Spot on about Goa and Phuket - I have no idea why those two areas were picked when it's not exactly hard to find places in India or Thailand that don't run entirely on tourist dollars.
Laos is a good pick, especially in the north but Cambodia has become firmly entrenched on the tourist trail already. Not as bad as Vietnam, sure, but give it ten years...
Nokia Sports Tracker lets you export your workout data as KML files. It also supports GPX, XML, CSV or Google Earth compatible formats. You can locally access all the data whenever you want. And, as it uses open formats, you can upload your workouts to Google Maps and have them appear there.
In the UK, almost every university has at least one DC++ hub that a large portion of the student body knows about and uses. Many have customised installers that make it easy for lay people to get starting filesharing and, with computers so ubiquitous on campus, almost anyone has the knowledge to get involved.
The thing is, these massively efficient networks that often contain dozens of TiBs of data would not be nearly as widespread as they are if it weren't for unwritten university policies. If the university isn't on JANET, external bandwidth is expensive. If it is, bandwidth isn't metered as such, but it's in the institutions' interests to not rinse their external traffic too much especially with high upload rates favoured by P2P protocols such as Bittorrent. As such, students using massive amounts of external P2P bandwidth are quickly clamped down upon while they are simultaneously reminded that the existing LAN costs sweet fuck all. What's more, untold masses of viruses come in from kids searching for warez ftp sites or loading up KaZaA.
It doesn't take too long for the computer scientists to put two and two together and test the waters with a DC++ hub either within the university or outside. As long as users do not saturate the university network and hence impinge upon academic use, it's a win-win situation. College kids get the new Tool album for free without getting busted and the university avoids angry letters from the xxAA while seeing its bandwidth bills fall. As long as students don't make it the university's problem, they're happy to ignore it.
It's hard to see how the RIAA can achieve anything by this. After all, they are private networks and no university's computer office is going to give them access to their network if they have any sense. The kids will be forced back to torrents and such. As long as those running hubs are intelligent enough to delete logs and people are prepared to migrate to something like WASTE, the RIAA's efforts are futile.
WASTE isn't foolproof and is a lot more hassle than the current alternatives anyone can figure out. But yeah, I can see several busted DC++ networks migrating to encrypted sharing in the next few years.
No it wouldn't - as morse code is much less efficient, it would necessarily be slower despite the reduced finger travel and shorted codes for more common letters. The deciding factor was the input device.
The article only seems to mention using these distros as a means to introduce oneself easily to Linux. While this is an obvious use of Linux-on-CD type distros, it's by no means the only one. Personally, I've found these things to be fast enough for the difference to be barely perceptible from proper installs.
I've been using Knoppix for a while now and have found it to be really rather awesome. The possible uses are almost limitless and this will improve even more if the ability to write to NTFS volumes is ever introduced.
For example: Recently a friend managed to fuck up his Window XP install beyond repair. I burned him a copy of the ISO and Knoppix sorted it out in minutes. It's blisteringly fast, the hardware auto-detection has to be seen to be believed and the amount of software on that one disc is mindblowing. It's certainly worth keeping a CD copy handy...
However, I'm intrigued as to why MandrakeMove wasn't included in the article. I much prefer to use Knoppix because of its ability to mount hard drives, but MandrakeSoft have been very perceptive in their implementation of USB keys. By carrying around configuration options and personal data on a USB storage device, anyone equipped with a MandrakeMove disc can convert any CD-bootable PC around the world into an equivalent of their home desktop. Many people have predicted that this could become a lot more commonplace in the future where computer users would have to rely a lot less on a home workstation-centric lifestyle. I haven't investigated, but I would guess that persistence can be gained in Knoppix by somehow copying the contents of the ramdrive somewhere more permanent.
Yes, I realise this. But the thing is even if the iPod supported Ogg Vorbis that doesn't guarantee it would produce gapless playback. The iPod doesn't double-buffer so if your songs are bigger than 32MB you're screwed. Even worse, it consistently fails to provide gapless playback on.wavs...
Personally, I believe that crossfading is a poor substitute for true gapless. Ever tried playing some Pink Floyd or Tool?
Well, I'm no expert, but as far as I'm concerned all these features have been achieved across several successful and affordable players. I can't see it requiring a significant technological leap to put them all on one device. Most are simple tweaks (firmware updates and UI) or necessary for the easy playback of my music (sorting by tag info, gapless playback).
From what I've learned, it seems that the only people likely to be of any help in this matter are the makers of the Rio Karma. Why is it that Apple can put Solitaire and an address book on the iPod but are still incapable of pulling their thumbs out and including basic double buffering?
Sure, maybe I could live without the inline remote and FM tuner, but I can see no reason why manufacturers would leave out such features that require so little effort to include...
Yeah, I'm just worried about the menu-system and that little navigation teet. Even the iPod menus are a little bare and restrictive for my liking. I definitely would have to try it out to see if I can get to grips with the jog-button thingy. I've encountered far too many dodgy inputs similar to that to take its quality for granted. Is the Karma's shape uncomfortable at all, either?
Admittedly, it is a very impressive player. The aspect that attracts me most is the developers' positive attitude to their customers.' feedback Now all I need to do is wait for them to release an 80GB (or larger) version or at least find out how easy it is to hack it open myself. I forgot to mention that I'd find it quite convenient to be able to use it as a backup/portable HD as well as all the above;)
What the hell? I couldn't bear using iTunes. It's bloated and featureless. Its sole purpose is to help me steal music over the school network with the assistance of MyTunes.
I use EphPod to put music on my iPod. When I'm using GNU/Linux, XMMS is my musical staple. If I'm booted into Windows, I'll use WinAMP 2.x to play my music over iTunes every time. iTunes has shitty encoding options - it doesn't even come close to EAC with LAME or whatever your encoder of choice is. However, my biggest complaint about iTunes is its insatiable hunger for resources and slow response. Plus, it takes up half my screen, has zero customisability and I can't find a half-decent visualisation for it anyway.
I bought a second generation 20GB iPod soon after they came out. However, I now have more music than I can fit on it and I'm getting interested in re-ripping my tracks at higher quality or even investigating FLAC. Also, Apple is doing me a disservice by preventing me from using Ogg-Vorbis which I still think is superior to LAME's output. If I download.oggs, I then have to go through decompression and another round of lossy compression to create mp3s that will play on my iPod.
As such, I'm very interested in the latest releases of hard-drive based mp3 players. I especially like the look of the iRiver players and I'm hoping to try out my friend's new Rio Karma. Nevertheless, I will have to save up again if I want to get a new player and there are a few minimum feature requirements I can't help thinking would be easy to include on a new player.
Native Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC support
Regular firmware updates that include customer suggestions
Optional remote (preferably with its own display
Ability to input audio via line-in and/or microphone. On-the-fly encoding not required
FM radio tuner
Semi-decent interface with well-organised playlisting and options. So many cheap flash-based players coming out of Asia these days have terrible interfaces. Also, an iPod-style scroll wheel or similar input device is necessary for scrolling through thousands of songs
Ability to sort folders/playlists by date, album, last modified, year and artist et cetera (i.e. dynamic rearranging of playlists, song lists according to ID3 tab information)
Access to other parts of tag information including year and lyrics
On-the-fly playlisting
Gapless playback
USB 2.0 or Firewire connectivity. Additional ethernet highly desirable
Can be mounted as external hard drive
15+ hour replaceable battery essential
I don't give a shit for ITMS compatibility or crappy organiser-style features or games. I just want to be able to fit all my songs in my pocket and find the right tunes to play when on the train. Is it really too much to ask?
From the FAQ: "You may freely use the images you find on our site, as long as it is not for commercial use. You may not modify the images. If you intend to use any of the images on a website, please acknowledge that it originates from ESA. For more information, see our Terms and conditions of use."
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Of course. I don't defend the action to try and censor any website or organisation on any level, I was merely stating that I understand why someone who is intent upon censoring all views opposed to theirs would start a vendetta against this group.
This a group that goes far beyond any notion of being reasonable and actively discourages negotiations of any sort. I suspect that even Bush is obliged to condemn these people. There is no way that these website can be contrived to be deemed to be speaking for Isralis.
Slashdot Mirror
Spot on about Goa and Phuket - I have no idea why those two areas were picked when it's not exactly hard to find places in India or Thailand that don't run entirely on tourist dollars. Laos is a good pick, especially in the north but Cambodia has become firmly entrenched on the tourist trail already. Not as bad as Vietnam, sure, but give it ten years...
Nokia Sports Tracker lets you export your workout data as KML files. It also supports GPX, XML, CSV or Google Earth compatible formats. You can locally access all the data whenever you want. And, as it uses open formats, you can upload your workouts to Google Maps and have them appear there.
http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.sh tml
In the UK, almost every university has at least one DC++ hub that a large portion of the student body knows about and uses. Many have customised installers that make it easy for lay people to get starting filesharing and, with computers so ubiquitous on campus, almost anyone has the knowledge to get involved.
The thing is, these massively efficient networks that often contain dozens of TiBs of data would not be nearly as widespread as they are if it weren't for unwritten university policies. If the university isn't on JANET, external bandwidth is expensive. If it is, bandwidth isn't metered as such, but it's in the institutions' interests to not rinse their external traffic too much especially with high upload rates favoured by P2P protocols such as Bittorrent. As such, students using massive amounts of external P2P bandwidth are quickly clamped down upon while they are simultaneously reminded that the existing LAN costs sweet fuck all. What's more, untold masses of viruses come in from kids searching for warez ftp sites or loading up KaZaA.
It doesn't take too long for the computer scientists to put two and two together and test the waters with a DC++ hub either within the university or outside. As long as users do not saturate the university network and hence impinge upon academic use, it's a win-win situation. College kids get the new Tool album for free without getting busted and the university avoids angry letters from the xxAA while seeing its bandwidth bills fall. As long as students don't make it the university's problem, they're happy to ignore it.
It's hard to see how the RIAA can achieve anything by this. After all, they are private networks and no university's computer office is going to give them access to their network if they have any sense. The kids will be forced back to torrents and such. As long as those running hubs are intelligent enough to delete logs and people are prepared to migrate to something like WASTE, the RIAA's efforts are futile.
WASTE isn't foolproof and is a lot more hassle than the current alternatives anyone can figure out. But yeah, I can see several busted DC++ networks migrating to encrypted sharing in the next few years.
It's worse than that - I'm sure many people use their livejournal password and email address on PayPal, eBay and other secure sites.
Actually, I have it compressed down to 254 GiB at decent quality,
I use SI units - tebibytes.
No it wouldn't - as morse code is much less efficient, it would necessarily be slower despite the reduced finger travel and shorted codes for more common letters. The deciding factor was the input device.
I'd really hope it was fresh. Because the UK laws are what they are, it's much more likely to be the former...
You rule. We need more front page stories about psychedelics.
Which are more than paid for by their advestisments and increasingly stranglehold on the market.
The article only seems to mention using these distros as a means to introduce oneself easily to Linux. While this is an obvious use of Linux-on-CD type distros, it's by no means the only one. Personally, I've found these things to be fast enough for the difference to be barely perceptible from proper installs.
I've been using Knoppix for a while now and have found it to be really rather awesome. The possible uses are almost limitless and this will improve even more if the ability to write to NTFS volumes is ever introduced.
For example: Recently a friend managed to fuck up his Window XP install beyond repair. I burned him a copy of the ISO and Knoppix sorted it out in minutes. It's blisteringly fast, the hardware auto-detection has to be seen to be believed and the amount of software on that one disc is mindblowing. It's certainly worth keeping a CD copy handy...
However, I'm intrigued as to why MandrakeMove wasn't included in the article. I much prefer to use Knoppix because of its ability to mount hard drives, but MandrakeSoft have been very perceptive in their implementation of USB keys. By carrying around configuration options and personal data on a USB storage device, anyone equipped with a MandrakeMove disc can convert any CD-bootable PC around the world into an equivalent of their home desktop. Many people have predicted that this could become a lot more commonplace in the future where computer users would have to rely a lot less on a home workstation-centric lifestyle. I haven't investigated, but I would guess that persistence can be gained in Knoppix by somehow copying the contents of the ramdrive somewhere more permanent.
Yes, I realise this. But the thing is even if the iPod supported Ogg Vorbis that doesn't guarantee it would produce gapless playback. The iPod doesn't double-buffer so if your songs are bigger than 32MB you're screwed. Even worse, it consistently fails to provide gapless playback on .wavs...
Personally, I believe that crossfading is a poor substitute for true gapless. Ever tried playing some Pink Floyd or Tool?
Well, I'm no expert, but as far as I'm concerned all these features have been achieved across several successful and affordable players. I can't see it requiring a significant technological leap to put them all on one device. Most are simple tweaks (firmware updates and UI) or necessary for the easy playback of my music (sorting by tag info, gapless playback).
From what I've learned, it seems that the only people likely to be of any help in this matter are the makers of the Rio Karma. Why is it that Apple can put Solitaire and an address book on the iPod but are still incapable of pulling their thumbs out and including basic double buffering?
Sure, maybe I could live without the inline remote and FM tuner, but I can see no reason why manufacturers would leave out such features that require so little effort to include...
Yeah, I'm just worried about the menu-system and that little navigation teet. Even the iPod menus are a little bare and restrictive for my liking. I definitely would have to try it out to see if I can get to grips with the jog-button thingy. I've encountered far too many dodgy inputs similar to that to take its quality for granted. Is the Karma's shape uncomfortable at all, either?
Admittedly, it is a very impressive player. The aspect that attracts me most is the developers' positive attitude to their customers.' feedback Now all I need to do is wait for them to release an 80GB (or larger) version or at least find out how easy it is to hack it open myself. I forgot to mention that I'd find it quite convenient to be able to use it as a backup/portable HD as well as all the above ;)
What the hell? I couldn't bear using iTunes. It's bloated and featureless. Its sole purpose is to help me steal music over the school network with the assistance of MyTunes.
I use EphPod to put music on my iPod. When I'm using GNU/Linux, XMMS is my musical staple. If I'm booted into Windows, I'll use WinAMP 2.x to play my music over iTunes every time. iTunes has shitty encoding options - it doesn't even come close to EAC with LAME or whatever your encoder of choice is. However, my biggest complaint about iTunes is its insatiable hunger for resources and slow response. Plus, it takes up half my screen, has zero customisability and I can't find a half-decent visualisation for it anyway.
Good software, my eye.
I bought a second generation 20GB iPod soon after they came out. However, I now have more music than I can fit on it and I'm getting interested in re-ripping my tracks at higher quality or even investigating FLAC. Also, Apple is doing me a disservice by preventing me from using Ogg-Vorbis which I still think is superior to LAME's output. If I download .oggs, I then have to go through decompression and another round of lossy compression to create mp3s that will play on my iPod.
As such, I'm very interested in the latest releases of hard-drive based mp3 players. I especially like the look of the iRiver players and I'm hoping to try out my friend's new Rio Karma. Nevertheless, I will have to save up again if I want to get a new player and there are a few minimum feature requirements I can't help thinking would be easy to include on a new player.
I don't give a shit for ITMS compatibility or crappy organiser-style features or games. I just want to be able to fit all my songs in my pocket and find the right tunes to play when on the train. Is it really too much to ask?
From the FAQ: "You may freely use the images you find on our site, as long as it is not for commercial use. You may not modify the images. If you intend to use any of the images on a website, please acknowledge that it originates from ESA. For more information, see our Terms and conditions of use."
However, in those terms and conditions, it goes on to say the following:
"The contents of the ESA Web Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for users' personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its website or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Use of material on the website is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.
All material published on the ESA Web Portal is protected by copyright and owned or controlled by ESA or the party credited as the provider of the content, software or other material.
Users may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the content, software, material or services, in whole or in part, without obtaining prior written authorisation. In order to obtain authorisation to display or use any content of the ESA Web Portal, please make a request for authorization by clicking on 'Contact us'."
Damnations.
Ewww. A badly organised hard disk clogged up with trash like WinAMP 3.0?
Not quite.
They both have much greater number of common divisors:base unit ratios.
12: 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1.
6: 6, 3, 2, 1.
10: 10, 5, 2, 1.
Of course. I don't defend the action to try and censor any website or organisation on any level, I was merely stating that I understand why someone who is intent upon censoring all views opposed to theirs would start a vendetta against this group.
Yeah, but when you actually read the website you can kind of see why...
This a group that goes far beyond any notion of being reasonable and actively discourages negotiations of any sort. I suspect that even Bush is obliged to condemn these people. There is no way that these website can be contrived to be deemed to be speaking for Isralis.