What I didn't want was a remote controled CD changer that forces you to remember the index number of the CD, and doesn't tell you song information. That kind of UI seems beyond useless given what's possible today.
Funny you should mention that, I was just discussion the utter ridiculousness of this with a friend earlier today.
Has anyone noticed that all R&D on audio CD players apparently ceased about 5 years ago? Not a single feature advancement has seen the light of day. Several years back I bought a Sony 400 CD changer and was completely frustrated with how difficult it was to input all the artist/title info. I finally gave up, sold it on eBay, and build a digital music server...never looked back.
exactly my feelings on it. But when I was looking at it, I found it was far cheaper to produce pretty much exactly the same thing with a PC and a wireless PocketPC. If I could buy something cheaper, and that probably had far better integration than what I could whip up, hell yeah I'd buy it. But at twice the price...no, just not gonna happen.
Sharper Image used to sell a neck cooling thing that used peltier coolers, but then they changed it to a water evaporator design. Battery life probably sucked on the original.
These are commonly used to cool processor cores down, pushing more heat into the heatsink, but keeping the core cooler than it would be with just a heatsink.
I'd disagree that they're "commonly used" for CPU cooling. Peltier heat sink assemblies have fallen way out of vogue in the last few years and were never particularly popular in the first place. Problems like generating a significantly higher amount of waste heat, while simultaneously creating a frost (no kidding) and condensation problem made them extremely impractical when faced with water cooling options.
That being said, peltier cooling IS commonly used in those little desk top refridgerators and portable DC cooler/warmers that you see for sale in RV catalogs.
I could buy a cheapo $299 Dell for each bedroom, network them wirelessly to a huge 300GB drive and have far more functionality than this setup. Am I wrong?
No, you're not wrong, you're simply not in the target market for this device. Clearly they're marketing this at people who's first reaction WON'T be how much cheaper they could do it themselves
Ultimately, they will reduce the price by about 50% or they will fail. I looked at the Sonos a while back and it was great, pretty much everything you could want in a multi-room wireless music distribution system, as long as money is no object.
My only complaint is that by making it white and oddly sized, they made it look like a Mac Mini, not like a stereo component. I don't know why so many companies have such a difficult time understanding that oddly shaped/colored components may be a plus in the computer world, but not in the audio one.
Yes, Joker killing Jason Todd was indeed a very effective plotline. I mean honestly, what would you do if you had a superhero at your mercy?
why I'd tie him up, reveal my entire plan to him, then start up an overly elaborate and time consuming method executing him, which I would not have any interest in watching, so I'd leave him unguarded to meet his end (in an hour or so).
No, totally wrong. I love mid-america, and have spent many years living there. But I'm beginning to smell a troll, for if you haven't heard about the major demographic trend hitting America in recent decades, no links will suffice. It's called Google. Check it out.
Sorry, no it doesn't work that way. You brought up the mythical statistics, so reference the source, or concede that you don't have one. It's not up to me to check your facts for you.
Wow. Totally wrong again. I sure have employed people, and run companies.
Ok then, what is the minimum living wage you've ever employed someone at? Tell me this, if you wanted to hire an intern for the summer, and he said you needed to pay him $30,000 a year, what would your response be?
Except WalMart is profitable to an extreme, so they are hardly operating on the edge.
There's that unashamed socialism again. Walmart is very profitable, therefore they should pay their employees more. Unfortunately, the way the free market works is the work defines the scale, not the profitability of the company. If all you can do is buff floors for a living, chances are you'll make the same no matter who you work for. That's your fault for not learing to repair buffers instead of driving them (or equivalent marketable skill).
Through the miracle of anecdotal evidence. Of course there are those examples. I never said otherwise or said or implied that all workers suffered like that. But if you deny that there are millions who do have this problem, you need to read more news stories.
You missed my point. That being that people choose their lifestyle, they just don't always choose one that fits their paycheck. I've seen people raising families on an income that I couldn't imagine living on by myself. That's where responsible choices come in to the equation.
Not even Microsoft denied those facts.
A finding of facts comes at the end of a case, it's part of the judgement. I'd define the years and milliions MS spent defending the suit as defacto evidence of MS disputing the "facts". Come on now.
I base this on demographic issues I've read about in recent years. The prairie is dying and people are moving to the suburbs and cities. Thus the number of small towns WalMart can choose is shrinking.
wow, didn't take long for your anti mid-america bias to come out. I suspect that you can't cite any stats to back up either of those statements and it simply reflects a personal biggotry of small towns.
How about a living wage instead of creating workers dependant on welfare to get through a month, and who have no health care? I don't care about minimum wage. Some states mandate higher levels since the federal level is not livable. And yes, this applies to all businesses.
And there it is. You're a socialist trying to pretend to ideals of capitalist competition. You'll probably deny that and feign outrage, but if you honestly feel every job in the country should pay a "living wage" then I already know you're a person who has never had to employ another person. You're using the terms "job" as a synonym with "career" and that's simply a naive position. Some jobs have a higher value than others. If your job is only worth $2 per hour to your employer, but it costs him $8 to employ you, the math works out pretty easy what's going to happen.
Since Walmart is your target of choice, let me ask you this. If walmart doesn't pay "living wages", how come I know people who live off their Walmart wages? My best friend from highschool was raised by a single mother who worked at Walmart. Not only did they survive, but...gasp...they actually had health insurance. Drop by Walmart sometime and ask for a benefits sheet before you accuse them of stuff you know nothing about. Here's a statement you'll probably want to quote in outrage "if your job doesn't pay you enough to live on, maybe you should do what it takes to get a better job instead of trying to make your unskilled job pay more". Nothing is stopping anyone from getting a college degree in medicine except ambition. The poorer you are the easier it is in a cruel twist of fate to middle class kids.
Huh? Come back from the ledge before you make another leap like that. I wasn't saying that at all. I said the Findings of Facts documented the abuse, and it did. I read it. The whole thing. All 150+ pages. Did you?
I don't see what was so hard to understand, there's no leap involved, you've stated twice now that you're willing to let government lawyers dictate your opinion on issues of technolgy. Fine. I suspect that only goes as far as they are stating the position you already supported though. (hint: a Finding of Fact statement is a document written by lawyers. the word "fact" in it does not make it gospel, it makes it what lawyers decided on)
There were elements of that in the Tim Burton Batman. Notably the really evil Joker and his laughing poison. But much more was left out.
I don't remember there ever being a kinder, gentler version of the Joker. I remember him beating Robin to death with a crowbar once, and that did make me laugh, but not in a positive way.
The suit was made by a friend of mine, who happens to be a big fan, so he put the effort in to make the suit look right. Of all the batman films so far, it's probably the one that most closely mirrors the comics.
Sorry, I got to call BullSh*t on that one. No Batman comic ever suggested a batsuit anything like any of the movies. The comic suit was always a typical cloth, nothing fancy, foldup-stuff-it-in-a-sack spandex suit.
The closes thing to the movie batsuits was in the "NightFall" storyline where Azrael replaced Batman for a while and built his own armored and weaponed batsuit.
So dude, either you're full of it, or your friend set you up to look like a jerk.
(The exact nature of Batman's relationship with Wayne Enterprises is unclear at this point.)
How about the fact that Batman is Bruce Wayne and owns Wayne Enterprises?
actually, no that's not true, as you'd find out after seeing the movie.
By the end of the movie he is the majority shareholder of the publicly traded company, but through the other 99% he has no legal relationship with the company.
Indeed, for your small community, WalMart's arrival must have been lots of fun. I totally understand that. Do keep in mind, however, that this sort of small community is increasingly rare, and not the type of place WalMart goes into much any more.
What do you base that on? I've always heard the exact opposite, that Walmart overwhelmingly chooses small towns to open stores in. Hence the concern about driving out the "main street" and "mom & pop" stores.
I think most people hate Microsoft and WalMart because of their dirty deeds and how they harm the free and open markets....How WalMart harms society is becoming clearer now (such low wages that people go on public assistance -- that is, you and I pay their wages since WalMart doesn't pay them enough to live on;...
I disagree. I don't think "most" people hate MS or Walmart, or particularly have an opinion one way or another. People who do tend to steep themselves in discussions with like minded people leading them to believe that everyone agrees with them. Techies hate MS because it's cool to hate MS. Economic nutjobs hate walmart because they're a poster child of the capitalist economy. Pretty much everyone else knows them as "that software company I hear about" and "that place I buy tampons at".
Your concern over low wages holds less water than any other argument I've heard yet. If the average walmart job isn't a minimum wager, then they're paying them too much in my opinion. unskilled, uneducated, mindless labor...how much SHOULD that pay? Are you as outraged at every restaurant in the country that doesn't pay their staff even minimum wage, and expects you to make up the difference for them? I don't buy the idea that every job in the country should pay for an opulent lifestyle. the country needs ditchdiggers too (knowing full well that ditchdiggers make damn good money, but it's an analogy my father used).
The Findings of Facts in the U.S. vs Microsoft case documented that beyond any doubt, and it was the part that got upheld in the appeals process.
So you're comfortable abdicating your judgement over issues of technology to the governement and lawyers? I assume that means you agree with privacy laws, software patents, DRM, etc? Do you really want to open that can?
What happens in your example when Walmart drives the other grocery store out of business? Think that can't happen? They've got a huge empire that can subsidize any losses they take until the competition is gone. Then you're back to square one, except your local grocery store has been replaced by a giant corporate entity that doesn't give a rats ass about your community. Don't think that Walmart moved into your neighborhood to provide more choices to you. They're there to wipe out all their competitors, like they've done in plenty of other towns.
Actually, what happened in my home town is that the former monopolistic grocery store owner now owns three stores, all still in the same competition area with Walmart. Funny thing was that by forcing HIM to be competitive, he found that people who used to avoid shopping at his stores and drove 45 miles to do "stock up" shopping, suddenly found his place reasonable and convenient.
Monopolies are never a good thing for anyone except that company's shareholders. It doesn't matter whether or not it's a local monopoly or some giant nationwide corporation.
The word "monopoly" gets tossed around a lot by people who clearly don't understand what it means. Having a significant market share does not make a monopoly, and having a monopoly is in and of itself not illegal or necessarily bad. You probably do business in some form or another with a dozen different REAL monopolies every day and never give it a thought. Not to mention the fact that you're overlooking the "free choice factor". Telling people "we want to deny you a larger selection and lower prices because we don't trust you to make the same choice as us" is worse than monopolistic, it's fascist.
And to take on your last point, yeah, a lot of people have taken on the biggest software companies in the world. And MS has killed a bunch of them. When Netscape IPO'ed, there was an even playing field, but only because MS wasn't interested in that sport yet. As soon as they got involved, they were able to crush one of the fastest growing companies in history. And they used their monopoly to do it.
Sorry, but I'm not going to buy into the "every competitor of MS who ever failed did so because of Evil Bill and his Anti-Competitive practices" slashdot mentality. Netscape went into the can because their products sucked, then MS joined the game with superior ones that Netscape failed to react to properly. I say this as a person who used the Navigator for years before IE came out, and had to professionaly support their horrible webserver. Netscape nailed their own coffin shut in the face of comitted competition. Competition has two possible results, innovation and failure. You don't get to straddle the fence and say "innovation is the result of competition" and then say "failure is the result of anti-competitive monopolistic practices".
Look at Firefox, look at Linux, and plenty of others. You come to the table with a clearly superior product and the size of the competition doesn't count for squat.
You *should* care about competition, not just for lower prices, but because it promotes creativity and the inventive spirit that has gotten us so far. It's a shame that it's dying out in favor of "I'm just a stupid consumer - please tell me what to use!" mentality.
Funny how when people talk about "competition", they only mean supporting their choices, not anyone elses.
I grew up in an area where there was no competion, and I mean NONE. there was one gas station, there was one grocery store, there was one movie theater (one screen). Wal Mart opened a store in town and THEY were the competition to the local monopolies. Suddenly people HAD choices where there were none before.
Just because a business is smaller than another one doesn't imbibe them with any noble qualities. So don't confuse personal hatred of WalMart or Microsoft with an unselfish support of free and open markets.
This whole media player argument holds zero water with me. How many times over the PC timeline have we seen some small start up company come out with a product that blew the doors off of the "big boys". Anyone with a PC and a C++ compiler can take on the biggest software companies in the world, and do so on a pretty even playing field.
Considering that our major interest is in web and file servers, why the hell should I give a damn what Red Hat's licensing costs are? Red Hat is not Linux, no matter how much certain malcontents like to jabber on about it.
well, I'm envious of you...no I really am. only having to worry about web and file servers is a luxury many of us would kill for.
However, in the real world...the one in fortune 500 corporate america, you don't always get to focus quite that narrowly. Some of us have to support commercial apps, ones that license in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and those apps require specific OS versions to run under them. Sure, I could run most, if not all, of them, under Debian, or SUSE, or what the 'F ever, but I'd get jack-f'ng-shit for support on them if I did so. So what, you say? support is worth crap anyway? Well, maybe true, but for those of us who work in the REAL world, and don't just hack shit in our parents basements, there's also an element of
accountability and responsiblity that we don't just get to discount because we dont' like it.
Try explaining to your CTO that EMC, Legato, or HP told you "sorry, not supported" when your datawarehouse took a dirt nap...all because you decided Debian was "good enough" to run something on, knowing it was an unsupported configuration.
This is the attitude that separates professional sysadmins from tweaker script kiddies. Grow up, or get out...in the real world there's no middleground.
Licensing is exactly what just drove my department to port a crapload of stuff OFF of Linux to Windows.
Redhat Enterprise is the "required" platform for many commercial apps to be run under Linux. Compare the licensing costs for Redhat and Windows and Windows comes out way on top.
It's the biggest thread to Longhorn sales in existance. With Win2K's death I don't think Microsoft has much to worry about regarding Longhorn being not successful anymore. XP & 2003 are pains to use as a server.
Really? I'd think the fact that Longhorn isn't available yet would be the biggest threat to it's sales numbers.
For you to say "fine, you shouldn't be going to the library anyway" is tantamount to saying this story doesn't matter.
Let's be clear, my statement is NOT tantamount to saying this story doesn't matter. My statement means EXACTLY that this story not only doesn't matter, it exists only as fodder to feed the popular paranoia that currently surrounds the "privacy as an abstract concept" culture.
The story might as well be titled "Library proposes slightly different way of doing same old thing - Nutjobs expected to react predictably"
It amuses the hell out of me how people will voluntarily "compromise" their "privacy" a hundred times a day without a thought because that's the way things have always been done. But when they hear a proposal of a new, possibly theoretical issue, they react like it's the end of free thought.
I'm going to make a statement here, one that many of you may not be prepared to grasp:
If you're worried about the government invading your library privacy, you probably SHOULDN'T BE GOING TO THE LIBRARY because they are RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT.
The "public" library system is a government agency. If you want privacy, then go to a damn bookstore like the rest of us. You can reasonably expect a private company to not share your information with the government but expecting the government not to share it with the government shows a fundamental disconnect in your paranoid reasoning.
How can you be paranoid about what the government will do with information you have to voluntarily give them?
What if it's a paragraph or two on the subject, every time a microphone is in front of your face for the last 20 years? Would you call it whining then?
I'm sure many people would agree with me that Apple has succeeded (if a 2.5% market share is success) in SPITE of Jobbs, not because of. Apple's design and marketing teams are the best in the industry, Jobbs is a blowhard, whiny little b*tch whom his entire company hates.
So basically, yet AGAIN we have Jobs claiming everyone copies Apples "innovations", when in fact they are really just incremental evolutionary growth off of other peoples ideas.
The amusing part is the volume of people who give Apple a pass on every idea they copy or outright steal from others in the industry, and then do a 180 and say anyone building on Apple ideas is copying.
Is there really no room at all to accept and admit that the entire computing industry moves forward by building on the successful ideas of the industry as a whole? Copyrights and patents are one thing, but this kind of childish "hey, stop copying..." whining is what keeps Jobs from being taken seriiously as an adult.
The iPod wasn't released until November of 2001, and EVERYONE knows Apple invented the MP3 player.
I mean this article would have you think that Apple not only didn't invent the MP3 player, but wasn't even the first hard drive based one. It almost suggests that Apple just decided to "me too" in a growing market, rather than innovating on their own.
Slashdot Mirror
Has anyone noticed that all R&D on audio CD players apparently ceased about 5 years ago? Not a single feature advancement has seen the light of day. Several years back I bought a Sony 400 CD changer and was completely frustrated with how difficult it was to input all the artist/title info. I finally gave up, sold it on eBay, and build a digital music server...never looked back.
I still want it to be black though.
Sharper Image used to sell a neck cooling thing that used peltier coolers, but then they changed it to a water evaporator design. Battery life probably sucked on the original.
That being said, peltier cooling IS commonly used in those little desk top refridgerators and portable DC cooler/warmers that you see for sale in RV catalogs.
Ultimately, they will reduce the price by about 50% or they will fail. I looked at the Sonos a while back and it was great, pretty much everything you could want in a multi-room wireless music distribution system, as long as money is no object.
My only complaint is that by making it white and oddly sized, they made it look like a Mac Mini, not like a stereo component. I don't know why so many companies have such a difficult time understanding that oddly shaped/colored components may be a plus in the computer world, but not in the audio one.
why, what would you do?
Since Walmart is your target of choice, let me ask you this. If walmart doesn't pay "living wages", how come I know people who live off their Walmart wages? My best friend from highschool was raised by a single mother who worked at Walmart. Not only did they survive, but...gasp...they actually had health insurance. Drop by Walmart sometime and ask for a benefits sheet before you accuse them of stuff you know nothing about. Here's a statement you'll probably want to quote in outrage "if your job doesn't pay you enough to live on, maybe you should do what it takes to get a better job instead of trying to make your unskilled job pay more". Nothing is stopping anyone from getting a college degree in medicine except ambition. The poorer you are the easier it is in a cruel twist of fate to middle class kids.
I don't see what was so hard to understand, there's no leap involved, you've stated twice now that you're willing to let government lawyers dictate your opinion on issues of technolgy. Fine. I suspect that only goes as far as they are stating the position you already supported though. (hint: a Finding of Fact statement is a document written by lawyers. the word "fact" in it does not make it gospel, it makes it what lawyers decided on)I don't remember there ever being a kinder, gentler version of the Joker. I remember him beating Robin to death with a crowbar once, and that did make me laugh, but not in a positive way.
The closes thing to the movie batsuits was in the "NightFall" storyline where Azrael replaced Batman for a while and built his own armored and weaponed batsuit.
So dude, either you're full of it, or your friend set you up to look like a jerk.
By the end of the movie he is the majority shareholder of the publicly traded company, but through the other 99% he has no legal relationship with the company.
Your concern over low wages holds less water than any other argument I've heard yet. If the average walmart job isn't a minimum wager, then they're paying them too much in my opinion. unskilled, uneducated, mindless labor...how much SHOULD that pay? Are you as outraged at every restaurant in the country that doesn't pay their staff even minimum wage, and expects you to make up the difference for them? I don't buy the idea that every job in the country should pay for an opulent lifestyle. the country needs ditchdiggers too (knowing full well that ditchdiggers make damn good money, but it's an analogy my father used).
So you're comfortable abdicating your judgement over issues of technology to the governement and lawyers? I assume that means you agree with privacy laws, software patents, DRM, etc? Do you really want to open that can?Actually, what happened in my home town is that the former monopolistic grocery store owner now owns three stores, all still in the same competition area with Walmart. Funny thing was that by forcing HIM to be competitive, he found that people who used to avoid shopping at his stores and drove 45 miles to do "stock up" shopping, suddenly found his place reasonable and convenient.
The word "monopoly" gets tossed around a lot by people who clearly don't understand what it means. Having a significant market share does not make a monopoly, and having a monopoly is in and of itself not illegal or necessarily bad. You probably do business in some form or another with a dozen different REAL monopolies every day and never give it a thought. Not to mention the fact that you're overlooking the "free choice factor". Telling people "we want to deny you a larger selection and lower prices because we don't trust you to make the same choice as us" is worse than monopolistic, it's fascist.
Sorry, but I'm not going to buy into the "every competitor of MS who ever failed did so because of Evil Bill and his Anti-Competitive practices" slashdot mentality. Netscape went into the can because their products sucked, then MS joined the game with superior ones that Netscape failed to react to properly. I say this as a person who used the Navigator for years before IE came out, and had to professionaly support their horrible webserver. Netscape nailed their own coffin shut in the face of comitted competition. Competition has two possible results, innovation and failure. You don't get to straddle the fence and say "innovation is the result of competition" and then say "failure is the result of anti-competitive monopolistic practices".
Look at Firefox, look at Linux, and plenty of others. You come to the table with a clearly superior product and the size of the competition doesn't count for squat.
Funny how when people talk about "competition", they only mean supporting their choices, not anyone elses.
I grew up in an area where there was no competion, and I mean NONE. there was one gas station, there was one grocery store, there was one movie theater (one screen). Wal Mart opened a store in town and THEY were the competition to the local monopolies. Suddenly people HAD choices where there were none before.
Just because a business is smaller than another one doesn't imbibe them with any noble qualities. So don't confuse personal hatred of WalMart or Microsoft with an unselfish support of free and open markets.
This whole media player argument holds zero water with me. How many times over the PC timeline have we seen some small start up company come out with a product that blew the doors off of the "big boys". Anyone with a PC and a C++ compiler can take on the biggest software companies in the world, and do so on a pretty even playing field.
My guess is probably about the time some marketing weenie first heard the term and thought it sounded coo.
and why is it that as soon as you hear "naked protestor", you already know they're going to be ugly as sin?
However, in the real world...the one in fortune 500 corporate america, you don't always get to focus quite that narrowly. Some of us have to support commercial apps, ones that license in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and those apps require specific OS versions to run under them. Sure, I could run most, if not all, of them, under Debian, or SUSE, or what the 'F ever, but I'd get jack-f'ng-shit for support on them if I did so. So what, you say? support is worth crap anyway? Well, maybe true, but for those of us who work in the REAL world, and don't just hack shit in our parents basements, there's also an element of accountability and responsiblity that we don't just get to discount because we dont' like it. Try explaining to your CTO that EMC, Legato, or HP told you "sorry, not supported" when your datawarehouse took a dirt nap...all because you decided Debian was "good enough" to run something on, knowing it was an unsupported configuration.
This is the attitude that separates professional sysadmins from tweaker script kiddies. Grow up, or get out...in the real world there's no middleground.
Redhat Enterprise is the "required" platform for many commercial apps to be run under Linux. Compare the licensing costs for Redhat and Windows and Windows comes out way on top.
Really? I'd think the fact that Longhorn isn't available yet would be the biggest threat to it's sales numbers.
Over the entire build of a $3000+ computer (Mac, PC, etc), no one component is going to change the price all that much.
The strategy behind this move probably has very little to do with price, and will very likely result is little change in price.
The story might as well be titled "Library proposes slightly different way of doing same old thing - Nutjobs expected to react predictably"
It amuses the hell out of me how people will voluntarily "compromise" their "privacy" a hundred times a day without a thought because that's the way things have always been done. But when they hear a proposal of a new, possibly theoretical issue, they react like it's the end of free thought.
If you're worried about the government invading your library privacy, you probably SHOULDN'T BE GOING TO THE LIBRARY because they are RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT.
The "public" library system is a government agency. If you want privacy, then go to a damn bookstore like the rest of us. You can reasonably expect a private company to not share your information with the government but expecting the government not to share it with the government shows a fundamental disconnect in your paranoid reasoning.
How can you be paranoid about what the government will do with information you have to voluntarily give them?
I'm sure many people would agree with me that Apple has succeeded (if a 2.5% market share is success) in SPITE of Jobbs, not because of. Apple's design and marketing teams are the best in the industry, Jobbs is a blowhard, whiny little b*tch whom his entire company hates.
The amusing part is the volume of people who give Apple a pass on every idea they copy or outright steal from others in the industry, and then do a 180 and say anyone building on Apple ideas is copying.
Is there really no room at all to accept and admit that the entire computing industry moves forward by building on the successful ideas of the industry as a whole? Copyrights and patents are one thing, but this kind of childish "hey, stop copying..." whining is what keeps Jobs from being taken seriiously as an adult.
MP3 players from 1999? Riiiight...
The iPod wasn't released until November of 2001, and EVERYONE knows Apple invented the MP3 player.
I mean this article would have you think that Apple not only didn't invent the MP3 player, but wasn't even the first hard drive based one. It almost suggests that Apple just decided to "me too" in a growing market, rather than innovating on their own.
And we all know none of that is true...