Apple laptops are all striaght clean lines, single color. Tasteful.
Then they have to go and screw it up by throwing a gigantic, highly visible, and sometimes glowing Apple logo somewhere on it. Completely tasteless, if you ask me.
iTunes doesn't have DRM in it. The iTunes music store does. iTunes is just an MP3 playing piece of software that CONNECTS to a service that sells "DRM-piece of shit" music, SHOULD YOU ALLOW/CHOOSE IT TO.
iTunes has DRM in it - how do you think it knows how to play files from the iTunes Music Store? Magic? It's much like the DRM in Mindows Vista. It's there, it won't interfere with non-DRM'd content, and if you stay away from DRM'd content it's effectively not even present. But to say it's not there at all is simply false.
Besides, biege boxes are so 1990's. Right now, black/silver is all the rage in the PC world, for better or for worse. I think at this point, if you want "boring beige", you'd pretty much have to build it yourself. And you'd still likely have to settle for a lower end case, as all the high end ones are not beige.
You'd be surprised. Kids like to steal cars like that because they are easy to hotwire (none of this chip business), or they can simply force the ignition if the parts have worn out due to thousands of starts. They then go joyriding for a while, then abandon the car once they get bored with it.
On the other hand, Model T's didn't have VIN numbers or anything like that. You probably didn't even have to deal with car titles either. Being that Model T's they came off of an assembly line, were extremely common, and they all were alike (barring post-factory modifications and damage), I would guess that you could steal a Model T, take the plates off of it, bring it over to the next town, and sell it as a used car from another state. Do this a couple of times, then move onto the next set of towns before people catch on. Stealing other types of cars might have been tougher, as they were more rare and more likely to be recognized.
The thing is, it's not always simplier and easier. Take climate control systems. In older cars, it was usually controlled by a few simple knobs or sliders, perhaps with a button or two to turn on the A/C and defroster. To change a setting takes a couple of seconds, usually can be done by feel alone once you became familiar with your car, and what the knobs and sliders did was obvious even if you had never seen that particular model before. Now we have complex systems, which usually involve navigating menus, looking at a screen, and multiple button presses even to change a single setting. Is this really better?
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I would say that a competent machinist, with access to the proper tools, could keep pretty much any car made until the late 1970's going indefinently. Just look at what they drive around in Cuba. As for more modern cars, after about 20-25 years, I'm going to guess that it'll be nearly impossible to find new replacement parts for the various electronic parts and sensors, and ditto for the things like the airbags. You'll also eventually run into problems with various plastic bushing and parts getting brittle and coming apart too - parts that used to be made of metal years ago. And you can't just machine a electronic board or a new sensor like you can for a part a 50 year old car needs. You'll only be able to keep a modern car going so long as you have a fleet of similar parts cars to salvage from. Once those cars are just shells, you're going to be stuck.
I'll take a "boring" Accord over some of other designs out there. The new Camry is butt-ugly (what were they thinking?), and sadly it seems that the rest of the Toyota's are going to emulate the look. To get this back on topic somewhat, Nissans are pretty ugly nowadays too, with the ricer lights and the sloping rooflines. Same with Mazda.
Explain how I bashed Vorbis. I'd really like to know. I said nothing about it as a codec.
I thought you were pulling out the whole "only 10 people care about Vorbis, haha!" line, but re-reading your post I see that wasn't your intent, my apologies. I should probably have directed my post to someone more like sokoban who also replied to your post.
Beside, unless you've got killer headphones I'd be very surprised if you could detect much difference between a 160kbps mp3 file and a Vorbis-encoded one. For portable players they're both fine.
You're right that I can't be able to tell higher bitrates apart, but I like being able to encode low bitrate OGG files to get the most of my 512MB flash player, as MP3 starts sounding bad at 96kbps or less, while OGG still sounds decent enough. I could also use WMA for the same purpose (my player supports it), but WMA leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Only because the color is emblematic of everything else wrong with the Zune. Skin it all you want, but the Zune is still hobbled by Microsoft's staggering failure to "get it."
They hit the sales target they were shooting for, which implies that they understood the market well enough to predict how many Zunes they were going to sell. I'd say they "get it".
Nothing at all happened to the concept of personal choice. But the original poster is still correct. Show me ten people who know about, care about, and prefer to use Ogg Vorbis and I'll show you at least nine, and probably ten, open source fans. And he's also correct in saying that if you had ripped the music to MP3 you could listen to it on practically anything.
What's with all the Vorbis bashing on slashdot these days? It's a superior codec than MP3, unencumbered by patents, absolutely free to use, and is supported by several brands of music players. The only real reason I can see to not like Vorbis is that Apple does not like Vorbis, and that's a stupid reason if you ask me.
Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil.
on
A Million Zunes Sold
·
· Score: 1
What about those people who don't carry their MP3 player out for you to see, and instead have it in their pocket/backpack/whatever. In that case, it could be anything, and you don't know. You also might want to keep in mind that Zune owners probably are more likely to carry their Zune in their pocket, due to embarassment.
On the other hand, it seems that each channel keeps wanting to increase their portion of the pie, and hence people's cable bill keeps growing and growing. This behavior is only going to hurt them in the end, as it seems that more and more people are just saying "screw it" and dropping cable (and satellite). If they don't start offering channels ala carte soon, they'll just end up losing all their customers to those that currently offer ala carte, such as Apple.
Ah, you've used Windows, I see. Installing things is much easier on pretty much every other platform (including macosx, most of the linux-based platforms, and most of the BSDs).
What are you talking about? One of the big problems in the Windows world right now is that applications are so easy to install, that the user often has to run special software just to keep applications them from installing all by themselves!
It might be that way for the first person who does it, or the first thousand people. But anything connected to transportation requires special infrastructure. Millions and millions of cars and trucks drive millions of miles per day, and consume millions of gallons of gasoline. Your local grocery store is not set up to handle the business your local two dozen gas stations currently handle.
Clearly you entirely missed the point he was making. The problem with a lot of alternative fuels is that you need special infrastructure to support it at all. However, no one is going to build the special infrastructure if there is no demand for it (due to no cars on the road that use the fuel), and no one is going to buy a car unless they are reasonably sure that they'll be able to buy fuel for it. It's a chicken and egg problem, and if you want to see it in action, take a look at the failures of natural gas and propane powered cars outside of some commercial fleets.
A starch powered car gets around this, as the infrastructure exists already to support them at the grocery store, atleast on a small scale. That means the early adopeters can buy the car and can be reasonably sure they can fuel it. As you point out, the current infrastructure cannot support every car on the road using starch, but if it starts to catch on, I can gaurentee that someone will see that there would be money to be made in developing the special infrastructure, and it would happen.
The worst part of using an Apple notebook is that you look like a total tool, especially with that giant, glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen. It's pretty much the same thing you see with trendy clothing, like Old Navy and Ambercrombie(sp?) and Fitch. I'll take my Thinkpad with the smaller, more discrete logo on the corner.
The lead in the CRT does a pretty good job of blocking the EM radiation from the CRT tube. I would be more concerned if you have the back of a CRT facing you for long periods of time (such as back to back desks or a similar configuration).
Insuring *your car* is totally optional. The manditory insurance is the insurance you have to buy in order to cover damage to other people and property that you might cause with it.
1) The Lenovo is cheaper but it's got a smaller smaller so I don't think that's a fair comparison. The screen is 14.1" and I don't think it was a widescreen.
They are both 1440x900 resolution widescreens. Sure, the Lenovo screen is smaller, but that means a smaller laptop, which is a good thing in my opinion.
2) Sales prices don't count because it's not a fair baseline comparison. Apple do have sales and discounts. I can argue that a Porche is cheaper than a Toyota because I happen to get one that some guy was liqudating in a divorce but that doesn't make the statement generally true. If you don't count the sales price, the Lenovo is $1,654.
Well, that would be like going to eBay, I didn't do that. In this case, we are both at their respective manufacturer's web store. The comparison is totally fair.
3) A better assessment is the Lenovo Thinkpad T60 Widescreen as it has almost identical specs: Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7400 (2.16GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB) Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 15.4 WSXGA+ TFT ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128M 1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM) 120GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim 2,018.00 base price
Well, if I wanted to buy that computer, I wouldn't pay $2018, I would pay $1513, an almost $500 savings. And I would have a higher resolution screen at 1680x1050 (what's with Apple and low DPI screens anyway?). I'm kind of surprised that there is no camera and bluetooth, but I guess that may be because the R61 is a newer model, and I would guess that the next version of the T series will have those options.
I have an older Sony alarm clock, and the way it handles DST is pretty simple yet effective. There is a single button on the side, that when pressed, advances the clock by one hour and turns on a DST indicator on the LCD display. Press the button again and the indicator is turned off and the clock goes back an hour. Makes the bi-yearly clock change a one click affair, where as all the other clocks you have to fiddle with them, especially in the fall when you set them back. And if the power goes out you have to press at most, one extra button when resetting the time. I'm surprised that no one else has seemed to pick up on this, it's about the best thing next to eliminating DST entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple laptops are all striaght clean lines, single color. Tasteful.
Then they have to go and screw it up by throwing a gigantic, highly visible, and sometimes glowing Apple logo somewhere on it. Completely tasteless, if you ask me.
iTunes doesn't have DRM in it. The iTunes music store does. iTunes is just an MP3 playing piece of software that CONNECTS to a service that sells "DRM-piece of shit" music, SHOULD YOU ALLOW/CHOOSE IT TO.
iTunes has DRM in it - how do you think it knows how to play files from the iTunes Music Store? Magic? It's much like the DRM in Mindows Vista. It's there, it won't interfere with non-DRM'd content, and if you stay away from DRM'd content it's effectively not even present. But to say it's not there at all is simply false.
Besides, biege boxes are so 1990's. Right now, black/silver is all the rage in the PC world, for better or for worse. I think at this point, if you want "boring beige", you'd pretty much have to build it yourself. And you'd still likely have to settle for a lower end case, as all the high end ones are not beige.
You'd be surprised. Kids like to steal cars like that because they are easy to hotwire (none of this chip business), or they can simply force the ignition if the parts have worn out due to thousands of starts. They then go joyriding for a while, then abandon the car once they get bored with it.
On the other hand, Model T's didn't have VIN numbers or anything like that. You probably didn't even have to deal with car titles either. Being that Model T's they came off of an assembly line, were extremely common, and they all were alike (barring post-factory modifications and damage), I would guess that you could steal a Model T, take the plates off of it, bring it over to the next town, and sell it as a used car from another state. Do this a couple of times, then move onto the next set of towns before people catch on. Stealing other types of cars might have been tougher, as they were more rare and more likely to be recognized.
The thing is, it's not always simplier and easier. Take climate control systems. In older cars, it was usually controlled by a few simple knobs or sliders, perhaps with a button or two to turn on the A/C and defroster. To change a setting takes a couple of seconds, usually can be done by feel alone once you became familiar with your car, and what the knobs and sliders did was obvious even if you had never seen that particular model before. Now we have complex systems, which usually involve navigating menus, looking at a screen, and multiple button presses even to change a single setting. Is this really better?
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I would say that a competent machinist, with access to the proper tools, could keep pretty much any car made until the late 1970's going indefinently. Just look at what they drive around in Cuba. As for more modern cars, after about 20-25 years, I'm going to guess that it'll be nearly impossible to find new replacement parts for the various electronic parts and sensors, and ditto for the things like the airbags. You'll also eventually run into problems with various plastic bushing and parts getting brittle and coming apart too - parts that used to be made of metal years ago. And you can't just machine a electronic board or a new sensor like you can for a part a 50 year old car needs. You'll only be able to keep a modern car going so long as you have a fleet of similar parts cars to salvage from. Once those cars are just shells, you're going to be stuck.
I'll take a "boring" Accord over some of other designs out there. The new Camry is butt-ugly (what were they thinking?), and sadly it seems that the rest of the Toyota's are going to emulate the look. To get this back on topic somewhat, Nissans are pretty ugly nowadays too, with the ricer lights and the sloping rooflines. Same with Mazda.
Explain how I bashed Vorbis. I'd really like to know. I said nothing about it as a codec.
I thought you were pulling out the whole "only 10 people care about Vorbis, haha!" line, but re-reading your post I see that wasn't your intent, my apologies. I should probably have directed my post to someone more like sokoban who also replied to your post.
Beside, unless you've got killer headphones I'd be very surprised if you could detect much difference between a 160kbps mp3 file and a Vorbis-encoded one. For portable players they're both fine.
You're right that I can't be able to tell higher bitrates apart, but I like being able to encode low bitrate OGG files to get the most of my 512MB flash player, as MP3 starts sounding bad at 96kbps or less, while OGG still sounds decent enough. I could also use WMA for the same purpose (my player supports it), but WMA leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
What is Steve Ballmer's uncle going to do with 1000000 zunes?
Build a house. A brick house, that is.
Only because the color is emblematic of everything else wrong with the Zune. Skin it all you want, but the Zune is still hobbled by Microsoft's staggering failure to "get it."
They hit the sales target they were shooting for, which implies that they understood the market well enough to predict how many Zunes they were going to sell. I'd say they "get it".
Nothing at all happened to the concept of personal choice. But the original poster is still correct. Show me ten people who know about, care about, and prefer to use Ogg Vorbis and I'll show you at least nine, and probably ten, open source fans. And he's also correct in saying that if you had ripped the music to MP3 you could listen to it on practically anything.
What's with all the Vorbis bashing on slashdot these days? It's a superior codec than MP3, unencumbered by patents, absolutely free to use, and is supported by several brands of music players. The only real reason I can see to not like Vorbis is that Apple does not like Vorbis, and that's a stupid reason if you ask me.
What about those people who don't carry their MP3 player out for you to see, and instead have it in their pocket/backpack/whatever. In that case, it could be anything, and you don't know. You also might want to keep in mind that Zune owners probably are more likely to carry their Zune in their pocket, due to embarassment.
On the other hand, it seems that each channel keeps wanting to increase their portion of the pie, and hence people's cable bill keeps growing and growing. This behavior is only going to hurt them in the end, as it seems that more and more people are just saying "screw it" and dropping cable (and satellite). If they don't start offering channels ala carte soon, they'll just end up losing all their customers to those that currently offer ala carte, such as Apple.
Ah, you've used Windows, I see. Installing things is much easier on pretty much every other platform (including macosx, most of the linux-based platforms, and most of the BSDs).
What are you talking about? One of the big problems in the Windows world right now is that applications are so easy to install, that the user often has to run special software just to keep applications them from installing all by themselves!
You mean there's so much Web 2.0 stuff out there that it adds up to 180% ?!
Yeap, we're actually at Web 3.1 right now. Just wait until Web 95.
WRONG.
It might be that way for the first person who does it, or the first thousand people. But anything connected to transportation requires special infrastructure. Millions and millions of cars and trucks drive millions of miles per day, and consume millions of gallons of gasoline. Your local grocery store is not set up to handle the business your local two dozen gas stations currently handle.
Clearly you entirely missed the point he was making. The problem with a lot of alternative fuels is that you need special infrastructure to support it at all. However, no one is going to build the special infrastructure if there is no demand for it (due to no cars on the road that use the fuel), and no one is going to buy a car unless they are reasonably sure that they'll be able to buy fuel for it. It's a chicken and egg problem, and if you want to see it in action, take a look at the failures of natural gas and propane powered cars outside of some commercial fleets.
A starch powered car gets around this, as the infrastructure exists already to support them at the grocery store, atleast on a small scale. That means the early adopeters can buy the car and can be reasonably sure they can fuel it. As you point out, the current infrastructure cannot support every car on the road using starch, but if it starts to catch on, I can gaurentee that someone will see that there would be money to be made in developing the special infrastructure, and it would happen.
Now I think of it, there is a fine line between us cheap grill nerds and poor rednecks...
v an_furnace.jpg
Ah, so is this your furnace?
http://www.oldhousestlouis.com/images/violations/
The worst part of using an Apple notebook is that you look like a total tool, especially with that giant, glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen. It's pretty much the same thing you see with trendy clothing, like Old Navy and Ambercrombie(sp?) and Fitch. I'll take my Thinkpad with the smaller, more discrete logo on the corner.
The lead in the CRT does a pretty good job of blocking the EM radiation from the CRT tube. I would be more concerned if you have the back of a CRT facing you for long periods of time (such as back to back desks or a similar configuration).
I would guess that part you see flying is actually the front driver's tire. It appears the front passenger tire also comes off if you watch closer.
Insuring *your car* is totally optional. The manditory insurance is the insurance you have to buy in order to cover damage to other people and property that you might cause with it.
Oh yeah? Well 127.0.0.0 - 127.255.255.255 is all mine!
1) The Lenovo is cheaper but it's got a smaller smaller so I don't think that's a fair comparison. The screen is 14.1" and I don't think it was a widescreen.
They are both 1440x900 resolution widescreens. Sure, the Lenovo screen is smaller, but that means a smaller laptop, which is a good thing in my opinion.
2) Sales prices don't count because it's not a fair baseline comparison. Apple do have sales and discounts. I can argue that a Porche is cheaper than a Toyota because I happen to get one that some guy was liqudating in a divorce but that doesn't make the statement generally true. If you don't count the sales price, the Lenovo is $1,654.
Well, that would be like going to eBay, I didn't do that. In this case, we are both at their respective manufacturer's web store. The comparison is totally fair.
3) A better assessment is the Lenovo Thinkpad T60 Widescreen as it has almost identical specs:
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7400 (2.16GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
15.4 WSXGA+ TFT
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128M
1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
120GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim
2,018.00 base price
Well, if I wanted to buy that computer, I wouldn't pay $2018, I would pay $1513, an almost $500 savings. And I would have a higher resolution screen at 1680x1050 (what's with Apple and low DPI screens anyway?). I'm kind of surprised that there is no camera and bluetooth, but I guess that may be because the R61 is a newer model, and I would guess that the next version of the T series will have those options.
I have an older Sony alarm clock, and the way it handles DST is pretty simple yet effective. There is a single button on the side, that when pressed, advances the clock by one hour and turns on a DST indicator on the LCD display. Press the button again and the indicator is turned off and the clock goes back an hour. Makes the bi-yearly clock change a one click affair, where as all the other clocks you have to fiddle with them, especially in the fall when you set them back. And if the power goes out you have to press at most, one extra button when resetting the time. I'm surprised that no one else has seemed to pick up on this, it's about the best thing next to eliminating DST entirely.