Backwards compatibility has enormous hidden costs. Reminds me of the startup I worked for. We used the latest high tech development tools that allowed us to run circles around the big, old, slow competitors. Eventually, one of them was forced to buy us out to prevent them from eating their lunch.
So what do they do then? They start forcing us to use their ancient, out-of-date development tools and processes. They never moved on to newer and beter things, because their vendors gave them backwards compatibility. Saved them lots of money by not having to upgrade!
Pretty soon, my group's productivity is back down to the same level as the rest of big-old-slow corp. With no reason to keep us around, they close my group down. Woohoo backwards compatibility saves they day!
to RTFA, but when I got to Excel being one of the greatest software ever written, I knew this was just another big stinking pile of bullshit. The interweb is full of this stuff, so why put it on Slashdot? I assume the rest of the stupid article had nothing else of interest.
Just start going to raves every night. You'll quickly damage your own hearing, and won't be able to hear it anymore. Yes, this is a joke! Go talk nicely to the guy! Talk in a mature manner and don't threaten or use profanity. It might be a good idea to even carry a concealed recorder. This can help in several ways: 1) You might be able to get him to remove the device once he realizes it is annoying even beyond his own property. 2) You might find out what he is pissed off about, correct it, and get him to remove the device. 3) You might get him to at least admit the device is installed just to annoy others 4) You will at least be able to prove that you talked to him and asked him nicely to remove the device. These last two points, along with the recording, can help you tremendously if you decide to go to small claims court. Most judges will be pleased with you if you can show that you tried to resolve the matter in a civilized way and the other party refused to cooperate. The judge will then find in your favor, get him to remove the device and probably fine him a small amount as well. Before going to the court, follow up the verbal communication with a letter. Again, the letter should be mature and must not include profanity. It should be serious, and explain carefully that he is having a deleterious effect outside his own property. Mention in the letter that you have verbally asked him to remove the device. Assuming it doesn't work, take this letter to the court as well. There is actually a good chance that you will be able to resolve the conflict without either court action or violence. Once you have succeeded with that, head on over to the middle east and resolve that conflict!
For me, standing in line at the checkout is usually anti-impulse buying. If the wait is too long, as it usually is at the Walmart, I start leaving items on the rack next to the line. The longer the wait, the more items I dump. Recently, the line was really long, and I started with about $50 in products, and wound up purchasing only about $5 worth.
Still, I don't like the self checkout because they talk too much, and too loudly. I think they are designed to appeal primarily to women, since they constantly tell you how much you are saving. (Women love that!) If they want to make more money from me, just add more cashiers to keep the lines reasonably short.
and it's the measure of the size of the gavitational influence of a body. Outside the Hill Sphere, the gravitational effects of other bodies dominate. The Hill Sphere of this 8cm tungston "sun" is extremely tiny, actually smaller than its' own radius, unless you place it far out in deep space, well outside the orbit of Neptune.
Don't believe me, go look it up on Wikipedia for yourself!
I've always found this article to most insightful with regard to the sort of effort you are describing:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml
At the least, it will open you eyes to the amount of effort required, if you really are serious about this.
Good luck to you.
Actually, my switch was largely driven by Microsoft. Not because I have some sort of loathing of them, (as many on/. apparently do), but because as a customer, I didn't feel I was being treated well.
I was sick of using dialup, and was looking for a faster connection to the interweb. My phone company, Verizon, was constantly bombarding me with offers for DSL, but everytime I called them up, "It's not available in your area" was their response. Next month, they send another flier, "Get $400 off if you signup for DSL now"! "Sorry, it's not available in your area"
So then I tried my cable company, Adelphia, and got pretty much the same story. So, I went to Direcway. They said I needed Windows 98SE. Fine, I said, I have Windows 98. I even went to the Micrsoft site and performed every update, which took about 9 reboots. I also performed updates to all drivers, and the BIOS.
So Direcway installs their stuff, and it doesn't work. "You have Windows 98, but you need Windows 98SE" they say. So I go to Best Buy and get an upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 98SE and install that. Direcway still doesn't work. The upgrade to Windows 98SE is not the same as Windows 98SE they say. How can that be? If it's an upgrade to Windows 98SE, then when you install it you should have Windows 98SE! After some research, I find that many other people have found that the upgrade is indeed not the same thing.
So now, afer I've spent $80 on the 98SE upgrade, I go out and buy Windows 2000 (another $200), and install that. Finally Direcway works. But now, Windows 2000 is unstable. Every few weeks, it refuses to boot up, and complains that system files have been corrupted. Sometimes it can be repaired, sometimes I have to restall the whole freaking operating system again.
After about 6 months of this crap, I decide to buy a new computer, and I'm pretty set on NOT buying more Windows. MACs look really great, but I'm a cheapskate and they seem way too expensive. Then I find a place (alphapcstore.com) that will sell me a PC with Linux pre-installed, (for $30), just like getting a Dell with the Windows pre-installed. So I give it a try, figuring that if I don't like Linux, at least I can still install my Windows 2000 on it.
I've been using the Linux box for a couple of years now and like it a lot. I had some experience using UNIX machines at work, so the learing curve wasn't too steep for me. My only complaint is that most often, when I install some new SW for Linux, the directions are wrong. They tell you to run the script as root when you need to be user, or vice-versa, or they tell you to put the tarball in the same directory where you want the SW installed, and then the setup script complains that you need to move it. The isntructions for the Real Player were so vague as to be useless, and when I found some instructions on some website somewhere, they were wrong because they were for a previous version of the Real Player.
None of this is the operating systems fault, of course, and it has worked well, much better than any version of Windows I've tried. It's just that people who create apps don't seem to be able to supply proper directions for how to install them. Maybe it's because their are some many different distributions. Most of the install directions that look like a lot of work went into them are directed at Redhat systems only. Any other distros you have to figure it out for yourself. A lot of times the apps seem to have links to the wrong directories. It seems that every distro has some different variation of usr/bin, usr/local/bin, usr/lib/bin, usr/local/lib/bin, usr/bin/app/bin/local/bin, etc.
Still, I haven't had Linux refuse to boot up, and I haven't once had to fix or re-install the operating system, so I'm way happy. If the app install thing can be improved, then I think Linux would be a good choice for lots of home users. The way it is now, most home users would just be completely baffled when an app install goes badly.
I believe this one originated from that wacky Lewis Carrol.
A man decides that he wants to become a lawyer, but he doesn't have the money to go to law school. His friend who is already a lawyer offers to teach him for $10,000. The friend says "pay me half up front, and half when you win your first case. If you lose your first case, then you don't have to pay me the second half."
The man agrees, pays the $5000 and proceeds to study law. After some time he passes the bar and officially becomes a lawyer. But then he becomes interested in other things and never tries his first case.
His friend wants the other $5000, so he sues the man for it. Now, since he is a lawyer, he decides to represent himself, and thus this becomes his first case.
Now suppose you are the judge in the suit. If the man wins the suit, then he does not owe the $5000, but since he won his first case, he owes the $5000. If he loses, the he must pay the $5000, but since he lost his first case, by the agreement he does not owe the $5000.
If you don't like Microsoft go ahead and run Linux, OSX, or whatever other op sys does it for you. There is no freaking law that says you must run freaking Windows! (and then complain about it constantly) Isn't it better to light a candle that curse the darkness? Besides, it's not like complaining is going to make MS change at all, so why bother.
Remember that in a C switch, the cases are not exclusive, each of the cases will execute (or at least be evaluated), one by one, unless you put in break(s), which will cause execution to jump back out of the switch once it finds a case that evaluates true.
So yes, this is a legal construct, by the rules of C. It's just a bit bizarre to get a grip on in terms of the flow of program execution. It's one of those things that C critics point to as why no one should ever use C, but I think it's one of the languages quircky charms.
I recall a test question in C class that asked if you should always place a break in each and every case statement. My answer of no was graded incorrect because if you don't then execution will fall through to the next case, often causing all sorts of unexpected behaviour. But here is clearly an example of taking advantage of the fall through feature.
...Especially about the future. From what I've read, oil will be very expensive very soon. The future is more likely to involve horses than flying cars, let alone utopia. Good luck, everyone.
If people believe his assertions are true, and they are concerned, then they can simply buy proprietary software - problem solved.
If people believe his assertions are true, and they are not concerned, then they can buy and/or use either proprietary or open source software depending on whichever best suits their needs - problem solved.
If people don't believe his assertions are true, then they can buy and/or use either proprietary or open source software depending on whichever best suits their needs - problem solved.
I've always been a big supporter of space exploration. Man is destined, some day, to explore and probably colonize other planets around other stars.
But NASA has proven that they won't be the ones leading way. Now the only sensible thing to do is shut it down. They obviously have no mission whatsoever. They are just desperately searching for some mission, something, anything, to justify their own existence. Which only proves, that there is absolutely no justification for NASA anymore.
Once it was a great organization, on the forefront of the future, now NASA is just another government black hole absorbing our tax dollars without actually accomplishing anything new. Better to give that money to real scientists, who will do real science with it, not waste it on boondoggles.
When capitalized, Arctic means "of or related to the North Pole", so yes by definition the Arctic North Pole can be ice free.
When lower case, it means frigid, as in "I hit on that girl at the end of the bar, but she just gave me an arctic look".
Now if you consider the second meaning, does that mean the antarctic is tropical?
What they need is to put scenes in movies where people are jumping with explosions behind them. Jumping and explosions, lots and lots of them. In fact, you could fill up a whole movie with nothing but people jumping and explosions. Now that would sell. Who needs plots and dialog and stuff?
Stores that use these tracking card systems always charge more than stores that don't. There have been many studies that have proven it. Check the Wall Street Journal.
You can prove it yourself, I did. Just check the prices of items in the store, before and after they go on sale with a card discount.
One week the frozen fish is 2.99. The next week, it's 3.79, but you get.80 off if you use your card! You're saving.80! What a bargain! As long as the sheep who shop there think they are saving money, the store is more profitable, so it's all good, right?
My iRiver was cheaper than the iPod, plays ogg, (mp3, wma) has a built-in FM radio tuner, electrical line-in, line-out jacks, optical digital line-in, line-out jacks, and better battery life than the iPod. The joy-button is not a slick, but it works ok. A better value than Apple, MSFT, or the other brands I looked at.
Just don't get the iRiver FM modulator; it has a problem; shuts itself off during any quiet moments between songs. Most annoying!
In Norman Spinrad's book "Agent Of Chaos", the police state has progressed to the point where there is a list of "Permitted Acts" and anything else is, by definition, illegal. The punishment for every illegal act is the same, instant death.
Sometimes this seems like a logical extrapolation, based on the changes that have happened over the last few years. Spinrad's only mistake might be that he projected this to happen hundreds of years into the future, maybe decades would be more accurate.
I hope this book makes a comeback, maybe it would wake some people up. It could also make a pretty good movie.
This article is not too bad. You have to consider that because of the target audience it is not going to be heavy on technical accuracy, but at least it has a reasonably unbiased viewpoint.
The complaint about it being hard to install software on Linux is correct, but really needs some explaination.
Yes, you have to log on as administrator and possbily setting file permissions to install software, but if this also means that a virus can't install without you logging in as admin and setting file permissions, then you are going to get a lot fewer viruses! This is the main reason that Linux is more secure by design.
Yes, it's less convenient, just as locking your car doors and requiring a key to start it makes it less convenient to just hop in and go.
The supermarkets claim these cards will save you money. So if the frozen fish is $2.95 one week, and the next week it's $3.85, but you save 90 cents if you use you card, exactly how much are you actually saving? It's just a scam to make more money for the store while fooling the customers. Safeway is the worst. Check out the Wall Street Journal article on the cards. Stores without cards cost less than the stores with cards, even after the alleged "savings" from the card. Great business model, screw as many customers as possible!
I've got an iRiver 140, a 40GB that I bought mostly because it plays Ogg Vorbis. Ok, it's not as sexy as the iPod, but with the FM tuner, optical I/O, gapless playback, and longer battery life who needs an iPod anyway? There aren't too many companies supporting the Linux-centric Ogg format, so if you like Linux, you should support those companies when you can.
As I saw it, the choice was kinda like this: do you want to date a very beautiful model who is lousy at conversation, can't cook, and doesn't like the things you do, or date a good looking girl who is fun to be around, a great cook and shares your interests? (Don't tell me it's more important that she's good in bed, sleeping with your iPod is just sick!)
By the way, the medias insistance in calling every other product an "iPod killer" is really stupid and annoying. STOP THAT!
Slashdot Mirror
Backwards compatibility has enormous hidden costs. Reminds me of the startup I worked for. We used the latest high tech development tools that allowed us to run circles around the big, old, slow competitors. Eventually, one of them was forced to buy us out to prevent them from eating their lunch.
So what do they do then? They start forcing us to use their ancient, out-of-date development tools and processes. They never moved on to newer and beter things, because their vendors gave them backwards compatibility. Saved them lots of money by not having to upgrade!
Pretty soon, my group's productivity is back down to the same level as the rest of big-old-slow corp. With no reason to keep us around, they close my group down. Woohoo backwards compatibility saves they day!
Selling crack also generates thousands of "jobs", but that doesn't mean it's a good thing, does it.
Finally Ohio has found a way to get rid of Kenneth Blackwell!!! Just accuse him child molesting and he's history.
to RTFA, but when I got to Excel being one of the greatest software ever written, I knew this was just another big stinking pile of bullshit. The interweb is full of this stuff, so why put it on Slashdot? I assume the rest of the stupid article had nothing else of interest.
Just start going to raves every night. You'll quickly damage your own hearing, and won't be able to hear it anymore. Yes, this is a joke! Go talk nicely to the guy! Talk in a mature manner and don't threaten or use profanity. It might be a good idea to even carry a concealed recorder. This can help in several ways: 1) You might be able to get him to remove the device once he realizes it is annoying even beyond his own property. 2) You might find out what he is pissed off about, correct it, and get him to remove the device. 3) You might get him to at least admit the device is installed just to annoy others 4) You will at least be able to prove that you talked to him and asked him nicely to remove the device. These last two points, along with the recording, can help you tremendously if you decide to go to small claims court. Most judges will be pleased with you if you can show that you tried to resolve the matter in a civilized way and the other party refused to cooperate. The judge will then find in your favor, get him to remove the device and probably fine him a small amount as well. Before going to the court, follow up the verbal communication with a letter. Again, the letter should be mature and must not include profanity. It should be serious, and explain carefully that he is having a deleterious effect outside his own property. Mention in the letter that you have verbally asked him to remove the device. Assuming it doesn't work, take this letter to the court as well. There is actually a good chance that you will be able to resolve the conflict without either court action or violence. Once you have succeeded with that, head on over to the middle east and resolve that conflict!
This is just really, really sad. The next logical progression would be Dame Edna commanding the Enterprise. Sad, sad, sad...
For me, standing in line at the checkout is usually anti-impulse buying. If the wait is too long, as it usually is at the Walmart, I start leaving items on the rack next to the line. The longer the wait, the more items I dump. Recently, the line was really long, and I started with about $50 in products, and wound up purchasing only about $5 worth. Still, I don't like the self checkout because they talk too much, and too loudly. I think they are designed to appeal primarily to women, since they constantly tell you how much you are saving. (Women love that!) If they want to make more money from me, just add more cashiers to keep the lines reasonably short.
and it's the measure of the size of the gavitational influence of a body. Outside the Hill Sphere, the gravitational effects of other bodies dominate. The Hill Sphere of this 8cm tungston "sun" is extremely tiny, actually smaller than its' own radius, unless you place it far out in deep space, well outside the orbit of Neptune. Don't believe me, go look it up on Wikipedia for yourself!
I've always found this article to most insightful with regard to the sort of effort you are describing: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml
At the least, it will open you eyes to the amount of effort required, if you really are serious about this.
Good luck to you.
Actually, my switch was largely driven by Microsoft. Not because I have some sort of loathing of them, (as many on /. apparently do), but because as a customer, I didn't feel I was being treated well.
I was sick of using dialup, and was looking for a faster connection to the interweb. My phone company, Verizon, was constantly bombarding me with offers for DSL, but everytime I called them up, "It's not available in your area" was their response. Next month, they send another flier, "Get $400 off if you signup for DSL now"! "Sorry, it's not available in your area"
So then I tried my cable company, Adelphia, and got pretty much the same story. So, I went to Direcway. They said I needed Windows 98SE. Fine, I said, I have Windows 98. I even went to the Micrsoft site and performed every update, which took about 9 reboots. I also performed updates to all drivers, and the BIOS.
So Direcway installs their stuff, and it doesn't work. "You have Windows 98, but you need Windows 98SE" they say. So I go to Best Buy and get an upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 98SE and install that. Direcway still doesn't work. The upgrade to Windows 98SE is not the same as Windows 98SE they say. How can that be? If it's an upgrade to Windows 98SE, then when you install it you should have Windows 98SE! After some research, I find that many other people have found that the upgrade is indeed not the same thing.
So now, afer I've spent $80 on the 98SE upgrade, I go out and buy Windows 2000 (another $200), and install that. Finally Direcway works. But now, Windows 2000 is unstable. Every few weeks, it refuses to boot up, and complains that system files have been corrupted. Sometimes it can be repaired, sometimes I have to restall the whole freaking operating system again.
After about 6 months of this crap, I decide to buy a new computer, and I'm pretty set on NOT buying more Windows. MACs look really great, but I'm a cheapskate and they seem way too expensive. Then I find a place (alphapcstore.com) that will sell me a PC with Linux pre-installed, (for $30), just like getting a Dell with the Windows pre-installed. So I give it a try, figuring that if I don't like Linux, at least I can still install my Windows 2000 on it.
I've been using the Linux box for a couple of years now and like it a lot. I had some experience using UNIX machines at work, so the learing curve wasn't too steep for me. My only complaint is that most often, when I install some new SW for Linux, the directions are wrong. They tell you to run the script as root when you need to be user, or vice-versa, or they tell you to put the tarball in the same directory where you want the SW installed, and then the setup script complains that you need to move it. The isntructions for the Real Player were so vague as to be useless, and when I found some instructions on some website somewhere, they were wrong because they were for a previous version of the Real Player.
None of this is the operating systems fault, of course, and it has worked well, much better than any version of Windows I've tried. It's just that people who create apps don't seem to be able to supply proper directions for how to install them. Maybe it's because their are some many different distributions. Most of the install directions that look like a lot of work went into them are directed at Redhat systems only. Any other distros you have to figure it out for yourself. A lot of times the apps seem to have links to the wrong directories. It seems that every distro has some different variation of usr/bin, usr/local/bin, usr/lib/bin, usr/local/lib/bin, usr/bin/app/bin/local/bin, etc.
Still, I haven't had Linux refuse to boot up, and I haven't once had to fix or re-install the operating system, so I'm way happy. If the app install thing can be improved, then I think Linux would be a good choice for lots of home users. The way it is now, most home users would just be completely baffled when an app install goes badly.
I believe this one originated from that wacky Lewis Carrol.
A man decides that he wants to become a lawyer, but he doesn't have the money to go to law school. His friend who is already a lawyer offers to teach him for $10,000. The friend says "pay me half up front, and half when you win your first case. If you lose your first case, then you don't have to pay me the second half."
The man agrees, pays the $5000 and proceeds to study law. After some time he passes the bar and officially becomes a lawyer. But then he becomes interested in other things and never tries his first case.
His friend wants the other $5000, so he sues the man for it. Now, since he is a lawyer, he decides to represent himself, and thus this becomes his first case.
Now suppose you are the judge in the suit. If the man wins the suit, then he does not owe the $5000, but since he won his first case, he owes the $5000. If he loses, the he must pay the $5000, but since he lost his first case, by the agreement he does not owe the $5000.
If you don't like Microsoft go ahead and run Linux, OSX, or whatever other op sys does it for you. There is no freaking law that says you must run freaking Windows! (and then complain about it constantly) Isn't it better to light a candle that curse the darkness? Besides, it's not like complaining is going to make MS change at all, so why bother.
Remember that in a C switch, the cases are not exclusive, each of the cases will execute (or at least be evaluated), one by one, unless you put in break(s), which will cause execution to jump back out of the switch once it finds a case that evaluates true.
So yes, this is a legal construct, by the rules of C. It's just a bit bizarre to get a grip on in terms of the flow of program execution. It's one of those things that C critics point to as why no one should ever use C, but I think it's one of the languages quircky charms.
I recall a test question in C class that asked if you should always place a break in each and every case statement. My answer of no was graded incorrect because if you don't then execution will fall through to the next case, often causing all sorts of unexpected behaviour. But here is clearly an example of taking advantage of the fall through feature.
...Especially about the future. From what I've read, oil will be very expensive very soon. The future is more likely to involve horses than flying cars, let alone utopia. Good luck, everyone.
No. Why should they concern me?
If people believe his assertions are true, and they are concerned, then they can simply buy proprietary software - problem solved.
If people believe his assertions are true, and they are not concerned, then they can buy and/or use either proprietary or open source software depending on whichever best suits their needs - problem solved.
If people don't believe his assertions are true, then they can buy and/or use either proprietary or open source software depending on whichever best suits their needs - problem solved.
Haven't we already done this?
I've always been a big supporter of space exploration. Man is destined, some day, to explore and probably colonize other planets around other stars.
But NASA has proven that they won't be the ones leading way. Now the only sensible thing to do is shut it down. They obviously have no mission whatsoever. They are just desperately searching for some mission, something, anything, to justify their own existence. Which only proves, that there is absolutely no justification for NASA anymore.
Once it was a great organization, on the forefront of the future, now NASA is just another government black hole absorbing our tax dollars without actually accomplishing anything new. Better to give that money to real scientists, who will do real science with it, not waste it on boondoggles.
When capitalized, Arctic means "of or related to the North Pole", so yes by definition the Arctic North Pole can be ice free. When lower case, it means frigid, as in "I hit on that girl at the end of the bar, but she just gave me an arctic look". Now if you consider the second meaning, does that mean the antarctic is tropical?
What they need is to put scenes in movies where people are jumping with explosions behind them. Jumping and explosions, lots and lots of them. In fact, you could fill up a whole movie with nothing but people jumping and explosions. Now that would sell. Who needs plots and dialog and stuff?
Stores that use these tracking card systems always charge more than stores that don't. There have been many studies that have proven it. Check the Wall Street Journal. You can prove it yourself, I did. Just check the prices of items in the store, before and after they go on sale with a card discount. One week the frozen fish is 2.99. The next week, it's 3.79, but you get .80 off if you use your card! You're saving .80! What a bargain! As long as the sheep who shop there think they are saving money, the store is more profitable, so it's all good, right?
I for one, welcome our new Apple DRM overlords!
My iRiver was cheaper than the iPod, plays ogg, (mp3, wma) has a built-in FM radio tuner, electrical line-in, line-out jacks, optical digital line-in, line-out jacks, and better battery life than the iPod. The joy-button is not a slick, but it works ok. A better value than Apple, MSFT, or the other brands I looked at. Just don't get the iRiver FM modulator; it has a problem; shuts itself off during any quiet moments between songs. Most annoying!
In Norman Spinrad's book "Agent Of Chaos", the police state has progressed to the point where there is a list of "Permitted Acts" and anything else is, by definition, illegal. The punishment for every illegal act is the same, instant death.
Sometimes this seems like a logical extrapolation, based on the changes that have happened over the last few years. Spinrad's only mistake might be that he projected this to happen hundreds of years into the future, maybe decades would be more accurate.
I hope this book makes a comeback, maybe it would wake some people up. It could also make a pretty good movie.
This article is not too bad. You have to consider that because of the target audience it is not going to be heavy on technical accuracy, but at least it has a reasonably unbiased viewpoint. The complaint about it being hard to install software on Linux is correct, but really needs some explaination. Yes, you have to log on as administrator and possbily setting file permissions to install software, but if this also means that a virus can't install without you logging in as admin and setting file permissions, then you are going to get a lot fewer viruses! This is the main reason that Linux is more secure by design. Yes, it's less convenient, just as locking your car doors and requiring a key to start it makes it less convenient to just hop in and go.
The supermarkets claim these cards will save you money. So if the frozen fish is $2.95 one week, and the next week it's $3.85, but you save 90 cents if you use you card, exactly how much are you actually saving? It's just a scam to make more money for the store while fooling the customers. Safeway is the worst. Check out the Wall Street Journal article on the cards. Stores without cards cost less than the stores with cards, even after the alleged "savings" from the card. Great business model, screw as many customers as possible!
I've got an iRiver 140, a 40GB that I bought mostly because it plays Ogg Vorbis. Ok, it's not as sexy as the iPod, but with the FM tuner, optical I/O, gapless playback, and longer battery life who needs an iPod anyway? There aren't too many companies supporting the Linux-centric Ogg format, so if you like Linux, you should support those companies when you can. As I saw it, the choice was kinda like this: do you want to date a very beautiful model who is lousy at conversation, can't cook, and doesn't like the things you do, or date a good looking girl who is fun to be around, a great cook and shares your interests? (Don't tell me it's more important that she's good in bed, sleeping with your iPod is just sick!) By the way, the medias insistance in calling every other product an "iPod killer" is really stupid and annoying. STOP THAT!