Well it's obvious that he's little more than an asshole anyway so why would it matter? He could either hide in his house for 30 days until the goatse.cx contract was up or put another cartoonlike graphic up to "prove" he had gone through with his end of the deal.
IMO, this was informative enough, and well worth the read, as I am both a shuttle owner and interested in the future of BTX.
Then you know what a BTX is, how much a system based on it should cost, what it normall looks like, what it normally includes, probably know links to external information on the product, etc.
Me? I had no idea what it was and I expected an "article" to at least give me some background on that.
The title and the summary were misleading and included ONLY information already included in the advertisement itself. Perhaps the submitter should have done some background legwork and posted that along with this summary of the summary?
If the submitter doesn't and the editorial staff really thinks that a short blurb with two pictures is important enough to post to the main page of Slashdot they should have done the background legwork for him.
They didn't really add ANYTHING to the summary (if anything at all) because they couldn't find a place to interject their political commentary on an completely unrelated topic.
Next time ignore submissions that are vague, worthless, and blatant advertisements. If you are being paid for the posting of the submission let us know so we can ignore the bullshit completely.
Throughout the article? Either you are exaggerating beyond the normal limits of exaggeration or I am missing something here... I see exactly TWO images. One of a LCD panel and one of a square box that has some sort of tray (DVDRW/CDRW?). Woohoo!
Let's not forget that the "article" is little more than a press release about a product that saves you $130! Saves me $130 from what? $1000? $2000? $more? Let's make sure that the editors do some weeding out of blatant advertising of crap next time.
This "article" didn't tell me much about the product, really didn't like anywhere but to other advertisements, and left me guessing.
Thanks for posting this to the main page. I really appreciate it.
Please remember why video tapes became so popular. Porn. People wanted to be able to watch other people do their thing in the privacy of their own homes.
While porn is rampant on the Internet the movie side of it all (outside of empornium.us) is rather lame and expensive.
DVDs are available for a little money and you get quite a bit of longevity out of them (watching not necessarily anything related;)). Some of those porn sites are shady when you pay to get the whole thing and some are just outrageously expensive ($29.95/mo? Give me a break).
For example, many people turn off their PCs (No. 3) and their HDTV (No. 19) or plasma screen TVs (No. 18) as they leave their homes.
Excuse me? PCs are VERY important and probably deserving of #3 but to say that HDTV and Plasma are in the top 100 is pushing it.
I have only seen HDTV at stores and on display at the state fair (I'm relatively unimpressed). I know one single person that has it and he uses it through DirecTV. I don't know a single person that owns a Plasma screen and I really don't think that they are terribly important.
HDTV is a bunch of tax-funded bullshit that's going to bring down the right to record as you choose. Media conglomorates aren't going to want you to have digitized recordings of high-def format because then you can compete with their DRMd discs.
Don't forget that such "trusted hardware" also makes it harder for law-enforcement agencies to spy on you... unless they have some kind of "master key". Which they will obviously demand, and get.
Umm, DRM just means you can't run unauthorized software on your DRMd hardware. It has nothing to do with not being able to spy.
In fact, in the scenerio I laid out, some sort of central authority would have to hand out authorization for DRMd client hardware to connect. If anything, this would make it even easier to "spy".
State software would be authorized and run on client machines and would have no restrictions that other software might.
You do know there are other countries than the US on the net, right?
What does that have to do with me? I live in the US. I think I covered what will happen in the US above (quoting in case you were too lazy to read the whole thing):
Nevermind that, but it may become illegal (through creative lobby) to own and operate an unlicensed/unprotected piece of hardware. Enjoy finding an ISP that will let you connect.
I for one have a hard time imagining China letting its citizen use such a DRM'ed computer.
Of all examples to give you used China? I'm modding you +5 Funny.
I have been writing/ranting on this topic for quite sometime on Slashdot (see here, here, and here). My worst predictions are coming true. In order for DRM to work it needs to be embedded in the OS, the BIOS, and various pieces of hardware.
Yeah, there is a possibility that non-DRM'd pieces of hardware (including LinuxBIOS) will have a market but the vast majority of people want stuff to work and work w/o problems. Microsoft, Intel, Phoenix, etc, will all tell everyone that they will end viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, etc if they just use their hardware solutions.
Yeah, well, that's great and all but you won't be doing anything on the net unless you are running trusted hardware. People's arguments that an "alternative" network will show up to solve that is bullshit. Just wait till your online banking, your taxes, and your foo are all on the "secure" Internet.
Nevermind that, but it may become illegal (through creative lobby) to own and operate an unlicensed/unprotected piece of hardware. Enjoy finding an ISP that will let you connect.
While this particular CPU might only find a niche market and may very well flop completely, I have a feeling that we will start seeing more and more of this sort of product coming out of the hardware giants. Who knows, maybe my paranoia will be justified?
Apple's success shows people are willing to pay, just not the inflated, over-hyped prices of the crap cds the RIAA has been coming out with.
Honestly, I really believe it has a lot more to do with easy of purchase and single track downloads more than the price.
Albums for $9.99+ isn't exactly inexepensive when there is no tangible media. Most new releases at respectible outlets (not in large shopping malls) are 12.99 or so.
People are still paying an overinflated price for crap that the RIAA puts out. They are just doing it without having to buy a disc full of filler when they only want one song.
Like my old Jukebox Multimedia 20, it will be overly large, have horrible horrible build quality, require ripping movies in bizzare formats with hard to find utilities, and have just enough battery life to turn on before turning off again.
Well considering that the more recent units (I can only speak of the AV400 series) handle AVI just fine I can't see them moving back to any "bizarre" format for future models.
Not to mention that I get 15+ hours of MP3 playback. I guess it takes you 15 hours to turn on and off the unit? I wouldn't know, my firmware doesn't seem buggy.
The display is a 3.5" TFT transflective touch screen (QVGA) 320x240 pixels, 262,000 colors and TV output. Archos says it can play up to 4 hours for video playback or 9.5 hours for music. A removable battery option is available. The unit is approximately 125 x 78 x 20 mm (4.9" x 3.1" x 0.8") and weighs 280 g (9.9 oz).
I have an 80GB Archos AV400 that I received for a Christmas present this year. A couple of things annoy me about the unit but that would happen with anything... The UI takes about 15 minutes to get used to as I really haven't encountered anything like it. Even after having it for three weeks I still find myself fumbling with the keys. The player display is very simple and tells me what I need to know but I would really prefer options to repeat one track/all tracks/etc right on the player screen itself rather than having to go into the setup each time to change these options.
The AV400 doesn't seem to have a removable battery which is worrisome as in my experience batteries start losing their charge after a year and if I am not able to replace it that would suck, bad. As far as length of play... The AV400 seems to easily get 15+ hours to a charge for music. I haven't been able to give it thorough testing on video playback and battery life yet though.
I love the fact that you can record *and* playback to TV. I am currently waiting for Tivo2Go's Tivo update to come down to my unit but until then I use the "Record to VCR" option on my Tivo to play the episodes and I use the Archos to record them. It's nice because I can watch the Tivo'd episodes anywhere in the house or bring them along with me.
It does play WMV DRM media and that's what it uses when you record a DVD to it. It's a bit annoying that you can't record a DVD and play it back elsewhere (it physically disabled the TV-out when you try) but other than ripping to AVI you really have little choice.
I haven't tried to use it to connect to my satellite receiver but knowing the issues I had trying to use the IR channel changer from Tivo I could only imagine the Archos wouldn't interface well either.
The LCD screen is nice on mine but it gets finger smudges all the time. I'd really like to see how well this Archos unit handles being a touchscreen. It might get ugly. I have one bad pixel (which is common) and I only notice it when playing movies but for the screen size it's pretty annoying. Maybe Toshiba can back these units too?:)
The AV400 comes with a CF expansion slot, currently used for picture retrieval, but I really wish they would allow for some wireless CF card integration. It would be VERY cool to be able to network via wifi instead of USB and surf the web and check email as the newer unit allows:(
All in all, I'm impressed with my Archos and I would recommend it to anyone that's looking into a portable media player that does more than just play music and display photos.
but in order for this to be monopolistic wouldnt apple have to have a monopoly on the digital music market?
Don't they? Just because other vendors exist doesn't mean that they aren't monopolistic. Microsoft isn't monopolostic because you have choice in which OS to buy and which browser to use and which Office Suite you can use?
Oh wait, we're talking about Apple so it's a different ball game, right?
"Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa," the lawsuit said.
Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to.
While I cannot comment on the legality of them bundling and tying the device to their store I can certainly say that the less tech savvy are forced to use an iPod if they would like to listen to their iTunes music on the go.
The second you download your first album and you realize that you can't play it on a portable device other than a CD player you wonder if you shouldn't just go out and get that iPod so that you can continue to get your music legally... Most people would think it really sucks to pay $10 for an album and then not be able to listen on the go without burning to a CD and then re-ripping to WAV>MP3.
It's not that I didn't expect this to happen with Apple though. They have always promoted lock-in. For now it is working as a benefit. Will they continue to be the leaders in the market though? Only time will tell if people begin to shy away from being forced into using their formats and their hardware. Sadly, in this day and age I have little faith in the consumer and their knowledge and desire to have freedom of choice.
I know it is bad form to go against Apple on Slashdot (especially with the editors apparently being paid off to put iPod on the front page at least once a day) but why can't we all be against them promoting a format that locks you into their hardware? Aren't we all for open standards that works across multiple platforms? Just because their device is sleek, sexy, and "the in thing" we should all just stop and pay homage? Maybe once MSFT opens the DOC format or switches it over to XML then Apple can open up AAC and we can all be happy?
Me? I'm going to stick to downloading and listening to my *free* and *legal* music from etree, FurthurNET, etc, and convert it over to MP3 to listen on the go. I just wish that everyone else would too. At least I know I am not supporting *multiple* monopolies when I listen to the freely distributable music that I do.
I'd rather be labelled a "communist" by a glorified software salesman than a "terrorist" by our government or a "fascist" by anyone else.
I'm sorry but I was unaware that "communists" were now the negative buzzword. He should have called them terrorists instead. He'd get a lot more press that way.
They could have also used QNX for stability and it's sutability for real-time (of which media is).
My Tivo has never crashed and it runs Linux. QNX also costs money to license eh? Linux doesn't. Personally, my media just isn't THAT important that I'd be willing to plop down even more money on a set-top-box just so that it was "more stable" than my Tivo.
I would have copy/pasted from the USA Today article but at the time I read it the link was unavailable on the main page so from this article at the Detroit Free Press:
On Friday, a helicopter carrying Port Authority detectives was hit by a laser beam as its crew surveyed the area to try to pinpoint the origin of the first beam.
I just love the wording they chose to describe the stupidity... "hit by a laser beam". They make it seem like the dude was firing a laser gun at them and harming the helicopter. Ugh. Yeah, pointing a laser pointer at a flying aircraft is dumb and it's unnecessary but to attempt to make it sound like some physical damage could have been done by the laser is just sensationalism.
If I want to snap pictures I'll bring my PowerShot. It has a much higher [5MP] resolution and is more configurable for actually taking pictures [the average camera phone can't adjust things like exposure, white balance, etc...]
You know, I do both. I can't exactly pull out my 5MP digital camera in the middle of a store and take a photo of a random item and upload it to my gallery immediately. I can with my mobile camera though.
I use my 5MP camera for stuff when I'm geocaching or out with the finace touring the countryside. I use the mobile camera for little things where quality doesn't matter much.
Most people don't use their cell phone camera in that manner but they could. Most people don't need 5MP (hell, I don't need really need it as I resize 99.9% of my photos to 1024x768 for my gallery anyway).
My first memory of using a computer was plugging a HUGE game cartridge into the back of my family's Vic20 and being in some castle (like Dracula's Castle or some shit). It was a text adventure game that I really never mastered. I think I was about three years old.
My father started me writing programs in BASIC before I was four (as that was what he was doing and of course I wanted to know how). I could read most things by then and this was not much more than just copying what he did anyway. I mostly remember playing around with simple things like PRINT, GOTO, and INPUT. Nothing very complex although I suspect (but don't know for sure) that my father never did anything terribly complex in BASIC.
We progressed through the Commodore stages (C64, C64C?, C128D) and when I was in 7th grade we upgraded to a Packard Bell 386SX-16 with a whopping 2MB of RAM and a 40MB HD. This is where my love of computers really started... I sat down my first day and discovered the DOS prompt (PBs at the time had a simple GUI menu that basically sucked) but quickly found myself unable to load anything from the 3.5" disks.
LOAD "*",8,1 was giving me "Bad command or file name" repeatedly... Dejected, I sat down and read the DOS 5.0 manual from front to back (several times actually). I spent time writing crap in Q-Basic (and eventually QuickBasic) and then moved on to Turbo C++ (which I must say had a far less interesting manual than DOS believe it or not;))
What I enjoyed most of all (and I have posted about that on Slashdot before) was thumbing through the old-school Computer Shopper looking to build my dream machine and making sure I priced it the best I could.
I miss the days of old-school computing when everyone knew at least some part of what was going on inside their machines and the OS even allowed you to! I missed that part of computers until I moved to Linux in 1996.
I'm just glad that with Linux I can continue to allow it to remain that way. I can forever live in the world that I had grown up in. So to answer your question about what I would do to introduce a child to a computer... Linux!
Linux allows you to get right down there in the trenches with your machine. You get to see what the hell is going on when it boots up. Sure, most people don't care (because they don't have to) but we all grew up watching DOS boot before Windows. We knew how to edit config files and save on what little memory we had so that we could run NewGameFoo.
I enjoyed learning about computers and playing around and finding out how they ticked. It scares me that NO ONE will know how soon as Windows does NOT really allow you to know. Everything is behind a shroud of secrecy and hard to find registry settings that are buried in deep trees of information.
At least with Linux a child gets the best of both worlds. A modern operating system GUI with nearly all the comforts of Windows while still being able to learn if they want to.
But that's just me. I learn by doing not by example. Using a computer that is open to explore was the best option for me.
Think of how many versions of M$ windows are unusable before a service pack 2 or 3.
Hmm, Windows2000 and XP ran just fine for me right out of the box without service packs. Yeah, you needed a good firewall (hardware and software) and you needed to make sure some services weren't running but I really don't consider that to make the "unusuable".
Honestly, I wouldn't run ANY OS without the above mentioned changes being made to the configuration.
Should we say that RedHat is bad because everyone knew that you shouldn't use a RH release before X.3?
Re:as longas we're stcuck with stingy ISP
on
TiVo to Go Released
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· Score: 1
Personally I was wondering if the shows would be DRMd at all so that I would be able to convert them to AVI and watch them on my portable media device.
Currently I use Tivo's "record to VCR" option and play the shows to my Archos in real-time so that I can carry them with me wherever I am. It's a bit of a hassle when you want to record multiple shows to VCR as you seemingly have to do them one at a time.
With Tivo2go I'd be able to back all the MPEGs up to AVI in one shot and watch them on my Archos.
I won't be able to play with this until I get home so I was hoping that someone had some knowledge of how it all worked.
Just be thankful that they DO release the source for these games. It keeps them alive. I don't know anyone else still playing network games from 1996 except for Quake.
By releasing the code for these games it increases their worth and their life for quite some time.
Slashdot Mirror
How about breaking it down by zip+4 and that number would drop dramatically.
There are what, 50 million Zip+4's in the US? How about breaking it down by Zip+2. I think that would make more sense.
Well it's obvious that he's little more than an asshole anyway so why would it matter? He could either hide in his house for 30 days until the goatse.cx contract was up or put another cartoonlike graphic up to "prove" he had gone through with his end of the deal.
IMO, this was informative enough, and well worth the read, as I am both a shuttle owner and interested in the future of BTX.
Then you know what a BTX is, how much a system based on it should cost, what it normall looks like, what it normally includes, probably know links to external information on the product, etc.
Me? I had no idea what it was and I expected an "article" to at least give me some background on that.
The title and the summary were misleading and included ONLY information already included in the advertisement itself. Perhaps the submitter should have done some background legwork and posted that along with this summary of the summary?
If the submitter doesn't and the editorial staff really thinks that a short blurb with two pictures is important enough to post to the main page of Slashdot they should have done the background legwork for him.
They didn't really add ANYTHING to the summary (if anything at all) because they couldn't find a place to interject their political commentary on an completely unrelated topic.
Next time ignore submissions that are vague, worthless, and blatant advertisements. If you are being paid for the posting of the submission let us know so we can ignore the bullshit completely.
Throughout the article? Either you are exaggerating beyond the normal limits of exaggeration or I am missing something here... I see exactly TWO images. One of a LCD panel and one of a square box that has some sort of tray (DVDRW/CDRW?). Woohoo!
Let's not forget that the "article" is little more than a press release about a product that saves you $130! Saves me $130 from what? $1000? $2000? $more? Let's make sure that the editors do some weeding out of blatant advertising of crap next time.
This "article" didn't tell me much about the product, really didn't like anywhere but to other advertisements, and left me guessing.
Thanks for posting this to the main page. I really appreciate it.
Please remember why video tapes became so popular. Porn. People wanted to be able to watch other people do their thing in the privacy of their own homes.
;)). Some of those porn sites are shady when you pay to get the whole thing and some are just outrageously expensive ($29.95/mo? Give me a break).
While porn is rampant on the Internet the movie side of it all (outside of empornium.us) is rather lame and expensive.
DVDs are available for a little money and you get quite a bit of longevity out of them (watching not necessarily anything related
For example, many people turn off their PCs (No. 3) and their HDTV (No. 19) or plasma screen TVs (No. 18) as they leave their homes.
Excuse me? PCs are VERY important and probably deserving of #3 but to say that HDTV and Plasma are in the top 100 is pushing it.
I have only seen HDTV at stores and on display at the state fair (I'm relatively unimpressed). I know one single person that has it and he uses it through DirecTV. I don't know a single person that owns a Plasma screen and I really don't think that they are terribly important.
HDTV is a bunch of tax-funded bullshit that's going to bring down the right to record as you choose. Media conglomorates aren't going to want you to have digitized recordings of high-def format because then you can compete with their DRMd discs.
Boo on this list.
Bah, logging in sucks. I just use the sudo hack to gain root access...
garcia@shitbox:~$ sudo su
shitbox:/home/garcia#
woot, the hack works like a charm. They should really include the C source for the hack so all the kiddies can use it.
Don't forget that such "trusted hardware" also makes it harder for law-enforcement agencies to spy on you... unless they have some kind of "master key". Which they will obviously demand, and get.
Umm, DRM just means you can't run unauthorized software on your DRMd hardware. It has nothing to do with not being able to spy.
In fact, in the scenerio I laid out, some sort of central authority would have to hand out authorization for DRMd client hardware to connect. If anything, this would make it even easier to "spy".
State software would be authorized and run on client machines and would have no restrictions that other software might.
You do know there are other countries than the US on the net, right?
What does that have to do with me? I live in the US. I think I covered what will happen in the US above (quoting in case you were too lazy to read the whole thing):
Nevermind that, but it may become illegal (through creative lobby) to own and operate an unlicensed/unprotected piece of hardware. Enjoy finding an ISP that will let you connect.
I for one have a hard time imagining China letting its citizen use such a DRM'ed computer.
Of all examples to give you used China? I'm modding you +5 Funny.
I have been writing/ranting on this topic for quite sometime on Slashdot (see here, here, and here). My worst predictions are coming true. In order for DRM to work it needs to be embedded in the OS, the BIOS, and various pieces of hardware.
Yeah, there is a possibility that non-DRM'd pieces of hardware (including LinuxBIOS) will have a market but the vast majority of people want stuff to work and work w/o problems. Microsoft, Intel, Phoenix, etc, will all tell everyone that they will end viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, etc if they just use their hardware solutions.
Yeah, well, that's great and all but you won't be doing anything on the net unless you are running trusted hardware. People's arguments that an "alternative" network will show up to solve that is bullshit. Just wait till your online banking, your taxes, and your foo are all on the "secure" Internet.
Nevermind that, but it may become illegal (through creative lobby) to own and operate an unlicensed/unprotected piece of hardware. Enjoy finding an ISP that will let you connect.
While this particular CPU might only find a niche market and may very well flop completely, I have a feeling that we will start seeing more and more of this sort of product coming out of the hardware giants. Who knows, maybe my paranoia will be justified?
I foresee a new internet of the future! One that runs on top of our existing home networking kits! The One True Internets!
None of us would be responsible for the content flying across the networks as we would all be ISPs!
Apple's success shows people are willing to pay, just not the inflated, over-hyped prices of the crap cds the RIAA has been coming out with.
Honestly, I really believe it has a lot more to do with easy of purchase and single track downloads more than the price.
Albums for $9.99+ isn't exactly inexepensive when there is no tangible media. Most new releases at respectible outlets (not in large shopping malls) are 12.99 or so.
People are still paying an overinflated price for crap that the RIAA puts out. They are just doing it without having to buy a disc full of filler when they only want one song.
Like my old Jukebox Multimedia 20, it will be overly large, have horrible horrible build quality, require ripping movies in bizzare formats with hard to find utilities, and have just enough battery life to turn on before turning off again.
Well considering that the more recent units (I can only speak of the AV400 series) handle AVI just fine I can't see them moving back to any "bizarre" format for future models.
Not to mention that I get 15+ hours of MP3 playback. I guess it takes you 15 hours to turn on and off the unit? I wouldn't know, my firmware doesn't seem buggy.
The display is a 3.5" TFT transflective touch screen (QVGA) 320x240 pixels, 262,000 colors and TV output. Archos says it can play up to 4 hours for video playback or 9.5 hours for music. A removable battery option is available. The unit is approximately 125 x 78 x 20 mm (4.9" x 3.1" x 0.8") and weighs 280 g (9.9 oz).
:)
:(
I have an 80GB Archos AV400 that I received for a Christmas present this year. A couple of things annoy me about the unit but that would happen with anything... The UI takes about 15 minutes to get used to as I really haven't encountered anything like it. Even after having it for three weeks I still find myself fumbling with the keys. The player display is very simple and tells me what I need to know but I would really prefer options to repeat one track/all tracks/etc right on the player screen itself rather than having to go into the setup each time to change these options.
The AV400 doesn't seem to have a removable battery which is worrisome as in my experience batteries start losing their charge after a year and if I am not able to replace it that would suck, bad. As far as length of play... The AV400 seems to easily get 15+ hours to a charge for music. I haven't been able to give it thorough testing on video playback and battery life yet though.
I love the fact that you can record *and* playback to TV. I am currently waiting for Tivo2Go's Tivo update to come down to my unit but until then I use the "Record to VCR" option on my Tivo to play the episodes and I use the Archos to record them. It's nice because I can watch the Tivo'd episodes anywhere in the house or bring them along with me.
It does play WMV DRM media and that's what it uses when you record a DVD to it. It's a bit annoying that you can't record a DVD and play it back elsewhere (it physically disabled the TV-out when you try) but other than ripping to AVI you really have little choice.
I haven't tried to use it to connect to my satellite receiver but knowing the issues I had trying to use the IR channel changer from Tivo I could only imagine the Archos wouldn't interface well either.
The LCD screen is nice on mine but it gets finger smudges all the time. I'd really like to see how well this Archos unit handles being a touchscreen. It might get ugly. I have one bad pixel (which is common) and I only notice it when playing movies but for the screen size it's pretty annoying. Maybe Toshiba can back these units too?
The AV400 comes with a CF expansion slot, currently used for picture retrieval, but I really wish they would allow for some wireless CF card integration. It would be VERY cool to be able to network via wifi instead of USB and surf the web and check email as the newer unit allows
All in all, I'm impressed with my Archos and I would recommend it to anyone that's looking into a portable media player that does more than just play music and display photos.
but in order for this to be monopolistic wouldnt apple have to have a monopoly on the digital music market?
Don't they? Just because other vendors exist doesn't mean that they aren't monopolistic. Microsoft isn't monopolostic because you have choice in which OS to buy and which browser to use and which Office Suite you can use?
Oh wait, we're talking about Apple so it's a different ball game, right?
"Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa," the lawsuit said.
Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to.
While I cannot comment on the legality of them bundling and tying the device to their store I can certainly say that the less tech savvy are forced to use an iPod if they would like to listen to their iTunes music on the go.
The second you download your first album and you realize that you can't play it on a portable device other than a CD player you wonder if you shouldn't just go out and get that iPod so that you can continue to get your music legally... Most people would think it really sucks to pay $10 for an album and then not be able to listen on the go without burning to a CD and then re-ripping to WAV>MP3.
It's not that I didn't expect this to happen with Apple though. They have always promoted lock-in. For now it is working as a benefit. Will they continue to be the leaders in the market though? Only time will tell if people begin to shy away from being forced into using their formats and their hardware. Sadly, in this day and age I have little faith in the consumer and their knowledge and desire to have freedom of choice.
I know it is bad form to go against Apple on Slashdot (especially with the editors apparently being paid off to put iPod on the front page at least once a day) but why can't we all be against them promoting a format that locks you into their hardware? Aren't we all for open standards that works across multiple platforms? Just because their device is sleek, sexy, and "the in thing" we should all just stop and pay homage? Maybe once MSFT opens the DOC format or switches it over to XML then Apple can open up AAC and we can all be happy?
Me? I'm going to stick to downloading and listening to my *free* and *legal* music from etree, FurthurNET, etc, and convert it over to MP3 to listen on the go. I just wish that everyone else would too. At least I know I am not supporting *multiple* monopolies when I listen to the freely distributable music that I do.
YMMV.
I'd rather be labelled a "communist" by a glorified software salesman than a "terrorist" by our government or a "fascist" by anyone else.
I'm sorry but I was unaware that "communists" were now the negative buzzword. He should have called them terrorists instead. He'd get a lot more press that way.
They could have also used QNX for stability and it's sutability for real-time (of which media is).
My Tivo has never crashed and it runs Linux. QNX also costs money to license eh? Linux doesn't. Personally, my media just isn't THAT important that I'd be willing to plop down even more money on a set-top-box just so that it was "more stable" than my Tivo.
I would have copy/pasted from the USA Today article but at the time I read it the link was unavailable on the main page so from this article at the Detroit Free Press:
On Friday, a helicopter carrying Port Authority detectives was hit by a laser beam as its crew surveyed the area to try to pinpoint the origin of the first beam.
I just love the wording they chose to describe the stupidity... "hit by a laser beam". They make it seem like the dude was firing a laser gun at them and harming the helicopter. Ugh. Yeah, pointing a laser pointer at a flying aircraft is dumb and it's unnecessary but to attempt to make it sound like some physical damage could have been done by the laser is just sensationalism.
Neither is Debian "unstable". Perhaps that's why they continue to label it unstable? ;)
If I want to snap pictures I'll bring my PowerShot. It has a much higher [5MP] resolution and is more configurable for actually taking pictures [the average camera phone can't adjust things like exposure, white balance, etc...]
You know, I do both. I can't exactly pull out my 5MP digital camera in the middle of a store and take a photo of a random item and upload it to my gallery immediately. I can with my mobile camera though.
I use my 5MP camera for stuff when I'm geocaching or out with the finace touring the countryside. I use the mobile camera for little things where quality doesn't matter much.
Most people don't use their cell phone camera in that manner but they could. Most people don't need 5MP (hell, I don't need really need it as I resize 99.9% of my photos to 1024x768 for my gallery anyway).
My first memory of using a computer was plugging a HUGE game cartridge into the back of my family's Vic20 and being in some castle (like Dracula's Castle or some shit). It was a text adventure game that I really never mastered. I think I was about three years old.
;))
My father started me writing programs in BASIC before I was four (as that was what he was doing and of course I wanted to know how). I could read most things by then and this was not much more than just copying what he did anyway. I mostly remember playing around with simple things like PRINT, GOTO, and INPUT. Nothing very complex although I suspect (but don't know for sure) that my father never did anything terribly complex in BASIC.
We progressed through the Commodore stages (C64, C64C?, C128D) and when I was in 7th grade we upgraded to a Packard Bell 386SX-16 with a whopping 2MB of RAM and a 40MB HD. This is where my love of computers really started... I sat down my first day and discovered the DOS prompt (PBs at the time had a simple GUI menu that basically sucked) but quickly found myself unable to load anything from the 3.5" disks.
LOAD "*",8,1 was giving me "Bad command or file name" repeatedly... Dejected, I sat down and read the DOS 5.0 manual from front to back (several times actually). I spent time writing crap in Q-Basic (and eventually QuickBasic) and then moved on to Turbo C++ (which I must say had a far less interesting manual than DOS believe it or not
What I enjoyed most of all (and I have posted about that on Slashdot before) was thumbing through the old-school Computer Shopper looking to build my dream machine and making sure I priced it the best I could.
I miss the days of old-school computing when everyone knew at least some part of what was going on inside their machines and the OS even allowed you to! I missed that part of computers until I moved to Linux in 1996.
I'm just glad that with Linux I can continue to allow it to remain that way. I can forever live in the world that I had grown up in. So to answer your question about what I would do to introduce a child to a computer... Linux!
Linux allows you to get right down there in the trenches with your machine. You get to see what the hell is going on when it boots up. Sure, most people don't care (because they don't have to) but we all grew up watching DOS boot before Windows. We knew how to edit config files and save on what little memory we had so that we could run NewGameFoo.
I enjoyed learning about computers and playing around and finding out how they ticked. It scares me that NO ONE will know how soon as Windows does NOT really allow you to know. Everything is behind a shroud of secrecy and hard to find registry settings that are buried in deep trees of information.
At least with Linux a child gets the best of both worlds. A modern operating system GUI with nearly all the comforts of Windows while still being able to learn if they want to.
But that's just me. I learn by doing not by example. Using a computer that is open to explore was the best option for me.
YMMV.
Think of how many versions of M$ windows are unusable before a service pack 2 or 3.
Hmm, Windows2000 and XP ran just fine for me right out of the box without service packs. Yeah, you needed a good firewall (hardware and software) and you needed to make sure some services weren't running but I really don't consider that to make the "unusuable".
Honestly, I wouldn't run ANY OS without the above mentioned changes being made to the configuration.
Should we say that RedHat is bad because everyone knew that you shouldn't use a RH release before X.3?
Personally I was wondering if the shows would be DRMd at all so that I would be able to convert them to AVI and watch them on my portable media device.
Currently I use Tivo's "record to VCR" option and play the shows to my Archos in real-time so that I can carry them with me wherever I am. It's a bit of a hassle when you want to record multiple shows to VCR as you seemingly have to do them one at a time.
With Tivo2go I'd be able to back all the MPEGs up to AVI in one shot and watch them on my Archos.
I won't be able to play with this until I get home so I was hoping that someone had some knowledge of how it all worked.
Just be thankful that they DO release the source for these games. It keeps them alive. I don't know anyone else still playing network games from 1996 except for Quake.
By releasing the code for these games it increases their worth and their life for quite some time.