I dislike the machines as much as anyone, but I think that's an incorrect interpretation of the process. I believe what they're saying is, the privacy is there, we do this little song and dance so that it is evident to the voters.
It also doesn't make them less qualified. And given the audience they're able to reach, if they feel strongly about a given topic I'd say they're morally required to speak about it.
Good, bad, ugly, agreeing with, and disagreeing with me.
So get the best of both worlds and by the iRiver IHP-140.
40 gigs, easy 12 hours of battery, up to 15 depending on your listening habits... supports many codecs, no drivers, no third party music manager to install on my friends' harddrives. Just plug it and that computer has an extra 40 gigs. Can copy over those ASF videos and listen to their audio as well if you fancy.
Great stuff, solid build... slightly larger than an ipod, though if I'm not mistaken smaller than the zen... either way, still fits in a pocket easily.
But then on my notebook I have to recompile my display drivers every fourth of fifth update, and I still haven't figured out why or when... heck, if I weren't a reasonably experienced user I probably never would've gotten the drivers going in the first place.
I'm learning it because I really dig linux, and want to know more about it, but I can't imagine what my dad would've said if I setup his computer like that, and then one day after turning it on he could only access the command line.
Don't get me wrong, I love apt, I can't wait until I get my new machine and really get to the tinkering with debian (I'm hoping for a 2.6 kernel and getting ACPI to work and the whole bit), but it isn't quite that simple for me... so...much...learning... windows, it's just babysitting, it's frustrating as hell, slow as dirt when I need to use a modem, makes changes I don't want it to, etc. etc., but on the other hand, to date it's always come back up and worked for me. Personally, I prefer the apt trade off, but if I were a non-techy, I'm not so sure.
Or you could read it as a simple expansion in user base. I couldn't agree with the parent more... but the other side is that my applications have gone from being used by a couple techies, to a small office after training to an entire office with less than an hour of training, and no manual ever gets read.
That's not an experiment in seeing if people will buy something useless, that's an experiment in intentionally deceiving someone as to what you're selling.
Junk hunters can gamble on those types of purchases if people are honest, instead you knowingly ripped one of them off.
They do, you'd need to become an independant contractor, get all of your paychecks for every job with no withholdings, pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis, and then settle up in April, or extend it to August to get a little more interest on any cash you owe them.
Yes, indeed there are obviouslly other solutions which can be employed right now otherwise we'd all be dying in droves. That's not the point, the point is many people are still screwing this up, here's another method...
I'm not saying MySQL's auto-increments are perfect... but at least get your facts straight. You can easily skip numbers, you can put explicit values in a column without being overriden and you can certainlly have a starting value higher than 1. I don't know if it can have a maximum value lower than the maximum value of the underlying datatype can't say I've tried that one... but all the rest I've just implemented within the last week so it's very doable.
And don't forget those who are oh I dunno, concerned about selling their product. You don't go to a customer site and say, no no, you need to reformat and install Linux, you'll love it honest... your other programs? What no, you don't need those. Not a good way to make a sale.
I have enough gripes with MySQL... but subqueries are not one of them. They're highly overrated, and nine times out of ten the correct joins will run circles around them performance wise.
PostgreSQL was one of the two, and it has stored procedures, triggers, and views. I believe it has it's own version of sequences, just as MySQL does. (Which I personally prefer to MS SQL's)
It's called a secret knock and that's the best analogy you could come up with?
Perhaps it's more like a ten-foot-thick steel blast door, but you can't even see the keyhole unless you knock on it just the right way?
Play for a billion was actually setup so no one would win. Well, at least not the billion, and then the risk was sold off to Warren Buffet, Pepsi basically paid him X million and said, if someone actually wins this thing, you owe them a billion dollars.
Of course you're absolutely right. It was the inconvenience of the batteries that was more the issue. And hauling around the CDR's. A CD MP3 is without question the economical route at the moment, I simply wanted to point out, they're not as nice as they first appear because spinning that disk at data rates is rather costly in terms of batteries.
Maybe, maybe not. The booting and such is really great, and that's just because it uses firewire which can host.
The newer iRiver's are planning on using USB2GO, and will likely add in alot of features like hosting media readers and whatnot.
But don't forget, other MP3 players are more than MP3 players too, my iRiver is a portable hard drive, linux, mac, windows, my computer, my friends computer, no one cares, as long as they have USB, I connect, take/give whatever I want, and am done, heck I use it for off site backups. It's also a nice encoder if I just want to plug it into the headphone out of my friends stereo, or sneak it into a concert. The Rio Karma is an MP3 server with it's ethernet jack, and I'm sure does other neat things.
Don't get me wrong, I think iPODs are great, they by far have the best user interface... but it's time people realize they have choices, and good ones now, look, play with, and then decide, the iPOD is no longer the hands down best player out there.
You know, this is how I thought too, except I bought my CD/MP3 player awhile ago so I paid 70$. And after going through 3 sets of batteries in the first weekend I wanted my 70 bucks back. The battery cost, and the never burning a new CD until I had another 700 megs of MP3's was frustrating as hell.
I finally settled on a non-iPOD hard disk player (iRiver) and couldn't be happier.
See this has always been the conundrum to me. Everyone says these items are perfect for the non-geek. But it seems to me, it takes a geek to get the full use out of them, you have to want to load/unload/re-organize different playlists and/or files every so often (trip in your case).
4 Gigs of static songs is what I imagine if I gave an iPOD-mini to my non-geek friends/family.
Not to mention the battery life questions of solid state designs.
If I remember correctly, some of those solid state players go well over 50 hours on built in rechargables, and several others run on basic double A's...
I'd agree with several of your points... disagree with a couple... and take definite exception to "long battery life", since when is six to eight hours long for a portable music device?
That's not even a full workday, it's barely the two hour wait, two hour flight, one hour drive to the hotel.
Plus you put that in the "generally does the best job" category, iPOD's battery life is trumped by several players.
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I dislike the machines as much as anyone, but I think that's an incorrect interpretation of the process. I believe what they're saying is, the privacy is there, we do this little song and dance so that it is evident to the voters.
For some reason if you bet on horses you tend to see more 2 dollar bills... at least that was my experience a few years ago.
It also doesn't make them less qualified. And given the audience they're able to reach, if they feel strongly about a given topic I'd say they're morally required to speak about it.
Good, bad, ugly, agreeing with, and disagreeing with me.
So get the best of both worlds and by the iRiver IHP-140.
40 gigs, easy 12 hours of battery, up to 15 depending on your listening habits... supports many codecs, no drivers, no third party music manager to install on my friends' harddrives. Just plug it and that computer has an extra 40 gigs. Can copy over those ASF videos and listen to their audio as well if you fancy.
Great stuff, solid build... slightly larger than an ipod, though if I'm not mistaken smaller than the zen... either way, still fits in a pocket easily.
But then on my notebook I have to recompile my display drivers every fourth of fifth update, and I still haven't figured out why or when... heck, if I weren't a reasonably experienced user I probably never would've gotten the drivers going in the first place.
I'm learning it because I really dig linux, and want to know more about it, but I can't imagine what my dad would've said if I setup his computer like that, and then one day after turning it on he could only access the command line.
Don't get me wrong, I love apt, I can't wait until I get my new machine and really get to the tinkering with debian (I'm hoping for a 2.6 kernel and getting ACPI to work and the whole bit), but it isn't quite that simple for me... so...much...learning... windows, it's just babysitting, it's frustrating as hell, slow as dirt when I need to use a modem, makes changes I don't want it to, etc. etc., but on the other hand, to date it's always come back up and worked for me. Personally, I prefer the apt trade off, but if I were a non-techy, I'm not so sure.
Or you could read it as a simple expansion in user base. I couldn't agree with the parent more... but the other side is that my applications have gone from being used by a couple techies, to a small office after training to an entire office with less than an hour of training, and no manual ever gets read.
That's not an experiment in seeing if people will buy something useless, that's an experiment in intentionally deceiving someone as to what you're selling.
Junk hunters can gamble on those types of purchases if people are honest, instead you knowingly ripped one of them off.
They do, you'd need to become an independant contractor, get all of your paychecks for every job with no withholdings, pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis, and then settle up in April, or extend it to August to get a little more interest on any cash you owe them.
I dunno, did you notice all of the estimated battery lifetimes are 60-90 minutes? I think I'd go for the T40 myself.
Yes, indeed there are obviouslly other solutions which can be employed right now otherwise we'd all be dying in droves. That's not the point, the point is many people are still screwing this up, here's another method...
I'm not saying MySQL's auto-increments are perfect... but at least get your facts straight. You can easily skip numbers, you can put explicit values in a column without being overriden and you can certainlly have a starting value higher than 1. I don't know if it can have a maximum value lower than the maximum value of the underlying datatype can't say I've tried that one... but all the rest I've just implemented within the last week so it's very doable.
And don't forget those who are oh I dunno, concerned about selling their product. You don't go to a customer site and say, no no, you need to reformat and install Linux, you'll love it honest... your other programs? What no, you don't need those. Not a good way to make a sale.
MySQL wins again and again for 3 reasons...
I have enough gripes with MySQL... but subqueries are not one of them. They're highly overrated, and nine times out of ten the correct joins will run circles around them performance wise.
PostgreSQL was one of the two, and it has stored procedures, triggers, and views. I believe it has it's own version of sequences, just as MySQL does. (Which I personally prefer to MS SQL's)
Because it's a layer, not a complete method.
It's called a secret knock and that's the best analogy you could come up with? Perhaps it's more like a ten-foot-thick steel blast door, but you can't even see the keyhole unless you knock on it just the right way?
Play for a billion was actually setup so no one would win. Well, at least not the billion, and then the risk was sold off to Warren Buffet, Pepsi basically paid him X million and said, if someone actually wins this thing, you owe them a billion dollars.
Of course you're absolutely right. It was the inconvenience of the batteries that was more the issue. And hauling around the CDR's. A CD MP3 is without question the economical route at the moment, I simply wanted to point out, they're not as nice as they first appear because spinning that disk at data rates is rather costly in terms of batteries.
Maybe, maybe not. The booting and such is really great, and that's just because it uses firewire which can host.
The newer iRiver's are planning on using USB2GO, and will likely add in alot of features like hosting media readers and whatnot.
But don't forget, other MP3 players are more than MP3 players too, my iRiver is a portable hard drive, linux, mac, windows, my computer, my friends computer, no one cares, as long as they have USB, I connect, take/give whatever I want, and am done, heck I use it for off site backups. It's also a nice encoder if I just want to plug it into the headphone out of my friends stereo, or sneak it into a concert. The Rio Karma is an MP3 server with it's ethernet jack, and I'm sure does other neat things.
Don't get me wrong, I think iPODs are great, they by far have the best user interface... but it's time people realize they have choices, and good ones now, look, play with, and then decide, the iPOD is no longer the hands down best player out there.
You know, this is how I thought too, except I bought my CD/MP3 player awhile ago so I paid 70$. And after going through 3 sets of batteries in the first weekend I wanted my 70 bucks back. The battery cost, and the never burning a new CD until I had another 700 megs of MP3's was frustrating as hell.
I finally settled on a non-iPOD hard disk player (iRiver) and couldn't be happier.
See this has always been the conundrum to me. Everyone says these items are perfect for the non-geek. But it seems to me, it takes a geek to get the full use out of them, you have to want to load/unload/re-organize different playlists and/or files every so often (trip in your case).
4 Gigs of static songs is what I imagine if I gave an iPOD-mini to my non-geek friends/family.
Not to mention the battery life questions of solid state designs.
If I remember correctly, some of those solid state players go well over 50 hours on built in rechargables, and several others run on basic double A's...
Eh whatever, it's not for me, is for some people.
Or it was the default, and leaving it switched on provided no noticeable benefit, so was never integrated...
I'd agree with several of your points... disagree with a couple... and take definite exception to "long battery life", since when is six to eight hours long for a portable music device?
That's not even a full workday, it's barely the two hour wait, two hour flight, one hour drive to the hotel.
Plus you put that in the "generally does the best job" category, iPOD's battery life is trumped by several players.