I trust to back me up and say I did the right thing in offering to help. If I'm on my own, I'm not taking the risk. Your kid can rot as far as I care!
All the money is flowing to crooked businessmen, corrupt politicians, and mobsters. It's like an exaggerated version of where the US is going; I just hope things here never get quite that bad.
emm, open your eyes dude and take a look around...
Slashdot Mirror
By a decent card and some proper interconnects to do the dub. Or, you could do it properly and get a card with a digital input and a CD player with a digital output. Some setups can even automatically detect the track boundaries when playing a whole album, saving you the bother of splitting it yourself.
Finally, you could do what 99% of everyone else does. Just download it from your favourite p2p application. As the original is protected, there will be less variants of the album available as less people are capable of ripping it. This actually makes it easier to download as there are more sources for the files as everyone is going for the same versions.
Bollocks. A properly encoded mp3 using a VBR rate, such as the r3mix preset has been proven to be indistingishable from the original using blind tests on professional hi-fi equiptment.
On the other hand, an mp3 done at 128kbit is going to sound shit regardless of the source.
Of course, most morans listen to mp3 through their free speakers that they got with the PC, converted to analog using a crappy on-board sound chip. What do you expect? Get a card with a digital output, hook it up to a decent DAC and you are laughing. (the blind tests above were done by burning the mp3 to CD, same idea essentially)
Yeah, but which is better for slipping into your pocket when your train gets to your stop? You're missing the point, these devices aren't replacing anything. No one is forcing you to take it up.
Honestly, I just don't get /. regarding mobile phones. Some people pitch trouser tents when some new device is released to slice bread while running linux, yet they act like ludites for mobile technology. What's the deal? Am I just getting a non-US perspective here, as mobile technology hasn't proved as popular in the states while here in Europe it's massive? Jeez, ringtones are outselling single sales of the songs they are supposed to be on this side of the pond!!
Oh, and the same phone had a 3D game available for it about a year and a half ago. Yawn. Old news. You can already get off-the-shelf 3D development engines for phone games.
You need to move to Europe! :-) We get all the cool phones here.
OK, so clearly we have different things we look for in a phone. Mine does e-mail, web, MSN, photos, divx, mp3, gps, mapping and calendaring. You can also use it as a keydrive. I couldn't care less for games and ringtones, just functionality that I actually use. I've actually stopped using my desktop as much, as I no longer have to log on just to see if I have mail.
Then you think that there is no need for a mobile where you can install third-party software? All a virus is is a malicious piece of software.
Would the same hold for a PC perhaps? Maybe you should only ever be allowed to use the software that comes with it, provided by the OS vendor? That would make things a lot more secure! After all, "there is no need for a OS to be susceptible to viruses", is there?
I think it's a social thing, this could work for the masses. Sure, for many (if not most) /. readers, uploading something to a server for retrieval elsewhere is second-nature to us. For someone non-tech oriented, it wouldn't even be obvious to them that you can do this.
On the other hand, having a physical token that you "carry" the data in might seem more acceptible. Just tap the screen (or whatever) and whatever document you have in focus gets grabbed. You take it to the projector in the meeting room, tap it, and your presentation "just works". The concept is just simpler and more real world, and it should be extremely easy to use.
It's also got a Star Trek feel to it. In the show they pass reports and such via pda like devices. Why bother when the computer can just send it to their console? And we all know that Sci-Fi influences drives a lot of R&D!!
I've taken it a step further. I got a password manager for my mobile phone and I keep everything encrypted in there. Each website gets an unique e-mail and password e.g. ebay@mydomain.com 4jd74jks. As I don't need to remember the passwords, each one is random gobblegook. I always have the phone anywhere I am, so I don't have to worry about someone messing with it without me knowing.
The password manager is doubly secure as the phone is also locked and the only way to unlock it without the correct code erases the internal storage, along with the password file.
Of course, this still leaves a major vunerability; compromised machines. The next improvement would be using a one-time password system. Then if you get your details tracked by a keylogger, virus or any other technique described in this thread, it really doesn't matter as the password is worthless the moment it gets used.
As soon as someone does this for mobile phones, I'm on it!! Of course, it will only work for systems I own, but they are the ones I care about the most. My credit card insurance takes care of the rest, and I could handle the karma loss if this account got hijacked... ;-)
Ah great, another capitalism == freedom nutter. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems. There are a hell of a lot of socialist countries (try Europe) where you have more freedom than capitalist countries. I'd place a bet on this, but that would be against the law where you are.
You see, the big fat rich people have convinced you that the system which benefits them and makes them uber rich also means you are "free". If you have issues with the inbalance, then you must be an evil communist. So please don't rock the boat and upset their apple cart. You must hate freedom if you feel like that.
Never thought of it that way, interesting. I'm glad I'm doing sequential backups.
switched to Maxtor after having problems with the others. - Western Digital is always priced far above everybody else.
I'm just buying for home use, so price is never really an issue when the difference is small. Paying an extra 5/10 bucks doesn't bother me as I'm not dealing with volume. I do seem to go thru a lot of storage tho, I've just bought a pair of 160GB drives for my main home/mail area.
WRT Maxtor, well I've had a lot of failures with them over the past 3-4 years. I suspect the box was running a little hot which may have contributed to this. I've also been hit by a DeathStar, which the shop claimed was not the one they sold me and would not replace. Last time I shop there, especially as the receipt for that days purchases had over 1500 UKP in sales (over $2500).
Currently my main desktop is making the warning clicks of death (with accompying OS freezes) and I'm expect that DeathStar to shuffle along soon. It's been this way for at least six months tho...
The most recent drive I bought was Segate Baracuda. I did a little googling first and they seemed to be well represented in user opinions on usenet and web boards. I can't comment on the noise as I've pulled out the original (hot) server and replaced with a new one, so the acoustics are all different. It's a smaller case and the drive is closer to it. Overall noise is down (I sleep in this room) but there is a new wirr wirr sound, but that could be the CPU fan.
Make friends with other techies, or see if your job will give you an IP Address and a place to leave a server.
I wouldn't want to give a techie access to this box, far too much personal data on it. Was looking for a non-techie for security reasons, all I need to do is lock the bios and boot order and lock the case and I'll know it's pretty secure. Giving it to someone who knows what GRUB is seems to be a bad idea!
Work is an option, for instance I could host the backup in here and just NAT out onto my own box, so I wouldn't need an external IP. But I'm not convinced...I'd rather give it to someone I trust rather than someone I'm paid to endure!!
The archtypical Slashdotter would be jealous that you have non-techie friends.
All my friends are non-techie! I get techies in work and on the net. That's enough for me!! But I have placed a few friends on the slippery path to geekdom!
Just wait until the first crime to be "gotten away with" because the criminal had one of these T-shirts used to prevent CCTV footage from reproducing their likeness!
There are bound to be some hard limits on things like directory listing sizes, file system depths and max individual file size, but don't quote me on these!
Plus, talking to someone on messenger while you are in the park with beer and nice weather while they are in work is a lot of fun! Especially when you attach a photo to the jibeing. ;-)
Many things work better on a phone as well. Map websites are fine and dandy, but the chances are that when you are on a PC, you know where you are. Being able to whip out my phone and enter a street name to see the nearest stations/hosptials/pubs while on the move is great.
Other things like the integration can make life really easy. For example, on a received e-mail on my phone, the sender is a hyperlink. Click on it and it'll take you to their entry in the address book, where you can either IM/SMS them, e-mail them (to any one of their inevitable multiple addresses), send them a voice mail or even call them! (well, it is a phone after all). And with most phones now you can sync with a PC, meaning that if someone gives you contact details on the road, the next time you dock you get it uploaded and importantly backed-up on your PC. Lose the phone, you lose nothing, especially if you are pulling mail from an imap server.
Many phones can already play divx/mpeg which is preferable as you can pause etc when distracted. The only time you'd be better with a TV tuner was to catch live events, say sport/news etc. Even then though, most phones now have net access, and why would you want to watch a football game on a screen where you can't even see the ball!!
I use the same system to keep a backup of my home dir and my large music collection. Having lost many hard-drives in the past (and never buying Maxtor again), I'm used to being prepared. Basically my server has two hard-drives... a small system one and a ext data partition. Everything on the ext partition (home, media, favorites, downloads) is included in the backup. Should the server fail, just reinstall the OS, although I'm thinking about Ghosting the install for quick restoration should it go bad.
Next step is to convince a friend with broadband to allow me to put the redundant box on their network, giving me off-site backups. You'd think it would be easy to persuade someone to host a box that has 70 GB of music on it, but you'd be surprised. Most non-geeks don't seem happy with the idea of a box running 24/7...
Twice that? I'm pushing 70 GB now, too big for even an ipod. Choosing what to convert to my 256MB SD-card is a major pain!!
Of course, I only carry one device with me, that acts as a PDA, organiser, mobile phone and internet device. Despite being a complete gadget geek, I like to travel light and combining everything into my phone, which I've carried everywhere for 10 years anyway, makes perfect sense.
I genuinely believe devices like ipods are a passing fad. Not that there won't be devices like them in future, just that they'll converge with other things. Lets face it, there's a lot of common functionality between your phone, PDA and ipod. Each has a battery, processor and memory. The cost of including new features will always be preferable to separate devices. Once you have the hardware to do this, all it takes is the right software to do different things. Carrying all this including a laptop hard-drive just to play music seems insane to me.
Ironically, the Microsoft Smartphone platform is very configuable. The menu system is identical to Win32 systems, i.e. folders and shortcut. It's definately a hackers phone, not for the faint-hearted.
Plus it can be legitimately application-unlocked unlike many DRM capable phones and the SDK is free (as in beer).
But all this could be solved by simply having a "reset button". Put a copy of the firmware in ROM... as soon as the button is pressed it reverts to that.
Covered in the "hidden" service menu on these phones. It automatically restores any parts of the registry or file system that become corrupt, so I've never seen it fail on me because of my screwing around.
Look at how popular ringers and backgrounds have become.
Another great feature here is ringtones are wav files (I just make my own in CoolEdit) and backgrounds are jpgs. The user-front end is completely skinable.
My favourite toy on it right now is Mapopolis, a vector based mapping app with GPS capabilities. I haven't gotten lost in ages...
But it's M$, so I'm probably wasting my time here...
However, I'd avoid codec packs if possible. They usually install outdated versions of codecs, as well as multiple handlers for different compression schemes. It becomes a nightmare to track and control which codec is used for whatever media.
It's far simpler and more reliable to install the codecs you need. DivX, XviD and an AC3 audio filter cover most of the ones you don't get on a standard windows build.
I also install WMP just to get the WMV codecs that come with it. BSPlayer picks these up nicely.
Of course, don't have the music on too loud, you still need to hear what's going on around you.
Who needs a reason to declare war? Just make one up. And when that is laughed down, make something else up. By that point the war has started. Sounds all too familiar...
It's a great toy. I never bothered upgrading the hard-drive, instead I stream all my media off several large drives on my linux box which is on 24/7 anyway. Had a bunch of folk round that were very impressed, imagine having entire runs of TV shows available on demand. Beats broadcast TV anyday.
The media giants missed the boat, much like the music industry. While they are still arguing about DRM and how to profit from it, people are simply making their own shit. And it's completely outwith their control. The BBC seem to be the only ones who have a clue to what's going on.
For anyone setting up an XBox for media, I recommend starting with the Slayer's EvoX installer, which you can get as an iso if you know where to find that sort of thing. It installs the EvolutionX dashboard with a whole load of useful applications.
I would be genuinely aprehensive about helping a lost kid nowadays. If the parent was to turn up just as you started talking, well you can kiss your job, your friends and your family goodbye. No smoke without fire etc.
You can't even smile when you see a bunch of kids having fun without somebody assuming you're getting sexual gratification out of it.
Although intended as comedy, there is a lot of truth in this. You can't even smile at a cute baby these days without accusing glares.
The result of this however does not bode well when your kids go missing. I'll be damned if I'm going near a kid that looks lost, unless I've got at least 20 witnesses I trust to back me up and say I did the right thing in offering to help. If I'm on my own, I'm not taking the risk. Your kid can rot as far as I care!
emm, open your eyes dude and take a look around...