I have only ever seen it once, and that was when it premiered in theaters. Now that I remember it, I didn't like it, so you got me. But it all fairness, of all the sci-fi themed movies you could have seen in 1989, it wasn't The Fly II or Millennium.
Perhaps go with the films? I was never a big Star Trek fan. I preferred Babylon 5. I loved the original films though. In fact, I really have liked every feature film I've seen. Maybe that can be an entry way into the TV series.
I've been paying attention to the WP7 crowd closely the last few months in expectation of jumping ship from both Android and iPhone. The people who have stuck with WP7 really love the system so much more than Android or iPhone, so they don't really want to go back. The big complaints are about not having parity in popular apps that are cross platform on Android and iPhone, things like Instamatic, Skype, just about anything Zynga. If WP8 helps bring those apps over, Windows Phone users will be happy. Hopefully Microsoft is working behind the scenes to get these apps.
Sony had that chipset in use prior to the update, and likely, it worked fine, so it's hardly Sony's fault that the chipset they used wasn't future proofed from a bug that, at that time, was nonexistent. Sony probably shouldn't have upgraded to ICS, but had they not, customers would have been frustrated and Sony would have gotten a black eye for not offering ICS. Customer satisfaction demanded that Sony give ICS. Is there no way for customers to revert back?
In addition to web browsing and occasional navigation, I stream radio and podcasts nearly daily whilst driving: Pandora, TuneIn, etc. Then there are a few social network updates, including picture uploads, but it's the streaming radio that makes up the most of my usage. I'm at 0.248 GB according to Verizon. I still would like to maintain unlimited service. Verizon has offered no reason other than the desire to make more profit as an explanation for the increase. I did the math, it will be an increase for me if the plan listed stands. As a long-time VZW subscriber, I'm too used to paying a premium. I just started looking at other carriers' plans, and there are some very good plans out there. I wonder how many customers Verizon will lose solely because customers got curious about what else was out there. I for one likely wouldn't have bothered to look at other carriers had Verizon not done this.
Isn't it a bit silly to to make the distinction between business phones and consumer phones anymore? The non-business activities of non-enterprise consumers seem pretty much exactly like the business activities of enterprise consumers. Both frequently check email, view media in multiple formats, update something on a cloud, check in at a location, search, map, etc. I'm thinking about switching from my iPhone and a my Droid to the Lumia 900 if I leave Verizon, or if Verizon gets one. I don't have the MS Office needs, but aside from a new social game apps, WP7 will cover most of my business and non-business needs. In any case, if one has to take sides, the marketing for the 900 clearly puts WP7 in consumer territory.
I agree with you in spirit, but when the customer signs the contract with the weasel words that allowed the provider to change terms of the contract, then that freedom is part of the contract itself.
I'm one of those grandfathered unlimited out of contract customers. I'm not entirely confident that I won't be forced into a new contract type even if my next phone isn't subsidized. Verizon has done away with unlimited. It's been gone a while now as I understand it. So, I wonder if Verizon would require me to pick a new plan even if I'm out of contract were I to buy a new phone at full price. I don't see where they couldn't do that. After all, I'm not bound by a contract to remain, and they are not bound by a contract to keep me.
Verizon's network is better is certain places. For example, I am currently in Phoenix, Arizona. I can and have been in places in the middle of nowhere in Arizona and California and New Mexico, and have gotten service whilst others around me on T-Mobile and AT&T did not. I don't travel to the middle of nowhere anymore, so fear of losing connectivity is no longer a concern for me. I point this out only because fear of losing that connectivity has allowed Verizon to keep many customers it would have lost already to AT&T. Verizon had a reputation as being somehow the better network overall for a lot of consumers, especially enterprise customers.
I'm one of the many grandfathered customers who still has unlimited on a smartphone. So, at the moment I'm weighing my options of jumping ship for AT&T or staying on to see if I can tolerate the new data caps.
I used to playing on MUDs. I never liked them more than my paper and dice based RPGs. I don't really understand this overemphasis on virtual property. I've played WoW and Magic online. I understand that one pays real money for virtual goods, but I prefer to think of it as paying to extend a gaming experience. None of these items have value to me outside of the context of the game. So, once the game is over, that's it. In Dungeons & Dragons (before all this computer gaming), I once had a +5 Holy Avenger sword. It even had intelligence if I recall right. But the character who had it was a Fighter class. I've roleplayed Paladin class characters who would have benefitted from that sword, but my Paladin and my Fighter existed in different campaign settings. They wouldn't know each other. That's how we played it back then. We didn't bitch about it. Were I to return to D&D today, I wouldn't cry over the fact that I really do already possess this sword somewhere. Perhaps these gamers who are pissed about losing their virtual goods are hoping that someday they might be able to reuse those goods. What if the game comes back a couple of years from now? Suddenly, it's a more reasonable that old players want to have their goods. Maybe they just want a virtual trophy room-like homepage that they can load and use to view their character. In this case, screenshots don't really do, because you want that animation. I believe my Diablo II characters existed as individual files. Are there any online games that let you backup a character to file? I wonder.
That would certainly piss me off. My only complaint about PayPal is their holding payment on a sale until delivery, then sitting on the funds for as much as 21 days. That hasn't happened to me, but I have had to wait much longer for payments to be released. It isn't even an issue of disparate banks not being in sync since PayPal will release some of the funds to cover shipping costs once you ship. I take it you had no legal means for getting the money back.
Open primary state. Registered Democrats can vote in the Republican primary and help select the candidate they feel would be best. Obviously, the point is to nominate the worst candidate to face Obama in the general, but the idea is that Romney gets defeated in the primary by Democrats looking to spoil the well by choosing the candidate they feel will be an easy defeat in the general. Then, ideally - if you're Santorum, Santorum takes the primary win, moves on and becomes the GOP candidate, and miraculously defeats Obama.
I'm an audiophile. Every now and then I buy an album off ITunes. I think my most recent purchase was Alcatrazz's AWOL in Hollywood - a live recording special release which I've only been able to find in downloadable form. I also spent $19 on a special double live album from Mr. Big. The latter was a mistake. I could have and should have waited to pick up the album in CD form for the same price. I'm holding off on the remasters of Ozzy Osbourne's first two records because I've read technical reviews that basically say the remastering is wonky and that my original vinyls and CD transfers will continue to sound better. Looking over my purchases, it seems I mostly buy indie artists and retro electronic music. iTunes is less justifiable for rock music for me.
I don't have as high a regard for those '80s era CD releases as you do. Red Rider's Neruda sounded great on my old Pioneer/Marantz mutt system, and Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder just put chills down my spine, but so many of those early CDs didn't sound that great to me. I would have thought that by now, music is mastered with the intent of being put on CD, and so the CDs should sound better than they did back in the 80s when most artists were mastering first to vinyl then cassette. I never got into SACDs. Instead I chased down MFSL CD releases. I've got an SACD player somewhere though!
PayPal's role is to be a trusted intermediary between strangers who want make a transaction but who don't trust each other and who don't want to reveal too much about themselves. Ideally, A wants to purchase from B. B wants to sell to A. Neither wants to be cheated. Neither wants the other to run away with the goods and the money. Neither wants to freely turn over a credit card number with expiration and security code online. PayPal is great. It works. I've bought and sold on eBay for years, and I've bought services and goods off eBay for years. I was bitten by a eBay's shift towards treating buyers with more integrity than sellers, but all in all, I haven't had a bad experience. I prefer not give out my credit card number to multiple merchants all using different payment gateways. PayPal is safer. If there are alternatives to PayPal, they are meaningless to me unless they are used by everyone I buy from and everyone I sell to.
Hi. First Sale becomes really ambiguous with software regardless of the country of origin because of shrink wrap licensing which courts have defended in some ways, then opposed in others. The biggest case is the Autodesk case wherein Autodesk sued an ebayer for reselling old copies of AutoCAD. Seller won but then lost on appeal because of the licensing model. AFAIK the supreme court continues to refuse comment on it.
Sorry for the late response, nursing a cold. The relevant case law is the recent Autodesk case wherein Autodesk sued an eBay seller who was reselling old copies of AutoCAD. The seller won the case initially, which was thought to affirm First Sale for software, but the 9th circuit Appeals reversed, acknowledging that shrink wrap licensing was valid. If I recall, there was a suggestion that the shrink wrap license model wasn't limited to software, but could even be used for non-digital products. There has been other case law that says the opposite, but case law in one geography isn't immediately law in another. It seems that justices are hesitant to affirm or deny outright which only adds to the ambiguity.
Actually, it's not clear what the law regarding resale of software. There's caselaw that supports both arguments: one that digital content is licensed, and one that digital content is purchased. You would think it's obvious that you can resell anything you've purchased, but it's not that simple.
No. Cricket and baseball share a common ancestor. Both evolved from older bat and ball games which were played throughout Europe, even Asia and Africa. Some people say baseball developed out of a regional variant of Rounders and was imported to America by immigrants, but simultaneously, there were eastern European immigrants playing the Russian games Lapta and Oina, and there are many who say modern baseball came from those, especially Oina. Cricket is a sister sport, not a parent.
Ron Paul is an idiot. Nothing will be instantly repealed with Ron Paul as President, just like nothing was repealed with Ron Paul as congressman for the decades he has served. In order for Paul to accomplish any of the big things he's promised, he'll have to take Presidential power far beyond what his philosophy permits in order to get Republicans to vote the way he wants.
I sadly agree. I don't use libraries anymore because I just buy physical books. Now that I'm running out of space and can consume ebooks comfortably, I am wondering whether I am limited to only my library for borrowing. I notice that I must be a NY tax payer in order to use the NY Public Library, even for ebooks. I'd like to know if there's a library that has the wealth of content that Chicago, NYC, or other major libraries have that is open to people who aren't local residents. I feel sorry for people who depend on a bad local library.
BASIC does have its limitations. Of course, most people only think of BASIC in terms of the old QBASIC, and not even QuickBASIC. Since it's Slashdot and the people here are thick, we have to reiterate that a programming language that's designed for quick and dirty coding needn't offer the kitchen sink or uphold some tech-theological principle in order to be valuable. On my old Droid, I often used Python for little random problems that I wanted to solve programmatically on the spot. BASIC on a phone is like a can opener or flash light in your car. It's utterly useless until you need it, then it's there. No reason to whine about it not being more than it is.
A miniDisc player is both an audio player and an audio recorder. Providing you have the mic on you, you can make studio quality PCM recordings anywhere that are incredibly hi-fi. Using the stereo line-in input, you can record from just about anything, and using the line-out, you can playback through anything. So, strictly speaking, the recording power bests what you can do with any other DAP on the market. DAPs clearly offer more uninterrupted music due to large capacity internal storage, and I rely on removable storage (disc cartridges).
I use Hi-MD format miniDisc 1GB cartridges. That's it, there will be no better in the market place since miniDisc is officially dead. I get roughly 94 minutes PCM wav recording or more possibly using ATRAC Advanced Lossless, but if I use a lossy format like ATRAC (modern ATRAC sounds as good as LAME MP3), I can get about 7 hours in HI-SP mode (256 kbps) or 64 hours in HI-LP (60 kbps) which sounds good for spoken word (lectures, etc). Clearly, a FLAC or Apple Lossless based DAP with even 16GB flash memory is technically superior. I find that technically superior isn't all that. If a DAP gets data corruption, you're done listening to music until you fix it. The worst that can happen to me is that one of my cartridges is corrupted, leaving me with whatever I have remaining. I usually carry several cartridges. If I'm recording a performance, I don't worry about losing the entire set as I would with a DAP. The MZ-M200/MZ-RH1 supports MP3 too, though it's not gapless as with ATRAC or PCM. I can playback LAME 320kbps MP3s. Oh, I can also record data.
Beyond that, it becomes a matter of preference.
DAPs are all in one now with fancy UIs. That's superior to what I have. I've got a long stereo cable for my mic and I have a tethered remote where most of the MZ-M200's features are accessible. If there's an advantage, I suppose it's that fact that my spartan setup doesn't impact battery life. My screen is just two small OLED displays. Being used to interfaces like this on stereo hi-fi, I'm comfortable with not having album art or desktop metaphors.
Sony's equalizer actually is useful. It's just presets, but I've found enjoyment in each of them for different types of material. My iPod Touch and iPhone 4 have equalizer presets too, and I believe I've only ever found one that sounded like an improvement. The BBE in Cowon is probably better than what I have though.
A clear disadvantage is software. The only official application for transferring recordings to and from miniDisc is SonicStage, a dead Windows only product. I am a Mac user. I couldn't get SonicStage working with Wine. I have Sony's Hi-MD Music Transfer app which does the bare job of moving recordings around. SonicStage was deeper, allowing me to convert music to other formats from within, create titles, groupings, etc. In miniDisc, you aren't limited to just track numbers, You can group tracks together and move between groups. This gives you the effect of moving between albums. There is an FOSS project for getting miniDisc Hi-MD and ATRAC support in Linux, and I have heard you can do most of what SonicStage does now. But really, Windows is the best platform for miniDisc users.
So yeah, you have to be nuts to pick miniDisc for MP3 playback, but if you want lossless recording and playback, and you don't mind carrying cartridges, miniDisc sounds better than an iPod and gives far better recording options than any DAP once you get over the hump over internal storage. I come from the mix tape 70s/80s generation though. When I realized a few years back that I didn't *need* to have every album I own with me everywhere I go, it became easier for me to stick with miniDisc for playback.
I'd say Sony has made some great products beyond 2004, speaking strictly of television and audio. I still use my mini-Disc. It's still one of my favorite tools despite the availability of more expensive flash or SD card based audio recorders. I also prefer it for playback over my iPods. Software is a pain in the ass, but I digress. My Sony Bravia TVs from around 2006 still work very well despite heavy use. My fat PS3 is a great machine, well except for the matters being discussed here.
Slashdot Mirror
I have only ever seen it once, and that was when it premiered in theaters. Now that I remember it, I didn't like it, so you got me. But it all fairness, of all the sci-fi themed movies you could have seen in 1989, it wasn't The Fly II or Millennium.
Perhaps go with the films? I was never a big Star Trek fan. I preferred Babylon 5. I loved the original films though. In fact, I really have liked every feature film I've seen. Maybe that can be an entry way into the TV series.
I've been paying attention to the WP7 crowd closely the last few months in expectation of jumping ship from both Android and iPhone. The people who have stuck with WP7 really love the system so much more than Android or iPhone, so they don't really want to go back. The big complaints are about not having parity in popular apps that are cross platform on Android and iPhone, things like Instamatic, Skype, just about anything Zynga. If WP8 helps bring those apps over, Windows Phone users will be happy. Hopefully Microsoft is working behind the scenes to get these apps.
You got them there. QA is one thing Sony could control and ought to have.
Sony had that chipset in use prior to the update, and likely, it worked fine, so it's hardly Sony's fault that the chipset they used wasn't future proofed from a bug that, at that time, was nonexistent. Sony probably shouldn't have upgraded to ICS, but had they not, customers would have been frustrated and Sony would have gotten a black eye for not offering ICS. Customer satisfaction demanded that Sony give ICS. Is there no way for customers to revert back?
In addition to web browsing and occasional navigation, I stream radio and podcasts nearly daily whilst driving: Pandora, TuneIn, etc. Then there are a few social network updates, including picture uploads, but it's the streaming radio that makes up the most of my usage. I'm at 0.248 GB according to Verizon. I still would like to maintain unlimited service. Verizon has offered no reason other than the desire to make more profit as an explanation for the increase. I did the math, it will be an increase for me if the plan listed stands. As a long-time VZW subscriber, I'm too used to paying a premium. I just started looking at other carriers' plans, and there are some very good plans out there. I wonder how many customers Verizon will lose solely because customers got curious about what else was out there. I for one likely wouldn't have bothered to look at other carriers had Verizon not done this.
Isn't it a bit silly to to make the distinction between business phones and consumer phones anymore? The non-business activities of non-enterprise consumers seem pretty much exactly like the business activities of enterprise consumers. Both frequently check email, view media in multiple formats, update something on a cloud, check in at a location, search, map, etc. I'm thinking about switching from my iPhone and a my Droid to the Lumia 900 if I leave Verizon, or if Verizon gets one. I don't have the MS Office needs, but aside from a new social game apps, WP7 will cover most of my business and non-business needs. In any case, if one has to take sides, the marketing for the 900 clearly puts WP7 in consumer territory.
I agree with you in spirit, but when the customer signs the contract with the weasel words that allowed the provider to change terms of the contract, then that freedom is part of the contract itself.
I'm one of those grandfathered unlimited out of contract customers. I'm not entirely confident that I won't be forced into a new contract type even if my next phone isn't subsidized. Verizon has done away with unlimited. It's been gone a while now as I understand it. So, I wonder if Verizon would require me to pick a new plan even if I'm out of contract were I to buy a new phone at full price. I don't see where they couldn't do that. After all, I'm not bound by a contract to remain, and they are not bound by a contract to keep me.
Verizon's network is better is certain places. For example, I am currently in Phoenix, Arizona. I can and have been in places in the middle of nowhere in Arizona and California and New Mexico, and have gotten service whilst others around me on T-Mobile and AT&T did not. I don't travel to the middle of nowhere anymore, so fear of losing connectivity is no longer a concern for me. I point this out only because fear of losing that connectivity has allowed Verizon to keep many customers it would have lost already to AT&T. Verizon had a reputation as being somehow the better network overall for a lot of consumers, especially enterprise customers.
I'm one of the many grandfathered customers who still has unlimited on a smartphone. So, at the moment I'm weighing my options of jumping ship for AT&T or staying on to see if I can tolerate the new data caps.
I used to playing on MUDs. I never liked them more than my paper and dice based RPGs. I don't really understand this overemphasis on virtual property. I've played WoW and Magic online. I understand that one pays real money for virtual goods, but I prefer to think of it as paying to extend a gaming experience. None of these items have value to me outside of the context of the game. So, once the game is over, that's it. In Dungeons & Dragons (before all this computer gaming), I once had a +5 Holy Avenger sword. It even had intelligence if I recall right. But the character who had it was a Fighter class. I've roleplayed Paladin class characters who would have benefitted from that sword, but my Paladin and my Fighter existed in different campaign settings. They wouldn't know each other. That's how we played it back then. We didn't bitch about it. Were I to return to D&D today, I wouldn't cry over the fact that I really do already possess this sword somewhere. Perhaps these gamers who are pissed about losing their virtual goods are hoping that someday they might be able to reuse those goods. What if the game comes back a couple of years from now? Suddenly, it's a more reasonable that old players want to have their goods. Maybe they just want a virtual trophy room-like homepage that they can load and use to view their character. In this case, screenshots don't really do, because you want that animation. I believe my Diablo II characters existed as individual files. Are there any online games that let you backup a character to file? I wonder.
That would certainly piss me off. My only complaint about PayPal is their holding payment on a sale until delivery, then sitting on the funds for as much as 21 days. That hasn't happened to me, but I have had to wait much longer for payments to be released. It isn't even an issue of disparate banks not being in sync since PayPal will release some of the funds to cover shipping costs once you ship. I take it you had no legal means for getting the money back.
Open primary state. Registered Democrats can vote in the Republican primary and help select the candidate they feel would be best. Obviously, the point is to nominate the worst candidate to face Obama in the general, but the idea is that Romney gets defeated in the primary by Democrats looking to spoil the well by choosing the candidate they feel will be an easy defeat in the general. Then, ideally - if you're Santorum, Santorum takes the primary win, moves on and becomes the GOP candidate, and miraculously defeats Obama.
I'm an audiophile. Every now and then I buy an album off ITunes. I think my most recent purchase was Alcatrazz's AWOL in Hollywood - a live recording special release which I've only been able to find in downloadable form. I also spent $19 on a special double live album from Mr. Big. The latter was a mistake. I could have and should have waited to pick up the album in CD form for the same price. I'm holding off on the remasters of Ozzy Osbourne's first two records because I've read technical reviews that basically say the remastering is wonky and that my original vinyls and CD transfers will continue to sound better. Looking over my purchases, it seems I mostly buy indie artists and retro electronic music. iTunes is less justifiable for rock music for me.
I don't have as high a regard for those '80s era CD releases as you do. Red Rider's Neruda sounded great on my old Pioneer/Marantz mutt system, and Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder just put chills down my spine, but so many of those early CDs didn't sound that great to me. I would have thought that by now, music is mastered with the intent of being put on CD, and so the CDs should sound better than they did back in the 80s when most artists were mastering first to vinyl then cassette. I never got into SACDs. Instead I chased down MFSL CD releases. I've got an SACD player somewhere though!
PayPal's role is to be a trusted intermediary between strangers who want make a transaction but who don't trust each other and who don't want to reveal too much about themselves. Ideally, A wants to purchase from B. B wants to sell to A. Neither wants to be cheated. Neither wants the other to run away with the goods and the money. Neither wants to freely turn over a credit card number with expiration and security code online. PayPal is great. It works. I've bought and sold on eBay for years, and I've bought services and goods off eBay for years. I was bitten by a eBay's shift towards treating buyers with more integrity than sellers, but all in all, I haven't had a bad experience. I prefer not give out my credit card number to multiple merchants all using different payment gateways. PayPal is safer. If there are alternatives to PayPal, they are meaningless to me unless they are used by everyone I buy from and everyone I sell to.
Hi. First Sale becomes really ambiguous with software regardless of the country of origin because of shrink wrap licensing which courts have defended in some ways, then opposed in others. The biggest case is the Autodesk case wherein Autodesk sued an ebayer for reselling old copies of AutoCAD. Seller won but then lost on appeal because of the
licensing model. AFAIK the supreme court continues to refuse comment on it.
Sorry for the late response, nursing a cold. The relevant case law is the recent Autodesk case wherein Autodesk sued an eBay seller who was reselling old copies of AutoCAD. The seller won the case initially, which was thought to affirm First Sale for software, but the 9th circuit Appeals reversed, acknowledging that shrink wrap licensing was valid.
If I recall, there was a suggestion that the shrink wrap license model wasn't limited to software, but could even be used for non-digital products. There has been other case law that says the opposite, but case law in one geography isn't immediately law in another. It seems that justices are hesitant to affirm or deny outright which only adds to
the ambiguity.
RetroGamer magazine fan here. That and the old Amiga mags. Some of the best magazines ever.
Actually, it's not clear what the law regarding resale of software. There's caselaw that supports both arguments: one that digital content is licensed, and one that digital content is purchased. You would think it's obvious that you can resell anything you've purchased, but it's not that simple.
No. Cricket and baseball share a common ancestor. Both evolved from older bat and ball games which were played throughout Europe, even Asia and Africa. Some people say baseball developed out of a regional variant of Rounders and was imported to America by immigrants, but simultaneously, there were eastern European immigrants playing the Russian games Lapta and Oina, and there are many who say modern baseball came from those, especially Oina. Cricket is a sister sport, not a parent.
In a case like that, what do you do? Do you scale the scores upward by some degree? With the time crunch, you probably couldn't retest.
Ron Paul is an idiot. Nothing will be instantly repealed with Ron Paul as President, just like nothing was repealed with Ron Paul as congressman for the decades he has served. In order for Paul to accomplish any of the big things he's promised, he'll have to take Presidential power far beyond what his philosophy permits in order to get Republicans to vote the way he wants.
I sadly agree. I don't use libraries anymore because I just buy physical books. Now that I'm running out of space and can consume ebooks comfortably, I am wondering whether I am limited to only my library for borrowing. I notice that I must be a NY tax payer in order to use the NY Public Library, even for ebooks. I'd like to know if there's a library that has the wealth of content that Chicago, NYC, or other major libraries have that is open to people who aren't local residents. I feel sorry for people who depend on a bad local library.
BASIC does have its limitations. Of course, most people only think of BASIC in terms of the old QBASIC, and not even QuickBASIC. Since it's Slashdot and the people here are thick, we have to reiterate that a programming language that's designed for quick and dirty coding needn't offer the kitchen sink or uphold some tech-theological principle in order to be valuable. On my old Droid, I often used Python for little random problems that I wanted to solve programmatically on the spot. BASIC on a phone is like a can opener or flash light in your car. It's utterly useless until you need it, then it's there. No reason to whine about it not being more than it is.
A miniDisc player is both an audio player and an audio recorder. Providing you have the mic on you, you can make studio quality PCM recordings anywhere that are incredibly hi-fi. Using the stereo line-in input, you can record from just about anything, and using the line-out, you can playback through anything. So, strictly speaking, the recording power bests what you can do with any other DAP on the market. DAPs clearly offer more uninterrupted music due to large capacity internal storage, and I rely on removable storage (disc cartridges).
I use Hi-MD format miniDisc 1GB cartridges. That's it, there will be no better in the market place since miniDisc is officially dead. I get roughly 94 minutes PCM wav recording or more possibly using ATRAC Advanced Lossless, but if I use a lossy format like ATRAC (modern ATRAC sounds as good as LAME MP3), I can get about 7 hours in HI-SP mode (256 kbps) or 64 hours in HI-LP (60 kbps) which sounds good for spoken word (lectures, etc). Clearly, a FLAC or Apple Lossless based DAP with even 16GB flash memory is technically superior. I find that technically superior isn't all that. If a DAP gets data corruption, you're done listening to music until you fix it. The worst that can happen to me is that one of my cartridges is corrupted, leaving me with whatever I have remaining. I usually carry several cartridges. If I'm recording a performance, I don't worry about losing the entire set as I would with a DAP. The MZ-M200/MZ-RH1 supports MP3 too, though it's not gapless as with ATRAC or PCM. I can playback LAME 320kbps MP3s. Oh, I can also record data.
Beyond that, it becomes a matter of preference.
DAPs are all in one now with fancy UIs. That's superior to what I have. I've got a long stereo cable for my mic and I have a tethered remote where most of the MZ-M200's features are accessible. If there's an advantage, I suppose it's that fact that my spartan setup doesn't impact battery life. My screen is just two small OLED displays. Being used to interfaces like this on stereo hi-fi, I'm comfortable with not having album art or desktop metaphors.
Sony's equalizer actually is useful. It's just presets, but I've found enjoyment in each of them for different types of material. My iPod Touch and iPhone 4 have equalizer presets too, and I believe I've only ever found one that sounded like an improvement. The BBE in Cowon is probably better than what I have though.
A clear disadvantage is software. The only official application for transferring recordings to and from miniDisc is SonicStage, a dead Windows only product. I am a Mac user. I couldn't get SonicStage working with Wine. I have Sony's Hi-MD Music Transfer app which does the bare job of moving recordings around. SonicStage was deeper, allowing me to convert music to other formats from within, create titles, groupings, etc. In miniDisc, you aren't limited to just track numbers, You can group tracks together and move between groups. This gives you the effect of moving between albums. There is an FOSS project for getting miniDisc Hi-MD and ATRAC support in Linux, and I have heard you can do most of what SonicStage does now. But really, Windows is the best platform for miniDisc users.
So yeah, you have to be nuts to pick miniDisc for MP3 playback, but if you want lossless recording and playback, and you don't mind carrying cartridges, miniDisc sounds better than an iPod and gives far better recording options than any DAP once you get over the hump over internal storage. I come from the mix tape 70s/80s generation though. When I realized a few years back that I didn't *need* to have every album I own with me everywhere I go, it became easier for me to stick with miniDisc for playback.
I'd say Sony has made some great products beyond 2004, speaking strictly of television and audio. I still use my mini-Disc. It's still one of my favorite tools despite the availability of more expensive flash or SD card based audio recorders. I also prefer it for playback over my iPods. Software is a pain in the ass, but I digress. My Sony Bravia TVs from around 2006 still work very well despite heavy use. My fat PS3 is a great machine, well except for the matters being discussed here.