This is all part of the vast right wing conspiricy first brought to our attention by the all knowing Hilary Clinton. The Republicans plan on passing legislation mandating that all vehicles in the United States be equiped with these boxes. Then on election day the evil Republicans will shut down cars owned by registered Democrats and Independents and only allow registered Republics to drive!
Republicans will finally be able to secure their stranglehood on the US goverment and begin the process of cutting down all of the trees, murdering all of the minorities and homosexuals and forcing the remaining citizens to turn over their first born children and pledge alligence to oil! We must put a stop to this madness before it begins, but first, we must save the whales, pull out of Iraq, stop global warming and repeal Bush's tax cuts for the rich which have destroyed our economy. Then we can begin stopping this madness of the black boxes.
Being able to copy and paste things (other than text) between apps is, apparently, also for Windows. Until Linux can do that, I'll stick with rebooting every now and then. Hell even trying to copy and past text between apps can sometimes have "interesting" results. Linux is great for servers. Linux has some issues on the desktop.
Some people crack me up. 98 is 5 years old. NT is even older. ME is a peice of crap. Why should any software / hardware vendor support it? How many Mac users are complaining that the lastest Apple software doesn't support OS 8? You people need to get a life!
Oh and don't give me that activation crap either. 2000 doesn't have any activation. If you complain that you can't find a copy of 2000 then buy XP and download the activation crack. It's pretty easy to find.
Use a CD-RW. That is what I do when I buy a music on iTuens and burn it to a CD. iTunes will burn track information on the CD so when I rip the CD back to MP3's none of the track info (Artist, Song Title, CD Title, etc.) is lost. When I'm finised I erase the CD-RW so it can be used again.
There are other factors, however, I don't believe the ones you listed are very valid.
1) previouly unemployes persons now getting jobs to replace all the men and women who get to go to the desert and die for oil.
1) We only have a few hundred thousands troops deplayed in Iraq and Afgahinstan. Of those, the vast majority are not reservists and did not have to leave their jobs to go over seas. They were in the militarty to begin with. If what you say is true we would have seen an increase in jobs when reservists were first called up to serve in Iraq which, in the case of a few of my friends that are in the reserve and are now in Iraq, was about a year ago.
2) The war machine will create an increased demand in certian secotors, as well as the supporting sectors.
2) While this is certainly true to a certain extent, this alone can not explain the extent of the boom we experienced last quarter. Factoring in the war, analysits were expecting about 6% growth. We experienced over 7.2% growth. Take a look at Octobers manufacturing activity. It surged last month. Manufacturing activity is a leading economic indicator. It means consumers and corporations are spending more, which means manufacturers start producing more, which means they hire more. A small increase was certainly expected after the war in Iraq began but this alone can not explain the extent of the surge.
This 3rd quarter GDP boom is all George W. Bush's fault.... wait a sec... the GDP boom is probably a good thing.... George W. Bush had nothing to do with it!
On a serious note folks, when things were not looking very good I heard a lot of people on Slashdot (and everywhere else) placing the blame squarely on Bush. Now that things are looking better, and if they continue to get better, will the same people give him any credit? I highly doubt it, but it will be entertaining to see how they can justify not giving him credit for a good economy when they could justify giving him grief for a bad one.
I personally belive that the president doesn't have all the much control over the economy. Don't get me wrong, he has some degree of control, but not much as many people would like to believe.
The BBC huh? Thanks, but no thanks. There are plenty of examples of the BBC and it's left wing bias all over the place.
Unlike the BBC, I don't hate America or the Bush Administration (although I'm not entirely happy with it) and would prefer my news from an organization without such a clearly, anti-Bush, anti-American, left wing agenda.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Fox news. They are a right leaning news organization. So what? If you want the liberal take on things you can listen to NPR, read the New York or LA Times, or tune into ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN and/or MSNBC. Do these networks present some of the right's arguments? Yes they do, but for the most part you get a liberal slant. Does Fox present some of the left's arguments? Yes they do, but for the most part you get a conservative slant.
The great thing about America is that you can get your news almost anyway you want it. I just wish more media outlets would fess up and quite presenting themselves as unbiased when they cleary are. That's one reason why I respect the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, James Carville (sp?), Al Franken, etc. At least when you listen to them, you know what position they are coming from. I'm so sick and tired of people pretending to be unbiased when they so clearly lean one way that it makes you sick.
Let's see...a researcher at a University is working with a strain of virus to develop better and stronger immunization agents. To do this he needs to figure out what he might be up against that terrorists might feasibly make. The ignorance of the poster, Michael, on science is glaring and obvious. The government funds tons of research every year - it's called grants. If you want to say they are funding bioweapons research look in military R&D labs, not in a University environment. Since the US has basically said they will not do bioweapons research, don't you think doing research in such a public way would be a bit obvious? I mean, getting a grant, publishing papers, etc. on this kind of obliterates the 'secrecy' that would be needed. And, part of the VAST majority of grant stipulations is that you must publish your results. Then again, the poster checked into all of this before making hs accusatory and 100% factual title right? Or...he at least read the article...right?
Please mod the parent up because this is exactly why we have Universities (not the military... read the article) developing these weaponized strains of various viruses. We're trying to figure out what the terrorists might do and how to protect ourselves against it. To do that, we must weaponsize strains of certain viruses using both known and experimental techniques to determine the best way to fight and/or immunize ouselves against them should the terrorists do the same and unleash a modified virus.
Or would you people prefer that we sit back, only studying existing known varitions of viruses and then be caught with our pants down when some terrorist develops a weaponized strain of a virus and releases it? That would be a total disaster. Part of the war on terror is trying to determine what the terrorists might do and prepare for it. We don't want to wait until they actually do it before we figure out how we would respond because in the case of a biological or nuclear attack, it would already be too late. So we give Universities grants to modify viruses to make them stronger and then to try and determine how to immunize ourselves against the stronger strain.
What do you people crying foul want us to do? This kind of research is both important and necessary to ensure that we are prepared against future biological attacks. I realize that you would rather go over to the Middle East, build a fire and hold hands with the terrorists and sing "Kumbaya Allah", but let's be realistic here, we are at war. They hate us and want us dead and no amount of singing around a camp fire is going to change that. We have to be prepared for a biological attack because we know that Al Queda and other terrorists are trying to get their hands on those weapons and would use them if they could get them.
Two things. First, you're completely right. Anytime Microsoft or any Microsoft employee talks about "choice" with a straight face then there is definitely something going on.
Second, they should be worried. I downloaded iTunes when it was released and immediately started using it as my main media player / jukebox. After buying some tracks from the iTMS I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new 40 GB iPod from the Apple store. Granted I had wanted to buy some kind of MP3 player for a while but I was heavily leaning toward one of the 128 or 256 MB flash players. I had absolutely no intention of buying a hard drive based MP3 player and definitely nothing as expensive as even the 10 GB iPod. After using iTunes and the iTMS and reading about how great people thought the iPod was I decided to go with the iPod. I had it shipped overnight and spent the entire weekend ripping my CD collection to MP3 in iTunes and playing around with the iPod. After a few days I can say that I am thoroughly impressed with both products and my satisfaction with them will result in having to take a serious look at a Mac the next time I buy a computer.
The iPod, while expensive, is such a great product. I can take my whole music collection with me where everywhere I go. The batter lasts 7 - 8 hours, it can be charged to 80% capacity in an hour (it takes about 4 for 100%) and it's small enough to fit comfortably in my pocket. The user interface makes it easy to interact with. It comes with a dock that has a line out jack so I can hook it into my stereo or take it with me to a friends and hook it into their equipment. With the car adaptor kit I can use it in my car.
The iPod also acts as a portable hard drive and a mini PDA. Setting the it up as a portable hard drive takes one click in iTunes. I had to buy the USB adaptor and a cable but now I can use the iPod to transfer files between my PC at work and my computer at home. You can also export your contact and appointment information from Outlook and store it in the iPod. It's even easier if you have a Mac as iSync can automatically sync your contact and calendar information for you.
I'm thrilled to death with the iTunes / iPod combo and I don't recall ever feeling this way about anything Microsoft has produced. So, to summarize, I think Microsoft is scared and they very well should be. I'm a happy Apple customer who will consider buying other Apple products in the future. Before iTunes and the iPod I wouldn't have even considered buying a Mac, or anything else produced by Apple.
Microsoft won't be able to one up Apple anytime soon by bundeling their Music Store / Jukebox with the next version of Windows because Longhorn is still such a long way off. That means that Microsoft is going to actually have to compete with Apple on the merits of it's own software and DRM format. That's going to be increadibly hard to do.
They certainly got me. I'm sitting in front of my work computer, happily listening to my _entire_ music collection with my new iPod. After downloading iTunes and reading some reviews/specs on the iPod, I went out and bought a 20gb one. I was looking for an mp3 player, and the idea of being able to store 20 gigs of music was what helped me make my decision:) Couldn't be happier.
I'm in the exact same boat. After downloading iTunes and being very, very impressed I bit the bullet and bought a 40 GB iPod from the Apple store. It just arrived today and I've spent the day ripping my entire CD collection to MP3. It's something I've been meaning to do for backup purposes for quite a while now. iTunes makes it easy and the iPod will allow me to take my entire collection with me. I can't get over how cool it is!
adio streaming isn't what I'm talking about. With Rhapsody, I can suddenly decide I really need to hear "Mr. Roboto" by Styx at 3am, and have it playing a few seconds later. This isn't the sort of thing I want to pay for a permanent copy of. My music needs are often whim-driven, so a flat rate streaming buffet approach works perfectly for me.
I've got to agree with you there. If you're looking for the ability to hear what you want, when you want, for a flat fee then Rhapsody is the way to go. I'm a subscriber to the service. The catch being that you've got to be willing to pay a monthly fee, be willing to deal with a limited selection and have a high speed connection to the net. Rhapsody is more of an on-demand music service where as iTunes is media player / organizer with a built in music store. Comparing iTunes and Rhapsody is like comparing apples and oranges. Other than the fact that you can purchase music with each, they are all togather different animals that serve different purposes. iTunes is about organizing the music that you've already got in your library and Rhapsody is about listening to music on demand.
iTunes works like a charm on my desktop but I'm having some problems on my Compaq laptop. The problem is with the CD player. iTunes will detect when a CD is inserted, check CDDB and get the proper disc name and track names and iTunes will read the the track lengths properly, but when I try and play any track on a CD it's like the track is zero length. It hangs for a second then tries to play the next track, then the next, then the next, etc.
iTunes for Windows is really a 1.0 release in terms of hardware support. There are literally hundreds of thousands of hardware combinations out there and it's going to take Apple a few releases to get the majority of kinks worked out. I, for one, am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
August 2002 I bought an iPod. Loved it so a month later I bought a PowerBook, my first ever Mac.
September this year I bought a DP G5.
And I plan to replace my wife's PC with a Mac sometime soon.
Without the iPod I would never have even considered a Mac. Microsoft should be scared.
After using iTunes and the iTMS I decided to bite the bullet and buy one of the new 40 GB iPods from the Apple Store. It's due here at the begining of the week. If I like it as much as I think I will, I may give a MAC a try. Perhaps this the begining of a trend....
I have no problem with iTMS, and I have an iPod, which is great. Still, I have an issue is the AAC's themselves. I'm hoping that Apple will license their DRM technology to other hardware manufacturers. I'd really like to be able to play AAC files on an MP3 CD player in my car, and I'm sure Windows users would like to have their choice of hardware devices to play AAC's on.
I hear you one that one man. To get around the whole AAC on other player problem here's what I do. As soon as I purchase and download music I use iTunes to burn it to an audio CD on a CD-RW disc. iTunes will burn the CD with the song names, so all you do is eject the CD-RW, re-insert it, remove the purchased music from your library and then convert the burned CD-RW back to MP3s in iTunes. Because iTunes burns CD's with the CD info you don't have to enter information about the tracks back into the tags of the mp3's when you're converting them back from CD you burned. When you're done you can erase the CD-RW and use it again. It's a few extra steps but it's worth it IMHO. No DRM to worry about.
Personally, as much as I want iTunes, I refuse to upgrade my Windows OS (which I barely use anyway) just to use it. I'll just check out one of the iTunes competitors that keep popping up instead that support 98. I suspect many people will feel the same.
While I can certainly understand your unwillingness to upgrade, I'd suggest moving to Windows 2000. IMHO it's the best OS that Microsoft has ever produced. Leaps and bounds better than 98 and I won't even bother talking about how much better it is than ME (what a POS that was). If your system can run 98 than it can probably run 2000. If you have no plans to upgrade then you shouldn't have plans to run any Windows apps that are going to be released in the future as you're going to see more and more that are not going to support 98/Me.
I can see why they would choose to target 2000/XP and not 98/ME. First and foremost, 98 is 5 years old and ME is a complete and total POS. There are probably features in 2000/XP that iTunes needs that are lacking in 98 / ME. You've got to figure that Apple would support 98/ME if they could. They took a look and determined it was more trouble than what it is worth. Perhaps they will add support in a future release and were just in a hurry to get iTunes out the door.
There is a patch available for the problem but you've got to contact Microsoft support services to get it. There are a few web sites that have it. I don't have links but I could dig them up if someone needs it.
The company is just protecting their IP from pirates.
Actually they aren't protecting their IP from pirates. They are protecting their IP from casual copying. Real pirates can get around almost any type of copy protection. Product activation, in most forms, is pretty easy to crack if you know what your doing. Activation doesn't stop real pirates. Not much can.
I have always found product activation funny. While I understand the desire to protect IP, casual copying in many instances can result in greater revanue for a company. Just look at Microsoft. The monopoly they now enjoy is a direct result of casual copying. Everyone I know used to stay current with the latest release of Windows / Office. Some bought it, some copied it, but almost everyone had the latest release of the software. That gave Microsoft a lot of power and influence and they used it to their advantage.
Since the XP series, most users have not upgraded. If they run XP it's because it came with their computer. Same goes with Office. Now if a lower cost alternative is available many of them will probably be open to it. I've told several of my friends about Open Office and conviced them to download it rather than upgrade to Office XP (and now 2003). I doubt those people I know are the only people looking for an lower cost alternative to Office. Activation may end up being a real problem for Microsoft in the long run.
It'll be a cold day in hell when I sign up for any RIAA amnesty program! It doesn't matter how many P2P networks they shutdown, monitor for piracy, etc. They'll never get em all! They won't even come close. All they'll do is tick more people off. Speaking of which, it'll also be a cold day in hell the next time I buy anything created by a member of the RIAA. I'd rather be tied to a chair and thrown down some steps than see another penny of my money go to the RIAA.
Ah yes, you've hit the nail right on the head with this one. It is all a part of the vast right wing conspiricy that Hilary Clinton warned us about.
It was started by Ronald Reagan and fellow conspiritors a few months after he won the White House. Reagan and his parterns knew there was a long road ahead to world domination but that it was possible. He know that in order to take over the world, he would need to defeat the USSR and stack the Supreme Court. His vice president, George Bush, was also involved. When Bush became president he continued to stack the Supreme Court with other conspiritors and oversaw the final break up of the Soviet Union. Bush engineered the Golf War so we could build a military presence in Saudi Arabia and be one step closer to the oil in the Middle East.
Alas, Bush was defeated in the 1992 election and the evil Republican plan was put on hold. Bush recruited Newt Gingrich and several others to continue on with the dastardly plan. Newt and fellow conspiritors decided that Clinton must go, the only question was how. They engineered and Republic revolution and take over the House and Senate in the 94 elections. Once they had control of bouth the houses of Congress it was time to make a move on Clinton.
They tried Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater and finally found something with the potential to stick in Monica. But alas, Monica-gate failed. Alough Clinton was impeached, the impeachment was not successfull and Clinton remained president.
Enraged, the Republicans decided that they would not lose again. The approached George W. Bush several years before the 2000 presidential primary and asked him, along with several prominant neo-cons, to join the conspiricy. Everyone agreed.
The Republicans then commanded as many CEO's as possible to begin moving their companies overseas, where they could afford cheaper labor and evade taxes. Part of the money that they saved could be funnelled illegally back to the RNC and to state Republican parties where they were able to buy votes for George W. Bush and run attack ads against his primary challengers.
Bush emerged victorious in the primaries and then the campaign began to defeat Al Gore. The evil Republicans continued to raise millions of dollars to purchase attack ads and buy votes. When it appeared there was a tie in Florida, George W. Bush didn't break a sweat. It seemed the Reagan and Bush Sr. were correct when they determined it would be necessary to stack the Supreme Court. With evil Republican operatives lead by Scalia and Thomas on the court, the result of the Florida supreme court case went in Bush's favor. Everything was begining to fall back into place.
George W. Bush was ready to begin the process of world domination. To ensure that Bush would win the next election, his cronies began purchasing companies that produced electronic voting equipment. He would fool the US into going electonic after the Florida 2000 fiasco. He would turn the Democrats anger against them to ensure reelection in 2004. The campaign for world domination could commence.
Bush beefed up the Military and sent secret evil Republican operatives to Afganistan to recruit the help of several unwhitting Al Queda operatives who reluctantly agreed to hijack aircraft and fly them into the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and the Capitol Building. The hijackings were to occur on September 11, 2001.
After the hijackings Bush invaded Afganistan. Altough Afganistan was not strategically important to Bush, it would provide the staging ground to test the effectiveness of our military against the defenseless masses.
Afganistan went off nicely, altough there would need to be some improvements made before the second wave of the plan could be implemented.
Two years passed by as Bush rebuilt the military. In that time Bush was also able to engineer a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans so they could in turn line the pockets his cohorts and ensure victory in the next election.
Some of you people never cease to amaze me with your anti-Microsoft FUD. I'm no Microsoft fan but some of your responses here are laughable. Look it's not going to come turned on by default and if you want to use the DRM you're going to need a server. The server requirement pretty much ensures that joe-six pack (who gets office bundled with his PC) is never going to use it. Offices where users take documents home to work on aren't going to use it.
Sane IT professionals won't bother with it. I would never trust my information to a Microsoft DRM enabled format that requires an authentication server. Can you imagine what will happen when the inevitable bug / worm / virus totally screws up the server and causes all of the authentication information to be lost. Everyone in the office is locked out of their documents for a day while the authentication server is brought back up. Especially after the hassle that was Blaster and SoBig, the last thing a sane IT department would do is implement Microsoft DRM that requires an authentication server to be up and running to open documents.
This is hardly a plot by Microsoft to lock users into the Office format. If DRM didn't require a server, was enabled by default and Clippy urged you to use it, then I'd be suspicious. As it stands now it appears to be a feature that was made to appeal to certain departments within large business and it will no doubt prove to be more trouble than it's worth.
I like SuSE's option. If you choose to install GNOME it's availble on their login menu, but is not the default choice when you're presented with the login menu for the first time. So Joe Sixpack will probably start with KDE but eventually wonder what the hell GNOME is and check it out (if he opted to install it otherwise he'd be clueless about GNOME and think KDE was all there is and there wouldn't even be an issue).
I just started using Linux so I speak from newbie experience when I say that it's not like the KDE / GNOME / Windows user interface are so differen't from one another that it's hard to figure them out. You click on menus that lists programs and differen't options (i.e logoff, restart shut down) and you click the programs on those menus to launch the programs. The basic windows functions are the same (the minimize box, restore / maximize box, close box), click the window bar at the top to drag, etc. We're not talking rocket science here and although there are subtle basic differences I don't think the average user would find the UI basics all that much more complex in one over the other. It's the more advanced users that can do more advanced things in Windows that would have more trouble, but if they are intelligent enough to search google, RTF and just click around and check things out they should have no trouble making the transition. I didn't really have any problems learning the ins and outs of KDE and I didn't read anything. I just messed around in KDE until I figured things out.
I haven't used GNOME as much as I would like to yet but in KDE everything is where I would expect it to be. Editing the menu's in KDE is as easy as editing programs in the Start Menu is in Windows. Editing the desktop theme, colors, look, feel, etc. is just as easy as it is under Windows and offers you even more customization options. Which is actually a bad thing considering how horrid the average Windows user's desktop ends up looking after they choose their own "custom" colors and icons and use a picture of their dog for their desktop wallpaper... I shudder to think of what they would do in KDE.
On a related note, the only real issue with Linux for Joe Sixpack IMHO is installing software. The average user is going to have a bitch of a time downloading and installing software or updating their systems. Yast2 in SuSE makes it easy to update your system but I wasn't very happy with the functionality. Downloading / installing new software and individual updates using RPM is a pain for the average user, even w/ Kpackage, because of dependency hell. I ended up using apt4rpm w/ Synaptic wich works wonderfully but you've got to be able to edit the default sources.list file which would probably be confusing for a newbie who's used to clicking on an exe on a web page and choosing "Run" when IE prompts them and havign the program launch and install itself. Granted you could just use Debain, but SuSE really is a good distro for a newbie. I bought my copy at Best Buy, installed it without any problems (it detected all of my hardware, my broadband internet connection, configuring the firewall was very easy, etc). SuSE should include apt4rpm preconfigured w/ Synaptic and host their own repositiory or at least include a preconfigured sources.list file. Apt w/ Synaptic makes getting new software and updating your existing software easier than it is under Windows!
Great, something else for the environmentalist wackos to flip out about. I'm all for clean water, clean air and saving trees but there are a whole bunch of absolute, environmentalist nuts in this world that bitch, moan and protest about everything.
Can you believe these nut jobs that don't want to import "genetically modified" food to Africa? The people there are starving and dieing as a result of lack of food but oh no, we can't be importing "genetically modified" food to save them because there might be some "unforeseen" consequences somewhere down the line. Well I have news for these people, we've been "genetically modifying" food since Gregor Medal. We've been combining various strains of things for hundreds of years to produce new offspring that is not found in nature. Ah but it might have some "unforeseen consequences" down the line. What unforeseen consequences? They can't name any nor can they site any proof that is food is somehow "bad". So, elitist pigs that they are, they'll just sit back and let people starve. Here's an idea, why don't we arm 10 or 20 starving Africans with baseball bats and put them in a locked room with one of the elitist pigs that are standing in the way of these starving people and their genetically modified food and see what kind of "unforeseen" consequences result?
I know that I'm probably going to get flamed by the/. faithful but I really did not enjoy the first LOTR film and decided to not bother with the rest of the trilogy. I couldn't imagine the tedium of sitting through an extended version.
You should definately give The Two Towers a chance. I felt the same way you did after watching the first one. It just got old real quick. The group is on the road, they find themselves in danger, they fend off the danger, repeat, repeat, repeat until the end of the movie.
I had never read the books but I went ahead and saw Two Towers because I thought that there had to be something more to this series.
I'm so glad I did! I thought the second one was great. The action starts as the movie begins and it really doesn't let up for most of the movie. I saw it three times and can't wait for the extended edition DVD. I thought the second one succeeded where the first one failed. Namely, as the three hours went by I never once was bored or looked down at my watch. I also thought the ending was a little more satisfying. The way the first one ended, I was like, "What.. that's it... all this time for that ending" but I was much more satisfied at the ending of the second. There was more of cliff hanger (especially with Gollum) that made me excited to see what happens in the third.
I went out and bought the extended edition of the Fellowship just so I can have the complete trilogy but I'm pretty sure that in the future when I watch the movies I'll just skip it. For me the fun with this series begins with the second film.
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This is all part of the vast right wing conspiricy first brought to our attention by the all knowing Hilary Clinton. The Republicans plan on passing legislation mandating that all vehicles in the United States be equiped with these boxes. Then on election day the evil Republicans will shut down cars owned by registered Democrats and Independents and only allow registered Republics to drive!
Republicans will finally be able to secure their stranglehood on the US goverment and begin the process of cutting down all of the trees, murdering all of the minorities and homosexuals and forcing the remaining citizens to turn over their first born children and pledge alligence to oil! We must put a stop to this madness before it begins, but first, we must save the whales, pull out of Iraq, stop global warming and repeal Bush's tax cuts for the rich which have destroyed our economy. Then we can begin stopping this madness of the black boxes.
Being able to copy and paste things (other than text) between apps is, apparently, also for Windows. Until Linux can do that, I'll stick with rebooting every now and then. Hell even trying to copy and past text between apps can sometimes have "interesting" results. Linux is great for servers. Linux has some issues on the desktop.
Some people crack me up. 98 is 5 years old. NT is even older. ME is a peice of crap. Why should any software / hardware vendor support it? How many Mac users are complaining that the lastest Apple software doesn't support OS 8? You people need to get a life!
Oh and don't give me that activation crap either. 2000 doesn't have any activation. If you complain that you can't find a copy of 2000 then buy XP and download the activation crack. It's pretty easy to find.
Use a CD-RW. That is what I do when I buy a music on iTuens and burn it to a CD. iTunes will burn track information on the CD so when I rip the CD back to MP3's none of the track info (Artist, Song Title, CD Title, etc.) is lost. When I'm finised I erase the CD-RW so it can be used again.
There are other factors, however, I don't believe the ones you listed are very valid.
1) We only have a few hundred thousands troops deplayed in Iraq and Afgahinstan. Of those, the vast majority are not reservists and did not have to leave their jobs to go over seas. They were in the militarty to begin with. If what you say is true we would have seen an increase in jobs when reservists were first called up to serve in Iraq which, in the case of a few of my friends that are in the reserve and are now in Iraq, was about a year ago.
2) While this is certainly true to a certain extent, this alone can not explain the extent of the boom we experienced last quarter. Factoring in the war, analysits were expecting about 6% growth. We experienced over 7.2% growth. Take a look at Octobers manufacturing activity. It surged last month. Manufacturing activity is a leading economic indicator. It means consumers and corporations are spending more, which means manufacturers start producing more, which means they hire more. A small increase was certainly expected after the war in Iraq began but this alone can not explain the extent of the surge.
Construction spending hit records highs last month. This two can not be explained by the war in Iraq.
This 3rd quarter GDP boom is all George W. Bush's fault .... wait a sec ... the GDP boom is probably a good thing .... George W. Bush had nothing to do with it!
On a serious note folks, when things were not looking very good I heard a lot of people on Slashdot (and everywhere else) placing the blame squarely on Bush. Now that things are looking better, and if they continue to get better, will the same people give him any credit? I highly doubt it, but it will be entertaining to see how they can justify not giving him credit for a good economy when they could justify giving him grief for a bad one.
I personally belive that the president doesn't have all the much control over the economy. Don't get me wrong, he has some degree of control, but not much as many people would like to believe.
The BBC huh? Thanks, but no thanks. There are plenty of examples of the BBC and it's left wing bias all over the place.
Unlike the BBC, I don't hate America or the Bush Administration (although I'm not entirely happy with it) and would prefer my news from an organization without such a clearly, anti-Bush, anti-American, left wing agenda.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Fox news. They are a right leaning news organization. So what? If you want the liberal take on things you can listen to NPR, read the New York or LA Times, or tune into ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN and/or MSNBC. Do these networks present some of the right's arguments? Yes they do, but for the most part you get a liberal slant. Does Fox present some of the left's arguments? Yes they do, but for the most part you get a conservative slant.
The great thing about America is that you can get your news almost anyway you want it. I just wish more media outlets would fess up and quite presenting themselves as unbiased when they cleary are. That's one reason why I respect the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, James Carville (sp?), Al Franken, etc. At least when you listen to them, you know what position they are coming from. I'm so sick and tired of people pretending to be unbiased when they so clearly lean one way that it makes you sick.
Then explain the XBOX or MSN ....
Please mod the parent up because this is exactly why we have Universities (not the military ... read the article) developing these weaponized strains of various viruses. We're trying to figure out what the terrorists might do and how to protect ourselves against it. To do that, we must weaponsize strains of certain viruses using both known and experimental techniques to determine the best way to fight and/or immunize ouselves against them should the terrorists do the same and unleash a modified virus.
Or would you people prefer that we sit back, only studying existing known varitions of viruses and then be caught with our pants down when some terrorist develops a weaponized strain of a virus and releases it? That would be a total disaster. Part of the war on terror is trying to determine what the terrorists might do and prepare for it. We don't want to wait until they actually do it before we figure out how we would respond because in the case of a biological or nuclear attack, it would already be too late. So we give Universities grants to modify viruses to make them stronger and then to try and determine how to immunize ourselves against the stronger strain.
What do you people crying foul want us to do? This kind of research is both important and necessary to ensure that we are prepared against future biological attacks. I realize that you would rather go over to the Middle East, build a fire and hold hands with the terrorists and sing "Kumbaya Allah", but let's be realistic here, we are at war. They hate us and want us dead and no amount of singing around a camp fire is going to change that. We have to be prepared for a biological attack because we know that Al Queda and other terrorists are trying to get their hands on those weapons and would use them if they could get them.
Two things. First, you're completely right. Anytime Microsoft or any Microsoft employee talks about "choice" with a straight face then there is definitely something going on.
Second, they should be worried. I downloaded iTunes when it was released and immediately started using it as my main media player / jukebox. After buying some tracks from the iTMS I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new 40 GB iPod from the Apple store. Granted I had wanted to buy some kind of MP3 player for a while but I was heavily leaning toward one of the 128 or 256 MB flash players. I had absolutely no intention of buying a hard drive based MP3 player and definitely nothing as expensive as even the 10 GB iPod. After using iTunes and the iTMS and reading about how great people thought the iPod was I decided to go with the iPod. I had it shipped overnight and spent the entire weekend ripping my CD collection to MP3 in iTunes and playing around with the iPod. After a few days I can say that I am thoroughly impressed with both products and my satisfaction with them will result in having to take a serious look at a Mac the next time I buy a computer.
The iPod, while expensive, is such a great product. I can take my whole music collection with me where everywhere I go. The batter lasts 7 - 8 hours, it can be charged to 80% capacity in an hour (it takes about 4 for 100%) and it's small enough to fit comfortably in my pocket. The user interface makes it easy to interact with. It comes with a dock that has a line out jack so I can hook it into my stereo or take it with me to a friends and hook it into their equipment. With the car adaptor kit I can use it in my car.
The iPod also acts as a portable hard drive and a mini PDA. Setting the it up as a portable hard drive takes one click in iTunes. I had to buy the USB adaptor and a cable but now I can use the iPod to transfer files between my PC at work and my computer at home. You can also export your contact and appointment information from Outlook and store it in the iPod. It's even easier if you have a Mac as iSync can automatically sync your contact and calendar information for you.
I'm thrilled to death with the iTunes / iPod combo and I don't recall ever feeling this way about anything Microsoft has produced. So, to summarize, I think Microsoft is scared and they very well should be. I'm a happy Apple customer who will consider buying other Apple products in the future. Before iTunes and the iPod I wouldn't have even considered buying a Mac, or anything else produced by Apple.
Microsoft won't be able to one up Apple anytime soon by bundeling their Music Store / Jukebox with the next version of Windows because Longhorn is still such a long way off. That means that Microsoft is going to actually have to compete with Apple on the merits of it's own software and DRM format. That's going to be increadibly hard to do.
I'm in the exact same boat. After downloading iTunes and being very, very impressed I bit the bullet and bought a 40 GB iPod from the Apple store. It just arrived today and I've spent the day ripping my entire CD collection to MP3. It's something I've been meaning to do for backup purposes for quite a while now. iTunes makes it easy and the iPod will allow me to take my entire collection with me. I can't get over how cool it is!
I've got to agree with you there. If you're looking for the ability to hear what you want, when you want, for a flat fee then Rhapsody is the way to go. I'm a subscriber to the service. The catch being that you've got to be willing to pay a monthly fee, be willing to deal with a limited selection and have a high speed connection to the net. Rhapsody is more of an on-demand music service where as iTunes is media player / organizer with a built in music store. Comparing iTunes and Rhapsody is like comparing apples and oranges. Other than the fact that you can purchase music with each, they are all togather different animals that serve different purposes. iTunes is about organizing the music that you've already got in your library and Rhapsody is about listening to music on demand.
iTunes works like a charm on my desktop but I'm having some problems on my Compaq laptop. The problem is with the CD player. iTunes will detect when a CD is inserted, check CDDB and get the proper disc name and track names and iTunes will read the the track lengths properly, but when I try and play any track on a CD it's like the track is zero length. It hangs for a second then tries to play the next track, then the next, then the next, etc.
iTunes for Windows is really a 1.0 release in terms of hardware support. There are literally hundreds of thousands of hardware combinations out there and it's going to take Apple a few releases to get the majority of kinks worked out. I, for one, am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
After using iTunes and the iTMS I decided to bite the bullet and buy one of the new 40 GB iPods from the Apple Store. It's due here at the begining of the week. If I like it as much as I think I will, I may give a MAC a try. Perhaps this the begining of a trend ....
I hear you one that one man. To get around the whole AAC on other player problem here's what I do. As soon as I purchase and download music I use iTunes to burn it to an audio CD on a CD-RW disc. iTunes will burn the CD with the song names, so all you do is eject the CD-RW, re-insert it, remove the purchased music from your library and then convert the burned CD-RW back to MP3s in iTunes. Because iTunes burns CD's with the CD info you don't have to enter information about the tracks back into the tags of the mp3's when you're converting them back from CD you burned. When you're done you can erase the CD-RW and use it again. It's a few extra steps but it's worth it IMHO. No DRM to worry about.
While I can certainly understand your unwillingness to upgrade, I'd suggest moving to Windows 2000. IMHO it's the best OS that Microsoft has ever produced. Leaps and bounds better than 98 and I won't even bother talking about how much better it is than ME (what a POS that was). If your system can run 98 than it can probably run 2000. If you have no plans to upgrade then you shouldn't have plans to run any Windows apps that are going to be released in the future as you're going to see more and more that are not going to support 98/Me.
I can see why they would choose to target 2000/XP and not 98/ME. First and foremost, 98 is 5 years old and ME is a complete and total POS. There are probably features in 2000/XP that iTunes needs that are lacking in 98 / ME. You've got to figure that Apple would support 98/ME if they could. They took a look and determined it was more trouble than what it is worth. Perhaps they will add support in a future release and were just in a hurry to get iTunes out the door.
There is a patch available for the problem but you've got to contact Microsoft support services to get it. There are a few web sites that have it. I don't have links but I could dig them up if someone needs it.
Actually they aren't protecting their IP from pirates. They are protecting their IP from casual copying. Real pirates can get around almost any type of copy protection. Product activation, in most forms, is pretty easy to crack if you know what your doing. Activation doesn't stop real pirates. Not much can.
I have always found product activation funny. While I understand the desire to protect IP, casual copying in many instances can result in greater revanue for a company. Just look at Microsoft. The monopoly they now enjoy is a direct result of casual copying. Everyone I know used to stay current with the latest release of Windows / Office. Some bought it, some copied it, but almost everyone had the latest release of the software. That gave Microsoft a lot of power and influence and they used it to their advantage.
Since the XP series, most users have not upgraded. If they run XP it's because it came with their computer. Same goes with Office. Now if a lower cost alternative is available many of them will probably be open to it. I've told several of my friends about Open Office and conviced them to download it rather than upgrade to Office XP (and now 2003). I doubt those people I know are the only people looking for an lower cost alternative to Office. Activation may end up being a real problem for Microsoft in the long run.
It'll be a cold day in hell when I sign up for any RIAA amnesty program! It doesn't matter how many P2P networks they shutdown, monitor for piracy, etc. They'll never get em all! They won't even come close. All they'll do is tick more people off. Speaking of which, it'll also be a cold day in hell the next time I buy anything created by a member of the RIAA. I'd rather be tied to a chair and thrown down some steps than see another penny of my money go to the RIAA.
Ah yes, you've hit the nail right on the head with this one. It is all a part of the vast right wing conspiricy that Hilary Clinton warned us about.
It was started by Ronald Reagan and fellow conspiritors a few months after he won the White House. Reagan and his parterns knew there was a long road ahead to world domination but that it was possible. He know that in order to take over the world, he would need to defeat the USSR and stack the Supreme Court. His vice president, George Bush, was also involved. When Bush became president he continued to stack the Supreme Court with other conspiritors and oversaw the final break up of the Soviet Union. Bush engineered the Golf War so we could build a military presence in Saudi Arabia and be one step closer to the oil in the Middle East.
Alas, Bush was defeated in the 1992 election and the evil Republican plan was put on hold. Bush recruited Newt Gingrich and several others to continue on with the dastardly plan. Newt and fellow conspiritors decided that Clinton must go, the only question was how. They engineered and Republic revolution and take over the House and Senate in the 94 elections. Once they had control of bouth the houses of Congress it was time to make a move on Clinton.
They tried Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater and finally found something with the potential to stick in Monica. But alas, Monica-gate failed. Alough Clinton was impeached, the impeachment was not successfull and Clinton remained president.
Enraged, the Republicans decided that they would not lose again. The approached George W. Bush several years before the 2000 presidential primary and asked him, along with several prominant neo-cons, to join the conspiricy. Everyone agreed.
The Republicans then commanded as many CEO's as possible to begin moving their companies overseas, where they could afford cheaper labor and evade taxes. Part of the money that they saved could be funnelled illegally back to the RNC and to state Republican parties where they were able to buy votes for George W. Bush and run attack ads against his primary challengers.
Bush emerged victorious in the primaries and then the campaign began to defeat Al Gore. The evil Republicans continued to raise millions of dollars to purchase attack ads and buy votes. When it appeared there was a tie in Florida, George W. Bush didn't break a sweat. It seemed the Reagan and Bush Sr. were correct when they determined it would be necessary to stack the Supreme Court. With evil Republican operatives lead by Scalia and Thomas on the court, the result of the Florida supreme court case went in Bush's favor. Everything was begining to fall back into place.
George W. Bush was ready to begin the process of world domination. To ensure that Bush would win the next election, his cronies began purchasing companies that produced electronic voting equipment. He would fool the US into going electonic after the Florida 2000 fiasco. He would turn the Democrats anger against them to ensure reelection in 2004. The campaign for world domination could commence.
Bush beefed up the Military and sent secret evil Republican operatives to Afganistan to recruit the help of several unwhitting Al Queda operatives who reluctantly agreed to hijack aircraft and fly them into the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and the Capitol Building. The hijackings were to occur on September 11, 2001.
After the hijackings Bush invaded Afganistan. Altough Afganistan was not strategically important to Bush, it would provide the staging ground to test the effectiveness of our military against the defenseless masses.
Afganistan went off nicely, altough there would need to be some improvements made before the second wave of the plan could be implemented.
Two years passed by as Bush rebuilt the military. In that time Bush was also able to engineer a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans so they could in turn line the pockets his cohorts and ensure victory in the next election.
When the military was back u
Some of you people never cease to amaze me with your anti-Microsoft FUD. I'm no Microsoft fan but some of your responses here are laughable. Look it's not going to come turned on by default and if you want to use the DRM you're going to need a server. The server requirement pretty much ensures that joe-six pack (who gets office bundled with his PC) is never going to use it. Offices where users take documents home to work on aren't going to use it.
Sane IT professionals won't bother with it. I would never trust my information to a Microsoft DRM enabled format that requires an authentication server. Can you imagine what will happen when the inevitable bug / worm / virus totally screws up the server and causes all of the authentication information to be lost. Everyone in the office is locked out of their documents for a day while the authentication server is brought back up. Especially after the hassle that was Blaster and SoBig, the last thing a sane IT department would do is implement Microsoft DRM that requires an authentication server to be up and running to open documents.
This is hardly a plot by Microsoft to lock users into the Office format. If DRM didn't require a server, was enabled by default and Clippy urged you to use it, then I'd be suspicious. As it stands now it appears to be a feature that was made to appeal to certain departments within large business and it will no doubt prove to be more trouble than it's worth.
I like SuSE's option. If you choose to install GNOME it's availble on their login menu, but is not the default choice when you're presented with the login menu for the first time. So Joe Sixpack will probably start with KDE but eventually wonder what the hell GNOME is and check it out (if he opted to install it otherwise he'd be clueless about GNOME and think KDE was all there is and there wouldn't even be an issue).
I just started using Linux so I speak from newbie experience when I say that it's not like the KDE / GNOME / Windows user interface are so differen't from one another that it's hard to figure them out. You click on menus that lists programs and differen't options (i.e logoff, restart shut down) and you click the programs on those menus to launch the programs. The basic windows functions are the same (the minimize box, restore / maximize box, close box), click the window bar at the top to drag, etc. We're not talking rocket science here and although there are subtle basic differences I don't think the average user would find the UI basics all that much more complex in one over the other. It's the more advanced users that can do more advanced things in Windows that would have more trouble, but if they are intelligent enough to search google, RTF and just click around and check things out they should have no trouble making the transition. I didn't really have any problems learning the ins and outs of KDE and I didn't read anything. I just messed around in KDE until I figured things out.
I haven't used GNOME as much as I would like to yet but in KDE everything is where I would expect it to be. Editing the menu's in KDE is as easy as editing programs in the Start Menu is in Windows. Editing the desktop theme, colors, look, feel, etc. is just as easy as it is under Windows and offers you even more customization options. Which is actually a bad thing considering how horrid the average Windows user's desktop ends up looking after they choose their own "custom" colors and icons and use a picture of their dog for their desktop wallpaper ... I shudder to think of what they would do in KDE.
On a related note, the only real issue with Linux for Joe Sixpack IMHO is installing software. The average user is going to have a bitch of a time downloading and installing software or updating their systems. Yast2 in SuSE makes it easy to update your system but I wasn't very happy with the functionality. Downloading / installing new software and individual updates using RPM is a pain for the average user, even w/ Kpackage, because of dependency hell. I ended up using apt4rpm w/ Synaptic wich works wonderfully but you've got to be able to edit the default sources.list file which would probably be confusing for a newbie who's used to clicking on an exe on a web page and choosing "Run" when IE prompts them and havign the program launch and install itself. Granted you could just use Debain, but SuSE really is a good distro for a newbie. I bought my copy at Best Buy, installed it without any problems (it detected all of my hardware, my broadband internet connection, configuring the firewall was very easy, etc). SuSE should include apt4rpm preconfigured w/ Synaptic and host their own repositiory or at least include a preconfigured sources.list file. Apt w/ Synaptic makes getting new software and updating your existing software easier than it is under Windows!
Great, something else for the environmentalist wackos to flip out about. I'm all for clean water, clean air and saving trees but there are a whole bunch of absolute, environmentalist nuts in this world that bitch, moan and protest about everything.
Can you believe these nut jobs that don't want to import "genetically modified" food to Africa? The people there are starving and dieing as a result of lack of food but oh no, we can't be importing "genetically modified" food to save them because there might be some "unforeseen" consequences somewhere down the line. Well I have news for these people, we've been "genetically modifying" food since Gregor Medal. We've been combining various strains of things for hundreds of years to produce new offspring that is not found in nature. Ah but it might have some "unforeseen consequences" down the line. What unforeseen consequences? They can't name any nor can they site any proof that is food is somehow "bad". So, elitist pigs that they are, they'll just sit back and let people starve. Here's an idea, why don't we arm 10 or 20 starving Africans with baseball bats and put them in a locked room with one of the elitist pigs that are standing in the way of these starving people and their genetically modified food and see what kind of "unforeseen" consequences result?
You should definately give The Two Towers a chance. I felt the same way you did after watching the first one. It just got old real quick. The group is on the road, they find themselves in danger, they fend off the danger, repeat, repeat, repeat until the end of the movie.
I had never read the books but I went ahead and saw Two Towers because I thought that there had to be something more to this series.
I'm so glad I did! I thought the second one was great. The action starts as the movie begins and it really doesn't let up for most of the movie. I saw it three times and can't wait for the extended edition DVD. I thought the second one succeeded where the first one failed. Namely, as the three hours went by I never once was bored or looked down at my watch. I also thought the ending was a little more satisfying. The way the first one ended, I was like, "What .. that's it ... all this time for that ending" but I was much more satisfied at the ending of the second. There was more of cliff hanger (especially with Gollum) that made me excited to see what happens in the third.
I went out and bought the extended edition of the Fellowship just so I can have the complete trilogy but I'm pretty sure that in the future when I watch the movies I'll just skip it. For me the fun with this series begins with the second film.