The thing is, I could easily imagine Apple running a "play for shure" ad which would soundly poke Microsoft with a big, sharp, pointed stick. Then, tell people that there is no guarantee that the same thing won't happen with the Zune.
Finally, advertising that iTunes has a lot of DRM-Free songs.
I hope this happens. I still am not convinced that Apple is not evil, but my impression is that Apple is evil in a "street mugger" sort of way, while Microsoft is evil in a "mass-murderer & child molestor" sort of way.
I have seen adapters that let you use CF on an IDE cable. I have never seen the reverse. While possible, good luck in trying to get an adapter to hook up your digital SLR to a 3-1/2" desktop hard drive.
Try to RTFA. There is a link to most of this stuff (except price). Dual GB and one 100 ethernet (not bad). USB connectors. The problem is that the thing appears to support CF as the only internal storage option. Great for an embedded system, but there is no way to add a hard drive, short of the USB ports.
I carry a leatherman with me everyplace I go. I suppose it is a knife, which could be used as a weapon. But it is also a set of screwdrivers, pliers, saw, file, scissors, and bottle opener. That puts it firmly in the "tool" category.
For that matter, a sharpened pencil could easily be used as a weapon. So, the definition of "weapon" is incredibly subjective.
Even a 30-06 rifle could be considered a "food-gathering tool" rather than a weapon.
As an Amateur Radio operator, I use (admittedly low power) laser pointers as point-to-point communications links. I am mindful of the exposure limits, and pre-spread the beam if necessary to comply. By using higher power, I could increase not only the distance over which the link were useful, but also the data rate for existing links.
Is that legitimate and lawful enough for you?
That is exactly what a terrorist might say. You should be locked up in Gitmo for the rest of your life, you menace to public safety.
"What do we do with witches?" "Burn them! Burn them!"
Performance of audio systems is not heavily affected by cables, if only the size of the wires is adequate.
Mostly true, but quality is worth paying for.
Gold plating will help resist corrosion. Thicker cables are also more likely to resist breaking. For line-level audio & video stuff, more shielding is better, especially for long runs and near 120V lines. Also the connectors (and the wires where they enter the connectors) is the place most likely to break, so premium connectors with nice strain relief are definately nice to have.
I am more than happy to pay a little more for premium cable that I know won't break or cause me problems. It is frustrating to spend 15 minutes debugging a piece of video equipment, just to find the problem is a cable that has broken (I know from experience).
I have never purchased Monster, but would have considered it if I could find them on a great sale. Now that I know what type of low-life scum-sucking company they are, I will not touch their stuff with a 10-foot pole, even if they were giving it away.
I believe that in all states (I know for certain in most states), you don't get a jury trial for traffic infractions. If it could land you in jail, jury. If it will cost you $20, no jury.
Besides, can you imagine a jury trial for traffic tickets? Unless they were going 30 over or endangering lives, "not guilty," "not guilty, "not guilty", etc.
The point of this article was that the "yellow" light timing is too short to be able to reasonably stop in all circumstances. What if the law is designed so that you break it (no breathing on Sundays) or something like that. It should always be a choice to break the law. If it isn't, then it's a problem.
Not if you get 0.5 seconds between yellow and red. That is sort of like saying "I will tell you when you break the law. Ooops, you just did."
I did not know that there were legal limits on how long a yellow light could be. TFA (and TFA that TFA linked to) did not actually state what the length was. Anybody know?
Possible. However, craigslist does deserve to make money any way they can. If Craigslist charges a nominal fee for each listing (say $0.25), good for them. If it is too expensive, somebody else will pop up and take away Craigslist's business.
In the end, the biggest complaint (as far as I know) is that people can get ripped off using paypal. Well, I have dealt with craigslist many times. There is no chance of getting ripped off if you keep your eyes open. You can drive over and see the merchandise before you pay, and if you sell, insist on cash. It's really that simple. Of course, buyer beware and inspect everything closely before you buy.
AMEN! MIDI is still just as useful now as it ever was -- not bad for a standard that is over 20 years old.
A lot of keyboards now have USB connectors, but that is basicly building a USB-to-MIDI adapter into the keyboard.
USB can't really replace MIDI, as USB is a firmly-fixed one master controlling many slaves type of arrangement. With MIDI, there really doesn't need to be a master, as such, and I can imagine some setups where master/slave setups just wouldn't work, or would at least make the software a lot more complicated.
Now, MIDI could do with a bit of freshening up. Perhaps quadruple the bandwidth (while still being backwards compatable), and switch to mini-DIN connectors.
The way they are making these movies is to make 4 episodes, take out the themes, and widescreen it. These ARE episodes.
Yes, but they packed all of the fun and laughs of a 20-minute episode into an hour-and-a-half movie. I loved Futurama (the series), but Futurama (the movie) was not nearly as entertaining.
Not really. They can prioritize packets based on port number. I would be very distrubed if they tried to determine the content. But, if they want to look at the packets just enough to throw them into broad bins, such as "FTP," "HTTP," "Torrent," "VOIP," "VPN," etc., then I can understand the practical reasons for doing so. This is generally known as QOS (Quality of Service). As long as they don't peek to see what's inside or try to record who I am talking to.
As for now, Colorado basically sucks for broadband access (FYI, I am on the extremely crowded Front Range, not in the mountains.)
Yup. Colorado Springs only has two choices: 1) Comcast. Decent speeds for the money, crappy company. 2) Qwest. Slow service, and crappy hardware that throws noise on my POTS line.
For the trillionth time...what Comcast SAYS they are doing is NOT what they are doing. Traffic shaping is fine, as long as it does not differentiate by source. Even if they were just throttling or "slowing down" bittorrent, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as what they are doing. They are doing man-in-the-middle attacks on bittorrent connections, and actively impersonating one of the parties in the connection. This is actually illegal.
For the trillionth time? Please note in the post that you replied to where I said:
If Comcast wants to throttle the bandwidth on my torrents, so be it. I can live with that. But ABORTING a torrent is just plain nasty on their part. Delay the packets, fine. Drop a few packets, fine. But to inject an abort signal, dirty trick.
Yes, it is. That is covered under the "raise prices" option. Apparently you missed that part.
Internet service providers are not in this for the warm fuzzy feelings of helping people. They do it for a profit. Network upgrades raise costs. Yes, they are a necessary part of business, but they also cost.
You are right that more and more bandwidth will be needed. They will have to upgrade in the future. Evrhything in a business is a balancing act. If you don't upgrade, people complain and flee. You loose. If you upgrade too fast, you spend all of your money, can't pay your bills, and go out of business. You loose. The key is to upgrade at the right speed. I am not in the business. I do not know what the right speed is. What I am saying is "no, you can't have a pony (infinite speed internet for free)." The easiest job on the football team is armchair quarterback.
You are right about selling "unlimited" bandwidth. They do need to be more transparent with what they are offering.
Their pricing is assuming that not all customers want to use their maximum available bandwidth at the same time, which is generally true. If they really DID beef up the system to handle ALL available bandwidth, then the price would likely double or more.
Basicly, if you want cheaper prices, you have to make a sacrifice or two. If you really want dedicated bandwidth, pay for your own T3 to your house. Cable is marketed to typcial home user, where the use is rather bursty.
This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices: 1) Raise prices. 2) Put limits on the service. 3) Go out of business. None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.
Note that I am NOT defending Comcast. I understand to need to do something about heavy usage. However, I am vehemently agains the WAY they have done things. Secret bandwidth caps and cancelling transfers are just plain decpetive and customer hostile. Now, if they had implemented a more reasonable policy, and actually advertised it, that would be good for everybody. I would be agreeable to temporary bandwith reductions (maybe 25% to 50%) for heavy useres during peak usage periods.
To summarize: I understand the need for limits and bandwidth control. But, Comcast has done a crappy job of implementing it, and has done it in such a manner as to stir up customer wrath. They could have handled things MUCH better.
Then they should not be protected from legal action regarding what flows over the network.
Make that stipulation and they will stop in a heart beat.
Not at all. For cable internet service, an entire neighborhood typically shares the same chunk of bandwidth. Each cable modem has a bandwidth cap, but if you add the bandwidth for each subsriber in a neighborhood, it easily exceeds the available bandwidth. Also, there is a LOT less bandwidth alloted for upstream transmissions, so cable networks are a lot more sensitive to torrents, where up and down are roughly the same (or at least the should be). This has nothing to do with legality.
So, from the cable company perspective, big downloaders affect the speeds of the entire neighborhood. I can certainly see their complaint.
In fact, I have no problem with bandwidth limiting. When I grab torrents, I try to set reasonable bandwidth caps so as to not affect my neighbors (unless it is something that I need in a hurry, like when the latest Ubuntu is released).
If Comcast wants to throttle the bandwidth on my torrents, so be it. I can live with that. But ABORTING a torrent is just plain nasty on their part. Delay the packets, fine. Drop a few packets, fine. But to inject an abort signal, dirty trick.
Well, the Parallel ATA interface typically uses small wires (probably around 24-28 gauge). Do you really think that you can power a whole hard drive over a pair of #24 wires? Nope, not even close. You would either need to use different wires, which would require a custom connector, or you would have to use MULTIPLE wires (probably about 12-20 should be enough. That, however, makes the connector wider, the cable wider, and increases cost for everybody.
Thick wires are cheap, and molex connectors are cheap.
The last I heard, the NSLU2 will NEVER spin down the hard drives. This may accelerate the wear on the bearings, and cause premature failure. Drives also consume more power while spinning.
It has been a couple of years since I have checked up on this, though. Perhaps a firmware upgrade has fixed this problem.
NAS boxes are not all that they are made out to be. Keep in mind one thing: they are made to be cheap. This means relatviely low-end processors in them. You are also stuck with whatever protocols that they happen to have.
I hope to soon gather enough junk hardware to build a FreeNAS box. This is based on BSD, and one of the totally cool thing is that it is also an rsync server. I have not seen an out-of-the-box NAS that supports rsync.
Very often, these NAS boxes are also small, which means small fans that have to run at high (noisy) speed in order to cool the thing.
I am not saying that all NAS boxes are bad. I actually have one and use it. I am just saying that a commercial NAS box is not a slam-dunk. The better ones might do everything you want, but the better ones are also more expensive, and probably more expensive than building one yourself, especially if you have some junk lying around.
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The thing is, I could easily imagine Apple running a "play for shure" ad which would soundly poke Microsoft with a big, sharp, pointed stick. Then, tell people that there is no guarantee that the same thing won't happen with the Zune.
Finally, advertising that iTunes has a lot of DRM-Free songs.
I hope this happens. I still am not convinced that Apple is not evil, but my impression is that Apple is evil in a "street mugger" sort of way, while Microsoft is evil in a "mass-murderer & child molestor" sort of way.
I have seen adapters that let you use CF on an IDE cable. I have never seen the reverse. While possible, good luck in trying to get an adapter to hook up your digital SLR to a 3-1/2" desktop hard drive.
For the link-challenged:
http://www.plathome.com/products/microserver/oms/oms_spec.html
Try to RTFA. There is a link to most of this stuff (except price). Dual GB and one 100 ethernet (not bad). USB connectors. The problem is that the thing appears to support CF as the only internal storage option. Great for an embedded system, but there is no way to add a hard drive, short of the USB ports.
I carry a leatherman with me everyplace I go. I suppose it is a knife, which could be used as a weapon. But it is also a set of screwdrivers, pliers, saw, file, scissors, and bottle opener. That puts it firmly in the "tool" category.
For that matter, a sharpened pencil could easily be used as a weapon. So, the definition of "weapon" is incredibly subjective.
Even a 30-06 rifle could be considered a "food-gathering tool" rather than a weapon.
"What do we do with witches?"
"Burn them! Burn them!"
Gold plating will help resist corrosion. Thicker cables are also more likely to resist breaking. For line-level audio & video stuff, more shielding is better, especially for long runs and near 120V lines. Also the connectors (and the wires where they enter the connectors) is the place most likely to break, so premium connectors with nice strain relief are definately nice to have.
I am more than happy to pay a little more for premium cable that I know won't break or cause me problems. It is frustrating to spend 15 minutes debugging a piece of video equipment, just to find the problem is a cable that has broken (I know from experience).
I have never purchased Monster, but would have considered it if I could find them on a great sale. Now that I know what type of low-life scum-sucking company they are, I will not touch their stuff with a 10-foot pole, even if they were giving it away.
I believe that in all states (I know for certain in most states), you don't get a jury trial for traffic infractions. If it could land you in jail, jury. If it will cost you $20, no jury.
Besides, can you imagine a jury trial for traffic tickets? Unless they were going 30 over or endangering lives, "not guilty," "not guilty, "not guilty", etc.
The point of this article was that the "yellow" light timing is too short to be able to reasonably stop in all circumstances. What if the law is designed so that you break it (no breathing on Sundays) or something like that. It should always be a choice to break the law. If it isn't, then it's a problem.
Not if you get 0.5 seconds between yellow and red. That is sort of like saying "I will tell you when you break the law. Ooops, you just did."
I did not know that there were legal limits on how long a yellow light could be. TFA (and TFA that TFA linked to) did not actually state what the length was. Anybody know?
Possible. However, craigslist does deserve to make money any way they can. If Craigslist charges a nominal fee for each listing (say $0.25), good for them. If it is too expensive, somebody else will pop up and take away Craigslist's business.
In the end, the biggest complaint (as far as I know) is that people can get ripped off using paypal. Well, I have dealt with craigslist many times. There is no chance of getting ripped off if you keep your eyes open. You can drive over and see the merchandise before you pay, and if you sell, insist on cash. It's really that simple. Of course, buyer beware and inspect everything closely before you buy.
Youngster.
My first computer had 5K of RAM, and I was glad to have it. Boy was I happy when I got a cassette drive for it.
Now, get off my lawn.
AMEN! MIDI is still just as useful now as it ever was -- not bad for a standard that is over 20 years old.
A lot of keyboards now have USB connectors, but that is basicly building a USB-to-MIDI adapter into the keyboard.
USB can't really replace MIDI, as USB is a firmly-fixed one master controlling many slaves type of arrangement. With MIDI, there really doesn't need to be a master, as such, and I can imagine some setups where master/slave setups just wouldn't work, or would at least make the software a lot more complicated.
Now, MIDI could do with a bit of freshening up. Perhaps quadruple the bandwidth (while still being backwards compatable), and switch to mini-DIN connectors.
How about the security implications? Hack the system, free stuff. Or, mail a bomb to your ex.
The postal system is more secure because people are constantly in the loop.
Not really. They can prioritize packets based on port number. I would be very distrubed if they tried to determine the content. But, if they want to look at the packets just enough to throw them into broad bins, such as "FTP," "HTTP," "Torrent," "VOIP," "VPN," etc., then I can understand the practical reasons for doing so. This is generally known as QOS (Quality of Service). As long as they don't peek to see what's inside or try to record who I am talking to.
1) Comcast. Decent speeds for the money, crappy company.
2) Qwest. Slow service, and crappy hardware that throws noise on my POTS line.
No great choices here.
Yes, it is. That is covered under the "raise prices" option. Apparently you missed that part.
Internet service providers are not in this for the warm fuzzy feelings of helping people. They do it for a profit. Network upgrades raise costs. Yes, they are a necessary part of business, but they also cost.
You are right that more and more bandwidth will be needed. They will have to upgrade in the future. Evrhything in a business is a balancing act. If you don't upgrade, people complain and flee. You loose. If you upgrade too fast, you spend all of your money, can't pay your bills, and go out of business. You loose. The key is to upgrade at the right speed. I am not in the business. I do not know what the right speed is. What I am saying is "no, you can't have a pony (infinite speed internet for free)." The easiest job on the football team is armchair quarterback.
You are right about selling "unlimited" bandwidth. They do need to be more transparent with what they are offering.
Their pricing is assuming that not all customers want to use their maximum available bandwidth at the same time, which is generally true. If they really DID beef up the system to handle ALL available bandwidth, then the price would likely double or more.
Basicly, if you want cheaper prices, you have to make a sacrifice or two. If you really want dedicated bandwidth, pay for your own T3 to your house. Cable is marketed to typcial home user, where the use is rather bursty.
This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices:
1) Raise prices.
2) Put limits on the service.
3) Go out of business.
None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.
Note that I am NOT defending Comcast. I understand to need to do something about heavy usage. However, I am vehemently agains the WAY they have done things. Secret bandwidth caps and cancelling transfers are just plain decpetive and customer hostile. Now, if they had implemented a more reasonable policy, and actually advertised it, that would be good for everybody. I would be agreeable to temporary bandwith reductions (maybe 25% to 50%) for heavy useres during peak usage periods.
To summarize: I understand the need for limits and bandwidth control. But, Comcast has done a crappy job of implementing it, and has done it in such a manner as to stir up customer wrath. They could have handled things MUCH better.
So, from the cable company perspective, big downloaders affect the speeds of the entire neighborhood. I can certainly see their complaint.
In fact, I have no problem with bandwidth limiting. When I grab torrents, I try to set reasonable bandwidth caps so as to not affect my neighbors (unless it is something that I need in a hurry, like when the latest Ubuntu is released).
If Comcast wants to throttle the bandwidth on my torrents, so be it. I can live with that. But ABORTING a torrent is just plain nasty on their part. Delay the packets, fine. Drop a few packets, fine. But to inject an abort signal, dirty trick.
Well, the Parallel ATA interface typically uses small wires (probably around 24-28 gauge). Do you really think that you can power a whole hard drive over a pair of #24 wires? Nope, not even close. You would either need to use different wires, which would require a custom connector, or you would have to use MULTIPLE wires (probably about 12-20 should be enough. That, however, makes the connector wider, the cable wider, and increases cost for everybody.
Thick wires are cheap, and molex connectors are cheap.
The last I heard, the NSLU2 will NEVER spin down the hard drives. This may accelerate the wear on the bearings, and cause premature failure. Drives also consume more power while spinning.
It has been a couple of years since I have checked up on this, though. Perhaps a firmware upgrade has fixed this problem.
NAS boxes are not all that they are made out to be. Keep in mind one thing: they are made to be cheap. This means relatviely low-end processors in them. You are also stuck with whatever protocols that they happen to have.
I hope to soon gather enough junk hardware to build a FreeNAS box. This is based on BSD, and one of the totally cool thing is that it is also an rsync server. I have not seen an out-of-the-box NAS that supports rsync.
Very often, these NAS boxes are also small, which means small fans that have to run at high (noisy) speed in order to cool the thing.
I am not saying that all NAS boxes are bad. I actually have one and use it. I am just saying that a commercial NAS box is not a slam-dunk. The better ones might do everything you want, but the better ones are also more expensive, and probably more expensive than building one yourself, especially if you have some junk lying around.