Write About People Pooping With Their iPods Next?
on
iPod-Jacked
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· Score: 5, Funny
Gosh and they never had headphone jacks with Walkmans, oh no.
I'd be more impressed if the iPods had something like the Neuros and could broadcast stuff, and you tune into other people's local broadcasts. Doesn't Apple have Rendezvous autoconfig software tech, couldn't they turn every iPod into a convenient super-local radio broadcaster? That would be a tech story.
This is just lame. Doing a search for the "Leander Kahney" it seems there is no iPod story too trivial for s/he to write and for Wired to publish.
What's next? iPodders describe music they listen to as they poo? And we get to read about it? Ugh.
Nice idea, bring back the old star topology for storage! I was trying to decide between external Firewire or external SATA. e-SATA has 3x the performance of FW400, but doesn't offer such convenient topology. What's the contention delay like in such a hub with all channels blasting at once? Has anyone benchmarked?
Is there a chance that installing the latest Apple OSX 10.3 could corrupt the firewire data? I read it has issues with external firewire drives.
I got 8 Maxtor 4A300J0 drives @ 5400. Picked them up from CompUSA for $239 during a mail-in rebate thing they had going on last month.
I'm running RAID5 so I loose 300GB to parity, but like you say, given the 2TB limit, that worked out pretty good. Btw, windows report my dynamic shared volume at 2,099,996,200,960 bytes, so it looks like I overcame the 2TB limit somehow.
I boot from a seperate drive that contains just XP and apps.
I ran some test on my RAID5, and here are my numbers:
This was when I was running the 3ware in a P3 800 board. If we round the sequential read to 80MB/s (640Mb/s) out of the raid, barring other bottlenecks (PCI bus and Ethernet I/O) I should be able to transfer:
32 average HDTV streams (at 20Mb/s), or
23 high-quality HDTV streams (at 27Mb/s), or
106 average DVDs (at 6Mb/s), or
71 high-quality DVDs (at 9Mb/s), or
2500 average mp3s (at 256kb/s), or
444 uncompressed audio CDs (at 1.441Mb/s)
If the 3ware card is plugged into a 64bit/66MHz PCI slot, and you have integrated Gigabit Ethernet that doesn't ride the PCI bus, you just might be able to dump 640Mb/s to a 1Gb/s switch and then feed clients from there.
I haven't really had a chance to stress test the system yet since I'm still waiting on my 1Gb/s switch, but things run real well over my current 100Mb/s switched network (3Com Superstack II switch).
I'm seeing maybe 3% network utilization when streaming a DVD to a client, I would not anticipate any problems with a half dozen streams which would be the most I could ever imagine streaming at once.
When moving 50GB across the 100Mb/s connection, network utilization goes to 75-80%, but cpu remains less than 5%. And it does not affect the ability of the server to stream lossless audio and/or video to a htpc client.
The 1Gb/s switch will be shared between the server and the workstations that I use to rip from. The media clients (htpcs) will remain connected to the current 100Mb/s switch which in turns connects to the 1Gb/s switch.
Yes, MC9 lives on the server along with a pair of M-Audio 24/96 DiOs and the built-in SP/DIF on the motherboard. This gives me 3 SP/DIF zones and 2 analog zones.
I talk to the server from my airpanel running the Lobby suite. From here I can launch DVDLobby and tell it to launch a movie on one of the htpcs. Or I can just launch MC9 and start different playlists to any of the 5 zones that eminate from the rack closet. I can also launch MC9 on any of the media clients and they then connect to the main MC9 library on the server. I can also launch any member of the lobby suite from these clients if I don't want to fetch the airpanel and control it that way.
It should be noted that you can't remote desktop directly to one of the clients if your intent is to launch something on the local display. The thinsoft folks I mentioned earlier well sell a single license client to allow remote desktop access to a single client while preseving the local session.
I like the ATI cards myself. Since the server isn't normally connected to a monitor, it just got some old AGP card in it, a Voodo5 I think. I run a Pro-9700 MP-1 in my main htpc, and a 9200 in the htpc connected to a rear projector via s-video. I'm not pleased with the s-video of this card, and have been told ATI aren't know for s-video quality. Anyway, likely not a concern in your case.
I don't have any regrets from going the XP route vs. linux or 2003 server. My environment is very stable, and I haven't had any hardware conflicts/issues.
I'm running a 2.8Ghz P4c with a Zalman 7000Cu heatsink and Kingston Hyper-X PC 3500.
I built this out of cannibalized parts last January 2003. I suppose by now you could probably double the media storage for the same cost -- there's a lot of rebates for PATA drives around.
Basically, all I bought new were the drives, the case, and the PSU. Total cost below $1300. Serves several thousand visitors a day, peaked at 30K hits for a while following a Slashdotting. CPU usage peaks around 20%. Using J River's Media Center, I've tested it serving 6 simultaneous 720x480 DIVX streams to clients over LAN and WAN with no problems.
These chumps spent 3 times what I did, and they don't even have disk redundancy. Who let the dogs out?
Reburned them for archival copies. 12 Discs - No errors. Never used labels (always figured they were dodgy), used water-soluble ink marker. No Sharpie!
They are some of the oldest mp3s in my collection! Also kind of nostalgic reading through 10-year-old NFOs from cracker groups long past.
If you read the article, what is actually (between the lines) reviewed is the DAC of the iPod, which is incredible.
Yes, it's reasonably quality... for a small portable music device. Quite good, not as good as the Creative Zen. Definitely optimised for listening in a noisy environment using crappy earbuds.
But I'll tell you what's better. I hooked up my girlfriend's Archos to my amp using its built-in, idiot-proof digital coax and I bypass the DAC altogether. Maximal quality -- limited only by the bitrate and audio characteristics of the file being played. I hear the more modern players, like the iRiver, go on better and feature optical digital I/O.
That's paddywagon, boyo. Based on Irish racial stereotyping.
Main Entry: paddy wagon
Pronunciation: 'pa-dE-
Function: noun
Etymology: probably from Paddy
Date: 1930
: an enclosed motortruck used by police to carry prisoners -- called also Black Maria, patrol wagon
Is it okay to admit that I prefer the BBC TV Series? Killer music, funky pseudo "advanced" fake computer graphics, and some excellent spaceship models. It's a pity about Zaphod's lame extra head though.
Apple, of course, is completely the opposite, and one of the reasons people buy things like the ipod is the great design (aesthetic, ergonomic, and otherwise).
The advantage was that they could get to market quickly with the iPod, once Archos and Creative showed them there was a market in HD-based players. But Apple's failure to design any custom ASICs or advance or protect the iPod technology mix since then is problematic. The iPod's power consumption is way high, their battery life stinks, and Apple finds it difficult to raise its iPod margins. Also, like IBM with the original IBM-PC, they can not really block others from doing the aggregation.
MS can also employ industrial designers to pretty up the outside of a commodity box, you know... Don't get too cocky.
While PortalPlayer's Maia is restricted from discussing how Apple managed its iPod design chain, he was able to describe how systems houses in general work with the audio subsection designer. A drawback for Apple, and other systems houses relying on reference designs, is protection of its product and market space. When fundamental parts of the design are done by others, there is an almost certainty that competitors will eventually ship products using the same basic technology. Obviously, a company like PortalPlayer makes the same silicon, firmware, tools and reference designs available to many other companies.
Check out Lyra, Archos for built-in CF support and
on
iPod Media Reader Slowness
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· Score: 2, Informative
I work as a photojournalist at a local newspaper, just about to switch to digital photography. It would be great to have a small multipurpose device to backup a compact flash card but ~22 minutes for a 512MB card.
Using an extra $100 under-performing clunky gadget to send data to a device with no image viewing seems like a losing proposition. I like the look of the new Lyra ($400) and Archos ($600... too rich for me!). Both seem to have CF built-in, and support other media with adapters. Both feature full-colour screens for instant viewing. And of course, they all also play mp3s and videos.
The 3rd party market sets the iPod apart from the rest; these features simply aren't available on other MP3 players.
It's my perception that the reason the iPod has these outrageously expensive add-ons (such as crummy Microphones, incredibly slow flash readers, and crappy FM tuners and transmitters) is because the iPod itself ships with such limited hardware.
Many other audio players have this stuff built in. Some at the same price point as the iPod even do video recording and playback. Have you seen what iRiver and RCA offer in the same price bracket?
Another thing I can't understand is the explosion in "skins" for the iPod. If this little hwite look is so damn perfect, why are so many people paying big money for some really ugly bras for their iPods?
I have a large MP3 collection all sorted into directories by Genre/Artist/AlbumName/Tracks. I just want to move up and down the directories and select a starting point to play at and just go.
No doubt many Pod People have posted responses, lauding the iPod's ID3 tag approach to playback. It is a nice touch. Unfortunately, like many Apple design constraints, it's a Henry Ford "any colour as long as it's black" all-or-nothing approach that makes you buy into their way of doing things or not at all.
But you can get the same functionality with the Archos (or any other directory-based player) and using J River's Media Center. MC9 offers Smartlists, which allow you to create on-the-fly playlists that aggregate songs accordig to logical parameters (based on ID3 tags or playlist membership). Just create a bunch of playlists and dump them in a playlist directory. Then pick and mix.
MJ has had the "make a playlist out of query parameters" feature for years, but takes it further: you can define custom fields in the database and search on them (though to be fair, iTunes already includes the things I used those custom fields for.) More importantly, its notion of (non-dynamic) playlists is much more flexible -- you can use a song's presence on a static playlist as a query parameter for a smartlist. I've come to think of playlists as a way of attaching attributes to songs. It's a much more flexible, nuanced way to represent things like genre, where multiple values can easily apply to a song.
You can then dump those generated playlists to the audio player and select a mood- or place-based playlist according to your whim.
And as regardes battery life, the first thing you should do is load Rockbox, if you have not already done so.
The next thing (a bit more tricky) is to replace the old, degraded, low-capacity NiMH AA batteries with some modern 2300 mAh ones. You will double or triple your battery life immediately for a cost of around $5. This site shows you how to modify an Archos safely.
A third option is to expand the Archos from 2MB to 8MB -- this lets the RAM cache more data and reduce the energy required to spin the hard drive.
I can't make $80 but I noticed these $100 10GB hard drive mp3 players. I notice that if you pay the same money Apple are asking for an iPod, you can get ones with recording, video, media card suipport, and 16 hour battery built in. Face it, the iPods are looking pretty tired next to some of the new handhelds: iriver, Archos, Creative, Samsung, and Rio are making great strides.
there are lots of things you can do with smart playlists, but to get any sort of genuine boolean logic in there requires scripting. you can't do that with the smart playlist interface.
If you want to play with serious Smartlist configurability, I suggest you check out JRiver's Media Center, and refer to this earlier comment.
MJ has had the "make a playlist out of query parameters" feature for years, but takes it further: you can define custom fields in the database and search on them (though to be fair, iTunes already includes the things I used those custom fields for.) More importantly, its notion of (non-dynamic) playlists is much more flexible -- you can use a song's presence on a static playlist as a query parameter for a smartlist. I've come to think of playlists as a way of attaching attributes to songs. It's a much more flexible, nuanced way to represent things like genre, where multiple values can easily apply to a song.
Within less than a minute, I had achieved what I'd never been able to achieve between two Windows boxes with WMP.
Yes, this is a definite trend and I've been enjoying this for several years with JRiver's Media Center. I slave 3-5 LAN clients and several WAN clients off my central Server. No-brainer setup, automatic discovery, playlists to die for. Apple are rather late to this party.
32 average HDTV streams (at 20Mb/s), or
23 high-quality HDTV streams (at 27Mb/s), or
106 average DVDs (at 6Mb/s), or
71 high-quality DVDs (at 9Mb/s), or
2500 average mp3s (at 256kb/s), or
444 uncompressed audio CDs (at 1.441Mb/s)...
MC9 lives on the server along with a pair of M-Audio 24/96 DiOs and the built-in SP/DIF on the motherboard. This gives me 3 SP/DIF zones and 2 analog zones.
I talk to the server from my airpanel running the Lobby suite. From here I can launch DVDLobby and tell it to launch a movie on one of the htpcs. Or I can just launch MC9 and start different playlists to any of the 5 zones that eminate from the rack closet. I can also launch MC9 on any of the media clients and they then connect to the main MC9 library on the server. I can also launch any member of the lobby suite from these clients.
Smart playlists are worth it. Managing huge playlists is better, IMHO, in iTunes than any other player. If you have TONS of MP3, iTunes wins, once you get into its playlist management stuff hardcore.
If like me you do indeed have a mammoth collection that demands clever smartlisting, you owe it to yourself to read this comment, which explains how iTunes' playlist features, while reasonably advanced, are still quiote behind Media Center's amazing flexibility.
the reason Christians weren't allowed to lend for interest had nothing to do with fear of economic activity, and plenty to do with legislating morality. It was considered wrong to practice usury, and it was thus made illegal. Yet another example that legislating morals is dumb.
Morality derives from the State, and yet also from the people, as a way of reproducing and constraining power relations. That's why "acceptable" morals were transformed during the century-long conversion of the Roman Empire from Pagan to Christian. It's a complex feedback mechanism.
Don't kid yourself about the position of Jews in European society of that time -- they were seen as a necessary, expendable evil. Xenophobia in general was rampant when Venice, following on from its seclusion of Germans under house arrest in apartment blocks, figured out it could move all its Jews into a single area, the Ghetto, where they could be controlled and, if necessary, eliminated more easily.
And as for the "why" of usury prohibiton, I am definitely viewing it from a structuralist viewpoint. What end did it serve? Why did it persist? Who gained advantage from it, and how was this advantage leveraged?
People have on occasion engaged in wholescale social engineering efforts through legislating morality. The Roman Church's redefiniton of 13 degrees of consanguinity as "incest" in the 1200s comes to mind, as do more recent and unsuccessful attempts at social engineering in the US, such as the failed Alchohol Prohibition and the failing Drugs Prohibition. Anyway, the link between post-medieval non-conformity, Protestantism, and Capitalsm is well-established and pervasive. I note that the massively expanded incest prohibition was originally designed to limit the growing power of self-sufficient kinship collectives within medium-sized towns. But by scattering marriageable brides far and wide, it had the unintended consequence of creating a more dynamic capital market and, by lessening the self-sufficiency, it made it possible for the merchant classes to profitably exchange more goods and services over greater distances. It was a key enabler for the rebirth of urbanism.
If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before
the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age, irrespective of whom he holds his lands. If such a debt falls into the hands of the Crown, it will take nothing except the principal sum specified in the bond.
What a different, horrible world! This passage reminded me that in this time the largest corporation in Europe, the Roman Church, was desperately afraid of economic activity that they feared (rightly!) could undermine their power. They knew that if merchants got more powerful and cities became wealthy, then their international monopoly on buildings and land would be challenged. Basically, no Christians were to be allowed to practice usury, or the accumulation of capital through lending. So they made it permissible for European Jews to practice usury (hence the 'money lender' stereotypes) because, well,when it came down to it, back then they figured Jewish people were barely human and could probably be killed and burned and their assets seized at will.
$50 for a recording mic? $35 for FM? $100 for a card reader?
Wow! That's a lot for some clunky gadget hacks.
I guess after spending so much on an iPod which *lacks* these basic features, Apple, Belkin et al figure they have captive, well-heeled market.
Seriously, how many comparable music players don't have recording or FM these days? In the last few days I've seen the iRiver and the Samnsung, and they are both cheaper than an iPod and come with this stuff built-in.
This review is poor. I note he omits any anlysis of the iPod's S/N output, which isn't surprising considering that Apple themselves seem to want this on the q-t. This is understandable because almost all other audio handhelds available feature higher S/N ratios. Audition an identical MP3 on a iPod and a Zen NX and you will hear a marked improvement on the Zen.
But the main thing for me that disqualifies the iPod from any consideration as "audiophile" is its lack of digital I/O. This is not new, the old Archos Recorder had digital coax input and output. Now I see the new iRiver 120 has optical I/O, and that sounds exciting.
Historically, market systems have outperformed regulated systems over and over again.
Show me the data that backs this up? When you compare the growth rates of developed nations during the heavily regulated 20th century as compared to the classically lightly regulated 19th centruy, you see a huge growth in productivity, GNP, and GDP in the 20th.
Further insights as to how our current regulated market economies differ from laissez-faire market economies can be found in the excellent Late Victorian Holocausts.
I read various tin-foil theories about how the new currency introductions are the thin end of a wedge to create two distinct US Dollar currencies - a domestic, non-convertible currency ripe for devaluation, and an external, convertible Dollar suitable for global transactions. It also lets them control the incredibly quantities of US cash now in the possession of the drug/terror cartels - by some accounts amounting to between 5 and 10% of the global economy.
The reason presented for this bifurcation is as a way to manage the massive capital outflows from the US to its creditor nations. I guess people in Washington are keenly aware of the disorder within the UK caused by its progressive devaluations over several generations of indebtedness in the 20th century after a century of Imperial overstretch and expansion.
It looks as if the Domestic and Non-Domestic $100 bills provided for in
Senator Leahy's S-307 will soon be with us. Last year, Leahy introduced
S-2158, which called for tightly controlled "domestic" and
"non-domestic" versions of the dollar, and new banknotes for both. S-2158 failed to pass
the 103rd Congress because of public objections to the "dual currency"
idea, but the Counterfeiting and Money Laundering Deterrence Act,
reintroduced just a few months later as S-307, is a very close replacement.
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh and they never had headphone jacks with Walkmans, oh no.
I'd be more impressed if the iPods had something like the Neuros and could broadcast stuff, and you tune into other people's local broadcasts. Doesn't Apple have Rendezvous autoconfig software tech, couldn't they turn every iPod into a convenient super-local radio broadcaster? That would be a tech story.
This is just lame. Doing a search for the "Leander Kahney" it seems there is no iPod story too trivial for s/he to write and for Wired to publish.
What's next? iPodders describe music they listen to as they poo? And we get to read about it? Ugh.
Is there a chance that installing the latest Apple OSX 10.3 could corrupt the firewire data? I read it has issues with external firewire drives.
I built this out of cannibalized parts last January 2003. I suppose by now you could probably double the media storage for the same cost -- there's a lot of rebates for PATA drives around.
Supermicro P6DBE (1997 vintage)
2xP3 600MHz
Adaptec 1940UW SCSI
Software RAID 1
x2 36GB Seagate SCSI drives
(web server)
1GB ECC PC100 RAM
x1 WD1600JB PATA drive
(apps)
Promise SX6000
Hardware RAID 5
x6 WD1600JB PATA drives
(media server)
ATI Rage Pro
(it's a server!)
Antec 1040SX Case
Antex True480 - 480 Watt PSU
Basically, all I bought new were the drives, the case, and the PSU. Total cost below $1300. Serves several thousand visitors a day, peaked at 30K hits for a while following a Slashdotting. CPU usage peaks around 20%. Using J River's Media Center, I've tested it serving 6 simultaneous 720x480 DIVX streams to clients over LAN and WAN with no problems.
These chumps spent 3 times what I did, and they don't even have disk redundancy. Who let the dogs out?
Reburned them for archival copies. 12 Discs - No errors. Never used labels (always figured they were dodgy), used water-soluble ink marker. No Sharpie!
They are some of the oldest mp3s in my collection! Also kind of nostalgic reading through 10-year-old NFOs from cracker groups long past.
But I'll tell you what's better. I hooked up my girlfriend's Archos to my amp using its built-in, idiot-proof digital coax and I bypass the DAC altogether. Maximal quality -- limited only by the bitrate and audio characteristics of the file being played. I hear the more modern players, like the iRiver, go on better and feature optical digital I/O.
Dude, have you checked out TinyURL?
http://tinyurl.com/trbs
Is it okay to admit that I prefer the BBC TV Series? Killer music, funky pseudo "advanced" fake computer graphics, and some excellent spaceship models. It's a pity about Zaphod's lame extra head though.
The advantage was that they could get to market quickly with the iPod, once Archos and Creative showed them there was a market in HD-based players. But Apple's failure to design any custom ASICs or advance or protect the iPod technology mix since then is problematic. The iPod's power consumption is way high, their battery life stinks, and Apple finds it difficult to raise its iPod margins. Also, like IBM with the original IBM-PC, they can not really block others from doing the aggregation.
MS can also employ industrial designers to pretty up the outside of a commodity box, you know... Don't get too cocky.
However, they don't seem to support RAW format, so you may have to check out this list of photo/video handhelds. The FlashTrax is listed as supporting RAW, and comes with 30GB (80Gb available) built-in for $500 (80GB is $700).
Many other audio players have this stuff built in. Some at the same price point as the iPod even do video recording and playback. Have you seen what iRiver and RCA offer in the same price bracket?
Another thing I can't understand is the explosion in "skins" for the iPod. If this little hwite look is so damn perfect, why are so many people paying big money for some really ugly bras for their iPods?
But you can get the same functionality with the Archos (or any other directory-based player) and using J River's Media Center. MC9 offers Smartlists, which allow you to create on-the-fly playlists that aggregate songs accordig to logical parameters (based on ID3 tags or playlist membership). Just create a bunch of playlists and dump them in a playlist directory. Then pick and mix.
iTunes does a kind of Smartlisting as well but the iTunes implementation of Smartlists is rather limited. You can then dump those generated playlists to the audio player and select a mood- or place-based playlist according to your whim.
And as regardes battery life, the first thing you should do is load Rockbox, if you have not already done so.
The next thing (a bit more tricky) is to replace the old, degraded, low-capacity NiMH AA batteries with some modern 2300 mAh ones. You will double or triple your battery life immediately for a cost of around $5. This site shows you how to modify an Archos safely.
A third option is to expand the Archos from 2MB to 8MB -- this lets the RAM cache more data and reduce the energy required to spin the hard drive.
Mine however is a simple setup, I recommend checking out some serious Media Center distributed setups...
But why the prohibition? Why would pastoral societies adopt as a general rule laws against the accumulation of capital. Think about it.
Don't kid yourself about the position of Jews in European society of that time -- they were seen as a necessary, expendable evil. Xenophobia in general was rampant when Venice, following on from its seclusion of Germans under house arrest in apartment blocks, figured out it could move all its Jews into a single area, the Ghetto, where they could be controlled and, if necessary, eliminated more easily.
And as for the "why" of usury prohibiton, I am definitely viewing it from a structuralist viewpoint. What end did it serve? Why did it persist? Who gained advantage from it, and how was this advantage leveraged?
People have on occasion engaged in wholescale social engineering efforts through legislating morality. The Roman Church's redefiniton of 13 degrees of consanguinity as "incest" in the 1200s comes to mind, as do more recent and unsuccessful attempts at social engineering in the US, such as the failed Alchohol Prohibition and the failing Drugs Prohibition. Anyway, the link between post-medieval non-conformity, Protestantism, and Capitalsm is well-established and pervasive. I note that the massively expanded incest prohibition was originally designed to limit the growing power of self-sufficient kinship collectives within medium-sized towns. But by scattering marriageable brides far and wide, it had the unintended consequence of creating a more dynamic capital market and, by lessening the self-sufficiency, it made it possible for the merchant classes to profitably exchange more goods and services over greater distances. It was a key enabler for the rebirth of urbanism.
$50 for a recording mic?
$35 for FM?
$100 for a card reader?
Wow! That's a lot for some clunky gadget hacks.
I guess after spending so much on an iPod which *lacks* these basic features, Apple, Belkin et al figure they have captive, well-heeled market.
Seriously, how many comparable music players don't have recording or FM these days? In the last few days I've seen the iRiver and the Samnsung, and they are both cheaper than an iPod and come with this stuff built-in.
This review is poor. I note he omits any anlysis of the iPod's S/N output, which isn't surprising considering that Apple themselves seem to want this on the q-t. This is understandable because almost all other audio handhelds available feature higher S/N ratios. Audition an identical MP3 on a iPod and a Zen NX and you will hear a marked improvement on the Zen.
But the main thing for me that disqualifies the iPod from any consideration as "audiophile" is its lack of digital I/O. This is not new, the old Archos Recorder had digital coax input and output. Now I see the new iRiver 120 has optical I/O, and that sounds exciting.
Historically, market systems have outperformed regulated systems over and over again.
Show me the data that backs this up? When you compare the growth rates of developed nations during the heavily regulated 20th century as compared to the classically lightly regulated 19th centruy, you see a huge growth in productivity, GNP, and GDP in the 20th.
Further insights as to how our current regulated market economies differ from laissez-faire market economies can be found in the excellent Late Victorian Holocausts .
The reason presented for this bifurcation is as a way to manage the massive capital outflows from the US to its creditor nations. I guess people in Washington are keenly aware of the disorder within the UK caused by its progressive devaluations over several generations of indebtedness in the 20th century after a century of Imperial overstretch and expansion.