I tend to agree. The review actually appears to be lacking in detail, too. In all fairness, it probably was geared towards a more novice, less tech-savvy readership (otherwise, why would you let a guy who has "absolutely no need to carry around 20 GB of music" review a HD-based MP3 player - geez).
I got to play around with the 20GB version of Dell's Jukebox for little more than a week.
To help you understand where I'm coming from: I currently own three MP3 players and I have one with me at all times when outside the house. Generally, it gets at least 3 hours of usage per day, too. So, it's safe to say that both, usability and sound quality, matter to me.
That being said, I can personally not, in good faith, recommend the Dell Jukebox. Here's why...
UI: to be honest, it sucks! Having the relevant controls on the front might make it look cool (at least that's what my girlfriend thinks) but it's doing a disservice to the user. But, okay, I could live with that if it weren't for the crappy, crappy scrollwheel. It just feels weird, cheap and not smooth at all. Plus, it's literally a pain to operate. That may not be a problem if you use your MP3 player for twenty minutes a day or have your custom playlists but if you tend to have big playlists and skip tracks a lot it quickly starts to hurt your thumb.
Asthetics: Personally, I don't really like the look & feel of the Dell Jukebox but that's just me. It's like that kid on the block who's trying way too hard and doesn't realize he's not black.
Sound Quality: This is the make-or-break thing, as far as I am concerned and the Jukebox did perform okay. It did test it with different sets of headphones (earbuds, in-the-ear headphones, clip-ons) and with my home stereo system. The sound was okay; I found it lacking in bass (and the sound could be a little clearer) but that was when I hooked it up to my speakers at home. Overall, it was okay - nothing extraordinary but not bad at all. One more thing about the review though - equalizers are pretty standard these days and certainly nothing to rave about. And the one included in the Jukebox is hardly anything more than a gimmick (that's true for most consumer product EQs though).
Battery: The battery life was great (as advertised). The battery is not user-replacable though. I did not open the device to check if it could be easily replaced.
Software: Well, it comes with Musicmatch which is a pretty crappy piece of software, so I didn't use it. Windows integration seemed okay to me. When I tried to access the thing on my Linux system it just would not recognize the Jukebox. I didn't really try to make it work as, at that point, I was pretty content on not keeping the thing anyways.
Screen: This is the one area where I found Dell's Jukebox superior to Apple's iPod. The blue backlight looks pretty cool, the contrast is great and it doesn't seem to consume much power at all.
Overall though, I don't see why anyone would switch from the iPod or Creative's Jukebox (or any other player for that matter) to Dell's Jukebox. The iPod looks better, feels better and handles better. Sure it is expensive but I think I'll keep mine. Creative's Jukebox Zen is superior in terms of sound quality (with good headphones, not the ones bundled with the device), capacity, controls (easy to operate it without taking it out of your pocket ) and price.
As far as first-time-buyers are concerned: well, it's an option but in my humble opinion, not the best one. YMMV. HTH.
Well, in fact the XBox is not that easily exploitable any more as "Live 2.0" also includes fixes for various buffer overflows, hence breaking various exploits (which in turn are needed to run unsigned code).
So make sure you do get a 3rd generation (or preferably older) XBox with the old pre-"Live 2.0" dash.
Good point. One of the major advantages of iTunes though is ease of use, in the sense that people don't have to go out and make an effort to search for their favorite artists' music. It's one intuitive interface that eliminates the need to go to different websites, and it offers seamless integration with the iPod software (which certainly is a strong point with the type of consumer Apple is going after).
Having a bunch of smaller labels will make this process more complex, and hence less appealing to your average Joe Schmoe Consumer.
Another thing to consider is that iTunes et al. allow users to buy tracks individually - so instead of being forced to buy an entire album for just two good songs, people now can just get those two songs. With the traditional business model the artist would get paid once (1 album sold); now the artist gets paid for each song individually. So, making good music, instead of just producing filler material to be included on some album, actually pays off...
Having said that, I have to admit I really like CDBaby. It's big and diverse enough to just kill time browsing through their inventory without getting quickly bored and you can actually find some really good new music that way.
Well, actually, at this point the issue is not whether Sherman Networks has a case at all.
The defendants merely asked the judge to throw the case out on the basis of the allegations set forth in the counterclaim being "too vague".
Think of it of a text book pre-trail motion; it doesn't really have anything to do with the material case at hand. Plus, the lawsuit is going to get (at least partly) suspended until all the appeals of the Grokster case are sorted out. At least, Judge Wilson doesn't seem to a man who bows down to pressure.
SCO - providing entertainment for first year law students, day after day.
Funny thing is, a friend of mine actually does use some of the documents SCO filed to point out common, silly mistakes to his class, which in fact consists mostly of first year law students.
Ah, what would we be doing all day long without Darl the Bride and his litigation clown department..?
... this is probably why. You also might want to check out this site. Paypal is currently involved in numerous trials worldwide and some of the stuff they're doing is ranging from questionable to ludicrous, and probably downright illegal in some cases.
That's exactly what happened at my place. First, the lady makes fun of me for watching a webcast and then, I have to endure the "oh, it's so cute; and look - it's pink" routine.
Sure you could get a decent looking, slightly larger Jukebox Xtra that has 7,5 times the capacity of the Mini iPod and replaceable batteries for exactly the same amount of money but it's "just no iPod". And, at that point - as every man knows - there's no reasoning with it.
That is the market segment Apple is going after.
And more importantly, it's also smart from a business point of view: she couldn't explain the difference between a Megabyte or a Gigabyte for the life of her. Now, at some point the thing will inevitably run out of space and instead of getting rid of older files she'll just buy a new one. Unless, of course, the battery dies first...
You're right - my above statement was indeed mistakable and less clear than it should have been. Also, I did not mean to offend you, or anyone for that matter (I apologize if I did).
What I was trying to do was to relate my personal reasoning (ie. why I couldn't see myself buying a portable video device) to point out that there's probably not much of a market for a video iPod. That's why I chose to describe my personal situation (ie. "around here"). I realize that things are different in other social stratums and other parts of the world - I should have been clearer on that point.
You will probably agree though that a portable video device, such as a video iPod, would probably not be marketed for people without cash to burn. And the type of people who are willing to spend $700 on a video iPod are generally more likely to actually have more than one computer.
There's at least one computer in every office around here. Most people have 3+ computers in their homes nowadays. High-bandwidth connectivity is becoming widely available. Multi-format DVD burners available at around $100. So why would I want to shell out $400-700 for a bulky device that I don't really need?
I mean my PDA can play videos just fine -- it has enough storage and CPU power to watch entire movies. But I never do it. When I carry my PDA, there's usually a computer or a DVD player nearby . So out of convenience, I just use those (bigger screen, better sound, nothing to fumble around). It's just a matter of using the tool best suited for the job.
Now the iPod on the other hand, is the best tool for the job.
Hmm... I think Graham makes a compelling case for the importance of freedom of information.
Being able to express unpopular topics or even matters deemed to be too taboo by a restrictive society and even being able to discuss them is what makes (semi-)anonymous systems such as Freenet and Mute so important these days. In a way, it's this centuries' way of doing what Hans and Sophie Scholl did in the 1940s.
Without freedom of though, freedom of expression and freedom of the press, conformity is pretty much the only way. Look at it this way - all great men (CEOs as well as philosophers, politicians; the list goes on) were special in their thinking or understanding of things. That's what made them truely stand out from the "regular" masses, and that's often what made them a success.
This proposition obviously has some problems, as others have pointed out.
There was an interesting story on cryptome a few days ago about putting a Phalanx anti-aircraft missle & 20mm machine gun defense system on top of the proposed Freedom Towers. Well, I don't know if a setup like that could effectively disable or destroy a target before it reaches its mark but I have to admit it sounds more viable than the solution describe in the article...
Seriously. I realize Slashdot readers as a group are probably pretty diverse with regard to age, race, jobs, background, etcetera. But what unites us is curiosity: we want to know how stuff works, how to solve a specific problem or how others have chosen to tackle those problems. That's what/. is all about, IMHO: discovering how to look at stuff from a different perspective, one you hadn't considered before (that, and killing time at work, of course;)).
I'm sure most of us would build an pluto-like device (I'm actually surprised they didn't name it iHouse) ourselves, even if turned out to cost the same, just for kicks...
Some countries, e.g. Germany, still have laws prohibiting the use of the term champagne (same thing applies to "cognac", cf. Article 275 of the Treaty of Versailles).
Nowadays, that's hardly more than a weird relict though - think about it: it's not really Kleenex unless its made by Kimberly-Clark. If it's generic it's a just facial tissue product. Same thing...
Blackholing entire domains, or even TLDs as I've seen some people do, is missing the point though. If you really look at the S/N ratio of email you realize that the real problem is that maybe 97% of all email communication is complete and utter garbage. Yet, those 3% legitimate information are so valuable that we choose to still bother with the current system.
I, for instance, have some friends in academia - people I'd generally describe as very bright - wo absolutely refuse to use anything but AOL to access the Internet from their homes. And, they couldn't care less whether any of use likes that; it just works for them and that's why they're going to stick with it.
One of my ex-girlfriends was the same way. She'd send me digital cards and naturally would use her AOL email address. The greeting card provider would then send out the notification with her address in the SMTP envelope.My servers are configured to accept mail from AOL but reject mail with obviously fake or unreasolvable email addresses, hence the notification would just get bounced. I explained this simple concept to her at least a dozen times but never could get her to not get mad at me.
Point is: Email is about communication which in turn is about people. Any anti-spam solution that doesn't take this into account is bound to fail.
Actually, this is quite an interesting topic. I used to be responsible for enforcing certain data security polices at "some government agency". The policy does clearly mandate not only secure storage, handling and accountability but also deals with accessibility (the timeframe I'm talking about being 10-15 years(!) minimum).
At this particular facility, security has always been pretty tight (not the 'security-through-obscurity' feel-good type that's commonplace nowadays) and has even been improved after 9/11. This applies to physical security as well as system security (both of which I'd describe as very much above standard -- well, they do shell out some money for outside consulting people;)).
Policy, also requires all data to be readable for at least 10 years (which is mainly an accountability and liability issue). Now, the problem here isn't really the media but rather the data itself. Most 5.25" and tape backups are still very much readable, however, they tend to be increasingly useless -- for a document to be of any official use it needs to be 100% reproduceable.
And these days, you do not just have to deal with Word 2.0 documents that current MS Word apps cannot import or render properly but also with data format's data are either highly proprietary (as in unsupported) or completely abandoned (this is especially true for some pre-dBase database stuff) and therefore quite useless.
To cut a long story short, accessibility is often underrated -- it's not only a media issue, even though reliable media standards certainly are important, it's also a data format issue. That's why long-term planing and a solid data-back up plan is so important.
There might be other problems associated with that strategy. AFAIR, a closed CC account still shows up seven years after the last payment on that account was made. If you repeatedly close accounts and shortly afterwards open new ones, your credit scores are likely to suffer (think about it - a potential lender is going to consider this suspicious behaviour, resulting in jacked up interest rates or denied loan applications).
If you've been "a good customer"(tm) and try to cancel one of your credit cards they might actually be willing to waive your annual fee in order to "convince" you to stay. I got a two-for-one airline ticket deal that way once...
Mailboxes like the one you purchased are pretty much standard in Europe.
The downside is that you can't just leave your outgoing snail-mail in your mailbox, put up the flag and have the mailman pick your stuff up (thereby saving you a trip to the post office). Well, I'm not even sure if this is customary elsewhere but it seems to work pretty well around here.
Of course, you also have to take into account that those little mailbox locks hardly provide any security or even deterence.
Well, in my experience it usually boils down to one, or a combination of, the following:
ignorance
incomptence
liability
That's one of the reasons the military and (some) government agencies have adopted standarized protocols to deal with this kind of stuff and generally are quick to reprimand those who violate policy.
Many security problems these days have to do with the fact that people for some reason refuse to apply common sense -- requiring people to wear ID tags at all times and conducting thorough background checks is not going to do any good if you just dispose of confidential documents into some backyard alley dumpster.
Well, the following is obviously not legal advice.
That out of the way, I sure hope you're exaggerating at least a little (I am assuming that you are within the US and that your service agreement is subject to US law). I certainly don't know what kind of contract you have with your ISP but an objective observer would probably find your provider's business practices to be downright criminal. Arbitrarily denying a service based on legitimate, contractual usage of such... pff. You know what you need - a competent lawyer and a new ISP.
Btw: Don't be too sure about being authorized to run any services though - your ISP can very well assign you a static IP and still bar you from running any public services.
I had a nice, long chat with a management person at my ISP about this very subject once.
I inquired if certain clauses in the service agreement, which were nil and void, were in there for a specific reason, other than to amuse those with the legal savvy of an average 1st year law student. He reminded me that I was free to not use their service, so I reminded him that he, or rather his company, was bound by the contract he had signed.
He then, in the most threatening tone of voice he could conjure, asked if I wanted to talk to his company's legal department about it. To that I replied, "Sure". He then connected me to the head of their legal department who turned out to be the guy's boss and after about five minutes he and I agreed the the guy was an absolute idiot. [This was no personal low-bandwidth account but a rather expensive, WAN setup though.]
Never heard from the guy again, ever. His boss and I have lunch every once in a while though. Moral of the story: 'unlimited' doesn't always mean 'unlimited' but it generally does.
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I got to play around with the 20GB version of Dell's Jukebox for little more than a week.
To help you understand where I'm coming from: I currently own three MP3 players and I have one with me at all times when outside the house. Generally, it gets at least 3 hours of usage per day, too. So, it's safe to say that both, usability and sound quality, matter to me.
That being said, I can personally not, in good faith, recommend the Dell Jukebox. Here's why...
Overall though, I don't see why anyone would switch from the iPod or Creative's Jukebox (or any other player for that matter) to Dell's Jukebox. The iPod looks better, feels better and handles better. Sure it is expensive but I think I'll keep mine. Creative's Jukebox Zen is superior in terms of sound quality (with good headphones, not the ones bundled with the device), capacity, controls (easy to operate it without taking it out of your pocket ) and price.
As far as first-time-buyers are concerned: well, it's an option but in my humble opinion, not the best one. YMMV. HTH.
So make sure you do get a 3rd generation (or preferably older) XBox with the old pre-"Live 2.0" dash.
Having a bunch of smaller labels will make this process more complex, and hence less appealing to your average Joe Schmoe Consumer.
Another thing to consider is that iTunes et al. allow users to buy tracks individually - so instead of being forced to buy an entire album for just two good songs, people now can just get those two songs. With the traditional business model the artist would get paid once (1 album sold); now the artist gets paid for each song individually. So, making good music, instead of just producing filler material to be included on some album, actually pays off...
Having said that, I have to admit I really like CDBaby. It's big and diverse enough to just kill time browsing through their inventory without getting quickly bored and you can actually find some really good new music that way.
I don't think that's going to help them too much - and Judge Wilson is actually following well-established legal precident in his ruling.
The defendants merely asked the judge to throw the case out on the basis of the allegations set forth in the counterclaim being "too vague".
Think of it of a text book pre-trail motion; it doesn't really have anything to do with the material case at hand. Plus, the lawsuit is going to get (at least partly) suspended until all the appeals of the Grokster case are sorted out. At least, Judge Wilson doesn't seem to a man who bows down to pressure.
Funny thing is, a friend of mine actually does use some of the documents SCO filed to point out common, silly mistakes to his class, which in fact consists mostly of first year law students.
Ah, what would we be doing all day long without Darl the Bride and his litigation clown department..?
Sorry about that (I guess I should have used the preview function).
... this is probably why. You also might want to check out this site. Paypal is currently involved in numerous trials worldwide and some of the stuff they're doing is ranging from questionable to ludicrous, and probably downright illegal in some cases.
Sure you could get a decent looking, slightly larger Jukebox Xtra that has 7,5 times the capacity of the Mini iPod and replaceable batteries for exactly the same amount of money but it's "just no iPod". And, at that point - as every man knows - there's no reasoning with it.
That is the market segment Apple is going after.
And more importantly, it's also smart from a business point of view: she couldn't explain the difference between a Megabyte or a Gigabyte for the life of her. Now, at some point the thing will inevitably run out of space and instead of getting rid of older files she'll just buy a new one. Unless, of course, the battery dies first...
What I was trying to do was to relate my personal reasoning (ie. why I couldn't see myself buying a portable video device) to point out that there's probably not much of a market for a video iPod. That's why I chose to describe my personal situation (ie. "around here"). I realize that things are different in other social stratums and other parts of the world - I should have been clearer on that point.
You will probably agree though that a portable video device, such as a video iPod, would probably not be marketed for people without cash to burn. And the type of people who are willing to spend $700 on a video iPod are generally more likely to actually have more than one computer.
There's at least one computer in every office around here. Most people have 3+ computers in their homes nowadays. High-bandwidth connectivity is becoming widely available. Multi-format DVD burners available at around $100. So why would I want to shell out $400-700 for a bulky device that I don't really need?
I mean my PDA can play videos just fine -- it has enough storage and CPU power to watch entire movies. But I never do it. When I carry my PDA, there's usually a computer or a DVD player nearby . So out of convenience, I just use those (bigger screen, better sound, nothing to fumble around). It's just a matter of using the tool best suited for the job.
Now the iPod on the other hand, is the best tool for the job.
Well, you gotta pick your battles...
Being able to express unpopular topics or even matters deemed to be too taboo by a restrictive society and even being able to discuss them is what makes (semi-)anonymous systems such as Freenet and Mute so important these days. In a way, it's this centuries' way of doing what Hans and Sophie Scholl did in the 1940s.
Without freedom of though, freedom of expression and freedom of the press, conformity is pretty much the only way. Look at it this way - all great men (CEOs as well as philosophers, politicians; the list goes on) were special in their thinking or understanding of things. That's what made them truely stand out from the "regular" masses, and that's often what made them a success.
There was an interesting story on cryptome a few days ago about putting a Phalanx anti-aircraft missle & 20mm machine gun defense system on top of the proposed Freedom Towers. Well, I don't know if a setup like that could effectively disable or destroy a target before it reaches its mark but I have to admit it sounds more viable than the solution describe in the article...
Seriously.
I realize Slashdot readers as a group are probably pretty diverse with regard to age, race, jobs, background, etcetera. But what unites us is curiosity: we want to know how stuff works, how to solve a specific problem or how others have chosen to tackle those problems. That's what
I'm sure most of us would build an pluto-like device (I'm actually surprised they didn't name it iHouse) ourselves, even if turned out to cost the same, just for kicks...
Some countries, e.g. Germany, still have laws prohibiting the use of the term champagne (same thing applies to "cognac", cf. Article 275 of the Treaty of Versailles).
Nowadays, that's hardly more than a weird relict though - think about it: it's not really Kleenex unless its made by Kimberly-Clark. If it's generic it's a just facial tissue product. Same thing...
Blackholing entire domains, or even TLDs as I've seen some people do, is missing the point though.
If you really look at the S/N ratio of email you realize that the real problem is that maybe 97% of all email communication is complete and utter garbage. Yet, those 3% legitimate information are so valuable that we choose to still bother with the current system.
I, for instance, have some friends in academia - people I'd generally describe as very bright - wo absolutely refuse to use anything but AOL to access the Internet from their homes. And, they couldn't care less whether any of use likes that; it just works for them and that's why they're going to stick with it.
One of my ex-girlfriends was the same way. She'd send me digital cards and naturally would use her AOL email address. The greeting card provider would then send out the notification with her address in the SMTP envelope.My servers are configured to accept mail from AOL but reject mail with obviously fake or unreasolvable email addresses, hence the notification would just get bounced.
I explained this simple concept to her at least a dozen times but never could get her to not get mad at me.
Point is: Email is about communication which in turn is about people. Any anti-spam solution that doesn't take this into account is bound to fail.
At this particular facility, security has always been pretty tight (not the 'security-through-obscurity' feel-good type that's commonplace nowadays) and has even been improved after 9/11. This applies to physical security as well as system security (both of which I'd describe as very much above standard -- well, they do shell out some money for outside consulting people ;)).
Policy, also requires all data to be readable for at least 10 years (which is mainly an accountability and liability issue). Now, the problem here isn't really the media but rather the data itself. Most 5.25" and tape backups are still very much readable, however, they tend to be increasingly useless -- for a document to be of any official use it needs to be 100% reproduceable.
And these days, you do not just have to deal with Word 2.0 documents that current MS Word apps cannot import or render properly but also with data format's data are either highly proprietary (as in unsupported) or completely abandoned (this is especially true for some pre-dBase database stuff) and therefore quite useless.
To cut a long story short, accessibility is often underrated -- it's not only a media issue, even though reliable media standards certainly are important, it's also a data format issue. That's why long-term planing and a solid data-back up plan is so important.
AFAIR, a closed CC account still shows up seven years after the last payment on that account was made. If you repeatedly close accounts and shortly afterwards open new ones, your credit scores are likely to suffer (think about it - a potential lender is going to consider this suspicious behaviour, resulting in jacked up interest rates or denied loan applications).
If you've been "a good customer"(tm) and try to cancel one of your credit cards they might actually be willing to waive your annual fee in order to "convince" you to stay. I got a two-for-one airline ticket deal that way once...
The downside is that you can't just leave your outgoing snail-mail in your mailbox, put up the flag and have the mailman pick your stuff up (thereby saving you a trip to the post office). Well, I'm not even sure if this is customary elsewhere but it seems to work pretty well around here.
Of course, you also have to take into account that those little mailbox locks hardly provide any security or even deterence.
Heck, people have armored mailboxes these days...
That's one of the reasons the military and (some) government agencies have adopted standarized protocols to deal with this kind of stuff and generally are quick to reprimand those who violate policy.
Many security problems these days have to do with the fact that people for some reason refuse to apply common sense -- requiring people to wear ID tags at all times and conducting thorough background checks is not going to do any good if you just dispose of confidential documents into some backyard alley dumpster.
That out of the way, I sure hope you're exaggerating at least a little (I am assuming that you are within the US and that your service agreement is subject to US law). I certainly don't know what kind of contract you have with your ISP but an objective observer would probably find your provider's business practices to be downright criminal. Arbitrarily denying a service based on legitimate, contractual usage of such... pff. You know what you need - a competent lawyer and a new ISP.
Btw: Don't be too sure about being authorized to run any services though - your ISP can very well assign you a static IP and still bar you from running any public services.
I inquired if certain clauses in the service agreement, which were nil and void, were in there for a specific reason, other than to amuse those with the legal savvy of an average 1st year law student. He reminded me that I was free to not use their service, so I reminded him that he, or rather his company, was bound by the contract he had signed.
He then, in the most threatening tone of voice he could conjure, asked if I wanted to talk to his company's legal department about it. To that I replied, "Sure". He then connected me to the head of their legal department who turned out to be the guy's boss and after about five minutes he and I agreed the the guy was an absolute idiot. [This was no personal low-bandwidth account but a rather expensive, WAN setup though.]
Never heard from the guy again, ever. His boss and I have lunch every once in a while though. Moral of the story: 'unlimited' doesn't always mean 'unlimited' but it generally does.