"Ever thought about how much a fancy new mobile phone is worth if you had to buy it outright? Probably at least as much as an iPod is the answer... and plenty of people carry those phones around in their pockets!"
Mobile phone theft was such a problem that the police here in the UK were spending loads of effort trying to stop schoolkids being attacked for the mobile telephones they carried, and finally the manufacturers were forced to find a way of deactivating stolen phones, which finally meant that the problem lessened.
The cost of losing a mobile telephone is now approximately $40 for insurance against losing it in your first year, or zero if you lose it after the first year. The cost you quote is accurate if you wanted to replace a stolen phone and use the new one with your contract, but the cheaper alternative is to switch to a low-cost contract, and ride-out the rest of the year paying for connection but not owning a phone.
Or just buy a stolen phone. Nice neat circle.
But about the iPod, I'd be replacing a $40 CD player with a $450 iPod, and that's just one more thing to think about before buying it. Also, the 6-hour battery life, the $50 battery replacement cost, the expense of external battery packs, plus them not being available in the UK, plus the possibility of problems getting it to work with linux, plus the inconvenience of getting firewire to work, plus the cost of buying a special AC adapter for each of the locations I'd frequently want to charge it... It just seems like every iPod accessory costs 50 dollars or more, where the equivalent accessory for a CD player would cost ten dollars.
"okay, find me david bowie, alan parsons project, rory gallagher, chemical brothers, the cure, velvet underground, radiohead, weezer, elvis costello, the pogues or the grateful dead on emusic and i'll start paying attention to it..."
Okay, find me Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Age of Mythology, Back Office 2000 and iTunes on linux, and i'll start paying attention to it
Sometimes it's good to put freedom higher on your list of requirements.
"And your MP3 player won't skip, either. Because it will be cushioned by about $380 in cash."
That's one of my concerns about buying an iPod: do you really want to be walking around with something that fits neatly in a thief's pocket, and is worth #400 (slashdot currency symbols be damned)
As to the choice in music stores... why would anyone use a music store which does not support the MP3 format? I understand that MP3s can be transferred to the iPod player, so surely any music store can be used?
"That's very bad for Microsoft...and great for Apache"
Perhaps, but realise that most of the "sites" listed in Netcraft are domain-squatters and those trying to game google; if you're hosting 27,000 one-page websites with a domain-name each, then Apache is better at doing that than any other webserver.
Imagine trying to set those up using a Windows GUI interface... (shudder!)
It might be more useful to have a survey of the most popular websites, for comparing what's used by the people with difficult technical problems to solve. (Fortune-x or FTSE-x doesn't count, as the size of a company is unrelated to the popularity of their website)
"I got a call from Dell yesterday... They were calling to sell me broadband access... but they made sure to preface their call with "you recently purchased a laptop from us""
/me strikes out Dell from his list of preferred laptop suppliers at work...
"Well, I'm wondering what would have been more damage.. the worm or the slashdotting"
Most slashdot users are familiar enough with the internet to know what SPEWS is without having to load the web-page. Those who are will hardly be noticed in the logs (remember there's a DDOS on the site), and besides, it's not exactly a lego-brick server.
The slashdotting joke may be old, but it only ever applied to sites being run off a modem, and even then, only to sites with huge images.
"whoever wrote this is probably sitting somewhere overseas. so, unfortunately we can bitch all we want about it being illegal, because noone is going to do anything about it."
While the spammers may well be overseas, I trust that our american friends, who live in the same country as the spammers, will have appropriate law-enforcement to sort them out.
California is, I believe, one of the first "overseas" locations to check.
"Seriously, if you want to reject stuff at SMTP time rather than accepting it then processing it, try using sa-exim (a freshmeat search will turn it up) - it fits into exim and rejects as soon as it's worked out it's spam - mid-DATA if need be."
Imagine one of these which needs a Beowulf cluster...
(i.e. how much CPU does it use for large-scale use?)
If anyone considers that such URL-blocking should be open-sourced, take a look at DMOZ, which maintains a classification of nearly every website on the internet, as RDF which can be parsed into categorised URL lists:
Data can be downloaded here, and the site list is about 300MB in size.
- FBI agents too open AOL accounts, which is worrying in a sense
Or, to quote the Onion? headine: 50% of people in chatrooms are FBI agents posing as teenage girls, trying to date the other 50%, which are FBI agents posing as teenage boys.
...any company with cycle-parking has to provide showers, it's UK law... Do you have any references for this, I work in the uk and would like to cycle to work occasionally but we have no shower facilites. It would be nice to have something concrete to take to personnel. cheers.
I'll ask about it next week; it's not something I was involved in directly. A google search doesn't reveal anything like that, but talks a lot about the benefits of companies voluntarily providing such facilities.
Examples:
"The first and basic requirement is secure parking, showers and changing facilities. Interest free loans for bicycle purchase and the establishment of Bicycle User Groups (BUGS) can assist in establishing a pro-bike culture within a company, as part of wider efforts to establish a change in attitudes and culture and to promote cycling positively. Showers and changing facilities can be used by employees for other health and fitness activities, and to meet health and safety requirements."link
(b) For employees who may need to change clothes and to shower after arriving at the office because, for example, they cycle or run to work, tax is not chargeable on the free use by employees of changing room and shower facilities at an employer's premises, provided these facilities are generally available to all employees. link, also mentions a 12p per mile standard if you go anywhere other than to and from work.
"Why, by 2005, I'll bet there will be hundreds -- nay, thousands! -- of copies of Redhat and Mandrake circulating around Vietnam for free! And thousands of applications too! The horror!"
To think somebody would translate my programs into Khmer and Vietnamese? Cool!
"Emacs can work as a text editor? How do I enable that feature?"
More usefully, how do you stop EMACS from getting confused when it's editing a webpage over an FTP or SSH connection? It seems to work until the first connection times-out, and then refuses to reconnect when it needs to save the document (or worse, says that it's saved the document to FTP, but hasn't)
Slashdot Mirror
Amazon: "Dell Digital Jukebox DJ" .
.
We found no matches for "Dell Digital Jukebox" . Below are results for "digital"
Amazon: "iRiver iFP-395T"
We found no matches for "iRiver iFP-395T" . Below are results for "river"
Amazon: "Samsung Napster"
We found no matches for "Samsung Napster" . Below are results for "samsung"
Amazon: "ipod"
See all 27 results in Electronics & Photo:...
See all 8 results in Books:...
"Ever thought about how much a fancy new mobile phone is worth if you had to buy it outright? Probably at least as much as an iPod is the answer ... and plenty of people carry those phones around in their pockets!"
Mobile phone theft was such a problem that the police here in the UK were spending loads of effort trying to stop schoolkids being attacked for the mobile telephones they carried, and finally the manufacturers were forced to find a way of deactivating stolen phones, which finally meant that the problem lessened.
The cost of losing a mobile telephone is now approximately $40 for insurance against losing it in your first year, or zero if you lose it after the first year. The cost you quote is accurate if you wanted to replace a stolen phone and use the new one with your contract, but the cheaper alternative is to switch to a low-cost contract, and ride-out the rest of the year paying for connection but not owning a phone.
Or just buy a stolen phone. Nice neat circle.
But about the iPod, I'd be replacing a $40 CD player with a $450 iPod, and that's just one more thing to think about before buying it. Also, the 6-hour battery life, the $50 battery replacement cost, the expense of external battery packs, plus them not being available in the UK, plus the possibility of problems getting it to work with linux, plus the inconvenience of getting firewire to work, plus the cost of buying a special AC adapter for each of the locations I'd frequently want to charge it... It just seems like every iPod accessory costs 50 dollars or more, where the equivalent accessory for a CD player would cost ten dollars.
What, are we trying to modify SCO's google result now?
"okay, find me david bowie, alan parsons project, rory gallagher, chemical brothers, the cure, velvet underground, radiohead, weezer, elvis costello, the pogues or the grateful dead on emusic and i'll start paying attention to it..."
Okay, find me Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Age of Mythology, Back Office 2000 and iTunes on linux, and i'll start paying attention to it
Sometimes it's good to put freedom higher on your list of requirements.
"There are third-party battery replacements available, and they're under $100."
I just replaced my CD player batteries. They cost $3.50
"HTML encode EVERYTHING the user sends to you."
You can sometimes spot a website coded by somebody with this methodology...
For example mandrakeexpert, where the preview window will display 15 backslashes in front of every single-quote you put in your text.
"And your MP3 player won't skip, either. Because it will be cushioned by about $380 in cash."
That's one of my concerns about buying an iPod: do you really want to be walking around with something that fits neatly in a thief's pocket, and is worth #400 (slashdot currency symbols be damned)
As to the choice in music stores... why would anyone use a music store which does not support the MP3 format? I understand that MP3s can be transferred to the iPod player, so surely any music store can be used?
"If they find fundamental flaws in the systems will they keep them secret to shore up US networks?"
I don't think Internet Explorer is a secret anymore
"The license is Free as in FSF. Don't worry about it."
The GPL lists free software licenses, if you want to check their opinion on a license. Cougaar isn't listed.
The open source initiative also lists licenses which qualify to be called Free Software. Cougaar isn't listed.
Is Cougaar using one of the listed licenses, or has it been sent to GNU for analysis?
Should Microsoft buy Ask Jeeves?
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Sounds ideal for integrating with Internet Explorer...
"Repeat after me: the internet is not the www and vice-versa"
You don't work for Verisign do you?
"That's very bad for Microsoft...and great for Apache"
Perhaps, but realise that most of the "sites" listed in Netcraft are domain-squatters and those trying to game google; if you're hosting 27,000 one-page websites with a domain-name each, then Apache is better at doing that than any other webserver.
Imagine trying to set those up using a Windows GUI interface... (shudder!)
It might be more useful to have a survey of the most popular websites, for comparing what's used by the people with difficult technical problems to solve. (Fortune-x or FTSE-x doesn't count, as the size of a company is unrelated to the popularity of their website)
"I got a call from Dell yesterday... They were calling to sell me broadband access... but they made sure to preface their call with "you recently purchased a laptop from us""
/me strikes out Dell from his list of preferred laptop suppliers at work...
"Well, I'm wondering what would have been more damage.. the worm or the slashdotting"
Most slashdot users are familiar enough with the internet to know what SPEWS is without having to load the web-page. Those who are will hardly be noticed in the logs (remember there's a DDOS on the site), and besides, it's not exactly a lego-brick server.
The slashdotting joke may be old, but it only ever applied to sites being run off a modem, and even then, only to sites with huge images.
"whoever wrote this is probably sitting somewhere overseas. so, unfortunately we can bitch all we want about it being illegal, because noone is going to do anything about it."
While the spammers may well be overseas, I trust that our american friends, who live in the same country as the spammers, will have appropriate law-enforcement to sort them out.
California is, I believe, one of the first "overseas" locations to check.
"Seriously, if you want to reject stuff at SMTP time rather than accepting it then processing it, try using sa-exim (a freshmeat search will turn it up) - it fits into exim and rejects as soon as it's worked out it's spam - mid-DATA if need be."
Imagine one of these which needs a Beowulf cluster...
(i.e. how much CPU does it use for large-scale use?)
If anyone considers that such URL-blocking should be open-sourced, take a look at DMOZ, which maintains a classification of nearly every website on the internet, as RDF which can be parsed into categorised URL lists:
Data can be downloaded here, and the site list is about 300MB in size.
- FBI agents too open AOL accounts, which is worrying in a sense
Or, to quote the Onion? headine:
50% of people in chatrooms are FBI agents posing as teenage girls, trying to date the other 50%, which are FBI agents posing as teenage boys.
...any company with cycle-parking has to provide showers, it's UK law...
Do you have any references for this, I work in the uk and would like to cycle to work occasionally but we have no shower facilites. It would be nice to have something concrete to take to personnel.
cheers.
I'll ask about it next week; it's not something I was involved in directly. A google search doesn't reveal anything like that, but talks a lot about the benefits of companies voluntarily providing such facilities.
Examples:
"The first and basic requirement is secure parking, showers and changing facilities. Interest free loans for bicycle purchase and the establishment of Bicycle User Groups (BUGS) can assist in establishing a pro-bike culture within a company, as part of wider efforts to establish a change in attitudes and culture and to promote cycling positively. Showers and changing facilities can be used by employees for other health and fitness activities, and to meet health and safety requirements."link
(b) For employees who may need to change clothes and to shower after arriving at the office because, for example, they cycle or run to work, tax is not chargeable on the free use by employees of changing room and shower facilities at an employer's premises, provided these facilities are generally available to all employees. link, also mentions a 12p per mile standard if you go anywhere other than to and from work.
"MS to Google: You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
Google to MS:
search "office software" returned 19323 results, showing 1 to 10:
- openoffice.org
- abiword.org
- koffice.kde.org
- gnu.org/software/emacs
"Why, by 2005, I'll bet there will be hundreds -- nay, thousands! -- of copies of Redhat and Mandrake circulating around Vietnam for free! And thousands of applications too! The horror!"
To think somebody would translate my programs into Khmer and Vietnamese? Cool!
http://invisiblog.com/ - uses MixMaster/CypherPunk anonymous email to post your blog, use a GPG key to sign it to prove it's you posting.
"Two people can keep a secret, but only if one of them doesn't know it" (i.e. your identity)
Stop press! We've found the weapons of mass destruction. Somebody inform Fox News...
"Emacs can work as a text editor? How do I enable that feature?"
More usefully, how do you stop EMACS from getting confused when it's editing a webpage over an FTP or SSH connection? It seems to work until the first connection times-out, and then refuses to reconnect when it needs to save the document (or worse, says that it's saved the document to FTP, but hasn't)
"What defines abandonware?"
At a guess, computer programs written more than 70 years ago. That's the limit of corporate copyright isn't it?
(no, EMACS doesn't count, they're still developing that)