I would say it's normal for a few oddball ideas to emerge when a company has squeezed several successful projects out. They just get a little headstrong when they've been flush with good ideas lately.
The pack is slated for release sometime in late 2007, and will target security improvements and Quality of Life issues that may spring up between January and the pack's release date.
Quality of Life issues? I mean, I've heard Vista makes you a slave to DRM but I didn't think they meant that in a literal sense.
For the second year running, no U.S. city has made the list of the world's top Intelligent Communities of 2007 [CC], as selected by global think tank Intelligent Community Forum
"We've come to this planet looking for intelligent life. Oops, we made a mistake."
I just built a machine for a gift this last Christmas, and I used the Apevia Q-Pack case. I know the measurements were given on NewEgg, but the case just seemed go big when I actually took it out of the box. One of my ideas had been that it would be possible to push the machine back on the desk and park the mousepad in front of it, but when I swapped out the old computer it was replacing (ancient HP minitower running Win98) I found the Apevia case to be exactly the same depth as the taller, but much narrower, machine it was replacing.
I was expecting the Q-Pack to be a cube in terms of measurements. But due to its wider dimensions with "normal" depth, things seem more crowded than ever on the desk now.
I investigated it and the service was horrible in every way. Music catalog sucked.
eMusic carries what they can. If you're upset you can't find your favorite artist on eMusic, the culprit is 90% of the time going to be the label the artist is on doesn't want eMusic to sell the songs due to lack of DRM.
It's getting really old hearing people bitch about how eMusic has no good music, like they're the ones responsible for that. You can't have lots of Top-40/Major Label artists and no DRM at the same time. Pick one or the other. Because it's going to be awhile, if ever, before you can have both.
The sound quality of samples sucked.
The sound quality of samples vary, but usually the samples average 160-256kbps. You then say iTunes quality is better, yet the bitrate is only 128kbps. Don't bother arguing about the AAC vs MP3 thing. I agree AAC is better quality. But if you think 128k AAC is better than 200k MP3 I have a bridge in the East I'd like to sell you.
One thing that I don't like is the samples are encoded a different bitrate than the songs themselves. But since, overall, the average bitrate for songs is 180-220kbps VBR, I'm not too worried about getting a lousy song after a good preview. Albums encoded at 128kbps are marked on the album page, as well as albums where not all tracks available for download.
Their purchasing options were limited to three subscription models. Even with free music samples I could not find any compelling reason to use their service.
Probably because you are not the type of consumer who likes subscription models, you should go to Audiolunchbox instead. You can buy per-track there, although individual credits are sold in packs. But the catalogs are pretty much the same, and a subscription is not required.
Re:What's wrong with this summary?
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Ah... there's no "dept." caption/commentary!
Let me be the first to suggest this be assigned to the "He's dead, Jim." dept.
I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing. From a marketing perspective, there are huge benefits to centralized computing of course. Take gmail for instance, which lets google mine your private communications to gain insight into products and services which might interest you.
Wow, I wonder where the government would stand on this.
On one hand, having all computing dependent on a few centralized data servers, makes them great terrorist targets. It would be in the best interest of homeland security to not make such an important aspect of our economy venerable in this way.
Meanwhile, everyone having to get permission to use their PC makes spying and silencing dissident SO much easier. TCPM anyone?
"That's basically what Apple has done in that kind of situation with Sony in Japan and Austrailia. If a label doesn't want to deal with your terms, just launch without them, and if you start making money they'll cave in eventually."
And if Microsoft was the only entity coming to the party, that strategy might work for them now too. But they're not. They're competing in an established market, where the market leader nets the vast majority of sales, and where the market leader has an established/loyal following.
And that market leader also has more favorable DRM terms already in effect. Microsoft has something to offer (a big potential customer pool due to the monop--er popularity of their operating systems). Microsoft should have rejected per song restriction changes with a simple "we need uniform rights to be competitive". Apple had gotten them already, so it would be hard for the labels to argue they were ceding too much control. Not getting sharing rights to all songs is especially unforgivable with the deal with Universal and the wireless sharing being the supposed break-out feature of this device. Microsoft was having to pay a fee Apple was not on top of the regular cut and Apple still got better usability.
TrueCrypt allows for hidden volumes (i.e. encrypted areas within encrypted areas) and it's a windows program. They claim it's not possible to detect the hidden volumes, but I have to take their word for it.
Actually, they say it is possible to detect hidden volumes a few ways, one being if you're using a journaled filesystem on the host device. It will be possible to see changes to hard disk sectors that the directory will say are not being used by files. So the solution is not to format the source disk as NTFS in a Windows case and use FAT32 or something like that.
There are two big problems, though: 1. Writes to the upper layer overwrite data at the lower layers, so the redundancy at the lower layers is pretty crucial to avoid data loss, and even then, beyond a certain point, you'll start losing data.
I think the solution is to make the outer encrypted volume a set size, and then create the inner volume to be flexible for size requirements. Before you create the inner volume, put a few financial-related documents in the volume. Now if they open it, here's a few documents and some more space we're not using yet as far as they can tell.
2. All the implementations I've seen out there are Linux-only (or at best UNIX/Linux), which makes them less than useless for most of the general public.
TrueCrypt is available for Windows, and it's dead easy to use in most instances. A double-encrypted setup maybe more difficult (as for plausible deniability you can't have it automatically prompting for passwords to mount volumes), but that not a use I see being sought by the general public. Most people are worried about hackers and laptop thieves, not how to get past government/security agents.
So, a quarter million of their tax dollars were used to help this guy set up a clear demonstration of how ridiculous this technology is and to eliminate his electric bill... Return on investment?
Conspiracy Theory: The Board of Public Utilities is in the utility companys' pocket. They fund this exercise, spending a boatload of taxpayer money, and the result is a house that costs the customer more than twice as much money in upkeep per year verses just using the status quo services. If anyone tries to start another initiative like this in five or ten years, they will be shouted down by all the taxpayers that remember this house.
It's not clear why this information failed to find its way into the released U.S. Defense Security Service report.' So you can all pack in your tin-foil hats --
Slashdot Mirror
I would say it's normal for a few oddball ideas to emerge when a company has squeezed several successful projects out. They just get a little headstrong when they've been flush with good ideas lately.
Not only that, they were spying on Dell.
Dell doesn't make printers! They simply rebrand Lexmark printers, and Lexmark printers suck. Why would HP want to emulate such crappy hardware?
If there are really that many movie pirates, why is global warming still occurring?
See? Science has proven this study's figures to be false!
Quality of Life issues? I mean, I've heard Vista makes you a slave to DRM but I didn't think they meant that in a literal sense.
1st RULE: Terminal will not transmit data about ROBOT FIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: Terminal WILL NOT transmit data about ROBOT FIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If command "HALT" executed, or terminal fails to respond, or gives hardware error code the fight process will be killed.
4th RULE: Only two robots to a fight.
5th RULE: One fight per session.
6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.
7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as required to complete the operation.
8th RULE: If this is terminal's first session at FIGHT CLUB, the terminal MUST fight.
"We've come to this planet looking for intelligent life. Oops, we made a mistake."
I thought it was a Google translation of what he actually said.
I found the mug they issue to everyone.
I just built a machine for a gift this last Christmas, and I used the Apevia Q-Pack case. I know the measurements were given on NewEgg, but the case just seemed go big when I actually took it out of the box. One of my ideas had been that it would be possible to push the machine back on the desk and park the mousepad in front of it, but when I swapped out the old computer it was replacing (ancient HP minitower running Win98) I found the Apevia case to be exactly the same depth as the taller, but much narrower, machine it was replacing.
I was expecting the Q-Pack to be a cube in terms of measurements. But due to its wider dimensions with "normal" depth, things seem more crowded than ever on the desk now.
At first I thought Microsoft was trying to pull a fast one on Wal-Mart.
Then I realized Wal-Mart would immediately recognize the OS they were running was not Windows when they stopped having crashes.
eMusic carries what they can. If you're upset you can't find your favorite artist on eMusic, the culprit is 90% of the time going to be the label the artist is on doesn't want eMusic to sell the songs due to lack of DRM.
It's getting really old hearing people bitch about how eMusic has no good music, like they're the ones responsible for that. You can't have lots of Top-40/Major Label artists and no DRM at the same time. Pick one or the other. Because it's going to be awhile, if ever, before you can have both.
The sound quality of samples vary, but usually the samples average 160-256kbps. You then say iTunes quality is better, yet the bitrate is only 128kbps. Don't bother arguing about the AAC vs MP3 thing. I agree AAC is better quality. But if you think 128k AAC is better than 200k MP3 I have a bridge in the East I'd like to sell you.
One thing that I don't like is the samples are encoded a different bitrate than the songs themselves. But since, overall, the average bitrate for songs is 180-220kbps VBR, I'm not too worried about getting a lousy song after a good preview. Albums encoded at 128kbps are marked on the album page, as well as albums where not all tracks available for download.
Probably because you are not the type of consumer who likes subscription models, you should go to Audiolunchbox instead. You can buy per-track there, although individual credits are sold in packs. But the catalogs are pretty much the same, and a subscription is not required.
Let me be the first to suggest this be assigned to the "He's dead, Jim." dept.
Wow, I wonder where the government would stand on this.
On one hand, having all computing dependent on a few centralized data servers, makes them great terrorist targets. It would be in the best interest of homeland security to not make such an important aspect of our economy venerable in this way.
Meanwhile, everyone having to get permission to use their PC makes spying and silencing dissident SO much easier. TCPM anyone?
Let's see "Gregarious Grizzly" next.
I, for one, welcome our new SpiderGeek overlords!
All parts will be metric so the entire world can understand them!
And that market leader also has more favorable DRM terms already in effect. Microsoft has something to offer (a big potential customer pool due to the monop--er popularity of their operating systems). Microsoft should have rejected per song restriction changes with a simple "we need uniform rights to be competitive". Apple had gotten them already, so it would be hard for the labels to argue they were ceding too much control. Not getting sharing rights to all songs is especially unforgivable with the deal with Universal and the wireless sharing being the supposed break-out feature of this device. Microsoft was having to pay a fee Apple was not on top of the regular cut and Apple still got better usability.
Actually, they say it is possible to detect hidden volumes a few ways, one being if you're using a journaled filesystem on the host device. It will be possible to see changes to hard disk sectors that the directory will say are not being used by files. So the solution is not to format the source disk as NTFS in a Windows case and use FAT32 or something like that.
I think the solution is to make the outer encrypted volume a set size, and then create the inner volume to be flexible for size requirements. Before you create the inner volume, put a few financial-related documents in the volume. Now if they open it, here's a few documents and some more space we're not using yet as far as they can tell.
TrueCrypt is available for Windows, and it's dead easy to use in most instances. A double-encrypted setup maybe more difficult (as for plausible deniability you can't have it automatically prompting for passwords to mount volumes), but that not a use I see being sought by the general public. Most people are worried about hackers and laptop thieves, not how to get past government/security agents.
I'm actually adding this to my collection of quotes and attributing it you (unless you have a different source).
lighting up the PC.
Meet the process, you can't kill!
Wouldn't that be tin-foil trousers?
It's not the shirt that's shrinking...