There is not land at the Artic - the Artic is a place not a continent because it is ice not land!
The article is completely incorrect Countries Plan Land Rush in Warming Arctic no, that is impossible. Antartic yes that's possible. At the Artic no, because there is no land, and if there is no land and the ice melts away the 'building' isn't a building as we would know it - it is a ship - in international waters.
The Kuro5hin article makes the point: Wikipedia has an explicit anti-elitist philosophy. Instituting a 'rely on the expert' system would be a massive change in the ethos of the (remaining) site founders.
It is one, IMHO, that is essential for the widespread adoption of it as anything greater than a casual 'with a pinch of salt' source of information.
I know that this has been talked about before on Slashdot but I think the most disturbing thing about Echelon isn't the hardware (although I'd bet there is a great deal more to it than the current article talks about) but the fact that it is used to spy on whoever it happens to pickup. A certain keyword in a communication is all that it takes to get Echelon's attention and then you are in it's grasp.
If you happen to be a U.S. citizen or resident, it is unlawful for the U.S. government to monitor your communications without a warrant. This is no problem for Echelon, the Canadians or the Brits will do it for the U.S. It is one giant loophole for the governments involved to spy on their own people as well as anyone else.
I don't really have that much to hide but I do value my rights and my privacy so that bothers me. I know that the powers-that-be justify this as being part of the defense of the free world, that this is a necessary component on the war on terrorisiom and that such draconian measures are justified to keep us safe. But, if I have to give up my rights, my privlidges as a resident of a free country, I can't accept that explaination. Simply because the tool has become a tool of a different kind of terror. It is a took used by a represive government, used against it's own people.
I fear a repressive regime in my own country far more than I fear Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen.
So many of the changes made since 9/11 have played into the hands of terrorists. The changes have made the way we live, the way we travel, and the way we do business much more restrictive and expensive. Airport security is probably the most glaring example of this. We aren't anonymous travelers just getting from place to place anymore. We are electronically monitored, our travels documented. Those TSA agents and airport police aren't free - every traveler and every citizen pays for them.
Echelon is worse than that in some ways. We don't know if or when our conversations and other communications are monitored. It is hidden from our view, shielded behind a digital curtain of secrecy. If it is used against us, we will probably never know.
Some people probably say: "What's the big deal if it is also used to catch drug dealers anyway? They are just criminals." I can understand that position but have to say that it is a pretty narrow view. The truth is that you can't make two wrongs make a right. A regime that turns it's military against it's own people isn't very far from being the enemy. This is the kind of thing that the Gestapo did in Germany. It is just wrong.
I'm glad to think that I live in a free country. I'm just not sure that we are as free as we think we are. I'm afraid that we already have our own version of "secret police."
I've really never understood this difference, usually cited by Americans, between CVs and resumes.
Yeah, I can look in a dictionary for a difference, but this is one of those cases where 'one language, two meanings' really comes into play for the English language. Both words, of course, are not English, but French (resume - OK I can't be bothered to get acutes into slashcode) and Latin (CV ). Both words have been adopted by English common usage, but English does not have an acute on 'e' in its scope so 'resume' [raesumae] cannot be an 'English' word, and CV is just a couple of letters, not a word.
Curriculum Vitae: Loosely translated, this means "course of one's life" [Latin does not translate directly].
Resume: Summary [more or less] BTW I'm not a great one for direct translation of languages as nuances and subtleties are often lost
But lanaguage is functional. A CV could be a one page document, if one were succinct, a resume could be a summary, but a summary of what (resume with no context means nothing), a document entitled 'John Doe - Resume' surely means a summary of John Doe (if one were to interpret in English), so what is the difference of 'John Doe - CV'?! Defining the difference between the terms is looking for a difference for a difference's sake.
A CV refers to what someone would submit for a job application, as would a resume. Someone would be mad to write a 10 page essay about their life [common interpretation of 'CV'] equally someone would be mad to submit a 2 line summary of their skills and previous position titles [possible interpretation of 'resume']. Drawing a distinction between the two, or saying one is better than the other is folly. I would be interested in what others think, but in the US a resume seems to be a 1-2 page document, a CV a long document, in the UK a CV is a 1-2 page document, the term resume is rarely used, what about Canada, Australia, countries for which English ios a second language?
Basically, adapt your resume/CV/description to what you apply for: list in descending chronological order (with some potential variation of importance), add some 'summary paragraph' that sells yourself near the top, stay relevant. Always include a covering letter.
an indictment of careless users and one of the sloppier Pirate2Pirate filesharing tools
Certainly suggests some prejudice from the story poster - to me this episode sounds like an indictment of careless admins. Why they jump on P2P being pirate I don't know, but I point out that if the story poster was related to the case, fail to acknowledge they are a related party, and the case ends up in legal predeedings, they have may have prejudiced the whole thing.
24 hours solid posting! Excellent, Michael you are my hero!!!
The regularity of interval between posts and other;site features' (I am a registered 'troll') shows slashdot.org is truely a site created by the readers and used by the readers, a true meriotcricy and not at all subject to groupthink of the OS community.
Could/.'s scripts be termed an intelligent life form? They certainly appear near-Turing complete. If someone adds a line of code stating 'I am Perl, I exist'... then they become self conscious life (memes certainly demonstrate 'life') and any deletion is surely a breach of Article 1 of the Startrek bill of rights.
Really? I thought boys were more likely to be born, but because of higher infant and jeuvinile death rates by the age 18 is reached girls outnumber boys.
The only way you can "prove" your program is correct is by mangling the specification one way or another.
Absolutely not... By the tone of your post I'm not sure if you don't understand or are bitter.
There are inputs, there are outputs. Inputs are clearly defined, outputs are clearly defined. The 'program' translates inputs to outputs. Pretty simple, eh?! In the most basic program inputs are verified, parsed/analysed, and a product is created. If it sounds simple that's because it is.
You rightly state Specifications should be kept simple so customers and developers can both understand them and easily talk about them. Absolutely so. As developers we exist to solve a problem or solve someone else's problem (/improve the solution). Something is presented to us and we find a neat way to do it - the technicalities in doing this shouldn't feature to the customer, if they do the customer has become a project manager (manager rather than steerer) and the ball games changes somewhat. Effective communication between customer consists:
-- Customer: I want to do X
Developer: What exactly is X? Do you have a way to do this presently you are happy/unhappy with? Do you need something improving? Do you have a fixed methodological framework/ do you need a new methodolical framework set out? Do you have a strict series of inputs or are you looking to be flexible with this?
Customer: Yes/no/something
Developer: I can do that for $$$ in ttt time. --
Developer was a stretch, more like a consultant, but consultants and developers work together, consultants getting in implementing specs, developers fed by consultants. Your point... "The only way you can "prove" your program is correct is by mangling the specification one way or another" is absolutely false... inputs are finite and outputs are finite... given inputs outputs can always be proved to be correct (according ti the specification).
There may be bad guys involved in these things, but that doesn't exclude any one of us from acting morally and ethically: Recently times have been hard, but if the temptation to act immorally, unethically or illegally enters anyone reading this, you should reject it. It is better to put a more modest meal on the family's table and to be proud you are, and to provide, an honest and decent role model than to give material and unnecessary consumer goods for short-term materialistic desires.
If you don't have your morality, you have nothing. Temptation can be strong, but you can rest easy every night knowing you are living within your means, you will not be arrested, and you are providing the best possible existence for yourself and family.
One one hand, I can understand bugs cropping up here-and-there, on the other I struggle.
From the article: Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do...
When I did compsci at Uni we had to logically prove each of our programs. This was not easy, but it made it impossible for a program to crash or have a bug - inputs clearly defined, outputs clearly reached - this was at a mid-high level, but applies bottom up - binary into assembly up the chain. It is totally possible to write bug-free code, but damn hard.
In the end of the day we are talking engineers, not scientists with their head in the clouds. Total bug-free code can be written, but a different version will have to be proved for every iteration of processor, address space, hardware combo, program interaction. This is time-consuming and costly. Mission critical apps can be proved perfect, for diverse massive office suites it's not worth the effort. I'd rather spend $200 on MS Office and have it crash now-and-again rather than spend $10k+ for a dedicated piece of hardware with millions of hours of development into getting it running on that equipment. In the latter bug-free case Open SOurce would find it incredibly hard to exist because of the wide diversification that benefits a smaller user-base.
It is a trade-off... on the one hand I suffer the odd crash and incompatibility with a cheap product with massive functionality, on the other I spend a massive portion of my income preventing problems which wouldn't be major anyway and accepting vastly reduced functionality with it. I do OK with a cheap and acceptable product and my income intact, or OO.o with even more of my income intact, MS do OK with big profits or OO.o developers enjoy more kudos and associated benefits. For apps with a higher degree of secutity necessary, such as a web browser, email client, or file/web server, I get choice of what to use - again with a whole range of trade-offs: Lynx for speed and securtiy through IE for compatibility but little security. MS doing OK with $$$ from what benefit IE has given them is less acceptable.
I'd rather my product able to do core requirements (security for a webborwser which MS fail at IMHO, to functionality for an Office suite which they have excelled at since 97) now with minor bugs (in non core/critical areas) - have you seriously encountered bugs necessary (probability and loss weighted across the population) to justify the massively higher costs of development?
Insert predictable rant here about how there are no bugs in Free software because any user could fix the bug themselves...
I agree. No doubt there will be a few who suggest the many-eyes approach will fix all the world's evils... it won't, it will let a developer who can be bothered to sift through the thousands/millions of lines of code necessary to fix the bug - this is a dedicated programmer and deserves credit for that... the world is not full of a large number of dedicated intelligent programmers who have time to do this for all, or even a small fraction of code they encounter - if you use Open SOurce (I use BSD/Windows with open/prop apps, don't bother with the 'jokes') do really look through every line of code looking for a buffer overflow exploit, do you pro-rata what you look through with the assumed userbase, do you assume others will do the QC/QA/peer review? Sure it could be made to be ultra-secure, and for this I am all in favour of Open Source (there is absolutely no security through obscurity, as those that need to know will know), but I really have a gripe with those that blindly use the many-eyes assumption and group-think, auto-mod others who disagree. If you want to criticise MS Office, then do something about it.
MS Office is massive, MS Office may be bloated to those who does not use all those features (and who does?!), but the idea of modulising Office suites, good or bad idea that may be, died miserabley in the last 90s.
MS Office is inferior, functionality and UI wise, to specialist applications made for a certain job - I would never do serious statistical analysis in Excel nor would i distribute a Word doc, nor would I make a webpage in Word(!).
Criticise it for valid reason, not knee-jerk group think, but it does serve as a good lowest-common-denominator suite that integrates OK for an intermediate solution. Open software may also suck at many tasks, but carries the benefit it is open. If I see the 'many eyes' justification for all opensource software refered to again, without proper justification I think I will throw my computer out of the window - please mods - don't just mod something down because you disagree with it, if you disagree contribute and bring effective discussion rather than pushing an opinion out of the room - save downmods for things which are clearly Offtopic, Flamebait or Trollish (and baiting discussion is not Flamebait, it is Discussion-Bait).
They have v. little need to take up their own bandwidth - just use BitTorrent (many independent trackers so all the half-wits don't superseed and make the torrent unservable).
Cheap for them (lower costs always go down well, plus a chance for someone to get brownie points with the finance department), fast for us, easy DL for everyone. Technology, huh?!
Present CD/DVD drives will not run this, so no difference there making this a different size. Future drives capable of reading/writing this could be made to also read/write CDs and DVDs just as they are today - just have a different sized groove, like CD drives can play mini-CDs today. It is nothing like Laserdisc which was way way ahead of its time - so much so when it was at its peak most computers (certainly CISCs) had no where near the horsepower to read the file format (though some RISCs could).
The iPod is excellent for its size, speed, and storage. But instead of shelling out for a new one, try finding an older iPod with a dead battery that someone is trying to unload. Maybe for $50 on eBay, or something.
It may not be able to hold a charge on its own, but it still works great as a tiny bus-powered firewire hard drive. An external firewire drive doesn't hold a charge, either, so what's the difference?
And if down the road your needs change, you can always replace the battery for $50 and you've got yourself a music player!
Slashdot Mirror
There is not land at the Artic - the Artic is a place not a continent because it is ice not land!
The article is completely incorrect Countries Plan Land Rush in Warming Arctic no, that is impossible. Antartic yes that's possible. At the Artic no, because there is no land, and if there is no land and the ice melts away the 'building' isn't a building as we would know it - it is a ship - in international waters.
The Sun is an example of everything wrong with British journalism.
No. The Sun is an example of everything whihc is wrong with Britian.
Discuss.
has a knee jerk reaction without thinking?! Only 1 in today's issue?!
Someone that founds an encyclopedia has an interest in knowledge? Wow, get your tin foil hat on now!
The Kuro5hin article makes the point: Wikipedia has an explicit anti-elitist philosophy. Instituting a 'rely on the expert' system would be a massive change in the ethos of the (remaining) site founders.
It is one, IMHO, that is essential for the widespread adoption of it as anything greater than a casual 'with a pinch of salt' source of information.
...when i get locked PDFs. Just take a screenshot of the document. Easy.
Isn't vendor neutral.
FOAD
I know that this has been talked about before on Slashdot but I think the most disturbing thing about Echelon isn't the hardware (although I'd bet there is a great deal more to it than the current article talks about) but the fact that it is used to spy on whoever it happens to pickup. A certain keyword in a communication is all that it takes to get Echelon's attention and then you are in it's grasp.
If you happen to be a U.S. citizen or resident, it is unlawful for the U.S. government to monitor your communications without a warrant. This is no problem for Echelon, the Canadians or the Brits will do it for the U.S. It is one giant loophole for the governments involved to spy on their own people as well as anyone else.
I don't really have that much to hide but I do value my rights and my privacy so that bothers me. I know that the powers-that-be justify this as being part of the defense of the free world, that this is a necessary component on the war on terrorisiom and that such draconian measures are justified to keep us safe. But, if I have to give up my rights, my privlidges as a resident of a free country, I can't accept that explaination. Simply because the tool has become a tool of a different kind of terror. It is a took used by a represive government, used against it's own people.
I fear a repressive regime in my own country far more than I fear Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen.
So many of the changes made since 9/11 have played into the hands of terrorists. The changes have made the way we live, the way we travel, and the way we do business much more restrictive and expensive. Airport security is probably the most glaring example of this. We aren't anonymous travelers just getting from place to place anymore. We are electronically monitored, our travels documented. Those TSA agents and airport police aren't free - every traveler and every citizen pays for them.
Echelon is worse than that in some ways. We don't know if or when our conversations and other communications are monitored. It is hidden from our view, shielded behind a digital curtain of secrecy. If it is used against us, we will probably never know.
Some people probably say: "What's the big deal if it is also used to catch drug dealers anyway? They are just criminals." I can understand that position but have to say that it is a pretty narrow view. The truth is that you can't make two wrongs make a right. A regime that turns it's military against it's own people isn't very far from being the enemy. This is the kind of thing that the Gestapo did in Germany. It is just wrong.
I'm glad to think that I live in a free country. I'm just not sure that we are as free as we think we are. I'm afraid that we already have our own version of "secret police."
I've really never understood this difference, usually cited by Americans, between CVs and resumes.
Yeah, I can look in a dictionary for a difference, but this is one of those cases where 'one language, two meanings' really comes into play for the English language. Both words, of course, are not English, but French (resume - OK I can't be bothered to get acutes into slashcode) and Latin (CV ). Both words have been adopted by English common usage, but English does not have an acute on 'e' in its scope so 'resume' [raesumae] cannot be an 'English' word, and CV is just a couple of letters, not a word.
Curriculum Vitae: Loosely translated, this means "course of one's life" [Latin does not translate directly].
Resume: Summary [more or less]
BTW I'm not a great one for direct translation of languages as nuances and subtleties are often lost
But lanaguage is functional. A CV could be a one page document, if one were succinct, a resume could be a summary, but a summary of what (resume with no context means nothing), a document entitled 'John Doe - Resume' surely means a summary of John Doe (if one were to interpret in English), so what is the difference of 'John Doe - CV'?! Defining the difference between the terms is looking for a difference for a difference's sake.
A CV refers to what someone would submit for a job application, as would a resume. Someone would be mad to write a 10 page essay about their life [common interpretation of 'CV'] equally someone would be mad to submit a 2 line summary of their skills and previous position titles [possible interpretation of 'resume']. Drawing a distinction between the two, or saying one is better than the other is folly. I would be interested in what others think, but in the US a resume seems to be a 1-2 page document, a CV a long document, in the UK a CV is a 1-2 page document, the term resume is rarely used, what about Canada, Australia, countries for which English ios a second language?
Basically, adapt your resume/CV/description to what you apply for: list in descending chronological order (with some potential variation of importance), add some 'summary paragraph' that sells yourself near the top, stay relevant. Always include a covering letter.
Absolutely bang on!
an indictment of careless users and one of the sloppier Pirate2Pirate filesharing tools
Certainly suggests some prejudice from the story poster - to me this episode sounds like an indictment of careless admins. Why they jump on P2P being pirate I don't know, but I point out that if the story poster was related to the case, fail to acknowledge they are a related party, and the case ends up in legal predeedings, they have may have prejudiced the whole thing.
The wonder that is slashcode has been updated so only subscribers can FP.
Please note than IP banning does not work if you use Primedius.
24 hours solid posting! Excellent, Michael you are my hero!!!
;site features' (I am a registered 'troll') shows slashdot.org is truely a site created by the readers and used by the readers, a true meriotcricy and not at all subject to groupthink of the OS community.
/.'s scripts be termed an intelligent life form? They certainly appear near-Turing complete. If someone adds a line of code stating 'I am Perl, I exist'... then they become self conscious life (memes certainly demonstrate 'life') and any deletion is surely a breach of Article 1 of the Startrek bill of rights.
The regularity of interval between posts and other
Could
Really? I thought boys were more likely to be born, but because of higher infant and jeuvinile death rates by the age 18 is reached girls outnumber boys.
So succinct and go true. Kudos.
Big Macs suck compared to Whoppers coz Whoppers have tomatos. Won Tun Soup is best though.
The only way you can "prove" your program is correct is by mangling the specification one way or another.
Absolutely not... By the tone of your post I'm not sure if you don't understand or are bitter.
There are inputs, there are outputs. Inputs are clearly defined, outputs are clearly defined. The 'program' translates inputs to outputs. Pretty simple, eh?! In the most basic program inputs are verified, parsed/analysed, and a product is created. If it sounds simple that's because it is.
You rightly state Specifications should be kept simple so customers and developers can both understand them and easily talk about them. Absolutely so. As developers we exist to solve a problem or solve someone else's problem (/improve the solution). Something is presented to us and we find a neat way to do it - the technicalities in doing this shouldn't feature to the customer, if they do the customer has become a project manager (manager rather than steerer) and the ball games changes somewhat. Effective communication between customer consists:
--
Customer: I want to do X
Developer: What exactly is X? Do you have a way to do this presently you are happy/unhappy with? Do you need something improving? Do you have a fixed methodological framework/ do you need a new methodolical framework set out? Do you have a strict series of inputs or are you looking to be flexible with this?
Customer: Yes/no/something
Developer: I can do that for $$$ in ttt time.
--
Developer was a stretch, more like a consultant, but consultants and developers work together, consultants getting in implementing specs, developers fed by consultants. Your point... "The only way you can "prove" your program is correct is by mangling the specification one way or another" is absolutely false... inputs are finite and outputs are finite... given inputs outputs can always be proved to be correct (according ti the specification).
There may be bad guys involved in these things, but that doesn't exclude any one of us from acting morally and ethically: Recently times have been hard, but if the temptation to act immorally, unethically or illegally enters anyone reading this, you should reject it. It is better to put a more modest meal on the family's table and to be proud you are, and to provide, an honest and decent role model than to give material and unnecessary consumer goods for short-term materialistic desires.
If you don't have your morality, you have nothing. Temptation can be strong, but you can rest easy every night knowing you are living within your means, you will not be arrested, and you are providing the best possible existence for yourself and family.
One one hand, I can understand bugs cropping up here-and-there, on the other I struggle.
From the article: Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do...
When I did compsci at Uni we had to logically prove each of our programs. This was not easy, but it made it impossible for a program to crash or have a bug - inputs clearly defined, outputs clearly reached - this was at a mid-high level, but applies bottom up - binary into assembly up the chain. It is totally possible to write bug-free code, but damn hard.
In the end of the day we are talking engineers, not scientists with their head in the clouds. Total bug-free code can be written, but a different version will have to be proved for every iteration of processor, address space, hardware combo, program interaction. This is time-consuming and costly. Mission critical apps can be proved perfect, for diverse massive office suites it's not worth the effort. I'd rather spend $200 on MS Office and have it crash now-and-again rather than spend $10k+ for a dedicated piece of hardware with millions of hours of development into getting it running on that equipment. In the latter bug-free case Open SOurce would find it incredibly hard to exist because of the wide diversification that benefits a smaller user-base.
It is a trade-off... on the one hand I suffer the odd crash and incompatibility with a cheap product with massive functionality, on the other I spend a massive portion of my income preventing problems which wouldn't be major anyway and accepting vastly reduced functionality with it. I do OK with a cheap and acceptable product and my income intact, or OO.o with even more of my income intact, MS do OK with big profits or OO.o developers enjoy more kudos and associated benefits. For apps with a higher degree of secutity necessary, such as a web browser, email client, or file/web server, I get choice of what to use - again with a whole range of trade-offs: Lynx for speed and securtiy through IE for compatibility but little security. MS doing OK with $$$ from what benefit IE has given them is less acceptable.
I'd rather my product able to do core requirements (security for a webborwser which MS fail at IMHO, to functionality for an Office suite which they have excelled at since 97) now with minor bugs (in non core/critical areas) - have you seriously encountered bugs necessary (probability and loss weighted across the population) to justify the massively higher costs of development?
Insert predictable rant here about how there are no bugs in Free software because any user could fix the bug themselves...
I agree. No doubt there will be a few who suggest the many-eyes approach will fix all the world's evils... it won't, it will let a developer who can be bothered to sift through the thousands/millions of lines of code necessary to fix the bug - this is a dedicated programmer and deserves credit for that... the world is not full of a large number of dedicated intelligent programmers who have time to do this for all, or even a small fraction of code they encounter - if you use Open SOurce (I use BSD/Windows with open/prop apps, don't bother with the 'jokes') do really look through every line of code looking for a buffer overflow exploit, do you pro-rata what you look through with the assumed userbase, do you assume others will do the QC/QA/peer review? Sure it could be made to be ultra-secure, and for this I am all in favour of Open Source (there is absolutely no security through obscurity, as those that need to know will know), but I really have a gripe with those that blindly use the many-eyes assumption and group-think, auto-mod others who disagree. If you want to criticise MS Office, then do something about it.
MS Office is massive, MS Office may be bloated to those who does not use all those features (and who does?!), but the idea of modulising Office suites, good or bad idea that may be, died miserabley in the last 90s.
MS Office is inferior, functionality and UI wise, to specialist applications made for a certain job - I would never do serious statistical analysis in Excel nor would i distribute a Word doc, nor would I make a webpage in Word(!).
Criticise it for valid reason, not knee-jerk group think, but it does serve as a good lowest-common-denominator suite that integrates OK for an intermediate solution. Open software may also suck at many tasks, but carries the benefit it is open. If I see the 'many eyes' justification for all opensource software refered to again, without proper justification I think I will throw my computer out of the window - please mods - don't just mod something down because you disagree with it, if you disagree contribute and bring effective discussion rather than pushing an opinion out of the room - save downmods for things which are clearly Offtopic, Flamebait or Trollish (and baiting discussion is not Flamebait, it is Discussion-Bait).
They have v. little need to take up their own bandwidth - just use BitTorrent (many independent trackers so all the half-wits don't superseed and make the torrent unservable).
Cheap for them (lower costs always go down well, plus a chance for someone to get brownie points with the finance department), fast for us, easy DL for everyone. Technology, huh?!
That, sir, is a far graver crime.
Present CD/DVD drives will not run this, so no difference there making this a different size. Future drives capable of reading/writing this could be made to also read/write CDs and DVDs just as they are today - just have a different sized groove, like CD drives can play mini-CDs today. It is nothing like Laserdisc which was way way ahead of its time - so much so when it was at its peak most computers (certainly CISCs) had no where near the horsepower to read the file format (though some RISCs could).
The iPod is excellent for its size, speed, and storage. But instead of shelling out for a new one, try finding an older iPod with a dead battery that someone is trying to unload. Maybe for $50 on eBay, or something.
It may not be able to hold a charge on its own, but it still works great as a tiny bus-powered firewire hard drive. An external firewire drive doesn't hold a charge, either, so what's the difference?
And if down the road your needs change, you can always replace the battery for $50 and you've got yourself a music player!