There are only a few things that I would actually pay to hear on the radio:
News/Sport? There's almost always a news station somewhere on the AM or FM dial. No need to pay there.
Music? I rarely listen to any music station. I have enough MiniDiscs in the car to keep me happy (just like the previously mentioned MP3 players).
Sporting Events? If I'm going to subscribe to sporting events outside of my local coverage I'd rather spend my money on a Satalite TV subscription. How many games am I going to want to listen to in my car? Plus, most of the stuff I listen to I can get free over the web (Ipswich Town FC) or if needs be can pay $30 to Real/MLB for a season pass to any baseball game.
For me, that leaves unique/niche shows. If I lived somewhere where Stern wasn't syndicated I'd think about dropping some cash to listen to him. Thankfully I live in DC, so I get that for free as well.
As someone has already pointed out, its a nice idea, but I think the satalite radio companies have overestmated the demand out there for thier service. They'll have to come up with something above and beyond simply reproducing the radio experience over satelite to get lots of people to fork over $$$.
And that would be forcing a service to broadband: i.e. I'm a Time Warner Cable subscriber and I HAVE to use AOL to access broadband. If that happens then there will be no incentive for independent companies (the ones who historically make the killer apps) to design something new and interesting. All of the control will be in the hands of AOL, MS (via AT&T/Comcast/Cox) and the like.
Now, I think that AOL service should be an option if you're a TWC subscriber, but I think that broadband and services should be orthogonal.
It also fails if you need to go back and grab a file from 6 months ago. Tapes and a good backup schema help take care of that.
Of course, the poster was looking for a home backup, so data retention probably isn't high on his/her list.
I have way too many god damn machines on a home network (windows, linux, Solaris/Sparc, OSX, etc) so simply backing up to a seperate drive doesn't look like it would cut it. Tapes would be best for a med/large *home* network, but it ain't exactly the cheapest. It might be worth looking at e-bay, dot bomb auctions to see if you can pick up a tape drive for cheap.
That seems to be the way folks are passing stuff that would never pass muster here in the States: Make it something that is a treaty, then argue that we need to do it because the rest of the world is.
From what I understand this has been the tactic of the like of the FBI as of late (pre 9/11). They've been lobbying foreign countries to ratify treaties so they can come back to congress and say "hey, we need to do it too (damn the constitution)"
This one's strength is actually its social engineering. The text of it sounds like something a friend would send. My sister got nailed and I got it via e-mail from her. Since I had just finished talking to her on AIM I found the text of it a little strange so my guard went up. Funny enough, McAfee didn't catch it on Yahoo (I scanned just to see what came up).
I assume this comment was tounge in cheek, but if not, the GnR Pinball game came out at least 8 years ago. Has some wicked multiball. Thankfully a friend of mine has it. Lots o' Free Play!!!!!
1. Office file formats. The DoJ needs to make this call. They need to force MS to release specifications for their file formats as part of the settlement. Though, I will note that conversion by programs like AbiWord and Gnumeric are impressive.
And add {Star,Open}Office as well. I just completed a small contract that required work with an excel spreadsheet. Nothing major, but not a minor problem either. The latest build of OpenOffice worked like a charm (I did some up front testing to make sure everything was kosher, both inporting from and saving to the latest MS Excel spreadsheet) for what I needed (there's still a major bug in vlookup, but thankfully I didn't need that functionality).
It's not quite to the point where I don't triple check stuff to make sure its compatible (and it's still in beta so hopefully it will be rock solid at release), but Open Office has saved me from having to buy MS Office (and crap all over the small profit I've made off of a couple of small projects)
Yes, it does exist today, but how long have GSM networks been in the US?
Actually, a while I belive. Wasn't Sprint Spectrum (claimed to be the first digital cell service in the states) GSM? I think they sold all of their GSM network to VoiceStream when it looked as if GSM was a dead duck in the states.
AFAIK that's how VoiceStream became as large as they did. They bought up Sprint Spectrum and a whole bunch of smaller, regional GSM networks in the states (for fairly cheap) when the conventional wisdom was GSM was dead (here in the US of A).
I think if the unix trend continues and Microsoft (/.'s favorite punchingbag) wants to dip their toe into the market they may do exactly as you say.
They have a BSD licenced code base to build off, can claim it's "Linux compatible" and would be able to say its one of the safest OS cores around. Make it a little pretty, make some changes to intergrate their products and they're in business.
Pie in the sky thinking of course, but I wouldn't doubt if there's a skunkworks somewhere in Redmond playing around with one of the BSDs in such a fashion, just in (the one in a billion) case.
Try about 6 years of Journals... thank god they came out with the CD archive.
LJ would be my first choice. Linux Magazine is pretty good as well, but I worry about it's health. It's been getting mighty slim these days. Of course, these are the only (US) print Linux rags that I know of anyway.
My reply wasn't worded all that well.. what I was implying was if you buy a PC with windows pre-loaded you're SOL for selling it (since there's no physical media to sell). If you buy the box shelf version then I assume you're going to use it... of course, down the road if you upgrade again you can now (baring an overturn of the ruling) sell that.
What's the point of spending a lot of time and money to transfer CD's (uncompressed, no less) to a computer?
Speed between changing songs on different discs. Some jukeboxen may cache a certain amount of music so the switch takes place while the previous song is still playing, but making a change on the fly would still make you wait. Of course, that begs the question: is instant gratification worth $10K+?
An 80's Arcade Game. One of those real-life 6' stand-up arcade games. Any self-respecting geek wouldn't snub his nose at one... well, unless it was a really bad title. "Oh, wow! Pit Fighter! I've always wanted one of THOSE."
Or a pinball machine. The best god-damn disposable income purchase I ever made. Lots of fun to play, and lots of geeky TLC needed to keep it in tip top condition.
Aha! That may be it. I'm running testing as well (just did a fresh install, upgraded from potato when my HD went bonk). How exactly did you fix (i.e. get esd to run correctly).
Yup. I tried KDE back in the 1.x days. Was nice, but it just didn't feel right for me, so I stuck with E. Have moved to Gnome and like it, but have just starting noticing that apps are loading slooooooooooooooowly. (Not smart enough to figure out why either.. I think the latest apt-get update grabbed something a little wonky) So I've given KDE a try. Wow. Leaps and bounds better than the old 1.x KDE (in terms of what I like). Am mighty impressed and will probably switch between the two of 'em for the time being.
Gotta say I'm still pulling for gnome, but either one's fine with me.
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There are only a few things that I would actually pay to hear on the radio:
News/Sport? There's almost always a news station somewhere on the AM or FM dial. No need to pay there.
Music? I rarely listen to any music station. I have enough MiniDiscs in the car to keep me happy (just like the previously mentioned MP3 players).
Sporting Events? If I'm going to subscribe to sporting events outside of my local coverage I'd rather spend my money on a Satalite TV subscription. How many games am I going to want to listen to in my car? Plus, most of the stuff I listen to I can get free over the web (Ipswich Town FC) or if needs be can pay $30 to Real/MLB for a season pass to any baseball game.
For me, that leaves unique/niche shows. If I lived somewhere where Stern wasn't syndicated I'd think about dropping some cash to listen to him. Thankfully I live in DC, so I get that for free as well.
As someone has already pointed out, its a nice idea, but I think the satalite radio companies have overestmated the demand out there for thier service. They'll have to come up with something above and beyond simply reproducing the radio experience over satelite to get lots of people to fork over $$$.
Just my $0.02
at least for me...
And that would be forcing a service to broadband: i.e. I'm a Time Warner Cable subscriber and I HAVE to use AOL to access broadband. If that happens then there will be no incentive for independent companies (the ones who historically make the killer apps) to design something new and interesting. All of the control will be in the hands of AOL, MS (via AT&T/Comcast/Cox) and the like.
Now, I think that AOL service should be an option if you're a TWC subscriber, but I think that broadband and services should be orthogonal.
It also fails if you need to go back and grab a file from 6 months ago. Tapes and a good backup schema help take care of that.
Of course, the poster was looking for a home backup, so data retention probably isn't high on his/her list.
I have way too many god damn machines on a home network (windows, linux, Solaris/Sparc, OSX, etc) so simply backing up to a seperate drive doesn't look like it would cut it. Tapes would be best for a med/large *home* network, but it ain't exactly the cheapest. It might be worth looking at e-bay, dot bomb auctions to see if you can pick up a tape drive for cheap.
my guess is that transparency or super-camoflage will be T3 feature.
The Teminatrix's secret weapon? Alpha Blending!!! I wonder if she'll have an nVidea logo on her forhead.
Get J.Lo to be the Terminatrix... she's already got a huge heat-sink of an ass
(stop me before I joke again....)
That seems to be the way folks are passing stuff that would never pass muster here in the States: Make it something that is a treaty, then argue that we need to do it because the rest of the world is.
From what I understand this has been the tactic of the like of the FBI as of late (pre 9/11). They've been lobbying foreign countries to ratify treaties so they can come back to congress and say "hey, we need to do it too (damn the constitution)"
This one's strength is actually its social engineering. The text of it sounds like something a friend would send. My sister got nailed and I got it via e-mail from her. Since I had just finished talking to her on AIM I found the text of it a little strange so my guard went up. Funny enough, McAfee didn't catch it on Yahoo (I scanned just to see what came up).
Guns 'n Roses finally have a pinball game out!
I assume this comment was tounge in cheek, but if not, the GnR Pinball game came out at least 8 years ago. Has some wicked multiball. Thankfully a friend of mine has it. Lots o' Free Play!!!!!
...on a Gottlieb machine :)
Or some 8 Ball Deluxe, or some GnR Pinball...
Forget consol games, go for some old fashioned pinball this Xmas. Yer index fingers will love you for it.
1. Office file formats. The DoJ needs to make this call. They need to force MS to release specifications for their file formats as part of the settlement. Though, I will note that conversion by programs like AbiWord and Gnumeric are impressive.
And add {Star,Open}Office as well. I just completed a small contract that required work with an excel spreadsheet. Nothing major, but not a minor problem either. The latest build of OpenOffice worked like a charm (I did some up front testing to make sure everything was kosher, both inporting from and saving to the latest MS Excel spreadsheet) for what I needed (there's still a major bug in vlookup, but thankfully I didn't need that functionality).
It's not quite to the point where I don't triple check stuff to make sure its compatible (and it's still in beta so hopefully it will be rock solid at release), but Open Office has saved me from having to buy MS Office (and crap all over the small profit I've made off of a couple of small projects)
Its a digital line out. There are usually two different types of digital line outs: optical and coax.
Grab a CD with optical out, grab a soundcard with an optical in, have fun ripping songs.
The only downside is that you have to rip in realtime and you'll probably have to ID the vast majority of the ripped files yourself.
Yes, it does exist today, but how long have GSM networks been in the US?
Actually, a while I belive. Wasn't Sprint Spectrum (claimed to be the first digital cell service in the states) GSM? I think they sold all of their GSM network to VoiceStream when it looked as if GSM was a dead duck in the states.
AFAIK that's how VoiceStream became as large as they did. They bought up Sprint Spectrum and a whole bunch of smaller, regional GSM networks in the states (for fairly cheap) when the conventional wisdom was GSM was dead (here in the US of A).
Not sure? According to the CNN article its a temporary thing. The Reg says its a lot nastier.
Plus, I think the Reg's angle was that there's now a Script Kiddie tool to do the job.
You just called a Kiwi an Aussie... [gulp] its going to get mighty ugly ;)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
I think if the unix trend continues and Microsoft (/.'s favorite punchingbag) wants to dip their toe into the market they may do exactly as you say.
They have a BSD licenced code base to build off, can claim it's "Linux compatible" and would be able to say its one of the safest OS cores around. Make it a little pretty, make some changes to intergrate their products and they're in business.
Pie in the sky thinking of course, but I wouldn't doubt if there's a skunkworks somewhere in Redmond playing around with one of the BSDs in such a fashion, just in (the one in a billion) case.
Try about 6 years of Journals... thank god they came out with the CD archive.
LJ would be my first choice. Linux Magazine is pretty good as well, but I worry about it's health. It's been getting mighty slim these days. Of course, these are the only (US) print Linux rags that I know of anyway.
My reply wasn't worded all that well.. what I was implying was if you buy a PC with windows pre-loaded you're SOL for selling it (since there's no physical media to sell). If you buy the box shelf version then I assume you're going to use it... of course, down the road if you upgrade again you can now (baring an overturn of the ruling) sell that.
Microsoft has already done this. You no longer get any recovery disc on a seperate (saleable) physical media. Its simply another partition on the HD.
Of course, this makes life difficult for Joe User since if the HD goes "bonk" you're screwed.
What's the point of spending a lot of time and money to transfer CD's (uncompressed, no less) to a computer?
Speed between changing songs on different discs. Some jukeboxen may cache a certain amount of music so the switch takes place while the previous song is still playing, but making a change on the fly would still make you wait. Of course, that begs the question: is instant gratification worth $10K+?
STOP USING PDFs FOR BASIC BLOODY INFO!
My guess is that they simply PDF their Word (or whatever dead tree creating document proc'r of choice is) Marketing Spec sheet.
What is needed is something akin to Distiller / PDFPrint that prints both the bare HTML along with the style sheet. Anyone know of such a beast?
Another "Me Too" post, but Tucows have been awesome. Good price, good service, no bullshit. One happy customer.
An 80's Arcade Game. One of those real-life 6' stand-up arcade games. Any self-respecting geek wouldn't snub his nose at one... well, unless it was a really bad title. "Oh, wow! Pit Fighter! I've always wanted one of THOSE."
Or a pinball machine. The best god-damn disposable income purchase I ever made. Lots of fun to play, and lots of geeky TLC needed to keep it in tip top condition.
Ah.. forgot to say "Thanks" for pointing me in the right direction.
Cool.
:)
Looks like I fixed it (somehow... did an 'esd &', logged out of gnome, back in, all was good). Good enough for right now
Damn, its nice to have a quick machine again.
Aha! That may be it. I'm running testing as well (just did a fresh install, upgraded from potato when my HD went bonk). How exactly did you fix (i.e. get esd to run correctly).
Mondo thanks!!!
Yup. I tried KDE back in the 1.x days. Was nice, but it just didn't feel right for me, so I stuck with E. Have moved to Gnome and like it, but have just starting noticing that apps are loading slooooooooooooooowly. (Not smart enough to figure out why either.. I think the latest apt-get update grabbed something a little wonky) So I've given KDE a try. Wow. Leaps and bounds better than the old 1.x KDE (in terms of what I like). Am mighty impressed and will probably switch between the two of 'em for the time being.
Gotta say I'm still pulling for gnome, but either one's fine with me.